On December 31, precisely at midnight, a waterfall poured from every balcony of my Yugoslav-style building. Cubans keep the tradition of throwing a bucket of water at year's end to clean all the bad brought by previous months and to spiritually "clean" the January about to begin. This year there were infinite reasons to throw water -- that precious liquid that prepares us to face everything to come -- from the windows, balconies and roofs. So my husband and I found the biggest container we could and together, from our 14th floor balcony, threw its contents into the void, thinking about everything we want to leave behind. The first sun of 2011 reflected brilliantly from the puddles in the street, formed not by rain but by our desires.
Few confess aloud the full list of hopes they harbor for the next twelve months, but it's easy to guess that an important point on every list is the need for political changes on this Island. Each defines it in his or her own way. "This has to end now," some say. "May Raul's reforms succeed in improving our lives," say others. Or, "May 2011 be the year that so many of us have been waiting for," is the cryptic declaration of some who lost patience and faith long ago.
Curiously, the word "revolution" is absent from these popular predictions, as the vast majority of citizens no longer consider it a dynamic entity, alive, in transformation. When they refer to the prevailing model in the country they do so as if it were an immovable structure, as if it were the most confining straitjacket, rigid and unlikely to adapt to the new demands of the 21st century.
All those ideals of renewal brought down from the mountains by young bearded men have given way to a government where power is concentrated in figures in their seventies and eighties, deeply suspicious of innovation. Nonetheless, in official pronouncements January 1st continues to be spoken of as the birthday of a living creature, when in fact it is the anniversary of something that died long ago. The Revolution has been buried by stagnation. The social project lies deep within the earth and the question on everyone's mind is what date should we carve on its tombstone.
For thousands of my compatriots the Revolution died in 1968 when Fidel Castro himself applauded the entry of Soviet tanks into Prague. The fierce bear hug that engulfed us, the omnipresence of the Kremlin, the thousands of barrels of oil it sent Cuba each year, its massive subsidies and its geopolitical demands, ultimately drowned any semblance of spontaneity.
The so-called Five Grey Years (1971-1975) turned out the lights on culture, as Socialist Realism clipped the wings of our creativity and reduced us to triumphalist stories whose protagonist was always the never-realized "New Man."
For my parents, the Revolution ended in the first months of 1989 with the criminal trial of General Arnaldo Ochoa, charged with drug trafficking. The subsequent executions, of him and others, and the purges in the Ministry of Interior, clarified for many that the anxiety to maintain power took precedence over all ideals, Marxist manuals, scientific communism and everything we had been taught in school.
For my generation, the requiem of the Revolution was confirmed some years later, with the punches and stones thrown on the streets of Havana in August 1994. When, in response, Fidel ordered the coast guard to stop patrolling the shore and to "let the scum that wants to leave, leave," Cubans climbed aboard rickety rafts all along the coastline.
For many, their departure destroyed the remaining illusions of those who thought the Revolution was a social project "of the poor, the meek, and the humble." It was precisely the poorest Cubans, in those days of despair, who risked the sharks and the overcrowding at Guantanamo Naval Base, where they were taken by the American forces who plucked them from the waters to wait for planes to complete their escape to the north. The thirty thousand who set sail in a single month took with them the last shred of believability of our authorities' insistence that the government represented all Cubans.
Now we are left with too-often stated reminders of an idealized past: "What could have been and wasn't," people say. Meanwhile, reality negates every word spoken from the dais, leaving the black market the only option for survival as apathy casts its corrosive acid over attempts to ideologically motivate us.
It is the long funeral that never gets to the end, where the family of the departed can't bear to shovel the sod over the coffin. Somehow, a few of them can't shake the belief that the deceased Revolution can rise up from its shroud, reinvent itself, shake off the wrinkles and chronic diseases.
The rest of us attend the funeral, asking the poignant question, "What went wrong? At what instant did the Revolution become a cadaver?" Deciphering this question may be of vital importance to our national future. We already know many of the chronic diseases that played a part in its death: personal ambition, bureaucracy, red tape, selling out to a foreign power, and copying a model that only looks good in a text book.
What we don't know is if it was the push we ourselves gave it, if it was our hands, our minds, which finally choked the creature they tried to create. Or if the genetics of the process were based on the chromosomes of failure from the start.
A version of this post originally appeared in Peru's El Comercio newspaper.
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.
Follow Yoani Sanchez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yoanisanchez
Cuba shows a rich side to tourists, but the political elite have siphoned off all the money.
Castro is right in there with Lenin and Stalin.
Having seen our "Change President" order the assassination of an American Citizen, having extended powers to detain and surveil American citizens..I am not impressed by American Capitalism.
Yes ALL dictatorships are vile and should end but do we really want the fine people of Cuba to end up being serfs to Oligarchs like the American people?
Freedom is relative. In America we have the freedom to speak but we also have the horror of poverty, for some of you..that means NOTHING to eat!
Not all Americans use their Freedoms and do not notice as bit by bit, it is being taken from us so when a nut gets jailed for a poem musing on the death of Obama we ignore it. However it was just a poem..a poem no matter how bad is art and was once protected..no longer.
I remember Russian artists who had clamored for American Capitalism being horrified they had to work in boiler room as no one supported them any longer. As an artist I've scrubbed toilets! They had no idea how EVIL and how cruel American Capitalism is.
American Capitalism is the last ism to survive except for Cuba. I hope unlike the East Germans they think long and hard about letting America turn them all into waiters.
Capita;lism is the only economical system that exists all other "beens" created by tyrant aprentices (Communism, socialism, fascism, etc) are simply ideological doctrines with no economical system to support them. Commies and fascists uses to say they will built a better economical system but in reality they don't know what to do when taking the power and regulary ends destroying the country.... that's why they all perished politicaly or got back to the wildest and cruel capitalism...... like castro who went from stalinism to fascism!!!
You are delusional if you think Cubans would be better off as waiters for Oligarchs. I hope they choose freedom of speech but keep welfare, free education and a stellar public health care service.
Not everyone has to cheer on Facebook billionaires as they give away 0.00000001% of their wealth to charity BUT will hate paying taxes like the rest of us.
I am a Socialist and can tell you there has never been a true Marxist State. A dictatorship is not Marxism..or any form of Communism. It's never been tried..sad to say.
B) "You are delusional" if you believe Cubans are better off as impoverished serfs than free individuals.
C) Marxism inevitably leads to totalitarianism-- economic planning necessitates choices between groups of people that can only be ultimately decided by a central authority if the goals of the society are to be preserved.
What a surprise.
www.havanatimes.org
I see you still fighting for Havana Times........ the problem is that they censures what they do not like..... that's why people don't last there and after a couple of censured comments they leave to not come back never!!!!
How many Cubans would not mind living in poverty in Honduras, another country with the U.S. selected puppet leader in charge?
As poor as Cuba is, I never see the appalling poverty and suffering of the people there that one sees in Haiti and Honduras, and other countries the U.S. can't keep its hands out of. Pakistan? What happened to the millions of people who were flooded out of their homes? The U.S. bombed the other side of Pakistan. How about the thousands of Afghans killed by U.S. bombing raids?
I've been to Cuba and I've been to Haiti, which the U.S. Marines have invaded and occupied several times during the past century. I would take Cuba any day.
Read U.S. Marine Corps Smedley Butler's book online for free, "War is a Racket."
Will HP publish this? Probably not.
Other available rates from 2009: Canada 4.99, USA 6.14, Chile 7.52, Costa Rica 9.72, Argentina 11.11, Colombia 16.87, Brazil 21.86, Dominican Republic 23.10
According to the UN your figures are wrong:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_death_rate
Very different statistics. The infant mortality rate is widely recognized as a much more valuable measure of a public health system, as it is not influenced by factors like the proportion of elderly to young in a population as a whole.
Also, you are not linking to UN data. You are linking to a Wikipedia article.
But thanks for playing.
Canada 4.99, US 6.14, Chile 7.52, Costa Rica 9.72, Argentina 11.11, Colombia 16.87, Brazil 21.86, Dominican Republic 23.10
Today Cuba ranks in the place 28 in the world what means castrofascism has spoiled the wanderful health system it inherited from democracy...... even accounting this data that place actual Cuba in place 28 is true.... we all know totalitarian regimes controling al information in the country uses to fake and inflate statistics.... there are many "political" prisoners in Cuba that are in jail just for dismantling regimes lies.... like Dr. Biscet or Dr. Darsis Ferrer.
http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/FACTS_Web/Cuba%20Facts%20Issue%2043%20December.htm
Cuba has a higher longevity rate than the USA.
In America if you get sick and have no insurance, you can always ask the local fire dept or some other organization to help you raise money to pay the bankrupting doctor bills or die.
I have to wonder which political system is more humane?
Haven't got the facts on your side? Go for the manufactured buzzwords and fear-mongering.
(news item; 'state' refers specifically to the "men with guns" aspect of occupation by domestic government,. so academically, the phrase "police state" is redundant.. and meaningless as a comparison between 'states' as 'police' as quite necessary to the maintenance of ANY 'state', by definition.
i would prefer NO state.
that does not appear to be a luxury i should expect to enjoy in my lifetime.
so then, with the assumption of the ubiquitous police state in modern late-capitalism globally, i must make a reasonable measure of the nature and extent of repression and who it serves in the case in EACH respective state ( ..each respective police state.)
does the state align its forces to protect, as "best" it may with such an apparatus, the rights of the vast population to enjoy lives of relative health and security, while repressing those very few who would compel the rest the rent themselves as a way of life? is that what the police are doing?
or does the state align its forces to "protect the minority of OPULENT, from the majority"? (james madison as publius) to project force power onto abstract religious concepts such as the legitimacy of wealth accumulated by the fractionalized labor of others, to protect usury property over the property of use. (usufruct) to protect the very predatory few.
is THAT what the police are doing?
and select accordingly, tactically, for now.
Think of it this way--you could be us.