Identidades in English No 1, February 2014 | Page 41

Cuba. They lose sight of, and disassociate, the true
identity of Cuban Rastafarians, who in addition fit in
perfectly with their brothers in the Caribbean and elsewhere. The constant goal of these writers is to create
confusion about the Rastafarians; they have begun to
say they are antisocial. This is what they try to prove
in the more than 500 pages of their respective books.
The resolutely intentional purpose these publishing
projects have is to identify Rastafarians with marginality and a lack of culture, which one can appreciate
upon reading the interviews in them; the questions
manipulate the Rastafarians to present themselves as
outside the social context in which they must live. Additionally, the evidence that is eventually presented
does not conform to that of their true reality. The interviewee is ignorant of the manipulative way in
which he or she has been used to distort that true reality.
The disingenuousness, futility and disrespect with
which the subject has been manipulated echoes the
constant indignation felt by those who really and truly
experience and live the Rastafarian life as a religion
and have no place from which to express themselves.
Both Samuel Furé, in La Cultura Rastafari in Cuba
(Editorial Oriente, 2011) and Marialina García Ramos, in Rastafarianism in Havana (Pinos Nuevos,
2012), express a reality far from the truthful one, and
write about an “Other” as an individual who cannot
distance himself from urban tribes. Instead, he is presented as wanting to create a new tribe. Both writers
seem ignorant of th e fact that human beings are essentially tribal and express themselves as such according
to the time and space societies afford them. The language these authors use to identify Cuban Rastafarians
is highly discriminatory; in addition, they constantly
make reference to bibliographies and groups quite different from our reality.
The subject of race and gender has been missing from
the State’s agenda for more than half a century. Now,

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furtively, there are writers in ‘official’ spaces who demonize the identity of “Others” as subtly as they can.
They allow no space or possibility for that identity to
manifest and project itself in all its independent and
sovereign dimensions or to create an accurate and real
image of itself, free of exclusionary or manipulative
trappings.
Cuban society has no rights; this no one can deny, no
matter his or her perspective. The police-like attitude
with anyone who is black is aggressive and violent,
particularly when the black person displays and even
wears things that identify him or her with Africanness,
and not with the imposed, European norms. To break
with the image blacks are supposed to project, means
having even less space in society and being even more
likely to suffer rejection from all sectors. The Western
mentality so broadly dominates our society’s spectrum that it is impossible to conceive of a black person
as a whole human being; with those attributes, which
fly in the face of the norms and styles to which we
were subjected for centuries, his or her presence is not
acceptable.
It will never be possible to forget the way the rights of
others were violated during the latter decades of the
twentieth century—starting with the sixties, and the
hippies, “freakies,” religious fanatics or homosexuals—all against the taboo regarding the Revolutionary
way of seeing the social behavior of individuals. Many
ended up in prisons solely for using the symbol for
peace, love and freedom, the name of God, or clothing
from the norm, and this is not even considering those
who lost their lives trying to defend their sacred freedom. The Rastafarians in Cuba endure constant police
harassment and are frequently considered anti-social.
They are disdained and demonized for their culture
and spirituality. Those who want to incriminate them,
hunt them; they are often denied the possibility of decent work.