By Elíades Acosta Matos                                                       Read Spanish Version

To travel in a bus in Havana, like the ones that go down Lisa or Alamar, for example, or to stroll through the city's streets, provides a good observer with answers to many of the questions that intrigue visitors. For example, the degree of solidarity achieved by the people, which nothing has been able to transform into selfishness or indifference, is patent and constant. The same happens when we see Cubans of different races intermingle without any prejudice, admire each other's beauty, acknowledge each other's merits, whatever they may be, and love each other without letting skin color be an obstacle.

A sustained press campaign abroad paints a Cuba divided in closed boxes, where blacks suffer shortages that, in reality, afflict us all equally. According to these "spokesmen," blacks are held back by a Revolution that has done nothing for their legitimate rights. Rather than "Cubans," these "specialists" say, they should be called "Afro-Cubans." The rise to power of the first black president in the history of the United States has put the topic on the table once again.

The question being asked is whether or not there is racism in Cuba or if enough has been done in the past 50 years to eliminate their expressions. Put a different way, whether socialism can foster full equality among all men, or if that accomplishment has been done by capitalism, which has been able to guarantee equality to a few, among them a man named Barack Obama.

To be objective, the questions should be reformulated, at least including other, no less important questions. For example, when and how racial divisions and prejudices were instituted on the island; what is (and was) the Revolution's policy on this issue; and if the measures adopted were effective and obtained palpable results.

The Revolution that triumphed in January 1959 inherited a long list of exclusions, postponements and injustices, of which racism was one. This burden, a true cancer that corrupts human relations and feelings, did not originate in the socialist society but had its roots in the colonial society and its apotheosis in the traffic of humans and slavery. According to historical data, the annual importation of slaves until 1851 was 10,400. [1]

U.S. intervention, far from palliating the harmful effects of this policy, introduced other racist practices until then foreign to the country. Gen. Leonard Wood did not flinch when he declared at a Senate committee hearing that "many of today's Cubans are the fruit of marriages between Negroes and native-born criollos and such marriages produce an inferior race." [2]

No one should be surprised that not even the hard-working Mambises escaped this double racism. "After the war," says Esteban Montejo, the protagonist of The Biography of a Cimarron, "an argument started over whether the Negroes had fought or not. [...] The result was that the Negroes were put out on the street. They were brave as lions, but were out on the street. That was wrong, but it happened." [3]

The Republic that was inaugurated in 1902 maintained racial discrimination in its essential expressions. Although the Constitution declared the equality of all Cubans, social practices and the refined forms of exclusion prevented such declarations to be put into practice.

The Revolution and socialism in Cuba have had to struggle with the heavy burden of the racial problems that colonialism introduced in the island and capitalism was incapable of eradicating. Ever since 1959, rather than voicing good wishes and passing seraphic laws, the revolutionary government has transformed the relations of production and the social relations so that all Cubans, without exception and independently from their racial or class origin, may have access to the opportunities for self-improvement and development.

It is true that in Cuba there have been no specific racial policies (which, incidentally, have not guaranteed any equality in other countries) but there have been employment, cultural, sports, educational, scientific and social justice policies, and policies to protect the needy that have allowed all Cubans to advance, on the basis of their personal merit and their will. When socialism in Cuba had moments of crisis, as in the 1990s, and specific social programs were postponed, or when undesirable inequalities emerged in areas such as personal income, setbacks have automatically occurred in the field of racial equality.

To express it in Cuban street lingo: through the same door that allowed the germs of capitalism into the island, part of the many advances in equality of opportunities, social justice, and brotherhood among men have emerged. And vice versa.

Much is speculated about the racial differences in Cuba, especially by those who attempt to use them and develop them as weapons for a political and cultural war aimed at delegitimizing the policies of the Revolution and dividing the Cubans. The truth is that the results of the 2002 census and the scientific studies made since then brought disheartening news to those pyromaniacs. Let us look at some.

• Nationwide, 65.2 percent of the population is white, but the number of mestizos increased by 4 points since the previous census.

• A recent study by the Cuban Institute of Anthropology among 2,784 individuals in Havana City revealed that 1,690 of them (60.7 percent) lived in racially homogeneous families, while 1,094 (39.2 percent) lived in mixed families.

• There is no substantial difference between the rates of schooling and the levels present among the different races.

• Out of 18 main sectors of the economy and social life that were analyzed, there is an over-representation of the white population in barely 12 percent of all whites, which means that the presence of whites and blacks in the remaining 88 percent is balanced.

• Out of 100 respondents in Havana questioned about population and the risks of poverty, only one mentioned a racial problem.

• In the case of marriages, according a 2004 study by the Institute of Anthropology, the racial differences have no significant influence, and there is a very low perception of whether this is a problem at the time of choosing a mate.

Among the insufficiently solved problems are these: (a) the lowest percentages of blacks can be found in sectors of the emerging economy, such as tourism; and (b) blacks have reduced access to family remittances from abroad, due to the ethnic composition of the émigré communities.

Do these data mean that there are no racists in Cuba and that there are no inequalities and problems that affect Cubans of one race more than those of another? Of course not. When history has placed people of different races at different starting points, nobody can pretend that all the differences, all the injustices and all the prejudices related to this issue will be eliminated in half a century.

But the fact that the Revolution and socialism have done more than any previous government and system for all Cubans -- especially the humblest, the traditionally underprivileged and among them the blacks and mestizos -- is a verifiable and evident truth, as well as the fact that there is a long road still ahead.

To researcher Pablo Rodríguez of the Cuban Institute of Anthropology, "in our concrete conditions, it is not a black movement that will contribute to specify blackness, and by extension to specify other groups, which will be a solution to the problem. [...] The question lies in maintaining a crusade of blacks and whites against racism in the field of action and research, so [racism's] ballast and effects that reduce the human condition may be proscribed from our society." [4]

At this stage, despite the pyromaniacs and "specialists" who try to tear apart what the history of Cuba joined together forever, from the heroic days of the redemptive manigua, the words of Juan Gualberto Gómez ring with special force and timeliness: "Ask for nothing as blacks; ask for everything as Cubans."

It is not a question of promoting a handful of fortunate men and women but an entire people, those people who do not consider themselves or act as if they were different from, or inferior to anyone. Those people you see on the streets or the buses carrying proudly on their skin the Cuban color.

Elíades Acosta Matos is a Cuban writer and essayist. He has written numerous essays and books, among them "Apocalypse according to St. George," "From Valencia to Baghdad." His latest book, "21st Century imperialism; The cultural wars," will be launched at the 2009 Havana Book Fair. Acosta was chief of the Department of Culture of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.

[1] Juan Pérez de la Riva: “The amount of forced immigration in the 19th Century," Social Sciences Printing House, Havana, 1997, pg. 5.

[2] Quoted by Jason M. Yaremko, "U.S. Protestant mission in Cuba," University Press, Florida, 2000, pg. 37.

[3] Miguel Barnet, "Biography of a cimarron," Gente Nueva Printing House, Havana, 1967, pg. 156.

[4] Pablo Rodríguez Ruíz, "Time, spaces and contexts of the current racial debate in Cuba."