Achievements and Continuity…! / Rebeca Monzo

A sidewalk somewhere in the Nueva Vedado neighborhood

Fantastic! In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the declaration of socialism and for its continuity. Thus says the propaganda, lately, that saturates the programming of the already politically overloaded national television.

But, as if this were not enough, for more than a month those of us who live around the famous Plaza of the Revolution, have been faced with the ongoing power outages, street closures, traffic diversion, loudspeakers in the early hours, volleys, etc., all due to the rehearsals to make the military parade media-perfect.

The only good thing that we draw from this is that the main avenues and side streets around the perimeter of the area of the parade, have been and are being paved, and we only had to wait fifty-two years for that long awaited dream to become reality. Now, you have to walk in the street, dodging all the dangerous traffic, in order not to break your face by walking on the broken sidewalks. Which makes us think, optimistically, that we’ll only have to wait another fifty years for this mess, as we say in good Creole, to be fixed up as well. Maybe this also has something to do with celebrating the achievements and continuation of what they brag about so much.

April 3 2011