Should the U.S. raise a fist or offer a hand to Cuba?
updated 1:48 PM EDT, Tue July 10, 2012
Yoani Sanchez says every U.S.
administration that has passed through the White House since 1959 has
influenced the course of Cuba.
HIDE CAPTION
Election 2012: Postcard from Havana
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- While Castro regime blames U.S. for Cuba's ills, many Cubans blame regime
- Sanchez: Cuban politics depends greatly on U.S. presidential elections
- Sanchez: Whoever wins the race to the White House will find Cuba in a state of change
Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series of dispatches exploring how the U.S. election is seen in cities around the world. Yoani Sánchez is the Havana-based author of the blog Generation Y,
which is translated by volunteers into 20 languages, and was nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize. This article was translated by Mary Jo
Porter.
Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- In the '90s a certain joke
became very popular in the streets and homes of Cuba. It began with
Pepito -- the mischievous boy of our national humor -- and told how his
teacher, brandishing a photo of the U.S. president, launches into a
harsh diatribe against him.
"The man you see here is
the cause of all our problems, he has plunged this island into shortages
and destroyed our productivity, he is responsible for the lack of food
and the collapse of public transport," the teacher says.
Nobel prize nominee Yoani Sanchez
After these fierce
accusations the teacher points to the face in the photo and asks her
most wayward student, "Do you know who this is?" Smiling, Pepito
replies, "Oh yes, ... I know him, it's just that without his beard I
didn't recognize him."
The joke reflects, to a
large measure, the polarization of national opinion with regard to our
economic difficulties and the restrictions on citizens' rights that
characterize the current Cuban system. While the official discourse
points to the United States as the source of our greatest problems, many
others see the Plaza of the Revolution itself as the root of all the
failures of the last 53 years.
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True or not, the reality
is that each one of the 11 administrations that have passed through the
White House since 1959 has influenced the course of this island,
sometimes directly, other times as a pillar of support for the
ideological propaganda of Fidel Castro's government (and now that of his younger brother Raúl).
Hence the growing
expectations that circulate through the largest of the Antilles every
time elections come around to decide who will sit in the Oval Office.
Cuban politics depends so greatly on what happens in the ballot boxes on
the other side of the Florida Straits -- and some share the view that
we have never been so dependent on our neighbor to the north.
Cuban diplomacy seems
more comfortable contradicting America than seeking to solve the
problems between the nations, which is why many analysts agree it would
be easier for Raúl Castro to cope with an aggressive policy from Uncle Sam than with the more pragmatic approach of Barack Obama.
Obama's easing of the
rules on family remittances, reestablishing academic travel, and
increasing cultural exchanges add up to an unwieldy formula difficult
for the Castro regime's rhetoric to manage. But the regime has also
tried to wring economic and political advantages from these gestures
from Washington.
The real question in
this dispute is which approach would more greatly affect democratization
in Cuba -- to display a fist? Or to offer a hand? To recognize the
legitimacy of the government on the island? Or to continue to treat it
as a kidnapper holding power over 11 million hostages?
When the Democratic
party, led by Barack Obama, came to the White House in January 2009, our
official press was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand the newly
elected president's youth and his African descent made him immediately
popular with Cubans, and it was not uncommon to find people walking the
streets wearing a shirt or hat displaying the face of the former senator
from Illinois. It was the first time in decades that some compatriots
dared to publicly wear a picture of the "enemy" (the U.S. president)
himself.
For a population that
saw the top leaders of our own government approaching or passing 80, the
image of a cheerful, limber, smiling Obama was more consistent with the
myth of the Revolutionary than were the old men in olive green standing
behind the national microphones.
Obama's magnetism
also captivated many here as well, and disappointed, of course, those
who hoped for a heavier hand toward the gerontocracy in Havana.
Farewell socialism ... hello to pragmatism
Beyond the political
issues, the measures undertaken by the Obama administration were felt
quickly in many Cuban families, particularly in their economy and
relations with their exiled relatives in America.
With the increased cash
from remittances, the small businesses that emerged from Raul Castro's
reforms were able to use the money coming from the north for start-up
capital and to position themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of
Cuban-Americans arrived at José Martí airport every week loaded with
packages, medicine and clothes to support their relatives on the island.
Those who see the Cuban
situation as a pressure cooker that needs just a little more heat to
explode feel defrauded by these "concessions" to Havana from the
Democratic government. They are the same people who suggest that a hard
line -- belligerence on the diplomatic scene and economic suffocation --
would deliver better results.
Sadly, however, the
guinea pigs required to test the efficacy of such an experiment would be
Cubans on the island, physically and socially wasting away until some
point at which our civic consciousness would supposedly "wake up." As if
there are not enough historical examples to show that totalitarian
regimes become stronger as their economic crises deepen and
international opinion turns against them.
No wonder Mitt Romney is a much talked about figure
in the official Cuban press. His strong confrontational positions feed
the anti-imperialism discourse like fuel to a fire. The Republican
candidate has been the focus of numerous articles in the official organ
of the Communist Party, the newspaper Granma. His photos and caricatures
appear in this same daily that was stymied when trying to physically
mock Obama. Given the high rate of mixed marriages among Cubans, it's
quite sensitive to enlarge the ears and fatten the lips of the U.S.
president without it reading as racist ridicule.
If, in the eighties, the
media's political humor was honed in the wrinkled face of Ronald
Reagan, and later the media had a field day with the physique of George
W. Bush, for four years it has been cautious with the current resident
of the White House. All this graphic moderation will go by the wayside
if Mitt Romney is elected as the next president of the United States.
There are those who are already laughing over the possible jokes to
come.
But whoever scores the
electoral victory will find Cuba in a state of change. The reforms
carried out by Raúl Castro lack the speed and depth most people desire,
but are heading in the irreversible direction of economic opening.
Havana is full of private cafés and restaurants, we can now buy and sell
homes, and Cubans are even managing to sell the cars given to them
during the era of Soviet subsidies in exchange for political loyalty.
The timid changes driven by the General President are threatening to
damage the fundamental pillars of Fidel Castro's command. Volunteerism
at any cost, coarse egalitarianism, active adventures abroad, and a
country kept in a state of constant tension by the latest economic or
political campaign appear to be gradually fading into things of the
past.
On the other hand,
citizens themselves have begun to experience the most definitive of
transformations, that which occurs within. Public criticism is on the
rise, although it has not yet found ways to be heard in all its
diversity, but every day the fear of police reprisals diminishes.
The official media have
unquestionably lost a monopoly on the flow of information and thanks to
illegal satellite dishes Florida television now comes to Cuba.
Alternative news networks circulate documentaries, films, and articles
from independent journalists and bloggers. It's as if the enormous ocean
liner of Revolutionary censorship was taking on water through every
porthole.
Young people are finally
pushing to have Internet access, while the retired complain about their
miserable pensions and almost everyone disagrees with the travel
restrictions that prevent our leaving and returning to our own country.
In short, the illusion of unanimity has fallen to pieces in Raúl
Castro's hands.
To this internal
scenario, the result of the American elections could be a catalyst or
obstacle for changes, but it is no longer the most important factor to
consider. Although the billboards lining the streets continue to paint
the United States as Goliath wanting to crush little David who
represents our island, for an increasing number of people the metaphor
doesn't play out that way. They know that in our case the abusive giant
is a government that tries to control the smallest aspects of our
national life, while his opponent is a people who, bit by bit, is
becoming more conscious of its real stature.
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