Guillén: Strikes out with the bases loaded
ByAurelio Pedroso
April 12/2012
What just happened to poor Oswaldo “Ozzie” Guillén reminds me of a well-known joke in Cuba about a gay baseball player who dreamed of stepping up to the plate in a jam-packed stadium, bottom of the 9th, his team trailing by one run, bases loaded and two outs, and then allowing the three strikes to glide happily past him without a single swing, in order to listen to the multitudinous roar of the home team’s fans: “You fuc… fa….!”
There is not much difference between those who want to crucify the babbling baseball manager who was on the verge of tears – a millionaire, by the way – and repenting on his knees like Mary Magdalene and asking for forgiveness, and those that in Cuba, in their time, denied religious believers access to universities. These gentlemen, here and over there, are classmates in the advance school of intolerance, people we know we can’t rely on when we sit at the table with one single agenda item: reconciliation.
Cuba today is not a shining example of free speech. There are peculiarities that set it apart from the rest of the modern world. Perhaps sooner than later Cubans will be able to express their opinions publicly, without fear of reprisals from those who might feel threatened. Even so, at present many have exercised that right and do not keep to themselves their points of view, as they did before, when a foreign or local journalist asks difficult questions. Likewise when in an officially convened meeting they offer a piece of their mind – no holds barred.
If Cuban authorities were to follow the example of the media show applied to the Venezuelan (Miami Marlins’) manager, a notorious dissident in the island, Oswaldo Payá, a recipient of the Sajarov Prize, would have been given the boot from his job a long time ago. Because how can the Party place in the hands of the acclaimed expert and government critic the electric and medical equipment that could easily convert a simple sneeze into a deadly rectal tumor?
I don’t share many of Payá plans for a future nation, but he has the merit of being the only government opponent who works for a living at a state-run enterprise. There aren’t many employees as respectful of his working day as he is at a shop of the Ministry of Public Health; thus his frequent interviews, appointments made after 5 p.m.
Guillén has promised to erase his affront to Cubans (did he have in mind the Cubans in the island?) and is willing to donate his salary of five games, about $100,000, to the cause of those who oppose the government in the streets of Havana and other Cuban cities. Freedom of opinion and going back on your word are rated in dollars. Commerce of speech. The free world?
Will we know the destination of this unique donation? Could be that a sizeable chunk fills the pockets of those who aspire to rent a larger and more potent steamroller that could sail from Key West to Havana. Or maybe Payá is given a brand new motorcycle so that he does not lose time between his political and humanitarian moves at the service of patients.
Ozzie’s, and his sponsors, show is already part of a laughable dossier.
Progreso Semanal/Weekly authorizes the reproduction of all or part of the articles by our journalists as long as the source and author are identified.
