Cuba just isn't the same anymore
Posted by Portia Siegelbaum
HAVANA - Cuba just isn't the same anymore -- not for those who opt to
leave for Miami or Spain, not for those who stayed and put their hopes
in the revolution led by Fidel Castro.
Those who remain on the island and their children are now going through
what amounts to a second revolution, even though there are those who
pooh pooh the currently contemplated changes as not going far enough or
fast enough.
As the Communist Party convenes its 6th Congress this weekend its stated
priority is revamping the economy to increase production and efficiency,
while implementing austerity measures to ease the burden on this
long-time paternalistic State.
It's a major shift in policy because the older generations who have been
told to live a certain way for more than five decades cannot suddenly
wrap their minds around a new approach to life that demands they fend
for themselves in most areas short of education and health care.
While getting my nails done the other day I listened to the manicurist
rant about how the one big achievement of the revolution was that until
now, you could go to bed at night knowing you had a job in the morning
and a pay envelop at the end of the month. What set her off was
government plans to eliminate up to a million jobs from the state
payrolls. Even though she has a successful private business dating back
to the 90s when the Castros first opened up a small non-state sector,
she views the coming economic reforms as throwing the baby out with the
bathwater.
And for the newer generation, nation, revolution and Fidel Castro are
not synonymous. The spirit of unity and common effort that marked the
1960s through the 1980s has virtually disappeared among younger people
despite government rhetoric to the contrary.
The idealism of the early years and Fidel Castro's strong belief that
everyone should be equal disappeared in the 90s along with the Soviet
Union and the rest of the socialist camp whose subsidies and
preferential trade terms kept the island afloat.
Consumerism, the bane of socialism and egalitarianism, has crept in
along with remises from family abroad so that the least revolutionary
(Communist Party members had broken relations with relatives who
abandoned the country) and often the least educated were the ones
welding cash and leading in the differentiation of classes despite the
previous three decade effort to wipe out that distinction.
Technology, no matter how restricted, has made young people aware of
what's happening and what's available all over the world. Even Cubans
with no legal internet connection at home, perhaps without a telephone,
manage to set up Facebook pages and exchange news and ideas with former
classmates across the world. As the Cuban pop band Buena Fe sings to its
wide audience, "Y que aventurera que se ha puesto la juventud. Le da lo
mismo Barcelona, Tokio o Moscu" or How adventurous young people have
become, Barcelona, Tokyo or Moscow, it's all the same to them.
Academic, author and former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray recently told an
on-line Cuban Catholic Church publication that. "There is a generational
gap in the political debate, not just of positions but of issues and
priorities. As in other revolutions, the historic generation did not
establish stable mechanisms to renew leadership through limits on
mandates. Today the moment is not charismatic but institutional."
And he went on to point out that, "The new generations do not settle for
references to a political program aimed at solving the problems of their
parents or grandparents." Instead Alzucaray said, "It is urgent to pay
attention to majority aspirations to have private property, travel and
solve their problems for well being in terms of housing, transportation
and food."
Because in the end, people think as they live, a university professor
lamented to me. Her small home with three tiny, one of them miniscule,
bedrooms now shelters in addition to her, three university age children,
one of whom just gave birth. The baby's father has also moved in. We
might say it's lucky the professor is divorced because there is simply
not enough room for a husband.
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