Racism in a socialist state (Cuba)
So much for capitalism being the essential cause of racism.
Anger among anti-racism activists has recently flared, after the Cuban police killed a 27-year old Black man, Hansel Hernández, in Guanabacoa, just outside Havana, on June 24. Two officers claimed they saw him stealing auto parts at a bus stop and pursued him when he began to run. One of them, a Black officer, ultimately shot Hernández in the back after he allegedly began throwing rocks at them. The government was forced to acknowledge the police killing of Hernández a few days after his aunt publicized the details of his death on Facebook.
Nonetheless, as activists were organizing a protest in Havana following Hernández’s killing, several high-profile participants were detained by the police in order to thwart the event, including various outspoken artists, such as Tania Bruguera, as well as independent journalists; some also had their internet service cut off. This is a common tactic used by Cuban state officials to silence dissent on a wide range of issues. The government also issued the equivalent of a #BlueLivesMatter PR campaign with the Twitter hashtag #HeroesDeAzul (Heroes in Blue), a tone-deaf and hypocritical message, given the government’s simultaneous critique of U.S. police racism.
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When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, his government set about eliminating discrimination within the public sphere and integrating public spaces such as beaches and parks as well as education and employment. The government saw Afro-Cubans’ disproportionate poverty as the main problem and focused on expanding education and health care to the whole population as a means of reducing racialized inequality. In the space of only three years, Castro announced that racism had been eliminated due to the class restructuring that had taken place in Cuban society.
However, one of the actions taken by the government to eliminate differences within the population was to outlaw organizations structured around racial identity, including the Black social clubs that had sprung up in the 1930s and 1940s in response to the de facto segregation that had existed before the revolution.
Castro essentially prohibited any public discourse on racial difference, and this had a chilling effect on race-based civil rights organizing on the island.
Those who spoke out about the anti-Black racism that of course still existed, such as Carlos Moore, were branded as counterrevolutionaries and often detained, sent to reeducation camps, or forced to leave the island in exile.
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