The cross and the sword
By Aurelio Pedroso and Manuel Alberto Ramy
HAVANA – The night of Saturday, Dec. 7, will be one to remember. Seldom does Cuban television interrupt its programming to announce something of great importance. Thousands of Cubans who watched the evening telenovela, a soap opera that attracts the largest number of viewers, were startled and went abruptly from romance to suspense. What could have happened?, they wondered.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had again occupied the Cuban people’s time. He had done so earlier, during the tense electoral process in his country, which was closely followed by most of our people. This time he wasn’t talking about votes but about the cancer cells that had returned to his body. He had to be operated for the fourth time, he said. He took a small cross and kissed it. He also kissed Bolivar’s sword, which he delegated to his staff. He prepared everyone for any eventuality with great aplomb, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“He’s a whole man,” commented my neighbor, as discreet tears rolled down the cheeks of Olga, his wife. The mystery of the cross and the sword, thought I.
By Sunday morning, Chávez’s condition was the only topic on people’s lips, as the introduction to any subject. From a simple car minder to a street vendor of vegetables, from the neighbor walking his dog to a high-ranking official whom I ran into on the street, they all talked about it. “Damn, that’s a hard blow to all Latin Americans,” the official told me. At the bakery, everyone seemed concerned, cursing that awful disease – cancer, to be exact – that rarely pardons its victims.
From the traffic isle on Fifth Avenue, the one where the Ladies in White show up every Sunday, several dozen Venezuelans, members of the Ribas Mission (an educational program leading to a high-school diploma) walked to the Venezuelan consulate on Fifth and 16th Street. They sang and shouted slogans supporting their president as they walked into the diplomatic building.
On their faces I could see an unusual mixture of pain, anger and hope. “Death can’t beat him,” one of them said. “I’m with you,” I told him, but I also was worried.
I was worried about the human being and also about his political project, which – like the sword of Bolivar, who forged the unity of nations – might be broken by human pettiness. Ramy, who accompanied me in my stroll and shared in this writing, put it this way: “With all his virtues and defects, Chávez – who is neither an extraterrestrial nor a divine being – has tried to bring together disparate elements at a special moment in history, following the established rules of the game. That’s where his accomplishment lies.”
The official I ran into (whom I cannot identify) told me clearly and frankly that he “hadn’t been able to sleep all night.” Others I talked to were not as dramatic, although, judging from Chávez’s somewhat prophetic statement at Miraflores Palace, they have few hopes for good news. “God knows what He’s doing,” the official said, leaving us intrigued about the meaning of his words.
The outlook ahead could not be more uncertain. That was confirmed by Chávez’s words, as he held the cross. Only time will tell, as the saying goes. And that will happen soon, it seems. Another question for Venezuelans to answer, along with the governments and policies that have emancipated our region and established alliances to have a common face, and set their own courses, with novel designs.
From Argentina, a country with an industrial base, to gigantic Brazil and small Jamaica and Cuba, we all have benefited from an emerging and brotherly Venezuela. It is not only Cuba, although many paint an uncertain future for us, reminding us of the extreme situation we lived in the 1990s, when we lost Moscow’s support. But that situation won’t return.
Those doubters don’t take into account what our island pays back, within a framework of strategic alliances and compensated economies. More than a dozen countries receive Venezuelan oil at preferential prices, with easy payment plans. Don’t forget that.
What was made clear was the spirit of the man who interrupted the evening soap opera. He said serenely what he had to say and apparently has set the stage so that, if the worst happens, the damage will be minor and his project can go on. He also showed devotion to his project and unconcern for power.
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