The plane touches down in the middle of a Havana night and tourists pass through the international airport terminal where dozens of Cubans offer them taxis, rooms for rent, rum or mulatas. A young man approaches a short, dumpy visitor and, squatting close to his ear, asks, "Mister, you like cigars?" but the answer comes with a strong and well-known accent that tells the daring vendor the origin of the traveler. These are the new Russians who come not for business but for pleasure, who have stopped calling each other "comrade" and who now carry their Visas or MasterCards. In short, they seem less and less like those who for decades sustained our social experiment.
It has been over fifty years since the Cuban government resumed diplomatic relations with what was then called the Soviet Union. Those who lived through that time have told me it wasn't easy to overcome the accumulated prejudices against the inhabitants of the first socialist territory in the world, those who were seen by many of my compatriots as part of an advanced colonization. Life demonstrated that the alarmists were not entirely wrong.
In the great naivete of our collective childhood there were no differences between Ukrainians, Turks or Lithuanians, as we believed them all a single extension ruled from the Kremlin. On the other hand, the cultural abyss between the homeland of Lenin and our fun-loving Caribbean island made one scholar admit that "Cuban and Russian hearts beat on completely different frequencies." However, geopolitics tried to match us up, without much success. Unlike other European countries, where Communism rolled in with the tanks commanded by Stalin, in our case it came with a subsidy, with boats full of oil that called at the ports of this Island every month.
"The Russians are coming!" cried some, frightened, while others responded, "Welcome to the Soviets!" Choosing between one word or the other was, for a long time, more than a linguistic dilemma, it was the taking of an ideological position. When Cubans of my generation started to be aware of the world, in the early eighties, no one was tearing their hair out to choose between these two words that history had forced to be synonymous.
So we watched Russian films and rode in Soviet Ladas. The downtown restaurant Moscow disappeared in a mysterious and voracious fire, and to the west of the city they raised a hideous building that would serve as the headquarters of the USSR embassy, which we jokingly christened the "control tower" both for it architectural profile as well as its political evocations. Those were the gray times, when we kids lived trapped between the teary Eastern European cartoons and the interminable discourse of the then robust Maximum Leader.
At the beginning of the nineties, with the collapse in those parts, the official discourse eliminated the references to former mentors. They erased them from the text books and removed the photos of the leaders in the fuzzy hats with earmuffs from the Museum of the Revolution, while national history was rewritten downplaying the Soviet presence in our lives.
The cultural impact of this abrupt departure made itself felt immediately, especially on movie posters, where the American productions -- and it continues today -- pack the theaters and only rarely are replaced with the old classics distributed in another epic under the symbol of a soldier and a peasant girl carrying a hammer and sickle.
To the surprise of many, an agreeable surprise of course, television premiered the series The Master and Margarita based on the unforgettable satirical novel of the awkward Mikhail Bulgakov. On the national scene the Bolshoi Ballet -- once the flagship of Soviet culture -- returned to perform again and, according to those who attended, defrauded the demanding Havana public. But nothing is like that era when the memorandums flew from the palace of colored domes to our sober Council of State.
After years of little interaction, the visitors from the other side of the Urals have returned. They are no longer seen in large groups, dressed in pants always one size too big and white shirts with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. They are no longer those foreign technicians who had the right to buy in stores prohibited to us, and who sold on the black market the trinkets they bought in those so-called diplo-shops.
We haven't gone back to calling them "los bolos" -- the bowling pins -- that appellation half mocking and half affectionate, honoring the lack of sophistication of their industrial products, full of rough welds, divorced from aerodynamics and comfort. Now, the returning comrades of yesteryear compete in the discos, look like businessmen, and wear French perfumes.
They are entrepreneurs showing off their computer products, such as the well-known Kaspersky anti-virus, before the astonished eyes of those who once saw them in their military uniforms. A couple of years ago they even had an exhibition area at the International Book Fair. Their shelves were filled with diverse topics, including self-help, with very few titles of Marxism and Leninism. They walk among us and no one screams in fear, "The Soviets are back!" Because it's clear to everyone that they've returned and, swimming at our beaches or drinking a mojito in some tourist bar, they are -- clearly -- Russians.
Yoani's blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
Translating Cuba is a 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
Life Expectancy in 2010 Cuba 77.7 years, Haiti, 29.9, Jamaica, 73.45, United States 78.37 years
Unemployment in 2010: Cuba 1.8, Haiti 40.6 (U.S. CIA Factbook) Jamaica 10.1, United States, 7.2%.
(source: World health Rankings: http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/country-health-profile/cuba)
Without Soviet assistance, the United States would have invaded Cuba long ago and ended the socialist experiment. In the best case Cuba might have become like Jamaica, unemployment 10.1%, life expectancy 73.45. In the worst case, it would be like Haiti, unemployment 40%, life expectancy 29.9 years.
Be thankful for Soviet aid.
Statistics supplied by castrofascism to all international organizations handling statistics cannot be trusted because regime main goal is to lure international opinion to believe they built a paradise..... real life expectancy nowadays for Cubans is below 50 years for people born after 1960 and 77 years for people born before 1950...... that's why Cubans escapes the country risking their life in rustic rafts hoping to reach Honduras or Mexico coasts.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afnx7j1m6eA&annotation_id=annotation_725071&feature=iv
Its very sad that Joani speaks as if she could have done a better job with the "Revolution" in Cuba.
That you call hostility of USA is known in Cuba as "the friendly-enemy-game"...... USA fakes an enemy attitude on castrofascism while keeps a fake embargo and also keeps Cuban nation in exile under control to avoid them to wage war against castro....... at same time castrofascism fakes an enemy-revolutionary attitude on USA while delivery to the friendly enemy all country's major industries in order to assure USA's conformity with the status quo.
Sigmund you know the power of the USA!
I have over 40 family stuck in Cuba.
Friendly enemy game?
Id like to knock you over the head with a friendly enemy game Sig
http://foia.state.gov/documents/FOIADocs/00005441.pdf
Along years this neutrality act has been honored and thousands Cubans been jailed in USA because this policy..... the reason is obvious:
Why would USA kill the golden goose that provides Florida and south USA with industries and commerce destroyed by castrofascism...... you better read this FOIA carefully and learn why USA still allows and so "hated" "enemy" so close its coasts, learn why USA wages direct war on Grenada, Dominican Republic or Panama without having so many reasons castrofascism offered but still while with a hand helps one kind opposition in Cuba but with the other hand put in jail the real opposition that can finishing castrofascism....... I doubt you have someone in Cuba, I even doubt you are Cuban and it is just because I know USA's power because I (and almost all Cubans in exile) knows that USA and castrofascism are playing this friendly enemy thing since long ago.
We all go to work and do our jobs day in and day out. Guess the amount of crap we get to horde in our homes with our earnings. And the lack of healthcare =/