14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 28 February 2018 — Daybreak and the morning is different. An agitation has been running through the neighborhood since the previous afternoon, when the neighbors spotted a potato truck while it was unloading at the market on the corner. The arrival of the product caused early risings, fights and even the resale of dozens of pounds in the surrounding area.
A certain aroma of fried potato has been wafting through the air for hours and in the hallways people are exchanging ways of preparing the food “using little oil” or “so that it lasts longer.” All life seems to revolve around a tuber that for months has disappeared from the state market stalls, where now sales are limited to just five pounds per person.
One wonders if such an excitement would have been generated on the island if the first official date for the departure of Raul Castro from the presidency had been adhered to. What if he had finished his term on February 24? Would people be talking about the issue as much as they are talking today about the arrival of the potato?
Probably not. The lack of enthusiasm for an event that analysts are calling the most important historical milestone of the last decades on this Island, the “change of an era,” or the end of the reign of the surname Castro, seems to have many reasons.
There is a widespread opinion that nothing is going to change in the country, no matter who takes the helm. Passions around this succession have also cooled in part because the wait has been too long. For some it has been decades, or their whole lives, and fatigue has finally caught up with them.
Citizens share the perception that “no matter what happens up there” they will not be the ultimate beneficiaries. However, the fundamental disinterest arises from the lack of surprises in a process organized to ensure that nothing changes.
Thin slices of potato in a frying pan can have more unforeseen results than a new face for the Cuban president. There is more mystery and excitement in the arrival in the neighborhood of a truck loaded with a product that nobody has seen for months, than in the boring political game of replacing one name with another but keeping the system unchanged.
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