Foreign diversity and Cuban xenophobia

Dmitri Prieto

HAVANA TIMES – Tourists who come to Cuba obviously arrive with certain stereotypes about the society and people that they are going to encounter.  Years ago, I was pleasantly surprised by the remark of an Italian friend after her first day in Havana: “there are no ‘typical’ Cubans”.

Effectively, our diversity – and not only in matters of race – runs an immense gamut of colors, faces, complexions, gestures and even ways of walking.

But unlike the phenotypes, the stereotypes persist, and in Cuba there are tons of these: very extensive notions of what is “typical”.

Here, we believe that we “know” the Frenchmen and the Frenchwomen, the German men and woman, the Angolan women and men, the Russian women and Russian men, and the Chinese of both sexes, respectively.

This is nothing unusual: myths about “national character” (a people’s own and others’) exist everywhere. But the fatal blow is struck when – reciprocally – a mold is created for how the inhabitants of some country SHOULD be when they happen to travel to another.

That’s when our own prejudice emerges.  A prejudice that can lead to attitudes that maintain us in a state of ignorance, or preconception, or perhaps even explicit racism, or hidden xenophobia: or up to and including institutional gestures of the clearest racist segregation.

As an intelligent person, Sunny Mann was perfectly aware that he was being the object of racist and xenophobic mistreatment, since they questioned his documents while his white-skinned compatriots were treated with total normality.

Sunny Mann – a British man of Indian origin who lives in Leicester – came to Cuba as a tourist a few weeks ago.  Obviously, he knew that that society here was composed of different types of people, and he also knew (from his own experience) that diversity – and not only racial diversity – is a recognized fact in the current world and one defended by all those presumed to be of good will.

In fact, in the wake of the great empires people of diverse origins dwell together in many places on the planet.  For that reason, each one of such countries now exhibits an immense gamut of colors, faces, complexions, gestures, and even modes of walking.

But when Sunny Mann, traveler from the United Kingdom, arrived at the José Martí airport in Havana (whose facade welcomes visitors with the phrase from our Apostle “PATRIA ES HUMANIDAD” [Humanity is Our Fatherland]”) he was separated from the rest of the group by the airport bureaucrats.

Because “he didn’t look British”, meaning he wasn’t white.  They asked him repeatedly about his citizenship, they made him wait apart from the rest, as if he were a rare animal in quarantine or an infiltrator from some hostile power (even though Cuba has excellent relations with both India and Pakistan, the countries with whose inhabitants Sunny Mann could be confused.)

As an intelligent person, Sunny Mann was perfectly aware that he was being the object of racist and xenophobic mistreatment, since they questioned his documents while his white-skinned compatriots were treated with total normality.

Sunny Mann has now written to Havana Times that he received a very negative impression from his reception at the airport.  The officials there gave him the “gift” of a living an experience of racism in a country such as Cuba, a manifestly multiracial country (more so than old Albion itself) which also proclaims itself as having eliminated the great inequalities among the people of diverse origins who form their population.

I wish to digress here for a moment.  As Cuban men and women, we know very well that the police here routinely make distinctions among people according to their phenotype (principally their race, but also by their clothes or the length of their hair.)

That Lombrosian* treatment has been the object of severe criticism from civil society.  But only rarely do we receive news that something similar has occurred with a foreigner.  (To be honest, I remember that during the 90s I heard about some black Frenchmen who were detained by the police, but when “everything was cleared up” they were issued an apology, even though the agents apparently continued to be surprised by the now oft-mentioned fact of the ethnic diversity in Old Europe…).

One of the most fantastic experiences of my stay in Great Britain (together with the museums and the London parks) was being able to see that diversity in action – and test out the attitude of others as well as my own.

When I arrived at the Heathrow airport, great was my surprise when I looked beyond the large “UK BORDER” sign designating the area for passport inspection, and noted that the small tables of the immigration officials were staffed by people of all colors and ethnic affiliations: sikhs with turbans, copper-skinned Indo-Britishers, mixed race and black descendents of Africans..

There, the whites were clearly in the minority.  Later, I noted that there was also ample diversity among the police, the shop employees, the drivers and even the university professors (although I’d have to say to a lesser degree in the latter case).

As far as religion goes, the presence of non-European belief systems such as Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Rastafarianism, was also evident and generally perceived as normal.

As Cuban men and women, we know very well that the police here routinely make distinctions among people according to their phenotype (principally their race, but also by their clothes or the length of their hair.)

In England, women of the Muslim faith use their Hejab scarves in schools as well as in other public places with no problem– something that doesn’t occur in France, for example.

Only at the end of the airport odyssey, when I finally arrived at the exit door with luggage and all, did I spy an elegant and congenial woman of white skin holding up a sign with the emblem of the British Council, my host organization.

She was of an age that evidenced a great deal of life experience, and generally very much in accordance with my – now strongly questioned – stereotype of the British.

We exchanged several comments about the weather in London (as they say it should be)  – yesterday was sunny, today rainy – then, with affection but with almost no display of emotion (as they say it should be), she helped me to change some money and board the metro.

I don’t pretend to be lauding systems of coexistence that could themselves serve as subjects for discussion, and which, as we know, have their origin in a reality of centuries of merciless colonial and social exploitation, slavery and cultural genocide.

My only point is that I sincerely believe that the surprise I received upon arriving in London was much pleasanter and more dignifying that that of Sunny Mann upon arriving in Havana.

Even considering that I was welcomed to Heathrow with a sign proclaiming “UK Border” while Sunny Mann at the Jose Marti airport was greeted by another which said: “Humanity is Our Fatherland.”
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*Referring to Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso (1836-1909) who asserted that criminals are a product of hereditary factors and can be classified as a definite abnormal type.