Ray Sanchez | Cuba notebook
August 5, 2007
Santiago de Cuba, Cuba Dr. Raynier Casamayor looked rested the morning
after a graveyard shift at a rural hospital, where he had spent 12 hours
tending to toddlers with fever, a little girl with pneumonia and a boy
whose forehead had to be stitched up after a nasty fall.
Now, the 31-year-old physician from Cuba's second-largest city could do
what he loves most — make music. El Medico, The Doctor, as he is known
to his reggaeton fans, sat in front of a PC in the three-room apartment
he shares with his wife, son and four other relatives, belting out lines
from one of his hits, a number titled Children of the Revolution.
"Everything is a lie and pure nonsense," he sang in Spanish with the
lilt of a Jamaican rapper. "They promise you illusions and deceive your
heart. ... To Hell with their promises. I don't see improvement. Hunger
increases every day. They said everything would change. I don't know
what to do."
His popular lyrics are embraced by youth in Cuba and throughout the
world, with El Medico recording on independent record labels abroad. The
lyrics to Children of the Revolution, first recorded in 2002, take on
new urgency at a time when the legitimacy and appeal of Cuba's
provisional government is most at issue among island youth. Nearly 5
million of Cuba's 11 inhabitants are under the age of 30, a mostly
apathetic and alienated "lost generation" long familiar with economic
hardship and isolation.
El Medico quickly pointed out that Children of the Revolution was about
"politicians the world over" and not necessarily about Cuba's socialist
system.
But he has never traveled outside Cuba, although his recordings in Spain
are in the top 10, where they keep company with Shakira and the Black
Eyed Peas. In fact, the island's public health ministry has on three
occasions denied him visas to travel abroad to promote his music,
Casamayor said. No explanation was given.
"I don't want to leave Cuba," he said. "I just want to travel. My
inspiration is here. The essence of my music is here."
Hoping to someday perform abroad, Casamayor is thinking about leaving
medicine, although Cuba's government views healthcare as a pillar of the
1959 revolution and considers its doctors a source of national pride.
Cuban authorities seem well aware of the restlessness among the younger
generations, who say that the time and energy spent on higher education
often yields few rewards and low salaries. In a speech in late 2005,
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque admitted that many young people
lacked "historical memory" and revolutionary conviction. He said young
people didn't know what it was like to spend half your salary on rent or
go to college only if you can afford it.
In June, nearly one year after emergency surgery forced Fidel Castro to
step down in favor of a provisional government headed by his younger
brother, the Cuban leader acknowledged the challenge in reaching the
younger generations.
"None of you was alive when the revolution triumphed," he wrote in a
letter to the Communist Youth Union. "Its roots were sustained in every
act of sacrifice and heroism of an admirable people, who knew how to
confront all obstacles." Castro added, "If the young people fail,
everything will fail."
Jaime Suchlicki, director of the Institute of Cuban and Cuban American
Studies at the University of Miami, said it is difficult to transform a
generation that has largely lost faith in the system. "They lost a
generation, a generation more interested in parties and leaving the
island than in making sacrifices," he said. "In other words, el Hombre
Nuevo [the New Man], which they talked about in the '60s, is nowhere to
be found."
Cuban youth, like young people everywhere, are more interested in
fulfilling their material needs and getting access to the Internet,
movies and entertainment than in making sacrifices.
"Few people will complain about healthcare or education, but they want
more," Casamayor said. "Young people want to be able to travel. They
want to be tourists. I would like to see a World Cup or an Olympics.
We're not starving here but still we want more."
On July 26, the most important holiday in the revolutionary calendar,
Raúl Castro talked about improving the island's bleak economic prospects
but he also demanded more sacrifice and productivity from workers. Asked
if he heard the speech, Casamayor shook his head.
"I had no time," he said. "They say the same things every year. When was
that speech?"
Ray Sánchez can be reached at rlsanchez@sun-sentinel .com.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/cuba/sfl-flacubanotebook0805nbaug05,0,7624337.column
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