Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 10

The Normalization
of the Divide
Manuel Cuesta Morúa
Historian and political scientist
Spokesperson, Progressive Arc Party (Parp)
National Coordinator, Nuevo País Project
Member, Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration (CIR)
Havana, Cuba

C

uba and the United States just announced
their intention to reestablish diplomatic
relations, which have been broken since
1961. Fifty-three years after the two nations entered their own Cold War which has yielded many
adverse complications, a process of political defrosting is beginning: one that seems to be calming old tensions and placing the two governments
on the path to civilized coexistence.
This political normalization is not the same a social normalization. The 1961 rupture came with
the additional promise that the social divide,
which