What Does Cuba’s Communist Government Want Today?

By Lien Estrada

HAVANA TIMES – While I’m busy selling some of my books, a customer approaches me. He’s a rather heavyset, medium-height man with a cane, a cap, and glasses. He asks me about a few of the books and their prices. I answer him. He nods as if to say, yes, that’s fine, no problem… (there are many ways to read that nod). He doesn’t leave. He sits down beside me and starts talking.

It’s not the first time I’ve struck up conversations with my customers. Some look around, don’t even ask anything, and leave. With luck, others buy something and go. But then there are those who may or may not buy and start talking about what they like to read, the kind of education they received, or what they always wished they had known… things like that. Many end up becoming friends and tell me much more than their literary preferences. Some tell me their entire life story.

This customer was one of them. He ended up telling me that he had been a Communist Party “cadre” at several companies in Holguín Province. He was a communist by conviction. And then he told me something with a slight laugh, but as though it were a deeply held truth of his, in a tone of complete certainty: “Communism is for people who don’t want anything.”

I found the man so likable, so pleasant, that I couldn’t bring myself to ask him: What human being wants nothing, sir? Because I don’t know a single one.

I remember one of Krishnamurti’s many talks in which he maintained that “not desiring” was impossible in human nature. Because even Buddhists, whose spirituality is founded on complete detachment, on not desiring, live with the paradox of desiring not to desire—which, in itself, is already a desire.

So then? I continued in my imaginary dialogue with my Communist Party of Cuba comrade. How do we achieve something that not even Buddhists have been able to resolve since the fourth century BC?

I haven’t forgotten my older cousin leaving for Miami because he wanted—among many other things, of course—to dress well. He was 24 when he emigrated. I know people who have told me, “If there’s food in the refrigerator and electricity, what more do you need?” And then there are those on the other side who say, “Why shouldn’t I have a house, a car, and a swimming pool?” Whether they manage to get those things or not is another story. But there’s the desire. The desires… And that’s without even mentioning freedom, rights, autonomy, respect for diversity, the possibility of believing differently and understanding life in a different way…

I didn’t argue with him. I was focused on my business. I simply replied to the older man, “It’s complicated.” He acknowledged that too. Then he left. He wished me good luck. I thanked him.

I haven’t forgotten him. Quite the opposite. I think of him often. Every time someone tells me, “If only in Cuba we could…” I say to myself: “Ah, a desire!” And it confirms for me that if most communists of that generation thought that way, they should have studied Krishnamurti.

Although I don’t know much about this Indian theosophist, I am certain that without desires there is no life. And Cuban communism should have taken that into account—and still should. To me, that is beyond question.

Read more from the diary of Lien Estrada here on Havana Times.