The day Raúl Castro became 81
The day Raúl Castro became 81
By Aurelio Pedroso
Sunday, 03 June 2012
At the corner of Third Avenue and the 12th St. in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar, very early this Sunday morning, I ran into a, literally, old acquaintance: a retired Ministry of Domestic Affairs colonel, whom I asked bluntly:
-Today it´s Raúl´s 81st birthday, will we find a relief?
I intended “relief” in the military sense of the word. The ex-high officer was nonetheless taken by surprise: he is certainly aware of Fidel´s birthday but that of his “younger” brother was not embedded in his calendar. Anyhow, in spite of his more than seventy year old mind, the military, as addressing imaginary troops, answered nimbly:
-We must find it!
He then went back 200 years before Christ to discuss certain Pharaoh´s documents where the, already mummified, dignitary assured that young people should not be given a lot of chances to command because of their natural lack of experience, then he leapt several centuries forward to land on a Shakespeare quotation: “Old men distrust youngsters for they were once young themselves.”
A gray day, and not metaphorically so, because it has been showering on the west and center of the island. Let´s sit and wait for the economic bill caused by destroyed houses, lost crops and other bad news in the electric and hydraulic networks.
There are no worse enemies today for the project of restructuration of the Cuban socialism than the omnipresent economic corruption and the unstoppable march of time threatening a historical event that Time magazine itself –the wordplay is involuntary- put in the seventh place among most transcendent historical facts from the past century. Like it or not, Fidel Castro filled the sixth step in the “XX Century personalities” category.
Though the Cuba of nowadays differs from the island of two years ago, the pace of reforms or however you want to call them, is slow. The people on the streets fear that such slowness may affect them as much as the whole nation.
Together with this Caribbean “perestroika” we witness the absence of a coming young relief. If such would-be protagonists were previously visible and even announced, or almost, they are absent now from the political scene. A simple search drill of a 40 to 50 character with the capacity to rule a government or even a political party is the proverbial wild goose chase.
Many improvised coteries were focused, not exactly on Raúl becoming 81- they probably did not know about it- but on the yellow pages of ETECSA, the national telephone company. Who could foresee it? Private initiative, with the satisfaction of authorities, debuts in the printed letters and rough publicity. Tariffs start with 30 cuc. (twenty something dollars).
Very few people dare defying this night of ill weather forecasts omens…except for youngsters, always ready for risks. Most stay at home: with us the weather, as with several other things, lacks the subtlety of middle terms. It´s either drought or storm.
Late at night I came back home in my routine rambling passing below the colonel´s modest balcony. The T.V., a little louder than necessary, gives away the synthetic newsreel: beware with the water and the role of youth in the defense of culture.
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