History

There are 169 municipalities in Cuba. In every municipality there is a museum. There are even small museums in towns that are not municipalities. Supposedly, museums treasure the history of those places. In Colombia, once named Elia, the municipality where I was born, there is a museum. In Amancio Rodríguez, once named Francisco, the town where I grew up, there is also a museum. I can barely remember the one in Colombia. I was a little kid when I left and in the poetry readings I offered later in that space the administration used to remove the objects from the main cloister fearing that writers (collectors of anything that shines, like güijes) would steal them. I remember the museum of Amancio. There were objects that, allegedly, belonged to the aboriginal people of the area. To the aboriginal people of yesteryear, the ones who wore loincloths. The ones from this time also, sometimes, have to wear loincloths, an innocent (and perverted) reader, like you, would think. But I mean the ones who were colonized. The ones from this time (you would think) have also been colonized. But I mean the ones colonized by the Spaniards. There are Spanish men living in Amancio, they have colonized certain mulatas that walk almost naked along the main street of the town. Or village. I guess its inhabitants are harvesters, or hunters, or both. I guess sometimes they are cannibals. But there is not much of the aboriginals of this time in the museums. There are objects of the aboriginals of yesteryear: carved stones, pieces of wood that were hunting and fishing utensils, remains of axes. To defend themselves. To rebel. The yesteryear aboriginals used to rebel and then, as a result of those rebellions, they were burnt. There are also objects of the mambises, who also rebelled. Rifles, pistols, machetes, sabres, bullets, gun belts. Phrases written or said by them against the colonial yoke, the one from yesteryear. In the museum of Amancio, I can still remember, there was a little chick with four legs. We didn´t understand what did the little chick had to do with the national or the municipal history. Not the little chick or its four legs. It was kind of sad to see it there, glued to a piece of wood. The little chick was sad, maybe because it was surrounded by too much history. There were other animals, also sad. Too much history, I suppose. I imagine that children still go to the museum in Amancio and look at the four-legged little chick, if it is still there, and they cannot understand what it has to do with the history of the Homeland. A four-legged little chick is just a poor animal with a deformity. The history of the homeland is just a poor little animal.

The (radiant) future of the Homeland

When I was a little kid, they announced the radiant future of the Homeland. I used to imagine it, by the time I was very young, with twinkling lights, phosphorescent streamers, fireworks. Later on, I dreamt that what they were announcing like the radiant future of the Homeland could be a sort of clean country like those you see in a movie, or this country where I live in now, without cracked walls, without stony, dusty streets, without people with faces disturbed by hopelessness. I used to imagine it really glowing, almost a blinding light. But I was growing up and my parents were getting old gradually and the so-announced future didn´t arrive, and I was pretty sure that it was going to surprise us one day we were always ready for. That certainty was turning into a vague hope and later into the cruel uncertainty. There were always people who never believed in a future and least luminous. They were called sceptical, faithless men. Afterwards, those men disappeared and inhabit now in cities more or less bright. About a year ago I left Cuba and I still believed, naively, that one day the future would come and I was not going to witness it. There were even friends who confirmed it: the radiant future of the Homeland was already near and I would be too far. I was accused many times for being pessimistic: I could only see the dark side, the rotten part of everything, and for men like me the future of the Homeland was taking so long to shine once and for all. Before coming to Canada, the Island was slashed by one of the worst hurricanes in our hurricane-like history, just when it was expected at least a spark of that longed future. I heard people say that God had abandoned us in the middle of the sea and others that not even Nature (the god of atheists) was with us. I was already living here when the blackouts returned, and that confirmed, once again, my suspicions. The dreamt advent is still a chimera. The ration card may fade and those things supposed to be government kindnesses (the essence of all those years of resistance) are now aimed against the people: is the people´s fault having got used to those free things, it´s their fault having sucked the kind breast of the Motherland and it´s the people´s fault that now she is like that, starving and with bags under her eyes. I always heard that the future of the Homeland would never come, but as innocence is not a capital sin, I was always holding the innocent hope that, suddenly, the heavens and seas would open and there would be light all over the Island. Ah, the future... I still close my eyes and I can almost smell it, touch it, taste it.

Nostalgia

There is a tiny Cuban insect that, in the island´s countryside, is called chichí. It stings so hard that you even get to feel like losing the sensation of that pain. Sometimes it even feels like you have been anesthetised in that area as it is a very deep pain. It has another peculiar characteristic: when you crush that little creature, it gives off an unbearable stench. I don´t even know if it is a defence mechanism used when threatened or if it only stinks to annoy, to screw you after being crushed. That little bug reminds me of nostalgia, nothing is more similar to nostalgia, that weird and imperceptible sensation that lands in our skin, bites and leaves a deep, lasting pain and, besides, stinks.