From Juan of the Dead to Rafa the cremator
By Aurelio Pedroso
HAVANA – Juan of the Dead is doing great at the local cinemas and TV screens. Both in Havana and Miami it earned Most Liked Film awards, a prize that, so far as I can remember, no other Cuban movie has won in the past half-century.
But I have just met a fellow who could also be featured in a movie, for several reasons: he’s associated with death and is a victim of bureaucracy and corruption.
Juan, leader of a fearless team of assassins, answered the phone saying that he could send your loved ones into the hereafter. Rafa – a real person – cremates them. And he’s a kindhearted fellow, because if the mourners don’t have enough money for the cremation, he contributes whatever amount is necessary to meet the fee, which is set by the government.
Cremation in Cuba costs 350 Cuban pesos (about 14 U.S. dollars), a sum that some families find hard to pay for one or both of two reasons: the often unexpected or surprising demise and the lack of money in the family budget.
Rafa – that’s how he wants us to call him – took over Cuba’s only crematorium eight years ago. Previously, he worked for the Ministry of Public Health as an electrocardiogram technician.
One unfortunate day, a relative of a patient complained that Rafa had “electrocuted” the patient. Relishing the black humor, I ask Rafa if he plugged the EKG machine into a 440-volt outlet instead of a 110-volt socket. Unsmiling, he answers that the patient simply died during the EKG exam. The case did not go to court.
“I should have applied the 440-volt current to the person who issued the complaint unfairly,” he says, savoring the same black humor.
Rafa then found a job at the brand-new crematorium in the municipality of Guanabacoa, a small building inside the cemetery. The building is functional, modern, well-designed and, surrounded by crosses, looks rather artistic.
By now, the facility can barely meet the growing demand from people who prefer the thousand-degree-Centigrade method of disposing of a loved one to the grim burial, which represents a second wake for the family.
“It’s a job like any other,” Rafa says coolly, with resignation. “What’s painful is when you cremate a child. My assistant gets weak-kneed and tries to stay away from those assignments.”
Soon, Rafa will become adviser-trainer for other crematoria being built not by the Public Health Ministry but by a company called Necrological Services. A state agency, a cooperative, or a joint venture? He doesn’t know.
Meanwhile, he’s dealing with another hair-raising situation. Some time ago, he sold a motorcycle that was eventually resold. The current owner (a friend of this writer’s) asked Rafa to confirm to the Motor Vehicle Registration people the cycle’s legal transfer. The initial paperwork at the Police Department went well but when they arrived at the Records Department, a clerk asked them for a 150-dollar bribe to expedite the process.
That’s not news in a country where corruption – though severely punished – has metastasized from one end of the island to the other. Bribe-takers range from an ordinary office clerk to a minister. Examples abound.
As expected, Rafa and the new cycle owner refused to pay the graft. Not because they didn’t want to finish that bureaucratic torture but because they just didn’t have the money.
I don’t doubt that eventually the motorcycle will be given a clean bill of ownership. But Rafa, whose honesty is almost visible, has been left with a bittersweet feeling similar to the one he experiences when he slides a casket into the furnace.
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