At the
heart of the Varela Project: people.
I traveled
to Cuba last week for the first time in my life to make a documentary about
Oswaldo Payá and the Varela Project. Tired of thinking in the abstract, I
wanted to discover with my own eyes what, at its deepest levels, the non-violent
reform movement represented to those living in modern Cuba.
With the nationwide crackdown of dissidents hitting full stride just as we were
about to leave the hotel for Payá's headquarters, the project became too
dangerous and my cinematographer and I were forced to turn back. Left with
several days to kill and an insatiable desire to speak to every citizen we could
find, the trip ended up bringing us closer to the heart of the Varela Project
and the urgent need for movements like it in today's Cuba than any introduction
to its leaders ever could have.
To be sure, it is decidedly difficult getting most Cubans to speak about their
society and their feelings towards it. Invariably, it takes hours of
conversation about anything but politics. Sometimes it also takes a couple of
beers. Often it takes a well-timed compliment about one of the fruits of
the Revolution -- anything to push some buttons. But whatever it takes,
without exception, the floodgates always open. And when they do, one
realizes that not a person on the island believes they live in a just society.
Disturbing enough. But far more disturbing is the pattern one sees emerge
after speaking to dozens of people. The relation between the Cuban people
and its government is like that of a failed, miserable marriage of many years,
where the two people hate each other, cannot stand the sight of one another,
and could do so much to improve their lives by either engaging each other anew
or, in more desperate cases, splitting apart; but are too tired, too forlorn,
and feel way too much inertia to ever do anything about it.
So it is with the Cuban people. They are too worried about surviving on a
daily basis, about filling their material needs in a socially and economically
unjust society, to ever concern themselves with politics.
To travel to Cuba and invest one's time listening to and observing people is to
overwhelm oneself with stories of misery and survival.
There is the man in Habana Vieja who teaches his five-year-old son daily about
the indignity of living in Cuba's socioeconomic system, but must make his living
outside his house selling the Castro and Che Guevara books visiting college
students love to buy. When I paid him in American dollars for an old
cinematography journal, he nearly wept - now he could buy his son a soft drink
and some sweets after his baptism on Sunday, he explained.
There's the college-educated jinetera whose most pressing need was to get into a
neighboring salsa club for the night - to the point that she invested several
hours talking to this inquisitive extranjero if it meant I would get her in.
When I asked her why it was so important for her to go, she simply responded,
"to forget."
There are the volunteers at a church in one poverty-stricken neighborhood who do
not hide their disgust with the government but, admirably, would rather devote
their energy to feeding and caring for the destitute elderly of their block than
fighting for any sort of political change.
How can one reasonably expect these people (and there are so many like them) to
fight for abstract political ideals when the material needs before them are so
much more pressing?
And there lies the Cuban government's most insidious and profoundly unsettling
legacy. The worst thing the government has done is alienate its own people
from politics, convince them that they have absolutely no stock in how their
lives are run, only in how well they survive.
Enter Oswaldo Payá, the Varela Project, and the other surging dissident
movements throughout the island and it suddenly becomes clear how profoundly
this non-violent revolution strikes at all that keeps the government in power.
Amidst the misery, amidst the indignity, amidst the self-respect and
self-determination that has been beaten out of the Cuban people, amidst four
decades of inertia, here is a movement that reminds the citizens it touches that
they are the sole agency in determining their future. Not only can change
begin with them, it must.
The exile community has debated back and forth the merits and demerits of the
Varela Project and the dissident movement in general. I admire it for its
discriminating attitude, particularly when I recall that it was blind hero
worship that brought Cuba to its present state in the first place. But to
travel to Cuba and stare injustice in the face is to realize that much of the
debate is grounded in semantics. Something far more profound than any
particular issue is occurring in Cuba today as a result of these non-violent
movements. In a society alienated from politics, a genuine civic movement
is rising and with it a newfound human dignity - the belief in each person who
signs the Varela Project or borrows a book from an independent library that
they, through politics, can and must have a say in how their society is
structured. Without this reclaiming of politics, of dignity, of
self-determination, injustice will continue no matter who is in power because
the people will not know that it is incumbent on them to fight injustice.
Saddened by these revelations, I remembered on my flight home how difficult it
was for Cubans to share their feelings about the government. I couldn't
imagine how difficult it must be to get them to sign their names to a petition
they knew was going straight to the government, with all of the repercussions
such an act of defiance connotes. Then, in my despair, I felt a moment of
hope. I remembered that Payá and his followers, having only just begun
this course of action, had somehow managed to gather 30,000 signatures for the
Varela Project. How they have managed to fight all the lethargy, fear, and
inertia that left me devastated I may never know, but it occurred to me that the
movement must be in very capable hands.
No wonder the government is scared.
Nicolas Calzada is a graduate of Belen Jesuit School in Miami, and Yale University. He is currently a graduate film student at New York University.
Published in The Miami Herald,April 1, 2003, page 7B
© Nicolas Calzada, 2003