What Are They Doing to Our Children?

By Ammi

HAVANA TIMES – I’m convinced that in order for a child to have a good childhood they must have the right to a name, a family, an education, food, healthcare, someone to protect them, for them not to work, or be discriminated against, or abused. A child has to be a child, above all else.

The more distant parents are from their children, the more vulnerable their children become. When I say “distant”, I am also referring to the time they are in school, where we leave a lot of teaching responsibility to teachers, without seeing the dangers this implies.

Living in Cuba is also a challenge for making, giving birth to, raising and educating our children. This totalitarian system has made sure to add allies to its Communist ranks, and so they have banked on the fragility of these tender infant minds, where they cultivate the poorly named “love for the Homeland”. People should love their Homeland out of their own free will and not because revolutionary “heroes” have been drilled into their heads as absurd idols.

It’s important to help children understand what rights they have. It isn’t at all easy, but one thing that is key is the need to “stop” forcefully imposing things on them to indoctrinate them where they see everything as black and white.

We are completely responsible for awakening an unlimited imagination in our children.

Many children, like my son, have no idea what the legendary slogan: “pioneers for Communism, let’s be like Che” means. It’s strange for him to be like someone who he has never met, somebody who isn’t mummy or daddy.

There are many slogans like this one, many other ways of introducing them into politics they don’t understand, or know about or only know a little bit about, the bit that has been dressed up so they find it inspiring, and an example to follow in their young age.

I know that this might be a controversial issue and it may spark many different opinions, but it’s also true that imposing any idea on a child, both religious and political, is criminal.  

I believe that we should leave this job for parents and not leave it to the State to do this. It is a violation of children’s rights, in my humble opinion. The right to be a person of free will, to choose the path they want in life and work on the kind of human being they want to be in the future.

I am afraid for my son, I don’t want him to become a puppet, a military prototype of silence and repression. What are they doing to our children?