| Between 1987 and 1991 the peoples of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, fought Soviet occupation essentially by singing. Two million people holding hands and singing patriotic songs across three countries. This was the Singing Revolution of the Baltic States. |
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We are now witnessing massive protests across Cuba with protesters chanting ‘Patria y Vida,’ meaning ‘homeland and life.’ Patria y Vida is the theme of a song written by Cuban dissidents that has resonated with Cubans in dramatic contrast with the government’s slogan of ‘Patria o Muerte,’ or ‘homeland or death.’ The lyrics of Patria y Vida highlight the lack of freedom in Cuba. Patria y Vida has become the protester’s anthem.
Yes, years of severe shortages of food, medicines, and other necessities, together with a wave of COVID infections were a precipitating factor, but this was not an uprising about economic shortages. This uprising reveals that Cubans no longer believe their hardship to be the result of U.S. economic sanctions, but rather the result of the unproductive economic system imposed by their leadership.
This Patria y Vida uprising shows that Cubans now realize that their hardships result from their lack of freedom. Next comes the choice they must make: exit, voice, or loyalty. Such is the theme-title of a 1970 book by the economist and political scientist Albert O. Hirschman, which perfectly captures the choices facing the Cuban people.
Hirschman’s Exit, Voice, and Loyalty became an influential must-read book for social scientists. Hirschman’s thesis is that an individual in a disappointing or failing relationship has three choices. That person can leave, complain, or endure in silence. In this scheme of exit, voice, or loyalty, ‘exit’ is leaving a country by migrating to a different nation-state, ‘voice’ is the option of articulating discontent, and ‘loyalty’ is allegiance to the governing regime or its ideology.
As we witnessed in Cuba, even in repressive regimes there is always a certain loyalty to the government. All regimes must have at least a modicum of acceptance from some sectors of the population in order to be able to hold on to the operational capabilities of its institutions such as the armed forces. For those not loyal to the regime, only exit and voice remain as the mutually exclusive options.
Historically, Cubans, including this writer, have opted for the exit option. Often, we chose the exit option to obtain resources to return and overthrow the Castro regime. This was the case of my generation of early Cuban exiles. The 1961 Bay of Pigs landing of the Brigade 2506 and other martial actions undertaken in the 1960s and 1970s exemplify the reasons for our exit. Today, our voices are older and softer, but still loyal to the idea of a free Cuba.
In Hirschman’s analysis, the early exit of the original voices paralyzes voice by depriving it of its principal agents. Yes, for a time perhaps, but today there is a new generation in Cuba that has now embraced ‘voice’ as their strategy to bring about freedom to that long suffering nation.
Hirschman notes that when the exit option is unavailable, as is fundamentally the case for Cubans today, voice becomes the only option for any opposition, “…the role of voice increases as the opportunity for exit declines.” On the other hand, the easier the exit option, the lower the prospect of voice. “The presence of the exit alternative can therefore tend to atrophy the development of the art of voice.” Knowing this, oppressive regimes have long sought to remove political enemies from the national sphere.
Now that a new generation of courageous and patriotic Cubans have found their voice in the island, the predicament, and the challenge, for my generation of exiles is to support their voice, not their exit, with all sociopolitical and economic resources available to us. I realize that it may seem hypocritical and callous for an exile to dissuade exit and encourage voice from the safety and comfort of exile. And yet, we must not fall into the trap of becoming complicit in silencing their voice by way of exit. Patria y Vida.
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