the arbitrariness of the national symbol

The numbers below mark three of the brief moments when, as can be seen in the video, someone carried a Cuban flag during the yesterday’s events in Parliament Square, Westminster, London. Yesterday, Tuesday 9 December, confronting riot police, some of the hundreds of protesters vandalized part of the facade of the Treasury building in Westminster, London, after learning that the House of Commons’ vote approved the raise of university tuition fees in England.

Watch the video in segments 0:07-13, 0:55-57, 01:02-03

The way in which BBC News dealt with yesterday’s incident in Parliament Square reminded me a bit of what I have heard and read about what happened during May of '68, in Paris, a year after I was born. But there is something that I find really interesting, and it’s that amidst the "attack" on the Treasury building someone would carry a Cuban flag, as can be seen in the background of the shot of the demonstrators over the square, whilst the reporter’s account of the events in this small segment ends when the same reporter labels 'missile' what Cubans would call ‘Cambolo.’ I wonder what would be the reporter’s comment on what we call 'the Cuban flag,’ had he referred to it. I am not clear about the gravity of my observation, but it isn’t less interesting in the wave of controversy over the fate and current situation of Cuba. The London sighting of the Cuban flag happened three days after Fariñas and fellow dissidents publicly released a document demanding change and rejecting the ‘modernization’ of the Cuban economic model as outlined in the basic document issued by the Cuban Communist Party before its upcoming 6th Congress to be held next April 2011. I am wondering if those images of the Cuban flag in London adjust to the ideals proposed by the Cuban opposition or to those proposed today by the Revolution.

In this case, it may seem obvious that the Cuban flag represents those who are against the raise of tuition fees for higher education in the UK. But what does it represent then for the Cubans who like me are here in the UK? What else does it signify in this context? Is the Cuban flag as global as the face of Che in a can of soda? Or like the American flag that has burned so many times? Or like the A of anarchy? This is one of the most arbitrary presentations of the Cuban flag that I’ve ever seen. I would think that within one of these extremes that I mentioned lays its symbolic matter. Since I cannot grasp its full significance I ask myself again: What’s the Cuban flag doing there?