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• 12 / 11 / 2009

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Cuban intellectuals rejected false accusations that their country is a racist society, according to an article recently published by the Miami-based “El Nuevo Herald” newspaper on a “declaration by African Americans in support of the struggle
for Civil Rights in Cuba.”

The document had been circulated in a hurried effort to collect signatures that provided visibility to what had been cooked by a Cuban-American who, has presented himself for years as “an expert in racial issues” and who has achieved a modus vivendi in the United States and Brazil by distorting Cuban reality.

The Cuban Granma newspaper published the “Message from Cuba to African American Intellectuals and Artists,” signed, among others, by essay writer and poet Nancy Morejon, poet and anthropologist Miguel Barnet, singer Omara Portuondo, and essayist Esteban Morales.

The message cites arguments refuting prevailing despise in Cuba against black nationals and that civil liberties are restricted for reasons of race. The island’s artists and intellectuals say that behind such fiction there is some malicious intention to have respectable figures of the African American community joins the anti-Cuba campaign that intends to undermine the sovereignty and identity of the Cuban people.

“If today’s Cuba were that racist country they want to invent, our nationals wouldn’t have massively contributed to the liberation of African peoples.”

Over 350, 000 Cubans voluntarily fought colonialism along their African sisters and brothers, the message reads, and adds that “if today’s Cuba felt such despise against black people, more than 35, 000 African youths would not have studied in Cuban schools over the past 40 years, or some 2, 800 youths from 30 African countries would not be taking courses in Cuban universities as they are doing at present.”

The Cuban artists and intellectuals also referred to the island’s cooperation with other African countries in the training of doctors and human resources in medical schools founded in Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia and Eritrea.

Similarly, they mention health care programs underway in several Latin American and Caribbean nations with significant presence of members of the Africa Diaspora as well as eye surgeries applied in Cuba to over 20, 000 Haitians and English-speaking Afro-Caribbean people.

The message also recalls that on the threshold of the devastation of New Orleans by hurricane Katrina, dozens of Cuban doctors and paramedical personnel offered their voluntary services to help the victims of that phenomenon, a gesture that found no response from US authorities.

After explaining about the desperate situation faced by the Cuban population before 1959, particularly the people of African descent, the intellectuals and artists highlighted the socially-oriented programs undertaken by the Revolution.

“Cuba’s policy against any kind of discrimination and in favour of equality finds constitutional support expressed in the chapters of the Cuban Constitution that refer to the state’s political, social and economic foundations and the rights, duties and guarantees of Cuban citizens,” affirms the message signed by prestigious personalities of Cuban culture.

Source: Cubanow