Things are not going to change overnight

"Things are not going to change overnight" / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez
Posted on December 20, 2014

14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Havana, 20 December 2014 — "Now when
they lift the blockade …" a student says jokingly to his friends sitting
in Mella Park at the University of Havana. His sentence ends mentioning
some a problem that has been solved, supposedly, by the foreseeable end
to the US embargo on Cuba. The group laughs and continues talking about
the next party of the Law School or the salary a computer engineer earns
at a company like Google.

Sitting on a bench to the side and eavesdropping on the conversation
doesn't feel quite right, but it is, perhaps, the only way to capture
accurately what the University feels about the latest news. Actually,
few agreed to answer questions for this report, and one group of young
people apologized with, "They've already been asking us a lot of
questions today, the foreign press has been around all day." On
presenting myself as a reporter, one of them got up to leave. So it's
impossible to get a face or a statement, even though two or three loners
are disposed – always in confidence and hurriedly – to offer their
particular vision.

Alberto, sitting on the side of the grand staircase waiting for his
classes to begin, is one. "We have to see if everything is not just
words, but I'd give it a greater than 50 percent chance that things are
going to go well." He is still wary, however, both of the changes to
come and of my identify, so he doesn't even want to say what department
he's in.

A recently graduated professor is less concise. "Everyone's talking now
about the approaches [between the governments]." And this seems to be
true, because near us three or four students are talking about it. She
confesses, "I believe that the reestablishment of relations is more
important than the return of the prisoners. At the end of the day, it's
what was expected. And of course it has much more influence on what will
happen from now on." She is also more positive than pessimistic about
the future.

Beyond University Hill, toward one end of the city, is the José Antonio
Echeverría Polytechnic Institute (CUJAE), the university for engineers.
Its students were less timid about offering their opinions for this
report, and in general were much more excited about the important
statements of Wednesday.

The first response of three of them, Telecommunications Engineering
students, about what to expect from the Cuba-US rapprochement, touched
on the improvement in connectivity. "Imagine, in our career," they
commented. "We hope that very soon we have more opportunities to access
the Internet and that there will be more advances in this. Even the
professors have talked about everything it [the announcement] could
mean. It's going to be good."

In the faculty of Civil Engineering, a young professor at the Hydraulic
Research Center (CIH) says he also has faith. "When I got the news via
SMS, before the announcement midday on Wednesday, I did not want to
believe it. And Obama's speech… it didn't match the summaries on Telesur
and I heard it again that night. I thought the translation was bad, but
it's true. It's wonderful."

Referring to the perspectives of his specialty in this new environment,
he notes that, "The rapprochement could facilitate our use of the CIH
equipment, which is in a pretty bad state. Right now, for example, we
can't test with the wave simulator." However, the interviewee said that
"things are not going to change overnight."

A little more than two days ago the nation suffered a political shakeup,
and Friday was the last day of classes for the year for many university
students, who start their Christmas vacations next week. The year 2015
is a great unknown for some; but unlike other times the answer, whatever
it is, seems to be really close. In a few words: the university students
don't know what to expect, but they are filled with expectations.

Source: "Things are not going to change overnight" / 14ymedio, Victor
Ariel Gonzalez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/things-are-not-going-to-change-overnight-14ymedio-victor-ariel-gonzalez/