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Alma Mater
October 29, 2008
Shots without Shotgun:
An Interview with Esteban Morales
By
Hilario Rosete Silva
A CubaNews translation by Robert Sandels.
Edited by Walter Lippmann
Inside the Malecon
“Even though it was already a thorny matter before we began the
independence struggles, little has been written about the issue. Few
historians paid any attention to it and studies that deal with it in the
present are rare. I lament the fact that the subject is taken up by
people living outside the country who do not always share our
circumstances.”
University professor Esteban Morales began talking. When he directed
what is now the Center of Hemispheric and United States Studies (CEHSEU)
at the University of Havana, Morales believed that the racial issue
could become an Achilles heel and a target for the darts of those who
make US policy against Cuba.
“How valuable it would be if attitudes coming from us would set the
pattern,” he added. “The problems in our reality should not be handed to
us -- we should be the first to take them up. The racial issue could be
another one of the arguments the United States uses to attack us. It is
an issue ‘from inside the Malecon’ that concerns Cubans.”
A two-term member of the Academy of Sciences, doctor of Economic
Sciences and doctor of Sciences, Esteban has served as visiting
professor in some twenty institutions of higher learning in ten
countries in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Every time he goes to the
United States, he is asked -- just because he is black -- how black
people are treated in contemporary Cuba.
Cuban ostrich
“They are interested in the racial issue in Cuba. Since any black person
from Cuba who appears before the public in the United States, no matter
what the subject, will be asked about racial discrimination in Cuba,
they should study the issue in depth. Because ours is one of the
countries that has worked the hardest for equality and opportunity for
all, we must not remain silent on the subject. We face a complex problem
that has to do with how Cubans have been treated historically and in
contemporary times. It influences the context of relations between Cuba
and the United States and the island’s political alliances and it is
related to our capacity to learn from errors committed in connection
with other issues.”
As a black person, do you run the risk of becoming obsessed with such
research?
“I waited 15 years before getting my feet wet,” he said, “preferring to
let the matter mature inside me. Picking topics for research is one
thing and starting work on them is another. I began work on it in 1986.
I found that the literature had several flaws. There was a social
reality that was not being addressed.
“I was 16 years old in 1959, black and poor. I had suffered
discrimination but could not write from the position of the sufferer,
whose focus is never objective. It would also have been hypocritical.
Because of the social and political organizations I belonged to, my
academic and professional resume, my frequent appearances in the media,
it could be said that I was one of those blacks who made the best use of
the rights that the Revolution guaranteed to all Cubans.
“Resisting subjectivity is one of my goals when I sit down to write, but
I am not obsessed with the issue. I have a scientific approach to the
subject, although emotion cannot be absent either. So, I try for a
balance between the two poles with the understanding that the problem is
a burden for my country and that, as a revolutionary intellectual, I
have the duty and the right to add my grain of sand to its study,
understanding and resolution. In historical analysis, we have to be
honest and avoid behaving like the ostrich that hides its head while
leaving its vulnerable parts exposed.
Target shooting
He was a student assistant in the School of Economics at the University
of Havana, where he received his degree in 1969, then worked there as a
professor and at various times directed the School of Political Sciences
and the School of Humanities, both at the University of Havana.
He said that the most recent chapter in the investigation of the subject
was opened by Fidel in March 1959, but that after 1962, there was a long
period of silence that, fortunately, has now ended.
“Yes, the racial problem has been a complicated one throughout our
history. It was always a source of contention. Since the late nineteenth
century, the US and Spanish colonial justification was that the blacks
who fought for the independence of the country were eager to establish a
republic in the Haitian style and criticized the authority of Maceo and
other black leaders. One hundred years later, the racial problem did not
appear in the Moncada Program though it was a concern for the July 26
Movement and would be included in its plans to establish civil liberties
and political democracy. It is no accident that at the end of March
1959, Fidel Castro began to raise the issue in several of his speeches.”
Alma Mater looked at the March 22, 1959 speech. The Comandante called
for a campaign to end the inferior treatment of blacks in Cuba. “There
has been in our country,” said Fidel, “the shameful practice of
excluding blacks from work…. There are two types of racial
discrimination: one in cultural or recreational centers, and the other
in the workplace …. if the first one defines the possibilities of access
to certain circles, the other – a thousand times more cruel – limits
access to the places where one can earn a living… and so we commit the
crime of denying to the poorest sector, more than to any other, the
possibility of working .… There must be a ban and a public commendation
against those … who have so few scruples as to discriminate against some
Cubans …because of lighter or darker skin…. Let us end racial
discrimination …, and work for an end to that odious and repugnant
system….” [1]
Set afloat
“However,” continued Esteban, “in 1959, the conflict between Cuba and
the United States began to intensify. In January 1961, Washington broke
diplomatic relations with Cuba; in April, came the mercenary attack at
the Bay of Pigs; imperialism continued to support counterrevolutionary
bands. So once again, there was an environment unfavorable for the study
of the problem. The specter of racial difference, seen as a source of
social division or an element of divisions within the revolutionary
forces, things that the enemy could take advantage of, spread throughout
the period. In 1962, on the threshold of the October Crisis, after
sectarianism had been denounced, after the Second Declaration of Havana
and the exclusion of Cuba from the OAS and after the US presidential
order establishing the total blockade of commerce between the two
countries, the issue ‘flew’ from the public arena and became taboo. When
anyone talked about it, it had to do with an earlier time. The silence
lasted until the late 1980s and early 1990s. The crisis that hit us from
outside and provoked an internal crisis extended into all areas and set
the issue afloat. Despite the great social and human achievements of the
Revolution, the issue had not been definitively resolved.”
By what signs did it become more or less clear, at the height of the
special period, that the issue needed resolution?
“There were obstacles to employment opportunities -- a painful form of
discrimination -- which, as Fidel said, limits the possibility that a
person can make a living, as well as limiting access to higher education
and important roles in certain areas. There is another fact: 85% of
Cubans living abroad are white. Blacks and mestizos make up only 15% of
the total and they emigrated late, almost without any support in the
receiving countries, which was usually the United States. Consequently,
they are least able to help their relatives in Cuba. Those in Cuba who
receive remittances are essentially white. Among them are intellectuals
and people who traditionally had purchasing power.”
Lack of conscience
Esteban wrote several works on the subject and a masterful book,
Challenges of the Racial Problem in Cuba, [2] presented at the 17th
International Book Fair in Cuba, 2008. Its premises were set out in
Cuba: some challenges of color, which received third prize
from the jury in the third edition of the International Essay
Competition Countercurrent Thinking, which met in Havana in 2006. In its
decision, the jury said the essay offered a critical view of a current
issue in our America -- the racial and cultural question -- and
addressed the complex process of lifting the burdens of racism in a
revolutionary country.
Summing it up, Esteban said, “The essay argues that the race problem is
perhaps the most complex, ‘unknown’ and the most difficult one in
our social reality. No other problem causes more anxiety, concern and
distrust. It is easy to find people who do not want to hear anything
about it, and if they do hear of it, they decline to comment. Are they
unaware that this issue is linked to others such as the economy, equity,
human rights, inequality, social justice, marginalization and religious
discrimination?
“The potential outcomes from this problem will depend on who manipulates
it and for what purpose. On the negative side, as we have seen, is its
potential to create social division; on its positive side, it is linked
to the pursuit of social and cultural integration and the struggle for
national unity.
“But returning to the matter of ignorance, I mean ignorance in a dual
sense: it is true that many people know little about the issue, but
there are also many with a weak conscience who coldly prefer to remain
ignorant.”
Felicitations from the cradle?
In our efforts to understand the origins of this problem,
might we forget that the burden of discrimination still exists in Cuba?
“We might forget that there are some who wish to practice racism. We
might even avoid the question of whether Cuban culture is capable of
reproducing segregationist attitudes per se.
“All we need to do is review our history again. Whites, blacks
and mestizos start from the same place. The colonizer with white
credentials – and that does not mean they were white-- arrived as such,
while the blacks were brought as slaves and the mestizos arose out of
the mixture. The labels were passed down from one generation to another.
“When it comes to wealth in Cuba, statistics from the bourgeois republic
show that blacks and mestizos had little of it, but after 1959, the fact
that the starting places continued to reflect traces of colonialism and
neocolonialism shows that five centuries of racism cannot be erased in
five decades.
“We talk about the innate prejudicial character of our culture. The
Hispanic element has played a dominant role ever since the discovery.
The Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz concluded that class, race and culture
were all part of the sixteenth-century invasion. Do we understand that?
“Perhaps it is not very difficult today for many Cubans to admit that
they are macho, but it is rare to find anyone who admits to being
racist. Asked if they are racist, people take offense. Nevertheless,
racial discrimination is also a remnant of that birth and development.”
I hate you my love
It is paradoxical, said Alma Mater, that despite the discriminatory
context of the hegemonic spirit, from the first color scheme off
contrasting black and white tones and the later coding system based on
the differences, in the end, it all would be cooked up into a "Cuban
stew."
“The levels of race mixture in the Caribbean and Cuba,” Esteban said,
“are greater in the English-speaking, French-speaking and Dutch-speaking
Caribbean. There, the processes of social mixing were based on the
physical distance between the white masters and the black slaves.
Today, all Cubans sing and dance the same. We are not really a Catholic
people nor are we seriously religious but we are syncretic believers
combining Christian beliefs with African religious elements without
ceasing to be one people. We have no ethnicities or minorities; we are a
multicolor people. I remember the photographic exposition of the faces
of thousands of Cuban artists, athletes and women that a French
photographer presented in the late 1990s in Havana. [3] In them, you can
appreciate that we have a spectrum of tones and gradations of black and
white, a catalogue of the shapes of lips, mouths, noses, hair etc.
“As for Fernando Ortiz’s ‘Cuban stew,’ watch
out, the stew is still not boiling and we must continue stirring it and
making sure that the cooks do not lower the heat. Some people are not
interested in being part of the broth where more ingredients are cooked
than we could have imagined.”
Only by exception
Fidel publicly addressed the subject of race again on February 7,
2003. The leader of the Revolution said that, despite the rights and
guarantees achieved for all citizens, “the same success in the fight to
eradicate differences in the social and economic status of black people
had not been achieved.” [4] The comandante took up the subject again on
December 5, 2004 in the Conference Center at the close of the Eighth
Congress of the UJC. Alma Mater checked the text:
“I spoke the words in this paragraph,” said the then Cuban president,
“without hesitation at the close of the International Pedagogy
Congress in 2003 .... It was something that I carried inside that I
wanted to express, the sad legacy of slavery, a society of classes,
capitalism and imperialism. There never was real equality of opportunity
anywhere. The possibility of studying, of getting ahead and obtaining a
university degree was always the exclusive preserve of the sectors that
had more knowledge and economic resources. The poor who escaped this
fate were the exception. "[5]
“It took 44 years, from March 1959 to February 2003," said Esteban
Morales. ”Fidel again encouraged us to continue our study, proclaiming
that the progress achieved through socialism had created the foundation,
but what was missing was the leap forward. He was right to say that,
thanks to the Battle of Ideas, the lives of children, adolescents, the
young and today’s Cuban families are no longer what they were in the
late 1990s. Racism in Cuba is not institutional. The government, the
Party, the institutions are not racist. Never before did blacks and
mestizos have a government that would defend their interests, but
discriminatory burdens remain within the individual conscience, in the
attitudes of groups and specific individuals. From this dichotomy comes
the force that tries to suppress the subject and which, through that
conflict, contributes to a resurgence of segregationist ideologies, and
raises the danger that racism could be reconstructed in the social
conscience of the nation.”
[1] Address given by Comandante Fidel Castro Ruz, prime minister of the
Revolutionary Government, in the Presidential Palace, March 22, 1959.
His speeches and interviews on this and other topics of the moment are
collected in the two volumes of thematic selections of his thoughts.
See Fidel Castro, El pensamiento de. Selección
Temática, vols. I and II, Editora Política, Havana, 1983.
[2] Esteban Morales Domínguez, Desafíos de la problemática racial en
Cuba. Fundación Fernando Ortiz, collection La Fuente Viva, vol.29,
Havana, 2007.
[3] Photographic exposition, Mil artistas cubanos, Mil
deportistas cubanos, y Mil mujeres cubanas, by Pierre Maraval
in 1996, 1997 and 1998, in Pabellón Cuba, ExpoCuba and the Habana Libre
Hotel, respectively.
[4] Fidel Castro Ruz, Seguiremos creando y luchando. VIII
UJC Congress. Closing address delivered by the Commander-in-Chief.
Office of Publication, Council of State. Havana, 2004,
p. 18.
[5] Ibid.
http://www.almamater.cu/sitio%20nuevo/paginas/universidad/octubre/esteban.html
29 de octubre
del 2008
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Disparos sin escopeta
Entrevista con Esteban Morales
Por Hilario Rosete Silva
Foto: Cortesía del entrevistado
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