Communication breakdown at the Capitol

The other day I was waiting for Orlando at the Capitol building. I got there ten minutes early, so I sat down on the steps to pass the time. It was a very intense few minutes; I witnessed two discussions about money, one of them quite outrageous and in two languages.

One of the photographers who uses a box camera to take pictures of tourists was trying to get 2 CUCs from a man who apparently had stolen them. That guy slipped away some how and he then threw himself at a tourist whose photo he’d taken. He spoke no English and she spoke no Spanish. He shouted he hadn’t received his money and she answered that she’d given him 3 CUCs, but they didn’t understand each other and repeated the same things over and over. It ended with some guys trying unsuccessfully to get the foreigners to pay for some caricatures they’d drawn on the spur of the moment without asking, which apparently they didn’t like and didn’t want to pay for.

I can’t help, at times, feeling a deep shame for all of us: the Cubans begging the tourists to pay them for some work they’ve come up with, because the State doesn't really pay them; and the tourists playing the naïve victims who don’t understand anything. I keep seeing TV spots that talk about us as if we were scum. There’s one in particular that bothers me, in which Fidel and Raúl and others are in the Sierra walking around with rifles on their shoulders. Then a voice-over says, “They gave everything… and you? What have you done? Then work!” Or something of that sort, fortunately I don’t know it by heart. For me, the truth as I see it is: we won’t do anything until they pay us… it’s so logical it seems like a joke.

When foreigners ask me if it’s true that Cubans don’t like to work I simply say: Would you work 8 hours a day for 20 dollars a month, or for 30, or 50 or even 100? I’ve never received a positive response.