Translating Cuba

Ali was a total sex lover and when she met Leandro she turned into a lover of sex with Leandro. Also also proved to be a smart and funny girl, with whom Leandro started to spend most of his time. They watched movies together, walked everywhere holding hands, went out to get drunk and once they even got tattoos together. Each had their right wrist marked with the phrase “Ali and Leo” inside a red heart.

Spending every day, every hour and every minute with Ali, Leo was forgetting the one who at another time had brought him much happiness. Bad began to be hungry for long periods and waited patiently for his owner to agree to feed him.

One morning Ali had to go visit her mother because, after spending so much time with her new boyfriend, she hadn’t seen her for almost a month. Leo didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to fill his time. He went out to the backyard looking for sometime interesting to amuse himself, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his beloved. In the backyard he saw the cage and Bud and remembered all the good times he’d spent with him, when he sat in front of him and told him his troubles, when he was a baby and played at throwing bunnies to him, or simply of a night when the sun started to set and the light illuminating the patio was reflected in Bud’s yellow eyes, Bud having spent hours completely still digesting the girl from the night before.

Leo was flooded with a deep sense of nostalgia on realizing he had left his friend to die of hunger. Bad was petrified in a corner at the bottom of the cage. Leo opened the cage door and gently touched the huge animal, but he was very cold. Leo felt a knot in his throat that wouldn’t let him breathe and with the weight of his conscience and his feelings he couldn’t do anything but take off running. In his desperation he even left the house door open.

In the afternoon when Ali returned from visiting her mother and found the front door open, she thought it was a provocation by Leo who must be very hot after spending all those hours apart. Then the girl started to get as hot as her boyfriend and took her clothes off, leaving her clothes just at the entrance and moving toward the back of the house looking for Leo to satisfy her desires.

On returning, Leo gasped when he discovered that Bad had not died of starvation and he had to take off running, but this time not to become dessert for his pet. Bad was taking the afternoon sun, but this time he was out of his cage and from his teeth hung the arm a woman with a tattoo on her wrist, in which he could read, inside a red hear, the phrase “Ali and Leo.”

Around noon members of the extended family began arriving. The first to get there were some uncles whose house was across the street, followed later by those who lived further away. Everyone, both children and adults, wore either a red or a white flower on their chests. The former signified the mother was still alive, the latter that she had passed away. This custom evolved as a way of preventing someone from “putting his foot in his mouth” by inquiring about a mother who was deceased. Fortunately, at that time almost everyone in our house wore a red flower. In the afternoon we were joined by other family members who, because they lived a little further away, did not join us for lunch. They nonetheless stopped by to pay their respects to the mothers, who on that day were the queens of the party. By evening, with all the family members and close friends, we were a multitude!

The superb lunch almost always featured a chicken, which back then was reserved for the Sunday feast. During the rest of the week we ate beef, prepared in one of its many different ways. It was the most common dish simply because it was both economical and good. The exception was Fridays when fish was generally served. Pork, guinea hen and turkey were the preferred choices on Christmas Eve, Christmas and New Year’s.

One of my mother’s culinary specialties was her always superb arroz con pollo, which on this day she served on big platters garnished with pimentos, asparagus tips, baby peas and hard-boiled eggs, prepared according to a famous recipe. There were also salads made with seasonal vegetables. And, of course, one could not forget to have a nice cream cake as well as the famous ice cream cake covered in chocolate, which came in a box packed with dry ice to keep it frozen until serving time. The climax of the lunch was the invariably delicious coffee, which my grandmother often said was the “crowning touch” to any meal.

Later in the evening, after almost everyone had left, Uncle Pedro (to avoid cooking) prepared wonderful sandwiches. He would spread one side of a baguette with butter and the other with mustard, adding slices of ham, chorizo, cheese and rounds of pickled cucumbers. There were two blenders in the kitchen similar to the ones found in cafes (there were a lot of us) in which he prepared delicious mamee or mango shakes, depending on the season. The fruit came from trees growing in the patio behind the house.

Today, so many years after that wonderful time in our lives, I am struck with nostalgia remembering those Mother’s Days with their Sunday lunches. After 1959 they were snuffed out, little by little, as our family became fragmented — as was the case with almost all Cubans — when most of us went into exile. Many of the products needed to prepare those feasts also began disappearing as a result of state intervention in private business and salaries which were no longer sufficient to cover their costs. Add to that the ever growing transport problems which prevented those who lived in other provinces from attending the festivities. Like a grey blanket, sadness began shadowing these family events from my childhood and adolescence. The houses became practically empty. No longer did anyone wear a flower on the chest out of either happiness or sadness.

This is just one more of our lovely Cuban traditions, which have gradually disappeared along with our youth and illusions. Fortunately, they went into exile along with our compatriots, who continue to practice them there. Because of this I have hope and am certain that one day they will return — perhaps a bit modified, but enriched — to fatten our cultural imagination and currently meager culinary repertoire.

11 May 2013

After the years of the Castro hurricane are left behind, the amount of money and resources squandered in overseas battles will be known. When Soviet Communism said goodbye, the island entered a stage called the “Special Period”: a punishment of waste and economic unproductivity. The regime was jumping through hoops.

The State coffers were nearly empty. Lack of oil paralyzed the development plans. Closed industries. The blackouts lasted 12 hours a day. It was like a war, but without aerial bombardments.

In Venezuela, in 1992, a lieutenant colonel in the paratroopers attempted a military coup to install himself in Miraflores. Meanwhile, in his office, Fidel Castro circled in red pencil the news from the event. He awarded the highest priority to young Hugo Chavez. And when he was released in 1994, he was the guest of honor. It was in Havana where the future alliance was born.

The olive-green autocracy bet everything on a winning horse. Screaming, the homeland of Bolivar demanded changes. The corruption and inflexibility of traditional politicians, rampant poverty and urban crime, had gestated an explosive panorama.

Hugo was Fidel’s man in Caracas. He came to power skillfully managing the discourse of poverty and social change. No talk of socialism to be controlled much of Venezuelan institutions. He didn’t talk about socialism until he had the better part of the Venezuelan institutions under control.

Venezuela is a democracy in appearances. There is free press and political game. Even elections. But the strong man of Barinas designed a strategy that will enable staying in power for decades, using authoritarian methods subtly supported by the Constitution.

Chavez’s ideology was amorphous. Catholic, a little Marxism along the way, and a first class passion for the XXI Century Socialism devised by the German political scientist, Heinz Dieterich.

Death came to collect him and saved him from disaster. If Venezuela remains committed to the path of political absurdity, it will end in massive street protests, citizen discontent and social unrest. The economic figures are unsettling. Crime is frightening. Inflation soars.

Although the barrel of oil is around $100, the money collected evaporates. Oil production decreases. Part of this production is to pay their debt to China. Another part is delivered at a subsidized price, if paid for at all, to Cuba and other Caribbean nations.

Socialism sounds nice in theory. Helping the homeless, prosperity, health and free education. That is good. But social policies should be designed without violating individual liberties or leaping over democratic laws. A State can’t plan a whole economy from toothpicks to the exact amount of slushy ice.

President Nicolas Maduro could turn things around for good. But he’s carrying the burden of his friends’ cadaver on his back. The advice that blows down from Havana should not be a pattern to follow.

The project is to polarize society. To continue delivering oil to the string of friendly countries. And consolidate the continental hegemony against the United States. During his visit to Cuba he met with Fidel Castro for five hours, presumed mastermind of today’s Venezuelan landscape.

If Maduro is an honest man, he will notice that his alliance with the Cuban government could lead to political ruin. The ideal would be to break that heavy burden, which annoys even many supporters of Chavez.

And the model to follow, opting for a modern and moderate leftist style like Lula’s of Dilma’s in Brazil. Otherwise, its days are numbered.

Iván García

Photo: Gregory Bull / AP, taken by Los Angeles Times. Fidel Castro receives Hugo Chavez at the airport in Havana on November 15, 1999.

11 May 2013

However, extreme deformation is produced in the national situation, where the word diversity becomes a true chameleon, constantly changing color according to conveniences. In political matters it is totally excluded, supporting this exclusion with the concept of a single ideology for more than fifty years, accusing those who do not share it of all the known expletives and even some created for this purpose (worms, annexationists, traitors, etc.), meanwhile using questions of gender, race and sex, with the objective of attracting these social clusters into the government fold, through pro-government organizations and institutions created and funded for this purpose.

This is not the only chameleon word used by the Cuban authorities. There are many others. Insult serves as a simple example.

Until so many of these words fail to shed the thick ideological veneer, with which they have been covered for their circumstantial use, and resume their unique and real significance, the speeches and official statements that use them continue to enjoy little credibility.

11 May 2013