Thank you very much for inviting me to this Martin Luther King, Jr. celebration. It is quite an honor to have the opportunity to address an American audience and speak about a person whose moral example and political influence have touched the soul, the heart and the minds of millions of people in this nation and around the world.
Cubans like Americans are not indifferent to Martin Luther King's appeal for equal civil rights for every individual. I want to tell you today a short history of what Cubans have done for the promotion and respect of human rights in the island. This is, for reasons obvious to me, the best way to honor Dr. King's legacy.
Cuba was a colony of Spain until 1898. The slavery system ended in 1886 but racism did not stop there. In 1868 Cubans in favor of independence began a war against Spain. Among the chief motivations for that war I can mention the urgent need to abolish slavery. However I have to confess to this audience that in my country of birth we had Black middle class Cubans who owned slaves of the same race.
Among the Cubans who initiated the independence movement, we will find landowners who freed their slaves, denounced the evils of the plantation system, and invited their former slaves to join their efforts. Some of the former slaves and other Afro-Cubans who participated in that effort became generals. They will command troops made of people of all races. One of this black generals was Antonio Maceo Grajales who died in combat in 1896. His death made the front page of the New York Journal. A Congressman from Illinois strongly condemned what he called Maceo's assassination. Even the stock market in Wall Street suffered from the impact of Maceo's death in December 1896.
Cuba obtained its independence in 1902. Nevertheless, independence by itself did not bring to Cubans the civil rights for which they had fought. In spite of having made large contributions to our sovereignty black Cubans were much dispossessed. To correct this situation, some of them tried to organize a political party with only blacks. That particular type or organization was in contradiction with the Cuban Constitution of that time. Mr. Martín Morúa Delgado, a Senator of the Republic and an Afro Cuban politician and writer opposed the idea. He wanted black Cubans like himself to be part of a larger segment of the country and society that included many dispossessed who were not necessarily blacks. He was unable to convince them. What happened next is sad. The advocates of racial separation were murdered and thousands of Afro-Cubans were massacred by the Army.
After this painful incident Afro-Cubans were able to gain a lot of ground in all spheres. The list of prominent Afro Cubans before 1959 has no end: senators, poets, writers, businessmen, governors, government officials, union leaders, generals, etc. One of these generals was a mulatto whose name is Fulgencio Batista Zaldívar who became elected President of Cuba in 1940 thanks to many Afro-Cuban and pro-communist voters. Mr. Batista ended his term four years later. In 1952 he decided to run for President for a second time, but he had no chances to be re-elected. For this reason, he organized a coup d'etat that brought him back to power for seven bloody years. In January 1959, a revolution lead by a lawyer named Fidel Castro, put a definite end to Batista's political ambitions.
In 1959 ninety percent of the Cuban population supported the leaders of the Revolution. But that was then in 1959. People of all races and social backgrounds went, literally, to the streets of all Cuban cities and towns to celebrate the new era. The new government started ambitious social programs. Castro's government enforced many good projects: free education, free health care, affordable housing, full time jobs and decent salaries, large social security plans, etc. The new leadership put under attack some terrible social plagues. Poverty, prostitution, unemployment, racism, starvation and illiteracy began to disappear from the Cuban social scene.
That is why American and Western European civil rights in the early sixties gave a strong support to the Cuban Revolution. By then famous Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén wrote a poem called "Tengo" or "I have" expressing how these positive changes were affecting all Cubans and Afro-Cubans in particular: "I have, let's see,/ like being a black/ no one can stop me/ at the door of a dance hall or a bar,/Or else in the lobby of a hotel/shout at me that there is no room,/a tiny room and not a great big room,/ a small room where I can rest." Lorna Williams, a Jamaican scholar who teaches in St. Louis, Missouri, says about this poem that "the acquisition of certain elemental rights by the formerly dispossessed now causes the present to appear as a unique moment of plenitude" (Self and Society 118).
In fact after 1959 many Blacks in Cuba have become more prominent in all segments of Cuban society. However soon after 1959 some Black Cubans began to criticize the negative tendencies of the new leadership. Because of this, they were arrested, sent to prison for several years (if not executed), forced to leave the country or to keep their mouths shut and live in internal exile. These Afro-Cubans, together with the rest of the nation, complained about the government's neglect for other important rights: religious freedom, the elimination of non-communists organizations, the abolition of private property, the invalidation of freedom of expression and opinion, the closing of independent media organizations, etc . Only Blacks who agreed with Castro's policies were the good and commendable Afro-Cubans. I must add that the same thing happened to Whites, Mulattos, Chinese, Jews, Arabs, etc.
What made the situation even worst for Black Cubans is the official assumption that a Black Cuban who opposes the government is a double traitors: first, because of his/her skin color, and second because of his/her political inclinations. Today in 1996 Afro-Cubans are 50% of the total Cuban population, and 80% of all Cuban prisoners are Afro-Cubans. Only two members of Castro's inner circle are blacks. However, none of them is influential within the Cuban nomenklature. The key government jobs are not given to Black Cubans. The main officials in charge of the Army, Foreign Affairs, Tourism, Sugar Industry, State Security and Culture are not Afro-Cubans.
And yet there are prominent and capable Afro-Cubans in the island. Mr. Jesús Yánez Pelletier is one of them. He even saved Castro's life when the now Commander in Chief was a political prisoner, and Mr. Yáñez a prison officer who disobeyed the order to poison Castro. Today Mr. Yáñez is a dissident and works for the illegal opposition in Cuba. He is a great admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King. I know that because we are friends. Mr. Vladimiro Roca is another example. His father, Mr. Blas Roca, was a Politburo member until he died in the eighties. Mr. Roca is now a much respected Cuban opposition leader with high credibility in the international community.
Cuba has wonderful Afro-Cubans scientists, athletes, writers, poets, scholars, dancers, musicians, painters, dissidents or not. The same can be said about dissident Afro-Cubans living in Miami, New York, New Jersey, Houston, New Orleans, Spain, France, Sweden, etc. Cuba's black population is the best educated in the Caribbean region. Black Cubans have the lowest rate of infant mortality in that geographic area. The infant mortality rate among Cubans of all races is even lower than in Washington D.C., Brazil or any of the Sub-Saharan nations in Africa. I am convinced that every decent person in the planet has to recognize and admit these facts.
But we have to distinguish, very carefully, between economics rights and social or civil rights. It is dangerous to enforce only some of them. For a society to be called democratic has to respect all kinds of rights: economics and civil rights for all. What separate Cubans of all races from Castro is that Cuban citizens have to sacrifice their civil rights for the sake of the economic rights. What separates Cubans of all races from Castro is the government intolerance toward the civil rights.
I do not believe that Dr. King, being alive, will support a regime where a single person decides what rights are going to be honored and what rights are going to be denied. I can not imagine that Dr. King will support a regime that tries to solve its congenital incapability to produce goods by exporting its population to richer nations. I cannot see Dr. King shaking hands with Castro knowing that Castro has persecuted religions and closed churches of all denominations. I cannot believe that Dr. King will call Castro a good leader knowing that Castro does not permit prisoners to have a Bible in their cells.
This is the message that I have for you today. The essential lesson Cubans have learned from Dr. King and other leaders are mainly two: non-violent resistance to oppressive governments, and the equal defense of civil and economic rights. Thank you very much for the privilege of talking to this audience about Dr. King's legacy.