droits de l'homme
Cuban Communist Regime Replaces Parents and Then Complains Its Children are Badly Brought Up
Strictly Prohibited: Drinking alcohol, Animals, Ball games, Skimpy clothing It’s difficult for a cell to maintain its health inside a sick organism. In an inefficient society the bubble of functionality bursts. In the same way, certain ethical values — selected and filtered — cannot be strengthened in the midst of a debacle of moral integrity.
Strictly Prohibited: Drinking alcohol, Animals, Ball games, Skimpy clothing
It’s difficult for a cell to maintain its health inside a sick organism. In an inefficient society the bubble of functionality bursts. In the same way, certain ethical values — selected and filtered — cannot be strengthened in the midst of a debacle of moral integrity. Rescuing codes of social conduct implies also accepting those that clash with the prevailing ideology.
We are now being called upon by the official media to recover lost values. According to the version put forth by the commentators on TV, responsibility for the deterioration falls mainly on the family, a portion on the schools… but not at all on the government. They talk about bad manners, rudeness, lack of solidarity and the extent of bad habits such as stealing, lying and laziness. In a country where for half a century the educational system, the entire press, and all the mechanisms of cultural production and distribution have been monopolized by a single party, one can only ask: what is the source of such impoverishment?
I remember that when I was a little girl no one dared to address another person as « señor » — mister — because it was a bourgeois throwback. As the use of « compañero » — comrade — is associated with an ideological position, many of us began to adopt new forms: « cousin, » « young man, » « hey you, » « Pop »… along with a long list of phrases derived from vulgar speech. Now they complain on TV that when we address others we are insulting, but… who started this deterioration?
The Cuban system opted for social engineering, and toyed with individual and collective alchemy. The most perfect example of this failed laboratory was the so-called « New Man. » This Homus Cubanis would supposedly come of age in sacrifice, obedience and loyalty. His uniformity was incompatible with the particular ethics of each home. So to achieve him, millions of Cuban children were removed — as much as they could be — from the family environment.
We went to daycare centers just 45 days after we were born; the Pioneer Camps took us in right after we learned our first letters; we went to schools in the countryside as soon as we left childhood, and spent our adolescence in high schools in the middle of nowhere. The State believed it could take over the formative role of our parents, thought it could exchange the values we brought from home for the new communist moral code. But the resulting creature deviated greatly from the one they had planned. We didn’t even manage to convert ourselves into the « New Man. »
They also launched themselves against religion, ignoring that dissimilar creeds transmit a share of the ethic and moral values that molded human civilization and our own national customs. They made us denigrate those who were different, we insulted the presidents of other countries with obscenities, mocked historic figures from the past, stuck our tongues out or blew raspberries when passing a foreign embassy.
They instilled in us the « Revolutionary promiscuity » that they themselves had already practiced in the Sierra Maestra, and incited us to laugh at those who spoke well, were deeply cultured, or showed any kind of refinement. This was carried out with such intensity that many of us faked speaking vulgarly, left off syllables when we talked, or shut up about our reading, so no one would notice that we were « weirdos » or potentially « counterrevolutionaries. »
One man — from the podium — screamed at us for 50 years. His diatribes, his hatred, his inability to listen calmly to an opposing argument, were the « exemplary » postures we learned in school. He instilled in us the gibberish, the constant tension, and the authoritarian index finger when we address others. He — who thought he knew everything but in reality knew very little — conveyed to us the pride of never asking forgiveness and of lying, that deception of rogues and scam artists that he was so good at.
Now, when the ethical picture of the nation looks like a mirror shattered against the floor, they call on the family to fix it. They ask us to shape values at home and to pass on order and discipline to our children. But how can we do it? If we ourselves were shaped to disrespect every code? How can we do it? If there’s no process for the powers-to-be to criticize themselves, for those who played at social engineering with our lives to recognize what they did?
Ethical codes are not so easily reassembled. A morality devalued by public discourse can’t be put back together overnight. And now, how are we going to fix this disaster?
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Cuban Communist Regime Replaces Parents and Then Complains Its Children are Badly Brought Up
droits de l'homme
L’organisation internationale contre la torture lance une « intervention d’urgence » pour José Daniel Ferrer
MIAMI, États-Unis.- L’Observatoire pour la protection des défenseurs des droits humains (OPDDH), a lancé ce vendredi une campagne d' »Interventions urgentes » en faveur du prisonnier politique et de conscience cubain José Daniel Ferrer García, leader de l’Union patriotique de Cuba (UNPACU), selon une note de Radio Televisión Martí.
droits de l'homme
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio) Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries. They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the « packets » of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes
New students at the University of Havana (14ymedio)
Born during the Special Period, they have grown up trapped in the dual currency system, and when they get their degrees Raul Castro will no longer be in power. They are the more than 100,000 young people just starting college throughout the country. Their brief biographies include educational experiments, battles of ideas, and the emergence of new technologies They know more about X-Men than about Elpidio Valdés, and only remember Fidel Castro from old photos and archived documentaries.
They are the Wi-Fi kids with their pirate networks, raised with the « packets » of copied shows and illegal satellite dishes. Some nights they would connect through routers and play strategy video games that made them feel powerful and free. Whoever wants to know them should know that they’ve had « emerging teachers » since elementary school and were taught grammar, math and ideology via television screens. However, they ended up being the least ideological of the Cubans who today inhabit this Island, the most cosmopolitan and with the greatest vision of the future.
On arriving at junior high school they played at throwing around around the obligatory snack of bread while their parents furtively passed their lunches through the school gate. They have a special physical ability, an adaptation that has allowed them to survive the environment; they don’t hear what doesn’t interest them, they close their ears to the harangues of morning assemblies and politicians. They seem lazier than other generations and in reality they are, but in their case this apathy acts like an evolutionary advantage. They’re better than us and will live in a country that has nothing to do with what we were promised.
A few months ago, these same young people, starred in the best known case of school fraud uncovered publicly. Some of those hoping to earn a place in higher education bought the answers to an admissions test. They were used to paying for approval, because they had to turn to private tutors to teach them what they should have learned in the classroom. Many of those who recently enrolled in the university had private teachers starting in elementary school. They are the children of a new emerging class that has used its resources so that their children can reach a desk at the right hand — or the left — of the alma mater.
These young people dressed in uniforms in their earlier grades, but they struggled to differentiate themselves through the length of a shirt, a fringe of bleached hair, or through pants sagging below their hips. They are the children of those who barely had a change of underwear in the nineties, so their parents tried to make sure they didn’t « go through the same thing, » and turned to the black market for their clothes and shoes. They mock the false austerity and, not wanting to look like militants, they love bright shiny colors and name brand outfits.
Yesterday, with the start of the school year, they received a lecture about the attempts of « imperialism to undermine the revolution through its youth. » It was like a faint drizzle running over an impervious surface. The government is right to be worried; these young people who have entered the university will never become good soldiers or fanatics. The clay from which they are made cannot be molded.
Excerpt from:
Who Is Filling Cuba’s University Classrooms?
droits de l'homme
A Caricature of a Cuban Woman
Woman drinking (14ymedio) 14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband « helps » her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a « Federated man, » an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness
14yMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 August 2014 — A woman on national television said that her husband « helps » her with some household chores. To many, the phrase may sound like the highest aspiration of every woman. Another lady asserts that her husband behaves like a « Federated man, » an allusion to the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), which today is celebrating its 54th anniversary. As for me, on this side of the screen, I feel sorry for them in the face of such meekness. Instead of the urgent demands they should mention, all I hear is this appreciation directed to a power as manly as it is deaf.
It’s not about « helping » to wash a plate or watch the kids, nor tiny illusory gender quotas that hide so much discrimination like a slap. The problem is that economic and political power remains mainly in masculine hands. What percentage of car owners are women? How many acres of land are owned or leased by women. How many Cuban ambassadors on missions abroad wear skirts? Can anyone recite the number of men who request paternity leave to take care of their newborns? How many young men are stopped by the police each day to warn them they can’t walk with a tourist? Who mostly attends the parent meetings at the schools?
Please, don’t try to « put us to sleep » with figures in the style of, « 65 percent of our cadres and 50 percent of our grassroots leaders are women. » The only thing this statistic means is that more responsibility falls on our shoulders, which means neither a high decision-making level nor greater rights. At least such a triumphalist phrase clarifies that there are « grassroots leaders, » because we know that decisions at the highest level are made by men who grew up under the precepts that we women are beautiful ornaments to have at hand… always and as long as we keep our mouths shut.
I feel sorry for the docile and timid feminist movement that exists in my country. Ashamed for those ladies with their ridiculous necklaces and abundant makeup who appear in the official media to tell us that « the Cuban woman has been the greatest ally of the Revolution. » Words spoken at the same moment when a company director is sexually harassing his secretary, when a beaten woman can’t get a restraining order against her abusive husband, when a policeman tells the victim of a sexual assault, « Well, with that skirt you’re wearing… » and the government recruits shock troops for an act of repudiation against the Ladies in White.
Women are the sector of the population that has the most reason to shout their displeasure. Because half a century after the founding of the caricature of an organization that is the Federation of Cuban Women, we are neither more free, nor more powerful, nor even more independent.
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A Caricature of a Cuban Woman
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