Thirteen years ago today, Castrolandia was rocked to its very core by the “Maleconazo”, a spontaneous anti-government riot that took place along Habana’s wailing sea-wall, The Malecon.
Almost another generation has grown up since then and the same dissatisfaction and despair that caused the “Maleconazo” and the “Rafter Crisis” still festers beneath the smiles of Cuba’s youth, The Children of the Revolution, The “New” Man.
In today’s Sun-Sentinel, Ray Sanchez, gives us another glimpse of the disaffected Cuban Youth in his article, In Cuba, doctor’s songs strike chord with disaffected youth:
Cuban youth, like young people everywhere, are more interested in fulfilling their material needs and getting access to the Internet, movies and entertainment than in making sacrifices.
To these new Children of the Revolution that were brought up to be like che and were born into slavery, freedom is just a concept, an abstract idea, a “siren song” like Carlos Lage called it that beckons them and gives them hope.
Cuba’s youth , Sanchez reminds us from La Habana, doesn’t listen to Sylvio Rodriguez’s regime apologies, they listen to “El Medico”, Dr. Raynier Casamayor’s, protest reggaeton song aptly named “Children of the Revolution”:
“Everything is a lie and pure nonsense,” he sang in Spanish with the lilt of a Jamaican rapper. “They promise you illusions and deceive your heart. … To Hell with their promises. I don’t see improvement. Hunger increases every day. They said everything would change. I don’t know what to do.”
This apathy and dissatisfaction with everything castro-revolutionary with the Cuban youth that Sanchez calls the “lost generation” has not escaped the discerning eye of Cuba’s Tyrant Emeritus who just this past June wrote to a reflection to the Cuban Youth where he said that “If the young people fail, everything will fail.” In castro-speak this means “failure is not an option, get with program or there will be consequences”
But in Cuba, as we found out on July 26 from the new tyrant’s mouth, the program is more sacrifice, struggle, and hard work – or else.
Will this be the generation that picks the “else”?