Another loss for all Cubans, and I\u2019m not referring to the 4-1 loss to the Rays in the \u201chistoric\u201d baseball game played in Cuba this week. Since 1959 Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits have seen their fair share of losses: lost children, lost parents, lost identities, lost homeland, lost freedom, lost innocence. The 90 miles of ocean between La Habana and Key West is the final resting place of many lost lives, and the losses continue.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve seen euphoric coverage of the \u201chistoric\u201d visit over the last week, with the leader of the free world and his family marching to communist Cuba as if they were headed to yet another trendy spring break tropical destination. Many more are watching at home in America, thinking they may want to get to the island before \u201cit changes,\u201d before \u201cit gets commercialized,\u201d before \u201ctourism.\u201d I hate to be the one to burst your bubble, but Cuba has been a commercialized tourist destination for quite some time. The rest of the world has been trading with Cuba; tourists from Canada, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Brazil \u2014 basically anyone who can afford travel to Cuba \u2014 have been vacationing in Cuba for decades. The only reason Cuba continues to be stuck in the 1950s is because of corruption and the choking hold communism has had on progress. Forgive my lack of enthusiasm when you approach me to tell me you\u2019re Cuba-bound \u201cbefore it changes.\u201d Before it changes? Does that mean before hope and prosperity reach Cuba\u2019s sunny shores or before fear and despair release their hold on the people? With any luck you\u2019ll come back wiser, albeit having enriched the oppressors. <\/p>\n
For anyone looking to experience a real island paradise before tourism and commercialization, go ahead and visit the island of Molokai, Hawaii for true sans commercialization. As for Cuba, with all the normalization hype, the reality of life on the island and the continued struggle of Cubans are either being ignored or trampled \u2014 not sure which is more distasteful. Cubans are fun-loving people who want what everyone else wants: food, jobs, a sustainable economy; freedom of speech, of press, of assembly, of worship; and free elections. If they could, they\u2019d be driving a 2016 Honda Civic over the much overrated gas-guzzling \u201857 Chevy. If they could, 10-year-old boys and girls would be at soccer or at band \u2014 anywhere except selling themselves outside exclusive resorts for foreigners, or \u201cjineteras.\u201d These children are the young faces of the sex trade, innocence lost forever.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always known freedom. I didn\u2019t experience the fear and oppression my grandparents and parents endured at the hands of communism. I was way too young when I left Cuba and this is the only homeland I\u2019ve ever known. My pain is different. It\u2019s pain rooted in all the years of watching with an aching heart as my grandparents and parents toasted a new year, \u201cNext year in Cuba, Chinita,\u201d year after year. Even though they loved and prospered in America, they never really got over the trauma and violence of the Castro regime. They never lost hope that they\u2019d return to their homeland someday. <\/p>\n
My kin were exiles, not immigrants. They didn\u2019t come to this country looking for economic security and better opportunities. They left everything they owned that wasn\u2019t already stolen by the communists and came here risking hardship \u2014 a small price to pay for freedom. They were exiled from a land they didn\u2019t want to leave and passionately hoped to return to. My grandparents and my father are now dead, my mother is too old and infirm to remember. The Castros, however, have outlived my kin. They have also managed to outlive American outrage, benefiting from America\u2019s collective short-term memory and our president\u2019s quest for a legacy. All the while, the Castro regime and their abuses of human rights continue to haunt generations of Cubans on both shores.<\/p>\n
I am not opposed to progress. I am actually quite open-minded and upbeat. I support normalized relations with Cuba if it means helping Cubans. I want innocence back in the eyes of Cuban children. I want people to have enough food without having to sell their dignity. I want people to experience the freedoms I have, to be free to write controversial or provocative opinions and not face torture and jail. Maybe this current normalization approach will help; maybe it won\u2019t. <\/p>\n
I think America should not compromise on human rights. And I just don\u2019t trust a communist government that was built on top of destroyed lives and decades of lies, a regime that ran the most prosperous Caribbean economy of the 1950s into the ground and keeps the country rotting, 50 years later, in the backdrop of what was once prosperous. And it\u2019s not quite over yet. <\/p>\n
At the bottom of the Florida Straits lie Cuban bodies that continue to tell the story of Cuba; new generations of desperate people doing desperate things hoping to reach American shores on makeshift boats that barely float; people desperately hoping for a \u201cdry foot\u201d on American soil, just so they won\u2019t be sent back to Cuba. And all this is happening in the throes of \u201cnormalization.\u201d This is why I am skeptical. Yet many don\u2019t see anything remotely odd with the juxtaposition of people still wanting to flee in the face of normalization. <\/p>\n
Could it be that Cubans continue to be oppressed and have no faith that \u201cnormalization\u201d will change their reality? No freedom. No hope. No way out. That\u2019s the Cuba that hosted and played baseball with America this week. That\u2019s the Cuba people still risk their lives to flee today. Maybe now you can understand why I\u2019m not all that excited about playing ball with a dictator who has the blood of so many people on his hands, no matter how much the media, American baseball and the Obama administration play it up.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Maria Uchytil is a Cuban-born Juneau resident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Another loss for all Cubans, and I\u2019m not referring to the 4-1 loss to the Rays in the \u201chistoric\u201d baseball game played in Cuba this week. Since 1959 Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits have seen their fair share of losses: lost children, lost parents, lost identities, lost homeland, lost freedom, lost innocence. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8790\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8790"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}