Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 8

handicap of poverty and neglect. The migrant orientales (people from Oriente) endsure longstanding and escalating dislike by Havana residents
and, like pariahs in their own land, have had to
deal with the indolence of measures employed to
forcefully return them to their regions of origin.
After so many years of misguided government
policy, which is responsible for these very migrations, continued mass relocation to the capital has
become a destabilizing force at a national level.
Fernando Palacio, Moisés L. Rodríguez and Eroisis González write about the devastating reality
of which people with disabilities and women are
victims. This is particularly the case for black
women, to whom the government and social service agencies offer general apathy, inattentiveness to their needs, and the corruption.
Other authors take us down the the paths of exclusion, discrimination, poverty, indifference,
and nonexistent acknowledgment or opportunities that Afro-descendant communities endure in
other Latin American countries: Rosivalda dos
Santos, with the second part of her article “Las
mujeres y la Copa Mundial en Brasil en 2014”;
Omer Freixa, with his article “Some Things are
Better Left Unsaid: Negritude in Argentina”; and
Ashanti Peru, with “Proudly Afro-Descendant.”
Each experience is closely tied to the historical
and current reality of Cuba’s black and mestizo
population. As a point of departure, Dos Santos
once again focuses on the soccer World Cup to
examine the multiple problems that affect black
women, including the stereotyped image of them
that continues to be used, especially regarding
their availability through sex tourism. She describes the myriad consequences as well as contexts of economic interests and cultural traditions
that have impeded attempts to solve the problem.
Freixa focuses on a problem that is well known in
Latin America, one that began when the emerging
republics decided to enter modernity holding aloft
the banner of whitening and racial purity. In Argentina, this was accomplished through forced
“invisibilization” and denial of the cultural contributions of Afro-descendants, leading to the creation of a national imaginary and exclusionary

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narrative that persists to this day. To close this
section of the journal, Ashanti Peru presents us
the inspiring and successful work of young AfroPeruvians transforming social exclusion, racism,
and other problems they face, work that could be
equally encouraging for Cuban youth.
Given the fact that the creation of a democratic
environment is essential for being able to
properly deal with the multiple problems and
needs of Cubans today, articles on deliberative
democracy return to our pages. “Pittsburgh Goes
to Cuba,