Union of Young Communists (UJC) - Who Is For That?

Union of Young Communists (UJC): Who Is For That? / 14ymedio, Victor
Ariel Gonzalez
Posted on March 14, 2015

14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Havana, 24 February 2015 — The only
thing Damian shares with Karl Marx may be the thick beard. In everything
else, the Havana engineering student is quite different from the German
philosopher who wrote Das Kapital. And the main contrast between them is
found in their ways of thinking because for this young man who enjoys
sporting the lumberjack style – the "lumberjack" fashion is spreading
through the capital – the last thing he wants to talk about is class
struggle, historical demands or communism. "Who is for that?" he asks.

To judge by his tone, it seems few. Instead, youngsters like Damian and
his girlfriend, or the friends with whom they usually meet in places
like the Bertold Brecht café theater or the Cuban Art Factory, prefer to
talk about European football leagues while drinking beer paid for in
hard currency. Things like the 10th Congress of the Union of Young
Communists (UJC) appear nowhere in their conversations, despite the
official propaganda that has been unleashed in an intense campaign about
the event. According to the press permitted in Cuba, this "will be a
congress that looks like Cuban youth."

Adhering strictly to that maxim, for starters, a good part of the
delegates to the Congress must come from abroad, given the number of
people who are leaving Cuba. Of the almost half million who have
emigrated in the last ten years, a high percentage are young people
seeking opportunities that their country is incapable of offering them.
Damian talks about that also, his desire to leave, and about something
curious: the majority of his friends who have managed to do it used to
belong to the UJC. "It's a double standard," he says. The most radical
and exclusive leftist militants went on to live under "cruel" capitalism.

Nevertheless, the increasing emigration is a taboo subject in the
current municipal assemblies preceding the big meeting of the young
communists. According to a leader of the organization interviewed Monday
on national television, such assemblies are in their final stage and
from them must emerge a document with "the major problems raised" by
their members then to be discussed in the "grass-roots committees." Only
then would topics be chosen for taking to the final Congress, and this
via mechanisms perhaps too arbitrary, as usually happens in a country
governed by an elite that stopped being young a long time ago.

Among those pre-Congress "proposals," the leader said, "the
transformations themselves of the organization" have prominence.
Although there are also "recreation as a necessity," and the ever
greater challenges that globalized cultural consumption poses for
"proper" values; or the search for fun spaces whose availability in Cuba
now depends only on how much money – that beast that communism tried to
eradicate with time – the customers are able to offer.

It is also said that other subjects from the official list will be youth
employment and opportunities for study. This Congress will be carried
out in a context in which the private sector is gaining appeal in the
face of the previously omnipresent State and where university courses
are of little use in earning a decent wage. The "updating of the
economic model" has not prevented the phenomenon of labor migration from
skilled positions to others of lower skill but greater remuneration.

One could not miss, among the "proposals made" that the communist leader
mentioned, the "responsibility of the youth with respect to the
continuity of the Revolution." Something logical coming from one who
defines himself as the "vanguard" of young Cubans and whose main
function is indoctrination. "The UJC not only has the responsibility for
the revolutionary and communist formation of new generations, but also
(…) that the organization that represents them, directs them, guides
them, and leads them towards each one of the transformations of our
society," said the interviewee in the morning report.

Accused of being elitist for assuming the right to speak on behalf of
the broad spectrum of young society, the Union is demonstrating a lack
of a monolithic nature that contrasts with the discourse of assured
historical continuity. Rarely do ordinary Cubans hear on official
television an expression of lack of trust in an institution that used to
be sacred. This is the reason that the organization's directors
themselves are considering working more closely with the "youth
universe," a classification with which they usually refer to non-members.

The most novel feature about this Congress is the new landscape that
emerged after December 17 and the consequent view of rapprochement with
the United States, the preferred geographic destination of youth who,
like the unbeliever Damian, pursue the dream of prospering outside of Cuba.

Belonging to the UJC is no longer a guarantee to access the state
meritocracy. Even the most popular singers, even if they keep a prudent
distance from the open political opposition, have never carried
communist youth membership cards. What icons or deals does the UJC have
to offer?

Traditionally, to be part of the organization meant an advantage for
those who aspired to good recommendations in their records, obligatory
for a university career or a job, the guarantee of belonging to a more
favored caste. Today, with young Cubans competing to see who has the
best cell phone, it is no longer like that. Without having been
officially recognized, the principal enemies today of the Union of Young
Communists are political apathy, the loss of its significance and its
function as a social placeholder.

The tie to the UJC has turned into a stigma and even a cause of ridicule
among youth. Young people often call its members "militontos"
(member-idiots) in their private conversations. In a society where
intransigence stopped being a virtue and everyone resorts to illegality
in order to live, the role of the "correct" has lost too much impact and
is even satirized by official media. "Who is for that?" Damian, who
definitely "is not for that," repeats over and over.

Translated by MLK

Source: Union of Young Communists (UJC): Who Is For That? / 14ymedio,
Victor Ariel Gonzalez | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/union-of-young-communists-ujc-who-is-for-that-14ymedio-victor-ariel-gonzalez/