An 80’s Child in Communist Cuba
“Revolutionary Cuba’s golden age ended in 1988–1990, when the former Soviet Union . . . discontinued its subsidization of the Cuban economy. The result was the economic meltdown of 1989–1994 . . . President Fidel Castro labeled the new époque the ‘Special Period in Time of Peace,’ a title that has . . . lasted almost two decades.”
“The concept of the special period in peacetime has emerged. And we are undoubtedly already entering this special period in peacetime. And it is inevitable that we will fall into this special period in all its harshness in peacetime. We will have to undergo this trial.” — Fidel Castro (Oct 90)
“The Berlin Wall has fallen,” the voice of the School Principal was solemn as if something terrible had happened.
For us — second-graders whose closest notion of a wall was the one with a green blackboard and two yellowed photographs of guerrilla heroes — such words left us completely indifferent. Eyes blurred with apathy, the sixty-ish ears in the classroom nonetheless kept open for his next utterance.
“There will be some changes. Our relationship with the Soviet Union will change,” which I took to mean, The Russians will be no longer our friends. It felt like a punch in the stomach. Given some content, you’d certainly understand why.
During the 70’s and 80’s, Soviet omnipresence in the island materialized in several forms: mandatory Russian Language studies, massive economic subsidization, and, a most pertinent piece of information to my reaction, the shaping of a new mentality in terms of educational and professional growth.
Hundreds of Cubans would delude themselves into pursuing studies in Moscow to emulate Yuri Gagarin’s or Andrei Sakharov’s accomplishments. I was no exception. Despite my tender age, I was determined to fly the over-five-thousand miles to become an astronaut.
Mine was not the naive yet utterly blissful dream of touching the stars, but one which would let me see beyond the mango trees that marked the peripheries of my hometown. That, plus discovering outer space as pictured in the Sputnik magazines, had been my highest aspiration before a man with a loose checked shirt and a black mustache told me to give it up.
Having stumbled upon these last words, maybe you expect to read a depressing story of how that hot morning of 1989 my dreams crumbled along with the rubble of the Wall.
But this is not the story my seven-year-old self would have liked to share you. Not today anyway.
“There won’t be any more Lolek and Bolek or Well, Just You Wait?” some kids asked. For children who had grown up watching (and admiring) the so-called “Russian” cartoons — albeit their different origins — , that was naturally their most terrible fear at the moment.
The Principal paused, choosing his next words carefully, “We don’t know what’s going to happen. But we do know we have to defend our Revolution. We have to fight against the American Imperialism!”
“Will there be a war?” some boys shouted in unison. Some were rather thrilled at the morbid idea of killing the “evil” Americans. After all, wasn’t that the whole purpose of Defense Sundays?
He shook his head, “No. But we cannot let the enemy do the same they did to East Germany!”
Then proceeded with the rhetoric that would go on to feed the national impasse for over fifty years, “We have to defend our Revolution! We have created a system so that you all can go to the schools and the hospitals for free . . . ”
The speech, same as always, was ended with a strident “Long live the Revolution!” seconded by a more vibrant “Long live!”
“Fatherland or Death!”
“We shall overcome!” all right fists raised in the air, a paradigm of indoctrinated euphoria that pervaded our Young Pioneer years on the island.
“Fatherland or Death! We shall overcome!”
And thus, while Soviet Gorbachev and Cuban Castro writhed on their red couches at the appalling idea of losing their power, a group of red skirts and shorts jumped up and down chanting, “Whoever doesn’t jump is a Yankee!”
“Whoever doesn’t jump is a Yankee!” the chant still playing in my head as I watch my step-daughters train for their Nawatobi competitions.
I don’t remember when or how all of this started: the shortage of food, the one-or-two-hour respites from three-day power outages, the disappearance of toys and everything else from the stores.
But I recall a scene which made me think life might not be going so well for my adult entourage.
A recurrent act during my childhood, I was in the backyard, the calabash tree branches creaking as I swung back and forth in the makeshift swing. Just a few steps away, my nanny was standing before a mountain of dirty clothes. She was talking to a neighbor while making some caustic soda soaps and sipping the chickpea coffee he would hand to her over the fence every morning.
The conversation was low, as usual. I could hardly hear the muttered “child again” and “time of your life you can be happy!” that got my attention. She looked at me, a Mona Lisa smile I could have deciphered more easily than her words.
How could she possibly have been happy as a child? It confused me: she had been a home servant since the age of nine, ironing starched shirts and moving a footstool around to reach the dishes or the clothespins on a loaded rope of white sheets. All ears now, I heard something about having “no responsibilities” and, above all, “no idea of what’s going on.” I couldn’t help jumping in: We were not the lazy, unaware beings she claimed us to be! “I do have responsibilities! I have tons of homework!” my voice quivering as I named every school-related task we had, a couple of local contests and chess tournaments also supporting my argument. She nodded her head and said, “You are right! That’s a lot of work.” She was not being sarcastic, she meant it.
I recall being happy for winning the argument, but her words kept me intrigued for a very long time.
What was going on? Maybe I wasn’t that aware after all.
From my child’s perspective, everything was just fine. As to the lack of food, and particularly, the replacement of milk and coffee with water and sugar, it didn’t affect me as much. I was relieved I no longer had to endure the torture of drinking the fatty liquid every morning before going school.
Of course, for us children, the abrupt farewell to ice cream and sugar wafers (i.e., the flavored cream sandwiched between the latter), felt quite devastating. But what really broke my heart was feeling my mouth water as my brother ate some deeply browned plátanos maduros fritos. I loved, love fried plantains, and el niño — because he was a sick child and, let’s be honest, his grandma’s favorite — was the only one privileged to eat the yummy dish. I loved, love my brother, but that’s something I’ll never get over it!
Aside from that, the fact that I was a fussy eater made the so-called Special Period famine more bearable for me.
From my parents’ perspective, having to feed themselves plus three children aged three to seven years old, two old abuelos, and a dysfunctional family of dogs — the canine counterpart of Xavier Dolan and his mère, if you’d ask me — must have been a real nightmare.
At night we would all sit around an oil lamp in the house porch — neighbors and poodles included — and I would hear stories about people eating cats, making “steaks” out of mopping cloths or “spaghetti” out of plantain peels. Some even graphically depicted the process of melting condoms in pizzas as a substitute for cheese.
I knew what a condom was because they were used as balloons for cake-less birthdays and school parties. (They still are.)
The conversations were always in the third person: nobody would ever admit adding contraceptives to their diets, let alone committing such kind of animal cruelty. Kids, on the other hand, would like to boast about having had meat in the weekend. “They taste really good, like rabbits!” they said.
The conversations were always in the third person: nobody would ever admit adding contraceptives to their diets, let alone committing such kind of animal cruelty.
As many Cubans my generation must have, I came to believe those stories had inspired Roberto Carlos to write his popular lyrics. “El gato que está en nuestro cielo / No va a volver a casa si no estás” (“The cat that was in our sky / won’t return home if you’re not here”).
You may wonder what my direct involvement was in all this. The answer: I’m still waiting for my mother’s confession about that time we had “hutia” for supper. As per my avowal, I sometimes feel guilty when watching your fluffy friends on Instagram pictures or YouTube videos, but as a child, I felt less moved by the whole cat-eating culinary experience than I would like to admit.
Regarding the disappearance of everything from the stores, it didn’t affect me as much either. As a child.
The lack of clothing and shoes made our parents resort to all kind of ingenious ideas to make us children not look like our native ancestors — the ones Cristoforo Colombo sighted in 1492 when arriving in “the most beautiful land that human eyes have seen.” (The Admiral’s own words.)
Not surprisingly, the popular overnight condoms became our sock elastics and hair ties. We would wear sandals made out of skipping rope, shoe soles made out of car pneumatics, and ensembles made out of feed sacks and flour bags, some colorful palms and tropical beaches landscaping their simple designs.
We might have looked like the American children from the Great Depression, except for the yellowish flavors adorning our hands and garments, and the red and white school uniforms epitomizing our so-called classless society.
I never cared much about the way I looked, nor did I ever believe that taming my bushy hair with big blue bows or flowery headbands could help me win a Nobel. (Nobel was the name of my favorite male classmate, which anyone who studied with us — at Loynaz Echeverría elementary school — will tell you.)
When the adults were engrossed in their everyday routines and, thus, not paying much attention to the way we dressed, I would go to the pedal sewing machine in my mom’s bedroom and grab whichever blouse or short from the clothing and remnants pile on top of it.
I recall one day my petite neighbor beckoned to me from her backyard. “Come play with me!” she shouted. “Bring your dog!” (The dog was a stuffed animal purse where we’d hide forty-cent coins, empty lipsticks, missing scraps and buttons, and all kinds of gems meant to fuel our vivid imagination.)
As usual, I took the first thing I saw from the Singer machine and left my house quickly. (I was a very social child.) As she yelled to her mum that we would be going outside, we heard the fast sandal steps approaching, a most furious look accentuating her permanent ogre wrinkles.
“What did I tell you, Ana María González Capote?” Not her real name, but it serves to illustrate the purpose of this passage: Your mother’s yelling out your full name, oh boy, that wasn’t any good. I could see the quick blush on my friend’s face that usually preceded tears.
“Why haven’t you changed?” The oddly non-green woman yelled. “You want to look like . . . ?” She looked at me from head to toe, stopping at the unmatched flip-flops — one probably nibbled by Negrita, and the other surely a couple of inches smaller because it was my brother’s or my sister’s. “ . . . Like her,” she grumbled, her eyes trying not to meet mine.
Like a bolt of lightning, she then armed her right hand with a sandal and started punctuating every word of her frustration with a slap on her daughter’s back. “I. Told. You. To. Change. Your. Shirt. You. Do. That. Now!”
As I ran off to my house, I could hear us cry, an unbroken stream of silent shame and loud sentiment mingling with Rudy La Scala and Nino Bravo’s hits on the radio.
That was an eye-opening experience. Yes, I felt ashamed for having been pointed to as a lousy etiquette example. No, I didn’t feel like changing my unetiquette way of dressing. Instead, I would play at other neighbors’ who would accept me for who I was — or, at least, who would keep their judgmental views to themselves. I was eight or so. More than two decades later, a more classic version of myself still feels the same way.
Regarding toys, if you were to ask my current self which presents she would jump for joy at, she would probably tell you “the Beanie Boos from Jean Coutu.” But as a child, I couldn’t care less about the dolls adorning the top of my parents’ wardrobe — their primary function indeed.
Reading Onelio Jorge Cardoso’s short stories or trying to decipher The Vortex’s intricacies with an old Cervantes dictionary (I never succeeded, by the way) was more much fun than combing and dressing the blond, light-eyed creatures.
In fact, children do not need many toys to be happy. A recent study published in Infant Behavior and Development — or its review in The Telegraph — might give you further insight on the topic. For my part, having been raised in a Santa Claus-less land and deprived of the luxuries most Western children have, makes me confident about the truth of that statement.
We could be happy with just a stone or a crushed can or a twig to play “plan,” our own version of “hopscotch.” We would invent games or resort to traditional ones like “hide-and-seek,” “la pañoleta,” or “tag,” a couple of ardent quarrels and a most fervent conciliation embrace guaranteed.
Having only one poorly equipped playground on the outskirts of our small town made us depend more on interactive games, friends and strangers alike always welcomed.
Having no electricity drastically reduced our TV consumption. We would now spend time, previously dedicated to the Russian box, playing baseball or kickball in streets lighted up by the Moon and homemade kerosene lamps.
I don’t recount this story of an 80’s child in Communist Cuba as praise for resilience or naiveté. I am not suggesting some type of victimhood in the face of the Special Period hardships and a totalitarian regime dressed up by terrific slogans and absolute control over all aspects of our lives-dreams and thoughts being a most pivotal piece in this Machiavellian, single-Knight game.
But there is no doubt those infancy years, from 1989 to 1994, shaped my life and thousands of others like me. They made us (many of whom are currently dispersed to several countries) see the world through other lenses: the lenses of appreciation for the small things in life.
In retrospect, that time feels so surreal that I cannot be entirely sure whether I have let myself both be fooled by a child’s buoyant, partly oblivious view of that time, and a fragile adult biased by a strong sense of justice and a political acumen in crescendo.
As I wrote this piece, those two selves were in a constant struggle — the little girl editing memories and words, the older one sneaking in her growing self-awareness and (not always appreciated) sense of humor.
If this is a bad tragicomedy drafted by a hangover J.K Rowling after a whole night of Mojitos and Cuba Libres? (See what I’m talking about?)
I want to believe I was happy. My seven-year-old self thinks she was. My thirty-five-year-old self is convinced us children did not need much to be in high spirits.
Some may call it resilience or naiveté. I call it presence, our lives brighten by the soothing glow of friends and people who cared.
Among the following, that was one the most important lessons those last years of my childhood in Cuba taught me:
- Be present — Children remember the hugs, the laughter, the pieces of advice, the time you spend together at the park. The rest is mostly irrelevant to their memories and love for you.
- Be creative and innovative — When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. No more lemons in the supermarket? No worries, you can always have a sweeter drink. In Cuba, we call it “aguazúcar.”
- Be positive — The “Don’t worry / Be Happy” mindset might feel genuine when swimming in turquoise waters, a glass of Piña Colada waving at you from a deck chair. But real life, the one that hits you (un)expectedly, is about understanding that walking in a snowstorm is just temporary. You have the power to turn most negative experiences into learning ones.
And, if a guy with a loose checked shirt and a black mustache tells you to give your dream up, build your chimera and strive for making it an attainable goal in life. If it feels right to you, it’s worth it. If it instills righteousness beyond yourself, get down to work and make the world go around with it.
“Get down to work,” my advice feels deceitful as I read it aloud.
The little girl unties the knot of her Young Pioneer neckerchief and throws it up into the air. She waves at me and smiles, a broad smile that seems to ask, “What are you waiting for?”
