Havana Cuba. – There are few things that are more remarkable than the discovery of the sea and its smells. I recognized such transcendence when I had not taken the first steps. It was a long time ago, so long ago that it would be impossible for me to recount my first impressions, but I do remember the insistent story of my elders, the one with which they noted the first look at the sea of that child I was, and then the entrance to the sea, the definitive encounter, the slapping on the water and the splashes that, inevitably, wet the face of that child that I was, and who laughed joyfully.
I discovered the sea some time ago, perhaps a very long time, and I even think that the details would be good to speculate about that first encounter. That moment would be extraordinary to put together a novel that I might write one day, and that could be called “The Boy and the Sea”, but that will be another time, because what matters to me now about that beach of my childhood is not the story of that child in his mother’s arms who discovered the sea, nor his first entrance.
What really interests me now are the notoriety, the resonances, that the beach of my childhood has been gaining in the Cuban news environment, the same in Miami as in Havana. And it is that Nazábal is on everyone’s lips, but much more on the politicians, and on the journalists whom those politicians compel to make the beach of my childhood more visible. My dear Nazábal is now in “El Bombo”, which is how we used to say it to point out certain leading roles, and some exoduses.
It turns out that for quite some time now, my childhood beach has been ironically called “terminal three of the José Martí International Airport”, even when that terminal three did not even exist at the Rancho Boyeros airport, when It wasn’t even listed as a project. And the reasons were, still are, more than obvious. Nazábal was the point of the Cuban geography from where more “illegal exits” took place.
And time passed, and an eagle flew by, and many more, over the sea of Nazábal… And it has been a long time since that one existed. gascar who took us so many times to Nazábal beach leaving from Encrucijada. And there is no carahata who retraced the rail road to get to the beach, passing through the Emilio Córdoba Sugar Mill, that sugar mill that was previously called Nazábal, like the beach, shortly before Fidel Castro seized power and seized the sugar mills from their owners. , to rename them later with other people’s names.
And the Nazábal sugar mill was renamed after Emilio Córdoba. And perhaps those name changes were the first sign of the destruction of the sugar industry. And perhaps Emilio Córdoba, that boy who gave his name to the Nazábal mill, could today be an opponent of the communist government, as perhaps Abel Santamaría was, like any of the parents of those boys who today make the journey by sea to reach Florida , and from Nazábal.
Encrucijada is no longer the place where Abel Santamaría or his sister Haydée were born. Crossroads is no longer the town of Jesús Menéndez. Encrucijada is no longer the municipality, which also make up the towns of El Santo and Calabazar, those in which Onelio Jorge Cardoso and Carlos Loveira were born, respectively, the latter one of the greatest feathers on the island. Encrucijada is no longer the town of fabulous parrandas and admirable floats. Encrucijada is just that municipality in which Nazábal is located, the site of the great exoduses, of the many escapes.
Nazábal now has other connotations, among which there is no longer that dock that seemed enormous to the child, even to the young man I was. Nazábal no longer has the warehouse from which that young man I was was launched, that warehouse that seemed enormous to me, and where the sugar that was later received by the patanas was stored to take it to various points of the Cuban geography; but Encrucijada today has very sad resonances that the Government makes visible on national television. Nazábal is today, more than anything, human trafficking.
The Government now makes my Nazábal very visible, and the human traffickers who arrive there, but is silent about their many damages, which lead the Cubans to leave from that point, to wait for the boat that his family paid for in Miami to be able to leave the Island. And it is those exits through Nazábal that favor, and to a large extent, the perpetuity of the communist government.
And whoever gets on the boat also promotes the fame of that discreet little beach of my childhood, of that little beach where I met the sea, the blue of the sea. And whoever commands the boat, those who ride Nazábal, are also guilty of the perpetuity of communism and its many damages. Cuba is not yet to be founded, Cuba is founded and, sadly, broken, and losing many children at sea. We do not have to found, like the Hebrews, a nation.
Our nation, although a prisoner and a slave, is already founded, and the exodus through Nazábal, from any point on the Island, helps the perpetuity of the communists. And each escapade is a new bolster for power. To leave Cuba is to leave the “house of servitude” and remain the only chance to win. Moses floated on the waters of the Nile, but the Nile is not Nazabal or the Atlantic, and we are not Moses.
For Nazábal, for any site, and with any escapade, we allow the reinforcement of the communists. Escape is possible? I don’t think a good Cuban can escape completely. Does the flight and exile provide some component that immunizes, that takes Cuba out of your head, from your bowels? Cubans, at least many of us, are subject to a flight process.
And no one managed to escape completely and definitively, at least until today, from death; However, many of the Cubans who leave face it without modesty, face the waves, the worst storms, but evade the government, slip away. The trip is in the imagination of most Cubans, but the trip as a getaway. And I wonder if escape is really likely. I believe that escaping is not just a problem of changing places.
Escaping is, at least for us, a trick, because in most cases the head remains stranded in Cuba, and they return to it again and again, perhaps trying to find the head that was left here. Nazábal, the beach of my childhood, is an example. Nazábal is the place to which many return to take one and then another, perhaps believing, or pretending, to take the entire country and plant it there, in the spacious North that many Cubans dream of. The Cubans intend to plant Cuba in Arizona or California, in New York or over the Grand Canyon, in Miami. The whole country on a ship that begins its journey in Nazábal. And hopefully that’s not the end, the only chance to survive.
OPINION ARTICLE
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