Havana Cuba. – María del Carmen’s life changed in the blink of an eye. Her two children want to leave the country. As a good “cadre” of the Party, she avoided talking about the subject for many months, even when it became evident that the future in Cuba had been closed even for those who have some facilities thanks to their contacts with power. María del Carmen believed that as long as she could provide plenty of food and vacations in tourist resorts at proletarian prices, her children would continue to live content in that friendly side of existence on the Island that she had to experience.
Since on July 11, 2021however, everything changed. That day she, although terrified by the magnitude of the protests, agreed to garrison herself to confront the “counterrevolutionaries.” Even there, where the civilian gendarmes, armed with sticks, were entrenched, her son went to look for her to return her home; but she refused and only in a moment of absolute privacy did she confess that she had not moved because she —she said—: “I have to fuck myself with this. This is what my family has eaten all their lives.
His family is now broken. His eldest son, who narrowly escaped repression during the protests, decided to sell everything to go to Nicaragua with his wife and his young daughter. Nothing can make him change his mind. He knows that this is hopeless.
She knows it too, but remains in shock, without explaining how Cuba got to the point where even his son wants to emigrate. And wanting is little. His son is desperate to go to the United States. He doesn’t talk about anything else. He sold his house and the electric motorcycle. He buys and resells what he can, accumulates, invests, saves, stamps the dollars and counts again. He calculates, checks the cost of the tickets daily and prays that the road to Nicaragua is not closed, because he is capable of jumping on a raft, even if he has to go alone.
María del Carmen helps him as much as she can, which is not much, because unlike other “cadres” she settled for her bus apartment and the remainder of her administrative tasks. She has not accumulated assets and does not handle foreign exchange; but she has helped many people. Her neighbors hold her in high esteem, describing her as a good person, devoted to a job that has allowed her to suffer a little less, and to keep her entire family united in Cuba.
His only illusion is about to be shattered. And while his son finalizes the details of the journey, his daughter, a fourth-year medical student, spends days lying in bed, depressed, without wanting to go to university or the hospital, because studying seems nonsense to her, and that’s it. he cannot bear the embarrassment of telling patients that there is nothing to alleviate their ailments.
María del Carmen feels that she has failed, that they have failed her, like all Cubans; but she is silent and the headache forces her to close her eyes and her salary, and she cries alone, she cries a lot and puts captopril under her tongue, and she fills with rage, but she doesn’t know what or who she is against. She really doesn’t want to admit it, she can’t. If her children weren’t there, her mother would still be there as a compelling reason to keep her mouth shut. She then remains mute, swallows dry and holds back the tears until she can’t take it anymore. Her son is leaving, her daughter wants to leave, her mother is old. Silence, loneliness, bitterness that she kills slowly.
María del Carmen would not criticize the regime not even to save her life, and all because her family “has always eaten thanks to this.” She does not perceive it, but her motives are a declaration of consensual slavery. She thought that she would always find a way so that her children would not be affected by the worst of the Cuban crisis. She, like so many of her condition, has spent her life believing that everything is solved with food; but her children want freedom.
If before you were worried about administrative issues and audits, now you can’t sleep thinking about the border crossings, the Mexican drug traffickers, the coyotes, the crossing of the Rio Grande. As the days go by she tries to conform, but she feels more and more empty.
She also turns off the television, fed up with so many lies. Whenever she surrounds her, she now reminds her of the uselessness of so many marches, so many slogans, so many cane cuts, volunteer work, meetings, mobilizations, commitments and reaffirmations. So much communist shit that she stole time with her children, and now she makes them flee in pursuit of the dream that they have always presented us as imperialist shit.
When her son gets on the plane, a process of disintegration will begin for her, of loss of meaning of all things. Her campaign suit in particular seems like a mockery to him, and she is reluctant to put it on. She would feel ridiculous with so much cloth covering anything. So much fabric wrapping a hollow soul, like an olive green shell.
OPINION ARTICLE
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