Why Afro-cubans of Havana’s San Isidro are seeking support of Black Lives Matter activists

Ninetymilesfromusshores,anotherpowerful reckoning has been playing out in one of Cuba’s poorest and predominantly Black neighbourhoods. Although this movement, too, calls for social and racial justice and inclusion, the unprecedented uprising of people of colour on the Caribbean island hasn’t goten the atention it deserves from Americans — and in particular, from Black Lives Mater activists and supporters. Where are Havanastruting Beyonce and Jay-z and, in fact, where’s former President Barack Obama, who encouraged Cubans to seek change and open up to the world?

Their voices are needed at this historic juncture in Cuba: the beginning of a post-castro era.

The Afro-cubans of Havana’s San Isidro neighbourhood — puting their lives on the line to openly confront the Cuban government — could use widespread support right now. They’re the flashpoint of an unrelenting and brave pushback against government repression, suffering, and economic strife that oten runs along racial lines.

With Raul Castro’s retirement as head of the Communist Party, there won’t be a Castro leading the country for the first time since 1959, although Castro relatives still hold positions in government. Withoutrealreformsthatestablishbasichumanrights and open economic opportunity for all, however, the transfer of power means litle to Cubans, who are once again fleeing by sea to South Florida.

Ater he succeeded Fidel, the second Castro brother was seen as a reformist, but he failed to deliver, miserably. Instead of opening the country to modernity, Raul Castro installed another loathed despot as president, Miguel Díaz-canel. He’s also replacing Raul as Communist Party chief.

With or without a Castro at the helm, Castroist oppression remains embedded in society, from policing practices that arbitrarily send people to jail, oten Black men and women, to the 2019 rewrite of the Constitution under Díaz-canel that criminalizes independent artistic expression.

The San Isidro movement began organically as a group of young artists opposed to the censorship measure, Ley 349, and gained strength as more artists, writers, musicians and independent journalists called for a dialogue about free expression.

The government refused to listen and continued arrests, harassment and surveillance, but the artists didn’t let up the pressure. Dozens of artists, intellectuals and journalists, among them big names in art and film, showed up last Nov. 27 in front of the Ministry of Culture’s building in Havana, demanding to be heard. On the streets, the leaders of the San Isidro movement are mostly Afro-cuban artists and their anthem and rallying cry, “Patria y Vida” (“Homeland and Life”), is a powerful Cuban rap and reggaetón song that bravely tells the regime: “Enough!”

Basta ya.

No more “trampling on an entire people’s dignity,” they rap. No more paradise in Varadero for foreigners while “Cuban mothers cry for their fleeing children.” No more treating us “like animals.”

This is the Cuban let protesting against the Cuban let — and the most hopeful note is that the rallying anthem and its cry for freedoms have caught on both in Miami and Havana.

“The deception is over,” they sing. “It’s time to create what we dreamed of and what you destroyed with your hands.”

The video has more than 4.6 million views on Youtube, yet I haven’t seen it make the Twiter feeds of American artists rightly advocating on behalf of BLM. To see people, Black and white, on a crumbling street in San Isidro singing “Patria y Vida” — led by one of the rappers, Maykel Osorbo, wearing a dangling handcuff link — to see them catcall DíazCanel, may seem par for the course for Americans accustomed to Black Lives Mater protests. But, in Cuba, it can be suicide. “#Patriayvida is a worldwide movement that belongs to all of us Cubans who demand freedom and democracy in Cuba,” Osborbo posted on Instagram. “Art has more force than a dictatorship.”

It seems so at this moment. The movement has grownoutsideofhumblesanisidroandincorporated a rainbow of advocates who’ve penned the “27N manifesto” wisely using language of the let that people on the island understand to outline what a new Cuba should look like.

It’s time for the American let to embrace a new day for Cuba. Cuban Black lives mater, too.