IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 9 ENGLISH | Page 6

vehicles, as if they were mangy dogs”.
The author also outlines the solutions
forcibly adopted amid despair by these
men and women, just for surviving. And
he
delves
in
some
historical
circumstances that have led people of
African descent to be the largest sector
within the group carrying the maximum
burden of helplessness and eviction.
Such lack of future perspectives is not
limited to the elderly. It also touches
and lacerates at close quarters the young
generations, although they are active
and ready to exercise tasks that would
allow them to live at least a bearable life
in a country where the multifaceted
crisis hinders and closes all the roads to
enjoy a dignified life. This reality is
shown by Rudicel Batista in “Life of a
Young Peasant: difference, race and
challenge," which tells how a young
Cuban has been struggling and tirelessly
working in their small farm from the
moment the school where he worked
was closed due to the total deterioration
of its facilities. Various reasons,
perhaps even some linked to race,
determined that this young man, known
as The Black, couldn´t find another job
in computer science, a major that had
costed him years of study and effort.
Thus, he is a living testimony of many
young Cubans of African descent who
abandoned their dreams to struggle for
live by farming. He does it in
frustration, but with love, since he is
providing for his family in a country
where tilling the soil y being happy
while reaping its fruits became a distant
memory.
Among many other problems affecting
the life of Cubans today, the lack of
future perspectives, the disruptions and
the educational dysfunctions are strong
evidence of the social breakdown that
leads many young people through more
painful paths and puts the fate of the
nation at risk, as Yordis García tells us
in "Youth
violence: a
terrible
scourge." The author examines the
expressions of violence that proliferate

and prevail in all areas of the family and
social
life
in
his
hometown,
Guantánamo, and indeed throughout the
country.
The misbehavior of children and youth
—its worst expression is the violence
that defines who calls the shots in the
Guantanamo streets— is fueled by
domestic violence at home and child
abuse in the schools, where teachers
without real vocation are also burdened
with the common everyday problems.
Good manners are demonized and the
policy of educational centers in the
country field has converted the
secondary schools into genuine juvenile
prisons, where the law of the
strongest rules and bloody events occur
amid the lack of control and in the light
of false notions about virility and
manhood. Such bad behaviors of free
will are reproduced and stimulated by
the street mobs that offend the civil
rights and democratic activists to the
extreme of stoning their houses.
The
outrages
suffered
by "Cubans of African Descent" are
discussed by Roland Tudela, who
openly blames the government for its
disruptive, intimidating and dividing
policies and practices. In "Neither race
nor sex: just humanity," Verónica
Vega also refers to inequality, racism,
discrimination, the wave of incivility,
the anthropological damage, the crisis
of values ... She notes: "With all that
allegedly implies the admission of
plurality and its exercise, nothing passes
beyond the debate and even the dreadful
disease of discrimination, at any scale,
silently mutates into a disguised illness
with
the
same
symptoms
of
intolerance."
In this regard, we would like to
remember the deep reflection by Matt
Leighninger, Vice President for Public
Participation in the NGO Public
Agenda, about learning (and social
unlearning) the issues of race. Starting
from the race riots during the 1990s in
major US cities, Leighninger explores

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