Mourning or Celebration?

Mourning or Celebration? / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado
Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado, Translator: Unstated

This September 28 they celebrated the fifty-second anniversary of the
creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDR). In
contrast to years past I did not see reports on Cuban television of two
or three previously planned nighttime parties,"which customarily are
celebrated on the 27thin "anticipation of the big day." Normally, the
national media "casually" attends these festivities in order to have
broadcast images of CDR enthusiasm for the event. Instead, there was
only one news report and it dealt with a daytime event in which the
president of one committee spoke. His audience was a small group of
passive and silent participants. There was not the usual interview with
an ordinary member, who was "emotional and aroused" by theanniversary.

With the passage of years and the "permanent special period," to which
we Cubans living in this archipelago have been subjected, the
festivities that were sponsored by these organizations have been
replaced in the city by "a people's cookout" featuring on an open-air
caldosa* on each cuadra – the lineal space between the two corners of a
block – and cheap rum for those who like alcohol. On the street where I
live,in a cauldron blackened by poverty and evocative of the
countryside,there was a pig's head and two or three kinds of vegetables
covered by a lot of water, all placed in the planting area in front of
the house of my neighborhood's CDR president. This time no music was
heard during the very few and boring activities that took place, and the
mood seemed to be more one of mourning than celebration.

This farcical institution — managed and founded decades ago to send a
message of "consensus," of a revolutionary honeymoon and a happy
marriage between the citizenry and the authorities — is out of date.
Almost no one expects anything positive from this organization, which
has only offered interference in personal lives, surveillance, betrayal,
nighttime security patrols — we never found out if they were acting in
the role of police or of decoys — a lot of meetings, voluntary work
brigades, rallies, marches and permanent blackmail through the use of
negative reports if you did not actively participate in the tasks
assigned by the organization.

After returning from a fact-finding tour of my neighborhood, I could see
from my balcony the depressing sight of the few people willing to be
served the "substantial" brew. They carried jugs, metal pitchers and
other containers, gathering around the cauldron and, on command from a
group of political warlocks with no future, conspire to annually expose
their misfortunes.

*Translator's note:Caldosais traditionally a thick broth or stew.After
the Cuban revolution cooking it became a communal event in which
neighbors brought whatever ingredients they had at hand. Some say this
came about because of food scarcity; others believe that the change had
more to do with the collective emphasis of socialism. (Source:
cubaentuscon.blogspot.com)

October 2 2012

http://translatingcuba.com/mourning-or-celebration-rosa-maria-rodriguez-torrado/