MANIAS OF NOT MENTIONING MENCHÚ / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

SHE’S CALLED RIGOBERTA MENCHÚ

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

She’s called Rigoberta Menchú. And, with her pre-Colombian bird’s voice, wreaked havoc on the recently closed Havana International Book Fair.

Rigoberta Menchú wanted to enjoy the presidential suite at the Hotel Habana Libre where they housed her. Addressed not only as the Prizewinner or the Plagiarism Peace Nobel, but the address of Obama. Rigobarack Menchú. And as such, demanded more seats for her uninvited entourage, unbalancing bureaucratized nerves and, of course, the hard currency budget of the organizers of the 2011 Cuban Fair.

Then they showed her book. The book to justify her trip to the land of Martí. And our ancien terrible did not like the object at all, despite being in what is known in the Cuban literary field as a deluxe edition.

The photos of the little Indian children were not democratically representative of all the ethnicities and multicultural et cetera. And for this her enemies will surely accuse her of Menchuvianism. In addition, the ALBA letterhead of the collection politically compromises its port-Norwegian neutrality. And so she would lose credibility as a Noble Savage mediator in the face of the civili$ed and guilty Europe. Fortunately her Cuban book wasn’t authorized for distribution. And run away, Communist so-and-sos! The book should be pulped. But please, Miss Menchú asked that they give her some hundred copies as a trophy for her bourgeois leftist arrogance.

The Casa de las Americas invited her to hum her tunes at the right hand of Roberto Fernandez Retamar. The Cuban press made a fool of itself once again (as it has done for such a long time now). And the presenter Modesto Milanes was left as the New Boyfriend of Our America, with a speech but without a work clucking with hype.

I wonder why this rude rebuff was not news on the Internet or at least in the Inter-nos. Why the narrative homogeneity that becomes so makes our little subnational life so tedious. Why Randy Alonso and his rapid response messengers, for example, don’t urgently call an International Menchú Round on Cuban Television or on TeleSur. Why we continue to cover this jetsetting fraud as if she were the populist Grande Dame. Why the secrecy and the shit swept under the worker’s carpet. And I wonder why the scoop is always left to me.

March 11 2011