Afro-Cubans like Antúnez are increasingly prominent leaders within the emerging democracy movement. Credit: Directorio
Veteran liberal journalist Nat Hentoff reveals the Castro brothers’ big dirty secret – the prevalence of institutionalized racism in Cuba – as detailed in the under-reported Statement of Conscience by African Americans:
- Afro-Cubans are experiencing strong and growing instances of racism on the island, with their 25-odd civil rights movements reporting a wide range of discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion and access to Cuba’s socialized medicine and educational system;
- Young black Cubans bitterly complain of aggressive racial profiling conducted by police, and Cuba’s jail population is estimated to be 85 percent black, according to black Cuban civil rights activists;
- 70 percent of Afro-Cubans are said to be unemployed. In such conditions, a vigorous rebirth of Cuba’s black movement, banned in the early years of the Cuban Revolution, is occurring. Cuban authorities are responding with violence and brutal civil rights violations.
The statement was prompted by Brazil’s black leader Abdias Nascimento’s condemnation of the Cuban authorities’ imprisonment of Afro-Cuban civil rights leader Darsi Ferrer.
Afro-Cubans like Jorge Luis Garcia Pérez (aka “Antúnez”) are increasingly prominent leaders within Cuba’s emerging democracy movement. Antúnez was one of five Cuban dissidents honored by the National Endowment for Democracy at a Capitol Hill event this year.
Addressing the meeting by phone from central Cuba, he welcomed the Democracy Award as an indication of the “prestige and recognition which the political opposition has gained.”
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