Leonardo Padura: A Scream

July 17, 2021

It seems very likely that everything that happened in Cuba starting from last Sunday, July 11th, was encouraged by a greater or lesser number of people opposed to the system, some of them even paid, with intentions to destabilize the country and provoke a situation of chaos and insecurity. It is also true that later, as usually happens in these events, opportunists and regrettable acts of vandalism occurred. But I think that neither one nor the other evidence diminishes by an iota the cry we have heard. A shout that is also the result of the desperation of a society that goes through not only a long economic crisis and a specific health crisis, but also a crisis of confidence and a loss of expectations.

To that desperate demand, Cuban authorities should not respond with the usual slogans, repeated for years, and with the responses that those authorities want to hear. Not even with explanations, however convincing and necessary they may be. What is needed are the solutions that many citizens expect or demand, some manifesting themselves in the streets, others expressing their opinions on social networks and expressing their disenchantment or dissatisfaction, many counting the few and devalued pesos they have in their impoverished pockets, and many, many more, standing in resigned silence in lines for several hours under the sun or rain, with pandemic included, lines at markets to buy food, lines at pharmacies to buy medicine, lines to obtain our daily bread and for everything imaginable and necessary.

Cry (2) "(…) Cuban authorities should not respond with the usual slogans, repeated for years…" (Photo: Canal Caribe)

I believe that no one with a minimum sense of belonging, with a sense of sovereignty, with civic responsibility can want (or even believe) that the solution to these problems would come from any type of foreign intervention, much less of a military character, as some have come to request, and which, it is also true, represents a threat that remains a possible scenario.

I also believe that any Cuban inside or outside the island knows that the U.S. commercial and financial blockade or embargo, whatever they want to call it, is real and has been internationalized and intensified in recent years and is too heavy a burden for the Cuban economy (as it would be for any other economy). Those who live outside the island and today want to help their relatives in the midst of a critical situation have been able to verify that it exists and to what extent by finding themselves practically unable to send a remittance to their loved ones, to cite just one situation that affects many. It is an old policy that, by the way (sometimes some forget this), practically the entire world has condemned for many years in successive United Nations assemblies.

And I believe that no one can deny either that a media campaign has also been unleashed in which, even in the crudest ways, false information has been launched that in the beginning and in the end only serves to undermine the credibility of those who promote it.

Cry (1) "(…) neither one nor the other evidence diminishes by an iota the cry we have heard. A shout that is also the result of the desperation of a society…" (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP)

But I believe, along with all the above, that Cubans need to recover hope and have a possible image of their future. If hope is lost, the meaning of any humanist social project is lost. And hope is not recovered by force. It is rescued and nurtured by those solutions and changes and social dialogues that, by not arriving, have caused, among many other devastating effects, the migratory desires of so many Cubans and now provoked the cry of desperation of people among whom there were surely paid persons and opportunistic criminals, although I refuse to believe that in my country, at this point, there can be so many people, so many persons born and educated among us who would sell themselves or break the law. Because if that were the case, it would be the result of the society that has fostered them.

The spontaneous manner, without being bound to any leadership, without receiving anything in return or stealing anything along the way, in which also a notable number of persons has manifested themselves in the streets and on networks, should be a warning and I think it is an alarming sign of the distances that have opened between the leading political spheres and the street (and even Cuban leaders have acknowledged this). And that is the only way to explain that what has happened has happened, even more so in a country where almost everything is known when it wants to be known, as we all also know.

To convince and calm those desperate people, the method cannot be solutions of force and darkness, such as imposing the digital blackout that cut off communications for days for many, but which has nevertheless not prevented connections for those who want to say something, in favor or against. Much less can violent response be used as an argument for convincing, especially against the non-violent. And it is already known that violence can be not only physical.

Cry (3) "Much less can violent response be used as an argument for convincing, especially against the non-violent." (Photo: Yamil Lage/AFP)

Many things seem to be at stake today. Perhaps even whether calm returns after the storm. Perhaps extremists and fundamentalists will not succeed in imposing their extremist and fundamentalist solutions, and a dangerous state of hatred that has been growing in recent years will not take root.

But, in any case, it is necessary that solutions arrive, responses that should not only be of a material nature but also of a political character, and thus an inclusive and better Cuba can address the reasons for this cry of desperation and loss of hope that, in silence but with force, since before July 11th, many of our compatriots had been expressing, those laments that were not heard and from whose rains these muddy waters have arisen.

As a Cuban who lives in Cuba and works and creates in Cuba, I assume it is my right to think and express opinions about the country in which I live, work, and create. I already know that in times like these and for trying to express an opinion, it usually happens that "One is always reactionary to someone and red to someone else," as Claudio Sánchez Albornoz once said. I also assume that risk, as a man who intends to be free, who hopes to be increasingly free.

In Mantilla, July 15, 2021.