Line up; Line up / Liliane Ruiz

Line up; Line up

It’s the end of the year. An avalanche of informative year-end summaries brings me news of some economic successes that I have not really known how to interpret. The Great State Machinery, in all of its propaganda, is said to be ready and willing to meet the challenges of the new year that begins.There are testimonies of a contented populace or gentle criticisms related to the price of consumer items. There’s a celebration of bank credits for families to construct their own homes; how good it is that at last some will see the possibility of constructing their own home as having come closer to reality. It’s all very nice, very finely painted in these images. In the end, everything seems aligned, with a touch of “before things were worse but now, everything will be better” added.

But the only thing that makes me laugh at all this is that is the testimonial evidence that before, under the command of the Castro descendant, everybody knew it was bad, very ruined, and with respect to this other moment, unable to speak openly.  A spokesperson of the Ministry of Construction declared that: “After the ruins accumulated from previous years”…  How bad everything was during the first Castro, until the next one seemed preferable. Now we continue being unable to speak openly. That shit we can’t say if they don’t give us permission…  I feel outside of all that. The monopoly of the state good, the good intentions of the dictators, a painted people, organized, insisting that everything be lined up, and me facing all that is so small, perhaps “evil”, a “worm”, someone who doesn’t want to work for the State, that doesn’t surrender anything and doesn’t want to owe anything. Mercenary without a salary, individualist. I am a butterfly, a butterfly witch, nocturnal, with unbreakable wings. I sleep during the day and I am active at night. How will those who rebelled in times of Soviet prosperity feel?  What will they have lacked? Submission irritates me. The state confinement gives me claustrophobia, the fucking old ideology.

Translated by: BW

January 9 2012