“Ma’am, respect your age,” growled M., the guard who guarded the door of the Cuban Art Factory last Friday. That night I would have wanted to attend a concert by X Alfonso, who was born only three days before me in the same city, perhaps in the same hospital. When I was a teenager, the police used to station themselves at the entrance to the concerts of X’s parents, the leaders of Grupo Síntesis. I particularly remember a concert in the late nineties, I think it was at the Rampa cinema, in which the police seemed about to suspend the concert, but in the end nothing happened and in hordes we entered and danced to the music of “Ancestors”.
The Art Factory guards are not policemen. They are identified by a black t-shirt, but their appearance does not inspire fear; it would seem that they could even be attractive. But no matter what uniform Guardian M. wore, he had the power—rare as it was—on Friday night outside FAC. The power to impose order. And the order was his order, one in which I was to receive his insults, perhaps accept them naturally.
I am from Havana but I have not lived in the city since 1995. I am not young, I am not white and, since I live in El Vedado, I try to walk almost everywhere and I do not usually dress to exhibit a social or economic status that arouses the interest of the Cubans in the street. That is, I get confused with them; but not with those who that night also approached M., the Guardian. Everyone, sooner or later, in one way or another, received permission to enter. When I approached him to ask why I was the only one in his environment who did not receive his approval, M. replied that if I did not like him, he could complain. With who? I inquired. To which he nimbly replied: “Complain with López-Calleja, who died today.”
I did not understand. And the contempt advanced, from her mouth and her eyes to my body, hurting. Another would have withdrawn. I do not. I decided to stay at the gates of Fábrica de Arte. I was not able to attend the X Alfonso concert as I had intended, but after receiving insults from the doorman I even lost interest, or forgot about it. I think that even if I had entered, I would no longer enjoy it. Instead, I was dominated by the need to know what were the reasons that motivated the outrage of that guard.
The guardians of Havana are quite a unique species that has been attracting my attention lately. Now he finally had the opportunity—even if painful—to observe its workings up close. During the two hours that I stood in front of the Art Factory fence, I listened to all kinds of justifications—some so unlikely that even M., so inflexible with me, had to admit their scant validity just before giving way with a gesture. between obsequious and resigned. At some point a colleague and friend appeared and came to greet me enthusiastically. Realizing my situation, he offered to help me get in. But not! M. would not allow it. I understood then that a very powerful force, perhaps visceral, dominated the attitude of the guard. Humiliation redoubled my curiosity, made me stand even more resolutely in front of him, asking him why, what in my appearance provoked such revulsion in him? He never answered my questions. He preferred to threaten me that the security cameras were recording everything. I smiled, and there I continued, observing and asking.
Discrimination consists of the attitude or treatment that are proffered to a person or group of people based on certain particular features of these.
M. did not know me. So it was only by my appearance that he could establish a judgment that would determine his decision to deny me entrance and allow it to all the others who approached him. What was it about me that caused the disgusted look on his face? And, also, the mockery of her. Close to us was B., a black girl who also worked as a guard, who didn’t stop to laugh at the situation and support her partner. But I didn’t go. She was getting more and more curious. And outraged.
We have too many guardians in Havana, and I wanted to know who these characters are. How does someone become a guard? What qualities should you have? Why do they do it? Do they take pleasure in their work? I think of power. In the doses of power that are reserved for them while they act as guardians, during those hours in which they control a space and the movement or paralysis of foreign bodies, to which they can dedicate their time.
On Friday, I was the perfect target of guard M. I don’t belong to today’s show business and few know me in this city where I don’t practice the quintessential Havana sport, speculation. This time, she was wearing a simple summer dress, black leather sandals. She was alone. What power could I wield? Why then not crush me and thus release the tensions of the night? All the repression and the negatives that he had not been able to exert on others, he could finally turn them against someone who seemed so vulnerable. With me, M. ran no risk of making a mistake. Whatever he did, the insignificance he saw in me would protect him.
Still today I interrogate the memory of his insults: respect your age and go complain to the general just hours before his death. I would like to understand what kind of rage they inspired. M. and I had never met before; nor did I meet López-Calleja or anyone close to him. How, then, to explain what a strange combination his neurons festered when they made a woman older than him, blacker than him, more unknown according to his calculations than him—a vulnerable one, in his opinion—along with López -Calleja, at the gates of the Art Factory? Why this unjustified hatred?
Perhaps it is that I should not have been there that night, exposed to the goalkeeper M. Perhaps all that had to remain in my memory of this trip to Havana was the concert that Pablo Milanés offered weeks before at the Ciudad Deportiva Coliseum.
“Come all to my garden.
Touch and strip the flowers to your liking.
Kiss nearby lips tenderly.
Shed a tear for each of us who is misunderstood.
And together let us make a single song to the happiness that awaits us.”
This is how Pablo opened the night singing, summoning and uniting and loving all Cubans from all over the planet, from one side and the other, from before and now, who assisted to exchange the best energies of the nation with him. There were twenty-five songs stringed together with preciousness and lucidity. A carefully selected repertoire to heal the soul of Cubans. Pablo can do it because he starts from listening. Only those who know how to listen manage to love.
Solidarity, respect, listening, love, that kept us all united there. That, too, I have been able to discover despite the hard island life of these times, in my walks through the city, in the mornings, afternoons, early night; in the midst of people who probably would not be considered worthy of respect by the guard M. at the door of the Art Factory.
In the midst of hardship, uneasiness and abandonment, solidarity among Cubans persists. It is the certainty that I take with me from this trip to Havana: the light that dissipates abuses. I want to keep that light and so I hope that my painful experience will at least serve to reduce the possibility that other Cubans will suffer from treatments like the one that guard M. gave me. I am no longer on the island, but minutes before my plane took off I received a message from a grieving X Alfonso: he wanted to know what happened between me and the guard on Friday at Fábrica de Arte while he offered his concert, he let me know that he would investigate what happened and that he would not allow this type of behavior. I consider his message and attitude very correct and I appreciate humanity. I trust. I know he will do his best to eradicate those problems. We can all, even a little bit, even in our small space, improve the life we share in the city we love, where being rejected only reinforces my stubborn belonging to it.
When I finally walked away from the entrance of the Art Factory, very tired and verbally beaten, towards my apartment, my attention was caught by a group of half-asleep old men on a dark staircase on 23rd Street. Like sad sparrows they huddled at the doors of a pharmacy, a warehouse, a store. I do not know. They waited for dawn without losing their place in a queue whose purpose I cannot imagine either. I approached a black lady and left her some bills that she kept in the pocket of my simple dress to spend at FAC. As I continued down the avenue, I entertained myself by weaving stories about the possible use that money would receive. I wanted to imagine that the lady I left them with would buy more of whatever they were going to sell when she opened the store, that she could resell it and — who knows? — among her clients could be the guard M. or someone in his family.
Havana contains many different worlds, apparently distant, but in the end it is only one. We are hurt by its ruins and by those who ruin it. Feeling helpless, we believe that we will not be able to save her. However, we continue to live it, some every day, others for more or less short periods, sometimes a little longer, and there are even those who can only experience it from afar, from memory. In any circumstance, the way we experience our Havana depends on the energies we want to cultivate and run through its streets. So let them be those of compassion and not despotism; love, instead of abuse.
“Join these feelings and make the path more beautiful”, Pablo Milanés sang on June 21 with his Cubans, closing his concert, raising hopes.
