Cuba's Revolution Seems Lost On Its Youth -- Scarcities, Lack Of Opportunity Cause Disillusion

HAVANA - As a product of revolution, Brian Morejon was entitled to an extensive and free education, a hallmark of Cuban socialism.

He has received free and complete medical coverage. He pays no rent.

But at 27, Morejon has little else.

His efforts at self-employment - now possible, but tightly restricted in communist Cuba - have gone nowhere. He spends most of his time drinking rum with friends, listening to music and dreaming of a different life.

"What we want is change in this country. I don't say this just for me. I say this for all my friends," said Morejon. "They'd say the same.

"We need a new system because this one doesn't work for anyone."

Forty years after capitalism ended abruptly on this island, Cuba's youth are restless and ready for something drastically new, if not a return to the anything-goes system Fidel Castro's rebels overthrew on Jan. 1, 1959.

Too young to have known what Cuba was once like and too wise to the ways of the world to not know about the opportunities abroad, many of them have no interest in the revolutionary rhetoric that infuses life here. They're tired of the scarcities and lack of opportunities.

Lingering for hours on street corners or on the Malecon, Havana's famed seaside promenade, they listlessly await something, anything, that would herald a new life. They rejoice at the brief distractions that break the daily monotony, from a Latin American film festival that recently ended to the latest Colombian soap

opera, which has enthralled young Cubans.

"The youth are disoriented. They're confused. They don't know what kind of future awaits them," explained Enrique Lopez Oliva, a longtime University of Havana professor.

Clamoring for change

Many simply want to get out. They dream of opportunities abroad.

Others are intent on finding jobs in the growing tourism sector, where they can earn more than most Cubans and receive tips in dollars.

"Tourism jobs get you ahead of university-educated jobs," explained one 18-year-old Cuban who works in a shop catering to tourists. When I was in secondary school, I had dreams. I wanted to be a biologist even, but that isn't possible now."

Still others have found that working outside the Cuban system - on the black market, providing goods and services for dollars outside of government regulation - offers a better life.

Some Cuba experts say the young have no connection to Castro or other leaders, men who rose to power in their 20s and 30s but are now seen as out of touch with the economic and political realities of a fast-changing world.

"The same generation that led the revolution is still in power in Cuba. It's the same ingrained leadership," explained Luis Martinez-Fernandez, the Cuban-born chairman of the Puerto Rican and Hispanic Caribbean Studies program at Rutgers University.

"It's precisely the younger people, those in their 20s and 30s, who are the ones clamoring for change," said Martinez-Fernandez, who has visited the island four times to conduct research. "I've seen the desire of the young people trying to find a way out - whether it's marrying a foreigner, whether it's working in the tourism industry rather than doing something else just to have access to dollars."

Role of the youth

Revolutionary Cuba has always depended on its youth.

After all, Castro, Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Camilo Cienfuegos and this country's other rebel heroes were young idealists when they overthrew Fulgencio Batista, whose corrupt government was associated with American mobsters and rapacious U.S. companies.

Today, 65 percent of all Cubans were born after the 1959 revolution.

The government ensures free educational opportunities for the young. Rallies for Cuban youth are organized. Leaders harp on the role the young play in shaping Cuba.

Perhaps most important, some of the top technocrats entrusted with guiding Cuba economically in the post-Soviet world were children during the early years of the revolution or were born soon after. Among the most visible are Carlos Lage Davila, the vice president, and Roberto Robaina, the foreign minister.

But it was Cuban youth who began an exodus from the island in 1994 aboard homemade rafts, with 40,000 eventually leaving. It is the youth who are embracing the music, culture and ideas of the world that Cuba has tried to shut out. It is the youth who are most likely to complain about conditions.

In the latest report of the Union of Young Communists, the government acknowledged that fewer members of the union enter the ranks of the Communist Party.

The government newspaper, Granma, noted last month that the report "advocates a search for new focuses that will bring this sector of the population in closer contact with the organization."

Frustrated by political system

Eduardo Mesa, a 29-year-old Catholic activist and director of a church-run magazine in Havana, said a great number of Cuban youth don't believe they can foster change. That is worrisome, Mesa said, because most of Cuba's youth cannot realistically hope to emigrate, either.

"I'd say that the Cuban youth suffer from great apathy," said Mesa. "There is a preoccupation with leaving. . . . As a nation, that's a problem."

Nicolle Ugarriza, a University of Miami graduate student who studied at the University of Havana last summer, said Cubans her age are "frustrated young people, because you know it's difficult to be cut off from American culture and the world."

She noted that students, however, had a range of opinions. "Some people support the revolution. Some people detest it. But my sense is most are overwhelmingly apolitical," said Ugarriza, 26, whose father is Cuban-American.

In random interviews on street corners and in apartments, young Cubans said they continue to support some of the main tenets of socialism, namely state-supported education and health care.

But many said they're completely detached from the political system. Some say they don't care what their leaders - even Castro - have to say. They look with cynicism at announcements in the state-controlled press trumpeting improvements in the economy.

"Young people don't want to know about politics or the economy," said Samuel Carter, 30. "They know they can't do anything about it. It just doesn't matter to them."

Carter said he has applied at the U.S. Interests Section, the equivalent of a U.S. embassy, for one of the 20,000 visas granted annually.

"I want to leave. I don't want luxury here. I don't want a limousine," he said. "We just want the minimal. We just want to be able to get an aspirin."

Author Marta Rojas, who made a name for herself chronicling the revolution, said Cuba's youth have sacrificed and will sacrifice for socialist principles.

But she acknowledges that not all young people "will feel that way."

"There are some who, for instance, see what capitalism can bring, in the movies, and decide that what they need to do is leave for the United States," she said.