While the revolution did create several organizations with popular support, it ultimately failed to address or grapple with racial inequality in any meaningful way. The government sticks to its official line that systemic racism has been eradicated by the revolution. Whatever issues remain are said to be rooted in people’s individual prejudices.

Although Cuba was never formally segregated, white and black Cubans both understand the nature of their coexistence, which can be described by a saying that goes back to colonial times and still rings true: “Together, but not one; everything in its place.”

According to Cuba’s 2012 census, the nation comprises three racial categories — white, black and mixed-race — with white Cubans making up 64 percent of the population, black Cubans making up 9 percent and the remaining 27 percent being mixed-race. In reality, Cuba is divided into two groups: the white one that wields political power, and everyone else.

Afro-Cubans have forged their place in Cuba’s culture nonetheless. Their impact is evident in Cuban arts, music, sports and cuisine. Narratives derived from Afro-Cuban traditions have helped shape the world’s imagination of the island nation. But that cultural influence does not translate to political influence.

In Cuba, it is apparent that those who have always possessed power are reluctant to share it. So when Mr. Díaz-Canel, as the country’s new president, announced last year that he was appointing black officials to three out of six Council of State vice-presidential positions, it prompted criticism from skeptics. Some saw it as a move that would not do much to tackle racial disparities.

Nobody expected Mr. Díaz-Canel to force Cubans to integrate and become “one,” but he had a chance to take a symbolic step and create a more inclusive Cuba for the island’s future generations. On Oct. 10, the National Assembly voted to reappoint Mr. Díaz-Canel as president, providing him with the power to nominate someone before the end of the year for the newly created position of prime minister.

By choosing an Afro-Cuban prime minister, Mr. Díaz-Canel could have positioned himself as more than the ineffectual successor of the Castros. Such a move would have been actually a double blow to the current system by proving to Cubans that black people can and will occupy positions of power in their country, and showing Raúl Castro that it isn’t too late to start a true revolution in Cuba. Unfortunately, his choice was Manuel Marrero Cruz, the long-serving minister of tourism, the paradigm of a white bureaucrat.

The so-called journalists of the state media always praising the single party Cuban political system were quick to emphasize that the new prime minister is not a member of the political bureau, the inner core of the Communist Party. As the leading figure for years of an activity run with dollars and financed by foreign visitors, Mr. Marrero represents actually the part of the economy hardly reached by black people. So we have now a clear guess of the business built slowly by the white power in Havana: away from the party, but not closer to the black part of the population.

Jean-François Fogel is a French journalist, who worked for the France-Presse Agency, the newspaper Libération and the weekly Le Point and is the author of, among other titles, A Press Without Gutenberg.

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