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Cuban Childhood in Ruins: Anatomy of a Broken Promise

“Everything begins with a scene that refers not only to an event, but to a form that condenses, in a minimal gesture, the deep relationship between power and childhood.”

By Andres Pi Andreu (Diario de Cuba)

HAVANA TIMES – Everything begins with a scene that refers not only to an event, but to a form that condenses, in a minimal gesture, the deep relationship between power and childhood. Childhood is not merely a biological stage or a private matter: it is the place where a society tests itself, where it decides whether to protect what has not yet fully come into being or whether to subject it, from the outset, to the logic that sustains it. In Cuba, that decision is not formulated as doctrine or declared as law. It is inscribed into everyday life.

One of those scenes was told to me by Cuban illustrator Rosa Salgado. Rosa had a very particular sensitivity toward the world of children; she illustrated books for very young readers marked by a precise tenderness, without artifice. Perhaps that is why, when she told me this story from her niece’s childhood, she did not do so from nostalgia, but from a clarity that was almost unbearable.

What she told me happened when her niece was around six years old, in the 1980s. At the time, her family had decided to leave the country, a decision that in Cuba was never regarded as a private matter.

One day, upon arriving at school, the girl’s favorite teacher — the same one who until then had been affectionate and protective — took her by the hand and led her to the courtyard, where all the students were assembled for the morning ceremony. What followed was not a conversation, nor a correction, nor an ordinary disciplinary gesture. It was a public humiliation.

In front of the entire school, the teacher announced that the girl and her family were leaving Cuba, and that this made them traitors. The word was neither metaphorical nor nuanced. It was a direct accusation, spoken in a space that until then had been, for her, a place of learning and safety.

The girl, not fully understanding the accusation, tried to respond through the prior bond she had with her teacher: she approached her, tried to hug her, to hide behind her skirt. The teacher rejected her, pushing her away as much as she could without letting go of her arm.

Then she removed the neckerchief the girl wore around her neck, an object that, beyond its symbolic function, had concrete value for the child: it was part of her school identity, her sense of belonging, her daily effort to care for the little she had. Not only did they take away the scarf, but it was also turned into an instrument of punishment. The teacher pulled out a pair of scissors and tried to cut it into pieces right there.

But the scissors were dull and would not cut the polyester. Then she remembered she had another pair and went to fetch them from the classroom. They were........

© Havana Times