HAVANA, Cuba.- In the most recent of his podcasts “From the presidency”, which was dedicated to the start of the new school year, Miguel Díaz-Canel stated that poor education and the loss of values are “the main cause of the discomfort we cause each other in our daily lives”.
The president is wrong again: the dictatorial regime that he represents, with all that it implies, is the true cause of the Cubans’ unrest.
Bad manners, rudeness, bad mood, dehumanization and violent behavior They are the expressions resulting from this malaise, and not its cause, as the president and first secretary of the Communist Party claims.
I do not intend to justify these attitudes that do so much harm to us, but it is clearly not easy to be affable when life has become an infernal tournament for survival where we have to face all kinds of obstacles and difficulties.
Imagine what mood you are in when you get out of bed after a blackout night, full of heat and mosquitoes, and without breakfast, to go to work, having to wait hours to board a bus packed with people as irritated as you.
It is very difficult to maintain good humor and composure when you are hungry, forced to wait in line for everything, gripped by prohibitions, surrounded by filth, lacking the most basic things, and what is worse: without hope of improvement.
We Cubans had a reputation for being affable, friendly, hospitable, generous, good-natured. If we were, we are becoming less so. The rigors of daily life under the inept and failed regime of continuity have changed us for the worse, turning us into a mass of beings who are mostly unsociable, bitter, suspicious, calculating and opportunistic.
We were such big sharers, but now if we are having coffee, we hide it if someone knocks on the door. And very rarely is there a plate on the table for a visitor, even if it is a family member.
We are forced to live on guard to protect ourselves from the crooks and swindlers who lie in wait for us at every step. And the houses, by dint of walls and bars, have become dungeons.
The acute crisis of the last three years, caused by the resounding failure of the economic reorganization implemented in the midst of the pandemic, seems to have brought out the worst traits within us: ambition, hypocrisy, selfishness, envy, slander, resentment, aggression.
Díaz-Canel said in his podcast that “nothing is more alien to the revolution than bad manners and discourtesy.” But the truth is that Cubans, in all official instances, whether in a bank or in a grocery store, are treated as if they were prisoners, without the slightest trace of respect and courtesy. It is not surprising then that we act with resentment, always on the defensive and ready to explode.
Vulgarity and marginality are no longer exceptional: they have become the norm in this society. Those who “act like they are fine, different” are the ones who get the brunt. Nobody wants to be considered weak or weak-willed and become a victim of abuse. Thus, we live in a continuous prison environment, where those who shout the most obscenities and act the most handsome prevail.
I don’t want to be fatalistic. It is very sad and depressing to give up decorum and decency. But it is well known that in an environment where there is a fierce struggle for survival and every man for himself prevails, it is very difficult for good people to be abundant.
