Translator: Unstated, Yoani Sánchez
Social processes have an often unpredictable alchemy. Although there are
analysts who persist in wanting to write a universal formula for
uprisings, or another for civil peace, reality is wedded to the
contrary. Cuba, for example, has defied the prognostications of nearly
all the optimists and exceeded the expectations of even the most
hallucinatory minds.
It appears that the specialty of our country is to shatter the forecasts
of Santeria priests, spiritualists and fortune-tellers. For several
decades we have disappointed the predictions of our collapse and, in
particular, the repeated prophecy of a popular revolt. Cubanologists of
all stripes have assured us, on this or that occasion, that the the
island is on the verge of fracture and that the people will throw
themselves into the streets at any moment.
Instead, the sidewalks are indeed full of people, but they are standing
in line to buy bread or eggs, or to submit applications to consulates to
emigrate. Not even the candles lit by the Santeria priests for
tranquility are upended by violence. Those of us who hope for a peaceful
solution are happy because, at least to date, nobody has had to serve as
cannon fodder against the anti-riot squads.
The chimerical formula of explosion foretold by some relies on the
element economic strangulation to inspire a people to rise up in
struggle. There are those who would like to give another turn of the
screw to the United States embargo against the island and cut off all
remittances that come from the outside. According to their hypothesis,
Cubans caught between the rock of their needs and the hard place of an
authoritarian government would choose to overthrow the latter.
I must confess that the mere mention of this theory reminds me of a bad
joke: An ancient leader, being interviewed by a journalist, enumerates
the signs of resistance. The autocrat relates that his people have
survived the economic crisis, the lack of food, the collapse of the
electrical network and the absence of public transport. As he explains
each hardship in this string he appends, again and again, "and yet the
people stand firm." Finally, the daring reporter interrupts him with a
question, "And have you tried arsenic, Commander?"
The thesis that our reality simply needs more economic hardship for the
social pressure cooker to burst is heard, oddly, most often among people
who do not live in the country. The Diaz-Balart amendment to the
Financial Services Appropriation Bills, recently approved by the House
Appropriations Committee of the U.S. Congress, would roll back measures
taken earlier this year by president Barack Obama that eased
restrictions on family travel to the island and liberalized
person-to-person monetary assistance. Voices in support of the amendment
see these bridges as oxygen that feeds the Cuban government, prolonging
its stay in power.
According to the arithmetic of "deprive them to make them react," change
would be just around the corner the day the spigot of foreign aid dried
up once and for all. But in the middle of that proposition, untested in
practice, eleven million people, and an equal number of stomachs, would
be caught. People who did not hit the streets in the devastating years
of the nineties when our plates were nearly empty and our clothes hung
in tatters from our emaciated frames.
During that time of endless hardship, a single popular "uprising"
happened on August 5, 1994, sparked by people desperate to leave the
country, not change things here. As fearful as we might be that the
pressure cooker could reach the bursting point, the reality is that the
vast majority would rather throw themselves into to the sea than face
the repressive forces.
And it is not because a people has a genetic predisposition to bravery
or cowardice, it is simply that there are a vast number of methods to
confront social rebellion. Those that have already touched us are,
without a doubt, efficient to the point of scientific proof.
For those political scientists who veer closer to physics than to social
sciences, it would be enough to shut off the flow of remittances and
travel between Cuban-Americans and the the island for something to begin
to move on the national stage. In their desire to prove such a
conjecture, the theory would be promulgated by them and the bodies of
the martyrs would be borne by us.
Over the course of the experiment and as it moved toward its conclusion,
the swimming pools of the mansions of the olive-green clad rulers would
not lack their supply of chlorine, the satellite Internet of the Maximum
Leader's children would not diminish a single kilobyte in bandwidth, and
the brand name lingerie of so many officials would not cease to flow
through back channels into the country.
Not only would this turn of the screw be unnoticed on the dining tables
of the official hierarchy, but with their full bellies they would
continue to rule over a people with only one obsessive thought: where to
find something to eat every day. The misery that reigns in so many
places would continue to be a mechanism of domination, not one of
disobedience.
Watching the news that filters to us through illegal satellite TV, text
messages, Twitter and email, we feel like guinea pigs in a laboratory
where all decisions are made by others, far from our shores. We have the
sensation of being mere numbers in a calculation as simple as it is
dangerous. Where the result anticipated by the architects of the
"pressure cooker theory" – that it will explode – ignores the fact that
its detonation could provoke a cycle of violence that no one could know
how or when it might end.
18 July 2011
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