The burial and the carnaval

By Varela

I lived in three cities in Cuba. Deep in the provinces.

I remember the funeral processions. The people walked behind the hearse looking mournful, weepy, serious. The fame of the dead person depended on the number of streets that filled with mourners. People would stand on the sidewalk to look as the cortège passed by; if someone wore a cap, he would remove it. The neighbors would lower the volume of their radios or TV sets. And the church bells tolled, even if the deceased was an atheist, a communist or a Mason.

But I also remember the streets full of cheer. And that caught my eye, because the same persons who attended the burial attended the carnavales, parading behind the floats amid streamers and confetti, rubbing against each other and guzzling beer. Dying – of laughter.

I also remember the street loafers, the ones who would stand on a corner and whistle at women. They walked around, compared each other’s strut and combed their hair using a store window as a mirror. They would help an old lady cross the street, throw a cookie to a dog, and talk loudly about anything at all.

Here in the United States, things are different. The most people I’ve seen walking in a hurry were competing in the Seven-Mile Bridge marathon in the Florida Keys. And strolling through New York City I felt I was in that same marathon, except that the people were not wearing shorts and T-shirts but shirts and ties. If you stumble and fall, people will walk all over you both in the Keys and in Manhattan.

Although some streets in Miami resemble streets in Cuba, and people speak loudly, gesticulating and defaming each other’s mother in an argument, when it comes to going out in groups of five or more there is a slight tendency to stay home if there’s nothing amusing outside. It’s a mathematical certainty, not my imagination.

Let me give you an example. I live in the metropolitan area with the world’s second-largest density of Cuban residents, after Havana. Out of 1.6 million Cubans appearing on the U.S. Census in 2008, more than half live in Miami and surroundings.

So a hunger-striker dies in Cuba and the press that opposes the Cuban government depicts him as a hero, a dissident and all the patriotic descriptions ever created. His picture is distributed through TV, the Internet and the printed press. Leaflets are printed. And a call is issued to a symbolic burial in the very heart of the sagüesera.

No aerial photographs are made. The cameras used for the TV newscasts take close-ups and don’t pull back for a wide shot. The reports in the media differ dramatically when it comes to the number of attendees: 5,000 according to El Nuevo Herald, 1,500 per Radio Mambí, 500 according to the Spanish newspaper El País, and 200 in my opinion, because I walked past it.

(My estimate comes from a comparison with a party last December in the backyard of a friend’s home. He told me he had more than 150 guests. But I must make clear that my friend offered his guests rum, wine, barbecued pork, goat stew, rice and beans, yucca and Benny Moré on the record player. That’s an important detail.)

The old folks at the symbolic burial of the hunger-striker – maybe because of the absence of pork sandwiches and beer – vociferated grumpily while carrying an empty coffin and a Cuban flag, both hired for the occasion. They shouted unintelligibly into megaphones, punched the air, raised closed fists; one man coughed, another spat, and the event came to an end. They all disappeared in their vehicles, as if swallowed by the city. Nearby, tourists in a bus snapped pictures to capture their image of “the capital of the Cuban exile nation.”

But another capital of the Cuban exile nation poured onto the street two weeks later, in the Calle Ocho Festival. That Miami was mixed, young and streetwise because it swayed and strutted with rhythm, sang, ate, drank and, what’s most important, laughed.

I know that more than half of that sea of people who sang and danced were the usual Cuban street loafers. In our social parody, death ends up giving its space to life.

Born in Cuba in 1955, José Varela has been an editorial cartoonist in Miami for 15 years. His artwork has appeared in the magazine Éxito (1991-1997) and El Nuevo Herald (1993-2006). A publicist and television writer, he is a member of the Progreso Weekly team.