Cuba: The Tyrannosaurus Rex Generation
HAVANA TIMES — The experience of Syrian refugees – a drama much talked about around Europe today, which is cause enough for concern in and of itself – led me to make a rather disheartening observation.
The tragedies these exiles bring with them from their native soil are made worse when they fall into the hands of Serbian, Bulgarian and Hungarian criminals, who not hesitate to try and make a profit through human trafficking.
The worst, however, is to be found at the hands of mafias, governments and common people in former Soviet satellites, where “solidarity” or any respect for human rights is practically non-existent. All the while, Austria is showing an exemplary sensitivity and behavior.
The first half of the 20th century clearly showed us that Austrians are not intrinsically kind and that Hungarians, Serbs or Bulgarians are not demons by nature.
This is the result of the perverse experiment that was inaptly called “communist,” for it did not even adhere to the tenets that the ideology proclaimed at the time, the experiment essayed in the countries behind the Berlin Wall, where the least capitalist development was to be found.
Today, the largest numbers of young, working-class neo-Nazis are to be found precisely in Eastern European countries. Within Germany (which has earned for itself eternal suspicion), the majority of people who feel nostalgia for the holocaust are clearly concentrated in the area that was once the GDR.
I would like to be able to say that Cuba will go a different way, but I fear that the new generations, already composed of an army of young people who are apolitical to the bone, defenders of a kind of anti-culture, characterized by the worst imaginable taste and the most commercial aesthetic possible, will also have an instinct aversion to any notion of solidarity, that they will carry this aversion in their genes, molded and forged as these are by the intense and premeditated fiasco that accompanied that jargon, that terminology they were forced to adopt – that the present and future generations will not be able to avoid associating these ideas with the unique scam the Cuban people were subjected to for more than half a century.
This new phenomenon is expressed through a handful of vulgar words and auxiliary interjections that are as difficult to understand as they are insolent and aggressive.
Regrettably, we have to admit that it is far easier to share cultural, ethical and even political ideas with those Cubans who were deported during the first years of the Cuban “de-evolution” than it is with the voracious litter spawned by that utopian project aimed at creating the “New Man,” a project that led to the creation of young people reminiscent of the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
John, you live in your own reality. First, where is the proposition that Cuba will copy the U.S. Model ? It is unlikely.
The U.S. Is not that bad. Of all the places, I could live, I would choose America. I love America with all it’s imperfections. I love the personal freedom here. I have done very well since immigrating from Cuba. Barack Obamba is no hostage to business oligards.
Ah, I did a web search and found various sources saying that he completed his studies and was a qualified Physician. However he completed his studies after his motorcycle tour of South America. To me that was interesting, as his motivation for adopting Marxism was apparently that tour and observation of so much poverty, but he obviously returned to his studies before commencing his political pursuits. I also recall that following his first personal execution, he examined the effects of the bullet upon the brain of his victim. no word of the Hippocratic oath! Of course his defenders will say that carrying out such an execution is justifiable for a Marxist revolutionary – but not by others!
I did not fail to see his point. My last sentence acknowledges that as individual freedoms increase in Cuba, Cuban values may suffer. Cubans pride themselves in greater racial equality. As a Cuban value, I would agree with you that racism is likely to increase.
I think you are missing the point of the article. There is a real danger of a surge in support of the Ultra-Right in Cuba. I have noticed an under current of racial tension that could explode if the economic situation doesn’t get better. Yet you lot are oblivious to the dangers.
So the fact that the name of the political party was National Socialist doesn’t do it for you?
John, don’t be a hypocrite (again). I have asked you to post at least one credible published source that shares your definition of socialism. It doesn’t have to be a Harvard professor, I’ll settle for a teaching assistant at a community college. Is there even one?
If you can equate Nazi Germany to a socialist state , you’re the one in intellectual trouble.
I would defy you to take your posts to any university’s economics or political science department for a critical analysis.
You should not accept my word for it but should confer with the professionals who teach these subjects .
It is understandably difficult for you to question your beliefs but you need to know just how foolish your thinking is.
I also fully understand that you would never submit your posts for professional grading.
I should correct my statement. Although Che finished academic studies from medical school he never completed a medical internship and therefore never fully met the licensing criteria.
Is that correct Moses? I am not doubting your veracity, but much of the written history is that he was a Doctor. Did he drop out or was he pushed?
If you look down below, you will see an example of the socialist defence mechanisms.
Mr. John Goodrich doesn’t like to admit that Hitler was a national socialist. So he uses the abbreviation of Nazi and has the temerity to query equating national socialism with socialism. This from a man who persistently describes the Socialismo of the Castro family regime and supported by the Communist Party of Cuba as “STATE CAPITALISM”
Yet again there is a demonstrated wilful ignorance of reality. The man is to be pitied.
He didn’t graduate.
You seem locked into a false dichotomy. Cuba, once free of Castro tyranny, will also be free to create it’s own style of democracy, the likes of which is a combination of democracies from around the world and, at the same time, totally new. So you see, the sow keeps her ear and Cuba gets democracy on it’s own terms.
I always understood that Ernesto Guevara was a medical graduate in his native Argentina. As a medical graduate he would be Dr. Correct me if I am wrong!
Are you really equating/conflating Nazism with socialism and /or the “Castros” ?
Do you REALLY want to go there and look really ignorant ?
Apparently so.[
“….a free and open democracy…”
With the electoral and economic systems of which country to be used as the models for this “free and open democracy” ?
The US government is an unelected dictatorship of money and free enterprise capitalism is also totalitarian .
You cannot make a silk purse ( democracy ) out of a sow’s ear ( the U.S.’s totalitarian systems).
Please do explain.
Dr was a title never confered upon him
Martin’s observations are astute. What I have observed is a lack of everything the Cuban revolution claims to stand for. Volunteering means compulsory overtime and solidarity is as a word so over-used that nobody listens any longer. The average Cuban is apolitical and escapes into materialism. Democracy is not a concept understood. While I always say Cubans deserve better than the current leadership I fear there will be surge in violence and ever-growing inequality with the members of the nomenclatura having a massive advantage. There won’t be that many oligarchs in a future Cuba simply because Cuba is smaller than Russia and natural resources have not been developed enough to provide that many rich pickings. Today in London took place the Cuban Futures Conferences attended by a starry-eyed British left. Who were the two leading delegates from Cuba? Two children of the current head of state! The Cuban self-preservation society knows what to do,Tthe ordinary people prefer to kep their eyes shut. Martin is right about Germany. The legacy of the GDR is for now nostalgia for easy solutions and a willingness to follow leaders blindly, something which the Western part of Germany is finally willing to leave behind in its great majority. Finally, a sobering thought about migrants. Just imagine for one moment Haitians would really come and seek refuge in Cuba. I would seriously fear for their lives. Remeber South Africa. it was showered with international solidarity only for ordinary people now to refuse solidarity to migrants from places like Zimbabwe.
Interesting observation. Sadly, more likely to be true than not. Young Cubans are voracious consumers. Their appetite for all things name brand is all the more incredible given Cuba’s struggle to acquire just the basic food and decent shelter. I wish for a post-Castro Cuba all the benefits that a free and open democracy should enjoy. Unfortunately, I am not so naive as the think that along with this freedom to to think and speak freely will not come the shallow and selfish characteristics of materialism. Castro’s New Man is going to crave new clothes, new cars, new houses and it will come at a cost to Cuban values.
Originally a concept of Stalin, the idea of the “New Man” was enthusiastically adopted by Dr, “Che” Ernesto Guevara. The idea that human beings will be prepared to sacrifice their own interests for the good of others is wonderful, but impractical. The reality is that the majority of humanity are more concerned about their own welfare and that of their families, than they are about unknown others.
Certainly there are many exceptions to this and those exceptions are usually much admired, but they remain exceptions.
The history of extreme and antagonistic political views in Eastern Europe is clear, being perhaps at its most extreme in the Balkans. Exploitation of nationalism is the last resort of political scoundrels. This is demonstrated by Hitler’s national socialism and by the Castro family regime in Cuba. Waving the flag becomes not a daily, but hourly occurrence, the media wallow in it. But there is a marked difference between love of ones country and support for the use of force to support a party political view through exploitation of that love, turning it from love initially to pride and from pride to nationalism which can then be used to foment oppression of those who don’t comply with your political view.
Political nationalists usually latch on to whatever sector of society regards itself as being exploited by others. Hence emergence of thugs necessary to both enforce nationalism and to recruit the disgruntled.
It’s an ugly, nasty view based upon discrimination of every kind.