Seven leaders from Cuba’s civil society organizations attended the United Nations’ fourth session of the Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. While in New York, two of these leaders, Rolando Rensoli, president of the José Antonio Aponte Commission of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), and Kenia Serrano, from the community project Karibuni and the Afro feminist Articulation Coordination, sat down to speak with the Amsterdam News.
The Permanent Forum, like all other UN bodies, brings advocates together to make progressive declarations and set goals for world governments to work towards. But it doesn’t supply them with the resources needed to achieve those goals, Serrano noted. “The resources countries in the North have were created by the majority Black nations of the South. They got rich at our expense,” she said. “That is where there is a need for historical reparations. The people, the populations, the African diaspora –– that Africanness that every Cuban has, that every Caribbean person has, that people here in New York have –– we feel that there is a historical debt owed to our people and that there is a historical debt owed Africa.”
For decades, Cuba has looked at how inclusion and inequality, particularly as it pertains to skin color, lead to societal disparities. Social researchers have debated the best way to address these issues. But Serrano noted that some Cuban institutions are reluctant to discuss racial disparities because they fear bringing the subject up gives ammunition to those who want to criticize the Cuban revolution.
There was a recent analysis of the general population’s health indicators at the end of 2024, shown on the program ‘Color Cubano,’ Rensoli said. The show looked at hernia samples, infant mortality, and life expectancy. Cuba looks at health indicators for its general population and will only differentiate its patients based on their skin tone. Rensoli noted that in Cuba, racial categories are not strictly followed: “We … assume that in Cuba we are all Afrodescendants,” he said. “It is another thing that we, well, we want our discourse about. We are a mestizo people, we are all Afrodescendants. We talk about skin colors, we are not an Afrodescendant and non-Afrodescendant population. We talk about Black Cubans, mulattos, and whites, but the issue of Afrodescendants encompasses us all.”
This year’s Permanent Forum meeting was a tad disappointing for UNEAC’s Rensoli. The declaration of 2011 as the International Year for People of African Descent, and the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001, have led to numerous meetings in New York and at the UN’s Geneva, Switzerland offices. It has forced the world’s advocates for African descendants, Rensoli points out, to shuttle between New York and Geneva to discuss Black world concerns. “I believe that Brazil, for example, which says its population is nearly 55% Afrodescendant, could host the forum. When we talk to each other in Afrodescendant forums, why don’t we talk about having one in Colombia? In Medellin, Cali, Barranquilla, or with the Blacks of Chocó? Why don’t we do Venezuela, which has an extraordinary Afrodescendant movement? They’re organized, and the Bolivarian revolution gave rights to the Afrodescendant communities. Why don’t we have one in Cuba? In Havana or Santiago de Cuba?”
Cuban delegation members who attended the Permanent Forum complained that their visas restricted them to only being able to visit the Cuban Mission and the United Nations. In New York, they had no opportunities to talk with Black New Yorkers in any of the city’s five boroughs.
Rensoli insisted that if the Permanent Forum were held in other parts of the world where there is a predominantly Black population, there would be better opportunities for world delegates to talk about Black communities and visit local ones. Serrano added that such meetings in those cities would also bring occasional economic boosts.
The Permanent Forum’s insistence that without racial justice there can be no global justice was also poignant for Serrano. She said that her nation’s ongoing struggles against the U.S. embargo on trade and financial dealings with Cuba is part of that fight. A delegate from another country even mentioned this during the Permanent Forum, Serrano said: “I was delighted to hear these people say that one way to fight against racism and one way to seek global justice is to remove the blockade on Cuba. For Cuba, for the Afro Cuban people, said one delegate, if the blockade is lifted from the Afro Cuban people, we are making an act of reparations.”