Mauricio's Diary [Cuba 2006]

Páginas del diario de Mauricio
Director: M. Pérez
Cinematographer: R. Rodríguez

Like Barrio Cuba, this is a recent film dealing with the broad sweep of the Special Period; but the two films are very different. If Barrio Cuba focussed on the problems of the generation of young adults, and their relationships with older and younger generations, this film focusses primarily on the older generation--their dashed hopes, their attempts to make sense of the world after the disappearance of the socialist camp. But it is also a chronicle of some of the experiences of the Special Period, from just before, in 1988, to 2000.

While some other treatments of the Special Period have naturally focussed on the economic hardships, this film is more about the psychological ones. To that end, it centres not on the worst off economically, but on people who are able to find a bit of extra income, through renting accommodation to tourists, remittances from families, or whatever. They are not, of course, rich, and neither are they jineteros; but by choosing people who are not economically desperate, the film is able to abstract away from economic issues and focus on psychology.

Mauricio, the protagonist here, is a man who is already 60 in 1990, an accomplished bureaucrat with a strong belief in the revolution and its ideals, but who does not see things with rose-tinted glasses. At the beginning of the film, in 1988, we see him and other Cubans living in the relative affluence they then enjoyed, looking forward to a certain future, although there are warning signs coming from abroad; Eastern Europe and the USSR, where his daughter studies, are in chaos.

As the film progresses, the socialist camp disappears, and Cuba is left alone. Many people are frightened, not knowing where things are going, and the protagonist's position temporarily teaching politics at a night school--which he took out of frustration with bureaucracy--positions us to witness the realisation on the part of everyone, students and teacher, that the old theories would not work anymore, that practical experience seemed to be disproving them. One comments that Cuba will now have to come up with its own answers, solutions that have never before been conceived of--in sharp contrast, presumably, to the situation in which supposedly foolproof foreign models could be imported. Another character says poignantly that everything will continue on--but that they will just have to re-learn how to live. It is a time when everyone is in crisis, lacking a framework for understanding the world, or what steps to take. This is a stark contrast to what happened in Eastern Europe, where although people were told their whole way of thinking had been wrong, at least they had another, prefabricated model that they could immediately cling to for support.

Simultaneously there is an interesting symbolic current having to do with Mauricio's family. As his daughter says, he has always been too idealistic, and his wife too practical. He and his wife split up as the crisis begins, and his wife leaves the country to work in a high-powered job for the WHO. His daughter, meanwhile, decides to stay in Russia after the dissolution of the USSR, and eventually moves to Sweden. Significantly, he resents the fact that she will be using the training and preparation that has made her who she is, and that has come from socialist Cuba, to make her labour saleable. She is, that is, a product of Cuba and socialism, which has also left a trace on her, as she later admits, of idealism--though the events of the 1990s make her into someone who only cares about herself and her family.

What is interesting here is that the conflict between Mauricio and his wife actually predates the crisis--even in 1988, she is planning to at least work abroad in Nicaragua for a while, and hopes that by taking Mauricio there she can get his head straight. By contrast, he wants to save his mental health by teaching politics at night school, something he can believe in. He is wary about going to Nicaragua because the FSLN might lose; but she just wants to go anyway for the money.

It seems, that is, that this relationship might be taken as a symbol for two aspects of Cuban society--its idealism and its practicality. The point, perhaps, is that the two have often found themselves in conflict, for example the latter being represented by the period of Soviet-influenced institutionalisation from 1976 to 1985, and the former by the 1960s and by the Rectification Period from 1986 to 1991. But while the two might not have always been in constant conflict, the Special Period perhaps threw the conflict into relief; for some of the most practically minded who could left the country or at least the revolutionary project, while idealists like Mauricio held out. His daughter perhaps represents the struggle between the two; she indeed sadly ends up in the former group.

It is from this struggle and the separation of the family that the melancholy of this film really comes, as exemplified by the last shot, in which Mauricio, together with his daughter-in-law, admits to feeling lonely. Here we are, at the end of the Special Period, after all the pain and suffering of the 1990s. Those who have jumped ship and gone abroad will never return, because they now have access to material affluence in the first world, and because they have lost any commitment to their ideals. Those who remained have weathered the storm, but they are, indeed, lonely. And the country itself is lonely--while chaos and crisis caused other socialist societies to dissolve and give up their ideals, Cuba held out, choosing to endure loneliness and isolation for the sake of its beliefs. Only with the Venezuelan revolution and recent events in Latin America has this loneliness shown any promise of ebbing. But there is a profound sense of melancholy in this film about the suffering that has been, and still is, required as a result of Cubans not compromising their beliefs.

This is further echoed by the emotional dependence of Mauricio and a friend of his on the results of the Cuban performance in sports matches against the US and Russia. His friend has a small stroke when the Cubans lose against the US; and it is only a Cuban volleyball victory against Russia which cheers Mauricio up in the end. This highlighting of the US and Russian teams makes clear the idea that Cuban dignity depends in part on its independence from whatever kind of dependency, including the dependency on the USSR, which was so bitterly compromised. But, just as at the end of Barrio Cuba we see a ray of hope, the volleyball victory suggests that Cubans have indeed got away with their dignity, even if they have many scars to show for it.

There are some more interesting details in this film. One is the portrayal of the 1994 summer riot, in which blackouts, heat, and shortages at the absolute rock bottom of the Special Period led to violence, calmed only by Fidel's personal appearance among the crowd. We do not see that part; only looters running through the streets and one who gets into a personal confrontation with Mauricio. Here Mauricio could be representing the construction workers who did battle with the rioters near the Malecón; he seems unable to control his anger at the looter, pinning him up against a banister and shouting at him 'What did you yell? What did you yell?', as he has heard that rioters were shouting 'Down with the revolution'. Again, the conflict otherwise represented as that between Mauricio and his wife is played out here; frustrated, angry and hungry young Cubans want to seek the most immediate solution they can imagine, while Mauricio represents those who have the benefit of more historical perspective. While he admits he does not have any theoretical answers to Cuba's problems, he believes in the revolution and cannot stand to see it destroyed.

A particularly interesting statement on the Special Period is made by Mauricio's younger second wife, who, on New Year's Eve of 2000, has a psychological crisis and dies, apparently as a result of not being able to stand the pressure around her anymore (she dies of a blood pressure problem, but there is possibly a double meaning here). What this amounts to, she says, is that the Special Period has changed everyone--and some more than others. It has made some into corrupt people and hypocrites; and above all, what was there before is now lost. Mauricio loves her precisely because she is idealistic--unlike his previous wife, she is 'a comrade'. But it is just that which seems to kill her; she cannot bear seeing what has happened to her country any longer.

As the director has said, Mauricio represents a whole generation of Cubans, including the director and many of his friends. It is impossible to watch this film with that in mind and not feel a deep sense of sadness for what has happened. One is reminded of the way in which this played out all over the world: millions of people who worked their whole lives for an ideal in which they believed, even if it had been tarnished by certain failures, then suddenly, overnight, losing everything and having to change their universe and their way of life. In Cuba particularly, the painful choice had to be made, both on an individual and on a national level, of whether to pay the price for continuing with one's ideals, or whether to give it all up. This film pays tribute to those who took the former path, and testifies to the price they have had to pay. As Mauricio says, others may see them as stubborn; but there is a quiet dignity conveyed as well, and a sense in which the last shot, of Mauricio and his pregnant daughter, conveys the message, as in Barrio Cuba, that the worst is over, and hope lies with the future.