Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 19

on the subject, and restore the voice to victims, so
we can once again become subjects.
Zurbano coins the term ‘leftist, anti-racist
fighter,’ but political leanings are a secondary detail. At this point, I don’t know if his declaration
is a preventative act of confirming allegiances, to
avoid a new wave of inquisitorial and racist aggression such was saw in spring last year.* Many
of civil society’s independent activists are also
leftists, but life has shown us that the most important thing in the fight to defend equality and
human dignity is humanism and loyalty to universally accepted values. In any event, anti-racist
thinkers and leaders like Juan René Betancourt,
Walterio Carbonell and Carlos Moore were subjected to persecution, repression and ostracism
right at the beginning of the revolution, despite
the fact they were unequivocally leftists.
For decades, the pretext of political-ideological
unity caused silence, immobility and loss of
ground in the treatment of the race problem in
Cuba. Successful experiences in places like the
United States, South Africa, Brazil and Colombia
reveal the importance of breaking with the useless
ideological divisions that have so weakened the
movement.
Zurbano formulates five points with which he
proposes to “reach our communities, both inside
and outside the capital, in search of shared solidarity, dialogue, collaboration, criticism, proposals and answers”:
1-Education: Include issues of race in school curricula, assuming availability of bibliographies,
specialists and institutions with reliable research
data from research (historiographical, anthropological, genetic, etc.) that is published and debated outside educational circles, starting with the
training of professors and teachers. In addition, he
wants the inclusion of the histories of Africa, Asia
and the Middle East.
2-Labor market: Promote access to positions that
dignify the professional capacity of blacks in important areas of the economy from which they are
evidently excluded. Guarantee decent salaries and
implement economic aid to low-income families,
as well as create employment training possibilities for young residents of marginalized neighborhoods.

3-Public policies and institutions designed to efficiently promote racial equality: Define institutions and policies that address the race problem—
which means how race (among other things) factors into the very framework of the country’s economic and social problems—in order to enrich
strategies and solutions, and make them inclusive
and horizontal.
4-Transformation of the mass media into critical
and emancipatory spaces: The need to give voice
to and promote responsible participation in our
diversity’s public sphere. To debate about different forms of discrimination in the media as well
as in communities, schools, work centers and
civil organizations. This scourge is hidden by silences, lack of sensitivity and a double standard.
5-Anti-Discrimination Law: Create a General
Law against all forms of discrimination, because
the (social, economic and political) context has
changed and our legal institutionalism will attain
significant weight and importance in the regulation of Cuban society. He also wants to find new
political and institutional ways to prevent social
injustices as well as discriminatory impunity of
the present.
The content of these points constitutes a need to
reestablish the already requested debate and evolution of Cuban society towards the desired state
of social equality and equity. Nevertheless, neither these initiatives nor the great, anti-racist
movement proposed by Zurbano will be possible
without the necessary change in mentality and
conceptualization, one that situates this serious
problem, with grave implications for the present
and future of Cuba, in a new light.
What is most important for Afro-descendants is
for us to stop being seen as victims of colonialinspired paternalism, or as responsible for or beneficiaries of it, either. We must definitely be
acknowledged as protagonists of our history and
subjects with rights and dignity. The values and
self-esteem of Cuba’s Afro-descendants must be
recovered via a restru cturing of our educational
system, media rhetoric and symbolic imagery.
Very little progress will be made if the authorities
do not acknowledge and accept their historical
and political responsibility for the traumas and
fissures that afflict us.
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