Cuba: Uncommon story, uncommon struggle (II)

Based on available story and literature on Cuba, a visitor to the island must go with a certain trepidation on what to find; what condition to find the human content of the island—the state of their minds, their well-being and their sense of themselves and the world, out there, from which they have been shut […]

Based on available story and literature on Cuba, a visitor to the island must go with a certain trepidation on what to find; what condition to find the human content of the island—the state of their minds, their well-being and their sense of themselves and the world, out there, from which they have been shut away for nearly five decades. You will expect to find dejected, scandalously sorrowful people wearing long faces and generally malnourished and discontented with life. Why not? If Cuba’s ‘enemy’, the most powerful nation of the world could crush Soviet Union, great distances away and richer and greater in manifold proportions than Cuba, added to the fact that Cuba’s economy was dependent on and integrated to the USSR’s and the socialist community which had, by and large, disintegrated since 1991; if the United States, in its determination to neutralize its revolution or at least moderate it, placed such a severe, drastic enormous blockade which virtually shut off the capitalist economy from Cuba’s reach; what level of well-being, economically and politically speaking, do we expect to find in the country? This is how Antonio Guerrero Rodidriguez, one of the Cuban Five, still compelled to live in the larger ‘prison’ in Miami after serving an unearned  jail-term put the questions I ask above, in a poem contained in his defense statement:

Why so much hatred for the Cuban people?

Is it because Cuba chose a different road?

Because its people wanted socialism?

Because it did away with the large estates

And wiped out illiteracy?

Because it gave free education

And medical care to its people?

Because it lets

The dawn break freely over its children?

But when you enter the street of Cuba, you are compelled into a sensation of great relief, if you are a sympathizer, or terrible and shocking disappointment, if you are an enemy. You find happy, simple but not simplistic, busy, warm and friendly people, enjoying the best of what serene and clement nature as well as good governance have made available to them. If you were a tourist, looking for designers’ outfits or expensive clothing materials and glittering jewels of doubtful quality, then Cuba is your wrong tourist destination. If you are hoping to come and pick state- of- the- arts posh cars in Havana, then you have missed your way. There is no fast, bustling life in the streets of Cuban cities. If you find the streets and alleys are empty, go to the beaches of the Caribbean Sea. Anytime any day, when people are off work, they empty themselves to the coastline breeze—its gentle swash and backwash, its noiseless waves. They are there, in their various stages of undress or under-dress—swimming, sitting out and roasting fish and meat; some just enjoying the peace of nature, others in yoga-like state of meditation. There is observable a feeling of contentment by the smiles and carefree radiance and dalliance you find on the faces of whole families at the sea-side.

If you wonder why so much unforced fulfillment in the Cuban air, you must look at the system that the revolution has immersed with the workaday lives of the citizens. Free and compulsory education is a given right of the citizens. Since 1961, Cuba had eradicated illiteracy and had in recent times mounted literacy campaigns and programmes, called the ‘Yes I Can Literacy Program’, to help spread literacy across the Caribbean and Southern America. This has been implemented in 28 countries where over five million people have been taught to read and write, virtually free of charge. Health care is free and higher health technology—biotechnology and genetic engineering through many breakthroughs in crucial health problems and diseases have been made—including heart-attack, surgeries, hemorrhoid, hepatitis, and so on. Of great importance is the benefit that other people, outside of Cuba, are deriving from their medical break-through and invention. Consider the ‘doctors-for-oil exchange’ between Cuba and Argentina. Consider the programme titled miracle operation going on between Cuba and Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa. In this enterprise, over two million surgeries have been performed by 821 Cuban surgeons in sixteen countries; 1.8 million in Latin America, 98,000 in the Caribbean and 23,000 in Africa. There is full employment in Cuba and you will not find any beggar or mendicants in the streets of Cuba. There is definitely no room for affluence, no vaulting gap between the rich and poor—in fact, the real wealth belongs to the state and the people get their basic needs from the common pool.

Concluded next week