Generation Gap: Cuban Style
Valdés, Maxine
The Minister of Education tried persuasion, tried reasoning with some of these youngsters, tried to advise them. Very well. But, of course, advice alone is not sufficient. If they don't...
...America has it...
...Worshipping one another's heroes is not surprising...
...Guantanamera" may have been a big hit in the States, but in Cuba it is strictly the Beatles...
...those cases will be treated the way they should be treated, but we will reeducate them above all through work, which is the best method of education...
...They wear long hair and mini-skirts...
...They are disorganized, but together against a factionalized political world...
...A Yankee rhythm is imported so they can dance their epileptic dances...
...Another Cuban formula for dealing with rebellious youth is standard in America...
...All wear strange necklaces and their minds are full of fantastic ideas...
...After describing the takeover of La Rampa, the article in Juventud Rebelde goes on: One night an end was put to all of this...
...It spreads without aid of treaties...
...All are seeking freedom, an elusive quality, hard to define...
...They are the words of Fidel Castro...
...Above all, they irritate those who, still stained with grease or dirt after a day's work, cannot hide their disgust or dislike for them...
...Work has the same holy aura in Marxism as in the Protestant ethic...
...Their American counterparts enshrine posters of Che Guevara on their walls, youngsters in Cuba tear them down...
...Those youngsters will be educated or reeducated...
...He is referring to a recent phenomenon in Cuban culture, repugnant to most of Cuban society, though not unfamiliar to the American eye...
...They are hippies, and a thorn in the side of the Cuban government...
...The Cuban Revolution is fiercely moral istic...
...It is all part of a movement, a mindshattering, apolitical, international movement of young people in virtually every developed or developing country...
...Young Americans desire spiritual strength and personal commitment...
...Those who could be caught were rounded up and are probably at this moment undergoing "re-education...
...It has no ambassadors...
...Contrary to popular stereotypes, the Cuba Revolution glorifies work...
...They...
...Cuba is seen as a symbol of it...
...And, of course, it is impossible to stop people from listening to American radio stations so near the U.S...
...Said one Cuban mother, "I tried to get him into the Service, but he was never called...
...Young Cubans desire material affluence and personal freedom...
...They are called enfermitos, the little sick ones (also in Cuban slang "the little groovy ones") . The official youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, carried an article on October 12, 1968, which stated: They are eccentric in appearance...
...But can even the Cuban government stop this movement...
...We could say that these are the new men of a bankrupt universe...
...Their American counter parts are accused of being Communists...
...All Cubans from 14 to 16 who do not work or go to school will now be placed in the military...
...The Minister of Education tried persuasion, tried reasoning with some of these youngsters, tried to advise them...
...If Fidel speaks of hundreds, there are probably thousands...
...They roam in gangs through an area of Havana known as La Rampa, the Cuban version of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury...
...It is youth doing its own thing and ignoring the squabbles of its elders...
...so, too, in Cuba, where its possession carries a 30-year jail sentence...
...But in Cuba revolutionary zeal allows little tolerance...
...the grass being greener etc...
...They are young...
...We believe that the new world will have no quarrel with aesthetic values and we do not believe that it will prevent people from dressing well, properly, and decently...
...American hippies make frequent pilgrimages to "the free territory of the Americas...
...It needs no ideology...
...On the imperialists, of course...
...It appears that in both countries the military service is looked upon as the place to make upstanding citizens out of socially undesirable beings...
...It is doubtful that their Cuban mirrorimages know any more about the real U.S...
...While American youth applauds Cuba for its forward strides in public education, 22 percent of Cubans between 6 and 16 refuse to go to school...
...But, of course, advice alone is not sufficient...
...they are called counterrevolutionaries...
...Their motto is "Do what you want, any way, when you want—right now...
...A 16-year-old American would find more in common with a 16-year-old Cuban than with a 40-year-old American...
...In America marijuana is a symbol of rebellion...
...They are the ones who like to sing and dance to modern music...
...We believe salacious or indecent language has no place in a good film or in books...
...Long hair and very tight trousers on the boys...
...THESE words sound familiar...
...Of these, half are between 12 and 15...
...Seeing young people who neither work nor go to school is very annoying to those who have worked to build the Revolution, including Prime Minister Castro...
...A world that was once divided vertically into nations is now divided horizontally into generations, and even Fidel Castro, idol of American youth, is not free from the burden of "generation gap...
...Compulsory education was established in the first place to ward off the threat of American subversion, which is now seen as more cultural than military...
...The confused persons, ideally youngsters who neither study nor work, will be transformed into useful citizens through a special re-education based on work and study...
...extremely short skirts on the girls...
...The "new man" is to be a dedicated worker with a marked absence of frivolity and self-indulgence...
...Many Cubans have studied in Eastern Europe, where this style has been prevalent MAXINE VALDLZ among students for years...
...than young Americans know about the real Cuba...
...If they don't understand persuasion, then they will have to understand another kind of procedure...
...Just how Cuban youth came under the spell of international youth culture is hard to say...
...The names of the gangs range from Los Sicadelicos (the psychadelics) to Los Ninos de las Flores (the flower children...
...Where do the Cubans place the blame...
...To quote from an official radio broadcast of March 7, 1968: They wear tighter pants every day and they let their bangs grow longer until they look like girls...
...Difficult as it is for American youth to believe, the Revolution officially despises the regalia of the new international youth mystique...
...Few young Americans have any notion of what these men really stand for, except a vague impression of them as an ultimate symbol of rebellion...
...The irony of it...
...IN AMERICA, the Che and Fidel cult, like beads and exaggerated locks, is partly a fad...
...A good many European, particularly French, movies are shown in Cuba...
...They practice free love and smoke marijuana...
...The miniskirt, a type of urban bikini, is another of the styles we import with the greatest shamelessness...
...HIPPIES IN AMERICA, while not always approved of, are usually tolerated...
...They might have been spoken by an American parent or politician, but they weren't...
...become vehicles for Yankee propaganda with which they win over other young people who join them, some out of curiosity, others for the adventure and, in general, for the sexual attraction which has been put out as "bait...
...Meanwhile, American idolators of Cuba continue to demonstrate against the draft here...
Vol. 17 • January 1970 • No. 1
