Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 29

Santiago de Cuba
Race, Poverty and the Challenge of Despair
Jorge Amado Robert Vera
Writer and journalist
Delegate, Citizens’ Committee for Racial Integration (CIR) in the Eastern Provinces
Santiago de Cuba, Cuba

W

hen La Villa de Santiago de Cuba was
founded, in 1515, it was built at the end
of a great bay on the southern coast of
the Cuban archipelago.
Today, the city has more than 500,000 inhabitants, of which more than 80% are Afro-descendants.
For this reason, this city has been considered

Cuba’s black city and, as a result, the worst-off in
terms of its socio-economic conditions.
In a social context, racial prejudice and racism are
strongly rooted and sustained by a series of discriminatory ideas and psychological attitudes.
A general lack of knowledge about the battle that
is being waged against racism has contributed to
a tripartite problem: discrimination, racism, and

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