Racism in Cuba
The Revolution Silenced Non-white Cubans
### The Revolution Silenced Non\-white Cubans

While many opponents of the Revolution, such as Cuban emigrants, argue that Castro created race problems on the island, the most common claim for the exacerbation of racism is the revolution's inability to accept Afro\-Cubans who want to claim a black identity. After 1961, it was simply taboo to talk about race at all. Antiracist Cuban activists who rejected a raceless approach and wanted to show pride in their blackness such as Walterio Carbonell and Juan René Betancourt in the 1960s, were punished with exile or imprisonment.

Esteban Morales Domínguez, a professor in the [University of Havana](/wiki/University_of_Havana "University of Havana"), believes that "the absence of the debate on the racial problem already threatens {...} the revolution's social project." Carlos Moore, who has written extensively on the issue, says that "there is an unstated threat, blacks in Cuba know that whenever you raise race in Cuba, you go to jail. Therefore the struggle in Cuba is different. There cannot be a civil rights movement. You will have instantly 10,000 black people dead." He says that a new generation of black Cubans are looking at politics in another way. Cuban rap groups of today are fighting against this censorship; Hermanos de Causa explains the problem by saying, "Don’t you tell me that there isn’t any \[racism], because I have seen it / don’t tell me that it doesn’t exist, because I have lived it."


Are there any black Cuban leaders or activists advocating for change today?