CARTAS

The Country to Come: and My Black Cuba 1

ROBERTO ZURBANO
MARCH 13, 2013

N INTRODUCTORY NOTE: There is a Yoruba proverb which says "By

A losing you win." Reflection, criticism, and greater commitments for

change are what I have won in these recent days, first turbulent and
then clarifying. Because of these discussions, today I better understand the
people and the positions they have defined with regard to racism.
At the end of a month there have been dozens of texts published in and
outside of Cuba. My questions are still the same and my convictions even
stronger. The answers multiply, ramify and achieve new pathways in the debate.
The original Spanish text has been requested more than once; in my March 26th
note, I explained why I could not make it immediately available: it was not
merely out of respect for my contractual arrangement, but also a moral response
to The New York Times.
Finally, I bring to light the promised texts, the original Spanish as written
before it was translated by the Times and a new translation to English, more
decent, professional and respectful of the original than the version that was
finally printed. The translation is the fruit of friendship and commitment to the
anti-racist cause. These are the texts and the road map that explain the
distortions that I have denounced. As for the ideas in my original article I
maintain both the responsibility and the spirit to discuss them in and outside of
Cuba.
In fulfilling this ethical responsibility, I am also sending these texts to
Afromodernidades, Desde la Ceiba, NegraCubanaTeníaQueSer and
Observatorio Crítico, all blogs and newsletters from the island that have given
dignified coverage on this and other important discussions on contemporary
Cuban society. And, it is also being sent to AfroCubaweb, the dean of all
websites on Afro-Cuban culture, where for decades we have found respect,
commitment, and professionalism when discussing our issues.
Roberto Zurbano
Callejón de Hammell
La Habana
March 26, 2013

Afro-Hispanic Review • Volume 33, Number 1 • Spring 2014 ~ 115

Roberto Zurbano

A critical testimony from within the island is also a way of looking at

oneself from outside Cuba, from the color of one’s skin, as if we were to
question the future of Afro-Cubans from a History . . . that repeats itself?
Change is the most recent news coming out of Cuba, but for Afro-Cubans
it seems more a dream than reality. In the last five years dozens of absurd
prohibitions have been lifted for ordinary Cubans, among them staying at a
hotel, buying a cellphone, selling one’s house, starting a private business, and
traveling abroad These measures are called an opening, but they are really no
more than efforts to normalize the conditions of citizenship. The economic
results of these gestures will bring about true change and permit Cuba to exit
History and enter, once and for all, into the Present. The Future (the country to
come) approaches swiftly, desperately, and in that race dreams and utopias
shared until recently by Cubans melt away.
Blacks have had to face the new opening of the private sector in Cuba with
a disadvantage. We inherited more than two centuries of slavery and sixty years
of exclusion in the Republican Period (1902–1959), and over half a century of
revolutionary rule (1959–2013) has still not been able to overcome them,
because of the way that racism is disguised and renews itself when not debated
or not openly confronted politically and culturally. If the 1960s meant
opportunity for everyone, the seventies revealed that not everyone had the
capacity to take advantages of those opportunities; the eighties showed a high
percentage of black professionals who in the nineties were excluded from the
privileged social spaces of tourism and the mixed economy. Already in the XXIst
century it’s evident that the black population is under-represented in their
access to political, economic, and academic power, in contrast to their over-
representation in the informal market, illegal activities, and marginal
neighborhoods.
If the nineties began to see two types of currency (peso and dollar)
circulate in the country, people also lived two contrasting realities: the first
allows white families to receive remittances from abroad, especially Miami, the
nerve center of an overwhelmingly white Cuban exile community. The other
reality is the sector of the Cuban population that does not receive remittances,
that black majority that saw the socialist utopia flicker out from the most
uncomfortable quarters of the island. For them, entering the new economy is a
challenge. In the last twenty years black Cubans have suffered a reversal or
paralysis of the great social mobility that propelled them from 1959 to 1989.
Paradoxically, during the same period, books and official discourse declared the
end of racism in Cuba. To deny the racial utopia was tantamount to committing

116 ~ AHR
 The Country to Come: and My Black Cuba?

a counterrevolutionary act, so denouncing racism has been extremely difficult,

but, through a certain cultural and political activism, there has been public
acknowledgement of the problem and racism has officially been recognized. I
think that to abandon the anti-racist struggle, especially against what I call neo-
racism (less overt forms of racial exclusion), would be politically disingenuous
with nefarious future consequences.
Raúl Castro announced that he would be serving his last term in office
(2013–2018) and with it a political era in Cuba will come to a close. By then the
island will be another type of country and we hope that women, youth, and
blacks will be able to guide the nation on a path where diversity is recognized
and practiced, where the diverse national projects that have lain dormant in the
hearts and minds of many will be heard. The new political generations of Cubans
will learn to walk on their own, feet on the ground, heads upright. I hope that
before 2018 organizations like the Cofradía de la Negritud (Black Brotherhood),
the Comité Ciudadano de Integración Racial (Citizens Committee for Racial
Integration), the Articulación Regional Afrodescendiente (Regional Network of
People of African Descent ), the Comisión José Aponte (the José Aponte
Commission) and other groups that form part of the Cuban anti-racist
movement will grow both in the legal and organizational sense so as to find
solutions that have been put off for so long, but that the black majority still
awaits. Black Cubans also hope for an end to the embargo, but more urgently,
they need to elevate their self-esteem, improve their material conditions,
increase their access to better jobs, and achieve recognition of their cultural
worth, and not just in a commercial sense. Black Cubans also want to be
protagonists in the new ways in which the nation will be understood and built.
I’m not asking that in the next elections (2018) we elect a black president,
but that this journey allows us to form new leaders, empower communities and
build consensus as well as strategic alliances inside and outside the country. Our
racial consciousness still remains insufficient and it would make it a small (or
ephemeral), triumph to have a black Cuban figure isolated at the top in a
prejudiced milieu, leading a country whose political and cultural links to Africa
some Cubans still try to hide. Eventually we will be able to have a black Pope or
President whose hands will not be tied. As for me, I will continue to struggle for
and dream of a country where black people are the builders, owners, and critics
of our destiny as Cubans, where we will enjoy fuller citizenship. That country has
yet to arrive, but aside from dreaming it, I go out searching for it every morning.
Roberto Zurbano
March 13, 2013

AHR ~ 117
Roberto Zurbano

Note

1. The original article as submitted to The New York Times.

118 ~ AHR
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.