The Afro-Cuban Movement: 1912/2012
The Center for Latin American Studies (University of Pittsburgh) and the Center for the Arts in Society (Carnegie Mellon University) present:
1. Film Screening and Discussion Gloria Rolando’s “1912: Breaking the Silence,” a documentary film about the 1912 repression of the Partido Independiente de Color. This year marks the centennial of the massacre.
Panel: Gloria Rolando (Afro-Cuban filmmaker), Roberto Zurbano (editor of Movimiento, Casa de las Américas), and Tomás Fernández Robaina (archivist, writer, and activist)
Moderator: Alejandro de la Fuente (Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh)
Monday, November 12, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
Location: 4130 Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh
2. Roundtable: The Afro-Cuban Movement and the Arts
Participants: Gloria Rolando, Roberto Zurbano, and Tomás Fernández Robaina.
Moderator: Kenya Dworkin (Associate Professor of Hispanic Studies, Carnegie Mellon University)
Tuesday, November 13, 2012, 4:30 p.m.
Location: Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136, Carnegie Mellon University
Tomás Fernández Robaina, Gloria Rolando, and Roberto Zurbano are three leading members of the new Afro-Cuban cultural and social movement that is currently shaping debates about race, culture, and nation in Cuba. Those debates have intensified in recent times, as Cubans commemorate the centennial of the destruction of the Partido Independiente de Color, a black national party that was created in 1908 and dismantled, in a wave of racist repression, in 1912.
A longtime activist, bibliographer, and scholar Fernández Robaina (Biblioteca Nacional José Martí) is the author of key texts for the study of Afro-Cuban history, including El negro en Cuba 1902-1958 and Bibliografía de temas afrocubanos.
An independent filmmaker, Rolando’s work studies and publicizes the frequently forgotten histories of black Cubans and of Afro-Caribbean immigrant communities. She has been working on a trilogy devoted to 1912 and to the memories of this
important historical event.
A writer, literary scholar, and critic, Zurbano (Casa de las Américas) is the Director of Movimiento: La Revista Cubana de Hip Hop, edited by the Agencia Cubana de Rap and devoted to covering and publicizing the hip hop movement in Cuba.