EDITOR'S NOTE: When U.S. voters go to
the polls in November to pick a president, Florida — and its heavy
concentration of Cuban Americans — may again play a central role in
determining who wins. Nowhere will this contest be more closely watched
than in Cuba, whose fate may be determined by the election's outcome. More
than 90 percent of Cubans in South Florida are white; over 60 percent of
the people in Cuba are black. In this series, BlackAmericaWeb.com examines
the role that race plays in Cuba — and in the tug-of-war between the
government of Fidel Castro and Cuban exile leaders in Florida.
On the crowded beach of Marazul outside Havana, a group of bikini-clad
young women sway to infectious salsa rhythms and talks revolution. Our
Cuban companion says they are “working girls,” trying to cash in on
their curves. The women say they are hardworking chambermaids and
schoolteachers.
Hard to say which is true, maybe both, maybe neither.
Ana Maria Perez Rodriguez, 23, who says she’s a fourth grade teacher,
is wearing a U.S. flag-like bikini; red, white and blue and emblazoned
with stars. “Me encanta Los Estados Unidos,” I love the United States,
she says, although she supports the revolution that brought Fidel Castro
to power and has given the country broad educational opportunities and
free medical care on demand.
What it has not given her is the shoes she craves and the cute little
T-shirts Rodriquez said she longs to wear. What it does not do is allow
her job to pay her more than $8 a month.
She said she wants to travel and work in the U.S. but said even after
Castro is gone, the revolution will continue. “The Cuban revolution is
very good,” said Rodriguez, “but it has limited our rights.”
And for young Cubans, especially young black Cubans, who are more
exposed to U.S. images and ideals than their parents, who are more aware
of what they may be missing, but have no memory of the widespread
discrimination that marked Cuban history before 1959, a test of ideas is
at hand.
Neivi Cuesta, 28, heads public relations for Havana’s five-star
Parque Central Hotel. Despite “the triumph of the revolution,” she
said “it is difficult to please people’s desires.” Her grandparents
had little money to send their children to school and before Castro came
to power, her mother planned on being a teacher. Now, her mother is a
surgeon, her aunt is a dentist, her uncle is an engineer. “I don’t
think, in fact I know, we would not have had the educational opportunities
we have had,” Cuesta said.
But that doesn’t take the place of the things she wants.
Cuesta wants to be able to afford to stay at the hotel where she works
long hours. She wants to travel, to buy her own car. She has visited
Canada so, “I know all the things I could have, but I want to have them
here,” she said. Cuesta wants the U.S. embargo against Cuba lifted and
said that will improve the lives of Cuban people. “I think we should
think of a way so that we can have the things we need and still support
the revolution.”
According to Cuban filmmaker Gloria Rolando, 51, that is the great
challenge of these times. In 2000, Rolando made a film about the 1912
massacre of 6,000 blacks in Southern Cuba who were demanding an end to
racial discrimination. Rolando, who was age 7 at the time Castro came to
power in 1959, said Afro-Cuban families and communities must teach and
pass down their history. She says they must continue to remember how the
society treated people of color prior to the revolution.
When her grandmother was young, Rolando said, blacks were forced to
walk around their local park; only whites were allowed to walk through.
“When the revolution arrived, they say no more separation. There were
educational opportunities not only for black people, but everybody who
didn’t have a chance, like poor whites in the country.
“The young generation wants material things, ‘I want this, I want
that.’ My mother is 77 and she is now inside the university for older
people. I don’t have the latest fashions in clothes or shoes, but I have
the example of my mother and she continues struggling and learning.”
In Havana’s central park, a pair of young Afro-Cubans is restless and
discontent. Manuel de Jesus Rodriguez and his buddy Lorenzo Caballero
Martinez, both 18, live in Guantanamo, a city in Cuba’s southern-most
province. Rodriguez said his parents earn very little money. He said he
wants to buy shoes and clothes but can’t. Yes they have education,
health care and a guaranteed job, but they are young enough to take these
things for granted while Western images of plenty fill their heads.
For young people in Cuba (60 percent of the population was born after
the revolution) and particularly young blacks who often still occupy the
lowest rungs of this society, it seems there is a deep hunger to see what
comes next; to see if the embargo will be lifted, to see if they will be
able to travel and earn more money.
They are hungry to see if the revolution, having triumphed in providing
most of the basic things they need, will now be able to provide for their
deep-seated need to get beyond the basics.
