FUCKED FASCISM
The only time I left Cuba I went to the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, Jalisco, in November-December 2002. There Mexico gave me a disheartening lesson. In Cuba, as we all knew already, we were heading towards a police state capitalism. But in Mexico I had a surprise that my restless imagination had never imagined: in Mexico, the Cuban Revolution was given daily laurels, was a living legacy, tangible theory, rhetoric of redemption.
Like a totalitarian time machine, I saw the leftist hysteria of crowds of teenagers with the most outdated songs of Silvio Rodriguez (even he wouldn’t dare to hum them in Cuba). Even the hotel’s porters tossed praised for Fidel my way. Families received me with admiration in their home (they gave me money to buy my bad books out of pity: I was always a mercenary). In restaurants they tended not charge me for the best dishes for the privilege of being a Cuban in Cuba and not a little shit in Miami. Not being one, I felt like an ambassador: or at least mayor in a city where I had gone out without much work.
I even experienced an act of repudiation lived 2002 book fair when at the presentation of the magazine Letras Libres — Free Words — there was an invasion of shit-eating choirs and, thus, a little university troop paid from Havana (perhaps by the local Reds) fratricidal boycotting the event of the Reds of universal range who would be its presenter.
Of course, there are many more examples, including assassinations, that my poor biography recalls firsthand. Now, the rapid spy brigades when and crucified a mafia threat at the door of a Cuban family who lived between Mexico City — known as the Federal District, Distrito Federal in Spanish or “DF” — and Havana (the DF, as indicated by its initials, is also “De Fidel”… of Fidel). Nailing posters: in this we are profitable in the midst of our material misery. They’ve made so very many on the Island, and now it was the terrible turn of a family of beautiful and loyal people, whose cardinal sin is to think aloud in their own words. A family whose original sin is perhaps to prefer the dark poets before the socialist sun of this nation of coercion. A free family whose beauty has vilely attracted death.
Our agents are specialists in intimidation and swindling. In undermining the body from inside (with panic or carcinogens, they don’t care): perhaps that’s why it is essential to spend millions and millions on a Ministry of the Interior. We kicked out the truth. Bricked off future desires lock stock and barrel. Hence the obscene hatred that removes the unnamed generals when a foreign publisher like Cal y Arena launches book of stories such as Tailwind, by Eliseo Alberto — whom we called “Lichi” — (1951-2011).
They never forgave Lichi, his uncomfortable report of the end of another century and millennium (the last of the Revolution, except in Mexico). His spiral of betrayal continues today post-mortem, despite giving up those little entry permits to his own country, despite tolerating sacred ashes on a bridge about to collapse, despite reluctantly seeking a kidney by way of MINSAP, despite the pats on the mane of the former Culture Minister Abel Prieto (now civil presidential candidate of the military junta in this atrocious self-transition). This we all know.
They filmed a movie that unfortunately forecast to be bad, after editing that novel to make it palatable to power. Lichi everywhere. And at the same time they massacre the mental health of their descendents. Letting them know that the Cuban chains are perpetual far beyond death. The eye at the tip of the pyramid of Plazatl has ever more criminals in the pay of the utopia. To live for one’s country is to die. May the heart eaten by the bearded ones now beardless on the sacrificial stone of stone of barbarism, whether you like it or not.
I read the news with tears. Of mercy. I’m a madman. In Mexico they had put a bullet in my ass and in the dick of the faggot blogger. That is globalized jargon coming your way very soon. And it will sell. They will take revenge on the nonconformists, the very few still don’t wear uniforms. On Lichi, on me and on everyone.
I reread this column with tears. With no mercy.
September 16 2012