Yesterday, out of the blue, Fidel Castro announced that he won't be candidate for the presidency of the Cuban Parliament. A piece of news with such an impact, that he had to repeat twice even though it was in written form. It looks like the "Commandante" is eventually going out in style and dignity. I remembered an old post, written last January when Castro was close to dying and I was becoming to emotional. Then Castro got through it and the post remained unpublished. Today I finally post it partly because I re-read it and liked it, but mostly because the meaning is still there. Castro's stepping down somehow liberates Cuba from the constant threat of its adversaries, above all it can serve in removing the argument of lack of democracy, fed on his remaining in power for almost half a century. It also opens the way for reforms, but -I hope- without any compromise for the Cuban Revolution.
Winter is here, my general.
The winter of our discontent is here. The vultures are already out there, sharpening claws, you may not hear them but it is only because you lie there unconscious. You listen no more to the news, that your one-eyed courtiers read you everyday, because you don't want to, because you are fed up with the lies you read about you as much as with the lies they invent to protect you. To protect your venerated image of saint, patriarch, supreme leader, father of the country, because a saint, my general, cannot be dying.
The people, your people, are looking at the vultures spiraling down from the skies and are afraid. Afraid that all the prophecies will come true. That this will be the end of the passing of the comets, that they will take our sea away and sell it to the landowners of deserts piece by piece, that the days will get shorter and shorter until finally the sun rises from the west, that the sand will turn to powder and the rivers will be mixed with alcohol. That the "Granma", will shipwreck once again, one last time , and will be silently covered with seaweeds and corrals. They are afraid that our children, your children will forget the letters and the words and trade them for shiny marbles and mirrors. That our sick, old people will be thrown out on the streets, because the vultures prefer the beggars, the crippled and the fools to the poor, the barefoot and the curious.
They say my general, that it cannot be true that the father of the country is getting old, that he is not recovering, that he is drowning in his own feces. Because they are afraid and they forget what we humans, really are. That we are this small vein in our head that pops open, this tiny bead of grass stuck in our artery, this gut that suddenly bursts and refuses to heal. They cannot believe, or they refuse to believe, my general, that your wound is refusing to heal, that it is left open, one more open wound on the face of this land, your land.
But it is true, that the wound is not healing.
And the vultures are out there pecking the barbed-wire fence you put around the country, trying to break in, drawn by the stink of a wound that won't heal and the sacred smell of the shit in your belly. This is what we are, my general, this is what you are. You are the open wound drawing the vultures and we have become the fence that is keeping them out. It's time you go now, but we' ll stay put.
Godspeed, my general.
PS. Similarities -or direct references- to G.G. Marquez's "Autumn of the Patriarch" are hereby declared to be obviously non-accidental.
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