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Rafael Ferro Salas, Grupo Decoro
PINAR DEL RIO, November (www.cubanet.org) - They have them shut away over
there. Now they are but a shadow of what they once were. The hours have become
the most important thing in the lives of those doomed to die. Nearly all wear
watches; the routine of measuring time seems to be an incurable obsession to
all.
The doctors of the sanatorium hardly speak to them. It appears they care for
them simply to justify a salary.
For each one of them days and nights are a journey toward the unknown. From
time to time a relative visits them. They are short visits, like all obligatory
visits.
The provincial sanatorium for victims of AIDS in Pinar del Rio is distant
from the
city. If someone passes near the place, he is immediately aware of the
misery that surrounds it. A high fence encircles the place, but the patients can
be seen from the road. They walk from side to side, as if searching for sun
baths for their bodies. They wear faded and mended pajamas that are pitiful.
The trees in the park look sad; it seems as if they were carrying some of
the patients' grief. There is a garden in the center of the entrance road. The
red roses look anachronistic in this place. From time to time the hearse enters.
Nearly all the patients say goodbye to the deceased when the hearse goes away.
It's like a pact.
Some of the patients there contracted the illness as innocent victims,
others were deceived. There are also those who, in the desperation of the
nineties, decided to inject themselves with the desease voluntarily. They met in
groups to inoculate themselves with the virus. It was a kind of collective
escapism. At first it was all an adventure, a joke; they had not seen the face
of death. It all changed when the first one died. They realized then it was a
serious matter: AIDS kills.
Sometimes you ask yourself who is to blame. How do you make the guilty pay
for the fact that there are patients who are terminally ill of their own
volition? It is sad that there are times in a country that lead its men and
women to commit suicide that way. The bitter memory of the voluntary carriers of
HIV in Cuba will never be erased. They were young people starting to taste life
and, like all youth, they were full of dreams. Suddenly and
without permission, the years of the nineties got under the skin, like a
terrible nightmare. All of Cuba entered into a period called "especial"
by the its inventors. It's seems now the misery will never end.
You think about a lot of things when you go by the sanatorium for AIDS
patients in this province. Inside there, young people who aged before time
journey towards death. But in the end we realize that we are all sick here. We
have all aged before time, we all suffer from compulsory confinement. The
question is, who will die first. And for that no one has the answer.
Versión
original en español
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