Month: December 2011

Like all the airports in the world, ours is impersonal, stressful, glass and aluminum on all sides. Once in a while the door to customs opens and someone comes out with their luggage wrapped in cellophane. The waiting family members scream, tears running down their faces, the newcomer is flushed with emotion. Meanwhile, on the first floor are the departures, the last hugs between people who may never see each other again. There are booths with glaring officials who check the documents. Passport, visa, ticket… permission to leave. I always wonder what happens to those who pass by this window without a “white card,” without this demeaning authorization that we Cubans must have to leave our own country. But there are few testimonials, the denials happen far from the runway where the planes take off.

The rumor that tomorrow, Friday morning, Raul Castro could announce an easing of the restrictions to enter and leave won’t let me sleep. In four years, my passport has filled with visas to arrive in other countries but lacks a single permit to leave this insularity. Eighteen denials of permission to travel is too much; more like a personal vendetta than the exercise of some bureaucratic regulation. I’ve had my suitcase packed for a long time. The clothing it contains is yellowing with time, the gifts for friends have expired or gone out of style, the papers I would read about current events are outdated. But the suitcase keeps looking at me from the corner of the bedroom. “When will we travel?” I imagine its worn-out wheels asking me. And I can only answer that perhaps this Friday in a parliament — without real power — some decree will return to me a right I should have always enjoyed.

In the event that the anticipated “immigration reform” is announced, I will test its limits from the airport, facing that checkpoint so many fear. My suitcase and I are ready. Willing to see if the guard will press the button that opens the door to the departure lounge, or if he calls security to take me away.

22 December 2011

A solitary man sweeps the dry leaves on the wide avenue where not one car is traveling in either direction. He lowers his head and avoids talking with the cameraman. Perhaps it’s a punishment for not applauding with sufficient enthusiasm at a meeting, or not bowing with theatrical reverence before a Party member. The scene of the sweeper on his desolate street is captured in a documentary about North Korea that has circulated on our alternate information networks. A painful testimony, with people all dressed the same, grey depersonalized buildings, and statues of the Eternal Leader on all sides. Hell in miniature, which leaves us with a sense of relief — at least in this case — for not having been born under the despotism of the Kim dynasty.

When Fidel Castro visited Pyongyang in March 1986, almost a million people greeted him, among them thousands of children waving flags with suspicious synchronicity. Cuban television reveled in the chorus that sounded like one voice, in dancers who didn’t differ from each other by even a hair out of place, and in those little ones playing the violin with surprising mastery and anomalous simultaneity. Months after this presidential trip, on the artistic stages of Cuban elementary schools they tried to emulate this robotic discipline. But there was no way. The girl next to me threw the ball seconds after mine had already fallen to the floor, and some abandoned shoe was left behind on the stage after every performance. The Maximum Leader must have felt disillusioned by the chaotic conduct of his people, so different from those syncopated genuflections before the Secretary General of the Workers Party in North Korea.

On Monday the images of thousands of people crying in the streets over the death of Kim Jong-Il called to mind those perfectly timed children. Although our tropical experiment never managed to “domesticate us” like them, we did copy something in the Korean model. In these parts, as well, genealogy has been more determinate than ballot boxes, and the heritage of blood has left us — in 53 years — only two presidents, both with the same last name. The dauphin over there is named Kim Jong-un; perhaps soon they will communicate to us that over here ours will be Alejandro Castro Espin. Just to think about it makes me shudder, as I did one day before those long rows of little girls throwing a ball at the exact same millisecond.

December 20 2011

María is a beautiful woman in our neighborhood who, every afternoon, very made up, is out walking her dog, and each time that I see her I can only think of Chekov.

Today she woke up with her body in pain, a little cough and feeling chills, so she decided to go to the polyclinic nearby. Once there in the emergency room, she was attended to by a young doctor who, upon seeing her, immediately sent her to get blood tests. When the results came back the doctor, not wasting any time, had her admitted to the hospital and covered her with a mosquito net to isolate her, saying that she had dengue fever, and he immediately informed her husband, who was in the waiting room.

When the ambulance came, they told him the husband couldn’t accompany her, but he flatly refused to let his wife go off without his even knowing where they were going to take her and both of them gave up going to the hospital and returned home.

Not even an hour had passed when a doctor and nurse showed up at the couple’s house to tell them that they had to go with the nurse. Faced with the insistence of the husband and his refusal to let her go alone, they agreed to his accompanying her. This time there was no ambulance, it was a closed transport from some State company, and inside there were other patients they had collected along the way. Maria said that this improvised transport drove like a kitchen mixer through the streets of the city, making stops to pick up others presumed ill, until it was almost like a crowded bus.

Finally they arrived at the old Covadonga hospital where, in a ward crowded with patients, they lined up to be treated. Maria asked who was last in line and said she had the impression, for a minute, that they were handing out beef, because the line was just as long as at the ration store. Her turn finally came and they sent her for tests, this time it was foreign students who were drawing blood; they poked her several times until finally they got it right. Sore all over, she huddled with her husband and waited patiently for the results.

After a while a doctor came and told her, “Ma’am you can go home, you don’t have dengue fever, you have a simple cold. Do you feel well?” “Perfect!” she replied, though she was quite dizzy, but fibbing she added, “I never felt better!”

She motioned to her husband and once she lost sight of the doctor Maria said that it reminded her of her early years at the University when she was running track and field as they made a rapid beeline for the Covadonga exit, and grabbed the first old taxi they saw to get home-sweet-home as fast as possible.

Fortunately, she’s well. She told me of her odyssey herself while, with her accustomed elegance, she walked her little dog, parading past my house.

December 7 2011

None of the classics of Marxism-Leninism could foresee the possibility that a country formally declared as socialist would be governed by a family dynasty. But now we get the news (?) after the death of Kim Jong Il that the leadership of that country will be left in the hands of his third son, Kim Jong-un, whom they call “the brilliant comrade.”

With the information available to us on this island, we should not make predictions about whether the new Kim has reformist tendencies, or is subnormal, or is more totalitarian than his predecessors. What I do consider useful to put on the table is the ease with which in this country’s public offices are inherited and, what interests us most, is how the Cuban media, private property of the Communist Party, approaches the issue: taking it for granted.

In the name of an alleged respect for the sovereignty of nations, they will recognize the legitimacy of the new leader, happy that a precedent exists, quick to point out the “imperialist maneuvers” or “media campaign” launched with regards to a family clan’s perpetuating itself in power. We must pay attention to the degree to which such a monstrosity is accepted, because said acceptance will be directly proportional to the proclivity to repeat here what happens there.

And I won’t even try the line, “this is not North Korea.”

19 December 2011

I was talking with a neighbor in his thirties or forties, who confessed to me with relief that, “Raul’s regime has improved the conditions of life, given us some oxygen, because the brother had suffocated us.”

I smiled before throwing a bucket of skepticism on his head. “Yes, Raul is lifting the prohibitions on a lot of absurdities his brother introduced; but this hasn’t improved the economic base, nor improved the lack of individual freedoms.

“You’re always criticizing! Do you deny that we are better off? And now we don’t depend on the Americans or the Russians. For the first time we are free.”

“Freedom is not synonymous with sovereignty. Why do you think they made these openings?”

My neighbor just opened his eyes and shrugged his shoulders.

“Governability, chico, governability. It is the only reason for these changes.”

“What freedom are you talking to me about? Now I can open a little business, quit the Party and the Union, be my own boss, make my own rules. This makes me free.”

“Sure, if you want a freedom like this,” I said, my thumb and forefinger nearly touching. “You’re the ideal for the future for our society. I congratulate you.”

I changed the subject. The guy was left half content between my congratulations and the plans concocted in his mind. He understood nothing.

December 12 2011

You turned six and were already waiting for your neck scarf, the slogan “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che.” Later, you started high school and, automatically, without anyone asking you, joined the Federation of High School Students (FEEM). As you continued to grow up, you ironed your skirt and under your uniform blouse a pair of breast buds began to be noticeable. When you reached puberty you were already a member of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, and then you became a part of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). Tedious meetings, ladies watching if you got home late, tongues ready to betray any irreverent phrase that escaped your lips.

They taught you a dozen courses about the role of women in the Revolution, but no one came to stay the hand of your husband who beat you at home. You were just a number on the membership list and — more than once — you diverted money from your FMC dues to make it to the end of the month. It was hard for you to learn to separate the language of the communications you read in an animated voice, from the domestic phrases in which you showed your disgust. You developed several techniques to stifle your yawns in these assemblies where they demanded “more sacrifice, more commitment.” And suddenly, everything began to seem so useless, so detached from reality, so distant from the ridiculous allowance the father of your children gave you, from your boss who demanded “favors” if you wanted to keep your job. You realized that the real discourse of your days was what came out of the half-empty pot — like an open mouth — in the middle of your kitchen.

For the last five years you haven’t been a member of the FMC. What’s the use of an organization like this, you say now, after coming to understand that demands for the rights of women can’t be met through such a masculine officialdom. Last night you heard on TV that the FMC wants to “put a new spin” on their role in society, and afterwards you felt your womb, rubbed your arms, looked at the unpainted walls of your house and your life in national currency. And despite the difference between your bare face and the perfect makeup of those interviewed on prime time news, you feel more free. Because that report had a whiff of mothballs and you don’t, you are alive for the first time your forty years, “belonging” to no one.

17 December 2011