"In Cuba we had to create a new culture, beginning with political culture - a different one from the culture of exploitation of man by man, of imperialist domination. McCarthyism was deeply rooted in the mentality of a lot of people. And the revolution is not only about making laws. It's about creating a new culture....
"In our colonial and neocolonial country there was culture too. But if you want to make a revolution, if you want to change the existing economic and social order for an order based on equality and justice, you have to begin by changing the old culture of that society in many, many ways. That doesn't mean that we have to change musical culture, but rather historical, political, philosophical culture.... It has to be changed, or else it's impossible to make a revolution."
The scene of Vidal Park in Santa Clara, where blacks used to have to walk around the outside, away from whites, returns to memory as a distant evil. It was a holdover that the revolution was able to overcome: "We ran into many problems, and the very first one was changing a certain culture, a certain consciousness. And that's what I devoted all my energy to at meetings, at rallies, on the radio and television. (...) Building unity is serious political work.
"We were riddled with discrimination. One day I spoke on television on this subject, and three days later I had to speak again. It caused such a reaction among such broad sectors that I was surprised. They began to say that we were going to force people [of different races] to get married, that we were going to impose racial equality by force. I had to explain once again what the ideas of the revolution were.
"We had to change a certain culture, and all these things become relative when there is poverty. There is a certain lack of culture that is inherited. It's a lack of knowledge more than a lack of culture. There were people who lived in better conditions, who had schooling, and then there were the poorest people, who had less culture and education because they had few means. That is inherited over time."
On a personal level, Fidel recalls not having racial prejudices as a boy when, in [the town of] Birán, he would sneak out of his parent's house to visit the Haitians' house: "They would scold me a lot, not for being there - in my home there was no sense of discrimination - but they were afraid that by eating toasted corn in the Haitians' barracks we would get indigestion or get sick."
He learned about racism later at the Dolores school, where blacks were refused admission. "Once I asked why there were no blacks there, and they replied: `Well, there are so few of them, poor things!' I'll never forget. (...) There was a little school next door for those who couldn't afford to pay, with some mulatto and black students. But those of us who considered ourselves white were at the big school."
For the Cuban leader, U.S. society was yet another revelation about racial discrimination. "Once I traveled by car from New York to Miami. Racism there isn't only against the Black population. It's against the Hispanics, the Latin Americans. In a simple cafeteria you could see how they regarded Latinos with contempt, even if they were white. If they were Indians it was worse, and even more so if they were Black."
During one of his visits to the United Nations to represent the revolutionary island, the president of Cuba was discriminated against for political reasons also: "When they kicked me out of the hotel where I was staying near the UN, I had two alternatives - either a tent in the UN courtyard, or Harlem. So I took off for Harlem. They [residents of Harlem] always saw it as a gesture of friendship, and 30 years later they welcomed me again with a lively and friendly rally."
The day before, Fidel had engaged in an extensive dialogue with the delegates to the UNEAC congress about the kind of ignorance that existed in his generation, which got its education on the march. This is what happened with racial discrimination, a problem that was largely resolved over these years, but which continues to exist in the form of prejudices in society: "There is an entire culture that is inherited, and we Cubans must do a self-analysis.(...) Part of our ignorance is having the false illusion that by socializing everything we were going to end this situation, which depends on human subjectivity."