BRISSENDEN: The crumbling home of the prestigious national ballet can barely contain all this intense youthful exuberance. This is Havana’s Grand Theatre – far less grand than it once was – and these are the grandchildren of the Cuban Revolution. They’re passionate, extremely talented and they want to be the very best dancers they can possibly be. But do they dare to dream beyond the strict confines of their small island home?

00:21

HENRY: “A famous dancer? What would it mean to me?

00:54

Henry

I’d like it if my art could be known to other people in the world. Why not?”

00:57

Dance class

Music

01:02

Kaysa in class

KAYSA: “I personally have set myself a goal –

01:08

Kaysa

to be a good dancer, not only in Cuba but in other countries as well”.

01:11

Dance class

Music

01:16

BRISSENDEN: Kaysa and Henry are star dancers at Cuba’s Spanish Ballet School. Kaysa is just seventeen. She’s studied classical ballet since she was four. She knows, given the chance, the world could be her stage but like almost everyone in Cuba, she has to be patient, very patient.

01:23

KAYSA: “We have to think big - even though things may not be resolved in one day, they’ll be resolved slowly.

01:47

Kaysa

We have to be optimistic because some day things will get better.”

01:55

Dance class

BRISSENDEN: But standing still doesn’t come easy to those born to move.

02:02

HENRY: “I think I still have a lot to learn.

02:07

Henry

I want to be a good dancer”.

02:08

Cuban sunsets

BRISSENDEN: Since before they were born, Cuba has been on the verge of a change that never seems to come. The tyranny of a transition that’s always just out of reach. Is it possible that change really is in the wind and this will be the Cuban generation that finally steps into a wider world?

02:11

Cuba general views

In the 21st century, Cuba is an increasingly strange anachronism – one of the last outposts of the old cold war stand-off. There is obviously incredible potential here, but after half a century of US embargo and socialist doctrine, the economy is in ruins. Young people are desperate for change but the old revolutionaries cling to the political battles of the 20th century and the central characters in all this remain Fidel Castro and his brother Raul.

02:40

Before Fidel Castro vacuum sealed Cuba, this was arguably more North American than any other country outside the United States.

03:12

Baseball stadium/Crowd at game

But even now, all these years on, the most anti-American neighbour can’t shake the great American pastime. Baseball is a national obsession and just like the dancers of the Spanish Ballet, the talent runs deep.

03:23

NORBERTO GONZALEZ MIRANDA: “In Cuba we have a system that is very organised - in this case, the Cuban Serie Nacional, Liga de Desarrollo.

03:50

Norberto Miranda

There are many opportunities for young people to play baseball.”

03:58

Baseball game

BRISSENDEN: Scouts in the US look longingly at what they describe as perhaps the greatest pool of entrapped sporting talent in the world.

04:03

Norberto Miranda pitches

Here, Norberto Gonzalez Miranda is the most valuable player of all. He’s the best pitcher in the Cuban league. A superstar without the pay packet. He knows he could make tens of millions in the US but dismisses it with an easy shrug.

NORBERTO GONZALEZ MIRANDA: “No, I’m not interested in that,

04:12

Norberto Miranda

because our country, our system provides for almost everything”.

04:36

Crowd in stadium

BRISSENDEN: Here at the Cienfeugo Stadium they may all be baseball tragics, die-hard fans of America’s pastime, but they’re by no means fans of the American dream. There’s a reticence, a deep suspicion of precisely what a more open Cuba may bring.

04:47

MARIELA CASTRO: “Well, what is going to happen I don’t know. We cannot know the future.

05:09

Mariela Castro

We know what we want, but not what is going to happen”.

05:14

Mariela Castro at function

BRISSENDEN: Mariela Castro is the daughter of President Raul. Her uncle has withdrawn from public view, her father hasn’t made a public appearance in months. So Mariela finds herself in the limelight, the smiling youthful face of the regime.

05:19

As a member of the ruling family, Mariela Castro has rare privileges and liberties and she’s one of the few Cubans prepared to engage openly in political discussions.

MARIELA CASTRO: “I also don’t like how the Communist Party’s been operating.

05:41

Mariela Castro

It’s now renewing itself, thank goodness. It was time”.

05:56

Cuban capitol building

BRISSENDEN: The regime knows something has to give. This month the Communist Party will hold its first party congress since 1997.

06:03

Banners. Fidel and Raul

The reclusive Fidel is unlikely to attend and it could well be the last significant political pitch for his brother as well.

06:13

There are broad expectations that Raul Castro will at least embrace some reform but even those in the inner sanctum say they don’t know what the leader might have in mind – or they’re not prepared to say.

06:22

“Has your father told you where he wants to take the country?”

MARIELA CASTRO: “No. He doesn’t talk to me about his work.

06:36

Mariela

I think he is like everyone else, “expectant” but he always says, “Many ideas will arise – the people will contribute – and many things will be done that we never imagined. I think he is happy with what is happening. I think he’ll say goodbye in peace, knowing he’s left the country in good condition to move forward”.

06:42

People on balconies/in windows/musicians

07:08

BRISSENDEN: But from the balconies of old Havana, Cuba doesn’t look like a country about to move forward.

07:14

Band plays

Music

07:23

BRISSENDEN:   Music, passion and sensuality are all part of the Cuban soul, and that spirit continues to define and sustain the people. But the country itself is falling apart. Few if anyone, can recall a major construction site. While many of Communism’s old outposts are now smothered in cranes and reverberating to the jackhammers, nothing has been built here for decades and little has been maintained or repaired. Not so the cars.

07:28

Cuban classic cars

Music

08:13

BRISSENDEN:  Necessity demands they’re patched up and while the eyes of a classic car enthusiast might boggle, these old clunkers from a bygone era of carburettors and drum brakes, are the most visible reminder of the political and economic stagnation in Cuba, held together with a combination of ingenuity and improvisation.

08:19

Music

08:45

Havana general views

BRISSENDEN:  Old Havana was once one of the most beautiful cities in the Caribbean. Now it’s in a state of almost melancholic decay.

MIRIAM LIEVA: “Old Havana was very beautiful, wonderful buildings, great architecture but 52 years nothing has been constructed or rehabilitated. The architecture has been lost. If you look

08:56

Miriam and Oscar

to the right or the left you find that people are living in very bad shape and in very bad conditions and that’s usual because most of the buildings in Cuba are crumbling and there is a great problem of housing”.

09:19

BRISSENDEN: Few know more about just how intractable the Castro regime can be than Oscar Chepe and Miriam Lieva.

09:33

Oscar and Miriam on Havana street

This Havana couple have been a part of Castro’s Cuba from the first tremors of revolution. Oscar came out of the jungles fighting alongside Fidel.

09:40

Photo. Oscar and Miriam with Fidel

In the years that followed, Miriam was as close as anyone to the top. But for them, the revolution never ended and the personal cost has been colossal.

MIRIAM LIEVA: “The consequences have been huge.

09:51

Miriam

Even if you’re out in the street you’re a prisoner of this government. You know it’s like a hostage, you’re a hostage”.

10:05

Oscar and Miriam at home

BRISSENDEN: Miriam and Oscar and a lifetime’s possessions are squeezed into this two room apartment in the Havana suburbs.

10:13

MIRIAM LIEVA: “We are not allowed to move from this place so we have to be here in this little apartment and our apartment is very surveyed. There is a political police office upstairs and it’s been there for many years. Now,

10:21

Miriam

nobody believes in Fidel Castro. They don’t even listen or read his reflections and Raul Castro has lost a lot or what he encouraged at the beginning of his term, it’s been lost”.

10:36

BRISSENDEN: In the early years of Castro Communism, Oscar worked closely with Fidel and later he became a specialist economist with the National Bank of Cuba. Eventually though he grew sceptical of the Cuban economic model. He found his criticisms weren’t welcome.

OSCAR CHEPE: “That is my struggle

10:51

Oscar

and I keep fighting, even though I’m aware that I’m in danger. They’ve told me themselves that I could return to prison”.

11:11

BRISSENDEN: AT 71 Oscar Chepe is in no shape for another stretch in prison.

11:23

Photo. Oscar in police car

His last is still fresh in his memory. In 2003 he was one of the so-called Group of 75 rounded up and imprisoned again during a crackdown against dissidents.

11:28

Oscar and Miriam walk in alleyway

It scarred him mentally and physically.

11:39

OSCAR CHEPE: “I was in Cuban Guantanamo, which is terrible. I was in Boniato prison… in Santiago de Cuba and in General Headquarters of Political Police as well. I was in El Combinado del Este prison –

11:44

Oscar and Miriam

and they are all terrible penal centres”.

11:58

Photo. Oscar in police car

MIRIAM LIEVA: “He really was in a very, very bad shape”.

BRISSENDEN: “How was he when he came out?”

MIRIAM LIEVA: “Well, imagine

12:04

Oscar and Miriam

he has very serious liver problems and many other problems and he had lost a lot of weight. You could see that he was you know… like, lost. He couldn’t even get a whole phrase together. You know he didn’t have concentration at that time. In Cuba they apply torture that you can’t see, you know? They don’t leave you any scars”.

12:10

Havana sunset. Men fishing

BRISSENDEN: But the scars on the country are all too apparent. Instead of persecuting and punishing the old economist, it might have been more useful for the regime to heed some of the criticism of Cuba’s economic structure.

12:30

Driving through rural area

Music

12:48

BRISSENDEN:  Take a drive from the capital out into Cuba’s rural heart and the problems become obvious.

12:51

Sugar farms

What used to be this country’s agricultural engine room is all but spent. Sugarland has turned sour.

13:00

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “The reign of sugar is over after 200 years.

13:11

Rafael Hernandez

This is over and sugar is not going to return as the centre of the Cuban economy”.

13:15

Sugar mill train

BRISSENDEN: Believe it or not, this place is called Central Australia. It was once one of the biggest sugar mills in the country. These days the sugar train runs joy rides for the few curious tourists who make it this far. What sugar cultivation remains is still run along the old Soviet collectivist model, but it’s a model that only ever worked here with Soviet patronage – and we all know what happened to that. Fifty years ago this sugar mill

13:30

Photos. Castro and revolutionaries

was also Fidel Castro’s headquarters during the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Bay of Pigs invasion came in 1961, two years after Castro and his band of revolutionaries overthrew the US backed dictator Batista. It was the first and only attempt to retake the country by Cuban exiles trained by the US.

14:09

The fight against Yankee Imperialism has always been a defining theme of the revolution, but the collapse of the Soviet sponsor hit Cuba harder than anything else.

14:31

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “We have been in crisis throughout the last twenty years, my friend. So

14:43

Hernandez

this is a crisis, yes. But is this worse, we are worse than five years ago and fifteen years ago? No. I don’t think we are worse”.

14:48

Hernandez and staff in meeting

BRISSENDEN: Rafael Hernandez is the editor of Temas, a serious mix of literary analysis, reportage and critiques published every three months. But like all major publications here, it remains supportive of the goals and aspirations of the regime.

15:02

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “I don’t think that the government believes that this situation may last for another 20 years.

15:19

Hernandez

They know very well and if you read carefully or if you listen carefully to Raul Castro’s speeches, he is very clear in his mind and in his statements are very clear about that we are running out of time. This is our last opportunity. This is what he says”.

BRISSENDEN: “Does he give a time frame to that?

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “No.

15:26

If you ask me for a time frame I say this year. Very important key changes will be made this year”.

15:51

Man reads near portrait of Castro

Music

16:01

BRISSENDEN: So, even in those pockets of the Cuban intelligentsia with a lifetime’s commitment to Castro’s socialism, there’s a recognition that change now is inevitable – but it’s a matter of degrees. And the future, whatever direction it takes, will be linked for better or worse to the US. How they deal with the post Castro era will be a challenge to both countries,  but here in Cuba nothing looms larger than the paradox of location. It drives politics, splits families and throws a shadow over the lives of almost everyone.

16:05

JUAN CARLOS CREMATA: “The history of Cuba it’s completely connected with the history of the United States.

16:44

Juan Carlos Cremata

You cannot speak about Cuba, about the history of Cuba without speaking about the United States. But it’s the same. You cannot speak about the United States without the history of Cuba”.

16:49

Juan Carlos climbs stairs, out on to balcony

BRISSENDEN: Juan Carlos Cremata is one of Cuba’s better known filmmakers. He is also one of those most publicly identified with the strained and conflicted relationship Cubans have with the US and with their own exiled community.

17:02

JUAN CARLOS CREMATA: “You know I was thirteen when my father died in the middle of the sea, Caribbean Sea with two bombs in the plane”.

17:18

Photo. Cubana Airlines plane.

Music

17:27

Photos of those killed

BRISSENDEN: Cubana Airlines Flight 455 was brought down by two bombs planted by anti-Castro Cuban exiles in 1976. All 73 people on board died. They included the members of the Cuban National Fencing team and their, coach Juan Carlos’s father.

17:32

Photo. CIA

Cuba accused the CIA of involvement and the attack became a symbol of the Cold War struggle. 35 years later, it’s still a key part of the country’s revolutionary story.

17:53

Car. Tilt up to Juan Carlos on balcony

And like many Cubans, Juan Carlos is wary of what might happen once Cuba does open the doors.

JUAN CARLOS CREMATA: “This America, North American society,

18:16

Juan Carlos

North American society is good? No, I don’t think so. Mmm… I don’t think so. And I know that United States is not the solution of the problem”.

18:27

Revolutionary murals

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “I think that the vast majority of Cubans believe that socialism doesn’t have to be the old socialism but a different kind of socialism.

18:42

Hernandez

It can still be socialism, but with a completely different model”.

18:53

Cars

Music

19:00

BRISSENDEN: And once again in Cuba, like the cars that chug and splutter around the city streets, that different model is likely to be a patched up, make do version of the old. As the regime tinkers with its broken down economy, those who can least afford it have been hardest hit. Recently unemployment benefits have been cut and half a million state workers are being laid off. They’re now expected to find ways to fend for themselves.

19:06

Jose Rey

JOSE REY: “My name is Jose Rey, and I am 22 years old. I was working but with the problems of staff reductions my contract was terminated and I had to turn to the streets. They told me they were very sorry, but you have to go”.

19:40

Jose’s DVD street stand

BRISSENDEN: The government has published a list of 178 small private enterprises it says are now permissible. Get yourself a permit like Jose Rey has, and you can get by selling DVDs on street corners. He’s not about to become a one man Block Buster video, but he at least is happy with his tentative steps out of the planned economy.

20:02

Jose Rey

JOSE REY: “If I sell five DVDs in one day I earn ten CUC. I’ve already made in one day what I would have earned in one month”.

20:25

Small business activity

BRISSENDEN: Florists, food traders, tutors, carpenters and hairdressers are some of the other business ventures on the government list. It’s hardly Chinese reforms or the dramatic changes in the old Soviet Union, but here it’s the biggest economic change in 52 years and capitalism can be contagious.

20:36

JUAN CARLOS: “I think that even though there are ones who don’t want to open Cuba will open in the end.

21:00

Juan Carlos

But I have to say I’m not clear why it will be the future. I hope that it will be good but…”

21:10

Young people in plaza

BRISSENDEN: “Is it happening too slowly?”

RAFAEL HERNANDEZ: “It depends what Cubans you are talking to. If you are talking to Cubans that are twenty five years old, they may be thinking or feeling that it is slow. If you are talking to people that are over 65 years old, you may get a very different response. So

21:26

Rafael Hernandez

I think that, yes, we want this to happen but, yes, we need to have this step by step”.

21:44

Havana seafront

Music

21:53

BRISSENDEN: But are the steps big enough, bold enough for a generation who know better than previous generations what lurks outside

21:56

Dance students

and hoping, maybe even yearning, to connect with that world.

MARIELA CASTRO: “Young people always want rapid change - they always expect things immediately.

22:03

Mariela Castro

What I like is that the process of generational handing over is being carried out, in a strong, responsible and careful manner because I don’t think it’s right to give over the stage to the young people without them having participated in the writing of the script.

22:18

Flamenco dance class

Music

22:42

KAYSA: “Well like all dancers, one would like to be known all around the world.

22:47

To be famous in your own country and then you go to another country where they recognise you, and say, ‘Look at this Cuban – how good she is! An excellent dancer – one of the best in the world!’.”

22:51

Music

23:10

Credits

Reporter: Michael Brissenden

Camera: Louie Eroglu ACS

Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen

Producer: Michael Maher

23:33