Author: Cubanet

To console him, and because I don’t believe that, for now, the government intends to abolish the ration book—a costly burden, yes, but an even greater psychological benefit—I advised him to relax. “Don’t believe in rumors,” I told him.

“This was the only life I had,” he replied.

I let him vent.

Have you considered leaving the country?” I asked him.

He sighed heavily.

“If I had someone to sponsor me*…”

I purchased my three little rolls of 20-something grams each, and perhaps because an evil shared among many is easier to bear, I returned home feeling better. On the way back I compared the disenchantment of this teacher—a fragile but dynamic man who used to dress in his militia uniform festooned with all his decorations—with the latest hobby of a certain neighbor. This is a widowed doctor who grew old dreaming of leaving the country, and who, now that he could do so without major paperwork and without losing the house he inherited from his elders, refuses to go. Neither his children nor his nieces and nephews (all of whom are abroad) are able to persuade him otherwise. Of these, one who was visiting in January, told me, grinning, “Imagine, with the remittances we send him, he’s living like a king, with a maid, lots of Viagra, and three, 20-something doctor-girlfriends to keep him busy.”

They seemed to be saying—that disenchanted teacher who wouldn’t know how to live without the ration book, and that doctor who has discovered that, with money, even being widowed and very elderly one can be happy—that the Cuban exodus would not have been so massive had the socialist government been able to provide a privation-free life for the citizen. However, the end of Pinochet, even though he left Chile off the charts in terms of a First-World standard of living, or of Franco, despite the vertiginous development achieved by Spain during the Generalísimo‘s last two decades, demonstrate that the issue is not just an economic one. As I read somewhere once, without freedom there is no lasting splendor. Nor is there ground that can withstand the cathedral placed upon it.

It has always been thus. Rome, once the ruler of the world, that mighty Rome of patricians and slaves where, moreover, the Christian was persecuted, eventually disappeared. A comparable lack of freedom ended Spanish colonial domination of lands in Our America, as well as the English, Portuguese and French. Vanished from that former America were Juan Manuel de Rosas, and Gaspar Rodríguez Francia, and Rufino Barrios and Porfirio Díaz and Gerardo Machado. In the America of my time, that America from when I was young, we saw the last of Trujillo with his braided uniform, and Somoza, and Stroessner, and Pérez Jiménez, and the Brazilian Joao Goulart, and Cuba’s Batista…

In recent times, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the world has continued lightening up. No longer are there even Hussein, Milosevic, Gaddafi, nor now, finally, that odious fellow in Yemen. With efficiency, in each of these cases, the lack of liberty—that secret gift of the oppressed—has done its fatal deed.

I do not surrender, and therefore do not give up the dream that today or tomorrow—that is, sooner or later (and these things almost always happen when one least expects them)—I and others like me, who number 11 million, including the glum teacher from this morning, will see solutions to our problems putting food on the table—as well as the slum housing, our city falling apart, and everything else that we know too well.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Translator’s Notes:
* To obtain a visa to immigrate to the U.S., a Cuban national must have a sponsor. This page from the U.S. Interests Section in Havana explains.
** Cuba has two currencies: Cuban pesos, also called moneda nacional (national money), abbreviated CUP; and Cuban convertible pesos, abbreviated CUC. In theory CUCs are a hard currency, but in fact, it is illegal to take them out of Cuba and they are not exchangeable in other countries. Cubans receive their wages and pensions primarily in CUPs, with wages roughly the equivalent of about $20 US per month, and pensions considerably less. The CUC is pegged 1-to-1 to the American dollar, but exchange fees make it more expensive. The CUP trades to the CUC at about 24-to-1. See here a concise description of Cuba’s dual-currency system and an announced plan to unify it.
*** The average Cuban citizen relies on “remittances”—material help—from relatives abroad. A Cuban blogger explains it here.

About the Author

Rafael Alcides was born in Barrancas, municipal district of Bayamo (Cuba) in 1933. A poet and storyteller, he was a master baker in his teen years. He has worked as a farmhand, cane cutter, logger, wrecking crew cook, and manager of a sundries store in a cane-cutters’ outpost. In Havana in the 1950s he worked variously as a mason, broad-brush painter, exterminator, insurance agent, and door-to-door salesman. In 1959 he was the chief information officer for the Department of Latin American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and spokesman of this agency in a daily television program in which he hosted and interviewed foreign political personalities. He was chief press officer and director of Cultural Affairs in the Revolutionary Delegation of the National Capitol.

Among his most recently-published titles are the poetry collections, GMT(2009), For an Easter Bush (2011), Travel Log (2011), Anthologies, in Collaboration with Jaime Londoño (2013), Conversations with God(2014), the journalistic Memories of the Future (2011), the multi-part novel, Ciro’s Ring (2011), and the story collection, A Fairy Tale That Ends Badly (2014).

As of 1993, he had been employed by the Cuban Institute of Radio & Television for more than 30 years as a scriptwriter, announcer, director and literary commentator when, at that time, he ceased all publishing and literary work in collaboration with the regime in Cuba. As a participant in numerous international literary events, Rafael Alcides has given conferences and lectures in countries in Central and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. His texts have been translated into many languages. He was honored with two Premios de la Crítica, and a third for a novel co-written with another author. In 2011 he received the Café Bretón & Bodegas Olarra de Prosa Española prize.

It is the equivalent of the Germanophile appellation, nurtured by the Major General of the Liberating Army, Mario García Menocal, in the days of the First World War, and when Cuba, following the United States’ lead, declared war on Germany and even purchased 30 aircraft and trained 30 aviators to send them to the battlefields on the other side of the Atlantic.

It is poetic to observe, at all times in history, the behavior of the autocrat toward his enemies. In those days, there were no strikes, especially in the sugar industry where, other than the local “Germanophile,” no true Germans (Germans who came from Germany to help Cuban workers) took part. There are even reports of ambushes and crossfire between the rural police force and Germans who, with the help of certain elements in the area, managed to break through the enclosure and, on one occasion, sink a submarine that was to have collected them at the heights of Nuevitas.

But the Germans lost the war and the Russians expanded the territory that had been taken by the Czar and, on the ideological front, spread out over the world. Machado, to keep up with the times, started calling his political enemies “Bolsheviks” and preached hatred towards the “Russian experiment.”

To save the country from such an odious potential destiny, one must cast the enemy to the sea, for the expeditious man does not waste time executing the common malcontent, nor agitating him until he grabs four boards and two truck tires and heads for the sea.

No, a man like General Machado throws the fellow to the sharks right there at the mouth of El Morro, so that if this enemy is heard from again, it is only through fishermen’s bad habit of describing a wristwatch still on an arm, or a pair of underpants still bearing a Chinese laundry stamp, which they at times discover upon opening a shark’s belly – for which reason President Machado, being unable to tape fishermen’s mouths shut, ended up outlawing shark fishing.

Batista during his second term, perhaps exaggerating a bit but not lying, called the 26^th Enemy (i.e. the 26^th of July Movement) by a name that turned out, to a great extent, to predict the future: “Fidelocommunist.” I say, to a great extent, because many worthy members of the movement did not accept its surprising turn towards the Leninism which was evident by the time they emerged from The Sierra. It was the “traitor,” the “pro-imperialist,” created under duress by Fidel Castro, that served as the model (for those who did not come down from The Sierra and stopped applauding) for the later, “worm,” “scum,” “unpatriotic one” – and, from the Bay of Pigs, the “mercenary.” *

In other words, the dissident, who, having no place in the totalitarian state where it is the ruler who imparts the law and distributes employment, needs the help of the countries and institutions interested in democracy; just as, for reasons opposed to democracy, the Cuban government has aided numerous foreign political movements and has, in turn, been helped by Russia, China, Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries, and later – and up until today – by Hugo Chavez’s (and now Nicolas Maduro’s) “Chavista” Venezuela.

But, you know what? Even those little epithets created to diminish the opponent get worn down and lose their edge from overuse, i.e. “mercenary,” which used to inspire such fear, and is already being disputed by children when organizing their games, and which is borne with pride because of what it implies, with that same pride with which half the Cuban exile community today bears yesterday’s dishonorable title of “worm.”

I don’t know if I have convinced you, but the young Communist (a law student, by the way) did not reply to me. Along the way I had made him note that our “mercenaries” have put their trust in words and images to serve as their weapons, which can be seen in the only space where with much effort they manage to rear their heads: the Internet. No bombs, no assassination attempts nor sabotages, such as were committed by those who today are in power. So peaceful and patient they are that, so as not to hurt anybody, they don’t even want to proclaim themselves as “dissidents.”

About the Author

Rafael Alcides was born in Barrancas, municipal district of Bayamo (Cuba) in 1933. A poet and storyteller, he was a master baker in his teen years. He has worked as a farmhand, cane cutter, logger, wrecking crew cook, and manager of a sundries store in a cane-cutters’ outpost. In Havana in the 1950s he worked variously as a mason, broad-brush painter, exterminator, insurance agent, and door-to-door salesman. In 1959 he was the chief information officer for the Department of Latin American Affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Relations, and spokesman of this agency in a daily television program in which he hosted and interviewed foreign political personalities. He was chief press officer and director of Cultural Affairs in the Revolutionary Delegation of the National Capitol.

Among his most recently-published titles are the poetry collections, GMT (2009), For an Easter Bush (2011), Travel Log (2011), Anthologies, in Collaboration with Jaime Londoño (2013), Conversations with God (2014), the journalistic Memories of the Future (2011), the multi-part novel, Ciro’s Ring (2011), and the story collection, A Fairy Tale That Ends Badly (2014).

As of 1993, he had been employed by the Cuban Institute of Radio & Television for more than 30 years as a scriptwriter, announcer, director and literary commentator when, at that time, he ceased all publishing and literary work in collaboration with regime in Cuba.

As a participant in numerous international literary events, Rafael Alcides has given conferences and lectures in countries in Central and South America, Europe, and the Middle East. His texts have been translated into many languages. He was honored with two Premios de la Crítica, and a third for a novel co-written with another author. In 2011 he received the Café Bretón & Bodegas Olarra de Prosa Española prize.

*Translator’s Notes: The epithets “worm,” “scum,” and “unpatriotic one” have been used for decades by Fidel Castro and his supporters against those who oppose the regime.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison