TransAfrica Forum

By Andy Petit

According to Radio Havana, actor Danny Glover, producer Camille Crosby, TransAfrica Forum’s Randall Robinson and about 20 other African American film makers, writers, and intellectual  visited Cuba to strengthen ties with Cuban blacks and push for an end to the U.S. embargo. On January 7 they met with President Fidel Castro.

The members of TransAfrica Forum, a private Washington, D.C. policy group that organized this trip to the island, say the U.S. embargo prevents Cubans from getting food, medicine, and other essentials. TransAfrica was a key player in getting the embargo on South Africa enforced and in bringing about the Haiti intervention. They work to influence US policy on Africa and on countries of the Diaspora.

Randall Robinson, the TransAfrica's president, said "American policies, 40 years in application, have hurt ordinary men, woman, and children in Cuba, and AfroCubans particularly, and it's simply unacceptable." He thinks that the trade ban will end soon and that once it has, Cubans will need help adjusting to new realities. For example, he worries that as capitalism enters the Cuban economy, AfroCubans won't get their fair share of opportunities: "Already there is discrimination in the selection of people for some jobs, but I don't think there's any question that the Cuban government opposes practices of this kind."

Besides calling for changes in U.S. policy, TransAfrica delegates talked with Cuban officials to seek improved race relations on the island. They met with officials such as Regla Martinez, a member of the National Assembly, Cuba's legislature. Asked whether there was an overly high number of blacks in Cuban prisons, she told them that U.S. and Cuban perceptions of race relations are very different. "For you it may be important to count the number of blacks and whites in prison. For us it is not… every day I feel a kinship with blacks, whites, Chinese. To me, there is no difference."   This is a classic expression of a certain Cuban theme of racial equality which has a long history.  Interestingly enough, Fidel Castro did not evoke it two days later when the delegation met with him and discussed this same topic.

An estimated 70 percent of the Cuban population has some African heritage. Slavery was abolished in 1886, later than in most other places, and blatant racial oppression continued into the 1950s, when blacks were still prevented from going to all-white clubs, beaches and restaurants This overt racism was abolished by the Revolution in 1959. Blacks have benefited from the subsequent changes in Cuba’s education and health policies and have moved into many positions of power. The Communist Party leaders in Cuba's two largest cities – Havana and Santiago de Cuba - are currently both black, for instance, as are 6 of 24 members of the Politburo.  However, recent economic stresses have led to an increase in racial tension: salaries from the euro-tourism industry and remittances from the mostly white Miami Cubans have gone primarily to white Cubans and blacks have taken the rap, having to resort to street hustling to survive in the face of rising food prices.   This imbalance goes very much against the grain of the Cuban government and it is doing what it can to insure equal income distribution, but the stresses of the post-Soviet era with increased US sanctions make this difficult.

Fidel Castro was the first Cuban president to recognize the nation's roots, saying some years back that "we are a Latin-African people." He has also spoken out against racial prejudice, though of course discrimination hasn't disappeared. In Randall Robinson’s view, "it would be unrealistic to expect that one can erase this kind of long-standing social pathology in the space of 40 years."

Fidel Castro spent 2 1/2 hours on Thursday with the TransAfrica delegation. TransAfrica's president, Randall Robinson, said Castro talked about Cuba’s efforts to overcome centuries of slavery and segregation and also about how he thought more work needed to be done to end racism, straightforwardly giving as an example that black Cubans are over represented in Cuba's prisons.