“Cuba has hidden the UN recommendations on racial equality”

Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna (Havana, 1968) is the National Coordinator of the Citizen Committee for Racial Integration (CIR) and has traveled to Europe to expose the situation of black Cubans under Castroism and present to the European Union, governments and institutions a Report on the Administration of Justice in Cuba, which has been carried out in cooperation with the Institute of Race, Equality and Human Rights.

The main objective of the CIR is to open a space in Cuban society for public debate on the racial discrimination, but the response that Madrazo Luna has found in the island's Government is repression, with detentions for hours, and the impediment of holding events and meetings, even when they are going to be held in private homes.

What is the reason for your trip to Europe?

In Geneva, I will meet with the United Nations (UN) Rapporteur on Racial Discrimination to inform him of the Cuban Government's failure to comply with his observations and recommendations to a report sent by the island authorities, which until now and since August 2018 has ignored the UN criteria and – as usual – has silenced this process before Cuban public opinion and has kept even the state institutions that deal with the racial discrimination in Cuba.

The reaction of cuban government has been try to reduce social and political activism in the area of racial discrimination, trying to blame those of us who deal with this issue in civil society for being part of the subversion promoted by the United States and demonizing us before the rest of the Cubans. but it has not achieved its objectives because in recent times social, human rights and political activism has grown, as is our case, against the discriminatory practices of the State and society.

One of the paradigms of the Cuban revolution was racial equality and its propaganda presented the island as a paradise for black people. What is your assessment of the situation of black people in Cuba?

The Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and the State maintain a conservative position regarding racial discrimination and our complaints, along with those of civil society, on the subject, trying to place this phenomenon in what is called the Cuba-United States dispute. .

But that has not managed to silence our voice or that of other civil actors and has made it possible for official institutions such as Casa de las Américas and the University of Havana to take up the issue and prepare their own documents on racial discrimination in Cuba, which neither They are public knowledge.

For example, researcher Mayra Espino Prieto, from the Institute of Psychological and Sociological Research, has prepared a report on the growth of inequality and poverty in Cuba and how it has affected the black and mixed-race population. This report remains silenced by order of the authorities who continue to ignore phenomena of racial reaffirmation in the poor areas of cities such as Havana and Santiago de Cuba, for example.

The PCC has tried to distort the issue through the José Antonio Aponte Commission, of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), which has been in charge of promoting the communist agenda in the field of racial discrimination and the problems that affect blacks in Cuba, such as the notable and constant emigration from east to west, that is, from the poorest areas to the least poor, in this case from Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Granma and Tunas to Havana.

Here I want to make a note. White people also suffer poverty, we have the case of Sancti Spiritus and Escambray, where there is hardly any black population, but its population also suffers poverty and marginalization.

And look at the extent to which the Communist Party (of Cuba) is not interested in addressing these issues, that in 2017 the CIR presented a report on the Human Rights of the Afro-descendant population in Cuba before the Cuban public opinion and at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and this report did not provoke a meeting or discussion with the Government on the issue, but rather an increase in repression against us, which then intensified when we presented the “Shadows” report before the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva, just when the regime presented its own.

But what has happened? That the Government has been forced to admit – timidly – and always in closed forums the existence of racial discrimination and this has not only been the result of our work, but of the solidarity of civil society and the positioning of state academic institutions such as Casa of the Americas and the University of Havana, which have been silently working on the issue of racial discrimination.

But I will not only go to Geneva to denounce the situation of black people in Cuba – the poorest and most marginalized – but my trip also has the objective of co-presenting the Report on the Administration of Justice in Cuba so that the UN, politicians and citizens Europeans learn how Justice works on the island.

For this objective we have had the important collaboration of the Institute of Race, Equality and Human Rights, based in Costa Rica, help that has allowed us to better make visible the legal arbitrariness of the Cuban Government in its attempt to demobilize citizen activism and how it attacks civil society.

Could you cite a specific example of racial discrimination in Cuba?

Several. The scarce presence of blacks and mestizos in the central administration of the State, the Political Bureau of the PCC, Cuban television and as tourism workers or in activities linked to tourism. If you check the list of owners or managers of small hotels and private restaurants you will see that blacks are also a minority.

Recently, there was a protest rally at the University of Villa Clara (central Cuba) against an artist who was a member of the Interracial Neighborhood Network (government), who denounced racial discrimination. The Dean interrupted the speech and the lecturer was arrested and taken to a police unit.

Not even in a forum organized by them do they allow the members of a network that operates in the orbit of the ruling party to express themselves freely. And so they have begun to monitor black artists and intellectuals who, even though they are a minority phenomenon, are beginning to promote debate on these issues.

But look if our situation is serious, a report from the official Cuban Institute of Anthropology revealed that blacks are also discriminated against in the central administration of the State, in the emerging state cooperative movement or in the solidarity economy modality, both promoted by the regime. That report is a State Secret, it was kidnapped and it is not possible to consult it by the public or by researchers.

The highest poverty rates correspond to regions and provinces with the largest Afro-descendant population and the issue of family remittances and telephone recharges that are received in a lower proportion by black Cubans, in part because for years the emotional blackmail of the Castroism that Cuba was paradise for us and the United States was hell. Circumstance that delayed the emigration of blacks and mestizos until the episodes of Mariel (1980, 125 thousand Cubans escaped by sea) and Los balseros (1994, 45 thousand Cubans escaped by sea).

And look if this phenomenon has worked, that Castroism managed – for a long time – to make the black and mestizo bourgeoisie and middle class of before 1959 invisible, painting a Republic without blacks, except in the roles of the poor and discriminated against; there were, but black people who lived well ceased to exist in the official discourse.

What was the impact that Obama's visit had on black Cubans?

It had a great impact on the black population. Black Cubans felt that Obama also belonged to them, and poor whites also felt that Obama's attitude forced the regime to reform and open the way to a horizon that could bring more prosperity and freedom to Cuba.

And they immediately saw how the regime, frightened, launched its broadsides against Obama, as soon as he finished his speech at the Gran Teatro de La Habana. Obama's visit, I am a witness, had a great impact on the blacks, mestizos and poor Cubans and scared the Castro regime that had not allowed the Cuban stage to be starred by a black person for years, as part of its policy of invisibility of the Afro-descendants.

Right now, Cuba has two black vice presidents, Valdés Mesa and Inés Chapman. Do you think that in a transition towards democracy they would act as apparatchik communists or blacks?

Has three. Beatriz Jhonson Urrutia, is vice president of the Council of State and President of the Popular Power in Santiago de Cuba.

But I don't think they would act like black people because His public presence is due to a make-up operation by the regime, driven by our work, by pressure from civil society and by the reports of official institutions. And I regret having this vision, but the thing is that the three of them have not even reacted – Lazo (Esteban) nor to the racial discrimination that has been happening for years in Cuba and they have turned their backs on the social movements of Afro-descendants in Brazil, Costa Rica and Colombia , For example.

Salvador, Chapman, Johnson and Lazo obey the totalitarian scheme and continue to think that talking about racism in Cuba is a United States plan that threatens national security.