Mazorra and Secrecy / Regina Coyula

A scandal so embarrassing, an event that in any other country would have made a minister’s head roll, here has been resolved with a trial behind closed doors, with scant information in the press where not a single name has appeared. No one who has seen the archive of photos from Legal Medicine (leaked to the Internet, even in dreams the Cuban press would publish only those photos that show the Mazorra Insane Asylum as it was in 1959), no one who has seen them can remain indifferent, those photos show an abandonment of so much over such a long time.

As a society we have lost the ability to articulate a protest, and the press, which should function as a preventative mechanism, as a guardian of our collective interests, publishes a laconic item. A pity that the scandal had to come to light through the foreign press accredited in Cuba and divulged in the alternative media. For me, all those diligent journalists who now talk about productivity and “perfecting the economic model” and “getting in tune with the new Guidelines,” should be the first to be “re-sized” — as in down-sized. They are like house cats who get used to a plate of food on time, they have forgotten how to hunt. And not receiving the green light to be critical they could be, “But what should I talk about?”

January 31 2011