2012 could be the Year of Sirloin Steak
By Aurelio Pedroso
HAVANA – The impotent men we have on the island (avowed and anonymous) might increase their patriotic fervor if in the next 12 months they follow the ancient advice of raising their virility to the potency of a 122-millimeter cannon by eating a big sirloin steak with half a kilo of fried potatoes before engaging in cheek-to-cheek combat.
It all depends on the government finding a happy solution to the problem of cattle rustling and illegal slaughter that besets the private and cooperative sectors. Also, to the problem that farmers who own cows can’t sell them to anyone they wish, trade them, mate them with elephants or slaughter them if a hapless cow faints, rolls down a ravine and breaks a leg.
For some time now, this topic has appeared with some regularity on the two opinion pages that the daily Granma publishes every Friday, suggesting that the political or livestock authorities are thinking of solving this problem, which discourages cattle raising, causes permanent insomnia to cattle farmers who fear their beloved Matilda will be murdered some dark night, and does not increase the growth of the country’s bovine population.
The next-to-the-last opinion I read in Granma was by a native of my hometown, Remedios in Villa Clara province (the former Las Villas, if you’re old enough to remember). That was a good enough reason – other than unabashed regionalism – to state my opinion on such an important matter. The latest opinion, one week later, on Friday the 23rd, was written by another reader, who made some suggestions about commercialization.
But first, I would like to relate a historical factoid that few people know. The only Spanish prime minister who was not born in Spain was a Cuban from Remedios named Dámaso Berenguer y Fusté (1878-1953). The Remediano, born to a Spanish father and a Cuban mother, went to military school in “the mother country.” Nicknamed “the little Cuban,” he rose to the rank of general during the African wars. The King asked him to form a government in 1930, upon the fall of dictator Primo de Rivera. A Cuban after all, and apparently a kind man, his brief administration was called a “dictablanda” – a “soft dictatorship.” What do you think of that, Don Mariano Rajoy?
After this digression, I return to the topic of the cows. The reader who wrote to Granma is named O. Barroso, maybe a soldier in the Armed Forces Reserve and maybe a veteran of the African wars, like Berenguer. His business is dairy production. So he writes:
“For farmers to buy large cattle, they must have an authorization called ‘sale-and-purchase letter’ from the livestock authorities. At this time, its is mandatory to sell the reproductive females (cows and heifers) to that organization, which leads to the same illegalities we have had in the sale of homes and automotive vehicles […]”
That’s some problem Barroso and others like him face. Cows are like houses, like vehicles. The same corruption, bribes and kickbacks. And what about the milk? Let the calf drink it, someone else might say.
Barroso ends his Dec. 16 letter to Granma with a truism:
“I don’t know how this measure can benefit the economy, because, with few exceptions, the farmers’ cows are more productive that the government’s.” And this is not a cow’s opinion; it’s an expert’s.
Unfortunately, I haven’t quite thought out a solution of my own. Nor is it my responsibility to draft decrees or ordinances. That’s up to the many Barrosos with hands-on experience on cows’ udders.
Those who must make the final decision should think about what happened with pigs. When the impediments and hindrances for their raising and commercialization were lifted, pigs went from clandestinity (veterinarians charged $5 to $10 to remove their larynxes so they couldn’t reveal that they lived in someone’s bathroom) to being sold openly anywhere on the island.
The open sale of cattle would eliminate several problems. Among them, the joke that in Cuba you can get a longer prison sentence if you stab a cow than if you stab a woman in a jealous rage. And we’re not even a state of India.
Once, during the Special Period, some kids opened a wagonload of cows parked at the Havana rail station. Film of the cows stampeding through the Malecón was shown on the prime-time TV newscast. Not all of them made it back to the wagon. I know for a fact that one of them went to her maker on the rooftop of a house. Months later, I learned how the residents convinced her to climb the stairs to that peculiar place of execution.
I have 365 days to win a bet I made with the chief of a cooperative butcher shop that in 2012 I will buy sirloin steak and shank there. (Right now, he’s only allowed to sell pork and goat meat.) Let me make clear that I don’t want the beef for erectile reasons but only because a sautéed steak surrounded by fries is a welcome dish at least once a week.
Officially, by a parliamentary decree, 2012 will be known as The 54th Year of the Revolution. The title for this article is something I cooked up, sheltered by my freedom of speech.
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