Should the U.S. raise a fist or offer a hand to Cuba?

Should the U.S. raise a fist or offer a hand to Cuba? / Yoani Sánchez
Yoani Sánchez

Havana, Cuba (CNN) — In the '90s a certain joke became very popular in
the streets and homes of Cuba. It began with Pepito — the mischievous
boy of our national humor — and told how his teacher, brandishing a
photo of the U.S. president, launches into a harsh diatribe against him.

"The man you see here is the cause of all our problems, he has plunged
this island into shortages and destroyed our productivity, he is
responsible for the lack of food and the collapse of public transport,"
the teacher says.
After these fierce accusations the teacher points to the face in the
photo and asks her most wayward student, "Do you know who this is?"
Smiling, Pepito replies, "Oh yes, … I know him, it's just that without
his beard I didn't recognize him."

The joke reflects, to a large measure, the polarization of national
opinion with regard to our economic difficulties and the restrictions on
citizens' rights that characterize the current Cuban system. While the
official discourse points to the United States as the source of our
greatest problems, many others see the Plaza of the Revolution itself as
the root of all the failures of the last 53 years.

True or not, the reality is that each one of the 11 administrations that
have passed through the White House since 1959 has influenced the course
of this island, sometimes directly, other times as a pillar of support
for the ideological propaganda of Fidel Castro's government (and now
that of his younger brother Raúl).

Hence the growing expectations that circulate through the largest of the
Antilles every time elections come around to decide who will sit in the
Oval Office. Cuban politics depends so greatly on what happens in the
ballot boxes on the other side of the Florida Straits — and some share
the view that we have never been so dependent on our neighbor to the north.

Cuban diplomacy seems more comfortable contradicting America than
seeking to solve the problems between the nations, which is why many
analysts agree it would be easier for Raúl Castro to cope with an
aggressive policy from Uncle Sam than with the more pragmatic approach
of Barack Obama.

Obama's easing of the rules on family remittances, reestablishing
academic travel, and increasing cultural exchanges add up to an unwieldy
formula difficult for the Castro regime's rhetoric to manage. But the
regime has also tried to wring economic and political advantages from
these gestures from Washington.

The real question in this dispute is which approach would more greatly
affect democratization in Cuba — to display a fist? Or to offer a hand?
To recognize the legitimacy of the government on the island? Or to
continue to treat it as a kidnapper holding power over 11 million hostages?

When the Democratic party, led by Barack Obama, came to the White House
in January 2009, our official press was faced with a dilemma. On the one
hand the newly elected president's youth and his African descent made
him immediately popular with Cubans, and it was not uncommon to find
people walking the streets wearing a shirt or hat displaying the face of
the former senator from Illinois. It was the first time in decades that
some compatriots dared to publicly wear a picture of the "enemy" (the
U.S. president) himself.

For a population that saw the top leaders of our own government
approaching or passing 80, the image of a cheerful, limber, smiling
Obama was more consistent with the myth of the Revolutionary than were
the old men in olive green standing behind the national microphones.

Obama's magnetism also captivated many here as well, and disappointed,
of course, those who hoped for a heavier hand toward the gerontocracy in
Havana.

Farewell socialism … hello to pragmatism

Beyond the political issues, the measures undertaken by the Obama
administration were felt quickly in many Cuban families, particularly in
their economy and relations with their exiled relatives in America.

With the increased cash from remittances, the small businesses that
emerged from Raul Castro's reforms were able to use the money coming
from the north for start-up capital and to position themselves.
Meanwhile, thousands of Cuban-Americans arrived at José Martí airport
every week loaded with packages, medicine and clothes to support their
relatives on the island.

Those who see the Cuban situation as a pressure cooker that needs just a
little more heat to explode feel defrauded by these "concessions" to
Havana from the Democratic government. They are the same people who
suggest that a hard line — belligerence on the diplomatic scene and
economic suffocation — would deliver better results.

Sadly, however, the guinea pigs required to test the efficacy of such an
experiment would be Cubans on the island, physically and socially
wasting away until some point at which our civic consciousness would
supposedly "wake up." As if there are not enough historical examples to
show that totalitarian regimes become stronger as their economic crises
deepen and international opinion turns against them.

No wonder Mitt Romney is a much talked about figure in the official
Cuban press. His strong confrontational positions feed the
anti-imperialism discourse like fuel to a fire. The Republican candidate
has been the focus of numerous articles in the official organ of the
Communist Party, the newspaper Granma. His photos and caricatures appear
in this same daily that was stymied when trying to physically mock
Obama. Given the high rate of mixed marriages among Cubans, it's quite
sensitive to enlarge the ears and fatten the lips of the U.S. president
without it reading as racist ridicule.

If, in the eighties, the media's political humor was honed in the
wrinkled face of Ronald Reagan, and later the media had a field day with
the physique of George W. Bush, for four years it has been cautious with
the current resident of the White House. All this graphic moderation
will go by the wayside if Mitt Romney is elected as the next president
of the United States. There are those who are already laughing over the
possible jokes to come.

But whoever scores the electoral victory will find Cuba in a state of
change. The reforms carried out by Raúl Castro lack the speed and depth
most people desire, but are heading in the irreversible direction of
economic opening. Havana is full of private cafés and restaurants, we
can now buy and sell homes, and Cubans are even managing to sell the
cars given to them during the era of Soviet subsidies in exchange for
political loyalty. The timid changes driven by the General President are
threatening to damage the fundamental pillars of Fidel Castro's command.
Volunteerism at any cost, coarse egalitarianism, active adventures
abroad, and a country kept in a state of constant tension by the latest
economic or political campaign appear to be gradually fading into things
of the past.

On the other hand, citizens themselves have begun to experience the most
definitive of transformations, that which occurs within. Public
criticism is on the rise, although it has not yet found ways to be heard
in all its diversity, but every day the fear of police reprisals diminishes.

The official media have unquestionably lost a monopoly on the flow of
information and thanks to illegal satellite dishes Florida television
now comes to Cuba. Alternative news networks circulate documentaries,
films, and articles from independent journalists and bloggers. It's as
if the enormous ocean liner of Revolutionary censorship was taking on
water through every porthole.

Young people are finally pushing to have Internet access, while the
retired complain about their miserable pensions and almost everyone
disagrees with the travel restrictions that prevent our leaving and
returning to our own country. In short, the illusion of unanimity has
fallen to pieces in Raúl Castro's hands.

To this internal scenario, the result of the American elections could be
a catalyst or obstacle for changes, but it is no longer the most
important factor to consider. Although the billboards lining the streets
continue to paint the United States as Goliath wanting to crush little
David who represents our island, for an increasing number of people the
metaphor doesn't play out that way. They know that in our case the
abusive giant is a government that tries to control the smallest aspects
of our national life, while his opponent is a people who, bit by bit, is
becoming more conscious of its real stature.

CNN Editor's note: This is the fifth in a series of dispatches exploring
how the U.S. election is seen in cities around the world. Yoani Sánchez
is the Havana-based author of the blog Generation Y, which is translated
by volunteers into 20 languages, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace
Prize. This article was translated by Mary Jo Porter.

10 July 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/?p=19838