The Thousand Ways to Conjure a New Year

The Thousand Ways to Conjure a New Year / Yoani Sanchez
Posted on January 5, 2015

Miami Herald, Yoani Sanchez, 3 January 2015 – In the afternoon they
started to assemble a doll. An old shirt, a straw hat and the dirty
pants of a neighbor who repairs cars. In the end, it had a sad face and
some straw sticking out through the eye holes. A few minutes before the
arrival of 2015, they set it on fire. Everyone laughed and danced around
the slowly-burning puppet. "We are scorching the bad that happened to us
in 2014," the principal organizer of the pyre said smugly. The flames
lasted long enough for the many curious to arrive and join the hubbub.

With buckets of water thrown from the balconies, suitcases for a walk
around the block, or a burning scarecrow, Cubans try to conjure a better
year and leave behind the setbacks of the previous one. A visa to
emigrate, prosperity in business, economic development, better housing,
love and good health, were the most requested desires. Above all, the
Island gravitated to the most incredible hopes and predictions. They
asked, and they even asked for the impossible. How many of these dreams
and illusions can come true in the coming months? Many and very few,
would be the enigmatic response.

Those who continue to place their hopes outside the Island, know that
with every day that passes it will be harder to get a visa to emigrate.
On the other hand, launching yourself on the Florida Straits continues
to be dangerous and uncertain. The fear that 2015 will see the end of
the Cuban Adjustment Act has made many rush their departure or choose
another destination. However, despite the obstacles, in the coming 12
months the exodus trend will continue, unless an unexpected and
miraculous turn of events allows Cubans to realize their personal and
professional dreams here at home.

Exhausted by the economic hardships, Cubans wait for the basic market
basket to get cheaper and the shortages to end. Throughout 2014 they saw
the price of food increase significantly, and the promises of better
supplies never materialize. Now, they hang all their hopes on the
recently announced normalization of relations between Cuba and the
United States bringing a quick improvement to their pockets and their
plates.

Self-employed business owners focus their prayers on the opening of
wholesale markets, lowering of taxes, and the ability to get bank loans.
They could be one of the sectors most benefitted by the expansion of
imports from the United States, better access to telecommunications
technology, and the increase in Americans traveling to the Island. At
midnight on 31 December, the desires of many of these small
entrepreneurs, as well, focus on the neighbor to the north.

The government itself has also established priorities. The figure of
Fidel Castro will be there for commemorations, panegyrics and yesterday.
Raul Castro will try to maintain iron political control while expanding
the pockets of economic autonomy, although in a very controlled fashion.
He will try to get the most out of relations with his old adversary, but
every step closer negates his own system. It's clear that the official
discourse is left without much to hold onto, the unraveling of the
conflict that nurtured his complaints, campaigns and slogans.

The dissent, meanwhile, is facing one of the greatest challenges of its
long-suffering trajectory. It must take advantage of every crack that
opens, finding space for its demands in some negotiations that so far
have included only the two governments, and preparing itself to move
from the heroic phase to the political phase. The search for consensus
will become vital to the survival of the critical sector. Important
steps have been taken in this direction with the identification of four
demands around which a growing and representative number of activists
have come together. All this under a repression that will not ease in
the short-term, and in a terrain still adverse to the exercise of free
association and free expression.

The youngest, those who were born during the Special Period and who have
grown up watching shows off the illegal satellite dishes and consuming
the audiovisuals now arriving in the "packets," are those with the
greatest expectations for 2015. Cosmopolitan and insatiable, they want
more, much more. They dream that this year they will finally become
internauts with access to the great World Wide Web from their own homes.
They are anxious to interact with the world without restrictions, to be
up-to-date, form associations based on their affinities, organize chats
with people at the far reaches of the planet, and participate in legal
videogame tournaments. In short, they want to behave as citizens of the
twenty-first century.

All of them have projected their hopes, some more simple, and others
truly surreal. But it remains to be seen if 2015 will be another year of
frustrations or this longed-for moment when dreams begin to be realized.

Translated from the Miami Herald

Source: The Thousand Ways to Conjure a New Year / Yoani Sanchez |
Translating Cuba -
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