Cultural Changes In Cuba

Cuba is changing. The “special period” has ended and Cuba is progressing out of its heavily ruling fist. A change in power and new relations with the United States has sparked cultural changes in Cuba, but not without dissonance. One of the largest fears in Cuba is of how to implement new policy and adapt to new ways of thinking. Amid signs of change and growth, many Cubans are hesitant to believe in a new structure of government and are tending to resort back to old habits and following old practices The “special period” was a time of trouble in Cuba. Following a loss of trading partners and increased shortages, compensation was needed. The new austerity measures, the period especial, were designed to protect Cuba’s depleting resources. As
Described as an ajiaco, the Cuban way of transition post socialism combines ideas from both socialism and capitalism. One insight into this practice is the creation of baseball outreaches. Baseball became an area of outreach, showing a successful system to impress other countries. On the outside, it may seem that “sporting spectacles of late Cuban socialism seem to offer distraction from rather than solutions to the food, housing, and transportation shortages plaguing the island” (Eastman, 6), but instead they are teaching a lesson. They are showing, “we are socialists, but with this [Cubadeportes], we’re learning to think more like capitalists” (Eastman 9). Cubans need to adapt to the new ways of life. For some time, they have been limited to socialist practices and thought, and only now are beginning to branch out of their old ways. However, the new outlets are beginning to highlight a larger and concerning issue- is all this new something that will
Rations limited what a person could buy and receive, and the black market became the only excisable way to purchase many needed goods, using US dollar prices and currency. To address the needs of citizens, jobs became available that paid in US dollar, as opposed to Cuban currency. Yet, this mix of currency complicated the matter. As Eastman explains in Baseball in the Breach, “The deep contradiction of this dual-currency economy in which the salaries Cubans earn are essentially worthless has led not only to desperation in the face of the visceral intensity of these shortages but to epistemological and moral crises as well (Eastman, 272)” New outlets allow for sources on income, but also highlight the intrinsic issue with steps out of the “special period”, offering insights into new concerns. Many baseball players are seeing new monetary gains, but not as attractants to stay in Cuba; they are defecting. They are forces in the fight out of the “special period”, but flee as lost icons of a step forward. How can one look at Cuba’s outlook and see promise if the designed icons to break socialism are