Since the 1970s when Cuba more formally adopted the uniforms and practices of the Soviet Union’s Communist Pioneers, children in later years of primary school began to wear Stalin red kerchiefs and matching jumpsuits modeled after their Soviet counterparts. However, kids in the Cuban equivalent of kindergarten through third grade wore a blue kerchief, dyed in the light blue of the Cuban flag. Then as today, the blue color encodes the idea, popularized by Fidel Castro, that José Martí, Cuba’s anti-imperialist nationalist leader and writer of the Nineteenth Century, launched Cuba on the path to the inevitable triumph of Marxism. Ironically, Martí was neither a fan of Karl Marx’s theory or a proponent of Marxism at any point in his lifetime. This fact had actually made him suspect among the thousands of socialist Cuban workers whose support he needed to free Cuba from Spain. It remains one of the many facts similarly silenced through the nature of Cuba’s school uniforms, kids’ mandatory membership in the Pioneers and, of course, school curricula. Sabrina, my goddaughter, never advanced to the red kerchief of her peers because she now lives with her parents in Spain. La Virgen del Camino, Havana, January 2009.
