Año VI Anyone could assume that I am digressing from the main topic of this book about the Cuban Revolution’s impact inside the United States. I would just like to take a quick look at Cuba today as we young people see it, mostly because of the role played on both sides by those who were our age back in the sixties, as mentioned through the pages of this book. So I apologize for talking about Cuba in the presentation of a book “which is not basically about Cuba”. I draw inspiration from a phrase by author Jack Barnes on page 29: “There are moments in history when everything stops being ‘normal’. All of a sudden, the swiftness of the events and the extent of what is at stake intensify every word and every action. The neutral ground disappears”. Cuba is going through a similar time these days. This presentation proves that Cuba is still important to left-wingers, particularly to those settled in the US. That’s why the constancy of our project remains an obligation, first of all to ourselves and then to our country’s import at international level. None of the young people gathered here today took part in that 1961 that Cuba and the Coming American Revolution reconstructs. Therefore, the best service this book can do all of us lies in its capacity to provide guidance and explain the policies on Cuba laid down by several US administrations, which we are morally bound to bring up to date. Today we are besieged by more complex threats and aggressions. On one hand, the current world order has empowered the President of the United States rides roughshod over any legal and ethical standards and talks directly about “forcing” changes and “breaking” stability. This is much like the openly anti-Cuban policies of 1961, best seen then in the Bay of Pigs invasion and their backing of counterrevolutionary bandits who murdered our young literacy teachers. On the other hand, there’s confirmation of more subtle methods sprung from technological development and a redesigned mission of the mass media. Their elaborate headlines and news –aimed at demobilizing the public opinion’s support that Cuba needs so much– make it all the way to the ears and minds of the Cuban people. Why is it that these misleading messages have an impact on Cuban youth? 1- Socialism’s heritage took some really hard knocks in Cuba following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the internal situation caused by economic hardship. The “restoration of socialism” is called to rank high on Cuba’s agenda for Political Culture. 2- There is a worldwide tendency to question capitalism’s outward look and phenomenological nature. Those rallies against the Group of Seven, environmentally unfriendly policies, people who die of preventable diseases… they’re all part of a more far-reaching struggle centered on the very essence of capitalism. Our schools and communities must boost their educational work to counteract the biased view that we young people have about politics. 3-The internationalization of phenomena which also have an effect on Cuba will be more and more important every passing day as a point of reference toward the things we must do. Politicized though it may have been by the US in the Cuban case, the issue of migration is not exclusive to this country. It sustains –much as in the abovementioned examples– the worth of our cultural action, within the boundaries available to the left. Above all else, it stands as an attractive choice capable of replacing –using intelligent methods and depending on specific circumstances– the banality promoted by the mass media.
With only three reasons, I have presented
ideas to describe what goes on in today’s Cuba. We launch this book
hardly a few days after a change of government, which undoubtedly dares
us to reorganize certain schemes of participation, management and
leadership in order to preserve and improve both socialism and a
Revolution definitely larger than ourselves.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|