Please, keep in mind that this post —as well as the entirety of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government..
The Cuban people have spoken: they have voted with their feet, they gather on any street to talk about what’s been broken for so long that not a token from the government can quench the thirst, the hunger, the stench stemming from that institution that some call “the Revolution,” which digs its grave and its trench.
____________ Author’s note: This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.
Screen capture of the 16-second video in which workers from state-owned Prodal company, in Havana, shout: “Long live the sausages!”
In Cuba, the Worker’s Union is just a branch of the State. It doesn’t allow debate. It curtails any reunion of people seeking communion of ideas by themselves, while there’s no food on the shelves, and there’s widespread condemnation of the Party as the indignation of the Cuban people swells.
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This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.
All the news that’s fit to print when the government controls radio, newspapers —their trolls!— in a never-ending sprint that doesn’t mention or hint at the truth, and talks all day and all night, and gets away with lies, alternative facts, and their multiple impacts: that’s the Castro Media Way.
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This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.
This text is my recreation and condensation, in English, of my décimas published this week in the Spanish edition of 14ymedio. Remember, this post —part of Ideological Deviation, my weekly column— is considered a crime by the Cuban government.
Díaz Canel has a wife whose tackiness knows no bounds. It’s not as cute as it sounds, in the midst of Cuba‘s strife, when she says that, in her life, he’s “The Dictator.” For sure! (Lis Cuesta is done with demure.) Cubans long to live in peace. That regime is a disease, and we are ready for the cure.
I will be brief. These terrifying words began many of the interminable speeches of the Mansplainer-in-Chief who, pistol in hand, took control of Cuba 62,000 millennia ago. With this introduction to my new column in 14ymedio, I propose to do exactly the same. (I’m referring to being brief, not to taking over the Island. I hope the results are not so devastating.)
The column will appear weekly under the banner Ideological Deviation, which in addition to being the title of my book of décimas, is a horrible legal concept with which the government frightened me in my childhood and youth in Havana, and for which any Cuban can still be imprisoned in the land I fled. The décima is a style of Spanish poetry created in the XVI century by Vicente Espinel. The format is 10 lines, eight-syllables each. It rhymes ABBAACCDDC. Jorge Drexler did a beautiful TEDx talk about it.
Does this mean that I am going to write an opinion column exclusively to the rhythm of the décima? Well, yes. The reason is simple: the meter and rhyme —and, hopefully, the content— will render them memorable. This will make it easier for them to be recited in morning assemblies at schools throughout the nation. From preschool to sixth grade! To infinity… and beyond! Pioneers for dropping bars, we will be like Espinel!
My octosyllables will come in a variety of tones and registers —lyrical, nostalgic, satirical, parodic, animal, vegetable, and mineral— which are my ways of thinking and feeling Cuba from a distance. Thinking and feeling are crimes in totalitarianism, and the Cuba that the Castros took for themselves is no exception. (Ah… and I aspired to write a presentation without mentioning that last name that produces gagging, nausea, hives).
I escaped in order to be, an action that in Spanish is split into two verbs: ser and estar. I fled in order to think and to feel. Beyond the seas and decades later, I admire those who are, who think, and who feel in Cuba. I could not imagine my life in my land, but I celebrate that there are those who can do it and do it every day, against the winds and the tides of an implacable regime. These verses, and those to come, are for you.
“The People,” “the Cuban Nation”
“The people,” “the Cuban nation” is not the same as “the State.” (No need for you to debate. Go on. Have a revelation.) The “Revolution,” that station in Dante’s Hell, is a trap: the government does kidnap the Cubans who dare protest; at Díaz Canel’s request, they get erased from the map.
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The photo in this post shows Cuban artist and two-time Latin Grammy-winner rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo, who has been detained at the maximum security Pinar del Río prison since May 2021 for his song “Patria y vida.”
Mixing Memory and Desire 