The broken man
From Havana
By Manuel Alberto Ramy
“The man who doesn’t say what he thinks is not an honest man.” José Martí
A broken man does not speak his own words; he owes his language to others and his thoughts to slogans. A broken man raises his hands and agrees, while his reason tells him: “If you don’t have a tongue, at least be one-armed.”
A broken man is a dual life, split in two between the opinion he holds and the convenience or inconvenience of expressing it, and it is so convenient that he doesn’t even dare to abstain. A peculiar personage, this gravel-man recovers his speech in the hallways after a meeting is over.
The duality of life tears at those who practice it, leads to neurosis, and when neurosis spreads to society it becomes apathy. Apathy, lethargy and disillusionment are several of its consequences.
To fortify the man is the cornerstone. Yes, I know that man is a total being. Swiftly said: stomach and values, dreams and realities.
In Cuba, more than a year ago, the doors were opened so that anyone may express his thoughts respectfully and in the proper place. We have to keep them open and fortify the participation of citizens, as has been done for quite a while, for example, by the Juan Marinello Center and the magazine Temas with its monthly colloquies.
Probably, the human factor is essential, the first step to channel “our socialism,” because at issue is the dignity of each person. The man, the person without a mask, is everything. Thus, directly and without compunction, spoke, more than a year go, millions of compatriots who, while reaffirming that their criticism or doubts were intended to defend the Revolution and welcome “more socialism,” did not use their comments as betrayals, as so many have interpreted, especially in the international media.
Broken men generate an anemic society; even though the worker arrives in time at his work place, he does not produce. At most, he will be a piece in his work place, sometimes a clumsy and cheap decorative figure, but never an active, conscious producer capable of integrating with his equals a labor community and developing the sense of belonging that is TO BE and TO HAVE, a personal and collective coherence, dignity at its fullest.
The sense of belonging — which certainly runs the risk of becoming an empty slogan — is not achieved through repetitions on TV, as I have heard frequently during the newscasts. It is sad that there are still people who believe that repeated words can substitute for reality. On the contrary, I remind you that they were created to designate it.
To invent realities is a work of fiction, and the man of fiction is a broken man, a personage who follows the line of a ritual in a destructive process of feedback that disintegrates. It seems to me opportune to clarify that the sense of belonging is much more than an ownership document; it is the real ability to participate and decide. The essence does not lie in the form of property but in the exercise of the person in any of his modalities.
To walk around shirtless, without two-sided speeches, is as important as the processes that reform everything that needs to be reformed. From this wheat, bread will be made. Otherwise, not one, not the other. Only the broken man.
Manuel Alberto Ramy is Havana bureau chief of Radio Progreso Alternativa and editor of Progreso Semanal, the Spanish-language version of Progreso Weekly.
