The Flintstones of Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – Lately I wake up waiting for the rooster to crow at me from the window. Living on this Island is like inhabiting a version of The Flintstones, only without the comedy’s irony or Hanna-Barbera’s colors. There are plenty of Wilmas here with their hair in buns and worn-out flip-flops, looking for something to throw into empty pots.
In Cuba, transportation is a fossil in motion—dinosaurs with square wheels that move to the rhythm of the potholes in the road. If you don’t leave home ready to push, you’re stuck. To the chant of “keep moving, there’s still room,” you end up tightly hanging on but at least you’re headed somewhere.
Appliances work on pedestrian propulsion. The latest tech craze is charcoal stoves; if you move your hands at a steady speed, at the right angle, and the cardboard you picked doesn’t fold too much in the process, you can light it quickly.
When the power goes out, the internet goes with it, and then my phone becomes a decorative object. I still cling to the illusion that I belong to the 21st century, and every now and then, an extraterrestrial signal lets me be “online with the world.”
The salary is like a stone-age car—it spins, makes noise, but doesn’t move forward. You work, and the result is a sad little coin purse. Meanwhile, the enthusiasm in government speeches sounds loud and clear, and if you’re among the few who still have faith in the system, maybe you believe you can buy cooking oil without mortgaging your dignity.
But those of us with our feet firmly on the ground have lost faith. Eyes wide open, we keep dining on imagination and toasting each night in our stone cups, filled with the air of despair.
I grew up watching my parents improvise to survive. I’ve never had the luxury of being a delicate Wilma; I’ve played the role of Fabiana, pushing her emotional stone-age car with stitched-up hope. But if there’s one thing we have in StoneCuba, it’s adaptability—that innate talent for “resolving” things with four sticks, two nails, and a lot of sarcasm.
Sometimes my daughter thinks I’m the chief engineer of StoneCuba. She believes I can fix everything. Mom is her capeless heroine, always ready to move forward, to endure a little more. She doesn’t know I’m tired of enduring, and that if I swallow my tears, it’s only for her.
She wants internet, art supplies, vitamins—and I can barely promise her charcoal and creativity. She’s a teenager and still has dreams; I don’t want to clip her wings. The real challenge is helping her open them and fly high—so high she escapes this prehistoric bubble.
We live in a never-ending episode of The Flintstones, stuck on a loop with no end in sight. The world moves on around us, new technologies, wars, politics, business, but we remain stranded in time, clinging to the same slogans from sixty-something years ago.
In short, “Yabba-Dabba-Doo!” as Fred Flintstone would say—or maybe I should say: “Don’t stress, my love, maybe the power will come back tomorrow.”
It’s not just a “nice read” to Cubans who are surviving there, nor for their families living here, like me, finding it more and more impossible to make a dent in their basic needs.
This “read” makes me both gut-wrenchingly sad with the ridiculous reality of my dear island of Cuba’s truth today, but also intensely proud, as I’ve always been, to BE Cuban, for I know of no other people with this undying tenacity, resolve and courage.
I have been here since 1963 and have little family still in Cuba. When I call my one cousin who is disabled and by now 77 years old, she ends up always making me laugh with her biting wit, even though I call to cheer HER up. And while I know, in part, the jokes and laughter may be a mask to hide her reality, at the same time, I know very well that the Cuban people’s core love for life and their innate sense of humor has carried them through many a hardship and many a decade.
Why this little piece of land in the Caribbean (although it is by far the largest island) has been singled out, time after time, year after year, decade after decade, president after President (Democrat and Republican, alike) while so many OTHER countries, even those with horrendous rights violations, like China, among others, are consistently approached for trade and commerce, is more than beyond my comprehension.
What I hope for Cuba is not for the U.S. to go in and “fix it” or make it into their image. My hope (fleeting as it may start to be) is that Cuba emerge from its ashes like a Phoenix, run by a Cuban who finally has no ties to the Communist party. It’s what she deserves. I’m not saying it’ll ever happen or that it’s even possible. It’s just my wish.
Wow. Heart-wrenching.
No you live in a never ending episode of the Castro version of the Twilight Zone!
There’s nothing et all funny about what’s been going on in Cuba since January1, 1959!
Cuba needs the Freedom!
Until when, my God? Cuba needs a change now. Help. Enough of exploiting the people!!!
It’s ironic that Cuba was at its height of prosperity and modernity just as The Flintstones began airing on TV in the United States.
Nice read!
And yet …Cuba survives.