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"Many of the Cuban peculiarities I have to grapple with as a writer still persist. That's why one of my characters declares that we're living in a dystopia, where almost everything operates according to decentralized logic. However, many other unique characteristics have been eroding. Slowly, Cuba has begun to transform into something else: social egalitarianism is dwindling, poverty is growing to levels very similar to those of other societies, people are fleeing precariousness and the lack of prospects, social media has become influential, and people live amidst an uncertainty about the future that is also global. But the country's socio-political structure remains unchanged, even amidst the external pressures that profoundly affect a nation targeted by its ambitions for the most powerful economy and military apparatus in the world."
And the million-dollar question is: what will happen in that rebellious, different, peculiar Cuba? Right now, a wide range of scenarios are on the table. As I've said before, the possibilities range from everything changing so that nothing changes (the political strategy of The Leopard ) to a devastating military action that could be modeled on what happened in Venezuela or what is happening in Iran.
Predicting that future is more of a complicated exercise—like grappling with Cuba's old and new peculiarities in literature—than a simple task. But what I am convinced of is that Cuba must change, indeed, it has to change, not because the country is under external pressure or because we are now on the verge of economic collapse. Cuba must change because Cubans need it, they deserve it, so that the country doesn't continue losing its young people who emigrate everywhere, and so that—among many other needs—its elderly don't live in the poverty of a present that, once upon a time, years ago, while they worked and sacrificed, was painted in the air as a better future. And the time will come to write about those possible Cuban realities, perhaps no longer so peculiar… or perhaps not? Tomorrow will tell.
Leonardo Padura
