Black working-class contributions to the Cuban revolution are immense, yet somehow often neglected in discourses around revolutionary Cuba. 

The long history of African resistance and cultural contributions to Cuban society, which has been intricately connected to global Black freedom movements has been in rhythmic continuity til present day. 

The continuities are clear and important on many levels – that is on the level of internal, as confronting internal contradictions specifically the necessity to fight the colonially structured vestiges of racism in Cuban society is an added terrain of struggle.  As well as external, the constant assault on the Cuban peoples by U.S. and its ally’s imperial logic, captured in the current embargo and attendant sanctions. 

It is here, the dialectical process of liberation finds its most articulate expression, now that the process of decolonialization has been initiated it is the continued anticolonial struggle that takes precedence. The struggle to heighten the internal contradictions, which is a struggle, in its totality, a struggle against the coloniality of being. Where the vestiges of old forms of oppression are presented in new ways. In the case of Cuba, where the colonial structures of race/racism are used to try to undo the revolutionary processes. 
Today, we present a conversation from a few weeks ago with Pedro Sarduy where we engage in a discussion that is in its essence, a mapping of the anticolonial process through an exploration of  Race and Revolution in Cuba: from an Afro Cuban Working Class Perspective. 

Pedro Pérez-Sarduy is a poet, writer, journalist, and broadcaster living in Puerto Rico, London and Havana. He is the author of Surrealidad (Havana 1967), Cumbite and Other Poems (Havana 1987 and New York 1990).

He is also co-editor with Jean Stubbs of Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993) and co-author for the anthology No Longer Invisible/Afro-Latin Americans Today (1995). 

His Journal in Babylon is a series of chronicles on Britain. His first novel, Las Criadas de la Habana (The Maids of Havana), is based on his mother's life stories about pre-and post-revolutionary Havana.  This is the first novel by a contemporary Afro Cuban writer on family life in Cuba. He has written numerous articles, some of which we present on this site.

Together with Jean Stubbs, he wrote Afro-Cuban Voices on Race and Identity in Contemporary Cuba (2000), a book based on interviews with Afro-Cubans (living in the Island), which has been published by the University Press of Florida. 

He also co-edited with historian Jean Stubbs Afro-Cuba: An Anthology of Cuban Writing on Race, Politics and Culture (1993).[5] 
Sarduy has read his work internationally and lectured regularly on race, politics, and culture at academic institutions, globally. He was Writer in Residence at Columbia University, New York (1989), on the CUNY Caribbean Exchange Program at Hunter College (1990), a Visiting Scholar at the University of Florida, Gainesville 1993), in 1997 at the University of Puerto Rico, Rio Piedras, and on the Rockefeller Fellowship Caribbean 2000 Program. 

He has also been a Charles McGill Fellow & Visiting Lecturer at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (Fall 2004), and Associate Fellow of the Caribbean Studies Centre at London Metropolitan University. 

Awards he has received a number of awards for his poetry. 
Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti, and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!      

Listen intently. Think critically. Act accordingly.

race & revolution in Cuba: an Afro Cuban working class perspective w/ Pedro Pérez Sarduy

Africa World Now Project is a multimedia educational project that produces knowledge about the African world through a series of methods that include: radio, podcast, publishing, film festivals, webinars, social media, etc.

Africa World Now Project is, in essence, a multimedia open-access 'classroom' that provides actionable information which explores continuities and discontinuities in the history, culture, and politics of the entire African world.

AWNP does this by engaging in organic discussions with scholars, artists, journalists, activists, organizers and others who are intentionally disruptive in assessing the various issues that exist in the entire African world.