Eastern Cuba hosts conference on raciality

SANTIAGO DE CUBA, Cuba, May 19 (ACN) The 2nd national conference 1912 en la Memoria is taking place in this city until May 20.

Sponsored by the provincial committee of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), the event gathers academics and researchers whose work is focused on racial issues to share views about the history of the struggle against racial discrimination.

UNEAC’s regional director Rodulfo Vaillant said that 1912… is part of the work of the Jose Antonio Aponte Commission, established in 2009 to make a cultural approach to the debate on racism and the steps to rid Cuba of its remnants.

Vaillant highlighted the willingness of our government, institutions and organizations to launch projects and implement actions aimed at the gradual elimination of racism without giving rise to internal divisions that would fracture the unity of the nation and the need for the sustained work and the cooperation of the whole society to do away with the racial prejudice that harms human dignity.

The conference will finish in the town of Mícara with the laying of a wreath at the site where one of the major clashes of the uprising of the Independent Party of Color took place when its members took up arms in 1912 against the mistreatment of and discrimination against the black and mixed-race population of the island by the government of the time. However, in less than two months, the army killed around three thousand of them, whereas the government only lost 12 soldiers.

The local UNEAC office spreads the permanent work of the Aponte commission and extends its activities to schools, the media and the community through lectures, talks and workshops.