Cuba’s China syndrome - Page 3
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 25: After the Crisis
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Jorge Sotirios
THE SHIFT BEING consolidated under Raul is evident in youth. The generation that benefited from schools, clinics and sports is distanced from the triumphs of the revolution; they're jaded because they had no part in it, unlike their elders. La generación perdida is a nod to Hemingway's Lost Generation and is applied to the bright young things with mobile phones who see little threat across the Florida Straits.
The question Fidel asked of students continues to echo. Is the revolution ultimately doomed to fail; is communism merely, as the old joke runs, the transition from capitalism to capitalism? The Soviet Union's seamless shift to primitive capitalism haunts Cuba. Fidel Castro, for his part, was never swayed by Che Guevara's liking for the Chinese system, nor did he believe the Chinese possessed a ‘higher socialist morality' than the Soviets. Castro denounced China's betrayal of ideological principle ‘for a pot of western gold' under Deng Xiao Ping, and painfully remembers the humiliating sugar-for-rice barter in 1964, and China's propaganda campaign inside Cuba (Fidel fumed: propaganda was his business).
A crisis comes when the old has died and the new hasn't emerged. Cuba's is as much economic as ideological. If Cuba follows China's authoritarian model to accommodate the demands of global capitalism, will its achievements go the way of China – disparity of wealth, the decline of rural towns, environmental degradation? Will Cuba trade spontaneity and creativity for rigidity and conformity? I suspect Chinese top brass would regard Cuba under Raul as not pragmatic enough.
China is a capitalist motor powering a communist shell. But the Soviet Lada using an outdated American motor doesn't move. The Chevrolet powered by Lada's engine runs, though sluggishly. Gliding into Havana and glancing at idle vintage cars, I had only one thought: whichever model Cuba chooses, I pray they include pantyhose.
THE GATHERING GREW in number. Youths in white singlets jostled shoulder to sweaty shoulder in tribute to the Marx Bros. More arrived: jineteras beside Italians with drunken faces. Everyone squished into the dining room and ultimately spilled into my bedroom. All of us queued at an altar draped with the Cuban flag, festooned with flowers. We were chalked three times before giving thanks. An ‘uncle' began whipping himself into a trance. His eyes bulged. A cane connected spirits, coaxing them into Ernesto's second-storey apartment with a thump. A pounding crescendo continued; the drummers numbered six; ancestor spirits were now inside Uncle. Chants circulated in every direction. Women in tight jeans began dancing, and stomped with fury. Ernesto's neighbour led an ecstatic dance. Sweat dripped from her braids in a bundle tied beneath a kerchief. After four hours, the air in the room had changed. Having farewelled spirits over rooftops in Barrio Chino, dissipating into dingily lit streets below, it was time to pause. Soup was handed out, along with sweet bread and rum. An elderly man gave a sermon for a better world, and reminded each of us to fulfil our potential. Cigars were passed around and crumbled in collective hands.
I'd like to join Columbus and Jack Nicholson in declaring Cuba paradise. Swaying palms, blue seas and alluring women construct an illusion of Gauguinesque tranquility. But Cuba is not a paradise, nor its secular equivalent, a Marxist utopia. What Cuba offers in a time of crisis is spontaneity, conversion and reinvention. I tallied contradictions. The Museum of the Revolution is equidistant from Lenin Park and Park John Lennon. The Moncado Barracks, the scene of a bloody uprising, is transformed into a school for juniors. The ‘Australia' sugar mill doubled as military headquarters during the Bay of Pigs debacle. Fanbelts were replaced by pantyhose.
If the grafting of Spanish Catholicism to West African beliefs can work its splendour and enchant tourists as well as locals in Chinatown, then it's worth cultivating. I gazed in the direction of La Cabana. Each evening the cannon blast signalled Habaneros to synchronise their watch. Tourists like me always did, but I can't recall Cubans doing likewise. ♦