As the country debates racism, support for Trump and views on race divide Cuban Americans
Cuban dissident Eliécer Ávila, who emigrated to the the United States over two years ago, said in a video he posted recently on Facebook that he believes the high unemployment rate among African Americans is due to their lack of “willingness to work.”
In the same video, Cuban American Democratic activist Sandor Valdés argued that replying “all lives matter” to the plight of a minority affected by racial discrimination and police brutality was not helpful. Ávila replied: “How many months do murdered whites have to wait to get a space in media coverage?”
As discussions about racism in the United States continue after the violent death of George Floyd, divisions in the Cuban American community have emerged once again.
Many conservative Cuban Americans believe that the #BlackLivesMatter movement and mainstream media exaggerate police excesses and racial discrimination issues to push a “leftist” agenda. Others, especially Afro-Cubans and those born or raised in the U.S., have expressed dismay at some responses that they believe are tone-deaf, especially when coming from Cuban activists concerned about human rights on the island.
Ávila told the Herald he is “in favor of demonstrations” but does not support “that many extreme leftist groups have hijacked the outrage and channeled it to legitimize their agenda.”
On Facebook, Cuban artist and activist Tania Bruguera said Ávila’s statements in the video showed “unprecedented political ignorance” and were the kind of comments typically uttered by “racist whites.”
“I remind Eliécer than in the U.S. he is not considered white because he is Latino,” she added.
Ariel Fernández, a hip-hop movement pioneer in Cuba who works as a music producer in Miami, also took issue with Ávila’s video.
“It’s a racist argument to say that Blacks are lazy and are unemployed because they don’t want to work,” he told the Miami Herald. “And you can be both supportive of the BlackLivesMatter movement and condemn vandalism.”
Ana Pelaez, a progressive activist and co-founder of the Miami Freedom Project, says Cuban Americans’ reaction has been “diverse” and “complex.”
While she has been surprised by the interest shown by people who are not usually active in politics, “in some cases I’ve seen people who I would assume would be empathetic, because of their own experiences in Cuba and the human rights issues that they’re advocating for, not be supportive of this movement,” she said.
Cuban American YouTube star Alexander Otaola joined the BlackTuesday campaign on Instagram in support of black victims of police violence. He added the hashtag #AllLivesMatter to his post. “If we are going to fight racism,” he said on his internet show Hola Ota-ola, “it is not by segregating or separating into races that we are going to achieve it.”
The internet celebrity said Floyd’s death “was not justified” and that the police officer found kneeling on his neck should be punished. But he also pondered whether Floyd, if still alive and given his police record, would not have joined the looting that has at times erupted during recent demonstrations.
Otaola’s highly popular show, with its heavy criticism of the Cuban regime, caters to an audience of Cubans who mostly emigrated to the United States in the past two decades. Some of his followers — he has more than a hundred thousand on Instagram alone — expressed disappointment at his comments.
“You were wrong when addressing the issue of racism. There is racism everywhere, but in the United States, the treatment of Blacks is extreme,” said an Instagram user with the handle @martilahabana. “Put yourself in the shoes of those who experience racism for a day, think as if they are your children, and then tell me how they are going to feel.”
Otaola told the Herald he was “not a racist” and “did not focus on people’s skin color.” He said he believed mainstream media and the left were trying to “promote vandalism” and “portray Floyd like a hero.”
Other Cuban activists have used their social media platforms to convince their audiences that racism in America is not a significant issue.
Social media activist Liu Santiesteban said on a Facebook video the media has manipulated people into believing racial discrimination is “the biggest problem in this country and the biggest problem the Black community faces.”
“That is entirely false,” she said. Instead, the “missing black father” is the main challenge for Black families, she said. Legislation promoted by the Democrats, she added, “pushes Black women to get a divorce to live out of the welfare system.”
Santiesteban did not reply to a request for comment.
Black Cubans point to the “lack of sensibility” underlying some of the arguments that other Cuban Americans have publicly made.
“If you can’t find compassion for someone who is not from your community, I think that’s where the problem is,” said Yvette Rodriguez, one of the owners of cigar business Tres Lindas Cubanas in Miami.
Rodriguez said when her parents came from Cuba in the 1960s, Cubans were also discriminated against and benefited from the passing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
“When speaking of Floyd’s death, some people say, ‘but what about his record?’” she said. “If you’re not racist, why is it so hard to have this type of conversation?”
Race is a thorny issue in Cuban history, and open discussions about racism have long been considered taboo, including after the victory of the Cuban revolution, when Fidel Castro proclaimed discrimination would disappear thanks to policies benefiting all workers.
The country has a large Black and mixed-race population. Still, many Cubans say that, as descendants of Spanish migrants, they are white.
Fernandez feels uneasy that some of these dissident voices, who have built a following by weighing in on Cuba’s future, are suppressing an open discussion about racism.
“These are influential voices; what message are they sending?” he said. “They want a Cuba where the race issue is not addressed, and thus, they are replicating the Cuban government’s views.”
Cuban actor, TV host and playwright Alexis Valdés posted a video, seen by more than 90,000 people on Facebook, in which he questioned those trying to deny the persistence of racism in the U.S., Cuba, and “everywhere.”
“We cannot deny that racism exists. The police have stopped me two or three times walking down the street, simply because I am mulato,” Valdés said. “And I have learned that it is because of racism; what use is there in denying it?”
Dear Cuban Americans
In social media, younger Cuban Americans have been trying to explain the dimension of the trauma suffered by the Black community in the U.S. by speaking of a subject most Cubans can relate to: Castro’s revolution.
“Dear Cuban Americans,” begins a post by University of Miami graduate Elisa Baena with over 35,000 likes on Instagram. “If you’re the child or grandchild of Cuban exiles, you know the revolution was likely the most traumatic event of their lives…. Now think about the scale of the trauma that Black Americans are born with and into…. Do you and your family act like the Cuban Revolution was a long time ago? The revolution began in 1959. Jim Crow ‘ended’ in 1965.”
CubaOne, an organization that connects young Cuban Americans with their counterparts on the island, also put out a statement to “stand in solidarity with our Black hermanos y hermanas.”
CubaOne recently organized a trip to Cuba around the concept of the African diaspora, said Cherie Cancio, one of its founders.
As in many other issues, such as the embargo, many second-generation Cuban Americans have embraced more progressive views. Their experiences growing up in the United States might have shaped how they perceive public protests and advocacy, Pelaez said.
“Coming from a Cuban family and growing up in the United States, I feel very comfortable seeing protests and seeing democracy in action,” she says. “That’s where I could see maybe it being different from someone who’s grown up in a different political system, and is adapting to a new one, why there would be that discomfort.”
People who were born or raised in the United States, experts note, have been exposed to debates about structural racism and racist police violence.
For those who grew up in Cuba, however, “an open, critical and militant discussion against institutional and police racism would be perhaps uncomfortable and difficult to process since it involves questioning one of the most sacred taboos of Cuban nationalism: the belief that we are not racists, that racism is something American,” said professor Alejandro de la Fuente, director of the Afro-Latin American Research Institute at Harvard University.
In Cuba and other Latin American countries, national myths have promoted ideas of racial fraternity. While providing a platform for more inclusion, they also convey a color-blindness discourse on race that has contributed to the invisibility of many instances of racial discrimination, as many AfroCuban activists have said over the years.
Cubans for Trump
As previous experiences with race and racism play a role in how Cuban Americans engage with the #BlackLivesMatter movement, so do party politics. As many Cuban Americans have embraced the Trump administration’s tough stance on Cuba, the fear of communism taking root in the U.S., a top Trump reelection campaign theme, has found a receptive audience.
The use of communist symbols such as the hammer and sickle spotted at a few demonstrations in Miami has fueled the fire, as well as problematic past statements of the #BlackLivesMatter movement in support of Fidel Castro.
Chants of “communists” erupted when a couple holding a #BlackLivesMatter sign approached a recent rally organized by the group Cuban Americans for Trump in Miami Lakes. Protesters also yelled, “Communists, go back to Cuba” and “you’re a [expletive] communist” to a Herald reporter and a photographer covering the rally.
Following the success of a car caravan he organized to condemn the Cuban regime, Otaola called his followers to go out in a “Law and Order” caravan last Saturday in Miami.
“Those who are thankful of this country for opening its doors to us are not going to allow that a group of leftist communist criminals mess with the life that has cost us so much to build outside our country,” Otaola said in his show. “I side with law and order, with the authorities, the side of justice.”
Other grassroots Cuban American organizations have been taking a different approach, trying to create spaces where people can gather and debate about race, both Pelaez and Cancio told the Herald.
“I think some of the work that needs to be done moving forward is really taking a stand,” Cancio said. “Organizations representing Latinos and Cuban Americans have to put their foot in the ground and say this is not a bipartisan issue. This is a human rights issue.”
Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres
This story was originally published June 24, 2020 at 6:00 AM.