The Stampede Continues

The Stampede Continues / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on November 22, 2015

Rebeca Monzo, 20 November 2015 — One year after initiating
conversations to reestablish relations with the U.S., the Cuban
Government continues its immobile posture, without taking a step forward.

The raised expectations, with which the immense majority of the Cuban
population gave itself illusions, have stagnated, and the stampede of
Cubans, most of them young, continues making news in all the foreign
newspapers.

A new Mariel Boatlift, but this time by land, is happening. So far this
year, the alarming number of national emigrants by different routes and
countries, with Miami the final destination, has risen to 43,169,
surpassing the massive emigration of 1994.

The loss of faith in the Cuban Government and the lack of those
so-awaited changes have caused a large part of the Cuban people to opt
for escape, in search of a better future for them and their families, in
other latitudes. Even people who have the privilege of working in
successful private establishments, like some private restaurants,
realized that the options of expanding and becoming independent, and
offering a better education to their children, were each time more
unreachable.

Others, still clinging to what they call "change," for lack of knowledge
— for example, being able to travel, buy a car or an apartment, or sell
their house — ignore that these so-called changes are nothing more than
the return of some rights usurped by their own government, for which
they don't need to be so grateful.

While a real opening isn't happening and the Government continues
clinging and demanding nothing intelligent, and continues paying wages
of poverty to professionals and preventing them from having their own
business, everything will continue the same.

This makes me think that really they don't want change that would make
their ancient governmental structure totter, or the irremediable loss of
power, which would cause the failure of their politics to be discovered.

As long as the higher-ups don't have the courage to renounce and admit
their own errors, and continue to entrench themselves behind demands and
absurd accusations directed at our neighbor to the north, the migratory
stampede will be unstoppable.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Source: The Stampede Continues / Rebeca Monzo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-stampede-continues-rebeca-monzo/