Iván García, Cuba Press
HAVANA, February - It's almost drama. Twenty thousand Cubans depart for the United States legally every year. Ever since the signing of the migratory accords of 1994, more than 100,000 have left to live in the "brutal and convoluted empire." But there is more. Two million compatriots
have left the island in 41 years of a revolution that was carried out -supposedly- to benefit the most humble elements of society.
Thousands of loveless marriages with Spaniards, Italians, Swiss or Germans are processed every year. Those that leave are not scum or traitors, as the authorities would have us believe. Some of the deserters are military, Castro's bodyguards, intelligence officers, physicians, teachers, artists,
sports figures and also unemployed youth who find no hope in the horrible monotony of life.
The number who may have died in the Straits of Florida trying to reach a different future is unknown. In spite of the fear of death, they keep trying. The most notorious case is that of Elizabeth Brotón Rodríguez, the mother of Elián, who lost her life in the journey.
Her son miraculously survived. And he has become a ping pong ball in a game between Havana and Miami. The rightness of the cause for the return of the child has not stood in the way of base manipulation by Castroites and their enemies.
Since December 5, Héctor, 18, who lives with his mother a few steps from the United States' Interests Section in Havana, has been subject to the screaming day and night asking for Elián's return.
Héctor hasn't paid much attention to the affair. He thinks that "if the father wants him back, he should go get him." He, of course, would not have gone the way of Elián's father; he is looking for any possible way to leave the country.
On Friday January 14, the morning was cool. Héctor shaved and dressed to keep a date at one o'clock in a waterfront café. He was meeting his latest paramour, a Canadian businessman. All the time he was dressing he heard through the window the yelling of more than 100,000 women
asking for Elián's return.
Héctor's mother was one of the participants in the march convened by the government. Not because she believed in it, but to preserve appearances. She works in a foreign enterprise and she doesn't want to be "labelled" a malcontent. Héctor smiles and shakes his head,
commenting softly that "she is a more of an extremist than Ileana Ros-Lehtinen," the U.S. congresswoman who is the target of the propaganda attacks in Cuba.
His case is typical of the double standard that is widely observed in Cuba. Héctor knows it, but doesn't care. He hurries to keep his date. He wasn't always a homosexual. "It's the necessity of leaving the country." His six-foot frame, brown eyes, dark skin and black, silky hair
charmed the old Canadian who works in the island and who used to frequent the fashionable gay bar in Havana, next door to the Fiat dealership.
Héctor, with his gay friends, spent his nights trawling for someone with money and a passport who would get him out of the country. It wasn't hard for Héctor. At the same time that the more than 100,000 women hurried tiredly home to prepare dinner for their children and husbands,
after marching asking for Elián's return, Héctor, sitting under a colored umbrella, enjoyed a chocolate ice-cream with his fat, foreign boyfriend who gave him the good news.
In two months, no more, he would be in Montreal. "Before spring," his date assured him. At home, he told his mother the news. She still hadn't taken off the T-shirt with Elián's face given by the government to the marchers.
She would have preferred her son had not become a homosexual to leave the country, "but the end justifies the means, and the young don't have any good reason to put up with this hell," she says.
She has forgotten that only two hours before she was vehemently asking that Elián be returned to his country. In the darkened living room, Héctor and his mother plan the future and consider the possibility that she will eventually follow him. That will have to wait. But if there is
one thing Cubans know how to do is wait.
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