Esteban Morales

Though Raul Castro and Barack Obama’s recent greeting at Nelson Mandela’s funeral was merely a handshake – there was really no time for anything more elaborate – the gesture was no accident. That is, they meant it.

Now, we know that there are hundreds of people facing trial on charges of corruption, and that this situation has even changed the racial make-up of the country’s population facing criminal charges, but we are given no details about how the proceedings are unfolding, much less the names of those accused.

Cuba’s is a multiracial society. This issue, however, is nowhere addressed in the country’s study programs. This holds for junior, senior secondary and higher education. The issue isn’t only passed over in silence at the different classes and lectures students attend.

Cuban President Raul Castro’s address to the closing session of the National Assembly of the People’s Power (Parliament) marks, without a doubt, the beginning of a qualitatively new stage in the process of public critique he has decided to push forward.

Many black people and persons of mixed racial background in Cuba believe that a change in the country’s political system is needed to improve the lives of this non-white sector of the population, which today continues to endure stereotypes, discrimination and racism.

Who is responsible for the fact that the issue of color isn’t mentioned in Cuban schools, that race isn’t a subject of study or research in any University syllabus, or that these questions aren’t sufficiently addressed by the media? Without a doubt, the Ministry of Education, Cuban television and the official press are responsible.

Under a title devoid of historical accuracy and objectivity, Roberto Zurbano is trying to characterize the situation of blacks in Cuba today. As a critical evaluator of the subject, I share some of his assertions, but not in such absolute terms, much less with the lack of objectivity with which these are formulated or his conclusions in a recent The New York Times article.

Obama split the blockade in half, doing away the measures that George W. Bush had taken against Cuba in terms of remittances, travel, visas, package shipments, etc. while still preserving it as an aggressive instrument against the Cuban government.