RACE & RACISM
10.4 CONCLUSION
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What should we do about the men and women of black skin. for whom Maceo 6 fought, suffering the same anguish of inequality that he suffered in his admirable body and spirit? We know what we must do. Because we take the commitment of Jose Marti 'and Antonio Maceo as our own. On this night of tribute, I wish to remember those great heroes of yesteryear, as we embark upon this new revolution, the phase which is ours to live ... (Raul Castro cited in Serviat 198611993, 88).
and economics, but the beaches, sports and recreational centres became state- owned and thus open to alL Arguably most importantly, the revolution:
put culture at the service of the people; revindicated the Cuban national culture; encouraged popular values in young people, irrespective of race or sex; helped to promote values previously discriminated against such as those of African origin practised by slaves, blacks and free coloreds; promoted mass study of all the popular arts; and, it goes without saying, set up a socialist education system, one for the whole island, for all citizens, male and female, blacks, whites, workers and peasants (Serviat 198611993, 89)
As a result of the above measures private education became abolished, which likewise was a source of 'racial discrimination' in the pre-revolutionary era.
With the abolition of discrimination, housing in places once restricted to the white bourgeoisie was offered to needy and deserving families, irrespective of skin colour. Other anti-racist revolutionary measures led to the incorporation of the Cuban people in mass social organisations such as the Central de Trabajadores de Cuba (Confederation of Cuban Workers, CTC), Federacion de Mujeres Cubanas (Federation of Cuban Women, FMC) and the Asociacion Nacional de Agricultores Pequenos (National Association of Small Farmers, ANAP). Serviat reasons that Cubans' right to full equality, with no distinction of race, sex or national origin, became laid out in the country's socialist Constitution, passed by the overwhelming majority of working people and officially brought into effect on 24 February 1976.
Serviat assesses furthermore that the economic, cultural and social development of the nation had shown that 'Marxism-Leninism' is the 'only theory that is scientific and can offer adequate solutions to the complex social problems of any nation'. For him, and conceivably the revolutionary Cuban regime, because the ruling classes had a vested interest in sustaining racial inequity as an instrument of antagonism and partition between the black and the white worker, and thereby benefited more, 'it is precisely through the expropriation of these classes that the main economic factor propping up racial or sexual discrimination is eliminated' (Serviat 1986/1993, 89-90).
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Arguably, the most significant gams resulting from the abolition of discrimination and the institution of egalitarian measures were not only the development of a truly non-racial social order, but more concretely, the institution of economic equality and the break down of human alienation. From his field research Zeitlin construes that for the Cuban black, where previously it had been unintelligible, the revolution made the association between their fate and the fate of privileged workers, and the pre-revolutionary economic order, manifestly understandable. The revolution increased the black workers' revolutionary consciousness and cemented the links between all sectors of the island's working masses (Zeitlin 1970, 281). Moreover, Zeitlin points out that the revolution has given all Cuban workers a sense of 'basic human equality, associated with full community membership' that they never had in the pre- revolutionary epoch. In the past, Cuban workers, to a lesser or larger degree felt themselves to be neither human nor citizens; they were alienated from control over their lives and not fully part of society. They rejected, and were rejected by, the ruling and dominant institutions. They were ruled, in the words of a sugar mill worker, by 'individuals who, after destroying the Constitution 7
submitted the Republic to the abyss of viciousness and corruption'. Before the revolution, they expected nothing but 'ill treatment and theft at the hands of government officials' (Zeitlan 1970, 285, emphasis added). Zeitlin contends, that aside from the array of factors that distinguished workers from one another, what unified them and made them what they were and what they could be is the fact that they constituted the working class that before the revolution, according to a Cuban worker, 'we produced riches that we could see but never touch; for we were the exploited and the trampled on. That has ended here' (cited in Zeitlin 1970, 284-85).
I Castro's pronouncements in this respect receive some attention as they are deemed of particular relevance to similar questions post-Apartheid South Africa continue to confront in current times.
2 See various editions of The Bulletin for South African socialist positions.
3Bom in Havana in 1914, Pedro Serviat was a graduate of the 1920s Jose Marti Popular University and worker activist in the communist movement. He was the first director of the Nico Lopez National School when it was set up in the 1960s, and then became head of the Party Movement of History Activists. Prior to his death, he was director of Party Institute of History of the Communist Movement and the Socialist Revolution of Cuba (Sarduy and Stubbs 1993, 296).
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4Anderson's version of this extract from Guevara's speech reads as follows:
How can a country that murders its own children and discriminates between them daily because of the color [sic] of their skins, a country that allows the murderers of Negroes to go free, actually protects them and punishes the Negroes for demanding respect for their lawful rights as free human beings, claim to be a guardian of liberty? (Anderson 1997, 617).
5 Changes in Cuba's education system, as perceived by Guevara, are presented in greater detail in Chapter II.
6 Antonio Maceo (1845-1896) a prominent military leader and strategist in Cuba's independence wars; opposed the 1878 treaty that ended the first war; played active role in the 1895 independence struggle under Marti's leadership; killed whilst in battle (Deutschmann 2003,409).
7Promulgated in 1940.