Category: Fernando Damaso

1. In Tulipán where it runs through the Plaza municipality, around the tiny April 19 railroad station, there is a long established series of private timbiriches (precarious tiny kiosks) that, with their principally artisanal products, support people who are not served by state markets.
2. On day, a few months back, they were dismantled by the order of someone, and they disappeared. Now some State timbiriches have sprung up, mainly offering fast food and alcohol.
3. I don’t know which of our brainy economists came up with this original timberiche economy idea. It’s possible it was the same one who thought up State parking lot attendants. Perhaps with that one he or she might be nominated for the Nobel in economics.
4. On the one hand, the press publishes studies about expanding self-employment, and on the other, they are closed down. If this happens in a baseball game, we say that the manager and the players have gotten their signals crossed: you bat in batting order and vice versa. So no one wins even a crappy game. Let’s agree, those who are paying the fees for these endless studies are we citizens.
5. A few days ago, in a small park at the corner of Tulipán and Loma, there were some nomadic self-employed, offering their wares. I hope they are allowed to stay, at least until the much-announced nuclear winner is upon on.

September 23, 2010

1. I have carefully read the List of Self Employment Jobs, that the government authorizes citizens to undertake (something unlikely in the 21st Century), as well as the clarifications of various officials, particularly in the newspaper Granma of September 23.
2. Mentally I’ve traveled to the feudal period when the master of the castle authorized his servants to engage in commerce on their land, but with one difference: he never established any list that limited their development of initiatives.
3. None of the authorized jobs have anything to do with production or with substituting local products for imported ones, two slogans much repeated lately. They only have to do, for the most part, with offering services, most of them pretty basic.
4. The reason for their limited reach, is based on the patch added, under pressure, to the Constitution some years ago, declaring that our political and social system is irrevocable. Our Mambises, who were pretty smart, when they edited the Constitution of the Republic-in-Arms, always made it clear it was temporary and could be changed. This is provided for in the Guáimaros (10.4.l869) in the Jimaguayú (l6.9.1985) and in the La Yaya (29.10.l897) versions. In the constitutions during the Republic they respected this principle. The Constitution of 1940, considered the most complete and best, was substituted for what they called the Fundamental Law at the triumph of the insurrection and then replaced by the Socialist Constitution, which was later amended as well. As we can see, nothing is irrevocable. Trying to put a straitjacket on current and future generations is naive as well as unjust.
5. I have belabored the previous point, because this is the main argument not to make the changes truly necessary, and to put makeup on a corpse to make it look as if it is alive and kicking, by freezing, for some time longer its natural process of decomposition.

September 26, 2010

Looking through an old suitcase one always finds interesting things, that once brought happiness and sadness and that today, forgotten by all, seem to have no value. However, if you feel them, put them to your ear, they vibrate with their own life as if reborn, full of noises and sounds for those who want to hear and smell them. This happened to me on a day when, yearning for the memories of my childhood, I opened an old suitcase of my grandmother’s, saved for who knows how many years in loft of the stairway.

Putting the key into the worm-eaten lock it gave way, moaning like a virgin on being possessed. On opening the lid, dozens of sprites of different shapes and sizes, leaped out onto the floor, and ran in all directions, hiding behind the furniture and curtains. I was caught between shock and surprise, but recovered quickly, staying still, just watching them. As they gained confidence they abandoned their hiding places and approached me, looking at me with bulging eyes and feeling me with their little hands. I felt like Gulliver in Lilliput, but I was reacting as if ignoring them, rummaging through the contents of the suitcase. Then it seemed that the leader, being the oldest, pulled on my pants leg and in a bell-like voice said to me:

“What are you looking for in the past?”

“The reason for the present,” I answered.

“The present is the present.”

I became pensive and closed the suitcase. In there were my grandmother’s things, but the goblins also got free and accompany everywhere all the time. Only I am the only one who sees and feels them. In old suitcases one always finds interesting things.

September 17, 2010

Socialism is so rigid it is practically impossible to reform it. It is like a straitjacket imposed on society the minute it begins, and afterward we are forced to live with it, ignoring any development of change in sizes.

1. A conception less orthodox and dogmatic would understand changes, and at least go from a Small to a Medium and then to a Large and Extra Large, avoiding the annoyance and in the end the tearing.
2. But this is like asking for the impossible. And Marti, with his foresight, warned against the dangers of socialism. It’s just that, as in many other things, we forget his warnings and fall, and continue to fall, into mistakes he warned us against.
3. There is no doubt that the ideas of Marx and Engels, as a theory, attracted and do attract as many intelligent beings as fools. Developed in their private offices and German breweries and London pubs, which is not meant as a criticism, fortunately they never applied them in life, assuming them to be Utopian.
4. Our great disgrace has been the continual enforcement of these social models. Each one in its way, to a greater or lesser extent, in different eras, has demonstrated its failure in the real world.

September 11, 2010

1. In my country there is the disastrous custom of different figures appointing themselves as judges of historic facts and personages. These are then analyzed through the political-ideological lens which, according to their point of view, exalts or debases them, ignoring the times and situations that created them and in which they lived.
2. As a result, the study of our history is a very complicated thing. People once respected and accepted by the majority, are today considered traitors or, what’s worse, collaborators with the established powers. Others, complete unknowns, emerge as saviours of the nation, but without any clear demonstration of any of their supposed virtues.
3. Everything is reduced to a process of labeling. If someone is labeled a reformist, annexationist*, autonomist, etc., they are marked for life and, from that point, any time their name is pronounced or written it is preceded by their corresponding label.
4. One of the most notorious cases is that of Narciso López, whose name is always preceded by the word “annexationist,” although no one has ever demonstrated this. So he is left hanging, historically, just like the poet Plácido (Gabriel de la Concepción Valdés) because of the first verse of his well-traveled posthumous poem, Prayer to God.
5. Perhaps it would be healthy to leave this task in the hands of historians, allowing them, independently and without demands nor pressure of the ideological-political sort, analyze events and people and express their honest opinions which, like everything in life, are not required to be identical or unanimous. So, history would be more interesting and digestible, as contradictory as reality, and precisely, therefore, more useful.

*Translator’s note: An “annexationist” is someone who would like Cuba to become part of the United States.

August 31, 2010

The tree began to spread its leaves on June 14th. First slowly and then more quickly. In the morning they began to cover the windows and towards noon they already reached the roof and had started to become intertwined. Their first effect was the dim light they let into the room. It seemed as if they took possession of everything and this would make them grow. By nightfall the room was a single entangled vine unable to be penetrated by any human being. On the fifteenth day the leaves began to extend under the door and broke the glass of the window, looking for new space. In three days the house was engulfed in full green leaves.Hundreds of birds came to the vine, filling every day of the week with their songs. As the hours passed, the leaves spread more and more. After the house, they covered the neighborhood and later the whole city. They grew on cars, on posts, illuminated advertisements and over shop windows. Everything went well and was acceptable until the moment in which they started to grow on people. The first one who noticed was García, a mason, when he was on his way to his work: leaves sprouted from his fingers. He ran screaming like a madman until a root set him into the ground next to the bus stop. The same thing happened to others. After one month, in the place where the city would have been there was a beautiful forest. This is how it remained for decades until one day when from a tree, a child was born.

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Translated by: Antonio Trujillo

The small blue circle was widening and growing until it ended up totally enclosing him. At first his feet and hands remained outside of it, now his whole body was inside the circle. He barely managed to keep his head outside, in a tenacious battle that he knew, if he lost it, if would all be over. Bystanders watched, some sympathetically, others indifferent, but no one stopped to help him or to hurt him. So he spent two nights and two days. It was the afternoon of the second day. It was always easier in the morning, as long as he didn’t get too burnt by the sun, or find the air too thin. The circle stretched at times, giving the sensation that he might be able to break it, but it only lasted an instant, and then it would immediately contract, squeezing even harder, trying to take in even his head. It was a terrible battle.

It had all started suddenly. he was walking, like every night, returning home, when he felt something trap his feet. He tried to keep his balance but he couldn’t, as he fell to the ground. From that moment he never stood up again. The circle tied his feet, after covering his ankles and then his knees. He fought that night and all the next day, and kept the circle from advancing further. Only in the morning of the second day did the circle manage to capture his arms. He was dirty and his clothes were torn, but he held his head erect, outside the circle. He tried to fill his constricted lungs with air and to not close his eyes, convinced that if he did he would be defeated. Just then he saw a child come running. In his right hand was a carnation and his face was one huge smile, the greatest he had seen in all his forty-eight years. He tried to warn him with a gesture of his face, to show the danger, but he failed. The child kept coming, and when he was near enough, he kissed his cheek and then dropped the carnation into the circle. Everyone was shocked. The circle stretched in one sudden movement, but this time it didn’t contract again, but broke into pieces, which in turn fell apart and disappeared completely. The man felt that his body was free again and looked around for the child among the crowd that was beginning to gather, but he couldn’t find him. He saw, however, that all the people around him had a small blue circle on their left legs, reaching up to their ankles.

August 16, 2010

In my childhood and adolescence, personalities from the war of independence were the ones they called patriots and, in its most general sense, all those who took part in it in one way or another. With the passing of years, the word fell into disuse, and was sometimes applied, rather ironically, to some politician at election time.
<ol>
<li>From the beginning of the sixties it was taken up again, and started to be used with athletes, artists, professionals, et cetera, who experiencing some success abroad, chose not to stay there and returned to their homeland.</li>
<li>Recently, different authorities in the field of education are proposing once again that the first job of education is to form ever more prepared patriots.</li>
<li>I beg to differ: I believe that the principle job of the family, of education, and of society, is to form citizens. When I write citizens, I am referring to people with moral principles, ethics and civics, capable of fulfilling their duties and exercising their rights. These people, unfortunately, are now in the minority, an important cause of the deterioration of our social existence.</li>
<li>In place of a country of patriots and heroes, I prefer one of citizens.</li>
</ol>

August 13, 2010

The cubicle was permeated with a strong odor of antibiotics. On the pole hung two hundred and fifty grams of blood plasma and two vials of serum, attached by thin plastic hoses that ended in his chest and arms. The oxygen cylinder was connected to his nose through a tube, trying to east his strangled breathing. His nose also had a drain hose discharging into a bottle hanging on the left-hand bar of the bed. Another hose coming from his abdomen drained urine into a bottle on the floor.

Every so often nurses checked on the jars and hoses and took his pulse, measuring his heart rate. In the next bed, an elderly man operated on for ulcers, emitted rhythmic moans from a state of drowsiness. The guy opened his glazed eyes and looked, lost in the morning of the accident between the crash and the screeching of brakes, searching the Asturian mountains for the wolves who preyed on the unsuspecting sheep. From time to time he raised his left arm, looking for his hand, and tried to scare away the hawk that, flying high, also searched for easy prey. The sheep pushed in around him, one against another, and he, the child-shepherd, stroked their woolly backs, giving them confidence.

The first heart attack surprised him in the morning. It was a hot blow tearing into his chest. He pressed against the sheep and merged with them. He wanted to avoid the wolves’ bites and raised his left arm again, fending off the sharp teeth. He felt the wolf move off, after biting him. The sheep stopped their bleating. The nearby olive grove wafted well-known odors his way, and the cold mountain wind ruffled his hair. He pressed the blanket against his chest. The nurse came and moved his arm.

“Careful,” she said, “you’ll disconnect the transfusion.”

Again the sheep surrounded him. He started to remember that old melody that, at night, when he returned home, he used to sing to scare the wolves away. From the church came the procession, carrying the virgin dressed all in white. María Isabel carried the ring and sat on the garden bench, stretching her legs. He looked at her and smiled. She hid her face.

The nurse felt his chest and again adjusted the drops falling from the bottles of serum.

In the distance was the roar of the guns. The sheep became frightened and ran from side to side. He tried to stop them. Then the second heart attack came. He felt his chest was on fire. He saw the doctor’s face bending over him. The boat rocked him on the waves and he was dizzy, feeling like he wanted to vomit. He clung to the railing. The doctor beat on his chest. The hawk launched itself at its prey. He raised his arm once more, trying to scare it, but he couldn’t. Then he began to feel like a speck of earth floating on the mountain air.

August 11, 2010

1. When we speak of solving the economic problems that overwhelm us, the road ahead appears complex and intricate. It has grown too much invasive marabou weed over the years and clearing it is no easy task. The solution is not to open narrow paths that, ultimately, are difficult to navigate and close up again with the first rains.

2. The solution is to open wide avenues where initiatives and work that will produce wealth for all Cubans can take hold, freed from the bureaucratic patronage that has produced nothing.

3. Public ownership in some key spheres, cooperative ownership, and small- and medium-sized individual ownership, without limitations, must become real factors in our development. The balance of each one will be determined over time.

4. It is time to abandon old and obsolete formulas that have failed everywhere, and face reality with ways and methods that correspond to the integrated and globalized world. It means taking no steps backward, only moving forward.

August 10, 2010