For Those Who Waited and Are Still Waiting
HAVANA TIMES – At home, no one would even think of turning on the television to watch the news and learn about events such as the talks between Havana and the United States. We laugh as we cite the segments we’re sure to see on the 8:00 p.m. primetime newscast: the cultural segment, the sports segment, some visit by a leader to a province giving “instructions,” and we can’t imagine that, in the middle of this country’s chaos, they would continue boasting about harvest “over-fulfillment,” for example.
We wait patiently for the power to return so we can connect to the internet and find out what may be happening in our own country, something we can’t learn about any other way.
That’s how I learn that one of the most powerful aircraft carriers of the US Navy is about 60 miles off Varadero. And that there are others in the east, along with statements about upcoming radical changes in the Island’s policy. I can’t help but think of a friend of mine. She was a psychology professor for many years at the nursing school in Holguín. Very critical of the communist system, and I believe she suffered it like no one else among my friends and family. So much so that she never tired of saying that she would celebrate in a big way when all this no longer existed.
I remember one time she told me she had done research on I don’t remember what topic and wanted to present her work at her workplace. But she was told that first it had to go through a review by Communist Party comrades before it could be presented, and that it would be delivered as part of the Party’s own work. She told me: “Lien, I said fine. I took what I had done and threw it inside a drawer. I’d rather cockroaches eat it than for my work to end up in the hands of those gangsters. I didn’t present anything.”
Her experience hurt me. She was a very well-prepared woman. She had degrees in History, Sociology, and Psychology, and she could have made many contributions if the context hadn’t been so adverse and if her rejection of the system hadn’t been so visceral. And I am sure that experiences like hers were shared by quite a few professionals in the country.
In the end she retired, sold her house, and went to live with a niece at an address I unfortunately don’t know. Still, every time I hear something related to the possible “fall” of this regime, I have to remember her. She never stopped expressing how she would celebrate it. If anyone hated the system, I can attest that she was one of these people.
Thinking about it, I want to find out where she lives and pay her a visit. I want to tell her that it seems that yes, that we will see it, the “fall,” the beginning of the next story… How many women and men are waiting for these moments?! I hope my friend is alive. We have survived no small thing, and like her I believe that there will be reasons to celebrate once this has concluded.
At the very least, everything needing to go through so many controls and censorship will be one of the issues that gets resolved, I believe. Just as living under the threat of losing one’s job, or studies, or finding oneself in tense situations with the justice system for thinking differently. I also hope that will no longer be a problem. Change is approaching, and in any case it will not be bad news for the majority of us who live in Cuba.