THE CUBAN QUESTION
A FAREWELL TIME
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| Versailles, the Cuban oppositon rendezvous... |
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| FIDEL CASTRO |
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| Yoani Sanchez, the blogger.. .change is about to come |
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| RAUL CASTRO |
Whatever
your side, the main fact to remember is that the Cuban Question seems to be a
matter of time.
Time
to come, time to go.
Without
doubt, the Cold War memories are still
burning with its main clash on
the Bay of Pigs by April 1961. Politicians and ordinary Cubans continue to
argue about this remote conflict; many are still ready for action, but from
both of sides of the Wind Passage, warriors are aging. Over the years, some of
them had give up, but when they come to tell their own stories, anger and ire are on the rise. The Castro’s saga had left a country divided
for many years to come.
The
Venezuelan experience with Chavez defining himself as a Castro heir didn’t ease
the things. Instead Castro, Chavez and Iran belong to the so-called evil axis,
another way to label this troika as terrorists. It has been a concern for the
US when fanatics and Muslims extremists venture in his back yard. But, Chavez and Castro endeavor remain the
way it used to be: a Cold War legacy that
few had maybe foreseen.
Now,
what we have to pay attention to, evolve around what Cuba would look like, once
the Castro’s experience is over. Whether we want it or not, time is the last
frontier in everything on earth. Even Raul Castro, who is now in charge, seems
to understand that time has come to do politics differently. Once he mentioned
Versailles, the Cuban rendezvous for high and middle class Cubans eager to wipe
out the Castroists from their tumultuous island... in the mean time, Washington
doesn’t close his ears to the need of change next door.
50
years later, in Havana, the famous ladies dressed in white went to the streets
as matrons to protest against their
loved ones in jail. This sign of time is very eloquent about the change so many
Cubans strive for. In Little Havana, Miami,
their counterparts wearing necklaces and earrings continue to curse Castro and his henchmen
that have stolen their youth. Now while turning the 70s, they have mixed
feelings about what they expect from a Castro-free Cuba.
Their
life in exile parallels that of Russian aristocratic life whose members made a
living as taxi drivers, singers and restaurant waiters in the Paris of
the 20s, after the Bolshevik revolution, with the only difference that Cubans
in Miami restarted a new life the outcome of which is more than you can expect after they left Cuba.
Among
the unavoidable gap generation, Cubans in Miami are impatient to show off with their successful life and
their shaping of the Little Havana, springing
full of life at lunch time. Cubans from the Castro’s nomenklatura have
to choose their word to express a kind of auto satisfaction about the triumphs
of the Revolution. In Miami, instead, Cuban success is booming at every corner.
What makes Cuban dissidents, bloggers such as Yoani Sanchez …and ordinary
people dream so much when Key West lights are blinking at night.
Cuban
tomorrows already are under way.
frantz bataille,
Down Town Miami,
September 5, 2013
