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ful to the Cuban population— is presented
by Ernesto Alvarez in “Buildings and Construction in Cuba.” The author emphasizes
the government's neglect regarding the
maintenance of buildings that house a high
proportion of the population. He exemplifies
with the centric Infanta Street, where most
of the buildings have collapsed or are actually uninhabitable in imminent danger of collapse. These conditions are by no means
unique to Infanta; they are growing at an
alarming rate and with them, the number of
families forced to live in unsanitary shelters
without the slightest hope of getting a decent
residence. In addition, the sad reality of
many buildings collapsing means also
countless human losses, even infants and
toddlers. A brief but illustrative testimony
connects the same issue with the eastern
zone of Manzanillo. In his piece “Tribulations in Cuba: My Market and the Hospital,”
Rudicel Batista describes the dramatic deterioration of both the grocery in the small
town known as “Las Novillas” and the Gynecological-Obstetrics Hospital in the very
city of Manzanillo. The author takes the
latter example for strongly criticizing the
falsity of a major repair reported on television. After the TV report was aired, Batista
made an inquiry into the facility and verified
the parlous state of crucial areas. Amid the
desperate situation in which they live, Cubans adopt different positions to solve their
problems, as Yordis Garcia argued in "The
Enigma of Cubans.” The author emphasizes
the increase —in recent decades— of the
fight against the adverse realities and provides many examples for sustaining the criteria of survival. In the same context, Jorge
Amado Robert relates the issues faced by

those working today for human rights, like
being stigmatized with terms such as mercenaries at the service of a foreign power, to
bring up "The Philosophy of Evaristo Estenoz and the Validity of his Ideas in Today’s Cuba" as worthy example of the
struggle of afro-descendants against the historical excesses of power and the need for
enhancing public awareness of Estenoz’s
principles at the present time, when the situation of the marginalized, especially those of
African descent, appears to lead to a dead
end. The racial problems abroad are addressed by the Brazilian Cássia Maria Carloto and the Peruvian Jorge Rafael Ramirez in
"Afro-Descendant Women in Brazil and
Peru: A Comparative Analysis of Income,
Work, and Education" The authors demonstrate how sexism and racism lie on the basis
of social inequalities as a result of the cumulative process of disadvantages associated
with discriminatory mechanisms. They use
basic statistical data from their countries
which are not available in Cuba for their
own Cuban scholars, due to the manipulative practice of the government —the exclusive controller of any data in all the spheres
of the national life— aimed to conceal the
realities in sight from the Cubans themselves
and especially from the outside world.
Meanwhile the visit of Cuban activist Marthadela Tamayo to one of the most populous
cities in the Colombian Pacific region, allowed her to write the chronicle "Getting a
Feel for Buenaventura" showing the poverty
and the face of destitution suffered by a
large part of the inhabitants in the city,
where people of African descent predominate. And the author Omer Freixa presented
in "Latin American and Caribbean Afro-

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