ELECTORAL PROCESS
Memories that mark a person

• AS a girl, I used to listen to my mother recount – with the pride of a combatant who shows off battle scars – that nobody could force her to vote in 1958. The family owed a favor to a bully politician, and he, as was common at the time, came looking for his payback during the presidential elections, demanding their voter registration cards.

My mother categorically refused, and dared to yell in his face, "When Cuba has an honest politician, then I’ll vote." Her response was so unexpected that the man was left speechless. My father, who witnessed the event, would remember that he feared reprisal from the man, but with the triumph of the Revolution a few weeks later, those fears were dispelled.

That memory, which had lied dormant for a long time, was unexpectedly awoken last week when we were called to the assembly to nominate candidates in our district. My mother was not included. "Did they forget about me because I am old?" she asked, feeling hurt.

Obviously it was just a mistake, immediately remedied, given that a few days earlier, the president of our local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution president had visited us to verify the voters’ list. We were also able to confirm that our family was part of the district, thereby including us among the 8,174,859 registered voters.

Nowadays, many Cubans like me, halfway between the youth and the elderly, can’t help comparing today’s electoral process with that of the 1950’s, our closest reference point. Then, in the midst of a huge barrage of propaganda, the streets filled up with pasquines ( satirical posters) – a word practically in disuse here now, given most young people don’t know what it means. Unknown faces peeped out at us from these pasquines, almost always with an ear-to-ear grin, and the air was filled with songs and slogans full of deceit and empty promises.

I could see how these memories left their mark on me during a recent visit to Topes de Collantes, a community located over 700 meters above sea level in the Escambray mountains. There, I talked to people who had settled around the majestic sanitarium built there in 1946, and to which, of course, they had no access.

Olimpia Salabarría, a local resident, will never forget what happened one evening during the 1950s, when one of her younger brothers suddenly fell ill and her father thought to knock on the hospital’s doors. The personnel on night watch refused to help the child, given that the local campesinos had no right to treatment there, as the hospital had been built for the family members and hangers-on of the regime of the day.

As was common back then, the residents of Topes de Collantes had absolutely no medical care, and were forced to travel over a dangerous mountain road to Trinidad, about 30 minutes away, or to Santa Clara, some two hours away. There, they were generally denied access unless they would promise to vote for the local politician.

The anecdote made me wonder how many voter cards it would have taken to pay for a pacemaker like the one implanted in my mother in 1995 – and renewed eight years later –, which saved her life, without having to pay a single cent or implying a political debt.

Cuba’s residents know that nowadays, nobody can demand anything from them for admission to a hospital, an operation, a scholarship to study at the university or a job, because they are entitled to all of those things by law, and these rights are an intrinsic part of their human rights.

According to the enemies of the Cuban Revolution, however, the only model "elections" are those of the powerful northern neighbor, where candidates – as alike as two drops of water – spend millions that could be spent on helping the needy of that country, and finally, after months of endless tours, speeches and dinners that cost thousands of dollars a plate, they end in fraud.

All Cuban citizens with full political rights can be nominated as candidates to People’s Power assemblies. The neighbors from the barrios or rural settlements, gathered at voters’ assemblies, have the exclusive power to select their candidates, by raising their hands, from among the best and most capable citizens, without any promises or campaigns.