Natural, racial and cultural diversity in the first Casa x Africa Day

On May 25th, Casa de las Américas will host the first Casa x Africa Conference, dedicated to Rogelio Martínez Furé and the 60th anniversary of Poesía Yoruba.

The conference aims to provide an overview of Africa as a diverse, complex and, above all, modern continent, while at the same time undermining the colonial images that present it as a territory of social and cultural backwardness.

The proposed activities will confront the racist ideology that projects the image of Africa as a continent inhabited only by blacks; in other words, they will highlight Africa’s natural, racial and cultural diversity through a sample of its developments in the fields of social thought, literature and film.

This celebration aims to stimulate the knowledge of the roots of culture and identity of the two continents; the paths of development over the centuries leading to the present, as well as the current state of cultural production on the African continent and its various diasporas.

Such a project makes it possible to intensify the bonds of solidarity from the perspective of a proud Third Worldism characterized by an anti-imperialist vocation.

Translated by Luis E. Amador Dominguez