The Cuban Regime’s Scriptwriters No Longer Scare Anyone

The official spokesperson Humberto López at a moment during the broadcast of the program on Cuban Television. (Razones de Cuba/YouTube/Screen capture)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Generation Y, Havana, 13 December 2023 — There was a time when official stories were better constructed or perhaps we were more gullible. In those years, they painted dangers that were really scary, bad guys that were truly fearful, and attacks that made everyone’s hair stand on end. Perhaps it was our naivety as a people combined with the information monopoly enjoyed by the Communist Party at the time, but it was enough for us to be told that “the enemy” was planning to poison the cisterns of day care centers and schools for us all to stop, for a few days, drinking even one drop of water at school.

Of those skillful narrators and our innocence not even a memory remains. For this end of the year, Cuban Television has launched itself to create the umpteenth story that, from the Cuban exile, sabotage is being prepared, weapons are being prepared and landings are planned. The example given is laughable. A lone man, who supposedly arrived on the island on a jet ski, armed with three pistols and a few bullets. Faced with such a description, one cannot help but remember when, in the stories of yesteryear, the villain really instilled fear and not pity. continue reading

For this end of the year, Cuban Television has launched itself to create the umpteenth story that, from the Cuban exile, sabotage is being prepared, weapons are being prepared and landings are planned

It is no coincidence, either, that every time the economic crisis escalates and popular indignation grows, these reports appear with all the traces of following a script to scare Cubans and thus prevent us from showing our discontent, taking to the streets or join a general strike. The theatricality of the scripts created with this objective abandoned realism long ago and has entered the realm of the fantastic, appealing to increasingly bizarre individuals, plans and devices.

The most recent delusions of persecution and invasion that official propagandists have spread show a very high level of desperation. They have lost any hint of objectivity, if they ever had it, to end up in the absolutely grotesque. Thus, with these caricatures of alleged evildoers and attacks, no one believes anything.

A piece of advice for bad writers of so many serials: perhaps training with Marvel or Netflix would give them more credible results.

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Cuba: The School Year Starts (Reprint from ‘Generation Y’ 2007)

Secondary school students during a cultural activity. (2015)(14ymedio)

(Note from Translating Cuba: This article is being reprinted because of its relevance to an article in 14ymedio today.)

Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 13 September 2007 — My son has worn this week for the first time his mustard color uniform at a junior high school building of Giron-style prefabricated architecture barely five minutes from our Yugoslavian model building. The last days of vacation were marked by the process of buying the shoes, the search for a new backpack, and the discussions about how much to narrow the oversized size 18 pants.

The morning of the first day went by with passionate words and promises of a perfect course. Then, it came time for us to get familiar with the new model of junior high school, so different compared to the years when I went to one. For instance, for a while now, junior high school students can’t go home for lunch.  The measure seeks to eradicate the contrasts between those who have a good lunch waiting for them and those who have less or almost nothing. It tries as well to prevent them from wandering the streets and committing crimes.

Under this new system, at noon each student receives a sandwich of some protein food and a glass of yogurt.  At that age, such a small portion only serves to awake the fierce appetite and makes their stomachs rumble during the next class hours. So from twenty past twelve, the parents start to approach the school’s surrounding fence with little containers, jars and spoons, to reinforce their children’s diet.  Some schools have banned the practice of bringing food to students, and other schools have announced that the students must bring their lunch to school with them in the morning.

Every day, in a quite stealthy way, I go near the school and pass through the fence the “shopping bag” with the necessary reinforcement.  I notice many parents outside doing the same, but I also notice that a good share of the kids don’t get the additional ration.  In the end, by trying to erase the differences, another one has been created, a difference so visible and sad that I wonder if it wouldn’t be better to be more flexible with the above mentioned measure and let the youngsters have their lunch at home, while guaranteeing decent food for those who stay at school.

Everything that is imposed, whatever is mandatory and rigid, ends up being undermined, weakened and, worst yet, rejected.

Repression in the Time of Shortages

Yoani Sanchez, via Twitter, Havana, 8 May 2019 — A nice “touch” in the fright of the arrest of @Luz_Cuba (Luz Escobar): After waiting five hours at the police station for the State Security agent to arrive to interrogate her, the “seguroso” never arrived because he didn’t have gas for his motorcycle. [#The Crisis Comes to the Political Police]

See also:
14ymedio Reporter Luz Escobar Arrested In Cuba / CiberCuba

Luz Escobar, Reporter for 14ymedio, Released After 5 Hour Detention in Cuba

Luz Escobar, Reporter for 14ymedio, Released After 5 Hour Detention in Cuba

Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 8 May 2019 — Thanks to all those who demanded the release of @LuzCuba (Luz Escobar). She just called us on the phone to say that she had been released after being under arrest for five hours. We will only have the details when she arrives at the 14ymedio newsroom and we speak with her. THANK YOU.

Ileana Hernandez is Arrested

Yoani Sanchez, Twitter, 13 July 2018 — Activist Iliana Hernandez arrested, director of the alternative program “Lente Cubano” (Cuban Lens). The dissident was taken to the Guanabacoa police station in Havana, where she is now, according to information received by 14ymedio from her mother.

See also: Two Activists File Complaint with the Attorney General over Travel Bans

Nicaragua on Edge

Students at the barricades in Managua. 12 June 2018.

Yoani Sanchez, The Voice of Your Rights, Havana, 14 June 2018 — With the roads cut off, the universities turned into barricades or makeshift infirmaries, and a figure of 146 people who have lost their lives in the protests that broke out last April, Nicaragua today is a nation awaiting a decision that must be taken by a single man. Daniel Ortega has in his hands the ability to allow the country to resume the democratic path or to sink into a spiral of violence and death.

The Nicaraguan Civic Alliance for Justice and Democracy, which brings together broad sectors, has called a national strike for next Thursday with the aim of demanding an end to the “repression.” Another of the objectives of this call is to demand the resumption of a dialogue that would allow ending the socio-political crisis in the country. continue reading

The strike is one more among the many signs Ortega has received in recent weeks of Nicaraguans’ rejection of the government formed by him and his wife, vice president Rosario Murillo. However, the former Sandinista guerrilla believes he is the only man capable of leading the Central American country towards a bright future that only exists in his delusions. He considers himself a kind of irreplaceable anointed.

From his Latin American allies and mentors, in the style of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, Ortega learned to hold on to power no matter at what cost. The presidential chair for him is not only a post from which he controls every detail of national life, but also a fortress that protects him from the law. As long as he stays inside the palace he will be safe, he thinks. A mistake made by many of the operetta caudillos who have ruled in Latin America.

Retaining the highest office in the country and not agreeing in time to resign may be the worst of the decisions that Daniel Ortega has made throughout his long political life. The protests have touched an emotional fiber in millions of Nicaraguans, especially among the youngest. Many of them, turned into improvised street fighters, intuit that there is no turning back and that allowing the continuity of ‘Orteguismo’ will result in a prison sentence or death.

That revolutionary fervor Sandinismo once counted on and the social mysticism that elevated it to power is now in the hands of its adversaries. Ortega does not have the support born of ideological passion nor does the enthusiasm of yesteryear animate the people. That connection was broken irremediably and the repression that he has unleashed against the demonstrators has ended by crumbling the little ascendency that was left to Nicaraguans.

Every hour that passes, every second that the caudillo does not negotiate his exit from the presidency, brings him closer to a more violent end.

In Managua, a man addicted to power takes refuge in his stubbornness without being willing to recognize that if he chooses to give up power and retire, when it is still possible, he would save countless lives, including his own.

Originally published in Deutsche Welle

 

Opinion: Lula’s Final Hour

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil. (Picture-alliance/AP Photo/E. Perezs

Deutsche Welle, Yoani Sanchez, 6 April 2018 — A few years ago, the socialism of the 21st century, that populist imitation that deftly disguised itself with a discourse of social justice and opportunities for all, seemed to be in full force in Latin America. The region was dotted with leaders who resembled something more than the ideology they embraced: they loved to hear themselves speak in public, they suffered from a chronic intolerance of political opposition and they believed they embodied the feeling of an entire nation.

That motley explosion of charismatic and authoritarian leaders ranged from the vociferous Hugo Chávez, to the arrogant Rafael Correa, the coca grower Evo Morales, and the popular Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. The latter was described as having emerged from the most humble strata of Brazilian society and, once in Planalto Palace, to have promoted changes to lifting more than 30 million people up from poverty. With these credentials, it was difficult not to applaud him and many international organizations fell at the feet of the steelworker become president. continue reading

However, behind the image of an austere man and implacable enemy of political corruption, Lula was creating his own networks of favors and support to which he responded with privileges and perks. The Workers’ Party became a more powerful force every day, one that harassed its political opponents, supported untenable regimes like that of Cuba and was constantly accused of diverting funds and mismanagement. However, Lula maintained his impressive popularity in Brazil and almost unanimous support beyond its borders.

Now, the former trade unionist seems to be coming to the end of his road. Last year he was convicted of corruption and money laundering and this month the Supreme Court rejected the last legal recourse to stop his imprisonment. Although the seasoned populist still draws crowds and leads the polls for the October elections, on his last tour of Brazil eggs were thrown and taunts shouted.

Cornered, the former president has chosen to to keep running forward. He has redoubled his discourse to the popular classes and has presented the whole judicial process in which he is immersed as an attempt to silence him politically or as a revenge of the elites and his old ideological adversaries. Others, however, accuse him of running for president to elude justice. Despite this attack from the podiums and from the media, it has not managed to prevent the myth from suffering major cracks.

With the conviction of Lula, part of the illusion that he fueled also falls, that of a leader who rises from below, who understands the poor, who will never steal from them. His fall from grace is also a blow to the left’s populist forces in the region, many of them tarnished by corruption scandals linked to the extensive maneuvers of Brazilian giant Odebrecht.

The socialism of the 21st century was not only killed by its own inefficiency in finding solutions to the serious problems of the continent, but by its dirty financial management. Their most distinguished representatives encouraged networks of loyalties and bribes that ended up taking their toll. The coup de grace was not “the empire” so much reviled, nor the “bourgeoisie,” but their own ambition.

More People Arrested at El Circulo Gallery

The number arrested grows; now they are: (clockwise from top left) Lia Villares, Tania Bruguera, Iris Ruiz, Luis Manuel Otero,Amaury Pacheco and Yanelis Nuñez, according to witnesses outside El Círculo gallery, where today the monologue “Psychosis” was staged.

See also: Police Arrest Actress Iris Ruiz and Blogger Lia Villares in Havana

Parliamentary Karaoke

Cuban members of the National Assembly of People’s Power lodge in the Hotel Tulipán during their regular sessions (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation y, Yoani Sanchez, 14 July 2017 — Wednesday night. The neighborhood of Nuevo Vedado is sliding into the darkness. Catchy music resonates in the Hotel Tulipán where parliamentarians are staying during the current regular session. They dance, drink under the sparkling lights of the disco ball and sing karaoke. They add their voices to a programmed score, the exercise they know how to do best.

With only two sessions a year, the Cuban legislative body gathers to stuff the population full of dates, figures, promises to keep, and critiques of the mismanagement of bureaucrats and administrators. A monotonous clamor, where every speaker tries to show themselves more “revolutionary” than the last, launching proposals with an exhausting generality or a frightening lack of vision. continue reading

Those assembled for this eighth legislature, like their colleagues before them, have as little ability to make decisions as does any ordinary Cuban waiting at the bus stop. They can raise their voice and “talk until they’re blue in the face,” and enumerate the inefficiencies that limit development in their respective districts, but from there to concrete solutions is a long stretch.

On this occasion, the National Assembly has turned its back on pressures that, from different sectors, demand new legislation regarding the electoral system, audiovisual productions, management of the press, same sex marriage and religious freedoms, among others. With so many urgent issues, the deputies have only managed to draft the “Terrestrial Waters Bill.”

Does this mean that they need to meet more often to fix the country’s enormous problems? The question is not only one of the frequency or intensity in the exercise of their functions, but also one of freedom and power. A parliament is not a park bench where you go to find catharsis, nor a showcase to demonstrate ideological fidelity. It should represent the diversity of a society, propose solutions and turn them into laws. Without this, it is just a boring social chinwag.

The parliamentarians will arrive on Friday, the final day of their regular session, in front of the microphones in the Palace of Conventions with the same meekness that they approached the karaoke party to repeat previously scripted choruses. They are going to sing to music chosen by others, move their lips to that voice of real power that emerges from their throats.

Fidel Castro In Humor And Oblivion

The man, who in life was the target of thousands of jokes about his death, has been dead for more than half a year without popular humor deigning to mention it. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Havana, 3 July 2017 — For decades Cubans were bombarded by official propaganda filled with materials about Fidel Castro’s supposed genius. In these vindications he was not only a father, but also a strategist, visionary, pedagogue, farmer and cattle rancher, among other lofty characteristics and pursuits. However, that prototype of patriarch, scientist and messiah had some “soft spots.”

Over time, many of us came to understand that the Maximum Leader was not as outstanding as they wanted to make us believe. Counting against him, he had several capital defects: with a complete lack of any capacity for self-criticism, he never engaged in debate, and he was not given to irony or humor, the most difficult and elevated scales of the human intellect.

Despite all the ill-advised decisions he made, Castro died without saying “I’m sorry,” contrary to those who say “to err is human but to rectify is wisdom.” My generation waited in vain for his apology for the high schools in the countryside, and other sad educational experiments, just was we waited for a mea culpa for the victims of the Five Grey Years, the Military Units in Aid of Production (UMAP) or the Stalinist purges. continue reading

Nor was controversy the terrain of the Commander-in-Chief. He shunned diatribe and prepared himself with selected data and later spewed it out over unsuspecting foreign journalists and crowds gathered in the Plaza of the Revolution. He liked them to say: “What a well informed man!” When in reality he was only a ruler with access to information that was not allowed to his citizens.

Castro drowned, in long hours of discourse, what could have been sound political talk and a constructive discussion to improve the nation. We had to worship him or applaud him, never contradict him. He never ceded the spotlight, fearing perhaps that we would realize that “the king is naked” or that the guerrilla had “not the least idea” of what he was talking about.

All the times the late leader approached controversy he was caught short. When he exercised that egregious sport that is verbal fencing, he was beaten in the first act.

All the times the late leader approached controversy he was caught short. When he exercised that egregious sport that is verbal fencing, he was beaten in the first act. His way of dealing with these defeats was to overwhelm the other with long speeches or to get his acolytes to destroy the reputation of his opponent. He was mediocre as a gladiator of the word.

Nor were jokes his forte. Although Castro was the target of thousands of humorous stories, at no time in his life did he demonstrate a gift for humor. In a country where there is always a parody waiting to break the surface, that corpulent character – dressed in olive green with his serious and admonitory phrases – was the constant butt of mockery.

His death has highlighted that lack of charming banter. The man, who in life was the target of thousands of jokes about this death and his presumed arrival in hell, has been dead for over half a year without popular humor deigning to mention him. Not even Pepito, the eternal child of our stories, has wanted to “portray” the deceased.

Sad is the fate of those who are not remembered in a single joke. Poor is the man who never said “I was wrong,” who never knew the pleasure of engaging in arguments with an adversary, and who couldn’t even manage to taste the grace of humor.

When The Abuser Is The Government

Karla Pérez González has been the victim of a new type of harassment, this time incarnated in a campaign of character assassination. (Courtesy)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 4 May 2017 – I was in the third grade and the teacher chose the most aggressive girl in my class to be the room monitor. She was given carte blanche to control the other children. Later, the abuser rose to a position in the Federation of Middle School Students and joined the Union of Young Communists. Today she is an active part of a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. She is corrupt and violent, but highly valued by the authorities in her area.

Cuba’s National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex), led by Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela Castro, has launched a campaign against homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. The initiative includes the family in order to “understand what it is about, to help the girls and boys, the teenagers, the young people, and all the staff of the school,” says the sexologist. continue reading

Mariela Castro says that the level of abuse in schools on the island is “fairly low,” an affirmation that demonstrates – at the very least – her lack of connection with the Cuban reality. Without reliable official figures, any investigation of the subject must appeal to the personal experience of individuals and this is when the stories and testimonies of bullying in the educational environment surface.

The high schools in the countryside, promoted by former president Fidel Castro, were a reservoir of these abuses, many of them carried out under the impassive eyes of the teachers

The high schools in the countryside, promoted by former president Fidel Castro, were a reservoir of these abuses, many of them carried out under the impassive eyes of the teachers. Suicides, rapes, systematic robberies of the most fragile, accompanied by power structures more typical of prisons than an educational institution, were the daily bread of those of us who attended these schools.

I remember the spring of 1991, when a student threw himself off the water tower of the People’s Republic of Romania High School in what is now Artemis province. He had been harassed by the taunts and pressures of several classmates. We were all crowded together in the central hallway during the evening’s recreation hour when we felt the thud of his body landing on the concrete.

His harassers never paid for that death, it never became a data point in the statistics of student victims of bullying, and a family had to bury a son without being able to put a name to what had happened to him: abuse. In the weeks after that death another student slit his wrists – fortunately he didn’t die – and a group of twelfth grade students beat up a tenth grader for “having feathers,” i.e. being effeminate.

However, abuse in the schools doesn’t end there. There are many ways to harass a student and not all of them come from his or her classmates, nor are they motivated by sexual stereotypes, strict gender roles or group bravado. Ideological violence, exercised by power and with the consent of the school administrators, is another way to inflict psychological damage.

A few weeks ago, a journalism student at the Central University of Las Villas was the victim of institutional abuse that will leave permanent psychic and social scars on this young girl, just 18. To make matters worse, it was the leaders of the University Student Federation who behaved toward Karla Perez Gonzalez as the school abusers, like the leaders of a gang or the thugs of the hour.

The former student has been the victim of a new type of harassment, this time embodied in a campaign of character assassination that would be laughable if it weren’t aimed at destroying her self-esteem and turning her into a non-person

Since her expulsion, the former student has been the victim of a new type of harassment, this time embodied in a campaign of character assassination that would be laughable if it weren’t aimed at destroying her self-esteem and turning her into a non-person. To do something like that to a student of such a young age is an act of rape from power, persecution dressed up in the robes of school discipline.

The abusers, protected from above, end up feeling that they can destroy lives, denounce innocents and beat others as long as they are protected by an ideology. A system that has fomented political thuggery in its schools and its streets cannot confront bullying in all the complexity that the problem presents.

Noisy campaigns to fill foreign media headlines and the collection of large funds from international organizations is not the solution for all the Cuban children who have to deal, right now, with the physical blows, the ridicule of their classmates or partisan indoctrination in their schools.

Men’s Matters

Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 18 June 2008 (Reposted 10 April 2017) — In this Central Havana of guapos* – tough guys – and brawls where I was born, I learned there are certain lines a woman should never cross.  I have spent my life breaking the laughable rules of machismo, but today – and only today – I am going to take refuge in one of them, one of the ones I dislike the most.  It warns, “A woman needs a man to represent her and to go to bat for her when another man insults or slanders her.”

Feeling attacked by someone with a power infinitely superior to mine, more than twice my age, and in addition – as the neighbors of my childhood would have said – someone who is “macho-male-masculine,” I have decided it will be my husband, the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, who will respond. continue reading

I refer to the damaging remarks that Fidel Castro made about me in the prologue of the book, Fidel, Bolivia and Something More.  Not even such a “great” attack convinces me to abandon the premise of refusing to engage in a cycle of rejoinder and self defense.  I am sorry to say I remain focused on the theme called “Cuba.”

Let’s leave it up to Reinaldo and Fidel to do the fighting.  I will continue in my “womanly” labor of weaving together, despite the chatter, the frayed tapestry of our civil society.
The guapos from my neighborhood will know that I learned “something” from them!

* Please do not confuse a Cuban guapo with a handsome man or suitor. That might work in another Latin American country, but here in Cuba the word carries a different connotation, which someone might explain to you  with a slap, or perhaps a stabbing.

Translator’s note: The first sentence is hard to translate because there is a double meaning.  Guapo/guapa is both an adjective and a noun and in common use it means handsome/gorgeous.  In Cuban slang “guapo” also means a tough guy, someone who likes to fight.  It can be used as an insult or to dare someone, that is as the aggressive form of “Hey, man…”  The original footnote explains this meaning for non-Cuban Spanish readers who may not be familiar with it.

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Site manager’s note: Translating Cuba has chosen to reprint this article, from the early in the second year of Yoani’s blog, in connection with Generation Y’s tenth anniversary.

Raul Castro Squandered His Last Chance / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

US President Barack Obama and his Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, shook hands a year ago in Havana. (White House)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 March 2017 — A year ago Cuba had a once in a lifetime opportunity. US President Barack Obama came to the island willing to turn the page on political confrontation. The gesture transcended the diplomatic situation, but Raul Castro – fearful of losing control – responded by putting the brakes on economic reforms and raising the levels of ideological discourse and repression.

Nations are not presented with opportunities every year, nor even every century. The decision to entrench itself and not to undertake political flexibilizations has been the Plaza of the Revolution’s most egotistical measure of recent times. Failure to know how to take advantage of the end of public belligerence with our neighbor to the north will bring this country lasting and unpredictable consequences. continue reading

These effects will not be suffered by the so-called “historic generation” – those at the forefront of the 1950s Revolution – now diminished by the rigors of biology and desertions. Rather than the generals in olive-green, the ones who will pay the price will be those who are still sleeping in their cradles or spinning their tops in the streets of the island. They don’t know it, but in the last twelve months a short-sighted octogenarian tricked them out of a share of their future.

The greatest waste has been not exploiting the international moment, the excitement about foreign investments, and the expectations everywhere in Cuba of taking the first steps towards democratic change without violence or chaos. It was not the job of the White House to encourage or provoke such transformations, but its good mood was a propitious setting for them to be less traumatic.

Instead, the white rose Obama extended to Castro in his historic speech in Havana’s Gran Teatro has faded, beset by hesitations and fears. Now, it is our job to explain to these Cubans of tomorrow why we were at a turning point in our history and we threw it away.

Measuring Hopelessness / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Those who believe that the closing of a one door to emigration will act like the snap of the fingers to awaken a society whose civic conscience is hypnotized are mistaken (Archive photo)

14ymedio biggerEl Pais/14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez,12 February 2017 — Statistics are deceiving. They only reflect measurable values, tangible realities. International agencies cram us with numbers that measure development, life expectancy or educational attainment, but seldom succeed in grading dissatisfaction, fear, and discouragement. Frequently in their reports they describe a Latin America and its inhabitants encased in a fog of digits.

This year the region will have weak growth of 1.3%, according to forecasts by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). A data point that barely manages to transmit the scope of lives that will be ruined by the region’s sluggish progress. Unfinished projects and a long string of social dramas will be accentuated in many of these countries in the coming months. The breeding ground from which populism springs.

However, the major drama remains the lack of horizons for millions of people on this side of the planet continue reading

A Haitian who risks crossing the jungle of Panama’s Darien Gap to reach the United States is driven not only by the miserable conditions of life in her country, the destruction left by natural phenomena or the repeated epidemics that cost thousands of lives. The most powerful engine that moves her is hopelessness, the conviction that in her own country she will never have new opportunities.

Seeing no end to violence pushes other Central Americans to escape their countries. In several of these nations gangs have become an enthroned evil, corruption has corroded the internal scaffolding of institutions and politicians go from one scandal to the next. Discouragement then prompts a response quite different from that generated by indignation. While the latter may push people to rebel, the former pushes them to escape.

Meanwhile, on this Caribbean island, millions of human beings ruminate over their own disappointment. For decades Cubans fled because of political persecution, economic problems and weariness. Until 12 January 2017, that generalized choking sensation had a relief valve called the wet-foot/dry-foot policy, but President Barack Obama closed it a few days before finishing his second term.

The most staunch critics of that migratory privilege say that it encouraged desertions and illegal exits. Some people also criticized its unjust character in that it benefitted and offered entitlements to people who were not escaping war, genocide or a natural disaster. They forget, among these arguments, that discouragement also deserves to be taken into account and computed in any formula that tries to decipher the massive flight that affects a nation.

A similar error has been committed by agencies such as the FAO, UNHCR or ECLAC, all of which specialize in measuring parameters such as the number of daily calories ingested, the effect of climate change on human displacements, or the percentage decrease in a nation’s GDP. Their reports and statements never evaluate the energy that accumulates under frustration, the weight of disappointment or the impotence reflected in every migration.

When more than three generations of individuals have lived under a political and economic system that does not evolve or progress, there is a conviction among them that this situation is eternal and immutable. They no longer see any horizon and the idea that nothing can be done to change the status quo becomes rooted in their minds. By now, many of those born in Cuba after January 1959 have grown up with the conviction that everything had already been done by others who preceded them.

That explains why a young man who had recently slept under a roof in Havana, who had access to a limited but adequate amount of food through the rationed market and who spent his long free hours on a park bench, launched himself into the sea on a raft, at the mercy of the winds and sharks. The lack of prospects is also behind the large number of migrants from the island, in recent years, who have ended up in the hands of human traffickers in Colombia, Panama or Mexico.

Washington not only cut an escape path, but the White House’s decision ended up deepening the depression that comes from the chronic absence of dreams that characterizes our country. The Cuban Adjustment Act, enacted in 1966, is still in effect for those who can prove they are politically persecuted, but the most widespread feeling among potential migrants is that they have lost a last chance to reach a future.

However, this undermining of illusion has little chance of being transformed into rebellion. The theory of the social pressure cooker and the idea that Obama closed the escape valve so that the fire of internal austerity and repression will make it explode is a nice metaphor; but it misses several key ingredients, among them the resignation that overcomes individuals subjected to realities that appear unchangeable.

The belief that nothing can be done and nothing will change continues to be the principle stimulus, in these areas, to lift one’s anchor and depart for any other corner of the planet. The pot will not explode with a sea of people in the streets bringing down Raul Castro’s government while singing hymns on that dreamed of “D-Day” that so many are tired of waiting for.

Those who believe that the closing of a one door to emigration will act like the snap of the fingers to awaken a society whose civic conscience is hypnotized are mistaken. The cancellation of this policy of benefits in the United States is not enough to create citizens here at home.

A new bureaucratic barrier is a small thing to those who believe that they have reached their own glass ceiling and that in their homeland they have nothing left to do. This quiet conviction will never appear in tables, bar charts or schemes with which specialists will explain the causes of exodus and displacement. But ignorance of it means the specialists will never understand such a prolonged escape.

Far from the reports and statistics that everyone wants to explain, hopelessness will take Cuban migrants to other places, re-orient their route to new destinations. In distant latitudes, communities will flourish that will dine on their usual dish of rice and beans and continue to say the word “chico” before many of their phrases. They will be the ones who will let drop small tear when they see on a map that long and narrow land where they had their roots, but in which they could never bear fruit.


Editorial Note: This text was published this Sunday, February 12 in the newspaper El País.