Politics and Civil Society in Cuba

The Issue of Race in Cuban Society Today: The Letter and Spirit 331

How much we want today those sobs,

that last traveling look

brutally uprooted from its landscape

from its home

from its banks

They were sold by their weight

we must pay the debt.”^5

There is still a long way to go. The future can not only be a hope. It

has to be an achievement.

5. Federico Mayor, poem written in 1992; Source: Africania, las raíces africanas en Ibe-
   roamérica (Africania: African Roots in Latin America), First International Colloquium of
   Afro-Latin American Studies, University of Alcala-UNESCO, Madrid, 1994.