Yesterday in a conversation among friends, fed up with such serious topics as the layoffs of more than one million workers and wanting to lighten up the conversation a little, we ended up telling anecdotes that, although sounding like jokes, are pure reality and make us laugh by being so absurd in themselves.
Look, Marta was telling me, I had to see it to believe it. It turns out that on G Street, after they furiously decimated the busts and statues of the Cuban presidents from the republican era, not taking into account that they are part of our history, there was a statue that became famous, because when it was knocked down, the shoes remained on the pedestal, and for this reason it continues to draw many visitors. However, it’s not that statue that I want to talk about, but the one they made of Salvador Allende, with a colossal out-of-proportion raised arm with the hand pointing to the horizon (in this case the sea).
Well, my friend continued, someone noticed that the hand could be unscrewed and separated from the rest of the bust, and he removed it as a joke. It was lost for several days until one night it was rejoined with the rest of the sculpture. Then, occasionally someone would remove it again, and days later it would reappear as if by magic. For that reason they had to assign a guard to the bust.
Like with John Lennon’s!, said Wilfre. It’s a fact that now there is a person assigned to guard the Chilean president twenty-four hours a day. The same thing happens with the most famous of the Beatles. The caretaker keeps the eyeglasses in his pocket and puts them on the now popular bronze figure when someone wants to take his picture next to it. Once the picture is taken, he puts them away again, until the next occasion.
One thing I am sure of, I told those who were present, is that neither of these two guards is going to be laid off with these new labor readjustments. And wouldn’t it be more economical, interrupted Verónica, if they put contact lenses on the subject statue?
Translated by: Espirituana
January 16 2011
