IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 8 ENGLISH | Page 90

or freed man serving as repressive agent against the slaves belonging to a particular plantation— used by the current supremacist power as an instrument to channel their racist resentment and powerlessness generated by its lack of convincing arguments. It is regrettable that, one hundred and thirty years after the abolition, an Afro-Cuban professional is unable to separate his political commitment from his racial self-esteem and the most genuine humanist values in order to criticize Obama as politician, and let’ s not even mention such an incredible offensive racist remark. It was so crass and rejected that it remains only a confirmation of the racist inconsistencies by the Cuban government. However, it is striking that this time several intellectuals, well-known for their anti-racist positions and their governmental affiliation, reacted with severe criticism against Argudín Sánchez and the weekly newspaper Tribuna. Both the discomfort and the concern of these intellectuals and activists due to the disrespectful treatment of President Obama draw attention, because they are so passively living all the daily atrocities suffered by the Cubans of African descent in regard of their history, dignity and rights. Those who are right now bothered by this futile and absurd insult to the American president have been living together with so many manifestations of institutionalized racism. They impassively and silently witness the acts of repression against peaceful anti-racist activists, who in several occasions have been expelled by the political police from public cultural spaces before the eyes of these undaunted pro-government intellectuals who are now so concerned about the insult against Obama. The now annoying intellectuals unaffectedly live together with the omissions and misrepresentations of historical facts and with the degrading representations of Cubans of African descent in both cultural and media spaces. Just before the eyes of these undaunted gentlemen, the authorities have practically nullified the popular commemoration of the heroic act by members of the secret brotherhood Abakua who sacrificed themselves in November 1871 trying to rescue the innocent medical students brought by the Spanish colonialists to the firing squad. They were also still and silent— and some of them active protagonists— during the media lynching of the outstanding intellectual Roberto Zurbano because of the truths he wrote in an article published by The New York Times. Finally the article " Obama ' s visit stirs racism " reached my hands. It was written by journalist and activist Gisela Arandia, who criticized the disrespectful treatment of the renowned visitor and deplored Argudín ´ s article as unequivocal evidence of the persistence of racism in Cuba. Arandia denounced the " lack of elementary revolutionary ethics " and that is precisely her first misconception. Ethics is a universal value free of political or ideological hues; ethics lies in the respect to the others, including those who are different. Adding the last name“ revolutionary” means putting limits and distorting the universal sense of the term. Ethics is essentially and totally at odds with the political constraints. She assumed the unfortunate incident as positive, because it reveals that racism still exists in Cuban society, but such a remark was not necessary, since inequalities and
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