EDITORIAL: Young People, Here and Now

A certain narrative, particularly emphasized by the media and platforms of the anti-Cuban industry and the hegemonic centers of power, states that all young people want to leave this country, that they don’t find perspectives or motivations here, that they have given up consolidating projects and have lost desires or capacities to fight to improve or transform the reality they live in.

Others, without necessarily being motivated by bad intentions, revel in the recurring and cyclical commonplace that youth is lost. They consider that, in a country that is aging due to unobjectionable demographic dynamics (which have economic, social and cultural srives), the youngest people show a disinterest, apathy and frivolity that disconnect them from the main challenges of the nation, even though the future of a necessarily consensual society project involves everyone.

These are reductionist and self-interested generalizations. They nourish the destabilizing pack of those who oppose, through irrational hatred, the Cuban Revolution.

Certainly, a non-negligible part of the Cuban population, under 35 years of age, has left the country or has plans or expectations to do so. It’s part of the worrying and painful phenomenon of exodus, which affects all sectors, mainly motivated by difficult economic conditions.

The champions of the reaction politicize every migratory movement, conveniently ignoring economic motivations caused largely by the strangulation policies to which Cuba has been subjected for decades.

Successive US administrations have played an elusive game: they express concern for the situation of the Cuban people while tightening the blockade, with the clear intention that citizens, overwhelmed by the crisis, confront the government.

However, there’s an obvious reality: not all young people want to leave Cuba. That doesn’t mean that they ignore the great problems and challenges of contemporary Cuban society, in contemporary Cuban society.

But there are valuable, committed, enthusiastic young people who want to fight... and they fight daily, in all areas of national life. People who contribute through effort, talent and hope, who share the unrepentant idea that a better country is possible... and essential.

They make up the moral reserves of the nation, and they are there, no matter how much imperial propaganda tries to ignore them.

The debates of the Congress of the Young Communist League have covered a very broad spectrum of the problems of today's Cuba, in which the participation of new generations is vital. There has been a commitment to creative articulations, which go beyond militancy, as they are based on a determined integrative calling.

These are not times for empty slogans and sterile idealizations from their very rhetoric. Ideas are needed to grow, mobilizing impulses.

Not only does the future depend on young people, as one of those often repeated slogans says. The present is also a responsibility. And there will always be Cubans who are committed to make a stand.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff