Franco Baptista

We Cubans who are over 35 years old, those of us who built socialism on foot, those who left our dreams up on the trucks where we were taken to the mobilizations, we have a right to be heard.

Miami - My name doesn’t matter; my country’s situation does. Those of us who are over 35, my name doesn’t matter; my country’s situation does. Those of us who are over 35, those of us who lived the glorious moments of revolutionary euphoria and put everything at stake in search of a better future, as if it were a game, and risked out lives in Angola, Ethiopia, Zaire, Congo, and many other places, those of us who had tears in our eyes as we heard those apocalyptic words of the well-known announcer, when the terrible events of Granada tookplace.

No shots are heard from the Cuban side, the last Cuban refuge has just gone down together with their flag. The ordinary Cubans, those who shoulder to shoulder and with a smile in their faces, worked trustingly, and were mobilized to the coffee and the sugar cane harvest, to pick up mangos, potatoes, tomatoes, or to sow what couldn’t be sown and never grew.

The offspring of the doctrine of the yes and no, who always said yes, because it meant defending what was ours and never said no, because it was a sign of treason and weakness. The youngsters of those days, who despite the prohibition listened to José Feliciano, The Beatles, Julio Iglesias and Roberto Carlos, kept watch and whether we were part of the PPI (Preparation Plan to Join the Communist Youth, in Spanish) or not, all the same we kept watch and went to all the demonstrations.

Those of us who threw eggs and those who didn’t and joined the choir shouting: “anybody who wants to leave, go right ahead” or “pim pom gone, down with the pack of worms”, confident that “the future belonged only to socialism” and that our effort entitled us to the heritage of a better future.

A dialectical understanding of things and facts. Those of us who studied that same Marxist dialectic, sometimes unfathomable in university, but all the same necessary because it constituted the basis of what we were building: a system where man was not man’s wolf.

Those of us who went to study in the USSR, those of us who learnt in university that politics is the concentrated expression of economy and not the other way around. Those of us who never knew of the gray lustrum, or those of us who did but didn’t care because we didn’t understand it.

Those of us who saw the Russian movies and cartoons, which we criticized sotto voce, but always trusting nobody could hear us, and thanking those above, when we complained that something wasn’t going well; because in the end, we had earned equality with our own sweat, and why not a seat in the real process of taking decisions, in a process that was unique in America.

Those of us who never realized -until it happened-, why socialism fell. Those of us who never got a car, or a house or a trip to the USSR, or those of us who did and believed that was it, top of the pops, up to our necks in euphoria, simplifying and ignoring most of the time, that we could never sell the car or the house if we needed to, or that the trip could not be to Paris or Madrid, but only to Moscow or Leningrad.

We, who proudly built socialism and burnt thousands of American images, the sons of those who stopped Girón’s mercenaries, grew up, studied and adapted ourselves to the changes as much as we could.

We learnt about marketing, computer and we are still going through Masters and Doctorates that make us believe we are moving ahead. The basis and execution structure of our socialist system has a psychological element which is shaped with such a strength and anchorage that make it almost monolithic. This complex psychological monstrosity that we helped build is perfect. It is a process that mentally dominates the aspirations of men because it is based on faith and gratitude, the fear of condemnation and the political exhortation against a powerful and real enemy.

It is a system of ideas, where the struggles take it for granted in our minds that we are in permanent war against everyone and therefore in permanent peril and threat. We have fought for the 6th, 9th and 12th grades, for the return of Elian, for the 5 and for thousands of other things I can no longer remember.

It isn’t the leader’s sudden illness, nor the wise or unwise conduction of those that come after him, but the lack of wellbeing accumulated for such a long time, the demoralizing cramming up, and the loss of values. Everything seems to be as before, but that isn’t so, now there are many other things that aren’t very reasonable and pink is only the painful memory of a dirty white.

Then there is our children: that concern with a body and mind of their own that you are under the obligation of educating. In order to do so we accept the path of good habits and the savior sentence of patriotism and faithfulness, but by then we have lost sight of the enemy which is no longer the common foe. Hundreds of new elements endanger the integrity of our children: prostitution, drugs, the lack of character of teachers, the decadence of much of the youngsters who have not been educated adequately, the harmonious sound of the triumphant capital now that so many of us aren’t there and have become the uncle who lives in Italy or the sister who lives in the United States, who has turned into an easy-going squanderer and leads them to believing during their 15-day-visit that it isn’t necessary to get an education, you just have to leave.

How many of our children want to emigrate? It takes a lot of political courage to give that question a truthful answer and it would be the cause of a lot of pain (so I hope) to see the future of the country condemned to a brutal and excessive emigration. It isn’t a new phenomenon, but we’ve bragging for 50 years that we have the best system in the world.

But the truth is that one way or another those who are abroad help out, and those who are here barely survive. Each and every one of the achievements we are so proud of hold on to a very weak thread.

Public health is a laughable and deteriorated fable, while most of the doctors and nurses dream of a humanitarian mission which will help them solve their most pressing economic problems. The Third World will remember Cuba for the historic and solidary task of helping millions of people all over the world; only 14 million will look at that historic deed with bitterness and the three million of us who live abroad breaking our backs in order to send medicines and money to our families.

Another undeniable achievement is the education we have obtained and with almost the same enthusiasm we have allowed to fall. We know getting an education in Cuba is no problem, but being a university graduate or a technician or whatever it is one has studied is a virtue only when one really learns and one has earnt the degree with the effort of one’s own neurons. In my country food is a serious problem whose solution is nowhere to be seen. Who doesn’t have a neighbor who didn’t study, didn’t contribute with anything, yet thanks to the multiple ways Cubans invent in order to survive, live and eat better than most? Hundreds of thousands of university graduates in this country waste away for a miserable wage, while some who run a business live much better, but hold it, the solution is not to deprive the latter of his business, but to increase the standard of living of the one who made a greater contribution.

We, the ordinary man of the street, those who believed that saying: to each one according to his capability, to each one according to his work, we’ve seen it go past, to go and sit in the laps of capitalism. Wealth hasn’t been multiplied; poverty that has been generalized. Socialism can come from different roads, but we must be on the look out because time goes by and many are waiting for the river to turn choppy, because they want the hardest capitalism and they are there to the right and left of those who hold the keys to the thunders, disguised, but they are too far away for us to warn them, and it remains to be seen if they really want to listen to us.

In the interchanges that have occurred among intellectuals after those television shows and after Soledad’s article, they have come up with lots of issues that cannot wait any longer. An open debate is necessary but it will be difficult because the system itself rejects it, there are many inquisitors to be found at all levels. Many in this country love the economic sanctions like the officers of the emergency squads love a good hurricane, it is a necessary evil for their survival, in order to be somebody, and the worst is that all of us who have nourished them all this time are their accomplices.

We then have to limit ourselves to the daily struggle of life, attending meetings of the Party and the CDR, while we think of the novel or about how the devil are we going to manage to buy some meat for Sunday lunch. Saying in public what we are expected to say, and thinking that this is no good, but we’ve got to keep on pushin’. Making comments to our true friends. Or we can put up a little business and try to make do from there. And we cry with the songs and laugh with Pepito’s old stories or with any one of the comedians that are still left in the island.

FGB - An ordinary Cuban, wrote this article for Kaos en la Red, a Website that is all over the world.

Source: www.miradaglobal.com