Blood and manure
By Varela
To better understand some things in life, the best method, according to my psychiatrist, is to compare, but in parables, same as Jesus did when talking to others. Remember that at that time people were very ignorant – almost like today but without a crucifix.
Note that Jesus said that it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to walk through the door of Heaven.
From that day on, all rich men have been chopping camels into little pieces to see if they can slip them through the tiny hole.
Well, so … to understand certain warlike poses, pretexts for struggle and militant opportunism, I always compare them with overly exaggerated notions. But I understand everything quicker that way.
For example, I picture this scenario: José Martí comes to Tampa to raise money for Cuba’s independence and decides to settle in Key West with the money he collects. He buys a bungalow, starts stuffing bottles with proclamations and exhortations and tosses them into the sea, so the Gulf current can take them to Havana. A way to struggle, of course.
I imagine Antonio Maceo flipping bombs at the Spanish Consulate in Caracas and sinking Spanish sailboats filled with civilians throughout the Caribbean Sea, “to bring the Spanish Crown to its knees,” as he puts it.
In the same manner, I visualize Ignacio Agramonte marching every Sunday around the public square in Camagüey – dressed in white and holding a gladiolus – demanding the release of Sanguily, a prisoner of the colonialist forces.
Meanwhile, I picture Serafín Sánchez in a Villareña estate, on a bed, staging a hunger strike to demand the resignation of Martínez Campo. And then he’s taken to the Naval Military Hospital in Cienfuegos to get intravenous feedings from Spanish doctors.
Likewise, I see Calixto García, carrying an independence project under an arm, collecting 10,000 signatures to legalize it and deliver it to the Captain General of the island.
Of course, at that rate, Spain would have granted us independence during the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 (a big world event), under pressure from the International Olympic Committee and the newspaper El País.
But let me continue and jump back in time to the 20th Century.
I see Fidel Castro, after being deported to Mexico by Batista, sitting in María Antonia’s house in a huff because he has no papers to return to his country. And the Cuban consulate in the Federal District denies him a visa to enter Cuba. Castro then revalidates his lawyer’s license, sets up a law firm and does business in Acapulco, where he buys a minipalace on a cliff overlooking the sea and marries María Félix, whom he met at a fund-raiser for Cuban democracy.
Still in Mexico, Fidel gets involved in an interminable Internet debate with Gloria Estefan, who was the main Cuban singer on the island because her father was the chauffeur at Batista’s palace.
And finally I imagine Raúl Castro (who returns to Cuba after the amnesty declared by the 1972 coup d’état against Batista), sitting on a grand chair in a mansion in Birán as the country’s Number One dissident and complaining in interviews with the international media: “The current illegitimate government of Gen. Roberto Martín Pérez won’t let my brother enter the island.”
Can you see the comparison of images? The patriot who contributes his machete, horse, bullets and landing craft has the right to say that any wannabe patriot hiding behind journalism or any other intellectual trade is neither a patriot nor the head of a turkey, that he’s a fraud and a mercenary. I don’t remember who said that every revolution generates rights. And that’s the real truth.
The phony former prisoners who are now in Spain, complaining even about the flies in the soup, could get (or steal) a yacht, cross the Atlantic, debark near Manzanillo, climb up the Sierra Maestra, and from there proclaim their complaints and suggestions.
But the men who actually do that are of a different stock, not another era.
