Cuba: Things happen and don’t

By Aurelio Pedroso

Little over seven years ago, when an ordinary citizen tried to reach the end of that monumental work of engineering that is the cobblestone road leading to the keys north of Villa Clara, he would be halted at a checkpoint of the Border Guard Troops of the Ministry of the Interior, where he would be turned back, unless the curious traveler, swimmer or fisherman could produce a permit acquired from a tourist organization called Rumbos, the Spanish word for “destination.”

And the citizen’s destination was precisely what concerned the border guards, who, by the way, treated everyone as “comrade.” “Matter of fact, a lot of people are leaving from these parts for Miami, comrade. Sometimes, 15 people come through, saying they’re going to celebrate a birthday and only two return.”

The Border Guard checkpoint is no longer there, but the illegal departures continue, though in lesser volume, through any point in the island’s geography, even on the southern coast. The travelers are encouraged by that exclusive and perfidious law that gives legality to Cubans if they can place only one foot on U.S. territory. The other foot may have been swallowed by a shark or a barracuda but the healthy foot is absolutely legal. “It matters,” as the fashionable phrase puts it.

We Cubans – and I say this without much chauvinism – have been blessed with the ability to go from the ridiculous to the sublime under any political umbrella, religious or commercial belief, whatever. For better or for worse. Heck, for a lot worse, on occasion.

Right now, on the first yards of the roadway to the aforementioned keys – which was awarded the famed Prince of Alcántara Award by the King of Spain from about 80 contestants – there are no guards in camouflage uniform but a couple of policemen and clerks who collect a toll (in freely convertible pesos) so you may visit some of the best beaches in the world, with some 70 walkways that protect the flora and fauna.

The word “comrade” is practically no longer used; it has been replaced by “sir.” From comrade to sir. How nice. It was a singular change that began when, in the late 1970s, the first tourists began to arrive and we Cubans, separated by something a lot more dramatic than 90 nautical miles, began to see each other’s faces.

I’m not trying to philosophize because I don’t like to, and philosophy gave me a headache in college (so did the political economy of socialism or capitalism, which was as much fun as climbing on the roller-coaster in the old Coney Island on Marianao Beach and ending up so dizzy you didn’t know which way to take home) but my theory is that some changes are dictated by laws or resolutions and others by customs as legitimate as laws (or more so) that emanate from everyday life and time. Something like “the people’s road,” in Roman law.

Returning to the topic, or rather, the cobblestone road, when our compatriots in the tourist sector heard that we, too, would have access to the hotels, many of them wailed silently because they foresaw a disaster. It was a chambermaid at the Meliá las Dunas, on Santa María Key, who told me to my face that they had feared a catastrophe but later had to revise their thinking. “It was the Cubans who saved our jobs this season,” she said.

That’s what happened this past summer, and I include Varadero, whose ballyhooed beach (which is badly in need of an injection of sand) is not even a shadow of these beaches on the northern keys.

Cubans from everywhere, carrying convertible pesos, a currency that is not used to pay their wages and comes from the most varied sources (dollar remittances from Miami, euros from Europe, rubles from St. Petersburg, pounds sterling from Holmes’ homeland), have been protagonists of the “boom” and I hope someday the Ministry of Tourism publishes figures about what it all meant.

The official currency exchange offices should do the same, because there are people here – many of them farmers or self-employed entrepreneurs – who buy convertible pesos and take their entire families to five-star hotels. One of the pioneers was the so-called King of Garlic, a farmer from Havana province who took his family to the Meliá Cohiba, and the Spanish manager of that hotel applied the policy of privacy so that no other guests would go looking for “the King.”

Let me make an aside to talk about the people who can’t get convertible pesos, not to vacation but to buy a liter of sunflower or soy oil. There’s a lot of these people and they will benefit if this country adopts a single currency that will occupy the place it deserves in the international currency scheme. And let’s hope that new breezes in the economy will be for good and not for evil.

To that end, the island will have to adopt – as has been said but not pictured very clearly – structural changes, other ways to see the future. A more open socialism, more modern, more practical, more participative. About communism, forget it. That’s science fiction, pure utopia, the Coney Island roller-coaster out of kilter and with defective brakes.

That – and not another invention of “same-with-same,” as we say in vernacular Cuban – is what people are asking for and saying outright, even in places as inadequate as a bus stop or the toilet in a second-rate bar.

Two years ago, we were asked to expose our opinions in the open. Opinions ranged from A to Z. Today, we’re back in the same place. But today’s Cubans are not the same as 10 years ago. Regardless of professional, cultural or political level, they make assessments and proposals that cover conceptual topics about society, politics and the economy using arguments that are both practical and current.

It is wise for rulers to listen to their people. One, three, or five very enlightened statesmen should not underestimate the capacity for thought of an entire people, much less tell them that the wrong ones are not part of the cupola of power.

Cuba has begun to change. And if it doesn’t move more boldly, it will sentence itself to death in the style of Chacumbele. [*] It is changing (not the way many would like) and here are two well-defined sides: a return to capitalism, or a move toward a better socialism whose design belongs not to a single person but to each nation with its own characteristics.

Another discussion has begun in the barrios and farm communities. In my neighborhood (which, I later learned, is no exception) we found two trends. One, an extremely conservative group, whose speeches no longer have any sense, and another, a group whose young and not-so-young members demand new horizons.

Not long ago, a colleague asked an 18-year-old boy what he would like for the island, in the immediate future. The young man answered that he wanted “socialism with swing.” In a word, a renovation.

The cobblestone road to the Santa María keys was not an anecdote but as a metaphor, ladies and gentlemen, male comrades and female comrades …

Aurelio Pedroso, a Cuban journalist, is a member of the Progreso Weekly team.

[*] The story goes that Chacumbele was a womanizer who lived in Havana in the early 20th Century. A woman fell madly in love with him and became extremely jealous. One day, she followed him through the streets of Havana, found him with another woman and proceeded to carve him up with a knife. A song written about the incident carried the line “…he killed himself, like Chacumbele,” implying that sometimes a person meets his death by his own actions.