Che Guevara’s eyes burn with rage, rather aesthetically, in Alberto Korda’s photograph that made Che the consumer market’s beloved left-wing revolutionary. On January 1, 2009, as Cuba celebrates the 50th anniversary of its revolution, its last half-century will remain a paradox. Because, the Cuban revolution exists for us first and foremost in graphic and aesthetic terms: those iconic, goose-bump inspiring photographs. The revolution also lives in what it produced: the Bay of Pigs disaster and the Missile Crisis; average salaries of still $20 a month; cheap goods that Cubans still can’t buy without resorting to “inventing” (Cuban code for raising one’s income, mostly by black-marketeering); two parallel economies at present — one run mostly by foreigners for foreign tourists and one for Cubans that still prohibits private enterprise; ramshackle cars that hit Cuban roads when JFK was still in office; a regime that jailed and/or killed so many political foes; the refugees who fled to the other side of the Florida Straits; above all, the US embargo that Fidel to Raúl Castro all cite to explain the poverty. In short, a condition instantly summed up in the plaster peeling off the walls in Havana homes.
Fifty years on, Cubans are understandably divided. The younger ones know and care little about the revolution and want to live better. Some of the older ones don’t want things to change — because Fulgencio Batista was immeasurably worse. After Raúl Castro took over as president, Cubans were allowed to buy cellphones, computers and DVDs. Even those cosmetic reforms are off now, without explanations.
Well, Cubans are among the best-educated Americans, thanks to the state-run education system, the obverse of its fabled success with public health. But the Soviet collapse destroyed an economy already shattered by the US embargo. As Cubans say, Castristas redressed socio-economic inequality by making everybody poor. Ironically, Fidel wasn’t formally a communist when his revolution succeeded. He imposed communism on Cuba after the Soviets saved that revolution.
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