San Rafael Boulevard: Showcase of Failure / José Hugo Fernández
Posted on October 8, 2013
HAVANA, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org – What was Raul Castro thinking
when, some days ago, in a meeting with the Council of Ministers, he said
they are "doing experiments in order to" address the effects of the
aging of the Cuban population? It's not that one wants to take a shot at
everything our chiefs say, but it would be easy to understand the
reasons we start to tremble as soon as we hear the word "experiment" on
their lips.
For example, could they be thinking about experimenting with the
abandoned elders who have now turned Havana's San Rafael Boulevard into
a showcase of the futility, lack of attention and neglect of the regime?
It's enough to walk a few blocks on this populous street to form a rough
opinion of the drama of the old people whose fate rests on the streets
of Havana, without any family support and without any government help,
which now and again brings the police down on them, piling them into
their cages like mangy dogs.
"To the old people who have to be cared for as if they were children,
especially those who have been working," Raul Castro also said at that
meeting, which also scares us, not only for fear of what could happen to
the children if the authorities stuck literally to their words, but for
the exception they make with respect to "those who have been working."
Did he mean to say that those who didn't work for the State have no
right to be cared for in their old age? And how will these bureaucrats
classify these old people, who have no record nor identification nor
more property other than the rags they are wearing, to make it clear who
deserves or doesn't deserve to be cared for according to their former
occupations?
Although the chiefs pretend not to take notice, as disheartening as is
the increasing aging of the Cuban population, so is the aging of the
Fidelist system, not only with regards to the ages of its principal
representatives. Also, and especially, the ton of years they have
remained imperturbably with the upper hand, anchored in the same speech
and in the same aberrant and retrograde experiments of yesteryear.
Thus, I see they have nothing left but to experiment with themselves,
retiring together, now that there is still time, as the only way to stop
the tragedy of our elderly homeless, as well as so many others who were
motive and today are an impediment to the solution.
José Hugo Fernández
7 October 2013
From Cubanet
Source: "San Rafael Boulevard: Showcase of Failure / José Hugo Fernández
| Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/san-rafael-boulevard-showcase-of-failure-jose-hugo-fernandez/
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