Times Change, Even in Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – A long time ago, a psychologist friend advised me that, in moments of powerlessness with someone—or with many people—if I could, I should go to a shooting range. Buy some pellets and start shooting at a target. And with each shot, I should imagine eliminating that person or those people. I laughed. I couldn’t believe the advice I was hearing. My psychologist friend said, with the expression on her face and her words: “You may think not, but I’m telling you, every now and then you should do it.”
I never did it, but I never forgot the suggestion. There was also the one about hitting cushions on the floor to channel your rage or writing a letter to vent all your emotions and then burning it, in an effort to resolve whatever emotional conflicts had been poured into it. Of all the advice, the first one was the most aggressive to me, and I didn’t dare follow through with it. Besides, those little stands with their old rifles, the targets made of cans and plastic bottles, and the round aluminum tin holding the pellets to shoot, they’ve almost disappeared. Though you can still find them in some places.
Like the one I passed in front of while searching for a bucket of drinking water, because there wasn’t a single drop in my neighborhood. I decided to go in. The stand had the usual Fidel Castro quote, as do all shooting booths in Cuba: “Every Cuban must know how to shoot and shoot well.” I decided, for the first time, to try out my friend’s advice and asked to buy five pellets. The man, very kindly, told me: “No, these are on the house.” I thanked him and started aiming and shooting. My aim was awful. I think I was better at it when I was a kid. I thanked the man in charge of the shooting range, who had been so kind to me, and continued on my way to keep looking for water, that was my task for the morning.
I remembered those times when everyone had to be a militia member and wore green on Defense Day. We trained in the territorial militia fields. Those weekends when the population was mobilized, and we had to run to the shelters, later we’d hear in hallway chatter that they were useless against the advanced weaponry of the Yankee enemy.
How could we forget those days when you had to wake up early whether you wanted to or not, because helicopters flew low and the sirens blared… and the enemy could attack at any moment. We had to be prepared…
That whole era has passed in such a way that when the memories visit us, it feels like a joke, and the younger ones look as if they can’t believe what they’re hearing. That’s how radical the changes have been. These days, we no longer believe in other enemies—except the ones among ourselves.
That unknown world beyond the sea no longer feels so foreign, thanks to the internet—once banned, now allowed for some years—which lets us glimpse the world and imagine it as our preferred destination. That government that once could mobilize the masses to military camps for shooting practice and drills now only draws a few—so few that no one even hears when such activities take place. And many of us laugh when we find out through influencer photos or videos on the topic.
In recent decades, the economic, social, and political changes have been so dizzying that it’s impossible to think of Cuba as the same country it was throughout its post-1959 trajectory—no matter how often the leaders insist that the pillars of the revolution haven’t changed. The economic transformations, the crises that have forced new state-level measures, are proof of this. And of course, no one is really interested anymore in “shooting well.”
The best-case scenario nowadays is to apply for a passport, secure Spanish citizenship—or any that frees you from being a slave to the Cuban dictatorship of the proletariat—and leave for lands where one can live with freedom, rights, and a minimum of comfort. Things that are impossible to attain in the homeland we were born in.
In the worst-case scenario, we continue enduring the acute crisis in every imaginable sense in our country. Where we don’t truly know what those in Power are plotting to keep themselves afloat (as one might crudely put it, “we don’t know what’s cooking”), because decisions that benefit all of us aren’t being heard anywhere.
When two, three, or four people gather at a shooting range, it’s no longer to defend the homeland from an invading imperialism or to carry out “Socialism or Death” to the last consequences. It’s just for fun—I was passing by and wanted five minutes of amusement. Or, like in my case, I wanted to try out the advice of a psychologist friend from many years ago, even if I still find it rather aggressive.