L is for Liberty

L is for Liberty / Henry Constantin
Posted on April 1, 2013

A beheaded Indian atop his white horse races around Las Tunas, this
faded and drab Eastern balcony what I love so much because there they
have loved me. The Indian is a bad omen, according to the elders of Las
Tunas, perhaps because of the already genetic fear of a population that
in the 19th century was attacked too often and burned too often. There
are those who say, to spread fear at night, that the last apparitions of
the headless one were before an apocalyptic hailstorm and a bloody car
accident many years ago. But it has not come out again.

And I think it's because, decapitated after all, he has no head to see
his surroundings. Because a subtle tragedy, without blood or fury or
visible cataclysms, happens every day. In the schools of Tunas — as its
citizens abbreviate Las Tunas — and in the whole country.

If you travel to the village of Cucalambé — eminent poet of Las Tunas,
whose formal name was Juan Cristóbal Nápoles Fajardo – drop in on
Vicente Garcia park. Look at the statue of the much-discussed gallant
general, walk through the bright new boulevard that stretched from the
little Catholic church, have an ice cream at Las Copas, take a peek at
Jose Marti Plaza, the most inventive Cuban monument to the man from Dos
Rios. All that is very nice. But if you don't want to upset yourself,
don't want any further on the boulevard that Ramon Ortuno Street.

Because a few blocks further on, like someone looking for the bus
station, there's a nursery school, a kindergarten — as the grandparents
call it — that is called "Little Friends of MININT," that is the
Ministry of the Interior. I went through there at the same time as the
parents were picking up their kids under 5, who do not read or write,
but who surely have already received lectures in that place about the
institution in charge of control and exhaustive surveillance over
Cubans, those who spy, interrogate, beat and imprison people. I
discovered that place and, dying of laughter at the excessive
brainwashing, took a a picture of it. Then came the bitterness.

Bitterness is not the name of the place, which is just a detail in the
landscape of Cuban education. The bitterness is because I remembered
that I'm alive and I have a son who lives in a country where all this,
these kindergartens for toddlers, primary and secondary schools for kids
and teens, the high schools and poly-techs, and the universities belong
to the state. And those who control the state — which I insist on
writing in lower case, because that's how I think of them — manage them
without any ethical respect for our children.

On the contrary, they use them to teach and evaluate the discipline of
their own political ideas. And worse: they train them in the arts of
obedience, of saying yes when they think no, of setting aside their
truth, of running away when they can't take it any more. Without the
permission of the parents, who also took the same classes.

Once I asked Dante, my son, who just turned 7,what letter he'd learned
that day. "F for Fidel," he answered. Not F for Family, which is what I
try to teach him, not F for fortunate, which is what he deserves. No,
those were not the most important words he learned that day. That day he
learned F, for Fidel.

They saw education in Cuba is free. I don't know. It's true that in
exchange for so much schooling and education the government doesn't ask
us for money, no. It asks us to give our liberty, which is worth more.

The Indian doesn't go headless any more in Las Tunas. Or there is no
disgrace to say it, or those it happens to are so used to it and silent,
that that rider on a white horse dissolves in the past. But this April
4th there's a party for our children, the students, who, for now,
continue in that only possible — free and compulsory — school. For now.

1 April 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/l-is-for-liberty-henry-constantin/