ABSTRACT
Black activism has been at the forefront of the changes and has confronted the government on various occasions to act on behalf of Afro-Cubans in Cuba. This chapter argues that although the latest strategy represents a widening of the limits that the state has put on race talk in the public sphere, the government continues to deny the presence of racial inequality. It identifies three strategies that the revolutionary government has adopted with regard to existent racism and racial inequality. Those are engagement during the early years of the revolution, silence and repression until the political opening in the 1990s, and acknowledgment and cooptation, which is represented today through a state organization such as the Aponte Commission. The Aponte Commission echoes the framing of race as prejudice and neglects to offer real debate regarding racial profiling by police, limited opportunities within the tourism industry and general employment discrimination.
