Three Wise Kings and The Cuban Revolution.

Three Wise Kings and The Cuban Revolution.

At the end of the 60', The Three Wise Kings were denied permission to enter the island of Cuba. The leaders of the emerging Revolution in their desire to give toys to every Cuban child became the new Wise Kings and created at the beginning of the 70' a distribution system that ended up leaving all children without toys. What I tell you here are my memories.

The New Wise Kings and Commanders of the Revolution: Fidel Castro, Juan Almeida and Ernesto Che Guevara. Painting on a Havana's wall in the 60'.

January 6th was one of the most wonderful time of the year, we celebrated The Three Wise Kings Day. The night before I tried to stay vigilant to discover the Wise Kings passing under the door of the house to leave toys all over the place, but I inevitable felt asleep with the biggest smile ever. Early in the morning I got out of bet as fast as I could to go to the living room to look for the hidden toys, it was time to play. My grandparents and my parents shouted "cold, cold" when I looked for them in places far from where they were really hidden and "hot, hot" when I approached and discovered them. Those were moments of joy and I had no idea that the Revolution was about to change everything.

One day we were told that the Three Wise Kings would never come back in January. Now the toys were going to be sold in the month of July at the neighborhood hardware store, take it or leave it. A drawing was organized where families won a number to buy toys on a given day for 6 days, for example: number 10 for the first day or 50 for the sixth day. For all children to have toys these were limited to three for each one and classified as Basic, Non-Basic and Directed Toys. Things started to get complicated for children and parents. The basic toys were the most attractive, the biggest ones and the most wanted. The Non-Basic toys were not so attractive and the Directed toys, as the word says, was the ones you were given and the least attractive, it was usually a ball for children and a game of jacks for girls. The goal was equality, but the problem was that there were not enough toys, and these were running out with the passing of days. If you were not lucky enough and got the last number for the sixth day in the drawing practically what you could buy was the dust of the store.
The most coveted toy of all and the dream of every child was a bike, but they only distributed very few for each store (usually 2). The only way to buy a bike was if you drew the number 1 for the first day and of course if you had enough money to buy it, because if you had the number 1 for the first day, but you did not have enough money, it was like getting the last number of the last day in the drawing. In practice, the most common way for a child to ride a bike was to borrow one from a neighbor. Riding a bike was a unique experience, and luxury not any one could afford.

I remember when toys were displayed in the shop windows, we gathered round to look at toys we could mostly never buy. The best toy I could ever buy during those years was a police car with a siren and lights in a year in which I got number 40 for the first day in the drawing, nor even dream about a bike.
While buying toys for children became complicated, imagine what it would be like for parents. A whole new world of barter emerged. Some families who did not have money they sold their lottery number to buy food. Others exchanged food for lottery numbers so that their children could have more toys. But children were still children and we were not aware of those economic issues. Of course, we had the most powerful tools that children could ever have to live, learn and play. Those tools were creativity, imagination, dreams and all energy of the world. With our creativity and that of our parents and grandparents, we made our own toys. Mother nature had everything to offer, including wood :) We used wood to make strollers, swords, bows and arrows among others.

Toy invented by Cuban children in the 70' and 80'. Pistol was made with clothesline pins and the bullet was a match ( video from Jorge Medina's Youtube channel).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=19&v=7mPDnESe15g

Wet earth served as play dough and so many other inventions. Our mothers and grandmothers sewed for us different costumes and as there were plenty of books, we played selling and buying them like in the bookstores. Imagination made us climb trees and sit in its most comfortable branches and suddenly a tree became a car and we drove along beaches, cities and countryside. A tree also became an airplane and flying over the island we enjoyed every inch of it beauty. With dreams we closed our eyes in full sunlight or under the moon and told each other about what we wanted to be when we grew up. Energy made us strong and we ran around the neighborhood, played hide and seek, thief and police, baseball or any other street game that existed at the time.

When children turned 12 they no longer had the right to continue buying toys. Anyway, that system of distribution of toys languished in the 80', and the generation of children who lived after mine, had it more difficult to buy toys, but that is another story.
Despite everything I had a happy childhood, and I had the whole mother nature and many friends with whom to play. And the best part of that I did not live in a socialist society, I lived in the mind of a child. That child still lives in my heart and refuses to give up.

Picture from: https://www.quotemaster.org/Inner+Child