The Electrical Re-Involution

The Electrical Re-Involution / Rebeca Monzo
Posted on December 21, 2013

In 2005, the then president and prime minister of our planet appeared
before TV cameras in order to explain to the population the benefits of
the hitherto despised home appliances, which from that moment would be
distributed in all the country by household through the infamous Ration
Booklet.

Refrigerators, air conditioners, "Queen" pots, rice cookers, personal
water heaters, energy saving light bulbs, electric burners, in sum, a
series of home appliances manufactured and imported from the People's
Republic of China.

I remember that, when in the 1970's I move to Nuevo Vedado, I had an
electric kitchen of three burners and oven, acquired in Paris in my
diplomatic years, and each time I went to buy products with the Ration
Booklet in the market that I was assigned to, they told me about
consuming too much electricity.

Three decades later, the same ones that reprimanded me came to offer to
exchange my old but magnificent 1949 Admiral refrigerator for a Chinese
one, which according to them consumed less. Of course I refused, because
you had to give up the perfectly functional one you possessed, without
getting a cent of its value, as if it were scrap, and pay an exaggerated
price for the new one.

Fortunately, I maintained said negative response on repeated occasions,
until they got tired and insisted no more. All those people who fell in
the trap of the new apparati are regretful, because they broke after a
while and there are no parts with which to fix them, but they still have
to continue paying for them. So it has been happening with all the low
quality Chinese equipment: mountains of aluminum and twisted cables fill
the shelves and warehouse of the famous consolidated workshops without
them being able to be repaired for lack of replacement parts.

It is shameful that some commission from the National Assembly has to
spend so much time and saliva talking about "Queen" pots and broken
devices, in a country where there are so many urgent problems, like the
bad state of schools and hospitals, the almost non-existent sugar
production, the lack of basic necessities in the stores, problems with
milk production, potatoes, in sum, with everything that is vital for the
population. Gentlemen, certainly it shames the National Assembly that
you have to air issues as ridiculous as the broken electric pots,
already obsolete.

I believe that the decision I made three decades ago, to not be dazzled
by the "electric re-involution" and not to go into debt buying those
Chinese products, was most wise. My old Admiral refrigerator, decorated
by me, continues cooling like a charm, and I do not owe a cent to the State.

Translated by mlk.

20 December 2013

Source: "The Electrical Re-Involution / Rebeca Monzo | Translating Cuba"
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