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