CDMX, Mexico-. The book “Cuban Privilege: The Making of Immigrant Inequality in America”, which has generated great controversy in the Cuban community in recent days, will be presented under new conditions.
The president of Florida International University (FIU), Kenneth A. Jessell announced that the place of presentation of the text, written by Boston University professor Susan Eva Eckstein, will be changed and other experts will be included in the debate .
In a statement released by the FIU explain that: “Due to the great interest in the topic, we are moving the Books & Books symposium in Coral Gables to a larger venue on FIU’s Modesto A. Maidique Campus. The event will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Friday, December 9 at the Wertheim Performing Arts Center.
In said statement, Jessell also said that other voices will be included in the space to diversify views on the subject and comply “with academic rigor and debate standards.”
After the criticism that the book has received from Cuban exiles, FIU decided to vary the presentation panel and include the Dr. Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat, author of Cuba: The Doctrine of the Lie. Gutiérrez-Boronat is an opponent of the Cuban regime and coordinator of the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. With his work, he documents and exposes human rights violations on the island.
Why has the content of the text bothered?
The controversy over Eckstein’s text, which analyzes the Cuban advantages in US immigration laws, was intensified after the statements by Kevin Cabrera, of Cuban origin. The Miami-Dade County commissioner described the text as “hateful” and “anti-Cuban”, after reading fragments of it and seeing a short video from the author presenting her research.
Eckstein, for her part, responded to the criticism that she does not reproach the “privileges” of the Caribbean people in her book. “I say that the United States should give more equality to other immigrants, not take away rights from Cubans.”
Yesterday Cubanet published an article of the journalist Roberto Jesús Quiñones Haces that addresses other claims to the author. After analyzing her speech at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs in the United States, Quiñones concludes that her speech has a perspective very similar to that of the ideologues of the dictatorship.
The Cubanet journalist also pointed out that in her speech, the North American academic made a mistake about Cuban history and current affairs, at the same time that she did not call the island’s administration a “dictatorship.”
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