About the XVIII International Conference of African Culture

The African Cultural Center Fernando Ortiz, of Santiago de Cuba, celebrates annually from 12 to 16 of April the African Conference of  African and Afro American Culture .The event is dedicated to the African Culture in general line and its influence in the formation of our and worldly others.

The Conference is a systemic event, structured on the base five commissions of work, four specialized workshops and a Symposium.The workshops are dedicated to the different artistic manifestations.The Color and shape, to Fine Arts in general, the Ancestral Rhythm, music and dance, Mask, focus its interest in all the manifestations of performing arts and Images dedicated to visual arts, cinema, video and photography, , AfroMelenas is a program to highlight the natural beauty and care of the women in Afrodescendant.The same are encounters from the theoretical point of view on these themes.

1. Commissions of Work:

1. Literature and Linguistics: Within this commission it will aboarded all of the studies from the optics of these disciplines approaching to the African, Afro Caribbean and Afro-American context.

2. History and Ethnology: Links related disciplines within a same commission, it will allow knowing and scrutinizing historiography processes that have happened from the contact among Africa and America.

3. Religion:The studies on the popular religions of African root have proliferated at the Cuban scientific panorama and in other countries of the area in recent times.Reflecting about the subject matters will allow scholars, nurses and believers of different latitudes to exchange criteria.

4. Gender, race and identity:This controverter topic of nowadays focuses on the ideology, philosophy and religion of the towns.The confrontation of different points of views will provoke a rich intellectual debate between the participants.

Specialized workshops:

The same discuss the African presence within the different manifestations

 The Color and shape: Dedicated to the fine arts.

 The Ancestral Rhythm: Dedicated to music and dance.

 Imagery: Dedicated to audio -visual arts, cinema, photo and videos

 Masks: Dedicated to the theater.

 Afromelenas: Dedicated to the women in Afro descendant concept of natural beauty.

 The first edition of the conference was celebrated in 1990;Moment in which scholars of African themes were united, within the academic sectors of the country,.That way the Conference became the first meeting whose fundamental objective was to discuss these subject matters of coherent and systemic way propitiating the gathering among Cuban researchers and from other latitudes to enlarge the vision of these studies in our country.

The Culture and Medicine Symposium demonstrated its utility from the beginning as an intervening vehicle the specialists of the Medical Sciences found a space where exposing their experiences and opening them to the exchange with investigators from other countries.

The analysis of the hits and achievements of each its editions have allow us to improve its structure and functioning. Achieving a bigger national and international participation, and narrowing the links with the African Embassies.

Among the ambassadors that we have had participating in successive editions are:Cabo Verde, Angola, Congo, Ghana, Mozambique, Nigeria,South Africa, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Mali, Gambia, Namibia, Guinea Equatorial.

These diplomats organize the round table on present-day Africa,one of the actions that motivates most to the participants of the event.

Collateral activities come true in addition to the academic encounters like: shows, presentation of traditional groups, afternoons of poetry, musical groups' concerts, infantile contests awards, among others.This edition XVIII is dedicated to the present Africa in America