Will camels be withdrawn from the Havana zoo?
Will camels be withdrawn from the Havana zoo?
Friday, 05 February 2011
By Aurelio Pedroso
Violence in Egypt. The crowds demand that Hosni Mubarak stops ruling at once: thirty years are more than enough. The place is hot, a human avalanche, as history has shown, cannot easily be stopped.
Many are on the run. Diplomats begging for explanations to their ministries, not to mention protection for their residences. Tourists and archeologists scrambling for the first plane to anywhere, whether Burundi or China, where, by the way, authorities have erased Egypt from the internet.
And behold the comparison. The common error of making one thing equivalent to another. Because us, Cubans, delight in such exercise in a tribune facing seven microphones, or in the domino table where the similarities of life in an igloo or in a tobacco ranch in Vueltabajo, are being discussed.
A few compatriots, hopeful of the imminent fall of the Cuban government are summoning, with British precision, for a demonstration on the sixth at six. They employ the motto often used by the same authorities they purport to thwart by remote control: all to the square.
Some illustrious dissidents in the island have been the first to discredit such promotions, and that for a number of reasons. “20 or 20 000, they would all go to jail”, Elizardo Sánchez has declared. Some others, in direct or telephonic consultation, have deemed the initiative as not viable.
Even if there will always be agents who from Miami, Madrid or Australia could propose so peculiar a revolt, even if we squeeze our brains to work, it seems impossible to export such enterprise to the island.
When the socialist, communist or whatever block fell down, many were awaiting Cuba´s turn, as much as they do now with the Tunisia-Algiers-Mauritania-Jordan- Sudan-Yemen and Oman axis. It would be naïve to believe that Cuba is immune to a phenomenon of popular discomfort, even if authorities publicly pretend that such a possibility does not exist, when in reality the whole structure is set to prevent it.
What then? The reader may wonder. The topic is many-sided. If ever, in the future, and not now, as a couple of Facebook associates seem to dream about, the people go out on the streets, the main instigator would be the government itself by not heeding the will of the majority.
And, in my view, the problem is not political but economic; otherwise put: it´s one of economic policy. A chapter has barely begun and time, and in time the good judgment of everyone involved, will tell.
But, to compare and keep on acting Cuban, let us compare: there is a whole variety of reasons, motivations, not to mention miles, between Tahrir and Revolution Square.
The sixth at six I will tread on the streets of our city, and I will sure tell you about it, while devouring a snack in one of the many, fast-spreading private cafeterias of the capital.
