“A meeting like this strengthens us; you have been thanking Cuba, but we have to thank you very much, because you have given us a lot of energy with your participation,” said the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Party and President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, to a representation of those attending the International Conference Cuba 2024 Decade for People of African Descent.

The President received, on Wednesday evening at the Palace of the Revolution, guests from 18 countries of North America, Central America, the Caribbean, South America and Africa, and there were interventions, virtual or in person, by the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Unesco, directors of United Nations agencies, the African Union, Caricom and other international organizations.

In the exchange, which was also headed by Inés María Chapman Waugh, Deputy Prime Minister, and Alpido Alonso Grau, Minister of Culture, the Cuban intellectual Rolando Rensoli Medina, coordinator of the Color Cubano Program, paid a special tribute to the American artist Danny Glover Laverne, present at the meeting, who ten years ago, after the declaration by UNESCO of the Decade for People of African Descent, had said that Cuba was the most moral country to develop this kind of meetings.

“And Cuba,” Rensoli said, “has thus closed the Decade for People of African Descent with dignity and morality”.

The American James Counts Early, retired from the Smithonian Institute and social activist, affirmed that “in Cuba we see something different in our America, because it has been able to promote a path of possibilities, of a new world, with the triumphant Revolution of 1959, which confronted racism, which sowed awareness in the people, mapping the sociological reality of racism.”

He thus stressed “the importance of informing the American people of the Cuban model against racism, which is, he emphasized, another legacy of Cuba to America and the world.”

Geoffroy De Laforcade, professor of History at Norfolk State University, expressed that “Cuba is the country in the world where he feels most comfortable, because here we talk intelligently and with hope about the future of humanity.”

He considered that the International Conference Cuba 2024 Decade for People of African Descent has been “an opportunity for dialogue between authorities, social activists, organizations and communities, which constitutes a different model of improvement and happiness.”

The Mexican Sheila Zamudio Beltran stressed that the event has been “an exchange between the African diaspora and its descendants, which has confirmed that the struggle is still alive. The fundamental point here has been – she said – the meeting of people who are talking about how to be treated as people.”

The American Colette Pean, founder of the December 12 movement, an organization for the rights of African-Americans, thanked Díaz-Canel, on behalf of her organization, the Cuban people, who “have acted in terms of leadership and a future of resistance.”

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