Practicing the Truth in Cuba
Verónica Vega Writer Havana , Cuba
State and Society
I
t is said that truth is relative . And it is true , if it refers to the individual appreciation of reality , which will always be subjective . But there is a truth that describes what we all perceive with our physical senses , as well as the facts and their consequences . In an interview for Diario de Cuba , the lawyer , former diplomat and polyglot Gabriel Calaforra told me :
" Nothing works here , and people have gotten accustomed to it , but it ' s an unsustainable situation . No country can be like that indefinitely . The number one problem is to rescue moral values . The Cubans were never very honest , but the revolution made the lie official . You just need to watch TV . The children are obliged to say that they will be like Che Guevara and the parents , that they are on the revolution side ... Everyone knows that ’ s a lie , but that ’ s what must be said ."
Now that the emblematic figure of Fidel Castro was relegated by biological laws , it is useful to analyze the balance that the official lie has left in the Cuban identity . Friends and acquaintances agree that the system in which the bornafter-1959 Cubans grew up has atrophied the interpretation of reality and made us ignorant of the logic behind an organized society . This concerns not only the illicit actions attributed to migrants from the Isle and the vulgar attitude and bad language that already threatens to become a Cubanness ´ stamp . Apparently , there is something more in the distorted vision with which Cubans go abroad for knowing other worlds . Respecting the property of others and the space of others — which includes avoiding annoyance with an unnecessary brushing against another ’ s body , as well as socially climbing through honest work and reliability , paying debts , complying with agreements and honoring the promises — is a missing value in their thought and by extension , in their actions . An old woman summed up this phenomenon with a lapidary phrase : " The new man got the worst of the old man ." By agglutinating the symptoms of the disease , it could be said that the ultimate cause is the absence of truth . The magazine Espacio Laical dedicated a dossier ( in its first 2016 issue ) to the dialogue that took place at the Cultural Center Felix Varela under the title " Living in the Truth ". I regretted not having heard about this event , where a priest , a psychologist , a journalist , a lawyer and the magazine ’ s editor participated . Especially because the questions suggested by such a hot topic to me neither appear in the presentations nor were formulated by the public . I would have asked the psychologist what traumas are generated in a child who , since day care , is indoctrinated in a political ideology beyond the children ’ s understanding ; how any personality can be affected by discovering that what you see is so far apart from what you are told to say , and by receiving an education focused on training to memorize and to repeat . Even history is taught with pre-made characterizations of its heroes . Students can neither judge nor comment . Since
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