Given the economic difficulties, many young people decide to emigrate from Cuba; the amount is such that at the moment you do not know who is farther from the island, those who migrated or the ones who stayed? Then a new syndrome arises.
Times have changed, what was norm before, now becomes the exception and it is no longer clear who moves away or stays. Over the years there are more lost friends and new empty seats in the classroom occurred more quickly or frequently than expected. For some unfair irony it seems easier today to plan a class reunion 90 miles away from Cuba than in the same playground and those who stayed suffer shared solitude quotas.
Much has been written about nostalgia of those who emigrate, but my generation has said goodbye to too many friends and couples with mostly unfulfilled promises. Nobody told us that life was too hard and the world too big. It comes a time when a doubt emerges for those who stayed in Cuba: were they or us the ones who left? We are a generation that did not choose its circumstances that could decide very little about it and reacts moving away from the harmful ends.
Staying here has a cost that some paid it with more pleasure than others, has a price that many are unwilling to pay and would not hesitate to change of flag. The battle to legitimize the right to leave was tough; it was fought even by those who did not aspire to it because our friends were the ones who were leaving. Eventually we will be the ones, who shall build a country where they want to return to, but we started with a disadvantage, we have inherited a bloodied Cuba in terms of migration and in which there are shared responsibilities. If we look well, we will find more than a sociological syndrome in our shores.
For a long time I looked for someone to blame for looting my most prized possessions. There is no doubt that the airport has a personal score to settle but the responsible is “the damned circumstance” which gives us few options to those rooted and encourages to try your luck out. There are still today people who call “scum” to those who left, maybe it is passionate resentment, unhealthy envy or pain of someone who has said goodbye to too many friends and family. Still today there are separate families by reasons that go beyond the distance, we still remember those who people threw eggs at them and then were greeted like royalty.
Those rooted are indebted to a part of emigration; those who like us never wanted to leave and left them no choice. We owe an apology (political, social and moral) to religious people, rockers, homosexuals and those who did not share our rigid social stereotype that was so schematic and influenced by the Soviet experience. The words by Diego in the film ¨Strawberry and Chocolate¨ still ring in my ears: “Do you think I’m leaving because I want to? Don’t you realize that I have nothing else to do, that I cannot do anything else? ”
What will we do now that there are so many worrying signs? As a teenager I spent the time talking about women and bragging about my conquests, now the boys prefer to speak about other countries and the ways to leave. The feeling of living in a country with a mortgaged youth is not pleasant, perhaps it is only compensated by the sense that inertia is finishing and we are starting to move.
My fingers are not enough to count the friends I’ve lost; I could fill more than a classroom with those who left. Some outside Cuba do not understand why someone stays here voluntarily and others continue loving their country without putting politics through in an issue that is purely patriotic. Our generation has more values than it believes but is less politically determined than our parents, perhaps it is the result of political saturation during our childhood.
Decades ago we were wondering why people were leaving, but now it seems that the “normal thing” is to opt for emigration. When I returned to Cuba a week ago, I was surprised with a cruel question: why did you come back? I could have repeated like Diego: I do not have anything else to do, I cannot do anything else… but it would not be true because I am rooted, because the price of nostalgia would be too high.
