more symbolic than real as legitimate representatives of the Revolution , for instance : the late Commander Juan Almeida , at the dawn of the Revolution , and the current President of the Parliament , Esteban Lazo , in the present times of endless agony . The unpardonable blacks are those like the dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo , who treacherously attempted to harm the image of the Revolution by dying in prison after more than eighty days of hunger strike in 2010 . He was so unpardonable that despite the recognition by international organizations as prisoner of conscience , he was branded both in life and posthumously as a " common criminal ." 6 In the memories of his stay ( 1964-84 ) in Cuban prisons , the late writer Jorge Valls asserted : " Blacks were subjected to a particularly bad treatment . ' You , black , said the jailer , how could you rebel against a revolution that is making you a human being ?' The blacks always ended up receiving more punches and bayonet pricks than the others . 7 The cardinal distinction If anything distinguishes the revolutionary racism from its traditional variant , it ’ s the pragmatism . Ignoring the rights of a human group does not mean giving up in trying to use them for benefits beyond the simple economic return . Exploiting the symbolic value of certain concessions does not guarantee equality , but so it ’ s quite effectively simulated . And the Revolution , such an entity that functions as a nickname of some Castro , is not only responsible for granting the dignity of the black population , but also the only guarantee to keep it . Thus , in the early hours of the Bay of Pigs invasion , Fidel Castro signed a statement calling to fight the invaders who “ are coming to take away the dignity from the black men and women after having been restored by the Revolution [ while ] we fight to keep the supreme dignity of the human being for all ”. 8 During the interrogation of the captured blacks invaders , Castro questioned the ideals of those who fought " against a revolution that has established social equality and given black people the right to education , the right to work , the right to go to a beach and the right to grow up in a free country , without being hated or discriminated .” 9 Such an epidermal and rhetorical confrontation against racism also served to contrast the egalitarianism of the nascent Cuban Revolution against the American nation that was still struggling with racial segregation in the South . Castro allowed himself to speak sympathetically about " the semienslaved U . S . blacks ” 10 in order to emphasize the difference . Any conflict between race and nation was solved with two sentences : one by Jose Martí and the other by Antonio Maceo . Dissected in a seminal essay by Enrique Patterson 11 , the Marti ’ s sentence reads like this : " In Cuba there is no fear of a race war . Man is more than white , more than mulatto , more than black ." It was contracted by the political routine to " a Cuban is more than white , more than mulatto , more than black ." Maceo ’ s sentence reads as follows : " Whoever tries to seize Cuba will gather the dust of its soil soaked in blood , if not perish in the fight " ( the politicians changed " appropriate " to " seize "). It does not even mention the issue of race . The only sentence by Maceo currently present in the Cuban political repertoire made it clear that the main concern of the most important national hero of African descent was the danger of foreign intervention . The Cuban racism should be resolved then by the Cubans themselves and , as it is well-known , being a Cuban means more than being white or black , more than ... As time goes by The accumulation of social problems of all kinds in the contemporary Cuban society — including the merger of remnants of traditional racism with the
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