Letter from Abdias Nascimento
Declaration of African-American Support
AfroCubaWeb
Reverse images: The acrimonious debate on race in Cuba (12/15/2009)
Laying the Groundwork for another 1912 (12/08/2009)
A Missed Shot on the Wrong Flank (12/09)
Other Commentaries
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A new discussion on race in Cuba began in 2009 with a letter from Abdias Nascimento of the Afro-Brazilian Sudies and Research Institute, criticizing Cuba's treatment of
an Afro-Cuban dissident, and was followed by another letter signed by a
number of prominent African-Americans (both letters are linked to on the sidebar). It was followed by a response from Cuba (reproduced below) as
well as numerous analyses and articles.
In addition, a petition initiated by the Minnesota Cuba Committee, entitled "In Solidarity with the Real Anti-Racist Movement in Cuba"was initiated.
Links to
other comments and analyses are on the sidebar. AfroCubaWeb has also compiled a wealth of information on the discussion.
MESSAGE
FROM CUBA TO AFROAMERICAN INTELLECTUALS AND ARTISTS
A Yoruba proverb states: "The lie may run for a
year, the truth will catch
up with it one day". Although the most intolerant political
circles and most
powerful mass media have tried to impose a distorted image of
contemporary
Cuban society on American public opinion for a long time, one
way or
another, in the end, reality leads the way.
We are sure that's the way it will happen when the arguments
refuting those
deceitful statements about our society contained in a
document circulated on
December 1st in the name of a group of Afro-American
intellectuals and
leaders are considered.
To say that among us there is a "callous disregard" for black
Cubans, that
they are "den[ied] civil liberties on the basis of race," and
to "stop the
unwarranted and brutal harassment of black citizens in Cuba
who are
defending their civil rights," would seem a delusional farce
if the evil
intention of adding respectable voices from the Afro-American
community to
the anti-Cuban campaign that attempts to undermine our
sovereignty and
identity were not behind those fictions.
If the Cuba of these times was that racist nation they want
to invent, its
citizens would not have contributed massively to the
liberation of the
African people. More than 350,000 Cuban volunteers fought
alongside their
brothers of Africa against Colonialism. More than 2,000
combatants from the
Island fell in the lands of that Continent. A personality of
undisputed
worldwide import, Nelson Mandela, has recognized the role of
those
volunteers in the definitive defeat of the infamous Apartheid
regime. From
Africa we brought back only the remains of our dead.
If the Cuba of today felt such disrespect for the black race,
more than
35,000 African young persons wouldn't have been trained in
our schools over
the past 40 years, nor would 2,600 young people from some 30
nations of that
region be studying right now in our universities.
A people sick with racism would refuse to collaborate in the
training of
medical doctors and other human resources for health at the
Schools of
Medical Sciences founded in Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea,
Gambia, and
Eritrea.
It would have turned its back on the health assistance
programs that have
saved thousands of lives in Latin America and the Caribbean,
where the
African Diaspora is significant, and they would have not
provided services
to the more than 20,000 Haitians and English speaking
Afro-Caribbeans who
recovered their eyesight through surgical operations
performed in our
country, free of charge.
It is very probable that the majority of those who signed the
document
aren't aware that when the City of New Orleans was devastated
by Hurricane
Katrina, dozens of Cuban medical doctors and paramedics
volunteered to
provide help to storm victims in a humanitarian gesture that
received no
response from the American authorities.
It is probable that those who signed the document also ignore
the fact that
from the earliest days following the popular victory of 1959,
the
institutional and legal bases that sustained a racist society
were
dismantled. In 1959 the Cuban Revolution found a critical
situation in the
majority of the population. Cubans of African descent, who
were among the
victims that suffered most from the Neo-colonial model that
existed here,
immediately benefited from the battle carried out by the
Revolution which
put an end to any form of exclusion, including the fierce
racism that
characterized Cuba during those years.
Cuba's policy against any form of discrimination and in favor
of equality,
has Constitutional backing, found explicitly in the chapters
of the Cuban
Constitution that refer to the essential political, social
and economic
foundations of the State, and about the rights and
obligations and
guarantees of its citizens.
These Constitutional Rights, as well as the mechanisms and
means to uphold
them and the restoration of legality before any violation of
them, are
guaranteed by means of very precise complementary
legislation. As never
before in the history of our nation, black and mixed-race
Cubans have found
opportunities for social and personal development in
transformative
processes that have been ongoing for the past half a century.
These opportunities are conveyed through policies and
programs that made
possible the initiation of what Cuban Anthropologist Don
Fernando Ortiz
called the non-deferrable integration phase of Cuban society.
It is a
process, we know, that is not exempt from conflicts and
contradictions on
which inherited social disadvantages and deeply-rooted
prejudices play an
important role.
Six years ago, Fidel Castro, in a dialog that took place in
Havana with
Cuban and foreign pedagogues, commented how "even in
societies like Cuba,
that arose from a radical social revolution where the people
had reached
full and total legal equality and a level of revolutionary
education that
interred the subjective component of discrimination, it does
exist in
another form," He described it as objective discrimination, a
phenomenon
associated with poverty and a historical monopoly on
knowledge.
Whoever observes daily life anywhere in the country will be
able to see how
a sustained effort is underway to bring an end to the factors
that provide
the conditions for that situation through new programs
oriented towards
eliminating any social disadvantage.
Afro-American intellectuals must know how their Cuban
colleagues have dealt
with these topics and promote actions from the prominent
position they hold
in civil society.
Some of the programs to which we have made previous
references came into
being as a result of the debates that took place in 1998
during the VI
Congress of the Cuban Association of Writers and Artists
(UNEAC), in an open
and sincere dialog with the State's highest authorities and
then-President
Fidel Castro.
It should be remembered that UNEAC, which brings together the
vanguard of
Cuba's intellectual and artistic movement, had as its
President and founder,
a black poet, Nicolas Guillen, one of the most important
poets in the
Spanish language during the 20th century, an active fighter
against racial
discrimination, and personal friend of Langston Hughes and
Paul Robeson.
Within UNEAC, an organization that never turned its back on
these problems,
a permanent Committee has been created to fight against any
remains of
discrimination and racial prejudices from a cultural
perspective.
In a racist country it would be inconceivable to found and
operate
institutions like the House of Africa, the Fernando Ortiz
Foundation, the
House of the Caribbean of Santiago de Cuba, the Center of
Caribbean Studies
of the House of the Americas, and the National Institute of
Anthropology,
which, among others, conducts in-depth research into the
African legacy in
our culture and interracial relations in our country.
Likewise, artistic organizations and entities such as the
National Folklore
Group, the Camagüey Folkloric Ballet, and the Oriente
Folkloric Group would
not have received support and the most widespread social
recognition.
The Museum of the Slave Route would not have existed. The
first of its kind
in Latin America and the Caribbean, The Museum is one of the
first results
of Cuba's commitment to the UNESCO-sponsored program to
vindicate the
contribution made by Africans forcibly removed from their
lands of origin
and brought to these lands where they helped forge new
identities.
If racial hatred was a predominant trend in our society, the
celebration of
the 100th Anniversary of the founding of the Party of Black
Independents
would have been nothing but a rhetorical gesture. The
celebration was based
on recovering the historical memory of that stage of struggle
by and
aspirations of the Cuban people for their rights and
liberation from all
forms of domination.
Genuine bearers of traditional musical culture much
appreciated by the
American public like "Los Muñequitos de Matanzas," "Yoruba
Andabo" and
"Clave y Guaguanco," would be working as parking lot
attendants, shoe
shiners and domestic labor were their extraordinary values
not recognized.
A racist society would not have committed itself so deeply to
translating
and publishing hundreds of literary works by African and
Afro-Caribbean
authors. On one of his visits to Cuba, the Nigerian Nobel
Prize Laureate
Wole Soyinka declared: "It is difficult to find any other
place in the
Western Hemisphere where the quest to learn about African
writers transcends
the interest of the academic institutions, as I have seen
here."
Cuban artists and intellectuals are thankful for the
solidarity, the
comprehension and respect many Afro-American personalities
have shown
towards the Cuban reality during a half century. We have
never asked them to
share our political ideas, nor have we put conditions on the
dialog, or any
type of support or backing. From a most basic sense of
ethics, we respect
their points of view.
Perhaps it would be opportune for those who signed the
declaration about
which we are commenting to listen, without prejudice, to this
criteria. We
are sure that by doing so, as the Yoruba saying proclaims:
"the truth will
have its day."
La Habana, December 3, 2009
Nancy Morejon, Poet and Essayist
Miguel Barnet, Poet and Anthropologist
Esteban Morales, Politologist and Essayist
Eduardo Roca (Choco), Artist
Heriberto Feraudy, Historian and Essayist
Rogelio Martinez Fure, Africanist
Pedro de la Hoz, Journalist and Essayist
Fernando Martinez Heredia, Sociologist and Essayist
Omara Portuondo, artist
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