IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 14

(or Fidel Castro, if there is any difference) it would be enough to declare in
less than three years, on February 4,
1962, that "the discrimination based on
race or sex" was suppressed. 3 And the
entire humankind, always in need of
happy endings, seemed to believe it.
After that, the silence.4 It would be a
version of the facts.
The other version
Rather than suppressing racism, the
Cuban Revolution revolutionized it. It
generated, so to speak, a revolutionary
racism. While traditional racism makes
every effort to preserve and justify the
social, economic and political inequalities, the "revolutionary" racism would
endeavor to eliminate any obvious way
of discrimination in order to prohibit
then any criticism of racial discrimination and any reference to race, except
the folkloric ones. This is recognized by
Professor Alejandro de la Fuente: "Just
as the overtly racist acts were judged as
counterrevolutionary, any attempt to
publicly discuss the limitations of Cuban integration was also considered as a
work of the enemy."5 And so it was. All
"black" associations were closed along
with the "white" associations. The
automatic and unmitigated repression
against black intellectuals who criticized the racial politics of the Revolution, such as Walterio Carbonell and
Carlos Moore, was not exactly an incentive to create more or less autonomous
associations on racial basis. Nothing
happened in those years, which suggests
that an Independent Party of Color like
the one founded in 1908 and massacred
in 1912 would have triggered a different
reaction by the revolutionary government in comparison with the violent
reaction by the government presided by
General José Miguel Gómez (18581921). Thus, the "minorities" discriminated until then had no choice but to
delegate their ability to claim in the
"revolutionary" avant-garde and to rely
upon its kindness and its degree of

empathy with their problems. Although
the revolutionary racism did not share
the public discourse of traditional racism on the manifest minority’s inferiority, the latter would concur with the
former in assuming that such minorities
could not and should not decide for
themselves what to do at their own pace
and convenience. Despite public declarations of equality, the Revolution
seemed to implicitly suggest that such
minorities were decidedly inept in
matters of autonomy and social selfconsciousness. It may be objected, not
without reason, that such view of the
revolutionary racism was characterized
by the recognition of autonomy and
social self-awareness only to the aforementioned revolutionary avant-garde
and to nobody else. In regard of the
freedoms of expression, association and
criticism, all the components of the sodubbed masses are also limited by the
punctilious suspicion of that avantgarde. Thusly we arrive to the point that
the Cuban regime exercises coercion
and repression in an indiscriminate and
equalitarian manner. Such equality in
repression would be true if the AfroCuban population wouldn’t have been
carrying the extra burden of having to
thank the Cuban Revolution for its
infinite generosity, as if restoring inalienable rights would have been an act of
pure justice, but an exaggerated concession; as if this sector of the population
was deemed inferior at heart. From such
an undeserved equality granted by the
Revolution, the latter will require not
only the absolute assignment of the
ability to express and to defend the
particular claims of that population, but
also tireless devotion and eternal gratitude. Here is where the revolutionary
racism, unlike the traditional one, does
make a distinction between black people: the distinction between useful and
unpardonable blacks. Useful like all the
black figures that after a demonstrated
obedience, are displayed in a manner

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