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Not all young Cubans are hostile to their system. "Look at me," says a nattily dressed, blond 24-year-old who spent two years stationed in Angola. "Do I look like the kind of guy you Americans call a mercenary? Do I have horns on my head? Sure, we have problems over there, just like you guys did in Viet Nam. But we had help from the East Germans and others in our Revolution, and it is our turn to help others. It is important that we repay our debts."
For such firm loyalists, ideology knows no borders. "I think Bruce Springsteen is a blind nationalist," proclaims the former trooper in the easy drawl he has copied from Florida deejays. "Sure! Just look at that title, Born in the U.S.A.!" Even here, though, things are not quite as clear as they seem. In the ex-soldier's spacious home off once splendorous Fifth Avenue, a picture of Che Guevara stares across at an equally large poster of Barry Manilow. Downtown in central Havana, a 15-year-old schoolgirl goes him one better. On top of her dresser she has carefully fashioned a collage of her three great heroes: Michael Jackson, Jesus and Che. Thus the unlikely eclecticism of Cuba's revolutionary experiment.