The 130th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Cuba will be commemorated during the 25th International Book Fair, taking place in Havana February 11-21, and then across the nation through April.
From February 15-17, the Casa de las Américas, one of the Fair’s secondary venues, will be hosting the International Seminar: 130th Anniversary of the Abolition of Slavery in Cuba, fittingly the first event to be held as part of the institution’s new Afro-American Studies Program, directed by essayist Zuleica Romay Guerra, also president of the Cuban Book Institute (ICL) and a member of the Fair’s organizing committee.
“We thought that an international event commemorating this date would be a good opportunity to launch the new Program, since we decided to organize an event which isn’t a stop on the road to look back at the past, but a pause to reflect on the impact of slavery on our present,” stated Romay in regards to the Seminar.
Topics featured in the study program include the work of researchers from the Americas in the 1930s and 40s, who recognized the profound mark left by the African diaspora on the region’s culture, while the inaugural event “will take a look at the legacy of and long struggle against slavery, as well as challenges looking toward the future,” explained the ICL president.
Over three days experts from Nigeria, Colombia, Spain, Brazil, the UK, U.S. and Puerto Rico, will discuss these important historical and cultural topics, which over recent years have not only been studied from anthropological and historical perspectives, but also physiological, among other disciplines.
Romay noted that several contemporary studies support the idea that “our societies are still immersed in a long process of abolishing slavery, as the scars, cultural and physiological marks of this regime still exist all over the Americas, even in Cuba, where so much has been done to support and vindicate the rights of afro-descendents, and where so much has been done to achieve true social equality and genuine human emancipation.”
