Youth Power
Their dreams seem modest—for now. But will Cuba's young people flex
their political muscle in a post-Castro era?
Web Exclusive
By Joseph Contreras
Newsweek
Updated: 11:21 a.m. ET Jan. 19, 2007
Jan. 19, 2007 - It's a touchingly quaint wish list for a modern world.
Freedom to travel. Retail computer stores. A country free from economic
hardship—and one that doesn't give preferential access to those using
foreign currency. But for Cuba's increasingly disaffected and restless
youth, this is the stuff of their dreams and aspirations.
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In any other country, a survey asking young people what kind of nation
they want to see in the year 2020 would hardly be fodder for the
pundits. But in a nation that rarely gives its youth a voice—and seldom
divulges the results of government opinion polls—the decision to publish
a recent survey in the country's official youth newspaper took on its
own significance.
The poll of nearly 300 young Cubans, published in the Dec. 31 issue of
Juventud Rebelde (Rebellious Youth), provided a rare and revealing
glimpse into the attitudes and aspirations of a generation. These young
Cubans have never known any other leaders other than Fidel Castro and
now, his younger brother Raúl. They had the misfortune of growing up in
an era of harsh austerity measures and personal sacrifice triggered by
the collapse of the Soviet Union and the aid pipeline from Moscow that
had propped up the Castro regime for three decades. Such is the gap
separating them from their peers on the other side of the Florida
Straits that the laptop computer which American undergraduates take for
granted has the aura of an impossible dream on the streets of Havana.
And as Cubans become used to life without the ailing Fidel running the
government, many analysts wonder how his successors will manage the
island's increasingly alienated youth. "Many grew up under intense
economic deprivation in an increasingly globalized and connected world,"
notes Julia Sweig, a Cuba expert who heads the Latin America program at
the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York. "They know what the
good life is through family members [living outside Cuba], they want
Nikes and iPods and stuff, and the revolution isn't delivering that stuff."
An ailing Fidel, in a picture released last year by Juventud Rebelde
AFP-Getty Images
An ailing Fidel, in a picture released last year by Juventud Rebelde
About two-thirds of the country's 11.4 million people were born after
Fidel seized power in 1959 and have no memories of the corruption and
social inequalities that were hallmarks of pre-revolutionary Cuba. An
estimated 2.2 million were born after 1991, when the regime was forced
to take draconian measures in order to survive without its longtime
Soviet allies. Electricity blackouts became commonplace, soldiers were
put to work cultivating crops on state-run farms, and university
graduates traded in their professional careers for jobs as hotel porters
and taxi drivers who received their tips in dollars.
Not surprisingly, the under 21s who equate communist rule with chronic
shortages, crumbling infrastructure and inefficient bureaucracy have
little revolutionary fervor. "This is the group that has no affiliation
to the Cuban revolution," says Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at the
University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies.
"It is the group most likely to want to leave Cuba.
That has not escaped the attention of the regime's top leadership.
"These young people have more information and more consumer expectations
than those at the start of the revolution," acknowledged Foreign
Minister Felipe Pérez Roque in an unusually candid speech in 2005.
"Sometimes I am sure that when you speak of free health care and
education, many of them say, 'Oh please, don't come to me with that same
old speech.'"
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Mindful of that mood of alienation, the regime last year dispatched
thousands of students and young social workers to take over
government-run service stations where employees were suspected of
siphoning off fuel supplies to re-sell on the island's thriving black
market. Many young Cubans have participated in a door-to-door campaign
to encourage residents to conserve energy by replacing outdated
electrical appliances. In one of the few major speeches Raúl Castro has
delivered since his ailing brother transferred power to him last July,
the 75-year-old defense minister urged university students last month to
be "fearless" in debating the important issues facing the nation in
coming years. "I always say, discuss to your heart's content and then
bring me your differences," declared Raúl. "We must continue gradually
opening up the way for the new generations."
But that opening has not happened at the rate that many young Cubans
would have liked to see. Of the five senior officials named by Fidel
last summer to help his brother govern in his absence, only one, Pérez
Roque, was born after Castro seized power in 1959—and the 41-year-old
foreign minister's star has actually dimmed since Raúl took over. Young
Cubans are well represented at the municipal and regional levels of
government and the Communist Party, but they are conspicuous by their
relative scarcity on the national stage. University graduates must spend
their first two years performing community service work at the princely
wage of $7 a month, and if they are lucky enough to land a job in the
bureaucracy or at a state-run company their monthly salary is unlikely
to surpass $20. The dim prospects for decent earnings and social
mobility led some dissidents inside Cuba to warn of a social implosion
in coming years. "The regime knows it has a time bomb on its hands,"
says Rolando Rodríguez Lobaina of the Cuban Democratic Youth Movement.
"It has no confidence in a transfer of power to these young people."
But no outward signs of a burning fuse have surfaced thus far. Despite
Fidel's sudden disappearance from public view, the second half of last
year witnessed no major protests in Cuban cities or a large maritime
exodus of immigrants. The most public expression of resentment and
disenchantment among young Cubans has traditionally come from some of
the island's leading rap music artists. Song lyrics complaining about
police brutality and discrimination against black teenagers in Cuba's
ostensibly color-blind society prompted a crackdown in the 1990s, and
some concerts were broken up by authorities. But the popularity of the
genre has been waning in recent years, and Havana's annual hip-hop music
festival was canceled last August.
Young Cubans may appear sullen and thoroughly dissatisfied with the
status quo in their country. But their political apathy and inaction to
date may reflect a frank recognition they would be no match for the
repressive machinery of an entrenched totalitarian government on the
streets of Cuba. "I don't really think youth can be a source of major
instability," says the CFR's Sweig. "Providing young people with a sense
that they have a stake in Cuba's future is a huge challenge on Raúl's
plate, but the regime pretty much has a handle on that." Perhaps the
real test will only come when both Castro brothers are gone and their
heirs will have to establish their own claims to legitimacy in the eyes
of Cuba's youth.
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