BLM and Cuban Americans, why both raise their fist and what each means
Final 12 months, as protesters marched for Black Lives Matter, I stood in solidarity with the Black group, and, like everybody I knew, I wished justice not just for George Floyd however for the lengthy line of Black lives who’ve suffered because of a racial inequity in our nation that haunts us not simply as a nation however as a human race; a generational taking part in area made uneven by the echoes of ghosts we are able to nonetheless hear coming from the chained bowels of ships that reached our shores throughout the Center Passage. We trafficked in human beings, we offered souls. Reparations ought to have come a very long time in the past.
I help Black lives. However I couldn’t and nonetheless can’t increase my fist alongside BLM.
As most of us know by now, the emblem for BLM is a clenched, raised fist. When the motion requested me to indicate my solidarity by posting this fist on Instagram and Fb, I simply couldn’t do it, regardless of my very family being blended race. I maintained my help for Black lives, used my voice within the methods I might, however I refused the image as a result of, for me as a Cuban American, the raised fist additionally symbolizes a haunting historical past that has reverberated for generations.
It represents the rise of a regime that tortured members of my household and has murdered so a lot of my folks. I am not the only Cuban American for whom the raised fist was a extremely problematic trigger of past trauma, given the image’s roots in Communist actions throughout time and historical past. There have been different teams who’ve been affected by Communism’s repressive regimes that felt the identical — some Venezuelan People, as an example.
The “concern of the fist” was the concern that BLM was saying: The best way to equalize the taking part in area = Communism. For these of us who know higher, who’ve been immediately affected by the outcomes of Communism, who perceive how Black lives fare beneath Communism (not properly, to say the least), the fist jolted us. So as to add to the symbolism, the BLM group wrote an elegy in Fidel Castro’s protection on Medium after his loss of life, which ended with the phrases: “Fidel Vive!” Again in 2015, two of BLM’s co-founders even recognized themselves as “trained Marxists.”
Even supposing the motion now consists of folks that might by no means name themselves “Marxists,” the phrase itself and what it stands for — alongside phrases like “Fidel Vive!” clenched inside a fist – is chilling for a lot of Cuban People.
Final 12 months, I wished, greater than something, to clarify the place that chill got here from, however I feared that saying something on the time, might draw mild from the place it completely wanted to collectively shine at that second: on Black lives.
Now, nonetheless, I believe it’s vital to share what I couldn’t then if I’m to be a real ally and, additionally, to ask for allyship in return. I imagine true allyship should be based in mutual understanding.
To fully understand my trigger, you would need to know that I’m the daughter of Cuban refugees. That my grandfather spent 15 years as a political prisoner in Cuba. That my different grandfather’s brother was additionally a political prisoner; given electroshocks as a type of torture in jail. To grasp my set off, you would need to know that a lot of my Cuban refugee associates are artists who can’t reside or work freely in Cuba as a result of the regulation is, actually, codified to instill the concern of imprisonment and loss of life in opposition to those that converse out in opposition to the State. Cuba is, merely put, not free.
Past my very own private expertise, Cuba is a rustic the place illegal and politically motivated torture and murder of its personal folks nonetheless exists. One has to easily learn by way of the 2020 reports on Human Rights practices issued by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, to see what’s occurring in Cuba at the moment: “Disappearance … torture and different merciless, inhuman, or degrading remedy, or punishment … arbitrary arrests or detention … denial of free public trials … illegal interference with privateness, household, dwelling, [and] correspondence…” The checklist goes on and on.
It was arduous to grapple with BLM’s fist as a signifier when the raised-fist image triggered all the things that had tried to destroy members of my household and nonetheless enslaves my motherland. This battle was made exponential as a result of members of my household, each speedy and prolonged, are each Cuban and Black.
Final 12 months, we felt racism and prejudice respiratory down our necks, as we tried to catch our personal breaths beneath our masks. At one level in the course of the pandemic, my sister and her household — a household comprised of a Black man, a Hispanic girl, and mixed-race kids — thought-about driving from California, the place they reside, to Miami, the place I reside. It had been the longest time we’d ever gone with out seeing one another, and we had been getting determined. However, we had been additionally actually scared they is perhaps pulled over, or that there is perhaps some violent motion taken in opposition to them on the street, particularly given the heightened racial tensions of the second. We had been, in different phrases, frightened of what it might imply for a Black household to drive throughout the South at night time. That we’re nonetheless afraid of that is an American tragedy.
This concern just isn’t unfounded. My sister and her household, just some years in the past, had rocks hurled at their dwelling in Sherman Oaks, California. It was, as we perceive it, a hate crime. One which pushed them from their home and neighborhood. My niece and goddaughter, who was shut to three years previous on the time, tried to know what was occurring as one rock after one other was thrown at her window. Sooner or later, she’s going to piece what occurred collectively, and what she’s going to see breaks my coronary heart in half. For now, she simply refers to that home as “the damaged home.”
The aspect of myself that wished to ensure not a single stone was ever hurled in hate once more prevented what my Cuban aspect felt from talking totally on the time or making an enormous deal concerning the fist. BLM was and is, too, obligatory. And extra so, I used to be grateful to have the ability to do, in the USA, what just isn’t allowed in Cuba: to protest freely.
Some Cuban People, Venezuelan People, and Nicaraguan People who introduced up their emotions in opposition to BLM’s image in on a regular basis dialog had been shunned consequently, referred to as “loopy Trumpers,” even once they weren’t aligned with former President Trump — their very own ache and marginalization belittled and ignored. Others had been referred to as “right-wing nutjobs” beneath the stereotype that “all Cuban People are hardline Republicans,” despite the fact that that can be unfaithful. For me, it was a relentless battle between factions that shouldn’t have been battling to start with, as we had been and are all looking for liberation.
I perceive that there are moments once we all want to return collectively and produce the solar to shine on one specific concern, in order that, lastly, we are able to all see that concern. Typically it takes a whole lot of years to tug the solar to a area that’s lived in darkish and dying shadow for all these centuries. I perceive that for this reason “All Lives Matter” was so enraging and painful a response to “Black Lives Matter.” Like having those that have held the solar all of the whereas, who’ve lastly lent it out, ask for it again, relegating that darkish nook to darkness as soon as extra. As somebody whose personal historical past nonetheless lives in veiled shadow, I perceive that.
I additionally lengthy for mild.
If allyship is about bringing the periphery to the middle, or marginalized and oppressed teams to the sunshine, then what occurs when marginalized teams are allies for one another? What if what we predict we learn about a gaggle, isn’t the fact as a result of that group sits in darkness too? Sooner or later, we do truly should hear to every story, and our knee-jerk response can’t be to kick one another out of the sunshine.
Most lately, I used to be invited to talk on a panel concerning the San Isidro Movement, an pressing motion of younger Cubans inside Cuba who’re combating for the appropriate to be free from tyranny. At present, its members — who’re bravely and outwardly calling the island “a grand center for torture” — are beneath menace of loss of life by the regime. They disappear from at some point to the following and are being held hostage by the federal government.
The poster for this occasion was a raised fist wrapped within the Cuban flag. Discuss a paradox. On one stage, you might say that the occasion appropriated BLM’s raised fist, which had, in flip, appropriated the Cuban Revolution’s raised fist. However that complexity is means too simplistic. It’s much more layered than that. There may be context and historical past about what it means to take again imagery, significantly that of propaganda, and complicate it. Make it a number of, a multiplicity upon which our democracy and American future stands. A multiplicity upon which true allyship stands. A multiplicity which is, the truth is, the which means of allyship. And herein, is the place the paradox comes full circle and I can nearly start to see a second the place the image of the fist can proceed to evolve, and I can increase mine, alongside the Black group and my very own Cuban folks. As a result of within the locations we share story, we are able to see and share mild.
We’re all combating in opposition to injustice and inequity. For freedom and pleasure, and high quality of life. For all times itself. For breath. And no, this isn’t the identical as saying “All Lives Matter” as a result of what I’m aiming for here’s a dialog, not a slogan – a bridge not a dam. An understanding that you just can’t assume there may be not darkness the place you can not see – that’s the definition of darkness. The Cuban folks, too, are begging to be launched from their yoke, needing mild. And never mild which shines on the oppressor, like an elegy to Fidel does, however one which listens to activists like Luis Manuel Alcántara, an artist who was, till lately, held captive by the Cuban regime. He and others are risking their lives day by day as we converse as a way to combat for a greater one.
I can’t but increase my fist for BLM, however I can nonetheless be a powerful and strident ally. And I can share this story, and, in sharing this story, I will be an excellent stronger one. That is the fantastic thing about being American.
