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.
***
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.”
We don’t talk about Castro (no, no, no). We don’t talk about Castro. But…
It’s been six decades. Sixty-two years of hunger, repression, and fear. (No one’s allowed to speak).
Castro walked in with a murderous grin. And he destroyed Cuba’s dreams.
Castro said, “Elections, what for?” (In 1959.) In doing so, he ruined us all. (Abuela, get the boats.) Let’s go to Miami now… but anyway:
We don’t talk about Castro (no, no, no). We don’t talk about Castro. But…
Hey! I grew up in fear of his endless stumbling, he was always on TV, muttering and mumbling. I associate him with the sound of exile.
It’s a heavy lift, with a pain so numbing. Abuela stayed in Cuba with the family wondering, grappling with prophecies they couldn’t understand. Do you understand?
A greasy beard, guards along his path. When he calls your name it all fades to black.
His spies see your dreams. They feast on your screams. But:
We don’t talk about Castro (no, no, no). We don’t talk about Castro.
I would like to congratulate everyone included on this list. And I would like to thank everyone who is working on publishing (more) Spanish books in the US.
I take ever this opportunity to celebrate the authors, illustrators, and editors —Melanie Cordova, Sylvie Frank, and Reka Simonsen— of the following books that I had the pleasure and the privilege to translate.
Ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. I knew it when I met him. I hated his repression. Ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. And then I had to tell him, I had to go. Oh-na-na-na-na-na.
Havana, ooh, na-na. There’s a police state in Havana, ooh, na-na, and throughout Cuba, but Havana, ooh, na-na, is where the ruling Castro Junta, the dynasty, keeps dragging our country through the mud.
A dictatorship is ruling the island. Sixty-two years! They’re sentencing minors for daring to speak against the tyrant. His name’s Díaz Canel, but we call him “Singao.” He’s just a puppet. My friends are in prison or they were exiled.
Ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. I knew it when I met him. I hated his repression. Ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh. And then I had to tell him, I had to go. Oh-na-na-na-na-na.
Havana, ooh, na-na. There’s a police state in Havana, ooh, na-na, and throughout Cuba, but Havana, ooh, na-na, is where the ruling Castro Junta, the dynasty, keeps dragging our country through the mud.
***
Here you can find the Spanish version of this parody.
I would like to congratulate everyone included on this list. And I would like to thank everyone who is working on publishing (more) Spanish books in the US.
I take this opportunity to celebrate the authors, illustrators, and editors —Sylvie Frank and Reka Simonsen— of the following books that I had the pleasure and the privilege to translate.
It would have been almost impossible to convict Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd without those painful almost nine minutes recorded by an American teenager: Darnella Frazier.
Right now, there’s a Cuban teenager, also, an AfroCuban teenager, whose name is Amanda Hernández. She is 17, and she has been under arrest since July 11th for recording the protests that took place in Cuba.
She was not taking part in the protests. It should have been her right. But she wasn’t taking part. She was recording and, for that, the Cuban regime threw her behind bars.
In December 2017, inspired by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical, I recreated Fidel Castro’s history as narrated by the Cuban people he subjugated for over five decades of dictatorship. (You can listen to that song here; trigger warning: it is in Spanish.)
Last week, using the same song, I wrote “Cuba for Foreign Correspondents and College Professors” to talk to those two demographic groups that, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, continue to give the benefit of the doubt to the Castro regime, which was recently inherited by Miguel Díaz Canel.
I have a couple of friends who have already included the song in their history unit on Cuba, alongside my articles “Cuba and the Art of Repression” and ”A Tale of Two Cities.” (They teach in middle and high school. So, come to think of it, this is really for educators K-16.) Feel free to include all these materials in your curriculum!
Cuba for Foreign Correspondents and College Professors
Mixing Memory and Desire 