[toeslist] Part One: An American in Cuba (by Mitchel Cohen)
 
Resent-Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2008 12:21:57 -0500 (CDT)


AN AMERICAN IN CUBA

by Mitchel Cohen

Liberal newspapers and journals as much as overt right-wing ones
have long been fond of de-nouncing the Cuban government as an
authoritarian "regime" that oppresses its people in the name of
socialism. They characterize those who support the Cuban revolution
as "Stalinists."

A number of U.S. leftists have bought into these arguments and
accept the prevailing demonization of the Cuban government.

On the other hand, many on the Left in the U.S.

take the opposite path, allowing little debate over the nature of
the revolution in Cuba.

(Please note -- "Liberal" and "Left" are not the same, or even part
of the same continuum, despite the congruence imposed by the corporate
me-dia.) Those leftists who criticize Cuba's policies are condemned
as "tools of U.S. imperialism"; those who find a silver-lining in
the U.S. government's trade embargo - among them socialists,
anarchists, even some marxists - are considered "enemies of this
hemisphere's only socialist revolution." These are the flames to
which leftists gravi-tate like moths. Both poles are dangerously
flawed.

In the summer of 1992 I visited Cuba as part of a delegation to the
Fourth Conference of Cuban and North American Philosophers, organized
by the U.S.-based Radical Philosophy Association. I had occasion
to travel quite a bit around Havana, and others in the delegation
ventured all over the country. There are many problems in Cuba -
and the people living there are the first to complain about them
and feel free enough to do so. Despite tremendous hardships caused
or exacerbated by the U.S. embargo, life on the ground in Cuba
simply felt more joyous than the way its represented from afar.

In assessing Cuban socialism most leftists in the U.S. - to say
nothing of the corporate media - simply miss the point. I found
that proposals I and others made for "Green" forms of "development"
were welcomed by most Cuban agencies, some quite independent from
the national government; they are eager for skilled international
input. What many in the U.S. fail to understand is that unlike the
situation in pre-unification Germany where the authoritarian
bureaucracy in the East was im-posed from the outside, it is the
involvement of the mass of Cuban people and not the structure of
the Cuban government that is the defining feature of the revolution
there.

Regardless of how one assesses Cuba, those of us living in the U.S.
would better serve our movements here by paying more attention to
the dynamic revolutionary culture, philosophy, morality and vision
of the Cuban people. I hope that this account of my experiences in
Cuba will contribute to restoring context and a human scale to the
current polemics.

Back to the Future

HAVANA, CUBA, June 1992 - HAVANA IS A CITY OF VINTAGE AMERICAN CARS
from the 1940s and '50s and single-geared Chinese bicycles from the
'90s. The old Spanish architecture, which predates the 1959 revolution
by centuries, is stunning, although everywhere in need of painting
(due to the U.S.

embargo, paint is scarce). Brilliant red-flowered flamboyante trees
line the major avenues and parks - the breathtaking Cuban equivalent
of New England's maples in autumn.

My dorm room is in a beautiful house in the Miramar section. The
June weather is sweltering.

My roommates and I are tempted to use the air- conditioners provided
by the university, but we refrain. We appreciate the sacrifices
they are making to meet the "bourgeois" needs of U.S.

visi-tors, but our awareness of their dire economic situation keeps
us from using up their precious elec-tricity. The Cubans think we're
crazy, ungrateful, it's super hot out, they'd die to have an air
condi-tioner.

I am overwhelmed by the unanticipated generosity and gentleness in
Havana, especially among the panhand-lers and occasional prostitutes
I encounter. Humor pervades all interaction; there is a vibrancy
that is tangible, sexual, a twinkling of the eyes that is hard to
describe and even more difficult to get used to.

I walk and bike all over the city; contrary to stories we heard in
Miami, there are no commissars breathing down my neck or looking
over my shoulder. Except for tourist hotels, where Cuban citi-zens
are no longer allowed - a double standard provoking serious dissension,
to which our translators are in denial - Cubans and tourists alike
are free to go anywhere and talk to whomever they please.

I stop everywhere to talk with people, take pictures, read, interview
officials and environmental activists, hunt for hard-to-find avenues,
gay venues, tea rooms and alternative medicine practitioners. Where
are the billboards trying to sell me something? Where are the
taxi-drivers yelling out to me? Everywhere the general absence of
interpersonal street violence and aggression is, to this New York-er,
wonderful ... and disorienting.

Cuban machismo is always evident, but it takes a different form
than what I am used to in the United States. For instance, it rarely
translates into physical violence on the street. And yet, everything
is relative, I suppose. Aurora Hidalgo, a young lawyer at the Ecology
Ministry, told me she now carries a knife because a woman who lives
in my building was raped a year ago -- the only rape in her whole
neighborhood near downtown Havana, in the last two years. Still,
when we visit the art museum, which is free and virtually empty,
the guards stand two-feet behind us as though we're going to run
up and draw mustaches on the sculptures and paintings.

I find myself thinking about the ways capitalism distorts us  not
only others, but what it has done to me, twisted me, shaped my
interactions, relationships, love life, expectations, desires and
sense of self, without my even knowing it.

Here, in Cuba, my cells are in revolt. My mitochondria are conjuring
energies that are more fully me than Ive ever before experienced.
I am coming alive, and I never even knew I was dead.

I didnt expect Cuba to be so personal a revelation. Like most North
American urbanites, I have taken for granted who I am all my adult
life. Can my friends in New York appreciate this feeling, the way
in which violence has so shaped our interactions, relationships and
sense of self that we don't even see it? If, as Ferlinghetti
metaphored, there is a "Coney Island of the mind," then there is
also some-thing of a Havana of the spirit. For now, I don't want
to go back home.