Long-Distance View / Regina Coyula

There are people who cannot look forward. It’s not about them being dispossessed or abused after 1959, it’s not even about their refusal to support the ideology that dominated the country. It’s about their personal philosophy, a feeling of inevitability, because I have talked to people who have been heavily affected by the revolutionary laws yet their major interest is not getting back their worldly goods but getting back freedom.. the country !<em>Patria</em>! the poor country, so worn out. Looking at one’s past is more about personality than the magnitude of loss.

There is also the idea of punishing those who collaborate with the government. In a country where the State has been the sole employer for the last 50 years and where any kind of job with responsibility, at any level require political endorsement, everyone turns into a collaborator. Those who didn’t adapt or refused to applaud, have paid for it.

This is not my case, nobody had to convince me. The hardest part came later, when I started raising doubts, when I felt I was betraying my ideals and the memory of my father.

I know that this political process failed by having all the defects of socialist countries in Eastern Europe. The only difference, the one that prolonged the agony of this corpse, is that the leader of the 1959 revolution is still alive; and while Stalin imposed friendly governments in the countries where the Red Army defeated the Nazis, nobody put Fidel where he is.

I’ve already been in the Communist Party and for that now I feel immunised against joining another party, not even one for the protection of flora and fauna. I like the idea of having this space to criticize the current administration and the future ones….but also for talking about friendship, tv series , and what happens to me, because we can’t live only for politics.

ps. Miriam de La Vega thank you so much, I’ve already sorted things out.

Translated by David Bonnano

September 29, 2010