The Ability to Question, the Willingness to Listen
As part of President Obama’s historic trip to Cuba, I will be writing a series of personal stories and reflections on growing up in Cuba, going back, and the journey since. Comments and questions, in disagreement or agreement alike, are welcome. These stories are meant to add to the conversation, to create depth and narrative beyond two countries and two sides. Cubans are one people and my story is simply one of many.
Today President Raúl Castro promised that, if given a list of the names of political prisoners, he would release them by nightfall. A powerful statement, an empty promise, a credible threat. But shouldn’t a country’s leader know whether his jails hold political prisoners ?And even if all political prisoners were to be released, Raúl gave no guarantee they wouldn’t be imprisoned again.
I tried to put myself in the eyes of a Cuban still living on the island. If I believed what I read daily in the Granma then I would first be aghast at the insult that my government could hold someone in jail for political reasons, and then believe the promise that they would be released. A mistake, no more. And maybe those political prisoners deserved it. Who are they to question what the Revolution has done for Cubans? Sure, we have our economic issues to resolve, but we are in this together. Going against the government, against the people, is treacherous and maybe should, after all, be punished.
Therein lies one of the many complexities of what is happening in today’s Cuba. Even if someone in Cuba saw the Ladies in White on TV, getting arrested, dragged on the street, carried like pigs to buses to be moved out of their peaceful protest, they might wonder what it was all about, and then, perhaps, presume the right thing had been done.
In a country where the truth has stemmed from government-owned outlets for most of the past century, and where Internet access is still incredibly limited and probhitively expensive, the ability to question, to doubt, to analyze is hampered.
A willigness to question cannot come without the ability to do so.
It’s hard to be able to question when you are taught not to.
In high school, and in the naïveté of my younger years, I met for the first time some students from China at a Model United Nations conference in the States. This was right around the time that Google search constraints and censorship in China were part of the news cycle. Out of genuine concern, and driven by my own Cuban cross, I sat down with the two Chinese students I had befriended over the course of the conference and asked them if they knew their online searches were being censored. Their response went something like: “What do you mean? Our government wants the best for us and takes care of its people.”
Maybe I should have known better. A few years later I visited Cuba and my family for the first time since leaving as a child. I knew what I saw on the daily Granma and on TV was innacurate. During that time, Venezuela had moved troops to the Colombian border. I had a family member ask me if I thought Colombia and Venezuela would go to war, because the story in Cuba was that Colombia had put troops on the border and was threatening Venezuela. What was I supposed to say — you are getting the wrong story? Still stuck on how to communicate doubt and questioning, I thought that if I had no proof I had no credibility for making such a statement. Having finished my first year studying Political Science at Yale, I gave some political theory type answer about how it was probably not in the interests of either country to go to war. I was still stuck in the rabbit hole of trying to prove truth, and I didn’t feel I was prepared to try to go down it again.
Today, I believe in communicating doubt and teaching to question. As more and more Americans go to Cuba and interact with the Cuban people, the conversations that demonstrate the different narratives on both sides and within them will have been shaped by the narratives from their respective media and governments. The narrative in the United States of Cuba is limited and filtered, as is that in Cuba of the United States. Getting past these polarizing narratives requires a willigness to listen without trying to prove who’s right, and engaging in curious, open questioning.
Here is a sample. In another Cuban interaction a few years ago, yet another family member asked me about American elections and whether they were influenced by money. “Well, yes,” I said. Obviously. “Aha!” was the ensuing reaction. I thought then that this was the perfect example of why I wished to avoid these types of conversations. How could I communicate Cuba’s own issues, despite those of the US, without falling prey to a polarizing debate?
Today, I would admit our faults and ask about theirs. Dig into opinions and positions. Engage in a conversation where no one is trying to prove who’s right or who’s better, but question assumptions and their sources together. Maybe we’ll disagree, maybe we’ll speak at times going past each other, failing to listen to where we are coming from. But in this grueling exercise, if both sides are willing to listen with curiosity and doubt, new understandings and practices are born. And this, I believe, is one way to really help the Cuban people, and ourselves in the process.
My perspective may be incomplete, but so might yours. Let’s doubt, question, and listen together.
