Afro-Cuban lives don’t matter to the shameful leaders of Black Lives Matter | Opinion
Now I have the answer to the question I’ve been asking for months.
Why doesn’t the Black Lives Matter movement care that Afro Cubans are being beaten, arrested, and jailed — and after Sunday’s historic protests in Cuba, also killed — for the “crime” of demanding the basic human right to free expression?
How can a movement supposedly dedicated to seeking justice turn a blind eye to what’s going on in Cuba, as if those batons, choke holds, and bullets weren’t used on Black people?
The regrettable, shameful answer came Wednesday night on the organization’s official Instagram page: Because the organization’s leadership stands solidly behind Cuba’s oppressive, white-led Communist regime.
Simply put, Black Cuban lives don’t matter to BLM.
Ideology is what counts, and BLM leaders remain firmly aligned with a discredited oppressive regime that crushes its people, millions of them Black or mixed-race. They remain faithful even though the dissident Cuban left — and, prominently, Afro Cubans — are leading the call for freedom and change.
Using the same tactic and the same words as the Cuban regime, BLM blames all the failures of the 62-year-old dictatorship on the United States.
Instead of condemning the treatment of Afro Cubans, they condemn the U.S. embargo as the cause of what’s happening in Cuba.
“Black Lives Matter condemns the U.S. federal government’s inhumane treatment of Cubans and urges it to immediately lift the embargo,” the statement says. “This cruel and inhumane policy, instituted with the explicit intention of destabilizing the country and undermining Cubans’ rights to choose their own government, is at the heart of Cuba’s current crisis.”
Afro Cubans promptly reacted with a deep sense of pain and betrayal.
“I am Black & Cuban and deeply hurt by the #BLM statement on Cuban protests,” Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote on Twitter. “They are blind and deft [sic] to the Cuban ppl, to their demands. With whom is their solidarity? Certainly not with the people in the streets. LISTEN to us.
“A similar education and awareness that #BLM rightfully demands for white people is what I ask for them,” she tweeted. “I ask BLM to put aside their preconceptions abt #Cuba and listen to the Cubans on the island, their reality not the speeches #BLM wants to believe.”
Brava.
This comes from a Black Cuban woman, she points out, who “dedicates her best energies & scholarship to fight racism and unflinchingly support #BLM struggle.”
Likewise, I have resoundingly supported the Black Lives Matter protests in Miami-Dade and devoted many columns and used my voice in this community to fight racism.
BLM’s refusal to stand with the Cuban people desperately putting their lives on the line, claiming their right to be free, is a punch in the gut.
Afro Cubans, who have fared the worst under the Cuban regime, are leading this new revolution in Cuba.
They created its anthem and soulful rallying cry, “Patria y Vida” — Homeland and Life. And one of them, Maykel Osorbo, is in prison.
BLM should be using its considerable connections and influence with the Cuban government to get him released.
He’s the guy in the viral picture with the handcuff hanging off his arm, defiant, dignified, representing the people of his mostly Black, poor neighborhood in Havana.
Cubans stand united
We, on both sides of the Florida Straits, stand united at a moment we hope will bring uncompromising change in Cuba. Change that delivers on what the people want, not what is convenient for ideologues keeping Latin America stuck in cycle of far-left and far-right battles.
Brave Cubans have taken a decisive step toward a new, pluralistic day with leadership that doesn’t pit Cuban against Cuban and doesn’t militarize children and force them into service to oppress their own people.
In supporting the illegitimate regime led by Miguel Díaz-Canel, never elected by the people but installed by Raúl Castro and his inner circle, BLM is hurting its own cause.
The lack of freedom in Cuba isn’t caused by the U.S. embargo. And there’s not a single video, among the dozens coming out of those impromptu protests, that calls for an end to the embargo.
The loudest, most unequivocal chant, is one: “¡Libertad!”
Freedom.
Despite those who seek to keep Cubans enslaved for their own political and ideological purposes, the Cubans are making themselves heard.
A Black woman, screaming at the top of her lungs in Havana, summed it up best: “We have lived 60 years in lies and deceit and that has to end. [Now] we take off the cloak of silence.”
The Cuban regime has the political power, but it no longer has the people on its side.
When it comes to Cuba, Black Lives Matter is standing on the wrong side of history.
This story was originally published July 15, 2021 at 11:17 AM.
