IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 2 ENGLISH | Page 27

as they are the most historically disadvantaged for
this sort of situation. Political mucky mucks talk
about prostitution in a very soft voice. They deny
it is a scourge that sacrifices more and more
young people daily in search of economic solutions. This reality situates parents at a dead end
when it comes to trying to combat the demoralization their children are succumbing to. This
scourge even affects young men, who engage in
homosexual practices as an economic out, and not
as a sexual preference, something many of them
openly confess. A great many of these young people have been penalized, fined or warned by the
police, but nothing is done to confront the problems that create these attitudes and behaviors. We
should recall that the women’s prison built in Havana to house only prostitutes is now essentially
a way of expelling from the city young people
from other provinces who come to the capital to
improve their economic situation by selling their
bodies. This generalized corruption eats away at
these new generations’ ethical references. They
have grown up at a time when all this has become
normal and these attitudes are accepted.
It is no longer only about a few politicians who
thrived from the public coffer nor about citizens
deprived of any possibility of satisfying their
needs by doing honest work and that have to steal
anything they can from a State that demands everything and offers less and less. Today, even the
police have been won over by corruption. Agents
sell influence and benefits without any shame
whatsoever.
The hustle bustle of interests regarding prostitution is so hurtful. Cubans with economic means
have a competitive advantage. Attorneys, prosecutors and judges conspire to sell prisoners even
their own rights. The latter know nearly nothing
about the damage this does to their own dignity,
and that of their families. Other entities, like the

Immigration Authority (MININT) and the Cuban
General Customs, are equally discredited.
Life in poor neighborhoods worsens, slums increase in number, and inequalities and despair are
greater than official indolence and the blindness
of important international personalities. It is incredibly lamentable to see how the educational
system has gotten caught in this infamous, corrupt, spiraling quagmire. Teachers and professors
survive by commercializing exams and grades.
This has become an everyday tragedy about
which only Cuba’s leaders seem not to know.
What can be said about the future of a nation
where a partial qualifying exam grade costs 5 dollars and the course’s completion costs $50? Another scourge we cannot rid ourselves of, because
it constitutes the very essence of how those with
power hold on to it, is the permanent terror to
which everyday citizens are subjected. In a country where everything is mandatory or prohibited,
the only thing that works with certain efficacy is
mechanisms of surveillance/control/coercion/repression.
The well-oiled machine that sets Cubans against
Cubans, and eventually divides them into repressors and victims, is one of the trump cards
this regime—with its inability to fulfill plans,
promises or responsibilities—holds in its hand. It
is expert at keeping up and using the panic it induces, and bewilders and paralyzes people’s spirits and thoughts.
The criminal impunity of a regime capable of
keeping a valiant human rights activist like Sonia
Garro imprisoned “provisionally” for two years,
and fabricate an absurd accusation against Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a very prestigious, humble
and dignified leader, is as bad as the legal aberration known as “dangerousness index.” The latter
has sent thousands of citizens—men and women
of all ages, mostly black, without them having