Is Cuba a Violent Country?

Isbel Diaz Torres

One of the things I have always praised Cuba for is its safety.  Lately, however, looking closely at everyday life around me, I have found signs of violence – restrained, but ever present.

It’s common for on-duty Cuban police officers, uniformed and carrying firearms, to use public transportation to get around.  I started wondering about how naturally we accept this implicit presence of death.  Why is this considered normal?

A non-militarized civil society should not support such assaults.  The presence of firearms on a bus represents a risk to the safety of the passengers.  With the arrival of summer, the increase in heat and commotion in buses makes arguments and scuffles more frequent.  No one knows what a cornered person is capable of doing.  They could snatch a weapon from a police officer to defend themselves; and there are certainly instances in which they would.

Many officers who board buses while armed can be characterized as being extremely young, which makes one imagine their probable lack of experience.  This is another risk factor.  In fact, to accept armed people in the streets, we are cavalierly granting them a tremendous advantage that is not always used ethically.

Why is it that at all of the entrances at the Coppelia ice cream complex, security guards are stationed there with nightsticks?  Is it possible to enjoy ice cream like this?  Why do we live daily with the presence of violence, implicit or explicit?

At the beginning of the revolutionary triumph in 1959, there was a slogan that arms were to be held by the people. That slowly changed, so slowly that we didn’t notice it.  Today the doctrine of “people’s war” is just an empty slogan and not a defense strategy.  “Experts” possess the weapons, and they flaunt them immodestly in the streets.

This mixture of civil and military latitude has been a mark of our society.  It is commonly known that a large part of agricultural production is distributed to the army, while each civilian workplace has a whole militarized structure related to defense.

The presence of weapons should be justified for the control of very specific situations.  The maintenance of order in society is vital, but I yearn for the day when that order is secured by citizens themselves, through social mechanisms, without arms and without the need for repressing bodies.