Havana Cuba. – Alain does not have a Delon by name nor does he spend his days in cold Switzerland. Alain did not have an affair with Romy Scheneider. Alain is in great health if he is to be compared to Delon, and even better is that he knows nothing of death and euthanasia. Alain is no more than 10 years old and makes one think that he will have a long life, but what most distinguishes this boy are the concerns of his 10 years, and also the shouting that he makes when luck is with him, when it is necessary to shoot and he beats, “by the balls”, his best opponents.
Alain is the most mischievous child, the most restless of all the kids in the neighborhood, and if there is one thing that makes him different from the rest, it is his frankness. The sincerity of that little boy makes his mother always alert. Alain’s mother assures that she can never be calm, that she is always alert to receive any complaint from the teacher or from her son’s playmates. Alain is the most sincere boy in the neighbourhood, the one who risks everything for everything, the same when he plays ball or at school.
Alain’s mother knows that I really like her son’s joy and that I love his outbursts during play, but what I prefer about this child is his sincerity, even when, hidden from his mother, he tells me: “don’t you Will you have 20 pesos left over to buy me four balls? Alain hasn’t been in the neighborhood for long, but his singularities distinguish him, make him the most peculiar of the neighborhood’s children.
I met him at the home of his “remedial teacher”, the one who always says that Alain put his patience to the test every day, and also says that the boy “gives up” more than a battalion of kindergartners. Alain is the most restless, but also the most sincere of all the children in my neighborhood. And I suppose that your teacher should say something similar to what I suppose, especially when she thinks about the sincerity of the rest of her students, and more so in these days when parents openly describe the national misery, especially when it comes to serve the table and fight with the children who are never satisfied with the dish that was served to them before. And it is that life is also eating and eating well, eating tasty.
Alain, the protagonist of these lines, plays ball but also scrutinizes the environment in which he lives, pays close attention to it, apprehends it to reveal it later. Alain is very attentive to all this atmosphere that begins in his house and spreads through the neighborhood, throughout the country. Alain recognizes the truth, and perhaps better than the elders, and unlike them he still does not recognize the danger, and he does not even know that in some way he is also a dissident of communism, especially when he recognizes, one by one, the truths he suffers every day and, like his elders, he grieves.
“Children are the hope of the world,” he said. Marti, and Alain is one of those hopes. Children, like Alain, grow up and stop being children, and sometimes they recognize daring and their differences with calmness, with assent. Those who today fear reprisals were also children, and today they recommend calmness and passive assent to their children. And that is why the truth that is revealed to us every day only gets quietude and fear as a response.
And now the curtains are drawn and the truths are revealed. Alain discovered them, naively, honestly, after the assignment made by the teacher, but perhaps from now on he will follow the procedure of his elders. After the fight, the boy will be more careful when it comes to recounting the miseries of the country in which he lives and which, like everyone else, afflicts him, at least until he gets entangled in a ball competition.
Alain already has a truth, and the truth is always revealing. The truth is also a lie that has taken off its mask, a truth that does not admit conformity, and even invites exposure and denunciation. Alain, the neighborhood boy, could be an honest man if the school doesn’t insist on teaching him to lie, if his parents don’t demand that the teachers handle the truth, all the truths. Alain showed a string of truths in his classroom and for that he got a reprimand. Alain showed, and in writing, the misery of the country.
And no one should require a child to be submissive and conformist. No one should suggest silences to a child. Alain showed the truth from his naivety, and he was punished. Alain was reprimanded at school, and then at home, for telling the truth. Alain could be a liar tomorrow. The boy related to the teacher, and in writing, the damage caused by communism, without naming it, without even knowing what communism is. The boy spoke, from his ingenuity, about hunger and the prices that his elders pay to get food for him, which is what, according to the teacher tells him, happens in other countries, but never in Cuba.
The truth for a child is very clear, and he is capable of showing it openly. He wrote and fulfilled his duties, but above all he was honest with himself, and for telling the truth they gave him, as he says, a zero bigger than his head. Alain could be a liar from now on. And who could doubt that the little boy can even believe in the coexistence of two contrary truths. What will he think in the future? Will he see two found truths?
And what will their answers be? Poor guy! Poor little boy who may also be told that his “president” is a polyglot and cosmopolitan, who showed signs of fluent English on his little trip through the insular Caribbean. Poor pioneers condemned to be like Che, to believe that Díaz-Canel speaks English. The boy, and in the middle of his formation, is divided into two halves; one of them is the one that was revealed to him at school, the other is the one that he sees every day. And what will happen to him now? How will he do so that the lie and the truth correspond? What will Alain be like? And where will the teachers be then? In exile?
OPINION ARTICLE
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