We live locked in an open-air tomb. And this time we were not surrounded by joy, we did not live days filled with smiles, This year it gave us heartbreak.
HAVANA.- We arrived very few days ago at the new year; We finally arrived at that very first day that marked the beginning of a new succession of days and also nights. And that’s how we closed the old year to leave open, as always happens, the new calendar, the one that, we long for, is a little bit better.
We have reached a new year, but unlike others, this time We do not receive the starter with the same enthusiasm as other times. This time we were much more discreet, more timid, even sad, and sparing and tearful. This time there were no noises or water thrown from doors and balconies to cleanse the days to come.
This year we didn’t even propose to take the usual walk around the block dragging a suitcase. The suitcase, always the suitcase that we use for escapes, the suitcases for that jump that is always an escape. The one that could put us on “distant shores”, in new, renewed landscapes. The trip, always the protagonist in the sad life of us Cubans. .
The trip, the helpful trip, the one every time, the one that many of us understand as the only possibility of saving ourselves from the many miseries. The journey regardless of the destination, the journey even to that Venezuelan geography of communism and death. The trip of young soldiers to any place, even to that Venezuelan geography where young Cubans died who perhaps were only looking for some improvement, even if it was brief.
A trip, always the trip to achieve what Cuba does not offer, a trip in which our bodies could come off our heads. A journey that is not life, that is only escape, and often death. We live locked in an open-air tomb. And this time we were not surrounded by joy, we did not live days filled with smiles, This year it gave us heartbreak.
This time we cross the doors of the new year invaded by the deepest darkness, by that blackness that, and there are not a few, often call revolution, while others assure that it is communism, and that in Cuba, if they are not the same, they are very similar, they are almost the same, at least, let me insist a little more, they are almost identical..
And this year, it seems, we will be full again of “Poor people and, the worst, trapped in a tomb, in “The Tomb of the Living”, so, in the manner of old Dostoevsky, I prefer to point out that reality that distresses us and even kills us.
What we have left to live will be accompanied by tears and deaths. Cuba is an inhabited tomb full of living men, living women and children. Cuba is a great open-air grave. And that could be one of the fairest ways among all those with which we try to qualify our realities, those that distress us and also kill us.
What we have left to live will be accompanied by many cries, it will be sighs, infinite sobs. And the blackness that invades each of our spaces will also be enduring. And everything happens like this because we put the light in the worst hands, leaving all the spaces open to the deepest darkness.
In the days to come, the negror will become more insistent, more closed, and perhaps even mourning for those young soldiers who died in Venezuela, in that place where none of the great chiefs were, nor the son or grandson of a great chief, those who stay in their nice houses, or somewhere enjoying a Cristach beer.
Among the dead are none of the big bosses, none of those who usually make long speeches on television, nor are any of the children of those big bosses. In Venezuela there was no grandson of Fidel Castrothat boy who prefers, of all things, Cristach beer, and we also had no news of the presence of any descendant of that Argentine with the last name Guevara.
We Cubans live in an eternal tomb, in an open-air tomb, much more terrible than the one that old Dostoevsky insisted on describing to us. Cuba is death, and if you doubt it, go out into the street so you can see the many living dead. Cuba is a tomb for the living, and if you don’t believe me, ask old Dostoevsky.
