14ymedio, Marcelo Hernandez, Havana, 29 November 2016 — Eulalia has two obsessions in her life: listening to music and sitting in her easy chair in the doorway of her home in the city of Alquízar, Artemis. There, she watches the evening fall and keeps an eye on her chickens so they won’t end up “in other people’s pots.” As of Saturday she has not listened to her boleros because the police are patrolling the streets to prevent people from drinking alcohol, listening to music, or holding any celebrations that contrast with the national mourning decreed for the death of Fidel Castro.
“I was here in the doorway when they picked up the pedicab driver,” said Eulalia, a retired 80-year-old with two children in the United States. The woman watched a scene this Sunday she will never forget: a uniformed officer stopped the driver because “he had some speakers with music and they told him to turn them off.”
The entrepreneur refused to comply and the scene ended with a violent arrest. “In this town not even a fly moves,” said the elderly woman, who believes that everyone should honor their dead however they please. “But to force a whole nation… that seems like extremism to me,” she added.
The scene is repeated everywhere. “My daughter turned 15 on Sunday” — a milestone birthday in a girl’s life often celebrated with as big a party as the parents can afford — “and we had to cancel the planned party because the police came by a few hours ahead of time and told us not to do it,” explained Ramon Carvajal, a resident of Havana’s La Vibora neighborhood. “We had planned to play the music softly behind closed doors, but we couldn’t do even that.”
On the other hand, in the emergency room of Calixto Garcia Hospital one of the guards welcomes the measure because, “since they suspended the sale of alcohol it’s quiet here, peaceful.”
There are also those who want to sincerely express their sadness at the death of the man who dominated the life of this island for more than half a century. That is the case for a cameraman with the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) for whom the president “was like one of the family, like a father who has always been close and now is gone.”
This pain is shared by Humberto, who drives for the Panataxi company, and fears that Raul Castro will not follow the path of his brother, “because he is not the same and there is a great difference in terms of charisma.” He also fears that after the funeral “everything will be forgotten and the government itself with throw aside what has been achieved here.”
“We lost the Great One,” said a newspaper seller this Sunday outside the Payret movie theater in Old Havana. “That man had a power, aché, and he was protected by a powerful dead,” explained the man, referencing the Afro-Cuban religions and the energy of the universe. “But I hope that now he will look after us from the other side.”
Nights in Havana are unrecognizable. “Nobody wants to risk their neck and people are waiting for all this to be over,” says Mizzy, a transvestite who frequents Las Vegas caberet on Infanta Avenue. “What’s going to happen when they open up the sales of rum and beer again… there are going to be deaths and injuries in the lines,” he jokes. “Even inside our homes we have to be careful, because the chivatón, the snitch, is making waves,” he explains, speaking of the whistleblowers who alert the police if there are celebrations in any home.
However, it is not only amusements and drinks that are regulated. “I’m building a house and I have to haul out some debris but no trucks want to move in these conditions,” says a resident of La Timba neighborhood. “I had arranged with some friends to take the left over wood and bricks, but they say there is a lot of control on the streets.”
The government intends to present a picture of massive acknowledgement and pain. It seems to have achieved it because the foreign press doesn’t look any deeper. The scenes on national television are of mourning and homage to the deceased, the announcers are wearing barely any make-up and two well-known presenters were captured on an open camera discussing whether to open the program with the usual “Good morning.”
“I’m looking for a DVD with movies because no one can stand this,” a retired ex-official from the Ministry of Foreign Trade told one of his daughters, looking at the repetitive programming flooding the national TV channels. “This is counterproductive, television is going to lose the little audience that remains and then they won’t be able to complain that people prefer the Weekly Packet,” he added.
In Sancti Spiritus, the residents are complaining that the Rapid Response Brigades are roaming the streets and the city appears to be under a state of siege. “People stay inside, there are a lot of uniformed police and black berets,” source who prefers to remain anonymous told 14ymedio.
At dawn on 26 November, a few hours after the announcement of Castro’s death, two evangelical pastors were arrested in Manatí, in Las Tunas province. The police forcefully entered the home of Rafael Rios Martinez and his wife, Maria Secades, and arrested them for the mere fact spreading their religious message through the speakers used during their worship service.
No one wants to cross the line to disturb officialdom. “You have to sit out the weather and wait,” says Eulalia from her doorway in Alquízar. The woman says that all these controls are designed to “prevent scenes like in Miami, people are toasting and celebrating.” However, despite her age, she is determined to celebrate the event: “On New Year’s no one will forbid me from singing and getting drunk; it will be late but it will be.”
