From rice to a jet ski

Today the line to buy ‘our daily bread’ has become very hot. We are in December and “this is looking worse and worse,” says a neighbor. She notes that “the rice has not arrived and we are at Dec. 11.” Whoever is behind her in the queue brings out the news of the sugar: “This month only one pound per person. And without sugar there is no country, at least that’s what I’ve always heard say.” “There is a country, but no sugar,” says the venerable old man in the worn Industriales cap, and adds with pain, “can there be a country without countrymen and without sugar?” And he added the ridiculous quota of rice “that they will sell when it reaches the warehouse.”

The comments escalated towards the entire universe of food, the products that are no longer available or are available only in hard currency, the fucking never-ending inflation as permanent, it appears, as that famous novel of the 1940s, The Right to be Born. But in the experienced novel of our daily life, the Don Rafael del Junco of the novel does not appear to solve the mystery that surrounds our shortcomings. It is not about a person or character. Audience and actors yes, for quite some time we have known what to do: work on the economic structure with rolled sleeves and ready to go. So?

And meanwhile, to give it color, we enter December with news of spies and infiltrators. Both seem to have broken records. The one over there, dressed in a suit and with a Hermes or Charvet tie, shows, according to the news, a history of 40 years spying for the Cuban government. A record that defies the useful life of a spy.

And over here there is one whose face we have not seen, but whose possible record lies in having landed on the island with a couple of pistols as an arsenal and on a jet ski, which he left exposed (according to a photo in the media) in the sand where he stepped on dirt, sorry, I meant sand. He could have buried it and marked the spot in order to collect her for his return there. Or, maybe, he buried it, and after his capture he let the Cuban authorities know where in order to include it in the photo. Whatever… the news seems like the preamble to the delivery of  a new chapter.

The only thing that would be worth it, over here and over there, would be to make amends with Santa Claus and get him to leave the cold sleigh and disembark on both coasts with love and peace and respect for everyone — for EVERYONE.