W hat persists in the midst and tension of this contradiction is the grave question of faith for many Cubans, and also for them, the equally grave question about the revolution' s survival. S ome Cubans expressed to me painfully that their trust in the Cuban revolution is seriously eroded even though they want or seek no alternative, leaving them deeply depressed. O thers have moved to a search for faith in a divine who exemplifies the hope for justice and its possibilities that had been represented in their minds by the Cuban revolution, for a socialist form of egalitarian distribution of wealth and resources, even if a such a hope may seem slim. This faith is spoken of as a 'theology of accompaniment' the radical church standing with the people and alongside the government in the pursuit of equality and justice. S till others seek faith through a renewed exegesis of Marxists texts which allow accommodation to forms of market socialism as ways to channel the onslaught of the dollar as well as to ease the effects of the collapse of the Soviet orbit and the U.S. blockade.
Money is on their minds.
It overshadows the symbolic value made by the government of the U.S. blockade, a blockade that ironically has been instrumental in the Cuban conversion to the dollar's possibilities. T he obsessive search by Cubans for U.S. dollars was most obvious in Havana where I felt myself inescapably linked to this currency, a dollar sign myself, no more. Prostitutes persistently solicited my dollar openly on the streets, children begged for it by name, vendors hawked for it, musicians smilingly played for it, religious shrines invited its donation. Fidel Castro even autographed U.S. currency for those who sought such autographs during an October 1993 visit I made to Cuba with the first Freedom to Travel Challenge sponsored by Global Exchange of San Francisco in defiance of U.S. travel restrictions and the embargo itself. B ut this obsessive search for U.S. currency has dangerously separated Cubans from Cubans in their own nation, where now two economies and two marketplaces prevail by government decree, one for the dollar, another for the peso.