Havana Cuba. – It scares me to admit it, especially because I am Cuban and because it is likely that some will assume, after my warning, that I am a stateless person, a bad Cuban, but even so I assume the risks. I admit then that I don’t like baseball, that its rhythm bores me, and that it even causes me arrhythmias, or at least certain heart rhythm disorders, if by any chance I have no other choice but to face the game. The slowness of baseball overwhelms me, especially if I make comparisons to soccer, volleyball, or basketball. I even prefer boxing, and also that strange ritual of homoerotic appearances that I perceive in wrestling.
I distinguish the slow prudence of chess, the one that many consider unbearably slow; however, I notice a certain greatness in its parsimony, in its pauses, and even in those silences that are overwhelming, and above all boring, at least for the vast majority, although not for me. I confess that I am more seduced by the set in which any game of chess takes place, and the neatness of its enigmas, its silences, the parsimony for each movement. I love the slow pace and calm on the board, and again the silence, and the discreet table that supports the board in which the 32 pieces are arranged, divided with perfect equity between the opponents.
Sometimes I even think that the world could be better if it resembled a chessboard, but the world is not a chessboard, let alone that part of the world that is Cuba. Cuba is more like a baseball field, like a stadium, but even when they have their very obvious similarities, the stadium is a little more democratic. In the stadium there are rules, and referees who monitor compliance with the rules, and they are punished, those rules are enforced.
A couple of days ago I played for a while a baseball game between Cuba and Venezuela, and I had to summon that very little patience that I have left; but this Sunday I had a worse time, so much so that that baseball field ended up seeming to me a space of absolute democracy, especially if I compared it with that game that is an “election of deputies to the National Assembly” which is already underway, which is yet to come, and in which we have no participation.
Perhaps because of all this I was thinking about how happy the government would be if it could control the baseball championships in which Cuba participates in the same way that it manages to assemble a national assembly of faithful; but the game depends on preparations and skills, on the skills of those involved. Baseball, all sports, depends on preparation and talent, while an election of delegates to “Popular Power”, an election of deputies to the National Assembly, are nothing more than a bad staging, a farce, a one of those fallacies that serve or believe they serve, even if they only pretend to be what they are not.
And what really is the National Assembly? It is an appearance, a bad facade, a figure without a real existence, a fallacy, a fantastic vision of reality, or just an appearance without a real existence. The National Assembly inevitably leads me to those verses by Quevedo, those verses that speak of a man glued to a nose, those verses that speak of “a superlative nose,” of a bearded fish, a naricism infinite and even reckless, and that surely Quevedo would see that Assembly that way.
It is a National Assembly for which we did not even elect its deputies. An assembly for which those deputies are already elected in advance, presented as candidates for deputies “by hand”; Raul Castro, Miguel Diaz-Canel…, all “elected” with that legend that they were preferred as candidates for deputies by the delegates to the municipal assemblies, without recognizing the dictates that come from them to, and by decree of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), put those unproductive faithful in the National Assembly, also useless.
The staging is very simple; the PCC warns the authorities of the municipal assemblies about who should be proposed as candidates for deputies, the rest is sewing and singing. It has already been dictated in which municipal assembly Esteban Lazo will be proposed and in which Raúl Castro, that nonagenarian who will undoubtedly be a figurehead who is applauded every time he is mentioned. And Díaz-Canel, without any fuss, was proposed by the Central University “Marta Abreu” of Las Villasthat university where he studied and where he recently defended his doctoral thesis, despite his many occupations.
And by decree they will assign to those assemblies, and to their gathered fat people, the names of those who should be the candidates for deputies, and finally, and without any setbacks, for deputies. The assembly, the fanaticism, that neither enthusiasm nor faith, will then do their part. That fanaticism that has faith in what is supposed to be “the absolute”, and that speaks on behalf of “everyone” even if it is nothing more than our unfortunate fate, the path to perdition and without a doubt to death. The assembly that will not repair the miseries, the one that will not put a stop to the repression, is already on its way, its “more of the same” can already be smelled.
OPINION ARTICLE
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