IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 6 ENGLISH | Page 7

The authors speak to us about the organic left,
alternative left, and oppositionist left, and
emphasize the contrasts between both
extremes. Various articles offer our readers
concrete examples of the immense problems
affecting the Cuban population. “Waiting on
Housing,” by Yusimí Rodríguez, talks about
how difficult it is to argue, explain, and show
a reality that is always hidden or twisted via
all the media, especially to people who visit
Cuba. This is particularly egregious because if
one walks with said visitors in Old Havana’s
tourist areas, it is filled with picture-postcard
hotels and buildings. In one article, we are
offered the example of a tourist who asked to
be taken to the other side of the bay, to Regla.
This tourist was able to experience Regla’s
crude reality in its full glory, when he visited
one of so many housing units where multiple
families, mostly black and mestizo ones that
have not managed to or have lost their
housing, live in incredibly crowded
conditions. Their living spaces reflect
unhealthiness, evictions, and environments
prone to illnesses, as well as the crudest of
shortcomings and wants. These are realities
that “cannot wait for the freedom of the press,
expression, and association to exist in
Cuba…for these people to be able to escape
the precarious conditions in which they live.
In “A Life With No Assurances,” Natividad
Soto walks us through the daily vicissitudes of
everyday citizens, realities that constantly
contradict lofty, “Revolutionary” propaganda,
and reflect the imposition of a dual morality,
due to their need to elude consequences that
could result in open opposition and a
demanding of rights. The article “Reflections
of a Cuban Teacher” offers us brief by
heartfelt observations by a woman who after
55 years of teaching talks to us about many
points that reveal the failure of social
programs, the crisis facing Cuba’s educational
system today, and the consequences, which

affect not only the shaping of generations of
future Cubans, but also of educators, too.
In such conditions, Cubans invent and endure
the most incredibly unpleasant circumstances
in order to survive. In “The New
Mavericks,” Armando Soler covers certain
problems in their extension all though the
country: how to find a space for survival in an
environment that thwarts and tries to stymie
each and every way one might find to eek out
a living his or her own way, and for their
families. Increasing needs, shortages, and
poorly paid work have led people to find
independent means for survival that skirt
rigid, official control. Only creativity,
professional skill, and audacity serve as
sub