Cuban exile community is in crisis
By Yadira Escobar
From her blog Yadiraescobar.com
MIAMI – Swimming against the current is not only exhausting but also futile – and that’s precisely what those who haven’t accepted the fact of a socialist existence in Cuba since 1959 do.
Most of the exiles live in South Florida, where I live, and it’s impossible not to hear the continuous radical anticommunist discourse that always calls for the overthrow of the Cuban government by different methods, all of them supported by the embargo and a strategy of isolation supported by three Cuban-American senators and the worn-out policy of keeping Cuba on a list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
It is true that the Cuban government in the past supported rebel groups that sometimes were linked to kidnappings or extortion (something that the United States does today, when it backs the terrorists in Syria and Chechnia), but it is also true that Cuba today is noted for staying away from foreign conflicts and is engaged in reconciling the Colombians.
Pacifism is fashionable today, because sabotage and semi-terrorist warlike adventures were not successful in the past, and because the USAID-funded dissidents inside Cuba follow an agenda of soft and persistent subversion intended to provoked the desired “Arab spring,” which of course has not reached the island and I’m certain will never reach it.
It is not a clandestine method, but one that’s openly cynical. On the one hand, the dissidents talk about “peace, love and freedom,” but on the other they pursue bloody and antinational objectives.
Modern dissidents who leave Cuba and return after buying merchandise from the consumer society, who make a living without working might fool many, but I don’t believe that they can establish a “parallel government” under the noses of the people, who, while wishing to live better, don’t believe the tale that national salvation or anything similar will come from abroad. And, for now, the people have decided not to change their political system.
I have listened to, attentively and without prejudice, numerous voices that speak from the exile community about a radical change for Cuba, and the truth is that I find them irresponsible and insensitive.
After living outside their native country for decades and losing all connection with neighbors or relatives on the island, it is very likely that some exiles have lost their sentimental attachment to their motherland.
But while I hear passionate statements, full of the most refined bourgeois ideals, I do not see what could be called the LOVE THY NEIGHBOR attitude. I say this especially when I see how easily some exiles support an embargo against their own people or when I see their enthusiasm for a possible civil war inside Cuba.
I think that the main crisis afflicting Cuban exiles today is the fact that they never won the hearts of their own children. The quest for success drew most of their descendants to a style of living that, contrary to all claims, split the Cuban-American family.
Extreme individualism and the mercantile vision of life led children and grandchildren to distance themselves from their family nuclei to walk down a path of promises written in English and full of Anglo-Saxon customs.
Most young people are not even aware of the best features of the Cuba of old. I don’t want to mention the Batistianos and their relatives, because some groups are condemned to total alienation, lest they make a very special moral effort. Rather, I’m talking about the Cuban-Americans closest to the political center, those who speak about the 1940 Constitution, authenticism, and representative democracy.
Some of them were journalists, others were teachers or artists. In general, they think and feel like middle-class people who supported the Revolution at first and later distanced themselves from the political process, as it defined itself through socialism.
I understand that they didn’t like communism, which they saw as a threat to their lives, because in general they belonged to social classes, trade guilds or labor unions that were not interested in the general welfare but in their own well-being and that of their relatives.
Unfortunately, every revolution produces painful transformations. What happened in Cuba was a clash among Cubans, a counter-revolutionary rebel uprising, executions by firing squad, and all kinds of human suffering.
But that pain is today part of a distant past. It makes no political sense to remain rooted in rancor or disapprove of a socialism that was elected by majority, because the new generations do deserve a bit of peace and order in their lives, and that is achieved with reconciliation. Remember my motto: “Without hatred or rancor,” a solution can be found.
In Cuba today, everything is changing and transforming. Not the kind of change desired by those who want the State to collapse, but enough change to defeat pessimism and static thought.
This is the time for the oldest exiles to reflect and emerge from right-wing immobility. I’m not saying that they should abandon their rightist thinking or their trust in capitalism, but that they should understand that life changes.
It is wise and fair to keep abreast of life, because – after all – there’s room for all of us in Cuba.
NOTE: In this photograph, taken by my brother Aaron, we see Huber Matos (standing) and Carlos Alberto Montaner at a typical gathering of exiles in Miami.
