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FROM
CUBA
Mascarade
Rafael Ferro Salas, Abdala Press
PINAR DEL RIO, Cuba - June (www.cubanet.org)
- Mrs. Novo says she's a revolutionary.
She's the wife of a coronel in the armed
forces. Coronel Cámara (that's Mrs.
Novo's husband's last name) is the head
of the Association of Combat Veterans in
this province. It's an organization that
groups together army veterans commanded
by Mr. Castro who overthrew the previous
government in 1959.
By pretending to pass for a "revolutionary"
and also by being the wife of a coronel,
Mrs. Novo is provided with various perks.
But...don't be confused, my friendly reader;
Mrs. Novo's is a game that many here in
Cuba call two-faced morality, though it's
a mere euphemism and has no morals to it.
The Novo woman--as some call her--is a fat,
well-dressed lady, and it's unnecessary
to say that she eats well, too.
Socialism is a system that generates squalor
on a large scale, and those squalid conditions
are distributed evenly among people. It's
a diabolical formula: the distribution of
misery affects more misery.
Mrs. Novo adapts herself to Cuban socialism
by pretending to be a good socialist, and
escapes the squalid conditions. She has
almost all her brothers and sisters in Florida,
but she doesn't publicize it. Her weakness
for money and the good things in life gets
carried away when those siblings visit the
island. Then Mrs. Novo becomes a veritable
lion protecting the packages her siblings
bring. Mrs. Novo is very intelligent, as
it's said in good Cuban: she knows how to
swim and hide the clothes.
From her social rank as the wife of an
officer of the armed forces with an "important
post" like her husband, Mrs. Novo visits
the best tourist resorts in the province,
reserved for government officials and high-ranking
army officers only. It's obvious to point
out that in those places of privilege for
"revolutionaries" Mrs. Novo also
doesn't talk about her exiled brothers and
sisters in Florida.
Just a few days ago a newphew of Mrs. Novo
was searched by the police in his home,
and all kinds of electronic goods, money
and even the house were seized. The nephew
put up foreigners there and did it illegally.
It seems someone denounced him and the boy's
luck changed overnight.
The "revolutionary" Mrs. Novo
learned of what happened to her beloved
newphew and flew into a rage. She felt that
everything they'd done to him was unfair.
That's to say as a revolutionary she did
the impossible to save him, but... for fun,
the woman's mask then began to fall from
her face. They stepped on her callus--another
popular saying--and it hurt her greatly.
The occupation of journalist leads one
to learn about all things--or almost eveything,
not to be too absolute--and this reporter
learned that Mrs. Novo is preparing something.
They say she's on the verge of retirement
and when she does, she'll go apply for a
visitor's permit at the United States Interests
Section to visit her brothers and sisters
like the good "revolutionary"
that she is.
Don't be surprised, friendly reader; many
of "today's revolutionaries" dance
to the beat of Mrs. Novo's son. They're
the privileged cast of a mascarade ball
and... there aren't masks for everyone in
this 46-year-old carnival, the longest on
earth.
Versión
original en español
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