Cuban University Students vs Cuban State Telecommunications
HAVANA TIMES – I was a seminarian, never a university student. I graduated from the Evangelical Seminary of Theology in Matanzas at the beginning of the year 2000. The Seminary was founded on October 1, 1946, and – as I understand it – has survived the debacle since 1959 because Sergio Arce, its long-time rector, was a friend of Fidel Castro’s.
We’re speaking of a time when priests and nuns were expelled from Cuba, religious schools were outlawed and turned into public schools; when religious orders disappeared, and many Christians were sent to the agricultural labor camps, just for being Christians, as happened to some professors from this same seminary. Attending Masses or Protestant worship services was highly frowned upon, because they wanted to build a materialist, socialist, Leninist society.
Despite everything, the Seminary remained open, even when the courses were made up of only three students – or one lone student, the oldest members of that institution told me. However, it managed to survive, preparing future leaders and pastors of the Protestant communities. This distinctly Ecclesiastical space for safeguarding an academic spirit within the Christian faith wasn’t immune from the control that the country’s Communist government has always exercised over everything being fostered on the island, whether or not it was within their scope of interest.
During my years of study, it was common to see the police walking in the hallways with their pistols and nightsticks, even though nothing had transpired to demand their presence in the center. Or you could hear comments about certain conversations between the Bible teacher – a PhD from the Sao Paolo Theological Seminary – and State Security. That professor later opted to remain in Brazil after his sabbatical year, and it was a hard blow to the Matanzas Seminary. Among ourselves, we would say half-jokingly that he had tired of pulling the corks off wine bottles with that go-between who came more often than desired.
In Cuba, even if you’re in a space that has nothing to do with the government, as in the case of the churches and seminaries, or NGOs like the Red Cross, it doesn’t mean you find yourself completely independent of that power called the Communist State. Nothing in this country escapes its shadow – the Red Cross is under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry, and the rest is subject to constant monitoring. Even important ecumenical institutions appear as extensions of Cuba’s Ministry of Culture, even though you might ask yourself – Why is this? Of course, I imagine that the response to this question would be very sharp, given the dynamic of the dominant power in Cuba.
The thing is, countries with totalitarian regimes can’t even conceive in the tiniest way of spaces beyond their control – not in social, economic, or cultural spheres let’s say, nor in other areas. Cuba is an example of this – with tighter iron hands in some epochs of its history, while in others slightly looser in certain aspects. But always present there, never allowing that grip to stop being felt. And if these types of experiences occur in arenas distant from what’s called the State, what couldn’t happen in these areas where people are directly under their authority, as in all the country’s educational centers?
What couldn’t happen to our students in the Cuban universities for carrying out the protests they’ve been holding this month as the result of the price hike on the part of ETECSA, the State company that’s Cuba’s only telecommunications provider? Because of this, we’re not surprised by the complaints voiced in the meeting of their centers: for example – Why must they receive home visits from the DTI (the Interior Ministry’s Technical-Investigational Department) because of their protests, when there are educational authorities and the Cuban students’ organization called the FEU (University Student Federation)?
Nor is it at all strange to see the videos these kids have recorded, about how one of them is given a citation to appear at the police station, then leaves their house and finds a patrol wagon waiting to take them to be interrogated. Sadly, it’s nothing strange for us to be aware that there’ll be purges in every one of these schools, and more than one student who won’t graduate. It’s not at all distant, because this sort of violent response is always seen in the country. Before, a student could be blocked from their entire career of study merely for wearing a sweater with English words on it (something that was forbidden during those years) or voicing an opinion that wasn’t considered 100% revolutionary.
It’s lamentable that an entire society should have accepted such vulnerability, such total defenselessness in the face of those who rule politically, and that we should pay with our own lives. It’s more than painful that we don’t know how to support these youth who attend their classes without good nutrition, in sub-standard conditions in the educational centers, and often in their own homes; amid endless power outages for more time than expected, and with so many factors working against them. And finally, with a little over a month to go until the August vacation, the government dictated these measures [that hugely inflate the price] for communications, making them even more inaccessible to the majority.
Let’s not lose sight either that those studying in these centers are well aware of the experiences of those who came before them – that many times in a corrupt, degraded, and decadent country like ours, trying to better yourself isn’t of much use. They’re studying there despite the fact that many relatives and friends have probably already asked them: “Why are you studying here? Get out of here.”
We Cubans know that many won’t finish, because they’ll decide to take what they’ve learned over four or five years to the seas and borders of anywhere they can go and build their dreams. Right here, doing so is becoming a mirage.
To remain indifferent to the events now occurring in the Cuban universities would be like betraying our own selves, abandoning our own selves to the ungodliness and indolence of power. Even though we may not know how to defend the protesting students, even though we don’t know how to defend ourselves, they must be clear that we’re on their side. To hold them present, I think, means betting on the reconstruction of a truly just world for all.
And that’s fundamental – to recognize ourselves in the others’ struggle. Because in one way or another, it’s our own struggle.
Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.