Simone de Beauvoir Taught Me That the Personal Is Political
HAVANA TIMES – In every fit of indignation I experience, and there are many against my will, I write on the walls: “Down with the dictatorship,” “Freedom, justice and rights,” or simply “freedom.” Like a prisoner might write on the walls of her cell. Because my house is my home, but for several reasons it has also become my prison.
I remember the day I went to the immigration office to find out if I was still “Regulated.” State Security had prevented me from traveling to Bogotá, even though I was about to board the plane with ticket and paperwork in order. And the very next day, after they told me I was still “Regulated,” State Security intercepted me at the corner of my street and told me I couldn’t leave my house. That day, a demonstration had been called in Central Park, and I wasn’t allowed to step beyond my four walls.
Because of these bitter experiences, and because of the many “small injustices of everyday life,” as our Dulce María Loynaz would say—most of them caused by this tyranny—I write these messages on my walls. Besides my family and friends who visit me, I also have clients. Wonderful people who come to buy books of poetry, novels, dictionaries… Many become friends. Others simply buy their book and leave, and we only see each other once.
But one customer did ask me about the writings on my walls. He asked, “And this?”—and to my surprise, he added, “This government no longer exists; it’s fallen.” I don’t agree with him.
I think we’re in the process of overthrowing it, with our many street protests, with millions of demands voiced on social media, with the attitudes now seen toward the regime’s mass organizations, with the ways people are responding to the economic, social, and cultural chaos… a chaos without precedent on the island.
But I don’t believe this government has vanished, as we wish it would, because of its levels of abuse and oppression.
Some say that we no longer know what we’re living through, because socialism is unrecognizable, and official discourse denies capitalism. And in the midst of this political disaster, some people believe we’re enduring the worst aspects of both capitalist and socialist policies, creating a desperate atmosphere in which those of us living in Cuba today are just trying to survive.
But no, that Gorbachev who stood at the podium and said to the Soviet people, “We can’t go on living like this,” has not yet arrived. And the Cuban leaders are determined to convince everyone that the direction and goals of the Communist Party have not changed… However, the exploitation, the disorder, the despair are overwhelming, and that supposed social justice of socialism is dissolving.
They can no longer say that dissenters are “scum” like in 1980. The phrase “Let them go, we don’t need them” can no longer be uttered. It’s no longer just a small group in society shouting against the status quo because they’re allegedly manipulated by the Empire, as Fidel Castro claimed. After seeing that the number of protestors is not exactly small, the most recent term used by the current president, guided and directed by the country’s military chief, is: “Confused.”
But now, those strongly protesting yet another measure that doesn’t benefit the people are university students. Across the country, they have united to publicly reject the new decisions made by the island’s only communications company (ETECSA), joining their voices with the rest of society in outrage over the excessive charges for mobile internet access.
No, I don’t agree with my customer, the industrial engineer: the government led by the Communist Party of Cuba has not disappeared. And for what we are suffering, and for what we want to change, we must keep working. I try to do that from the private sphere, from what I feel is most my own. That’s why, when asked: “When will you repaint the walls?” I answer: As soon as things change.