The absence of young people in the activities of Cuba’s Youth Labor Army, EJT, is noticeable
14ymedio, Natalia López Moya, Havana, 31 July 2024 — A bunk bed with a thin mattress, boots that he had to return when he was demobilized and a uniform that was not olive green were, for months, the main belongings of Abdiel, 20, who has just finished his Active Military Service (SMA) in the Youth Labor Army (EJT). In the shelters where it was previously difficult to find space, the young man barely came across “four cats” due to the mass exodus and low birth rate.
Abdiel, whose name has been changed to avoid reprisals, is part of the group of recruits who did “deferred” service, a total of 14 months from when he entered the EJT until he left to study a specialty at La Colina University in the Cuban capital. “I was lucky because although I didn’t get the degree I wanted, I was able to get one that allowed me not to have to spend the two years of Military Service,” he explains to 14ymedio.
A resident of the Plaza de la Revolución municipality and coming from a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses who do not even participate in the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Abdiel ended up on the list of those who are not trustworthy for entering military units where they are in contact with “strategic information for the nation,” as he was warned by the Military Committee when he registered for the SMA. He was placed in an EJT base in East Havana.
Abdiel ended up on the list of those who cannot be trusted to enter military units where they are in contact with “strategic information for the nation”
“I thought they were going to send me to fight the Aedes Aegypti [the mosquito that transmits dengue] or to repair the railway lines, but all I did was waste my time,” Abdiel reflects. Founded in 1973, the EJT was nourished by the Centennial Youth Column and the infamous Military Units for Production Support (Umap), where everyone from religious people and homosexuals to those considered “disaffected” to the Government ended up. From its beginnings, the Youth Labour Army was assigned to work in agriculture and construction.
Fernando Ponce, 56, a resident of Miami, remembers his time in the EJT. “It was a way of doing the service in a less difficult way, so many parents used their influence to get their children to end up in the EJT. There were also those who invented an illness, a religious faith or said they were gay so they wouldn’t have to end up in hard military training, in one of those units lost in the middle of nowhere.”
Ponce went through the EJT and now his son has just left Cuba thanks to the family reunification process, escaping just before entering the SMA. “Last year we had many hard times because he was due to enter the pre-Service in August 2023, but last year when he finished high school, he and his mother, who still lives in Havana, moved and that turned things around.”
When young people turn 16 in Cuba, they are called to enroll in the SMA, which often coincides with the end of pre-university or vocational training, in the case of those who are still enrolled in the official educational plan. Ponce’s son was finishing his 12th grade and had no plans to continue with university education, but he took the entrance exams nonetheless.
“The visa process for family reunification was already underway and he even had an appointment date at the US consulate in Havana, but he continued to behave as if none of that existed and applied for a degree in History,” the father explains. Just before taking the entrance exams, the teenager’s family moved house, neighborhood and municipality.
When young people turn 16 in Cuba they are called to enroll in the SMA, which often coincides with the end of high school.
“Several of his classmates told him that when they went to the Military Committee they asked him if he knew where he was, but the summons to register never reached his hands, so he spent about a year between one thing and another: he never sat in the classroom at the Faculty of History, nor did he have to enter Military Service because they stamped his visa and I bought him the first flight after he left the Consulate.”
Now in Miami, Ponce’s son looks back and feels that he was saved “by a hair’s breadth,” says his father. In Havana, his bunk was empty the entire time that Abdiel and the few other young men in his EJT unit were mobilized. The other many beds that also had no occupants were probably those of emigrants or Cubans who did not even come into the world nearly two decades ago due to the drop in the birth rate.
With the demographic crisis and mass exodus, Cuba has lost 18% of its population between 2022 and 2023, according to an independent study by Cuban economist and demographer Juan Carlos Albizu-Campos. “The first day I spent in the Unit there were not even ten new recruits,” Abdiel tells this newspaper. “I thought that as September progressed or October arrived more would join, but that never happened.”
At the first morning assembly with the heads of the military unit, the highest-ranking officers in charge showed their most inflexible face. “But that lasted until lunchtime,” the young man reports. “They immediately let us know that there was little food and that we could leave to eat and sleep in our houses because that would save the Revolution resources.” Quick to grasp the message, “that same day we stampeded.”
The rest of the SMA was “morning assemblies, training and harangues,” he explains. “We couldn’t go to inspect or fumigate in the anti-vectorial fight [against the Aedes Aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue fever] even once because there was no fuel to take us and the backpack fumigators were broken,” he tells 14ymedio. “We went to the unit, they saw our faces and we went home with the same smile. That’s how I lost a year of my life without doing anything.”
Quick to grasp the message, “that very day we stampeded”
The EJT troops were exhibited, during the years when Raúl Castro was Minister of the Armed Forces, as an example of administrative and productive management. In the Cuban capital, numerous agricultural markets were opened, such as those on 17th and J streets in El Vedado and Tulipán, in the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood, managed by that entity and which were displayed as the path to efficient production and trade in line with the purchasing power of the population.
But those days of glory are long gone. Most of the platforms in the EJT markets are now under private management and young people dressed in their uniforms — a beige colour that banishes any connection with war conflicts, and caps that resemble the outfits worn by Boy Scouts in the United States — are increasingly seen less often on the streets of the Island.
A friend of Abdiel, who lives in Jovellanos, Matanzas province, was not lucky enough to get a university degree program and ended up as a recruit for 24 months, spending the first year in a military unit run by the Revolutionary Armed Forces and assigned to defense, but is now with the EJT. “We have to take care of repairing the train lines but there are hardly any resources or people to do it,” he says.
“We have to take care of repairing the train lines but there are hardly any resources or people to do it”
“I’m in a shelter with other young people from Matanzas and there are also some from Mayabeque. We are a small group but the leaders have stayed in the old days and think they have an army. They stop to shout orders at us, they divide us into platoons and they have a command structure that makes it seem like there are thousands of us. It’s very ridiculous,” explains the young man on condition of anonymity.
The visits to see the family, which were spaced out in times of greatest tension, with a possible enemy invasion knocking at the door, are now “up to twice a week because what suits the bosses is that we don’t stay for lunch or dinner in the unit. Every mouth that doesn’t need to be fed is food that they sell elsewhere or take home,” he says.
However, the menu does not allow for much profit because of the small quota and the limited variety of products. “Rice that is mud, broth that looks like water and from time to time a piece of pumpkin or sweet potato,” explains the young man. “Not even the dogs in the unit eat what is put on the tray.” As an advantage over the few recruits in his hostel, “you can have seconds in the dining room if you want, but nobody is interested in that stew.”
Every now and then, recruits from various places meet at some official activity, where they are taken in civilian clothes to “make up the numbers.” Among the topics they discuss, in addition to their dreams for the day after demobilization, is the situation of the units and the lack of “arms to carry a weapon.” Meanwhile, the commanders act as if the shelters are full and the training areas packed. “Attention, soldiers!” Abdiel and the “four cats” of his camp heard them say until a few weeks ago.
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