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/ Lamasiel Gutierrez Romero
It was presumed that with the triumph of the revolution in 1959, racial discrimination would be eradicated as soon as the differences between social classes disappear. Yet, the issue that has been deeply rooted in the society since the colonial era is still alive and kicking and has been gaining power over time.
Cuban blacks are the poorest social layer. Over 80 percent of the prison population is black or mixed.
Black Cubans are often arrested in the street and sometimes even deprived of their personal belongings for no apparent reason other than their skin colour.
Also, excessive police force is used against the black and mixed population in the island. Many videos from security cameras that are circulating on the internet show the police beating black men and women with rubber sticks in public in the street.
Children of black parents are less likely to study at a university and most of them follow in the footsteps of their parents.
Black people also form the majority population of little towns known as “solares”, where houses are made of cardboard and pieces of wood and are glued one to another. These settlements with poor sanitary conditions have become the focal point of fights and housing problems.
Even the Cuban leader Raul Castro has acknowledged that “the revolution has not been very successful in eradicating differences in the social and economic status of the black population.”
In 2002, an official journalist admitted in a magazine published in Cuba that most of the 700 thousand higher education graduates produced over the past four decades are white and that there are almost no coloured people in leading positions in the country.
Black women are more likely to suffer violence and machismo due to their sex and colour and are often stereotyped as a sex symbol. Black men, in turn, are more likely to commit crime due to the existing racism and lack of opportunities to find a proper, well-paid job. Thus, a lot of blacks of African descent gain their living by illegal commerce, pimping, prostitution and similar activities.
The Cuban government has acknowledged the existence of discrimination in Cuba; yet, it has not owned up to the marginalization and poverty of the blacks and does nothing to address these negative attitudes.
Many Cuban state enterprises pay their black employees the lowest wages and offer them only low-status jobs.
The entire population of the Havana slum of Mantilla has been recently shocked by the death of a black child named Angel Izquierdo Medina. The 14-year old boy was killed on July 15, 2011, by a white army officer with a history of police violence, who shot the boy on account of his climbing a fruit tree in his yard. The former army officer declared that he killed the boy in self-defense, but the residents of the Mantilla suburb, mostly black, are outraged by the crime and are calling for justice.
Mantilla is a suburb on the outskirts of Havana, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. It is considered one of the most dangerous places in terms of domestic violence, crime and poverty.
Discrimination of black population, which has the highest poverty rate in the entire Cuban society, can be also observed in health care: black Cubans are often unable to receive kind treatment or specialized medical services due to not having resources to buy appropriate gifts for physicians.
Also, large percentage of the peaceful opposition in Cuba is made up of blacks and coloured people as the most abused and repressed part of the population. Black political prisoners are much more likely to be exposed to violence by Cuban jailers and often suffer prolonged solitary confinement in punishment cells or are subject to savage beatings.
In the course of his 17-year imprisonment, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez, a prestigious black dissident, was subject to various kinds of torture including an attack of guard dogs egged on by army officers. The torture was inflicted on him only on account of his refusal to participate in the prison re-education program, in particular to succumb to communist indoctrination, wear the uniform of a common prisoner and chant government slogans.
The situation of Afro-Cuban population has even worsened and racial discrimination has become more evident with the start of the special period in 1989 and the collapse of the socialist block.
In his treatise on the situation of the black population in Cuba, Esteban Morales, prominent economist and former member of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), notes that historically, blacks and mestizos have been the least skilled and the most disadvantaged in the labour market and had to content themselves with the worst jobs, the lowest wages and also the lowest pensions. Morales also reasons that due to the existing racism in the United States, exiled Cuban blacks earn less money and are therefore unable to send much remittance money to their relatives on the island.
Carlos Moore, an exiled black activist fighting for the rights of blacks, who has also criticized racism in the United States, reports that only white leaders can be seen in the highest government positions in Cuba. Moore also points out that since 1990s when Cuba opened up to tourism, blacks have been denied jobs in hotels and holiday resorts as these are more “visible”.
In its 2011 proclamation, the United Nations confirmed that Cuba is a country with persisting racial discrimination and high rate of marginalization among the population. The plan of the United Nations provides that the black population in Cuba have equal rights as the whites in terms of job opportunities, alimentation and health care.
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