The "Other" Revolutions

[Judi Lynn]

The "Other" Revolutions
By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Apr 21, 2011 (IPS) - YES to sexual diversity! NO to transgenics! LONG LIVE @! In stark contrast to the political apathy of many of their contemporaries, some sectors of Cuban youth are radically re-writing the standard slogans, opting for active participation and fomenting "new revolutions within the Revolution."

"The anti-racist revolution, the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people) revolution and the ecological revolution are the ones that have most consistently blazed the trail, and their coming of age could be in our hands," biologist Isbel Díaz told IPS. "The word 'minorities' should have no meaning in this world, and especially in this country."

The founder and editor of El Guardabosques (The Forest Ranger), an electronic bulletin advocating tree conservation, Díaz sees in the young people around him "deep cravings for freedom in the widest sense of the word: freedom of expression, sexual and ideological freedom, freedom of movement, of action and of consumption

"The feeling of suffocation that arises from having attained high cultural and educational levels in a permanently circumscribed environment is something we all want to do away with," said Díaz, who at 35 is living proof that youth is not a matter of age but "an attitude, a state of mind."

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55343

[Peace Patriot]

1. Thanks for posting this! The changes in Cuba are a fascinating subject and one that

our chronically unreliable corpo-fascist 'news' organizations are covering as well as they've covered the Cuban Revolution for the last 50 years, the Bolivarian Revolution throughout Latin American now, the failed U.S. coup attempt in Venezuela ('02), the failed U.S. coup attempt in Bolivia ('08), the successful U.S. coup in Honduras ('09), U.S. rigging of Haiti's election ('10-'11), USAID funding of rightwing groups throughout Latin America, the corrupt, murderous, failed U.S. "war on drugs," and every other topic of importance to us and to Latin Americans.

So it is interesting to get perspectives that seem to be genuinely from inside Cuba, about the changes in Cuba. The article reveals a "generation gap" (remember that old '60s phrase?) in Cuba, with the communist elders being the "establishment" and the youth pouring their youthful rebellious energies into struggles against racism and sexism (esp. LGBT) and for the environment.

One Cuban, involved in forest ecology, says that "The feeling of suffocation that arises from having attained high cultural and educational levels in a permanently circumscribed environment is something we all want to do away with."

But the article then says: "Díaz grew up with guaranteed access to free health care and education. The conquests of his parents' generation, that spearheaded the transformations that followed the triumph of the 1959 revolution, were for him 'inherited rights.'"

I wonder if Diaz and other young Cubans realize how imperiled their access to free health care and education is, and how hellish it is when those human rights are absent and/or when people are stripped of the health care and educational opportunities they once had, by corporate profiteers, as is happening here. Cubans, more than any people in the world, are aware of the health crisis in poor countries, where many Cubans have worked to bring the benefits of Cuba's highly superior health care system to others. I wonder if they are aware of equally serious crisis in health care--and the comparable one in education--in the "first world."

And one of the REASONS that we are losing our right to health care and to education, is this phenomenon of young people "losing interest" in politics--which began, in the U.S., with the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, all within the space of five years (1963-1968). All U.S. young people could do after that is protest, quite hopelessly, against the "military-industrial complex," which assassinated all three of them in order to induce hopelessness--a horrible situation that continues to this day, with the "MIC" now having played the final act with their corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting systems, the biggest inducers of hopelessness ever.

You can experience a "feeling of suffocation that arises from having attained high cultural and educational levels in a permanently circumscribed environment" in a capitalist context as well as a communist one. That was the experience of young people in the U.S. in the 1960s-1970s--high cultural and educational levels that led straight to rebellion against the "MIC" and its horrors (Vietnam) and advocacy for world peace and social justice. The "MIC" and its rightwing operatives proceeded to attack free education (which, in the 1960s was virtually free at the college/university level, in public educational institutions, if you were poor), fought public health care for all, tooth and nail--privatized it, made it exorbitantly expensive--and are currently attacking minimum health care for the elderly.

The U.S. is now "a permanently circumscribed environment"--with "Stalinist"-like media and vote counting control. In fact, Cubans have more democracy and more rights than we do, even in an "authoritarian" communist system (albeit a Cubanized one). Their main problem seems to be that the youth are restless. But do these youths have an appreciation of HOW HARD IT WAS for Cubans to attain and protect their free, extraordinarily high quality education and health care systems, and how thoroughly these rights have been destroyed in the U.S. and are under attack everywhere in the capitalist "first world"? The U.S. capitalist system is, in truth, eating itself alive. It is eating its young. It is discarding its elderly. And it has created a predatory capitalist monster that is, literally, eating the planet.

The World Wildlife Fund gives us 50 years--at present levels of consumption, pollution and deforestation, with the U.S. the worst offender on the first two--50 years to the DEATH of the planet!

So, Cuban youth may be restless, but they may also be part of one of the few viable economic/social systems on Planet Earth--one that strongly places social values ahead of profit, and one that has strongly resisted corporatization--which is leading the human race off the cliff to the DEATH of the planet.

So I say to any Cuban youth who may be reading this: If corporatization is where you're going (and, believe me, the Corporate Rulers are intending to suborn you with their bald-faced lies about "freedom"), then you will surely lose what you consider "inherent rights" to education and health care--your children could even lose literacy itself, as many of ours have, in the corporate attack on U.S. public education; and you, in your old age, could be tossed aside, denied health care, allowed to starve, as the corporate rulers intend for our elderly poor--and when they start talking to you about how "green" they are, beware, beware, beware. You will not only lose Cuba's beautiful, pristine beaches, and real food, you will not only suffer vast pollution of air, soil and water, you will not only end up with shit jobs at shit wages in shitty corporate hotels, you may well become truly "suffocated"--lose your ideals, lose all hope--as has happened to so many people in the U.S., young and old--and you may end up contributing to the death of Planet Earth, rather than inspiring the rest of us to STOP over-consumption, END pollution, STOP clear-cutting forests and create social/economic models that WORK--that maintain BALANCE between humans and nature.