When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A Foreigner: Viewing the Cuban Exile

• In Event: Ways of Seeing: Foreigners and Cuba in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The figure of the foreigner in twentieth century Cuba used to be a totalitarian taboo. However, many successful Cubans have been perceived as foreigners, the designation carrying materialistic merit. The nationality of these “nuevo ricos” vanishes when faced with ordinary Cubans, who in turn combine scarcity and cynicism in a modus vivendi where begging is the best vocation, the rationale being that local victims deserve mercy —money— from abroad. In fact, when it comes to Cuban exiles, they are considered Americans ipso facto and treated better than endangered species: they get whatever they want. Even the language used to talk to the so-called Cubans is caricatured, as if they are unable to fully understand their own tongue. The narrative of reality designed for them is a neutral mixture of official data with a touch of humorous dissent, besides asking them unusual favors or offering them an enticing deal. Socialist citizens seem to assume solvency in their fellow Cubans as a post-national token. How do long exiled Cuban foreigners, in turn, look back at their countrymen left behind —aside—, if mutual recognition is to be considered before attempting national reconciliation? In the more recent context of Raúlpolitik, the actual reforms leading to State capitalism could be consecrating a caste distribution of social roles, as an outcome of a monolithic model in its terminal phase. A country of foreigners is definitely much more subject to governability than a country of free Cubans. Dictatorship might be giving way not to democracy but to dictatocracy.

Author

• Orlando Luis L Pardo Lazo, Voces Magazine