The Cuban Dream
HAVANA TIMES – Since I grew up in a family torn apart by exile, from a very young age I’ve heard that emigrating is the only way to prosper without losing your soul. Without having to lie, pretend, to gain favors or the concession of some small business that always hangs by a thread.
I still remember the tense atmosphere of 1980, the first stampede I witnessed. People wanting to leave, even at the risk of being lynched by their own neighbors.
Then came the crisis of the 1990s and, after the Maleconazo protest, the sea filled with fragile boats, tragedies, miraculous arrivals.
I got used to seeing family, friends, acquaintances leave…
I got used to stories of broken relationships, dissolved friendships, and silences growing ever wider. Families remade as best they could, on one side or the other.
Legal petitions left incomplete, endless waits that become habitual—or sometimes (in the rarest of cases) are abandoned when a definitive way out finally arrives, but new ties have formed and breaking them would feel tragic..
Yesterday I spoke with a friend who left by crossing through several countries and, after more than a year in Miami, had to return because he couldn’t legalize his immigration status.
He felt stunned by the abrupt change: “Everything’s worse—oh, the prices, the blackouts, the mosquitoes…!” and at the same time, he confessed to feeling a great sense of relief.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with people over there,” he told me. “They become machines for making money. They lose the essential bond, everything I always considered sacred: preserving your connection with a child, a parent, a sibling, a friend. Not hurting unnecessarily, never betraying, not abandoning your people, your blood, a true friend… People start prioritizing other things. And the result is that they become strangers. Many—almost most—become despots when trying to help you. No matter how close the bond, it doesn’t count how much you helped them in Cuba, or how you consoled and encouraged them when they had nothing.”
And I started thinking about the cases I know, all of them bewildering, some even cruel.
I don’t know, but something happens in that forced transformation, in that integration into the rules of a society that demands your full attention—where the past hurts and starts to recede, shrinking to ever shorter calls or messages.
Oh, the present is hypnotic. In that dazzling world where everything is new, pristine, where everything works and life moves at such speed, you begin to realize that work takes up too much time and bills swallow your paycheck. The only compensation is consumption. With cash or credit. Food, clothes, electronics… What you want, what you need, or maybe not so much—but who cares if it gives you so many forms of freedom.
What could those left on the Island understand, poor souls trapped in a static present where all their strength is spent just keeping their bodies going. It doesn’t stretch any further.
What could they know of the world, of enjoying life?
The cycle of buying and debt expands: it’s no longer just the house, the car, and the endless insurance policies. It’s what you’ll do in your free time, however little that is. Outings, more shopping, more stuff, exploring brands and payment plans, travel!, everything you missed out on in Cuba.
The family back there, on the other side, has shrunk to a dot in the pupil or a pang of guilt some Sundays or holidays.
Everything that comes from that cursed country feels heavy, gloomy. Empty markets, streets full of garbage and sewage. People who endure anything. Maybe someone vents on social media, more cursing than arguments. Dirty hospitals with no medicine, homes collapsing on their owners. What horror, my God.
And anyone who arrives in La Yuma—if they don’t quickly adapt to the new dynamic—becomes a burden. Here anything goes: kicking a nephew, a brother, a mother out of the house… Let them work like you. No one took pity on you when you arrived either. Here, if you turn sweet, the ants eat you.
Reunions that took so many mutual sacrifices soon end in misunderstandings, disputes, accusations, and suppressed tears. What could have happened between one country and the other? What was swallowed by the sea when you crossed it—this ghostly distance that from Cuba seemed to hold up an empire of dreams now possible, but without this sense of loneliness, this piercing sadness, this inability to recognize the person you missed so much and for whom you left everything behind.
Since I was a child, I’ve heard that emigrating is the only way to prosper without losing your soul. That intangible thing that sustains us and saves us from dehumanization. From selling ourselves for an ideology we don’t believe in and that is the cause of an entire peoples’ misfortune.
The soul—that which helps us materialize the dream so many of us grew up with. Broken families who see that fateful sea as the only obstacle to happiness.
If you read past stories by Veronica, you also see stories of joy and friendship. So her diaries reflect the fluctuating emotions as she may be torn between dealing with the terrible difficulties and good times with family and friends.
Let’s hope that Cuban leaders recognize the potential for happiness among the people and then vote for the changes that allow the productivity necessary to let that happiness to grow.
It is so important to read stories like this; stories that give a broad perspective of life in Cuba. They are balanced by the stories of others that love and appreciate some of the good and the joy that can be felt in Cuba – despite the difficulties.
Emerging from the corruption and inequality of neo-colonial Cuba is not easy. But if we are honest and realistic about failures as well as the possibilities, Cuba may get to a place that is good for all.
Although I usually agree disagree with the author, Veronica Vega, this time I disagree. She writes, “…emigrating is the only way to prosper without losing your soul.” There is the alternative of being born with Castro in your last name as a means to prosper as well. Although it’s debatable if they have souls to lose.