Identidades in English No 5, Abril, 2015 | Page 30

Afro-Desendants in the
current Cuban Economy:
History, Challenges and Perspectives.
Fidel Guillermo Duarte González
Historian, community work specialist
Pinar del Río, Cuba
uba’s economic history always
and irrevocably has been tied to
the forced participation of Africans. Their impact was decisive in all
the island’s processes—historical, economic, and social—that led to the rise
of the Cuban nation, despite the harassment to which they were subjected
by the Spanish authorities and the entire
slave infrastructure. Afro-descendants
were a decisive fact in the independence
struggles, and represented a large part
not only of the insurrectionist troops,
but also of a group of extremely notable
and prestigious military leaders, the
most relevant and well known of them
being Lieutenant General of the Liberating Army, Antonio Maceo. Despite this,
when the Republic came into being,
Afro-descendants were socially and
economically relegated to the lowest
stratum, and were victims of the most
brutal repression, this when they decided to demand their rights through force.

C

of 1959, a number of not so much laws,
but declaration were made on behalf of
this ethnic group. Precisely because of
this, the reality that was imposed after
consisted of losing propositions very
similar to the ones that had existed earlier, except for the fact that they were
now affecting free people. This paper
hopes to present how there realities
have been reproduced cyclically
throughout history and to this very day,
a very serious obstacle to equality that
has implications in terms of economic
reforms.

Introduction
Philosophers and so-called professionals from the colonial period in cahoots
with sugar plantation owners went out
of their way to promote not only a theory to bolster the sl ]