Cuba: Electricity Is a Prize, Life Reduced to Waiting for It
The Cuban people are grateful for the lightbulb that turns on again, even if it goes out tomorrow.
By Jose Adrian Torres (14ymedio)
HAVANA TIMES – The return of electricity after hours of blackout is celebrated as an event in Cuba. The arrival of an oil tanker sparks rumors and headlines that bring relief, even if only for a few days. A package of frozen chicken at the state store can become the central topic of conversation in a neighborhood.
And now, even the rumor circulates of a supposed “Phase 10” – a promise ten years into the future, more invention or metaphor than real plan – functioning as the most sophisticated version of that deferred reinforcement: a distant carrot that never resolves the hunger of the present, but keeps citizens trapped in waiting. A kind of “terminal phase” of a regime exhausted and with no way out, dressed up in the language of plans, stages, and the eternal: “we are taking measures.”
The logic is clear: absolute deprivation destroys, but intermittence keeps hope alive. Power knows this. Skinner knew it when he showed that pigeons, pecking without knowing when they would receive food, did so more insistently than if the reward were predictable. Any mother or father knows it when they dole out whims sparingly to reinforce desired behavior. And so does a regime that turns daily life into a behavior experiment: I don’t give you what you deserve, but from time to time I offer you a spark, a respite, a promise. And that’s enough to keep you expectant and docile, not rebellious.
The Cuban people, trapped in this cycle, live between anxiety and hope. They are grateful for the lightbulb that turns back on, even if it goes out tomorrow. They celebrate a pound of rice, even if meat is missing. They cling to the announcement of a ten-year economic plan, even though they know the previous ones were never fulfilled.
In the end, the question is inevitable: how many times must one peck to earn the joy of turning on a lamp, of eating normally, of living without upheaval? I feel it personally when I wait for the next call to see my “adopted” nephews – ten and three years old – whom I love as if they were my own. Each meeting with them is a gift for me. But that gift does not always arrive when I look for it. Their mother administers those visits as if they were an unexpected concession. Sometimes she lets me know at the last minute: “If you want to see them, come now, because we’re leaving.”
From my academic background in psychology, I recognize the mechanism: it’s a variable contingency reinforcement program. I don’t know how many times I must accept her rules, nor when the reward of being with the children will come. That uncertainty causes anxiety, but it also keeps me expectant, with my hope set on the next call.
My mother told me something similar about her childhood in the hard years of 1940s Spain, with its ration card similar to the Cuban libreta. On Epiphany she would receive a doll, but after playing with it for a short while it was taken away “so it wouldn’t get ruined” until the following year. The gift existed, but it was transformed into deprivation. The joy mixed with frustration.
That is what an entire country feels today, turned into a laboratory of intermittent reinforcement, where life is reduced to waiting for the next “prize,” which is nothing more than the desire to live with dignity.
First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.