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CUBA: Replica Slave Ship
Drops Anchor amidst Debate on Racism
By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA (IPS) - A replica of the
historic Cuban slave ship Amistad, which
was taken over by the Africans aboard in
1839, is visiting Cuba, where academics
and community leaders have begun to
publicly debate the problem of racial
discrimination that has not been stomped
out in Cuban society.
After docking in Matanzas, a port in the
region of the same name where large
numbers of slaves once worked the sugar
plantations, some 100 km east of Havana,
the schooner will drop anchor in the
capital Thursday, where it will stay
through Wednesday, Mar. 31.
The 42-metre long black-hulled, two-masted
schooner, built in Mystic Seaport in the
eastern U.S. state of Connecticut,
sailed from the Dominican Republic to
Cuba Monday.
The U.S.-flagged Amistad is the official
tall ship of Connecticut.
It is an almost exact replica of the
Spanish merchant ship that was the scene
of a revolt by 56 slaves who seized
control of the vessel and demanded that
the crew sail them back to Africa.
But the ship's navigator fooled them and
took them up the North American coast
instead, where the Amistad and its
occupants were taken into custody in New
York. The slaves were then taken to
Connecticut to be sold.
However, after several high-profile
trials, a court found that they had been
illegally imported from Africa because
the U.S. Congress had banned the
international slave trade in 1808. The
landmark decision declared that they
were free people, and 35 survivors
returned to Africa in 1842.
The incident was a milestone in the
abolitionist movement.
The schooner's visit, which coincides
with the International Day of
Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery
and the Transatlantic Slave Trade,
commemorated on Mar. 25, was described
by Cuban writer and ethnologist Miguel
Barnet as a healthy, constructive forger
of bridges of friendship - the meaning
of the Spanish word Amistad - between
the people of Cuba and the United
States.
William Pinkney, the first captain of
the reproduction Amistad, known as the
Freedom Schooner, told reporters that
the vessel could serve as a platform for
denouncing inequality and recalling the
"great feat by the brave captives" who
were born free and fought for their
right to freedom.
The 1997 Hollywood film "Amistad", about
the slave mutiny, directed by Stephen
Spielberg and starring Morgan Freeman,
Anthony Hopkins, Djimon Hounsou and
Matthew McConaughey, was shown again on
Cuban TV Monday night.
The schooner's crew of 18 people will
visit historic sites in Cuba linked to
slavery, and will offer visits on board
to the public as well as academic talks
and other activities.
In Barnet's view, the ship's arrival in
Cuba also represents a "crack" in the
nearly five-decade-old U.S. embargo
The port of Havana played a key role in
the slave trade in the Caribbean, as a
stop-over point for slave ships, even
after the importation of slaves was
banned. The British parliament abolished
the slave trade in 1807 and slavery
itself in 1834, while slavery was not
abolished in Cuba until 1886.
The Amistad Freedom Schooner made
landfall in Cuba a day after the
International Day for the Elimination of
Racial Discrimination, Mar. 21, which
was commemorated in this country by
intellectuals and citizens concerned
about the persistence of the problem of
racism.
"The issue is gaining visibility, which
gives us hope that progress will
continue to be made," Norberto Mesa,
founder of the Cofradía de la Negritud (CONEG),
a "brotherhood" or association of black
people aimed at raising awareness about
the problem, told IPS.
According to CONEG, racial inequality is
a growing problem in Cuba, where the
latest census, from 2002, indicates that
of a total population of 11.18 million,
7.2 million were white, 1.13 million
black, and 2.78 mixed-race, based on
self-identification. However, scholars
estimate that the Cuban population is
actually around 60 to 70 percent black
or mixed-race.
"We foment debate at the community level
because we know that solutions will
start to emerge, as a result of citizen
participation," Mesa added, after a day
of cultural activities organised by the
Casa Comunitaria (community centre) in
the Havana neighbourhood of La Ceiba.
During the activities that day, the
Cofradía awarded its annual prize to
Eric Corvalán, a Cuban filmmaker who
filmed the first documentary on racial
discrimination in this country, "Raza"
(Race). The 2008 film helped launch the
fledgling debate on racism.
"That was the message, the idea, but I
am not satisfied. The debate should be
at a national level," Mesa commented.
CONEG wants a Cuban parliament
commission to focus on the question of
racism. It is also pushing for the issue
to be included on the agenda of the next
congress of the Young Communist League (UJC).
"What could divide us is precisely the
failure to deal with this problem," said
Mesa, referring to the socialist
government's official stance in the
1960s, when the Cuban revolution
considered the issues of racism and
discrimination solved, and saw any
discussion of the matter as a threat to
unity and social cohesion.
Cuban writer and academic Esteban
Morales said in an earlier interview
with IPS that "despite the radical
nature of the process that got underway
in 1959, the country's social policies
failed to take skin colour into
account," in spite of the fact that "the
colour of one's skin in Cuba is a
significant variable in social
differences.
"White people came to Cuba by their own
free will, as colonisers, with goals
that they very often achieved. Black
people were brought here by force and
turned into slaves. These are very
different starting points that cannot be
forgotten or ignored, and that continue
to have an impact today," he added.
The International Day for the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination was
brought to a close with a celebration of
rumba - a drum rhythm, song and dance
that originated in this country as a
combination of Spain's flamenco and the
musical traditions of Africans brought
over as slaves - in the Havana
neighbourhood of California, which is
home to some 36 black families.
California was the site of the
implementation of the first project by
the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC)
"aimed at directly and openly working
against racial discrimination," said the
initiative's coordinator, Gisela Arandia.
"The project includes the improvement of
the living standards of the local
population." |
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