You say you want a revolution?
Fidel Castro just died and so too his and Che’s dream of a new order.
My family in Miami might spit on me for saying this but Fidel achieved in a short order of time a total revolution – he brought literacy to the people, he brought equal opportunity, and sadly he lost sight of utopia and he became more and more removed from the people themselves and soon there was equally no opportunity and literacy meant little when all there was to read were books about Fidel. Yes folks, he lost his mind and his vision, but in concept, his vision had merit.
I was born in May 1959, we left Havana in March 1959 with the clothes on our backs (I was in my mom’s tummy). I went back in 1999 to celebrate my 40th birthday and I saw a Cuba that was an enigma – I went with the backdrop of the dotcom explosion happening in San Francisco and found a way of life in Cuba that seemed more worthy of living, and still I was repulsed by Castro’s rigid hold on the minds and bodies of the people there. I have little hope in his brother’s rule and truly believe the best days of Cuba lie ahead, but it is not without concern about what happens to the island when special interests take over and once again exploit the natural beauty of the people, land and culture for private material gain.
Viva la Revolución! Only this time, the right one.
October 13th, 2012 at 9:25 am
Hi Rachel, I’ve been enjoying your blog for years and meaning to leave a comment. Thank you so much for sharing your stories. You have a tremendous gift for turning every experience, no matter how difficult, into something life-affirming.
About Fidel — it would have been very interesting to see what direction the revolution could have taken without the embargo. It may have ended the same way, but I always wonder how much of Fidel’s paranoia and hardline stance were a result of our own rigidity and blindness.
October 13th, 2012 at 3:06 pm
No doubt DeLisa, we as a country were not ready for a revolution even on a neighboring island. When I went in 1999, I met some incredible people who would not have had the education, the opportunities, and life that Castro’s world offered them, and yet I did sympathize with my family who remained there and stood in line to get meager pieces of bread. It almost reminds me of the quote I saw from Jimmy Carter’s Crisis of Confidence speech where a guy wrote in, “Some of us have always been in a recession.” For those at the bottom it was a lift up, for those at the top it was a far fall. But somewhere in there was a dream of something better. I read Che’s biography many years ago and I was cheering him on and then at the end he became confused and didn’t even follow his own bylaws and wound up dead. It’s probably why there is this romantic hero version of him that still exists today, but both he and Fidel saw the horror of how Cuba had become the U.S.’s prostitute and they wanted change. It seems unfathomable that today a revolution like theirs could even be construed much less transpire.
It’s a real sin that we still have that embargo going today – a black eye for us, for sure.
October 13th, 2012 at 3:26 pm
DeLisa – one more thing, thanks for reading and appreciate your comment.