Havana 2016. Flickr/Ken Walton. Some rights reserved.Olga, a former University teacher, remembered her faithful
devotion to Fidel Castro when she was growing up in Santiago more than forty
years ago. ‘Before the triumph of the Revolution I went to a Baptist private
school. After I went to a state school, and I grew disenchanted with religion.
This happened not only to me, it happened to my entire generation. The change
was profound. Fidel replaced the God we had believed in. He was a very
significant leader for everyone, but in particular for us of the younger
generation. We threw ourselves into the struggle to make the revolution. Life
was very difficult after the sugar harvest of 1970 failed. We suffered a lot,
but we still had that belief, that determination, that we had to fight for the
revolution. We thought of Fidel as our God the saviour, and we all closed ranks,
and we struggled, and we tried not to see his errors, his flaws. I did not
return to the church for many, many years.’
I first
interviewed Olga (not her real name) twelve years ago, when with a team of
Cuban and British researchers I began recording the life histories of Cuban men
and women living on the island. Olga and I last met several months ago, in
Miami, where she now lives. Our team has collected the life histories of 125 Cubans
from different generations, social positions and political views, of diverse
racial, gender, sexual and religious identities. Many talked with us multiple
times, recounting how their lives and attitudes have changed over the years.
Cubans over the age of fifty frequently brought up Fidel in our
conversations. Usually they portrayed him favourably, but not always. Fearing
their criticisms might be overheard, in place of his name they tapped their
shoulder, [indicating his epaulets], or stroked their chin [the beard], or referred
simply to He. In place of his name they tapped
their shoulder, [indicating his epaulets], or stroked their chin [the beard],
or referred simply to He.
Like Olga, many older Cubans described Fidel as a divine figure who
protected them. Salomon,
a Communist Party official who prided himself on his sincerity, said,
‘Unfortunately Fidel cannot live forever. Fidel has been the beacon, the
guiding light of this process. He has extraordinary vision. He can predict the
future. When no political analyst, absolutely no one imagined an event could
happen, he foretold it. He warned us. His kind of genius, for he is a genius,
does not often come into the world. Fidel made many sacrifices. He sacrificed
his life to give us life.’
Older Cubans enjoyed recounting amusing tales about Fidel’s obsessions,
his foibles. They portrayed the great Comandante-en-Jefe as a man with human
defects, a relative they loved and indulged. After the triumph of
the revolution my life changed. I became a person.
Cubans of the elder generations frequently
thanked Fidel for everything they had, even for what they lacked. ‘Gracias a
Fidel’ came naturally, especially when they found themselves face to face with a
stranger carrying a recorder. Yeyé, an elderly Afro-Cuban woman, told us, ‘My life had been hard. I
suffered. Then came Fidel Castro Ruz who put everything right for everyone.
After the triumph of the revolution my life changed. I became a person. But I
have to tell you that as a worker I did not have the opportunity to study. I am
illiterate. Not totally, totally, I can sign my name. But aside from that I
give enormous thanks to Fidel Castro. For a poor person I have everything.’
Yeyé did not have everything. Later she told us that she did not have enough
food to put on the table.
Younger Cubans, women and men who came of age in the
post-Soviet era, often criticised Fidel. Their lives have been marked more by
hardship than comfort. Despite Fidel Castro’s last great campaign, the Battle
of Ideas, which attempted to convince young Cubans to uphold the ideals of socialism,
many felt that socialism was a utopian dream which belonged to a different era.
Carlos, a custodian in a small rural town, said, ‘they made
you believe that you loved him (Carlos stroked his chin), and you applauded.
They made you believe, and you jumped for joy. They made you believe you were
happy. They repeated so many things that you came to believe. Now I believe in
myself and nothing more.’ At the end of the day
Party membership does not give you a house, or a car, or money: quite the
contrary.
Mario, a young IT specialist at a government ministry, is in charge
of recruiting young people into the Communist Party. Mario confided, ‘the
number of young people who want to join the Party is falling. It’s a social
problem. They don’t identify with the historical generation, with Fidel and
Raúl. They’re indifferent. They lack political commitment because at the end of
the day Party membership does not give you a house, or a car, or money: quite
the contrary.’
Several months before
illness forced Fidel to provisionally cede power to Raúl, he announced with
much fanfare that the period of hardship was over. Posters sprang up with a
smiling Fidel next to the slogan, ‘Vamos Bien’ (We’re doing well.) Esteban, who
twice had tried to flee Cuba on a raft, pointed to the poster and said, ‘Don’t
believe it. The situation is getting worse, for the last year it has been
getting worse. It is crude, super crude. There is less food. Less of
everything. He (tapping his shoulder) says ‘Vamos Bien’, but that’s a lie. We
have much less than we had before.’
The generation gap between old and young Cubans is greater
than ever. Alina Rodríguez, a filmmaker
who now lives in Mexico told me, ‘Cuba,
probably, is the last country in the world to try to create a system like ours,
because we all have learned that it doesn’t work… The type of society we had in
Cuba won’t happen again because it emerged at a unique historical moment, and
it managed to survive, although no one really understands how. The Cuban experience
has been very rich and very complicated, rich precisely because it was
complicated. Artists feel that we have lived a history that will never be
repeated. I was nurtured in the bosom of Cuban Revolution. Now I ache inside
because so much of what I have seen, what I have lived through, makes me
grieve.’ This
is my historical moment and I want my life to be better right now.
Luis, a medical student born in 1989, the year the Berlin
Wall came down, didn’t waste his breath talking about Fidel. He said that Fidel
was an irrelevance. ‘In school they talked about before and after the
Revolution. They told us before was bad, after was good. But I am living now. I
don’t care what it was like before, or after. I want to live in better times.
This is my historical moment and I want my life to be better right now.’
Fidel Castro portrayed the Cuban Revolution as a dual struggle
to end US domination and build socialism. Patria Libre o Morir, Free
Fatherland or Death, was his rallying cry. Fidel’s motto continues to hold sway
with many older Cubans. They suspect Obama’s hand of friendship cloaks a new
strategy to undermine what remains of the Cuban Revolution. Many younger Cubans
turned away from Castro’s historic call. They are ready to sacrifice national sovereignty
and egalitarianism for economic improvement. They hope, or had hoped before
Trump, that Obama’s overtures would bring some economic relief.
The research has been funded principally by the The Ford
Foundation and the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida), with additional
funding from the British Academy, the Arts and Humanities Research Council,
(AHRC), the Leverhulme Trust, and the David Rockefeller Center for Latin
American Studies at Harvard University.