A question too difficult to answer?

By Aurelio Pedroso

The question should be considered not only difficult, but extremely complicated and apparently even compromising.

Three levels at Western Unión in Cuba have been unable to clarify the news currently published in Miami, regarding the new modality for remittances to Cuba. From $5 dollars up to a maximum of $10,000, payable in Cuban Convertible pesos, known as CUC.

Is it true? I asked the employee at a Western Union outlet at La Puntilla shopping Center in Miramar. She could not give a straight answer and kindly told me that my best option would be to ask at Western Union’s headquarters in Cuba, represented by Fincimex, a branch of CIMEX Corporation.

This was undoubtedly the adequate place for clarification. Not the provincial headquarters of Select Fruits or the office of the sewage company, but WU’s representatives on the island.

I asked the same question to the receptionist at FINCIMEX and a few minutes later an official received me. Upon telling her that I was asking not only out of personal curiosity, but also because I was a journalist for a U.S. medium, she seemed to suffer from catalepsy that at once prevented her from uttering a word. Subsequently, she asked me to wait and went out to fetch someone higher in command.

After a few minutes of waiting I was called on the telephone and talked to another official, who also refused to answer the question and denied me the pleasure of offering his name.

But all was not in vain. There were several guiding occurrences. One of them, that I should call a 1-800 telephone number to clarify my doubts. In other words, call the U.S.

Another one was that I should access the Western Union website. I accessed Google, searched for Western Union in Cuba and the mentioned subject, but all I found were press reports of the Mexican newspaper La Jornada signed by our colleague Fernando Ravsberg.

Perhaps if I had said at a WU outlet that I had a new license as a gardener and that my brother in Miami wanted to help me out with some money to buy a lawnmower everything would have been simpler.

We are well on the road of excessive secrecy and the fear of facing the national and the duly accredited foreign press. On one side, ignorance, on the other unnecessary “transfers” at levels that in the end do not answer is equal to fostering rumors and misinterpretations.

Well, if my editor pays for it, I’ll call that 1-800 number.