We Are Nothing / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Finally he’s left alone.

Bent over, his perfect Greek profile now that of a vulture.

There is some classic wisdom in the raptor species. Something of nobility in the adaptive gesture of eating carrion.

He’s not even remotely senile, as his enemies from the antipodes claim.

He is simply alone, in an irreconcilable world, surrounded by reminiscent faces. Traces of totalitarianism.

All around him, everyone understands the scene perfectly. They smile at him with pity. Take photos with impunity. They believe themselves privileged to attend the latest anecdotes of the Revolution. Also there is, notably, some impatience, or maybe nervousness. They know the Revolution will end with this hesitant body.

Meanwhile, we gaze ghoulishly at the vacant eyes of the Minimum Leader, the Companion in Chief, who no longer holds any dictatorial job, and, barely able to touch objects with an index finger, soon will no longer murder even something as innocent as a baby. After having imposed so much barbarity as a strategy of eternal governance, Fidel is now living in Braille. His death will be tactile. The Cuban rite of extreme unction will come to him on his spotted skin, perhaps at the hands of the Cardinal.

The senile, in any case, are us. Who allow him this saintly solitude, backs to the recognizable world, surrounded by repressors in an exquisite state of futurity, already ready to compromise our future in a new totalitarianism about to be designed.

10 January 2014