The people of Cuba are facing widespread food shortages, power outages, rising inflation, a contracting economy, and a damaged public health system struggling under the pressure of COVID-19. Anger at their government’s inability to meet their basic needs rallied unprecedented numbers of Cubans to protest in the streets in July 2021. Although the government detained over 500 Cubans over the course of these protests, activists remain defiant in the face of continued crackdowns. A fresh set of anti-government rallies is planned for November 15, timed to coincide with the island’s reopening to international tourism.
These demonstrations could herald a new future for the Cuban people, but the current wave of activism needs to address longstanding socioeconomic inequalities, cultural differences, and racial, gender, and sexual discrimination on the island. International governments and transnational advocacy organizations also have a role to play – economic embargoes of Cuba have worsened conditions for its people, and the international community can do more to support the Cuban people in achieving a more democratic future and more equitable society.
Join Perry World House and the Center for Latin American and Latinx Studies (CLALS) for a conversation on the implications of the uprisings and what the future holds for Cuba.
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We will continue to provide virtual access to all of our hybrid programming. Zoom details will be found in your order confirmation email.
SPEAKERS
Odette Casamayor-Cisneros, born and raised in Havana, is an associate professor of Latin American Cultures at the University of Pennsylvania. Centered on the Afro-Latin American and Afro-Latinx experiences, her most recent works examine self-identification processes and the production of counter-hegemonic epistemologies in the global African Diaspora. Prof. Casamayor is the author of Utopia, dystopia e ingravidez: reconfiguraciones cosmológicas en la narrativa postsoviética cubana (2013), a thorough study of the existential void experienced by Cubans after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc in the 1990s; and prepares a new book, On Being Blacks: Self-Identification and Counter-Hegemonic Knowledge in Afro-Cuban Cultural Production. Professor Casamayor has been extensively writing about Cuban current events in her bi-weekly column in OnCuba News, “Con tinta negra” and other publications, such as Truthout, that recently published the article “My Heart Aches for Cuba — and I Yearn for More Solidarity From the Global Left”.
Amalia Daché is an Afro-Cuban American scholar and associate professor in the Higher Education Division at the University of Pennsylvania. Her experiences as a 1980’s Mariel boatlift refugee and student navigating U.S. inner-city schools, community college, state college and a private research-intensive university contribute to her lines of inquiry. Dr. Daché’s major research areas are postcolonial geographic contexts of higher education, Afro-Latina/o/x studies, community and student resistance, and the college-access experiences of African diasporic students and communities. She is lead editor of Rise Up! Activism as Education, published in 2019 by Michigan State University Press. Her most recent article, “Bus-Riding from Barrio to College: A Qualitative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis” appeared in The Journal of Higher Education in 2021. Dr. Daché engages in research within contested urban geographies, including Havana, Cuba; Cape Town, South Africa; and Ferguson, Missouri. In Havana, Dr. Daché conducted an ethnographic study of cultural memory through the educational histories of Havana’s Cubans. A number of features make Cuba an important site of inquiry for issues related to higher education access and global democracy —including that 70 percent of the country’s population is of African descent. Dr. Dache has appeared as an expert in national media such as Spike Lee’s documentary Two Fists Up, Red Table Talk: The Estefans, MSNBC’s The ReidOut with Joy Reid and American Voices with Alicia Menendez, Slate’s A Word Podcast with Jason Johnson, NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday with Lulu Garcia-Navarro, The #SOSCuba Podcast with Enrique Santos, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Philadelphia Inquirer, and Al Dia News.
MODERATOR
Fernando Chang-Muy is the Thomas O'Boyle Lecturer in Law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law. He also teaches courses at the Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice on topics such as US Immigration Law, International Human Rights and Refugee Law, and Non Profit Leadership. He served as Legal Officer with both the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN World Health Organization (WHO), AIDS Program. He also served as the first director of Swarthmore College’s Intercultural Center, Assistant Dean for Student Affairs, advisor to the Provost on Equal Opportunity, and lecturer on International Human Rights in the Peace and Conflict Studies. He currently serves on the Leadership Council of the Philadelphia Cov-19 Fund, which has raised 18M for grants to local nonprofits. He recently joined the Board of Trustees of the Philadelphia Foundation, serving on its Grantsmaking Committee. He is co-editor of Social Work with Immigrants and Refugees (2nd ed. NY: Springer Publication, 2016) and contributing author to diverse publications. He is a recipient of both the 2011 and 2018 Penn Law Public Interest Supervisor/Advisor of the Year Award honoring outstanding project supervisors and advisors; and the 2016 recipient of the Law School Beacon Award, recognizing exemplary commitment to pro bono work by a Penn Law faculty member.
