“It’s been 200 years – you should get over it”

This past weekend, the group took a vacation to Trinidad, a small city in Central Cuba. The coastal town, ornate with colonial architecture and cobblestone streets has historical roots in the sugar industry. With colonial sugar plantations came centuries of slavery, and all the atrocities the introduction of slavery brings to a people and nation. Part of our excursion was a visit to a traditional sugar plantation. This experience was one of those moments for me thus far. One of those moments where entering a space strikes you in an impactful way. For me, climbing to the top of a watchtower that was originally built with the intention of keeping watch over the slaves on the plantation struck me particularly. From the top of the watchtower, which was more than 5 flights of stairs tall, I could see the entire valley. Starting from the giant yellow colonial mansion at the heart of the plantation, small shacks with mixed wooden and red molder roofs scattered out into the wide open fertile valley. It was all too clear which houses were for slaves and which were for owners and other domestic workers. It was a very powerful feeling to look down upon the plantation and imagine who was here previously and for what reason. Even more so than that, the lack of conversation around the history of slavery at this plantation was striking. This ‘lack of sensitivity transcended to downtown Trinidad, where the décor of our favorite restaurant included child-size slave shackles, whips, and other torture devices. I have also heard of ‘eat like a slave’ restaurants, and slave shacks restored to bed and breakfasts. How can this possibly be okay? How is national suffering preserved and memorialized? When I asked someone about slavery, he responded with “It’s been 200 years – you should get over it”. Get over it? How can you get over something like slavery? I think there is a fine line when it comes to discussing matters of national suffering. How does a nation move forward from something like slavery while educating about its continued implications and memorializing its victims? In Cuba, I have found there is a lack of discussion outside the academic sphere, especially encompassing lasting repercussions in the contemporary moment.