Exiles, émigrés and the fig leaf

By Luis Sexto

Lexicographers demand it: dictionaries must define words cleanly so their meaning may come through, uncontaminated by ideology or political interests.

Because if the entry for the word “poverty” were defined in its evangelical sense, there would be no need to organize popular rebellions or become indignant over high prices or the cost of living. And “the rich” would be like the collateral expression of a luxury that only would place in evidence the moral beatitude of the poor.

Specifically speaking, “émigrés” and “exiles” are objects of distortion. In the language manipulated mainly from the United States about that conglomerate known – improperly – as the Cuban diaspora, émigré is a synonym for exile.

Any dictionary will establish a difference. Exile is the departure from one’s homeland for political reasons, i.e., an exiled person is avoiding probable punishment for his opposition or political crimes. The émigré, on the other hand, leaves his homeland to seek elsewhere an opening of an economic nature that perhaps he cannot find in his country for any reason, including an indirectly political reason.

And there is such a thing as a roving emigrant, or someone who has a spontaneous desire to go elsewhere. However, none of these carries revenge in his luggage.

Therefore, not all Cubans living abroad can be identified as “exiles.” Nor can we talk about a Cuban diaspora, a term used semantically to refer to the dispersion of people outside their territory.

But if 2 million Cubans are in various locations worldwide, 12 million Cubans live on the island. What diaspora are we talking about? How far will the language be stretched by the propaganda mongers, if not ideologists, from the antisocialist right whose air-conditioned barracks rise in Miami?

The topic keeps recurring. It is as current as the time of day on any office clock. According to National Assembly president Ricardo Alarcón, Cuba has announced a “radical and profound migratory reform.” Some exiles, who now describe themselves as historical, are trying to take advantage of the urgent and exigent solution of the migratory conflicts of thousands of people eager to leave Cuba without conditions or limits and return, even for a visit, without being called foreigners.

And some exiles also want to take advantage of the economic opening proposed by the project of modernization or renovation of the so-called centralized socialist model to move the magnetic North of the revolutionary compass to the geographic North. So far, nothing has convinced me otherwise.

Is it ethically fair to assume negative intentions in those who say they’re acting in good faith? Isn’t it politically naïve to assume supportive intentions from exiles – be they historical or hysterical, according to a recent amusing appellation – who have not renounced their essence because they have not modified either their label or attitude?

The uppermost intention of exiles is to return, to come back for what they still consider theirs. That characteristic was theorized by Spanish essayist Gregorio Marañón in an old book, lost somewhere in my house, that has current ideas such as this one: exile is escape, or a trip that from the start means that the traveler plans to return for what he has lost. The émigré, in turn, lacks that retrospective. He has lost nothing, or has nothing, and travels abroad to find something.

It is advisable for Cubans on the island and outside to know the difference between exile and emigration. No one who describes himself – in his own words or someone else’s – as part of the exile community may participate in a meeting between émigrés and the nation. The exiles are keeping their possessive return nice and warm, no matter what they say.

As long as the behavior of the exiles indicates or contains an attitude of opposition to socialism as an aspiration, and, given a choice between socialism and capitalism, they say they like the latter better, it will not be politically wise to share spaces.

To those who prefer capitalism as efficient (but essentially unfair by keeping 4 billion people worldwide below the level of poverty) and reject an imperfect socialism (but perfectible in its vocation, justice and economic legitimization) we would ask if they can in good faith engage in cooperation with their country of origin, which is trying to improve a socialism that is different from the one that failed.

Can we reconcile with each other while assuming that the exiles, by will and by description, are not interested in reconciliation to coexist but to try to conquer their “promised land”?

Apparently, they’ll have to continue to wait for the United States, the country where most of them live and the country that pays many of them, to fulfill the promise of returning their flag to them in a free Cuba.

Free, as understood by Washington and the exiles. Free, i.e., North-Americanized and lighting the major Cuban cities with the neon lights of companies owned either by the U.S. or a sector of the Cuban-Americans who, as proven, are more of the latter than the former. If nothing else, they’re the heirs of the good life enjoyed by the local bourgeoisie in pre-revolutionary Cuba.

If Cuba drifted toward capitalism, as some leftist thinkers consider inevitable, if I must confront that change, I would prefer it to be without any dependence on the United States. Is that possible?

For that reason, a reconciliation with the exiles, minor though it may be, can only benefit the most powerful sector of that community: the one with influence in the U.S. Congress, the one that promotes representatives and senators that speak Yankee-accented Spanish.

As I see it, the Cuban government and the Cuban people will have to reconciliate themselves with the émigrés. That means passing migratory rules that conciliate the nation’s interests with the desires and needs of the true émigrés. And that migratory policy will have to be established even if Washington maintains its Cuban Adjustment Act and its wet-feet-dry-feet policy, encouraging illegal travel and calling the emigrants “refugees.”

A survey published by EFE in Miami some months ago revealed that 44 percent of the respondents “supports an end of the economic blockade and that 80 percent considers it dysfunctional. About 75 percent supports the sale of medicine and food; 57 percent favors unrestricted travel and 61 percent opposes any law that restricts that possibility. This indicates that the far right is out of sync with the opinions of a majority of the population, because 58 percent favors a reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.”

With so many native Cubans expressing themselves against the confabs that are so prevalent in Miami – a First World city filled with emigrants but governed by increasingly fewer Third World exiles – there seems to be confirmation of the lexicographic and political difference between emigration and exile.

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