Manuel Vázquez Portal, Grupo de Trabajo Decoro
HAVANA, March - Where Cuba is headed, no one knows. There are no oracles, seers, or cardreaders who could foresee it. We are fresh out of omens, after forty years of disasters, bumps and mistakes.
Fidel Castro milked his promises dry. He promised so many utopias that no one believes in the promised land any more. Rather, everyone seems to just want out of this land.
He promised us that fresh milk would flow out of the faucets. Just as well, because lately we can't even get water out of the faucets. He promised us that socialism would be Eden for the workers. Thanks to capitalism, we at least are still workers.
He promised us we would defeat the monster to the north. It's a good thing we didn't because, who would send us the few dollars we get now? He promised us that we would own the stars, and we have stars spinning around us like a cartoon character who's had an anvil dropped on his head. He
promised and we believed.
Now we are paying the price for our candor. Our future was yesterday. My grandfather told my father and my father told me that they were struggling to build the future. But the future is past, and I am trying to figure out what to tell my children.
We are not even living in the present. Cuba is mired in out-of-fashion slogans, dusty speeches no longer relevant, obsolete methods, forgotten formulas, cars that would be better off in museums, and herbs trying to pass for medicines. We are a sort of natural history museum where people can see
exhibits of what used to be socialism.
And if our present is already past, how can we know what the future has in store. You speak of the future in Cuba and people look at you as if you were a liar. There were many promises. There was so much talk of the luminous future that nobody thinks of anything but the not-even-daily
availability of soy hamburger. All that people look forward to is nightfall, so that at least Fidel Castro will be one day older and the suffering one day gone.
Anything that happens would be fine, most think. What they don't want to hear about is promises and dreams of building the future. A place under the sun would be fine, where one can eat and talk-especially talk-and die simply, without being freighted with so much historical significance.
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