To believe that the entire galaxy is centered on this small Island or that Atlantis was here are things many Cubans have asserted more than once. We go through life with focused manias, shedding light on ourselves and digging the curette into anything we boast of knowing. One of the most widely practiced national sports is cataloging the politicians, presidents and personalities of other countries without knowing too much about them.
And so, we are quick to judge and deeply intrusive about matters beyond our borders. But in sticking our noses into foreign matters, we aren't unique. This could be said of all nationalities on the planet, without committing the sin of exaggeration. And much more so now that the global village seems ever more familiar, and thanks to communication technologies what happens in our neighbors' backyards seems as if it happened in our own. A butterfly fluttering in the Amazon may influence the purr of a collective taxi running along the Malecon. The new leader elected in Peru will greatly draw our attention, even though for 50 years we have not been able to elect our own president.
With the superficiality of those who are far away, people in the streets of Havana refer to the second round of Peruvian elections with alarm and simplicity. To change the maximum figure of a country is no longer a matter of concern only within national borders. People jump these boundaries more and more, those lines imposed by history, and they opine, assess, advise regarding what others decide, as the direction that political figures imprint on their nations, inevitably ends up influencing all those around them.
To place a ballot in a box is no longer a personal or regional act, wrapped in the privacy of the voting booth. On June 5 there is too much at stake for the region for us to reassure ourselves by saying, "This is a problem for Peruvians, it is for them to resolve it." It is difficult to remain silent when you see your neighbor in such a difficult dilemma, and you know that the path they choose will mark a part of the path of every Latin American. The Peruvian crossroads, now, is also our conflict.
And this meddling, which we've turned to from modernity and insularity, has us looking south from the Caribbean Sea and wondering, will Keiko Fujimori, daughter of the now imprisoned former president, win? Will the leftist ex-army officer Ollanta Humala be elected? The negative echoes of the government led by the center-right candidate's father still resonate in these parts, but the rival nationalist candidate worries us more.
If we were to be guided by the official press, one could say that the Cuban authorities still sympathize with the one who, in his past presidential campaign, offered an anti-system discourse, although in this campaign he appears more measured. Among the delusions of our aging political class is the fantasy that with the emergence of an axis of support, the Cuban system will stretch from the Bravo River to Patagonia.
The managers of our national destiny fantasize about the mirage that allies will come from outside to save us, as the Soviet Union once did and as Huge Chavez is now attempting. But Humala has distanced himself, at least in his current campaign, from any discourse that aligns him with the Plaza of the Revolution. This distancing has reduced the emphasis on him in the news, as well as the admiring adjectives that the daily paper, Granma, and the national news were so ready to grant him.
The big question is whether this information strategy is aimed at not showing too much enthusiasm so as not to sway the electorate, with a closeness to the Castros, or if, in fact, the one-time fellow traveler is disappointing them with his new moderation.
Perhaps some of the doubts about Humala murmured in our streets are due to his military origins. Olive green uniforms are quite traumatizing here, especially recently as Raul Castro has placed a greater number of members of the Armed Forces in key positions. But the fundamental suspicion of the Peruvian candidate comes from a history we fear to see repeated in other places.
It's the narrative of the coming to power of a charismatic man, swearing -- and perjuring himself -- that the will of the people will be respected above all. A man who then dismantles the structures of civil society, the press, the means of expression, to expand his authoritarianism to every sphere of life. Probably the aspirant in Peru is far from doing the same, but our national suspicion does not let us see clearly.
Peruvians already have enough with their own tremendous national dilemma to also consider the apprehensions of Cubans, whatever they think. But beyond the call to opine on matters far from this island where we were born, we have always had the dream of being a continent, and in this particular case we are very aware of what is happening in Peru.
Not only because the small town that has ended up being the world has strengthened the ties that bind us, but because we sense that the election will also mold our next steps as well. But our fantasies will not influence the marks that will be made next to one or another name; in the end we are only a few interlopers more, worried eavesdroppers who have suffered too much.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a new compilation blog with Yoani and other Cuban bloggers in English.
Yoani's new book in English, Havana Real, can be ordered here.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanifromcuba
I have been a witness to the war against the poor and against immigrants that are deemed illegal in an effort to get around labor laws. I have been a witness to police harassment and illegal search and seizure and imprisonment.
I would rather live in Cuba - a country that is not waging war anywhere. Cuba has a lot of problems, but it is superior to the US. A better standard of living doesn't equal a better place to live.
Yoani lived in Switzerland but never in the US. If she lived in the US, would she be an activist against the extreme cruelty and oppression of the US government? Only she can answer that question.
Fantasy world is amazing!!!!!
I am sure, and millions of Cubans too, that this person that assure “would rather live in Cuba” would last in Cuba (living in same conditions common Cubans lives) just a couple of days. To live in a small room together with your parents, grandparents, siblings and cousins; with no A/C, running water, sporadic electricity service, bitten by mosquitoes and fleas, defending your scattered food supplies from roach, rats, your siblings and cousins, with no refrigerators, having to carry your drinking and bath water from pipe trucks several hundred yards away and surrounded by black water running out the 100 years old sewer system …. That is not the way this “valiant person would live for more than 24 hours….. I am sure!!!
I country that is not waging war anywhere!!!!!
Jeez!!!!...... Dear one….. you better run back to history classroom!!!!
Algeria, Ethiopia, Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Angola, El Salvador, Bolivia, Colombia, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Grenada, Vietnam…….
50.000 Cubans lost the life in Florida’s Strait trying to escape castrofascism and reach US coasts…… I don’t know a single US citizen that died in Florida Strait trying to reach Cuba escaping capitalism.
"Raul Castro is the responsible for this assassination" said the opposite and journalist Guillermo Fariñas. This is the direct result of the incitation to violence made by Raul Castro in the last communist party congress.
"Lo que nunca haremos es negarle al pueblo el derecho a defender a su Revolución, puesto que la defensa de la independencia, de las conquistas del socialismo y de nuestras plazas y calles, seguirá siendo el primer deber de todos los patriotas cubanos" (We never will stop the "people" when it decides to "defend" the "revolution" because the first duty of Cuban patriots is to defend the independence, the socialism and our streets and public places). Whit this incitation gave Raul Castro green light to paramilitary militias and political police to re4press with extreme violence any kind of public demonstrations against regime. Now we have the first victim of this brutal policy.
The main thing that the embargo prohibits is access to lines of credit. Cuba has a horrible track record of paying back credit and has an enormous debt with many countries around the world. And considering that all credit that is invested abroad is guaranteed by the US government, and if Cuba were to refuse to repay these credit - it would be the American taxpayer that would have to bail out investors going to invest their money in Cuba.
Cuba has had the entire world to trade with - the embargo is an easy excuse that the regime uses for explaining everything.
And your characterization of the Cuban community outside Cuba is so biased and unobjective that I shouldn't even respond to it. You make us all to be a bunch of mafia thugs interested in looting the country. You don't know anything about Cubans. Just another American who thinks he knows it all.
To those who were exiled in the early 60s, I say: Prove to me that you are a good person. Did you participate in the Civil Rights Movement?
Black Cubans may have benefited a bit and wealth is more equally distributed. But it was done, not by raising all boats, but by lowering most of them. Except of course, those of the Communist nomenklatura.
If exiled Cubans living in the US really cared about Cuba, they would support democracy and socialism within Cuba. Instead, they undermine good government within the US and within Cuba. Truth be told, many of them are brutes.
Rest assured Cuba will be heavily saturated by CIA agents the moment Cuba looks like it may try elections. American money will buy a Cuban government and corporate America will once again run the island just as they have in the past.
Although we can't say she has been a big influence on politics, either here or in her home country ;)
If it were so, Hugo Chavez wouldn't be so important.
There are countless countries where the election of the US President has an impact, but not an all-important one.
Looking at the history of other communist/dictatorship which the US deals nicely with across the world. If its' further away the US wouldn't care to embargo. Cuba could see itself growing into "modernity" as the author puts it regardless, as long as it does business with the US.
Secondly, why does saying Havana the correct way it is supposed to be said in English make you any less Cuban?
Make that 59 years to count Batista.
Last I heard, Batista arrested and often killed anyone suspected of being a communist.