Now confident to go beyond the previous confines of private, often whispered conversations, Cubans from various walks of life are increasingly voicing individual opinions and starting projects about racial identity, discrimination, and proposed remedies.  The changing awareness and concern about new articulations of racial consciousness and related criticisms of discrimination has prompted the Cuban government to support research and discussions about the touchy subject as it manifests as a pervasive aspect in the private lives of Cuban citizens.

Last month Fidel Castro, in an extended discussion with the Union of Artists and Writers, once again addressed the topic of Cuban identity, touching upon issues of race in the context of globalization. The issue of race was given special attention in the proceedings of the Fifth Cuban Communist Party Congress (October, 1997):  "in the present we must continue the consolidation of the fair policy of promoting blacks and women, especially as cadres, in the same way that has been occurring with youth, with out being mechanical.  This is a policy that guarantees the moral authority of the Party before our people. The Party must insist in the application of that policy in all spheres of society."

Some Party members indicated that affirmative emphasis on race caused disquiet among some in the ranks. Others suggest that Fidel Castro is a lone progressive voice who periodically raises the issue of racial advancement among more conservative leadership.   Whatever the environment of receptivity on matters of race within the inner circle of Cuban governmental leadership, or the motives in support or against affirmative approaches, there can be little doubt that Cuban society, has at least for the moment, entered into a period of more open dialogue and debate about matters of race.

A documentary film is being produced by an Afro-Cuban film maker on the 1912 massacre of three-thousand Afro-Cubans resulting from the formation of a Black political party then deemed illegal by the government. Critiques are increasingly made about the lack of wholesome black images in present day Cuban media.  Teatro Negro has been formed and is writing and presenting plays about racial identity and discrimination. Afro-Cubans are increasingly quoted in the foreign press about race and racism in Cuba.  Clinton Adlum formerly of the Cuban diplomatic corp, now attached to a program at the University of Havana, where he does research on comparative race relations in the United States and Cuba was quoted in the Dallas Morning News (9/17/98):  "There is no official racism here anymore. But there is still a culture of racism. The mistake was to think that just by having everyone integrated, racism would fade away."   Similar perspectives from Afro-Cubans, locating ongoing problems of racism in the context of racial progress during the last forty years, are appearing in the foreign press.

The breakthrough on broader public and government initiated discussions of race and discrimination inside Cuba is also reflected in the spate of recent public discussions and news articles in the United States.  While African-Americans have frequently explored and debated issues of race and racism in Cuba since the 1959 Revolution  (see The Dallas Morning News article by Tracey Eaton on the January, 1999 visit to Cuba by an African-American delegation organized by Randall Robinson, President of the Washington-based TransAfrica Forum),  recent public forums are distinguished by participation of Cubans who live in the United States or other countries. Many of these Cubans who now find themselves immersed in the topic of race for the first time have previously either hedged on the subject, or denied the existence of racism in pre-59 Cuba.  Most notable among the Cuban voices now attracting public attention are the self-identified Afro-Cubans living outside Cuba whose opinions and writings on the subject have until lately found little publicly expressed and sustained interests among fellow Cubans in the U.S. of whatever racial identity.

In November, 1998, the Center for International Policy sponsored a seminar "Miami and U.S. Cuba Policy: A New Look" with a panel on "The Views of the Afro-Cuban Community" which featured among other panelists the outspoken, in some quarters controversial, Afro-Cuban Carlos Moore. The discussion and debate by the all black panel in front of an all white audience generated a number of follow up news articles which vigorously engaged the subject with various interpretations of Jose Marti's views about Cuban racial identity and references to theories of sincretism and conflicting interpretations of Cuban national history, all summoned to bolster one or another construct about racial identity,racism, and social policy.