Havana Cuba. — pas de deuxby the Spanish writer and journalist Ramón Pernas, is one of the many novels inspired by the dramas generated by the Civil War (1936-1939) and the subsequent dictatorship of more than 35 years of General Francisco Franco.
I recently came across this novel, which in 2001 was published in Cuba by Editorial Arte y Literatura with financing from the Spanish Fund for the Development of Education and Culture, and after reading it, I was very impressed, particularly by the characterization that plays the negative character of the plot, Ricardo Orol.
As a counterpoint, the two protagonists, Alfonso and Ricardo, who were friends in their childhood and adolescence, recount the tragedy of their lives.
A few days after the military uprising that started the civil war in July 1936, Alfonso’s father, captain Pablo Constanti, dies at the hands of Ricardo, who is part of a kind of Falangist death squad.
Captain Constanti is not a communist, he is just a liberal and a Mason who, as a soldier, swore to defend the Republic, but Ricardo hates him, he sees him as his enemy, despite the fact that Don Pablo and his wife always welcomed him into their home, helped him and they gave him good advice. Ricardo, very poor, motherless, with an alcoholic father who makes a poor living singing tangos, envies the distinction and well-being of the Constanti family so much that, faced with the impossibility of leading such a life, he comes to detest all its members, especially Don Pablo. The Falangist preaching of “neither poorer nor richer, all equal because of their work” ended up poisoning the boy’s mind, who became a fascist thug rejected even by those of his faction and who ends up committing suicide, embittered by the coming of democracy and the return from exile of Alfonso and his sister to Vilaponte to participate in a tribute to claim the memory of Captain Constanti.
one reads pas de deux and he wonders how many men and women similar in hatred of Ricardo Orol were engendered by Castroism.
Fidel Castro’s Revolution, from its very beginnings, with his demagogic preaching of false egalitarianism, painting himself “by the humble and for the humble” to nourish his ranks, inflamed the envy and rancor of the declassed, the humiliated, the neglected, the frustrated, the self-conscious. They made them feel like protagonists of a great cause for which they were willing to do anything, to kill and die if necessary, it was enough that the Maximum Leader demanded it of them.
Thus, they first hated the bourgeois and then everyone who thought differently. They renounced their religious beliefs, their uses and customs, broke with relatives and neighbors, whom, in many cases, they lent themselves to monitor and inform the police.
Time, too much time has passed, and the majority of those who said they were willing to do anything for Fidel and the Revolution, given the many disappointments and the precariousness of their existence, do not even remotely feel that fervor. They only have the fear and inertia of the old rituals. Many are disappointed and remorseful, although they refuse to acknowledge it because they did not give in and admit that they were wrong to dedicate their lives to something that was not worth even a third of their efforts and sacrifices.
But the wounds are still open in our society. Bleeding and purulent. The damage that the candle-eaters of yesterday and the day before yesterday caused to others and to themselves and to their descendants is not repaired from one day to the next, especially if the makeup of the circumstances and those responsible for this has barely been retouched. situation.
For this reason, because we have not forgotten, it is outrageous to listen to the spokesmen of the regime who try to monopoly patriotism and Cubanness and who qualify as “haters” to everyone who disagrees with official thought and opposes the abuses and ordinances of the bosses.
The Castroites, who have been teaching hate and the most extreme intolerance for more than 64 years, speaking of love and reconciliation. Fuck off!
OPINION ARTICLE
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