Revolutionary Cuba’s racism problem

You can tell a lot about a country from its sexual politics. Out one night at La Fabrica, a state-funded arts venue and club in suburban Havana, a friend and I got chatting to a group of local girls. While we were talking, a trio of young black men were doing some kind of coordinated dance routine next to us. ‘That’s cool,’ I said. One of the girls rolled her eyes. ‘I would never dance with a black guy,’ she said, with a nonchalance suggestive of something that subsequently became very apparent. Racism is normal, and everywhere, in Cuba.

Since Castro’s death we’ve heard everything about the perceived successes and failures of revolutionary Cuba. The conversation has run the usual gamut from economics to politics. But a revolution can be measured in more than just material ways. I had thought the revolution was meant to have solved the problem of social inequality – racial discrimination included.