I’d like to be able to have a conversation with the Cuban-American Yadira Escobar. The photo in her blog tells me that she is young, and the information she provides about herself indicates that she emigrated when she was very little. I have read much about how Yadira would like to return to Cuba, and I have also read about what her dream Cuba is.
Yadira is a self-proclaimed lover of freedom. Neither the Marxist collectivism nor capitalist individualism agree with her idea of what Cubans want; however, she missteps in inciting our academics, university students, and specialists of all kinds to be at the ready to plan the national course.
I can assure young Yadira that there is an intellectual contemplation coming from many places and many walks of life on Cuba, but their mark cannot always be found in official channels; it needs to be sought out in alternative sites, and in many cases, it is plagued, silenced and demonized. continue reading
The desires that this young woman echoes should be permanent in the different forms of broadcast and in the spheres of thought and debate that exist or that are trying to emerge in our country; that is, not only the virtual, but the physical as well.
I don’t know what optimism that escapes my understanding makes Yadira think that nationalism can create a harmonization. According to what I see, the overdose of misdirected nationalism has been a source of social friction and has divided us into communists or anti-patriots, team-players or apathetics, the right or the left, revolutionaries or defectors, and other always antagonistic comparisons.
Nationalism is one of the tricks that Cuban government propaganda has used to try to convince everyone that all thinking contrary to what is official is unpatriotic. The fatherland is another thing; it is something intangible that goes with someone and manifests itself in each person in a different manner; it is an emotion and sometimes an aroma, and is, above all, an unbearable taxonomy.
In effect, a large percentage of the population voted for an eternal socialism. I, who see how the people vote and later see how it is justified, who knows the way in which the vote is controlled from the electoral system down to personal decisions–including intimate ones–would allow myself to doubt the sincerity of the counts and the sincerity of the voters.
I cannot decline to comment on Yadira’s vision of the March 13th ferry tragedy. She was very tiny when the terrible events occurred, but with a little information about the fateful night, no one can talk about an accident. An accident implies an involuntary action; Yadira seems to not know the survivors’ story. On the contrary, she accepts as valid the version that the Granma newspaper provided.
The drowned children did NOT fall from the boat as in the happy little simile that she uses. The boat was attacked; with powerful water jets it was flooded and sank. I leave the details of the nightmare to her investigation. Such an act cannot be classified as anything more than criminal. Since then, the decision for adults to subject minors to a dangerous journey has vanished.
To live in Cuba gives me a little more of a view of the country. People don’t escape because of the constraints of the Embargo; people escape because the ruinous economy doesn’t allow for prosperous opportunities, because in a government of 55 years, they keep talking about experimental economies.
In the sickness of the administration, the corruption and the squander, the effect of the Embargo has been minimal. I invite Yadira to see the guidelines of the economic policy laid out in the Party’s latest congress. The words embargo or blockade aren’t there. And if the motivation to abandon the country at first glance appears economical, political decisions have put us where we are.
If popular sovereignty were sacred, the labels of Cubans from Cuba or Cubans from Miami would have disappeared a long time ago; I don’t dare imagine what we might have been; but I’m sure that the Cubans that work, govern, and opinionate, and among them I picture Yadira, could have done better in the last 55 years.
And without appealing to the generous and disinterested help of any world power–we already know how interested you are and the privileges that you’ve enjoyed in the name of sovereignty–the search for democracy is a problem among Cubans.
Translated by John Daniels
15 August 2014
