Spectator's Journal: Cuba's New Revolutionaries
Martinez, Roman
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. Castro has resisted pressure to trade internal reforms for international goodwill. Earlier this...
...It's about time...
...So you eventually conform — there's no other way to put food on the table and keep your family safe...
...According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, daily caloric intake is ten percent less than it was in the 1940's, and meat consumption has fallen almost a third...
...But we're still fidelistas ." And it isn't surprising why...
...No one expects his tolerance of internal dissent to last for long...
...Get angry...
...Clearly, it will take more than economic woes to reverse decades of revolutionary propaganda...
...dollars...
...We're ready to teach the Cuban people to fight for their rights," he says, "to do things they haven't been allowed to do in forty years...
...The new generation of activists must therefore wage their peaceful war on two fronts—fighting back against government repression while simultaneously tending to the despair that pervades every segment of Cuban society...
...Cuban schoolchildren are still evaluated on the basis of their ideological fervor, and anyone hoping to continue in the educational system is required to assume an active role in state-sponsored revolutionary youth organizations...
...Coast Guard and forcibly repatriated...
...This is not to say that Castro is entirely immune from foreign pressure...
...There are no illusions of a quick march to victory...
...any signs of counter-revolutionary activity are reported to the Cuban authorities...
...You can't do anything about it...
...when they are available it's only in prohibitively expensive "dollar stores" inaccessible to ordinary Cubans...
...Yet despite the hardship and their disenchantment with the Revolution's promises, many Cubans remain emotionally attached to Fidel Castro himself...
...Since the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the island nation has been beset with crippling economic hardship and continual food shortages...
...Most Cubans don't hesitate to talk about their economic woes...
...they hang like ornaments on the arms of wealthy Canadians and Europeans frequenting the city's nightspots...
...Castro has resisted pressure to trade internal reforms for international goodwill...
...And Big Brother Fidel never ceases his watch...
...Cuban democracy can never flourish, with or without Castro at the helm, until the people break free from the material and spiritual dependence that years of repression have so assiduously cultivated...
...William Jorge, a co-founder of Tamarindo 34 Human Rights, explains further: "They've been in power forty years," he says...
...Over 8o,000 Committees for Defense of the Revolution nationwide keep tabs on every block...
...When lies are repeated for that long, over and over again, eventually they become the truth...
...As Gutierrez makes clear, the state's powers of coercion are as strong as ever...
...Rolando Munoz sadly concurs: "It's Stalin's system," he says with a twisted smile, "but Fidel Castro has perfected it...
...Even Cuba's health care system, once the proud boast of Castro apologists around the world, has now taken deathly ill...
...Despite the difficulties, Rolando Munoz remains determined...
...They've always got their eyes on you," says Adela Rumbarto, a nurse at her Havana neighborhood's local medical clinic...
...Instead, he sentenced them to three-and-a-half to five years in prison...
...Furthermore, Cuba has become the sex-tourism capital of the Western hemi'We want to teach people that they're strong, that they can live life without Fidel,' the 29-year-old Munoz said...
...He tells of doctors and lawyers unable to survive on the monthly government paychecks of $15 or $20...
...S till, if there's ever been a chance for an opposition movement to gain a foothold in Cuba, the time is now...
...Ivan Dominguez, a former professor of mechanical engineering who now drives a taxi cab, points to himself as an example of the shift many have made into the tourist industry—the only hope of Cubans hungry for U.S...
...7 7 sphere...
...It's no coincidence that there's been a recent barrage of immigrants landing on Miami's shores...
...Earlier this year, he embarrassed a Canadian government that has been notoriously friendly toward Cuba by defying Prime Minister Jean Chretien's request that he free four prominent opposition leaders...
...At night, prostitutes can be seen cruising Havana's MalecOn Boulevard...
...The American Spectator • November 1999...
...There's no point to getting angry...
...If nothing else, the progress of the Tamarindo Street activists suggests that Castro's regime is vulnerable as never before...
...Now, instead, they're carrying bags, working in hotels as bellhops and waiting for tips from foreigners...
...Even when you think you're walking down the street and minding your own business...
...He has not yet taken any direct action against the Tamarindo 34 group, which Munoz and others attribute to the international media's coverage of the hunger strike...
...We might no longer believe in the ideology of Communism," says Eldor Gutierrez, a 24-year-old busboy...
...The latest trend in health care is medecina verde, "green medicine"—the homeopathic and herbal remedies doctors now use to treat ailments from colds and bacterial infections to burns and scars...
...The Tamarindo Street activists are well aware that this hopelessness and conformity are the most crippling legacies of Communist rule in Cuba...
...Everyone is scared," says Migdalia Rosado...
...For most of these young jineteras, latching on to a deep-pocketed tourist is the only way to enjoy their own country's beaches and music clubs—not to mention their last resort for putting food on the table...
...Antibiotics, meanwhile, have been replaced by acupuncture...
...Over 1,50o have arrived since the beginning of the year— and that's not counting the hundreds intercepted at sea by the U.S...
...Eldor Gutierrez agrees...
...Any crackdown now could disrupt this month's Ibero-American Summit, an annual meeting of Spain, Portugal, and Latin American countries, which is being held in Cuba this year for the first time...
...Medicines continue to be in short supply...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
