Melones has shown how cruel Cubans can be when it comes to choosing between the living and the dead
14ymedio, Xavier Carbonell, Salamanca, 26 January 2025 — Even in politics, one can (should?) be frivolous. For many years I refused to wear olive green shirts. My situation was particularly dramatic, since everyone – from my grandparents to relatives in the Yuma [abroad]– insisted on giving me changes of clothes in various shades of green, from incandescent green to snot green. They wanted me green, green, like Lorca’s clichéd green. My refusal had a simple explanation, and a little family sensitivity would have been enough to guess it: who, having spent time in the Cuban Army barracks, can stand that color?
Military service in my country develops unparalleled skills, such as bathing with a 500-milliliter bottle of water, dry shaving, and equating obedience with survival. Wearing the unforgettable army shirts, changed only once a week despite the tropical heat, also required skill. You put your left arm into the sleeve, then your right; you button it up to the neck; you flap your wings, squat, stretch your arms vigorously, trying to escape the semicircular scab on your armpit.
The lieutenant has his solitary dove on his shoulder and the major a star; the recruit’s rank is that smelly crescent moon
The lieutenant has his solitary dove on his shoulder and the major a star; the recruit’s rank is that smelly crescent, darker than the rest of the cloth, even more disgusting if one becomes aware that others have worn the same stiff shirt, which marches alone, one, two, one, two, in the plaza of the School of Defense.
I suppose that these days, any Cuban man – and some women who voluntarily enter the lion’s den – will have been reminded of his military service by the news of the explosion in Melones. Only due to a metaphysical mistake was it not us — in another time, in another province but with the same clothes — but those 13, a number that is always a bastard for the superstitious.
Melones has shown how cruel we Cubans – humans – can be when it comes to choosing between the living and the dead. We have cared more about the messianic Donald Trump, who snatches away millions of Cubans even though he has made it very clear what migrants mean to him: worms, criminals and pariahs, just like for Castro. We have cared more about parole, CBP One, credible fear, asylum, the White House, Melania’s hat, tea with the Bidens. We have cared more about the 553, and how could we not care, if – at least the political prisoners – should not have spent a single day behind bars. Life weighs more.
But who cares about the “heroes,” the “combatants,” those who “died fulfilling their duty,” the sweet Cuban warriors?
But who cares about the “heroes,” the “combatants,” those who “died in the line of duty,” the sweet Cuban warriors? The regime knows well what it does and what it says: a soldier’s job is to die for the Revolution. It is not the same to say that nine children died – they were children: look at their social networks – because children have families; soldiers do not. It is not the same to pronounce a name as to list four officers, with their ranks. We have learned that when a man dies wearing the stinking olive green shirt, his life is lighter. One more casualty in the great struggle against an imaginary enemy – Revolution is fiction – it is not a man who dies, a number dies.
Now I see the photos of the Student Bastion all over Cuba, of Díaz-Canel smiling while the idiot on duty disassembles a Kalashnikov, of a crowd of university students taking photos – in Holguín, the day after the funeral tribute to the 13 of Melones! – of a fire-eater handling a machine gun, posing like a Power Ranger. Here, instead of life, what weighs more is the moral impudence of the Cuban. Does no one feel guilty about Melones? Nor for the Supertankers? Nor for Angola and so many other wars?
Too much blood stains the battered shirts of the Army. Blood spilled by mistake or bad luck.
Too much blood stains the battered shirts of the Army. Blood spilled by mistake or bad luck, by order of an imbecile – we already know that the Armed Forces collect them – or to please the Dracula-like Commander. That blood stains the hands of Díaz-Canel and of every high official, of the deputies of Parliament, who have not had the courage to raise a debate about the service, and of the entire Cuban military ranks, from Álvaro López Miera to the hundreds of drunken sergeants in every municipality.
I will not say goodbye to the boys from Melones with a martial salute or with funeral paraphernalia. I will say goodbye to them as the otaku , the future chef, the football fan, the one who had a girlfriend waiting for him, a friend with whom he wandered the streets, parents. More than ten years ago, when I looked like them and wore the same shirt they wore, we sang songs in English in that dark square of the Santa Clara Defense School.
It was the “music of the pre,” Evanescence, Gotye, Nickelback, Gorillaz, AC/DC, Aerosmith and especially Green Day, which I now play to remember. To remember them. “I walk this empty street / On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams / Where the city sleeps / And I’m the only one, and I walk alone.”
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