Little Faith

"Eternal Young Rebels": At 23rd and Paseo in the Vedado neighborhood of Havana

Before, I found myself pessimistic, talking with people and feeling a mixture of disappointment and sadness, as if in the words of my interlocutors there was a light I couldn't see.  In time, I discovered a relationships between age and the degree of disappointment with those with whom I interacted, with greater age came less faith in the future.

Our parents' generation -- to my understanding -- is at the height of skepticism.  So the majority -- thank God not everyone -- live with disappointment regarding the current Cuban reality, which they share with a chilling degree of distrust in what has almost become a taboo: the future.

The discourse of the self-nominated Historical Leadership of the Revolution has been primarily responsible for the distrust toward the young.  I would seem that since 1959 generations have been born with a genetic defect: the inability to build their own future, their own lives.  Sadly, it is difficult to escape the repetitive official propaganda, which rises at times to truly surreal moments, like the photograph in this post.

It is depressing to discover that a whole segment of society has stopped believing in what they started, that they see no other road for Cuba except chaos and misery, that they don't believe in the future of their children within the borders of this Island, that they don't believe in anything, not even the innocence of the youngest.