Identidades in English No 3, September 2014 | Page 7

this Cuban civil project is getting involved is
transparent and eloquent. It is convinced of the
fact that life in these peripheral places in the city,
which are marked by extreme situation, total
overcrowding, marginality, poverty, exclusion
and vulnerability, greatly affect the physical
growth and emotional development of children
and youth. This independent project, which is
closely affiliated with the Citizens’ Committee for
Racial Integration and its leader Juan Antonio
Madrazo, goes to the community to take a bit of
joy and happiness to those children. Through a
methodology called Teatro de la Creación [Theater of Creativity], stories, riddles, historical recreations, storytelling and drawing, they attempt to
instill social and cultural values that will help and
guide them in their insecure lives and sometimes
violent environment they grow up in. It also creates positive ties between the project, community
and parents.
Given the fact that the problem of race, class and
gender transcends Cuba’s borders, we are publishing an article by Rosivalda dos Santos titled
“Women and the World Cup in Brazil in 2014.”
After reviewing the forms of exclusion that characterize soccer’s development in her country, the
author goes into the manipulation and alienation
to which the sport has been subjected. She focuses on how the image of the black-mestiza
woman as lascivious, sensual and available is exported, which comes to a head during the 2014
World Cup. One of her primary goals is to expose
the Brazilian government’s negligence and hypocrisy with regard to sexual tourism and reveal
the complexity of the growing prostitution problem in the country. She bases her analysis on a
study of bills that have been crafted to address it,
what public and official reactions have been to it,
and offers testimonies from women involved in
this profession.
“Cuban Homosexuals: Antecedents, Present and
Future,” by Moisés Leonardo Rodríguez, is a look
at the problems endured by victims of the harassment and persecution that came to a head during
the Revolution’s earliest years, with the creation
of the Military Units for the Aiding of Production

(UMAP), where they were held in the most denigrating of conditions for years. He thoroughly explores the triumphalist propaganda that surround
the National Center for Sex Education
(CENESEX), its highly touted program’s lack of
results, and the lack of attention and rejection to
which LGTB movements in Cuba, and any independent effort on their part, are still subjected.
This section closes with the article “The CounterCultural, Problematic of Identity in Rhetoric
about Gender, Race and Group in Contemporary
Cuban Art,” by José Clemente Gascón, who explores the mark the last decades’ misfortune has
left on art, especially from the 1990s on, with the
unprecedented, generalized crisis brought about
by one of many dramatic events that directly impacted the victims in their struggle for survival:
the “rafter crisis” of the 1990s. A desperate mass
of people took to the sea in search of an uncertain
future that cost the lives of many. This context
gave way to a group of Cuban artists who creatively lay bare human misery, despair, and the
tragedies that play out for them because of their
sexual preferences, or social or racial affiliation.
Around that time, “an artistic discourse with a different view of the race problem emerges, as part
of the subaltern culture practiced by the most disadvantaged people in Cuban society. It focused
on the black subject in Cuba as marginalized,
with economic disadvantages, traumas, and his or
her own demands.” Society’s critical recreation
through cultural expressions has often been a way
to reveal, raise consciousness and face problems
that are hurting humanity in different places and
throughout history.
This issue is devoting a lot of space to the activities and proposals that are being carried out and
entertained to establish the underpinnings for our
democrati 26