IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 119
One style that is increasingly gaining in
popularity among young people is to
copy foreign customs like LAM parties
(parties in which people play online
video games) or celebrate Halloween.
There is a specialized market offering
articles for birthday parties that feature
favorite, U.S., cartoon characters:
Mickey Mouse, Snow White, Shrek,
Sponge Bob, etc. Even children’s, firstgrade graduation diplomas sport images
of Ariel (the Little Mermaid) and
Princess Jasmine, from the film Aladdin.
There are visible and also hidden reasons
for this rejection: a decade’s old,
economic crisis and an unstoppable flow
of emigrating exiles are both weighty
reasons, but not enough all on their own.
Our first, probing question should be
concerning the degree of security a
Cuban national ID card or passport offer.
Cubans do not feel protected; instead,
they feel like controlled objects: at
school and work, anytime one is
involved in legal procedures or
formalities, and even in one’s own
home, where it is possible to be
assaulted by unannounced, mass
fumigations, or CDR meetings, or
unexpected blackouts. This brings to
mind a friend of mine who emigrated,
who ten years after leaving would be
shocked at the Island’s reality: “There
are blackouts, and nothing happens! In
Chile, if the light goes out for just a few
minutes, the next day there are electric
company people at your door with gifts,
so you don’t sue.” Incessant questioning
by functionaries and the police, our
“symbolic” salaries, the risks involved in
trying to be self-employed, and the
illegal acrobatics in which we must
engage just to survive reaffirm our
continuous sense of uncertainty.
Conversely, how does one feel pride for
a scene to which there seems to be no
end, for most of Havana, at least?
Crumbling streets, overflowing trash
bins, hungry dogs, delayed and
overstuffed buses. Our much-acclaimed
dignity, a direct inheritance from our
homegrown heroes, does not exist any
more, at least not in any practical sense.
After 37 years of self-sacrificing service
in Public Health, a nurse was going to
take her first trip abroad (thanks to a
family member, not to her career); she
confessed to me that almost all her
luggage was borrowed. Cuba’s showy
face, the glittering institutions, or those
that are being restored, the luxury hotels,
in which everyday citizens are seen with
suspicion, don’t create any sense of
belonging eith