A Military Unit Where One Can Find Young Men / Juan Juan Almeida

altoThe old Communist dogmas dictated that certain behaviors were seen as socially immoral actions. There are several testimonies of people interned in concentration camps were they tried to reeducate the so-called “Dispersed Sexual Addresses.” Loving someone of the same sex was a criminal act that entailed consequences and established punishments.

I will not write about a degrading “yesterday” that is restless when you dig into it. There are more than a few leaders who, knowing the power of weapons, especially when they point, decided to hide themselves and squeezed into a closet where social differences had no distinction. The prudish modesty of the barricaded closet just like the Caesars, Alexanders, conductors of the new path, and Moncada heroines.

But times change, the USSR died, and Socialist Camp came to an end, and the days of the Messiah Hugo Chavez appear to near their end, the Revolutionary eyes no longer see a certain enchantment in the battlefields and with an extravagant touch, perhaps something obscene, convert soldiers into magnets for investors.

The new Cuban fashion mixes the lines of pleasure, torture and humiliation, transforms martial units into sadomasochistic dungeons, and for discriminating tastes even arranges home delivery.

With a simple call to the military unit UM 1011 in its enclave south of Havana in the municipality of Managua you can receive, direct and with no additional cost, like Valkyrie stags of the gods, and with no fear of a glorious death for waiting the reward from the lewd pimp that is your fatherland: young recruits who will be willing to offer their noble and manly charms.

After hearing “at your service” on the other end of the line, you have to answer in code something like, “I need a green jacket for my blue passport.” That the recipient is free, does not mean that the dream is free, yet the clientele seems to increase.

The sad excuse of a human seems chilling to me. Incredible sincerity, unparalleled effrontery. A spiral of decadence, the degradation of the market, I would have to be very indolent not to want justice.

Military service in Cuba is obligatory, every young man on reaching 16 must go to the military office where he lives and register; not to do so is to subject himself to criminal law.

Now I repeat terribly convincing phrase of a “distinguished entrepreneur” who assured me he had been a casual user of this type of service, of official pandering: “There is no creature on earth who does not fight for survival. Cuba encourages the causes, and fights the consequences like someone who says close your eyes, hold out your hands, and open your mouth.”

February 10 2013