Alberto N. Jones

I can venture to say, that until July 25, 1953, not many people in Cuba or around the world had ever heard the name Fidel Castro, which changed dramatically on the following day, July 26. As previous summers living in Guantanamo, we were invited by the Payares family to share with them Santiago de Cuba’s renowned Carnival, which usually began with a dance at the Hatuey Beer gardens that went on until 3:00 AM.

On September 26, Elio Delgado Legon published a corrosive article with the instructive title of “The Journalism of Terror regarding Cuba.” This is the same person who unleashed a vicious, treacherous, blitzkrieg attack against my article “The persistence of racism in Cuba” a subject he knows nothing about, does not care and for which he is selectively blind and deaf.

Cuba’s media has made the general population believe that the US president has the immense privilege, authority and decision-making power that the Cuban president has, creating a false impression that is self-destructive.

Recent controversies about the heated issue of racism in Cuba sadly confirm that the unfounded fear of the Cuban government to recognize and confront the increased racism in the country and its intent to pretend this tragedy does not exist, would serve only for this malady to metastasize.

A moving article written this week by columnist Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald marks the 10th anniversary of the violent death in “punk gangster” crossfire of 9-year-old Sherdavia Jenkins in Miami. This X-Ray image of the human disaster that is rooted in that city and has metastasized throughout the United States suggests the existence of an ethnic cleansing program in place.

The result of lingering racism in Cuba is graphic, irrefutable and devastating. Black neighborhoods are like war zones, the disproportion in the incarcerated population, level of prostitution and poverty are permanent testimony.

Long before President Barack Obama thought of running for political office, the seed of discord was sown in Miami in 1998 with the creation and training of anti-Cuba groups disguised as Independent Journalists, Independent Librarians, Independent Farmers and Independent everything else, with the sole purpose of highlighting existing racial disparities in Cuba.

Seventy seven years after taking my first breath on this day (August 29) in a hut in Banes, Oriente, Cuba, I should be a very happy man because of my relative good health and thanks to the development of the internet and social media, I have been able to receive hundreds of loving messages from family, friends, neighbors, former schoolmates and co-workers on three continents. But I’m not… (11 photos)