I get up, got to the mirror to brush my teeth, and discover that my eyes are slanted. I can’t turn on the light because Rafa is sleeping; I prefer to think that I didn’t sleep well and that it’s because of the shadows in the room and I leave it.
I turn on the TV to see the Literary News from the Cuban press and understand nothing, the credits are unintelligible and all the announcers have eyes like mine. Now I know! The exaggerated military focus and the cult of personality of the Maximum Leader has Koreanized the Cuban caiman.
The incapacity of reclaim rights in Korea is something that affects even the members of the Politburo. I don’t know if they receive more money than the rest of the natives, but closeness to power gives them such advantages and influence that money passes to an inferior plane. In this way they fulfill the precept of false equality in the autocracies of the left.
Beyond sarcasm, the number of times they rehearsed the parade for April 16th, when they began the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the “Bay of Pigs Victory” was incredible. Truly, there are times I think that Cuba is North Korea.
It saddens me to think of the families that cook with kerosene or that have nothing to warm their children’s breakfast before they go to school, and how much fuel has been wasted in preparing for the march and in the march itself.
Also how, in workplaces, they are prohibited from turning on their air conditioners, despite the torrid heat of the tropics, because that have exceeded the energy conservation goal for the month. It’s this way in my production facilities and even hospitals.
But what really motivated these lines, was a personal experience I want to relate to you. Juan Manuel is a young professional working in a hospital in the capital and is a friend of my eldest son.
On Friday the 15th in the afternoon, we went by his house to see him and while there, the chair of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) came to demand his presence in the delegation that would go to the square the next day, representing that CDR. Our friend said he would participate for his workplace, to which the chair argued that a he must submit a paper certifying that, because if he wasn’t going to march for one or the other, he should stay and do “volunteer work” in the block along with the other neighbors who would attend.
Incredulous, we were discussing it with him and his mother, talking that these coercive gears and likely we are to hear on national television, as always happens, the interviewers talking to foreign guests about the “spontaneity” of people’s participation in the event. As if we Cubans don’t know how these “voluntary and obligatory” mechanisms that characterize the activities of this type in our country really work!
Hurrah Kim! Those who goto simulate freedom, salute you..
April 20 2011
