By Belén Gopegui
Sometimes I hear or read arguments I don’t understand. Sometimes a journalist asks, scandalized: “And what is the Cuban government going to do to provide solutions for its people?”
It’s like if, in a playground where a large group was beating up a child simply because they are different, a journalist appeared and, instead of asking, “And what are we going to do to make them stop hitting him?”, asked the child being bullied, “And what are you going to do to make them stop hitting you?”
Sometimes other journalists lament that, after so many years of revolution, Cuba doesn’t have more oil, forgetting that what has been prohibited — not just Cuba, but the country from which that journalist is speaking, whoever that country may be — is selling oil to Cuba. Forgetting that any non-oil-producing country in the world that suffered the consequences of such a prohibition would enter into crisis.
Forgetting that the word crisis, in this case, is not an abstraction; it represents lives with names and surnames, bombarded without bombs, with siege, with hunger for food and the resources that alleviate the suffering of the most vulnerable: newborns, the elderly, the sick. The Cuban people, accustomed as they are to institutional and community protection systems when hurricanes and other catastrophes strike, organize themselves, take care of each other, and share the scarcity, but sometimes all that is not enough against a deliberate cyclone of slow death, imposed by force and condoned by the international community.
If this same prohibition were applied to any European country, there would be, I think, some differences. On the one hand, it is very likely that resentment would be unleashed among the population, because European coexistence rests on the abuse and unequal treatment that some sectors of the population exert over those who harvest their crops, those who care for their elders and children, those who clean their houses, those who receive under-the-table or ridiculously low wages so that others can earn ten, twenty, a hundred times more.
On the other hand, solidarity movements like those organized for Cuba would not emerge from any country, because in Europe, if some countries gave anything, it was always from their surplus. Because within those countries, economic priorities have always been subordinated to giving more to those who already had more, not the other way around. Because internal inequality is compounded by external inequality, given that European wealth stems in part from a colonialism that still persists in the form of unbalanced agreements. And because we are unaware of, or have forgotten, what has been called a “sense of historical moment,” which unites people because they know that the possibility of ending a piece of capitalist realism depends on their actions.
Of course, Cuba is not perfect, nor is it obligated to be. Revolutions are not made to achieve perfect places, because people are not perfect, but rather to try to create places that are habitable for everyone, and thus prevent the pleasure of a certain percentage of the population from being bought with the anguish, fatigue, exhaustion, and humiliation of another percentage. To try to build aspirin the size of the sun so that everyone can celebrate the good fortune of being alive. It is impossible to know if they could have achieved it, or if they still can. From the beginning and to this day, the United States has been preventing them from having fair trade relations, sometimes simply from having them at all, out of fear that the revolution would advance and could be a path to follow.
The smugness and glee displayed by certain commentators when discussing the ongoing negotiations between the Cuban and U.S. governments only reveals their true nature and foreshadows that when a bully is on our heels, these same commentators will be there, ready to pay homage. They are the ones who prop up the bully, who remain silent, who nod in agreement, who witness the abuse and, when the blows are struck, mock the victim, saying, “See?”
If we must speak of cowardice regarding what is happening in Cuba, let us remember that any decision that country makes will only challenge those who, from the outside, stand by impassively in the face of injustice and then look at each other—perhaps we look at ourselves—asking with feigned perplexity: Why is what is happening in so many areas of politics and life happening? Because we have remained silent and accepted it. What cowardice, yes, what a tragedy that no European country has sent oil to Cuba. A video is circulating of Cuban children singing Silvio Rodríguez’s song in the dark:
The pale-faced northerner harasses me from the south, the east, and the west, from every latitude,
the pale-faced one who has divided the sun
into an hour of shrapnel and an hour of pain harasses me.
The earth wants to take me away
the water wants to take me away
the air wants to take me away
and only fire, only fire will I give
I am my earth, my air, my water, my fire.
What has been learned in and from Cuba, what is being learned, is part of who we are, continues and will continue to give earth, air, water, and fire, to a possible, different way of living, a way of living without stepping on anyone’s neck just because they have appropriated fewer resources. Many days lie ahead; any act of solidarity is essential, not to help Cuba, but to help us, to help create a world where the word justice has not disappeared and where we don’t have to live with shame, fear, and loneliness.
[ SOURCE: CUBA DEBATE ]
