The Closed Door

I just finished reading Yoani Sánchez's book, Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth about Cuba Today. Sánchez is a blogger, who since 2007 has written about daily life in Cuba and her efforts to live in her native country as "a free person." She writes about growing up during the "Special Period," when times were particularly hard after Cuba lost the subsidies it had received from the Soviet Union following the break-up of that country, and the food shortages that persist today. The bureaucracy that answers to no one (or at least not to the country's citizens), the repression directed against anyone who questions the regime, the struggles to get the things the family needs at the government-run stores and on the black market. Although she has received many international journalism prizes, she has never been allowed to travel out of Cuba to receive them, and only has seen smuggled copies of her book (a collection of posts from the blog), as shipments from the publishers have been seized by the government. In Cuba, the internet is censored, and her blog cannot be accessed from within the country. She's been abducted off the street by thugs and beaten. She is under surveillance. Last fall Tom and I went to a talk on Cuba, and the speaker mentioned her work. How has she not been arrested or thrown into prison? The speaker said that he thought at this point that she was well enough known that she was protected by her prominence. 

In this repressive country, the film The Lives of Others was shown in 2007. This German movie, made in 2006, tells a story (set in the former East Germany, beginning in 1984) how surveillance changed those who were watched and those who did the watching. Sánchez writes about chanting "Open up!" out on the street, as they waited for the theater to open its doors, and how that phrase stayed with her, and how it summed up her desires for her country. I do wonder who made the decision to show this film in Cuba. It doesn't come down on the side of those doing the watching. They must not have realized how the story ended.

The speaker we heard last fall talked about how Cuba is run by old men, and how the ruling Communist Party has been unable or unwilling to include any younger leaders in leadership positions. There's only so many more years that these aging men can keep the door closed. At some point, it will open up. It's only a question of when, and how.