A View from Cuba

by Inda Schaenen

St. Louis

            It's impossible to take a bad picture in Cuba. Just about every image the eye can frame juxtaposes elements that are incongruent, ironic, beautiful, frustrating, moving, amusing, outrageous, touching, confusing, inspiring, or just plain gorgeous. Even the most random snapshot is likely to capture something meaningful.        

            I'm thinking of the enterprising microcapitalist I saw while strollling in Central Havana last week. He sat on a small chair in front of a TV-tray-sized worktable. Upon the table were several small silver tweezers and other devices used in manicuring or jewelry repair. Beside the tools, upright on their ends, were about a dozen colorful cigarette lighters, the kind North Americans might think of as "disposable."  In Cuba such items are not disposable; whether broken or empty, they are fixed. Here, in the severely constrained marketplace that is defined by the crumbling doorway of a wreck of a mansion on a falling-apart boulevard, they are being fixed for a fee.

            Such scenes and millions of others are there for the tourist--easy to grab, easy to digest.

            Widen the lens, and it's possible to see a bigger picture. Decades ago, the Beatles were banned as counterrevolutionary. Not long ago, Fidel himself apologized for his misjudgment and dedicated the bronze John Lennon sculpture now sitting in the heart of a Vedado park. Four months ago Cubans couldn't have cell phones. Now they can. Earlier this year, Cubans could not rent cars or stay in hotels. Now they can and they do. It is a commonplace to say that times are changing in Cuba; the whole country seems to be bracing for what will come next. On the other hand, in many ways the country has been bracing and re-bracing since the revolution marched into Havana in January of 1959.  How Cubans feel about some of the scenarios likely to unfold from the present moment varies from person to person.

            The other day I met a retired electrical engineer, a former dean at the university. Because the intercom was broken, he met my daughter and me in the lobby of his modernist 1950s residential apartment building on the Malecón, the once-grand street that sweeps along the water of the Florida straits. We took the slow-moving elevator to the seventh floor. There, in his north-facing booklined corner office, where he has worked and lived for 46 years, he continues to write and read, and he communicates regularly with friends and colleagues from abroad. When asked about the future, this educated, informed man tends to shrug.

            What is the meaning of this shrug?

           This retiree has only one framed photo on the wall, a photograph of the late revolutionary leader Che Guevara. Under the picture is a copy of a letter Che wrote to his five children. "Grow up as good revolutionaries," Che wrote. "Study hard so you can master technology, which allows us to master nature. Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of  us, alone, is worth nothing. Above all, be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary."

            Having been twice to Cuba, once five years ago and once last week, I actually think that Che's words in this letter captures the tension that drives to the heart of the predicament in Cuba, if not to the heart of all nations.

             "Each one of us, alone, is worth nothing," Che wrote. In other words, we humans are social creatures. We find our meaning as living beings in connection and interdependence with one another. The needs of the individual can and must be subordinated to the interest of the group.

            On the other hand, if we also "feel deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world," the value of the individual instantly rises. Every single individual, Che suggested, deserves dignity and respect.

            But keeping track and rectifying the injustices "committed against anyone, anywhere in the world," can be a messy, expensive, time-consuming, and even bloody business. "One for all and all for one" makes a catchy slogan, but a complicated socio-political policy. I believe my Cuban friend's shrug indicates a recognition of this complication.

            In Cuba, just like everywhere else, leaders must perform the same old balancing act: weighing individual rights against collective welfare, two sets of interests which will sometimes, inevitably, be at odds.  Just to take one example from home: adequate health care for all would probably mean less profit for a few. To date, we Americans have generally accepted that the few should profit at the expense of the many.

            Cuba's attempt for nearly fifty years has been to provide more for a greater proportion of her 11 million people, particularly for the masses of people who happened to have been born with less than they needed. Naturally, many of the people in 1959 who happened to have been born with more than they needed were outraged.

I  try, whether walking around Havana, or visiting the countryside, to set aside the silly nose-thumbing theatricality of the longrunning Fidel vs. Uncle Sam Show. I think instead about the people I encounter. Many of them live in ruins. Others go about their business in ways that would look familiar to a resident of Union, Missouri or the Upper West Side in New York.  Everywhere I turn I see people trying to figure things out--doing the business that makes a go of life. Likewise at  the national level, Cuban leaders tend to experiment with plans, with projects, with systems. Some work. Some don't, and then the faulty plans are either tweaked or abandoned. 

            I suppose my point is this: just because something seems broken and empty (remember the "disposable" lighters?) doesn't mean it has to be thrown away. Someone, or a group of someones,  might just come along with the vision and the skills to fix it.