The Pioneers Are Retiring

The Pioneers Are Retiring / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez
Posted on October 8, 2015

Nearly half a century later, children who begin studies in Cuban schools
are forced to repeat the anachronistic slogan: "Pioneers for Communism,
we will be like Che!"

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 8 October 2015 — The ceremony is
solemn. The national anthem echoes from the loudspeakers and an adult
with a serious face ties the blue scarf around the student's neck.
Little has changed since my childhood, when that initiation turned us
into members of the youngest mass organization in Cuba. A piece of cloth
and a slogan sealed the commitment: "Pioneers for Communism, we will be
like Che!"

These days the initiators of the Cuban Pioneers Union, renamed as the
José Martí Pioneers Organization (OPJM) in 1977, are applying for
retirement at their workplaces. They no longer have that glimmer of hope
one saw in their eyes long ago, nor do they even speak about
"communism," a concept that the Party in power itself has forgotten to
mention in the Guidelines issued by its last Congress.

Meanwhile, Ernesto Guevara, who inspired the motto of the Pioneer
organization now celebrating its 47th anniversary, has become the face
on T-shirts, paintings and ashtrays sold to tourists. In the midst of a
political scenario where the Cuban Government serves as a mediator for
peace between the Colombian guerrillas, Guevara's call to create "two,
three, many Vietnams" sounds like the advice of a madman eager for the
Apocalypse and dreams of the end days.

Those enthusiasts who inaugurated the OPJM, today sneer at the Pioneer
salute that obliges the fingers of the right hand to join together
"demanding the indissoluble union of the peoples of the five
continents." The military gesture must be performed with the elbow at a
90 degree angle to ratify that "collective interests are put above the
personal." This, in these times of "every man for himself," driven by
the economic shock therapy decreed by the Government itself.

In this time of makeovers, where Cuban television broadcasts homilies
and speeches by American officials, it is surprising that they have not
eliminated this purely ideological organization that absorbs Cuban
children. In the midst of so many daily priorities, we parents have also
strongly demanded that our children not be soldiers of a political
experiment from such a young age.

The OPJM also brings with it decades remote from reality. Like in 1991,
when in the midst of the collapse of the Special Period, the first
Pioneer Congress was held under the slogan, "We are happy here." People
still had the energy to mock the phrase and there are those who insist
it was painted along the outer wall of Colon Cemetery in Havana. An
awkward joke, but so was, and is, the pioneer movement.

And the mockery hasn't ended. In the room of a friend from elementary
school there is a fading photo of his Pioneer initiation day. It is
black and white, although time has given it a golden tone that makes it
more unreal and distant. "That was a time when I could not see," jokes
the forty-something.

He alludes sarcastically to the popular joke of a boy who comes to
school and tells his teacher that his pet cat just gave birth to ten
kittens. A few days later the concerned teacher asks about the health of
the litter and receives the unusual response, "Five of the kittens
opened their eyes, and the rest remain communists," said the boy
sharply. "I was like that, I didn't see what was in front of my nose,"
my playful colleague explains. Now, he has a look that scrutinizes
everything, tacitly accepting nothing.

Nearly half a century after the creation of the OPJM, children who begin
their studies in Cuban schools are forced to repeat its anachronistic
slogan. The mothers who sheltered them in their wombs also shouted it,
and even their grandparents did, with their neck veins swollen, full of
conviction that Communism would arrive any minute now.

The piece of cloth that on this morning of 8 October is tied around the
necks of thousands of Cuban children still has the shape of an isosceles
triangle in which the vertices mean "study, work and fight for the
conquests of the Revolution." The ritual, which has become routine,
keeps intact its burden of ideology and imposition. It is the gesture of
the winners that marks the children of the vanquished, the hot iron
stamping conqueror on the offspring of the conquered.

Source: The Pioneers Are Retiring / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez |
Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-pioneers-are-retiring-14ymedio-yoani-sanchez/