A Future to Wince At (Cubans) [View All]

[babylonsister]

A Future to Wince At

By ANTHONY DePALMA
Published: February 24, 2008


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Of course we understood that things are not always as they seem, and that became clear when the maid in our 133-year-old hotel came to mop up the mess caused by a leaking pipe. Hearing the lilt of Miriam’s Spanish put her at ease. After chatting for a few minutes, she poked her head into the hallway to check for supervisors and shut the door. Only then did she speak from the heart.

“Nobody says it, but everybody knows that someone new could be worse than what we have now,” she whispered. It was the kind of declaration I’ve learned to trust because it stems from neither fear nor a desire to curry favor.

Despite having plenty of motivation to demand change — the frequent shortages, the decrepit housing, the cruelty of having one currency for tourists and another with far less buying power for Cubans — she said she feared change more than she feared the status quo. Then she checked the hallway again.

Such skittishness might seem odd to Americans. After all, change seems to be on the lips of every candidate back home.

But just as Americans are debating what change means, and how to accomplish it, Cubans see change in many different ways. After Fidel’s announcement, the Communist Party newspapers and state-controlled television mockingly dismissed foreign news reports that change was suddenly in the air over Cuba. “They talk about a coming epoch of change, as if the revolution hasn’t been an epoch of change from the beginning,” Lázaro Barredo Medina, editor in chief of the party daily Granma, said in one broadcast.

Truth is, things have changed since my first trip to Cuba in 1978. The heavy presence of the Soviet Union then is a faint shadow now, reflected in blue-eyed Cubans named Yuri. There seem to be more new cars on the roads, more fast food on the street, and more buildings undergoing repair. There even seem to be more buses and fewer people waiting for them since Fidel’s younger brother and temporary replacement, Raúl, publicly demanded that something be done about the pitiful mass transit system when I was here just a year ago.

But much has not changed, or has gotten worse. More families live two or three generations in the same cramped apartments. Detention, interrogation and other troubles still descend on people who dissent in ways as small as wearing a plastic wrist band embossed with the word “cambio,” which means change. The press is still controlled, and disloyalty to the Communist Party still raises the suspicion of neighbors that can lead to the loss of a job or a house. Dissidents remain enemies of the state.


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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/weekinreview/24depalma.html?ref=world