Regina Coyula, Translator: Unstated
The term left-right, for Cubans in Cuba is like additional data that
should appear in on our ID cards, because the authorities always have a
subliminal — or overt — need to label us, to complete our personal data
with information that lies in the deepest part of the head.
I can't deny that I've only lived this "reality?" My knowledge, my
upbringing, obey the historical and dialectical materialism of all those
theories that I studied in the manuals of the Academy of Sciences of the
USSR, and twenty years since the disappearance of that Utopia that was
to complete the future, there are still flashes of it in our centers of
study.
I don't pretend to be a specialist; but it also turns out that some
people from exile seek a social taxonomy, similar but opposite to that
applied in our parameter-setting country.
If my life depended on the famous dichotomy, I believe that I would say
left, but not to placate anybody, especially not the Cuban government so
aged and conservative that still seeks to be appear like a paradigm of
the left; rather because in addition to not knowing the updates of the
social theories, I would say "left" because it seems that yes, I'm on
that side, although many are quickly checking out of my company, and
others say: "You'll see, I told you so!" …you never fooled me."
Common sense tells me that it's not important to be left or right, it's
important to recognize the country's urgent need for change, and that in
this change there have to be many voices because democracy, according to
what I imagine, has lengthy discussions preceding any vote.
I aspire to have friends who are liberals, Christian-democrats,
conservatives, social democrats, environmentalists, communists, what do
I know, without it being considered a "problem of principles" to think
differently.
All these years the government has instilled in us that ideology marks a
boundary. The response of that warmth, I see the sequel, even in Cubans
who live in open societies. Nothing has done more damage to the left
than the left itself.
November 28 2011
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