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The Discourse on Racism in Anti-Castro Publications, 2007

Here we track issues of race and identity among the anti-Castro groups based primarily out of Miami as well as responses from Cuba and abroad.

* Afro-Cuban Alliance, Miami

* Asociación Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, Madrid, Spain

* Carlos Moore, Brazil

* Enrique Patterson, Miami

* Proyecto de Relaciones Raciales, Mississipi: Ramón Colás, Founder and Director of Independent Libraries for Cuba [See Library Juice, 3/01]

 

The Afro-Cuban Alliance, the Cuban Culture Encounter Association, and Independent Libraries for Cuba have been recipient of NED funds. Carlos Moore was salaried as translator under a recipient of large sums from CIA, Holden Roberto of Angola, whose group FNLA fought against the Cuban backed Angolan government.

* Cuban American letter writers attack African American columnist Tonyaa Weathersbee, who writes for the Florida Times Union in Jacksonville.  11/07

* From the Front Page Magazine, site of the notorious neocon David Howorwitz, who started out, like many neocons, as a leftist:

Red Against Black by Myles Kantor  8/20/2007 Front Page Magazine: "In addition to sharing heroic dissidence, Esteban Cardenas, Enrique Patterson, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, and Oscar Elias Biscet are black Cubans. The latter commonality is significant given the recurrent myth that Fidel Castro has enhanced black Cubans’ quality of life. "[B]lacks are demonstrably better off under Castro than they were under the Batista dictatorship," Randall Robinson writes in Defending the Spirit. Economist Jude Wanniski similarly claims that "Fidel made life better for black Cubans." In addition to brutalizing these and other Afro-Cuban dissidents, Castro’s totalitarianism subjugates Afro-Cubans as a whole; there is no Afro-Cuban exemption from "illegal exit," "disrespect," "illicit association," and other repressive policies. Afro-Cubans are enslaved, muzzled, and terrorized no less than white Cubans. In fact, there is evidence that Afro-Cubans are more acutely repressed. Prohibitive emigration, for example, has applied with greater intensity to Afro-Cubans. Patterson notes, "I am certain that because of my race, I was the first member of the group [the Democratic Socialist Current] that the political police went after.""

Professor West, What About Castro’s Leftwing Victims?  2/12/02 Front Page Magazine: "Patterson’s being a black Cuban also didn’t endear him to the regime; black dissidents refute Castro’s propaganda that the Cuban Revolution has benefited them. "I am certain that because of my race," Patterson notes, "I was the first member of the group [CSDC] that the political police went after.""


Response from Cuba and elsewhere

Dr. C. Esteban Morales Domínguez, Havana:

Anti-Cuban subversion: the race issue, 9/07
El tema racial y la subversión anticubana, Jiribilla, 9/9/07 Vease la respuesta de Enrique Patterson

Alberto Jones, Florida: 

Unmasking the Promoters of the Racial War in Cuba
, 9/07 
Desenmascarando a los Promotores de la Guerra Racial en Cuba, 9/07

A Failed Revisionist attempt To Mask Cuba’s Tragic History 11/07


Such discussions are not new, though they seem to have been recently discovered in certain parts of el exilio. See ¿Qué tienen los negros en cuba? por Pedro Pérez Sarduy, 1996, Revista Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana. What Do Blacks Have in Cuba? by Pedro Pérez Sarduy, 1996, Revista Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana.

 

NED Funding of AfroCuban Dissidents - National Endowment for Democracy
www.ned.org/grants/05programs/grants-lac05.html

Afro-Cuban Alliance
$62,000*
To promote discussion about the conditions of Afro-Cubans and Afro-Cuban issues. The Afro-Cuban Alliance will establish a quarterly journal, Islas, which will be distributed inside and outside the island. The journal will seek to inform Cubans of African descent on the island and in exile about civil rights, the hidden history of slavery and racial discrimination in Cuba, the experience of civil rights movements, and how to organize to bring about change.

Asociación Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana (Cuban Culture Encounter Association)
$200,000*
To promote free debate and discussion about Cuban politics and the future of Cuba. Endowment support will enable Encuentro to publish its journal Revista Encuentro and continue to maintain its website and its web-based daily newspaper Encuentro On-Line. Encuentro will publish four editions of its journal, which will be distributed in Cuba and abroad.

[Encuentro published a remarkable blame the victims account of the 1912 massacre]

Bibliotecas Independientes de Cuba (Independent Libraries of Cuba) (BIC)
$133,773*
To promote intellectual freedom and debate inside Cuba. BIC will continue to provide material assistance to independent libraries in Cuba and promote international awareness of the library movement. BIC staff will travel to Latin America and Spain to meet with libraries, universities, think tanks, and other organizations to enlist their support for individual libraries and the libraries movement.

NED was founded in the early 80's to openly continue CIA's covert funding of publications, books, organizations, etc. As CIA funded various entities, they were invariably outed, causing numerous scandals, such as that involving the National Student Association in the US in the 60's. So the model was shifted to overt Congressional funding in order to legitimize the work, forgetting that Congress is perceived even in the US as a corrupt body entitled to little respect or credibility.


Enrique Patterson

From the Allianza Democratica site:

"Enrique Patterson is an essayist and journalist.  A Cuban dissident and co-founder of the Corriente Socialista Democratica Cubana, he became a political exile in 1992.  His professional career as teacher includes positions as Professor of History and Philosophy and Head of Department at the University of Havana, 1976-1982; Professor of Literature at the Institute Anton Makarenko, Havana, Cuba, 1983-1987; and, as professor of Spanish, Miami Dade County Public School System, 1994 to present.  His publications and conferences are numerous.  Well known ones include, “Sin calcetines” in Remembering Cuba, anthology edited by Andrea O’Reilly, University of Texas, “Heberto Padilla; La Revolucion Fuera del Juego”; “Cuba: la nacion a la luz de las transiciones”; “Cuba; discursos sobre la identidad”; “Teoria y Practica de la Revolucion Cubana”; “La Experiencia de la Diaspora Cubana”; Prognosis After the Break; “La Descriminacion Racial: Problema Pendiente en la Transicion Cubana”; The Role of Race in Cuba – U.S. Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, NY; “Las Violaciones de los derechos humanos y la descriminacion racial en Cuba”, Martin Luther King Center, Atlanta, GA, and among others, his last conference “La Idiologia de la Revolucion Cubana”, Cuban Cultural Congress, Madrid, Spain. Mr. Patterson currently serves as President of the Instituto de Estudios Cubanos. He earned a BA in Hispanic Literature, University of Havana, 1974, and a MA in Cuban Studies, also at the University of Havana in 1977."

-- http://www.alianzademocratica.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=118&Itemid=231

Racismo, totalitarismo y democracia  11/9/2007 Encuentro: de Enrique Patterson - "Recientemente, La Jiribilla, publicación cultural online del régimen, publicó el artículo "El tema racial y la subversión", firmado por el Dr. Esteban Morales. Más allá de las omisiones, mentiras y descalificaciones (entre ellas, la demonización de quien escribe), resulta interesante el intento de re-abordar ¡por fin! el tema racial, aunque sea desde los paradigmas de las ya desgastadas ideología y práctica "revolucionarias". El reconocimiento, leve y tangencial, de los descalabros del régimen a la hora de lidiar con la tradición racista y discriminatoria indica la dificultad del poder para seguir negando la existencia de semejante flagelo en el seno del llamado régimen "socialista"."

 

Links

LOS NEGROS, LOS OLVIDADOS EN EL ''PARAISO SOCIALISTA'' CUBANO
www.lanuevacuba.com/nuevacuba/notic-07-06-2040.htm

Red Against Black, Front Page Magazine, 8/07
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=4CB4B434-C56D-4716-A30F-A8BD8EBFBF00
This is a neocon publication, run by newly conservative former Trotskyite David Horowitz

 

 

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Last modified: December 09, 2007