A Future to Wince At (Cubans)

[babylonsister]

A Future to Wince At

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: February 24, 2008


snip//

Of course we understood that things are not always as they seem, and that became clear when the maid in our 133-year-old hotel came to mop up the mess caused by a leaking pipe. Hearing the lilt of Miriam’s Spanish put her at ease. After chatting for a few minutes, she poked her head into the hallway to check for supervisors and shut the door. Only then did she speak from the heart.

“Nobody says it, but everybody knows that someone new could be worse than what we have now,” she whispered. It was the kind of declaration I’ve learned to trust because it stems from neither fear nor a desire to curry favor.

Despite having plenty of motivation to demand change — the frequent shortages, the decrepit housing, the cruelty of having one currency for tourists and another with far less buying power for Cubans — she said she feared change more than she feared the status quo. Then she checked the hallway again.

Such skittishness might seem odd to Americans. After all, change seems to be on the lips of every candidate back home.

But just as Americans are debating what change means, and how to accomplish it, Cubans see change in many different ways. After Fidel’s announcement, the Communist Party newspapers and state-controlled television mockingly dismissed foreign news reports that change was suddenly in the air over Cuba. “They talk about a coming epoch of change, as if the revolution hasn’t been an epoch of change from the beginning,” Lázaro Barredo Medina, editor in chief of the party daily Granma, said in one broadcast.

Truth is, things have changed since my first trip to Cuba in 1978. The heavy presence of the Soviet Union then is a faint shadow now, reflected in blue-eyed Cubans named Yuri. There seem to be more new cars on the roads, more fast food on the street, and more buildings undergoing repair. There even seem to be more buses and fewer people waiting for them since Fidel’s younger brother and temporary replacement, Raúl, publicly demanded that something be done about the pitiful mass transit system when I was here just a year ago.

But much has not changed, or has gotten worse. More families live two or three generations in the same cramped apartments. Detention, interrogation and other troubles still descend on people who dissent in ways as small as wearing a plastic wrist band embossed with the word “cambio,” which means change. The press is still controlled, and disloyalty to the Communist Party still raises the suspicion of neighbors that can lead to the loss of a job or a house. Dissidents remain enemies of the state.


more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/weekinreview/24depalma.html?ref=world

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. "Still, what most surprised us was how little Cubans clamored for drastic change"

I live in Miami, so I've seen all sides of the Cuba situation, and I think I understand why Cubans on the island are terrified of change. They're not stupid. They know that returning Cuba into being again a capitalistic haven for the rich will mean a creation of separate classes again, hunger again, illiteracy again, no access to medical care again, and everything that besotted the island before Castro arrived. It was a very very horrible life for the majority.

We may not realize it, but Cubans on the island don't live that badly. For example, if you move a poor American family living hand-to-mouth to Cuba, aside from the culture shock and the inability to speak the language, they would be far better off than they are here. Sure, you can't move a rich American or an upper middle class American to Cuba and expect the same reaction.

We who live here don't envy Cubans on the island because we imagine them suffering hunger pangs, being sad and depressed, and being lonely. None of that is true. In fact, they work less than we do, and have enough food to live (tho most assuredly not the variety we have here - although I must say that, as one who is not into toxins, I could easily dismiss 90% of what is in any of our grocery stores as non-food garbage). But I digress. Cubans on the island all read and write, they read newspapers, are more well-educated than we are and know more about current events than most Americans. They all have health care, something we cannot claim. Tho it may surprise many, Cubans on the island go to movies, play cards, have parties, have quince celebrations, get married, get divorced, have babies, go to nightclubs dancing on Saturdays, have block parties, etc. etc. etc.

To give one example of many, compared with Haiti, which is a country of squalor and blight, no streets, mud, starvation, malnutrition, and death, Cuba's people live good lives.

As I said, I live in Miami. Miami has a lot of dirty, little secrets, and I have been privy to many of them. Two of the little dirty secrets Miami never speaks up about is the number of Cubans from the island that have landed here, and have, after a few years, returned to Cuba. Going to back to Cuba is a very very difficult thing. By leaving, you have renounced all manner of things, including your home (where rent was probably $10/month), your job (with job security forever), your friends, and your prestige. But many do go back anyway, which is remarkable.

For example, today I hired a man to move some throwaway items out of my home and take them to the city dump. He told me his story. He landed here 4 years ago from Cuba, and stayed in Miami under the Cubans-only "wet-foot-dry-foot" law which encourages Cubans to come here with the promise that the U.S. Government will provide for them financially for a while (welfare). Since he arrived he's been unhappy. He says he has never worked so hard. "I work like an animal," he says. Despite working so hard, he can barely make ends meet and sometimes does not have enough to cover the basics. He and his family live day to day despite adding to his hard job as a janitor by doing little odd jobs here and there for a little bit of money here and there. Everything here, he told me, is so expensive, and here, he said, one needs things one doesn't need in Cuba. A car, for example. Then he told me his experience with buying a car. He went to the local car dealer of a famous Japanese auto maker and purchased a used car for what he thought was $11,000. A week later, he was re-reading the contract when he thought something looked wrong. They had charged him $24,000 for the car. He told me he was advised there was nothing he could do, as in this country the buyer has to be careful, not the seller. He wishes he had never left.

Second secret Miami Cubans don't divulge to anyone is the fact that Miami Cubans secretly travel to Cuba to get free health care. Why? Well, many reasons. One is because health care in this country is outrageously expensive. Second, is that many people have no insurance here. Third is that many, many Miami Cubans trust Cuban doctors on the island far more than they trust the ones here. Lastly, many Miami Cubans feel more comfortable being taken care of by Cubans on the ialand because doctors there are more, how shall I put this? Kind? Sweet? Gentle? Family-like? Warm? Caring? Spend lots and lots of time with the patient?

In any case, I can see why people on the island would be very very wary of change. Sure, they'd love to have a mall nearby and money to spend in it. However, they also know their history, and that what existed before Castro was quite bad for all but the rich and the few middle class. So, despite the embargo, despite the lack of malls, despite the lack of varieties of foods, Cubans know very well what they have and what they don't, and what will happen if their country returns to being a capitalistic servant of the U.S. Cuba is very imperfect and it's a mess because of the giant swallowing monster it has next door, but its majority live peacefully and better than the majority in Haiti, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guiana, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, most African nations, India, and I can be here for the next 30 minutes naming names of countries whose majority live much much worse than Cuba.

[babylonsister]

3. Thanks so much for your thoughtful post. We really know so little

of what goes on in Cuba, but I sure would like to.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

4. Me too. They'd be better off if geographically they were very far away from the U.S.

The fact that they're not terrifies them.

[RC]

2. Golly gee, Ya think the embargo might have something to do with this?

What's say we lift it and find out for sure.

[bemildred]

5. Yeah, I bet they don't sleep at night wishing they could have WalMarts to shop in. nt