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.