Luis Aguilar Leon. Published Thursday, August 10, 2000, in the Miami Herald.
I can feel no wind signaling an end to the stasis.
When ships of old sailed the uncharted seas, they followed charts illustrated with fearsome monsters. But their sailors feared something more than Poseidon's terrors. This was stasis, a phenomenon that stilled the wind and turned the water into an immovable trap as far as the horizon. Then,
according to legend, no birds flew and even fish swam down to depths beyond human reach.
The stasis's effect on sailing men was tortuous. Stranded and longing for the gentlest touch of breeze, some counted the dwindling provisions, others went mad and leapt into the sea. From such a fate arose the legend of the ghost ships, vessels manned by skeleton crews, condemned to sail at
night, in perennial expectation of the wind that would bear them home.
Today both my birth country and my community lie in stasis. After the wave of intense emotion that marked the case of Elián González, Cuba is back in the vacuum of no progress. As its economic crisis worsens and foreign tourism highlights the differences between the dollar-wielding
minority and the peso-dependent majority, Fidel Castro tries to generate the wind with demonstrations of sound and fury that signify nothing.
Little has changed in Cuba since the fall of the Soviet Union. Heroic dissidents singly confront the corrupt power that has drained the nation's people for more than 40 years. The Catholic Church settles for minor protest. And naive diplomats still hope to gain concessions by dialogue with
Castro, who long ago became a stone sphinx in the desert, ready to pulverize the pyramids at the mere mention of reform or liberty.
The exiles are in similar straits. Politically powerful, able to stop or frustrate those in Washington working to lift the Cuban embargo, they nonetheless lack the strength and weaponry to threaten the sphinx or to improve their international image.
The sands of time are depleting the original number who came in the 1960s and '70s. My generation, Castro's generation, will be leaving the scene before too long. Those between 40 and 60, the youngest exiles to have memories of Cuba before Castro, are at the zenith of their potential and have
been unified by the Elián saga. But these sentiments, along with the unity, soon will diminish. And group members are unable to check Castro, let alone checkmate him.
This leaves those in Cuba and those in exile who are between 20 and 40 years old. The perspective of the first may be tainted by the government's constant propaganda and its growing corruption. Those in exile have been here long enough to grow roots and multiply, and the lines of dual loyalty
have blurred. It may yet be that their greatest role in Cuba's destiny may come after Castro's fall. Until then, their bond with the Cuban people frays.
I am neither a pessimist nor an optimist about Cuba's future. Pessimists believe they will lose even when they are winning. Optimists expect to win despite their losses.
I accept the possibility that a violent upheaval may occur tomorrow or build up like Vesuvius toward a more-distant eruption. But when I raise my head, I can feel no wind signaling an end to the stasis nor can I see the coastline 90 miles away.
Luis Aguilar León is an historian who has taught at Georgetown, Columbia and Cornell universities.
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