A Man’s Role, or the Creole Viagra / Yoani Sánchez

The “gift bag” last month wasn’t very full. Supplies were scarce and he had to settle for some bananas and few pounds of chicken. Better times will come. Anyway, he felt blessed because when he got to his neighborhood with the ten eggs that were also distributed at work several neighbors came out to ask him — anxiously — where they were being sold. He blushed slightly, but told them, with a touch of vanity, that he hadn’t bought them, they were part of the portion given to all members of the Ministry of Armed Forces.

Wearing a military uniform on this olive-green Island has multiple advantages. Not only are there perks in the form of food and material objects, but each individual is invested with a certain capacity to cushion legal penalties, skip procedures that would take another citizen forever, and even expeditiously obtain new housing. The same official, who now better hides his food quota from his neighbors’ eyes, told me once that his grade of captain was like “a check made out to bearer.” When his younger son committed a crime it was enough for him to dress up in his epaulets and boots for the judge to send the “misguided youth” to serve his sentence under house arrest rather than in a penitentiary.

But our man with the pistol on his belt and his helmet aspires to more. Only senior officials, those who attain a certain level in the hierarchy, receive a frequent allocation of the drug PPG, also known as the Cuban Viagra. He has little time left to climb the ladder before retirement age, but he doesn’t want to retire without achieving his monthly quota of these little vitality pills. The Ministry to which he devoted his life will help him fulfill the role of a man, because a soldier must be ready to conquer — and to uphold the names of his leaders — not only on the battlefield, but also between the sheets of whatever bed he might come across.

March 14, 2011