Childhood ghosts
Below are excerpts of a post from Yoani Sánchez's award-winning
Generation Y blog, desdecuba.com/generationy, which is compiled by
friends in Europe from information she sends surreptitiously from Cuba:
The Big Bad Wolf or the Boogeyman was called something else in my
childhood: The Urban Reform.
Raised in a house for which my parents had no papers, when there was a
knock on the door it scared us to death because it might be the housing
inspector. I learned to look through the blinds before opening, a
practice I keep to this day, to avoid those with portfolios who snooped
around and warned us of the legal fragility of our home. The institution
they represented was more feared in my tenement than the police themselves.
Numerous confiscations, stamps stuck on the doors, evictions and fines
made even the tough guys of Central Havana tremble when they heard
someone talking about the Housing Institute.
Now the ghost of my childhood has returned, with what happened to the
patio of my friend Karina Gálvez. An economist and university professor,
this pleasant woman from Pinar del Río, was part of the editorial board
of the [Catholic] magazine Vitral, and now is an essential pillar of the
portal Convivencia (Coexistence). This, in a society where censorship
and opportunism are growing everywhere, like the marabu weed, could be
interpreted as a great mistake on the part of Karina.
To make matters worse, she has always believed that her parents' house,
where she was born and has lived for more than forty years, was a family
property, as it says in the title deed stored in the second drawer of
her dresser. On the basis that building one's own patio should be
something as personal as the decision to let one's nails grow, she built
a covered patio that her friends all contributed to. Gradually it became
a place for discussion, an epicenter of reflection, and a place of
essential pilgrimage for the artists and free thinkers of Pinar del Río.
Until Bishop Emeritus Ciro González came to bless the Virgin of Charity
that presided over this cozy space. I remember that Reinaldo and I
looked for a ceramic artist who recorded the Cuban flag and shield for
the improvised altar in the now famous ``Patio of Karina.'' Then the
legal skirmishes began, the Urban Reform inspectors with their threats
of forced destruction and expropriation. It seemed that it would all end
with a monetary penalty or, in the worst case, in tearing down what had
been built.
But for those who don't know how to build, it gives them pleasure to
confiscate, to remove achievements of others, seizing what they
themselves have not created. And so it was Tuesday that a brigade came
to the house of my friend and announced that the patio was not hers, but
rather the property of the state enterprise CIMEX, which abuts the
house. At a speed rarely seen in these parts, they raised a metal
barrier which that night was converted into a brick wall.
Karina, in her infinite capacity to laugh at everything, said that she
will paint a pair of roosters on the ugly wall, announcing the dawn. On
the other side, the land that has always been hers is now used by
others. One day she will get it back, I know, but not the Urban Reform,
nor the political police, nor the rapid response brigade stationed
outside will keep us from continuing to say and feel that this is
Karina's Patio.
Childhood ghosts - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (19 December 2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1389850.html
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