Radio Mambí

By Varela

This station is a kind-of loudspeaker perched on a pole in the middle of Miami, screeching all day long. Some screeches can be understood; others, cannot. And the listeners who phone in sound like the echo of those screeches.

They just as mindlessly offend a community activist like Peñalver (whom they see as someone trying to knock them off the pole) as they ask for the assassination of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez or Barack Obama. The issue is to liquidate communists, populists, socialists and everyone who sounds like an intervener, or appointed controller of private property, because the station’s director – who was CMQ Radio’s intervener in Cuba – says he had a bad time intervening.

As to the calls for Obama’s death, the Mambisers got their hands slapped by the Secret Service, because an angry listener reported the calls right away. They argued that they didn’t have time to press the cut-off button that would have barred from the airwaves the calls from the crazies who asked for regicide. But that’s very strange, because when someone phones and shouts “Viva Fid…!” they press the button at the speed of lightning. It seems some of their cut-off buttons (or fingers) are faster than others.

One of their vociferating stars is a so-called Ninoska, who defends the right of some women in Havana to dress in white to go visit their imprisoned sons or husbands or demand their release. On the other hand, Ninoska cackles with glee through her megaphone when the wives or mothers of The Five Cubans imprisoned in the United States are denied visas to come visit them.

That loud-mouth demands the release of all prisoners in Cuba, because she apparently believes she is a defense attorney. But at the same time she demands that The Five Cubans imprisoned here be sentenced to five consecutive life terms, because she apparently believes she is a prosecutor.

There’s a bit of contradiction in this lady’s rantings. It never seems that she’s expressing opinions, sitting in a sound booth, but rather that she’s peddling newspapers on the street, shouting as she goes.

The one with the best noise-making apparatus is a man named Pérez Roura, who had two nicknames back in his native Ceiba Mocha – “Horse Face” and “Hollow Head.” The second moniker stuck, because the horses complained about the first one. They may be long-faced but they’re smart.

Many of Pérez Roura’s listeners consider him the best candidate against Montaner the Good (Montaner the Bad is his brother) for the presidency of a free Cuba in the future. But the future is looking increasingly dim, because people have to mark a birthday every 12 months, and he’s running out of months.

This leader of the “microfane” (as his followers say) has kept up the Christmas spirit for the past quarter of a century with the slogan that, next Christmas, he’ll barbecue a hog in Ceiba Mocha. Judging from his age, I think the best he can hope for is to plant a ceiba tree in his Miami home and cook the porker next to it.

Speaking of age, this is a radio where everything is directed at the elderly listener. In commercials and political programs, they refer to Viagra as the only path to happiness, the way they claim the Constitution of 1940 and the Central Highway were the only law and the only road in Cuba.

Listeners drop off as a result of death, lack of concentration, failure of their hearing aids (due to Medicaid-Medicare cutbacks) and disappointment, which is the worst thing that can happen to a fanatic. It’s like the guy who always bets on the losing team; one day he will bet on the other team.

The station has a daily shouting fest (the most-listened-to, because it is the loudest) called The Round Table, to which it has brought fresh meat as the top attraction. It’s a young sexologist who used to give advice on late-night TV about oral and anal sex, lubricant substances and the Kama Sutra positions.

It seems that the lady doctor’s way of staying warm at night caught the attention of Radio Mambí’s Announcer-in-Chief, who immediately hired her as a political commentator and ideologue for The Round Table. Now she gives lectures about global warming, saying that there’s no such thing. It appears the only warming in the station is of a different kind, but that’s for each listener to interpret.

So, from this pole stuck into our city, with the loudspeaker blaring day and night, calls have been made to invade Guanabo and set fire to Guanabacoa; to spend three days killing Cubans on the island once the Castro regime falls; to send all blacks to the eastern provinces and keep all whites in the western lands; to return all sugar mills to their original owners, along with the cane (yesterday’s cane, because today’s cane has less sugar), and to bring back the U.S. Marines (maybe to piss on Martí’s statue once again.)

Logically, they already celebrated Posada Carriles Day with a giant marathon to collect money for his trial in Texas. What’s weird is that Radio Mambí is no longer owned by a Cuban but by a consortium, by a media giant that advocates brotherhood, cultural exchange, solidarity and love among Hispanic peoples – the Univision network.

Born in Cuba in 1955, José Varela has worked as an editorial cartoonist in Miami for 15 years, for the magazine Exito (1991-97) and El Nuevo Herald (1993-2006). A publicist and television writer, he is a member of the Progreso Weekly team.