Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 23

The enormous challenge to the present and future
of Cuba was reaffirmed at the Forum: extremely
high levels of marginalization and exclusion, present throughout the country and the Caribbean,
where thousands of citizens - mostly Afro-descendants - live like illegal pariahs in their own
country, are deprived of basic services, and are
subject to the permanent threat of repression.
Their existence is one of pitiful abandonment.
Forum participants agreed that this enormous
problem of inequality and despair is distinctly absent in the authorities’ socioeconomic reorganization plans as well as in plans of some exile groups
that seek to benefit from the current crisis and the
eventual transition.
Nor does this problem appear in the image that
Cuba offers some representatives in the internal
opposition.
The idea that is was time to openly and honestly
acknowledge the overwhelming nature of those
problems was ratified; that it was time to promote
the long awaited project of civic and economic
empowerment for traditional and current victims
of inequality, marginalization and exclusion, or
run the risk of these traumas and shortcomings
further complicate what is already going to be a
difficult democratic reconstruction.
The presenters reiterated the so often mentioned
need to economically empower Cuban Afro-descendants in order to guarantee equality and social equilibrium, which something that is ever
present in the official rhetoric and propaganda,
but non-existent in the complexity of our everyday lives.
Argentine professor and Africanist Omer Freixa,
who presented during the afternoon session, offered a comprehensive review appraisal of the
presence and legacy of Africans and their descendants in his country, as well as how their “invisibilization” has followed prevailing historical
patterns.
Professor, plastic artist, and critic, José Clemente
Gascón, spoke at length about the presence, images, and traditions of Afro-descendants in Cuban
plastic art - both historically and contemporarily.
The session on Saturday, December 13th, was initiated by Robert Castell, who spoke about the

psychosocial and experiential impact of the extensive religious syncretism that has characterized Cuban society since early in its history.
Eleanor Calvo and Juan A. Madrazo described
many characteristics of Cuba’s current socioeconomic reality, as they have done at a number of
different international events.
After that, Leonardo Calvo updated people about
the specifics of and challenges facing the debate
on race in Cuba, according to the pronouncements
made by critic and essayist Roberto Zurbano
about the shortcomings and gaps in official - supposedly serious - attempts to address racial equality, including anti-racist campaigns.
During discussion, much was said of the worry
shared by many of those present regarding the
weak intervention of official projects to foment
society-wide debate about about interracial relations and patterns of inequality within the context
of Cuba’s present-day complex socioeconomic
situation. In this respect, one of the issues raised
was about the recent inaugural meeting against
racial discrimination sponsored by ARAAC [Regional Afro-Descendant Articulation of Latin
American and the Caribbean]: the gathering was
problematic because it made no room for the kind
of work conducted at the Forum, including proposed solutions to the enormous rifts and shortcomings from which society still suffers.
Calvo insisted that only truly independent antiracist organizations, the reclaiming of identity,
Afro-descendant self-esteem, and connections to
global efforts to promote the values and rights of
Afro-descendants and minorities will bring about
substantial and qualitative change in the way in
which the problem of racism - whose underpinnings go back to the beginning of our history, and
which gets further complicated with each silence
and manipulation - is addressed and transformed.
Cuban Afro-descendants, who bear the heavy
burden of so much aggregated inequality and injustice, are called to regain their civic, political,
and media voices in this process of transition to
democracy. This would mean a very different
kind of social interrelationship for all those who
are called to be political and social actors, ones
who act with responsibility and integrity, to ad-

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