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important topics in the national context, such as the so called “affir-
mative action” programs developed in other countries, and the one
coined as “Afro-descendents” in the international level.
To finish, allow me to repeat some words I heard from the main
character in my book Biografía de un Cimarron (The Autobiography of a
Run-Away Slave), that black Cuban named Esteban Montejo, who in
one of our first meetings confessed: “Because of being a run-away I
did not know my parents. I did not even see them. But that is not sad,
because it is true.”
I finally would like to invoke a great friend of Africa and Cuba, Dr.
Federico Mayor, Former General Director of UNESCO, who in this
poem reflects my own view on racism as the most despicable feeling a
human being may experience, from the moment Africans were turned
into pieces of ebony, forced to work as animals as part of the great
mercantile business of the slave trade, with total contempt for their
human nature—only because of the color of their skin and their con-
dition as enslaved men and women:
“In the House of the Gore Slaves, in Senegal, in 1992, I exclaimed in
horror:
His last look,
before being laid out in the hold.
His last look,
to that narrow door,
to that island,
to that land of his
now sailing in the waves of lack of love
towards unknown coasts.