Book review
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.13169/intejcubastud.5.2.0213 |
| Pages | 213244-215 |
| Published date | 01 October 2013 |
| Date | 01 October 2013 |
| Author | Steve Ludlam |
BOOKREVIEWS 213
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polemics against Cuba, the US embargo and its associated policies are directly
and indirectly the major sources of constraint of human rights of all kinds on
the island. Certainly, securing the ending of the embargo and US ‘regime change’
policy would do more for human rights in Cuba than anything else outsiders can
possibly achieve. Hopefully, as well as filling a surprising gap in English-language
material for students of Cuba, this splendidly concise book will contribute also
to the demise of a blunt and counterproductive weapon that imposes such harm
on a people who dared to overthrow a US-supported dictator, and who have
struggled since to construct their own society.
Steve Ludlam, University of Sheffield, UK
Esteban Morales Domínguez, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial
Inequality (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2013) pb 244pp.
ISBN 9781583673201
Reviewed by Steve Ludlam
When it comes to race equality in Cuba, several contradictory things confront
the regular visitor: the evidence in all directions of the establishment by the
Revolution of civil equality; the persistence of race discrimination and inherited
disadvantage; and the almost total absence of the racism issue in public discourse.
The striking exceptions are the hip-hop lyrics promoting black consciousness,
and which, after Barack Obama’s first election and the astonishment that it
generated in a Cuba used to portrayals of an irredeemably and violently racist
empire, included comparisons of Obama with Super Mario! Esteban Morales’s
new book, an English translation of his Cuban articles and interviews on the
subject of racism, is an enormously important contribution to clarifying the
causes and consequences of such contradictions on the treatment of racism
inside Cuba, presented in terms of his overlapping themes of history, culture,
sociology and politics.
Morales is uniquely placed to make this contribution both personally and
intellectually. He is black, and one of Cuba’s leading academics and public
intellectuals. Externally, he is the most effective and outspoken public rebutter of
the US media war and its exilio stringers on the racism issue. Internally, he is the
most effective and outspoken critic of the failure of the Revolution to confront
the legacy and impact of racism in Cuban society. Part of his importance stems
from his habit of speaking truth to power. In recent years he was suspended
from his Communist Party branch for a year for publishing an article on the
website of UNEAC (Cuba’s writers’ and artists’ union), arguing that high-level
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