IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 58

Professor Cavalier dialogues with some Cuban delegates at the preliminary evening

Led by Cuesta Morúa, the Cuban
delegation included Eliécer Ávila,
leader of the opposition group Somos+;
the historian and freelance journalist
Boris González; the member of both the
Constitutional Consensus and the
Project New Country Marthadela
Tamayo, who is also promoter of the
magazine Identities in Cuba; Yusmila
Reyna, Commissioner of both the
United Table for Democratic Action
(Spanish acronym MUAD) and the
Civic Platform Other 18 in the eastern
provinces; Nelson Alvarez, from the
LGBTI
organization
Afro-Más;
Fernando Palacio, from the Liberal
Cuban Party Solidarity; and Sander
Alvarez, Vice President of the Cuban
Integration Platform and member of the
magazine Identities’ team.
The activists coming from Cuba gave a
distinct touch to the meeting. Responses
for each question of the working group
emerged from their interventions: How
to get people involved in deliberations
on the Constitution? How these
discussions can be viewed as practical
aid by the participants? How could the
regime react? How could the

participants ensure productive and safe
discussions? These are just a few among
the many diverse questions answered
during the meeting, while also new
questions were arising from the
discussions.
To close with a flourish, the cultural
center Art Emporium Gallery opened its
doors to launch the eighth issue of the
magazine Identities and the book The
African footprint in Cuba (2016), by Dr.
Juan
Antonio
Alvarado,
which
summarizes more than thirty years of
research on the contributions by African
slaves to the Cuban nation, culture and
history. Compared to other classic
books on the subject, this piece of
writing is innovative because the author
studied the phenomenon at its root, in
several regions of Africa from where
their inhabitants were brought as slaves
to America. It is essential for the Cuban
historiography, but it can also
substantially contribute to the central
objective
of
the
activism
on
Deliberative Democracy: teaching the
most recent Cuban generations how to
freely think.

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