User:JorgeReyes/A Photo Journey through the Heart and Soul of Cuba
Saturday, March 18, 2006 {{editorial}} I'm amazed how some still compare present day Cuba to the man we love to hate, Fidel Castro himself, as if Cuba, the Cuban people, the very heart and soul of that small, crocodile-shaped island in the Caribbean, were synonymous with each other. After almost fifty-years in power, yes, you heard that right, fifty-years, sometimes the allussion to the man and the people as one and the same is automatic. Even I have found myself making the comparisons.
It wasn't after I returned to the country of my native birth after more than twenty years of absence, that I began to think for myself, independently of familial or personal prejudices, and realized what we, Cubans the world over, have been doing wrong for as long as, well, that Biblical-seeming patriarch came to power in 1959.
Simply put, there's an either/or mentality when it comes to Cuba, "a la Fidel." Hence, we seem our own worst judges for by advocating irrationalities such as, that strange policy of the US embargo against Cuba, we're not assisting in opening Cuba to a freely pluralistic society, one in which political principles and beliefs are respected. It's so simple. Yet, we're set on self-destruction by advocating anything but a complete destruction of that Cold War relic which still, to my amazement, many if not most Cubans living in exile, still seem to think is Cuba's ultimate salvation. But, since I love to corrupt the minds of our youth, and perhaps our elders, too, like Socrates was charged with before taking the hemlock that killed him, I will go this extra mile to prove a bit more deeply into our embargo-mentality: if the US embargo against Cuba will be the only rational policy that will, ultimately, depose Castro from power, howcome he's still in power? howcome his power is now, and until the day he dies, more entrenched than ever?
And yet, we have Congressmen and Congresswomen in the US government who's sole ticket to fame has been their good-faith attempts to misinterpret what they, themselves, must know. The US policy against Cuba since 1959 has been one of vitriolic, one decybel too high and, bingo, Cubans in this so-called exiled existence, nomads really, are more of a rare breed of assimilated Cubans than Cubans in Cuba!
I left Cuba with my parents when I was eight years old in 1982. I returned almost twenty years later as a result of my grandmother's illness, which killed her six months after a diagnosis of a rare form of cancer. Luckily, if not hastely and unprepared, my mother, an aunt and I returned. To say much is to vent into nostalgia. To say too little is to be a hypocrite. My experiences in Cuba eventually became a published book titled, Rediscovering Cuba: A Personal Memoir, a book which is still in print and which, as the years go by, has proven truer than I believed when I penned the small tome.
I wrote intensely. I wrote and poured my heart out. Basically, I blamed this disaster that has befallen the Cuban nation on all of us-- every single Cuban who made a choice to either leave or stay. Since I wrote the book, I've noticed that I've become a bit more political, which is something I tried to stay away from when I was in the process of writing the book. Still, my beliefs remain non-sectarian when it comes to politics because it is my strong viewpoint that openess, not isolation, communication, not censure, that creates a healthy environment from which to live, grow, raise families and become the person each of us is meant to be. That in Cuba doesn't happen all the time since it is a politically repressive system, no doubt about it, though believe it or not there is more discussions about just about every topic under the sun (mind you, with the typical Marxist euphenisms), than there actually is in the so-called land of the free, the good ol' usa. Call President Bush a jerk, and you might end up in jail. Ouch. So much for freedom of the press.
Book aside and my own hystrionics aside, my journey through Cuba became part of a wonderful collection of pictures I took of local places, local people, and folkloric scenery. These wonderful images and not just the typical images of Cuba with, well, by now you know who, that Biblical Patriarch, is Cuba. Whether Communist or none of the above, whether exiled in Miami or New York City or Paris or whether living under a palm-thatched 'bohio' somewhere in an isolated town, this is Cuba, to paraphrase a Cuban/Russian film of the same title.
Long after He is gone, long after His face is just another failed god like Lenin, a sort of historic curiosity, a rebirth of a new Cuba will spring even if from incremental hopes and dreams, and when that day comes we'll all wonder why we didn't think of opening the windows to this beautiful paradise if but just a tiny crack at a time..... --JorgeReyes 17:49, 18 March 2006
[edit] Related Wikinews
- "Dissident meeting held in Cuba" — Wikinews, May 22, 2005
