Cuba and the Time to Take Off the Masks
The numerical disproportion between those who cling to the current model and those who want a political opening is overwhelmingly favorable to the latter.
HAVANA TIMES — Next to me, in the shared taxi, a young man listens to a YouTube video at full volume on his phone. The material harshly describes Alejandro Castro Espín, mentions the word “dictatorship” several times, and denounces the repression of the Cuban regime. No one reacts. No one tells him to turn the device off. No one confronts him ideologically. A few minutes later, in a long line in front of an office of the Etecsa telecommunications monopoly, a woman listens to a song by Los Aldeanos that calls out Castroism. The state employees don’t even flinch, and in the line there is even someone repeating the chorus.
When I return home, a neighbor who for years has been an obvious informant for the political police approaches me to say that “something has to happen, because this can’t go on like this.” On the stairway up to the 14th floor, without electricity and with the elevators shut down, another neighbor jokes that the fictional character Cuco Mendieta — a Cuban supposedly belonging to the US Delta Force who took part in the capture of Nicolas Maduro — is about to arrive in Havana on a very similar mission to the one in Caracas. We laugh, and the climb feels lighter.
Never before has Cuban officialdom been criticized so openly as it is now. I cannot recall a single moment in our recent history when criticism of the Communist Party was so widespread, carried such a corrosive tone, and was spoken so loudly. “Gusanear,” that verb taken from government insults, is the daily practice of millions of people on this Island. People “gusanean” at bus stops, in workplaces, and in the line to deposit a few dollars onto that Clásica card that allows the purchase of the little gasoline left in the country. People “gusanean” at the ration store, at school meetings where they announce the suspension of in-person classes, and on the platform of the bus terminal empty of vehicles and of hope.
The defenders of the system are at an absolute disadvantage in Cuba. Of the ideological fervor they once displayed, nothing remains. Many are silent, scanning the horizon for the change that is inevitably approaching, and others have crossed over to the side of the critics at a speed that is surprising. Masks are falling, medals are being hidden, and patting the neighborhood dissident on the back is a way of making each person’s position clear. The numerical disproportion between those who cling to the current model and those who want a political opening is overwhelmingly favorable to the latter. At last, we are the majority — and “they” know it.
Faced with this panorama, Miguel Díaz-Canel should think twice before asking for sacrifices and making calls for “creative resistance.” His capacity to mobilize is at rock bottom; the Party he leads is living hours of extremely scarce support; and those who until yesterday were preparing for the trench will no longer respond to the call to immolate themselves. Not only has fear changed sides, given the regime’s meager ranks, but the hope that this very difficult moment will give way to “a free Cuba” has settled into the collective imagination. “It won’t be long now,” another neighbor tells me from her balcony. “This time we’ll be rid of them,” she adds before hanging the sheet she has washed by hand, in the middle of the blackout.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.