Cuban Blogger Defines Freedom To The World

Generation Y is a Blog inspired by people like me, with names that begin with or contain a "Y." Born in Cuba in the 1970s and 1980s, marked by schools in the countryside, Russian cartoons, illegal emigration and frustration. So I invite especially Yanisleidi, Yoandri, Yusimí, Yuniesky and others who drag their "Y's" to read my Blog and to write to me.

The relativity of distances obsesses the Cuban balseros [rafters, i.e. those who try to escape to the U.S. by sea]. “So close yet so far,” the strip of sea that lies between Cuba and the United States seems to say.

When the Institute of Meteorology announces several days with good weather, then the remote Cuban coast sees the rafters arrive, the men and women who the nation is losing, who no longer stay to employ their talents, their time, their lives, in Cuba. Some will blame this illegal emigration on the “economy,” as if economics and politics could, in Cuba, each go their own way.

You have already tried three times to reach the coast of the United States. Why this obsession with reaching it or, if you prefer, leaving?

I have been thinking of leaving this country for over ten years. At first I wanted to do it through a letter of invitation to Italy, but it didn’t work because between the exit permit, passport and ticket, what I had to pay totaled more than a thousand dollars and I just could not bear these costs and neither side knew anybody there to help me. So I reflected a bit and I told myself: “I know the sea very well, from when I was very small I have been in the water.” So I decided to use the sea to fulfill my dream of leaving Cuba.

At first it was the same to me, where I would go, I just wanted to close my eyes and be away from all the things that annoy me every day. Being a thousand kilometers from the end of the line for bread, the Head of Sector, transport problems, Roundtables, and also my family, since we don’t all fit in the house and coexistence becomes very difficult.

Some of my friends went to Spain, others are married to foreigners and now I get postcards from incredible places. Others preferred to stay and really don’t do well. When I meet them they tell me that they still live with their parents and now receive from their workplace an extra bag, once a month, with soap and detergent. I do not want that for my life, I do not want to be in my sixties and have a pension that won’t support me and have to sell cigarettes to survive, and all of these things in my own country. I do not want my life to depend on the whims of a few top people who will decide this month whether I will eat peas or lentils. I want to experiment, I want to try other things, and I don’t think that in the next ten years I can do that here.

--snip--

Hasn’t it occurred to you to free your mind of this obsession and to use your talents and energies in this country?

I’ve passed through many stages. At one point I was seriously looking for a job and I decided to make my life here. But after six months I stopped. On the one hand was the administrator who was sticking it to me because he knew I was the one who had returned after trying to leave on a raft; on the other hand I couldn’t find a space where I could say what I felt about everything around me, until it got to the point where I came to believe I was sick because everything bothered me. But talking to people my age I realized that a wish to leave the country is widespread, perhaps more than people think. I realized I was not a rare bird but that if there are those who are fighting for the dream of studying in college, or to be a famous artist, I was going to use my energies to fulfill my dream of traveling. With that I don’t think you do any harm to anyone, it’s a personal decision and ought to be respected as one.

I also tried to make some handicrafts to earn a little extra money and to gain some independence from my parents but it all ended when they confiscated some wild cane I took from Lenin Park to make some ornaments. I stopped everything with tremendous apathy. I thought to continue studying, but the option to get involved with the Trabajadores Sociales [young adults in Cuba who do voluntary social work such as changing everyone’s incandescent light bulbs for energy saver bulbs – see Generation Y entry of 20 June 2008] didn’t appeal to me, nor did graduating and working for a wage that wouldn’t support me. Then I started work at the CVP (Venezuelan Petroleum Corporation) but after three months on a trial status they said I wasn’t a reliable person and let me go.

The biggest shock may come later when they know how to read and search in a dictionary for the significance of this rare word that hangs from the entrance. The first meaning of “proletariats” that they will discover is people who are “dispossessed, who have no assets,” and they will be annoyed by those who tangled their tongues and, on top of that, condemned them to not having any property.