Educating Cubans & Americans

In her June 26th blog (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/), Yoani Sanchez complains about the Cuban school system – inept school teachers; students faced with a series of standardized tests that are in such constant flux that it confuses students instead of aids in their learning; and Physical Education hours that are spent haphazardly. Sound familiar?

FCAT scores; the **** we pay our teachers, thereby ensuring that the best and the smartest are lost to other professions. As for PE – well, we’ve seen the size of our kids.

However, Yoani then adds a line about how it has become common practice for teens in Cuba to trade sex with their teachers for good grades. One would hope that, despite “grade inflation,” this kind of behavior does not actually exist in the States to the extent it seems to in Cuba. Perhaps it did once, before all those sexual harassment rules were added to student/faculty handbooks.

Regardless, she ends the blog like this:

“We cannot continue to be satisfied with the fact that at least while our children are sitting at a desk they are not roaming the streets at the mercy other risks. Within the walls of the classroom very serious vices can be developed, permanent ethical deformations, and an incubation of mediocrity of alarming proportions. No parent should remain silent about it.”

I’d say that’s pretty good advice for parents, even here in the grand ‘ol US of A.

Big Fat Cuban Families

Today, I read an entry on a blog called My Big Fat Cuban Family www.mybigfatcubanfamily.com. I know this isn’t a blog coming from inside of Cuba, which is what I said I’d be blogging about lately. But, I think this blog is incredibly relevant to the Diaspora and to what “Cuban” means. The entry I read today was called “My Life Has Been as Crazy as a Fiddler on a Roof.” At the beginning of the blog, the blogger, a Cuban-American mom who lives in Orange County, California, states that she hasn’t been able to blog because she’s been pouring all her creative juices into supporting her daughter in her high school production of Fiddler on the Roof.” I have been eating, sleeping, and breathing Russian Jews. ;-)” [The smiley face is hers too]. And the thing is, I believe her. I believe her whole heartedly. And I love it. I believe her and love it because I have a Cuban mother too, who, since were little is, for better or worse, as enmeshed as it gets.

Here’s to all the over-protective, uber-involved, "who-says-you-can’t-do-it-all" Cuban moms. We love you, with our whole hearts.

Droughts and Summer Doubts

Yesterday, Yoani (http://desdecuba.com/generationy/)wrote a blog about the summer heat in relation to deflated expectations – melting hopes; and heat flashes on buses. The political prisoners who have been making the international press for several days – the political prisoners that are said to be released soon – are still behind bars. Summer plays out her drought-full role and, meanwhile, on the other side of the sea, and across quite a bit of land, I sit in a coffee shop, working, in California – doubtful.

My doubts are of a different place and time, but belonging to the same summer. Doubts about the future, decisions made, loves lost, and the fact that I’m sitting here, tired and desperately sad. I will not list my set of concerns because they will, doubtless, seem trite in comparison to the plight of those imprisoned in Cuba or those feeling locked in by the waters that surround them with a tight sky releasing no relief. But, still, I do feel overwhelmed by a particular bout of 31-year old growing pains, another course of searching on the horizon. Because that’s what happens when you grow –there’s this moment of absolute misery, when your pants are too short and you have nothing to wear. You’re naked until you go out and fill your closet again with an adjusted size. And while I minimize my feelings in comparison to that of the citizens of Cuba, I will say they are no less real, no less painful. I long for the day when everything fits again.

Cuba, itself, is going to have to go through an enormous bout of growing pains if it ever sheds its old bag of a leader. Buildings will outgrow their purpose; prisoners their bars; black markets their purpose; prostitutes their profession; bloggers their urgency; exiles their desolation…

Church and State

On June 3, in a blog coming out of Cuba called Voices Behind Bars (http://voicesbehindbars.wordpress.com/), Pablo Pacheco Avila, a Cuban political prisoner, lauded the Catholic Church for intervening on behalf of Cuban prisoners, for their human rights and for their eventual release.

For many months, the issue has been bubbling to the surface – for the Cubans, with as much vigor as the oil that is bubbling up in the Gulf. One prisoner, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, died in Feburary, after an 85 day hunger strike. Another Cuban, Guillermo Farinas, a journalist, has been on hunger strike since Tamayo’s death. He promised to continue his strike until 10 prisoners were released.

Enter the church, which Pacheco calls the “mediator” between Castro (Raul, these days) and the Damas de Blanco (Cuban women -- the mothers, sisters, and wives of those imprisoned, who have been marching for days, for months, for years, protesting, despite threats and tribulations). Now, here arises the question, that age old question, about the actual role of the church and its relation to government – Church and State. Pacheco makes an argument in favor of the church’s intervention. And, in this case, it does make sense. If the church is supposed to spread a particular teaching; a Christ-like way of life, then it makes perfect sense to fight for those whose rights are being abused behind bars in Cuba. These, after all, were journalists, protestors, writers, that were writing and speaking their minds, simply that. In 2003, the Cuban government cracked-down and took them in. They are still behind bars, in dire conditions, some of them dying.

I just wonder, however, what goes on behind closed doors (not to mention behind bars). What the church and state are actually working out. I wonder how much of this is just Raul Castro buying time? I wonder how much of any of this will truly be effective. And, I wonder, how it is that one is effective at all when the Cuban government is involved. “God willing” these prisoners will be released, and one must be thankful for the intervention of the church, or its “mediation.”

But, what about the prisoners that will remain behind bars, after the church stops showing up on front pages; and the others that will be captured after.

I wonder, how do you really slay this dragon?

Lightning Speed

ASIDE: Today’s blog is in response to Yoani Sanchez’s post on Generacion Y on May 28 -- http://desdecuba.com/generationy/ For a while, I'm going to try and respond to blogs coming out of Cuba instead of newspaper articles, as they are also news.

What if the pace of our days was different? On May 28, Yoani Sanchez wrote in her blog, Generacion Y out of Havana, about a particular mode of transportation in Cuba – a particular type of hitchhiking. The blog ‘s title is translated, in the English Version, as “Taking Advantage of the Light.” At first, I thought I was going to read a tale about how Cubans have to take advantage of the daylight in Cuba because of power outages, and of course, there’s a double entendre in there somewhere, but what she means is more concrete – having more to do with street and sidewalk. It’s about how people in Cuba harass people in cars at stoplights for a ride. [Notice my interpretation (harass) is completely American – I admit it].

Some drivers give in to the “harassment” but ask for favors in return (get “harassed” in return – they feel a girl up, for example), while others drivers simply make up excuses. Some women (because, as Yoani explains, it’s easier to get a ride if you’re wearing a short skirt), have decided to use their own two feet and walk and walk and walk. Which slows everything down, but which, sometimes is worth the longer route; the wait.

Which brings me back to my question – what if we lived like that? How would that pace affect our lives? I can think of a million ways it would drive me up the wall. Me who, after living in Manhattan for nearly a decade, almost died of boredom my first year back in Miami (despite it being my hometown). People were slow, they arrived late, and worse, they didn’t even have any excuses – they simply arrived late to a get together or a meeting and that was that. They weren’t having to hitchhike at red lights, they all had their own cars.

Here’s a story: The other day I went to a gathering in Miami Beach. Everyone was late of course (a cultural phoneme, I’m telling you). Many of the people at this get-together were Cuban-born dissidents. Once everyone finally arrived, the BBQ and the talking started up and one young woman in particular began talking about how much she missed Cuba. She had come to Miami twelve years ago, dreaming then of a better place with opportunity. Today, she feels the urge, daily, to return to Cuba. “People may not have jack over there, but they have fun,” she said, and for the first time that day a big smile appeared on her face as she expressed the kind of joy people have in Cuba. It seems like a cliché. And, really, it could all be nostalgia – a dangerous and complicated thing because the land is always greener on the other side of the sea, so to speak. But, perhaps she had a point; and perhaps it has something to do with the forced pace at which people in Havana must/are forced to live. And yet, are they really forced? That’s another questions all together (about why a revolt by the people against a dictator has not come sooner, ages ago. But, again, another topic for another day).

On my particular end – I think to myself: How would life be different for me as a writer if the pace were here, in the States, as it is in Cuba? How would it be for bloggers? One of the reasons Yoani’s blogs are so good is because she’s forced to write them out before hand, before even getting to internet space and time. Or, if not writing them out before, at least thinking about them for a good amount of time. Here, everyone has constant access to high speed wireless from almost everywhere . The result: American twittees (twits?) and face-bookies seem to write constantly but you’re hard pressed to find something of substance. Would our blogs be better if we were forced to slow down?

But then again, would blogging exist? Would the internet exist? If we Americans didn’t live at the pace at which we do, taking advantage of every bit of light, everywhere.

Perhaps we are lucky (or unlucky, depending on which way you look at it; I’m going to stick with lucky) enough to simply have more light to draw power from.