The Communist Party Congress... If We Didn't Laugh...

Yoani Sanchez - Award-Winning Cuban Blogger

The Communist Party Congress... If We Didn't Laugh...
Posted: 04/15/11 09:12 PM ET

Laughter is still an effective cure for the daily trials. Thus, on this
Island, we bend our lips into a smile more for self-therapy than for
happiness. Then the tourists take our pictures and go home saying we are
a happy people, that we haven't lost our sense of humor before all the
difficulties. Ahh! The tourists and their explanations! We tour the
world with the instant of that laugh on our faces -- a laugh that
preceded a gesture of disgust -- or with the image of satisfaction that
overwhelms us on resolving, after a year's effort, a pair of graduated
lenses for a child.

Splitting our sides laughing can also be preventative medicine to avoid
disappointments to come. Perhaps for this reason, every time I ask
someone about the possible reforms likely to grow out of the Sixth
Communist Party Congress, they answer me with a giggle, an ironic
"teeheehee." Next they shrug their shoulders and come out with a phrase
such as, "Well, no one should have any illusions... and maybe they'll
authorize the purchase of houses and cars." They end their words with
another enigmatic grimace of pleasure, confusing me still more. It's
difficult to know if the majority of my compatriots today would prefer
that transformations be approved at the Party Congress, or for it to be
a fiasco to demonstrate the system's inability to reform itself.

Although expectations have faded considerably in recent months, some
part remains, especially among the most materially destitute and the
most ideologically fervent. The image of a pragmatic Raul Castro has
been replaced by that of a hesitant ruler, trapped by a situation beyond
his control. The Congress some assumed would lead to reforms, has come
too late and forfeited, with this waiting, many of the hopes it once
unleashed. Behind the enigmatic smiles of the taxi drivers, pizza
sellers, students, and even Party militants, is now concealed the
insolence of those who know how little things change, and who use silent
mockery to vaccinate themselves -- in advance -- against the frustration.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/yoani-sanchez/the-communisty-party-cong_b_849973.html