POLITICS
My grandfather had political ambitions, or at least he wanted to participate in politics, but the politicians paid him scant attention. He was a member of the Orthodox Party [a liberal reformist party], which was then led by Eduardo Chibás. Once, around Christmas, someone wanted to take a picture of the entire family. My grandfather pulled out a huge poster with Chibás’s picture on it. The poster was so large that it crowded everyone out of the photograph.
My grandfather opposed religion and was an anticommunist liberal. He could read with ease and, within that peasant milieu, this was a rare privilege. Once a week he went to Holguín to buy Bohemia magazine, edited by Miguel Angel Quevedo, which was in a way the source of our political education. My grandfather would lean against one of the house support poles and read the magazine out loud. If anyone uttered so much as a sound, my grandfather would make such a fuss that as soon as he opened the magazine, even the animals would retreat in silence. In those days Bohemia was one of the best magazines published in Latin America. It had everything: literature, politics, sports, news; it was against all dictatorships, including, of course, those that were communist.
What made my grandfather sense that communism would not solve Cuba’s problems, when he had really never suffered under that system but had, in fact, endured all the calamities of capitalism? I would say it was his peasant intuition. I also think that my grandfather was influenced by the reports of farmers being shot in communist countries, which made him reject communism while he still passionately hated the right-wing dictatorship that we were enduring, had endured, and would continue to endure for several years. For my grandfather, those who ruled before Batista had also been a bunch of crooks. That is the reason why he felt a great deal of respect for Chibás, who denounced corruption and whose motto was “Integrity Against Greed.” My grandfather’s hero was not to become president of the Republic; a few months before the election, he shot himself. According to several commentators, Chibás’s suicide was related to the fact that he had denounced the corruption of an important government official, Aureliano Sánchez Arango, but was unable to submit conclusive proof when required to do so.
The same day that Chibás died, so did my great-grandmother; she also died suddenly, hit by lightning. In our area lightning struck frequently, supposedly because the earth was very rich in nickel. At my great-grandmother’s wake everybody dissolved in tears. I walked up to my mother, who was crouched in the kitchen by the stove, and she said, “I’m not crying because of my grandmother, but because of Chibás.” I think the whole family was crying for that reason.
My great-grandmother’s death was actually somehow related to the death of Chibás. Years ago my grandfather had installed a crystal radio receiver so he could listen to Chibás when he spoke. This receiver was wired to an antenna installed high on bamboo poles. The antenna had served as a lightning rod, and my great-grandmother, who at that moment was next to the radio, was struck.
We all used to gather around the radio because it had only one earpiece, through which my grandfather usually listened and then relayed the news to us as he heard it. Sometimes, when my grandfather was upset with my grandmother, he would interpolate phrases that were not part of the radio program; they were insults or else chauvinistic comments against women, which my grandmother would listen to impassively because she thought they came from the radio.
One of my aunts had the privilege of being allowed to listen to a soap opera; while she listened, she would pass the story on to her sisters. My aunt would summarize the love affairs of a woman in a soap opera called Divorced, broadcast at noon. The title and the story itself bore a close resemblance to the lives of my aunts and my mother, all abandoned women who, as the announcer would say at the beginning of the program, either “dreamed of an ideal marriage or had known happiness.” Sitting on my mother’s lap, I remember, while my aunt was describing the erotic scenes she heard, I would feel my mother’s legs quivering; I would feel the sexual tension in this young woman, probably anxious to make love.
Part of the house burned down as a result of the lightning bolt that killed my great-grandmother, and now we kept on crying, not because of those burnt palm fronds, which could be replaced, but because of the death of a man who had promised us Integrity Against Greed.
After the death of Chibás, things got easier for the political crooks who always managed, one way or another, to control the island of Cuba. In 1952 a military coup led by Fulgencio Batista brought him to power again, and it became impossible for the Orthodox Party, or any other party, to win elections. Batista’s dictatorship was repressive from the start, not only politically but morally as well.
One day we were preparing ñame [a tropical tuber] cuttings to be planted on the farm, when we saw a couple of country policemen coming our way. That filled us with dread; the police never made social calls. They came to arrest my uncle Argelio, who had had a sexual encounter with an underage peasant girl whose father had notified the police. My uncle was arrested and taken to jail. It was proven later that the girl had taken on several lovers before my uncle, and he was released. He nevertheless decided to act on his long-held plan to emigrate to the United States. In those days of extreme poverty, the dream of all who were down-and-out in Cuba was to go “north” to work. My uncle Argelio did go, and from the United States he sent us a photo in which he was steering a luxurious motorboat, his hair impeccably groomed even though the boat seemed to be moving at great speed. Many years later I discovered the trick: One would go to a special photographic studio and have one’s picture taken while sitting in a cardboard boat with a cardboard ocean as background. In Cuba everybody thought my uncle was driving his own boat.
In time some of my relatives decided to let my uncle start immigration procedures for them so they could go to the United States. It was not easy; thousands wanted to emigrate, and a visa was difficult to obtain. My aunt Mercedita made over twenty trips to the consulate in Santiago de Cuba to request a visa to the United States, which was for many years denied her. She was finally able to leave with Dulce María, and my “doctor games” behind the bed came to an end. Later my mother emigrated. Apparently she went as a tourist without permission to work but did work illegally, taking care of the children of those lucky enough to get a job in a factory. I can imagine my mother in some run-down apartment in Miami in the fifties, taking care of crying babies who were possibly more unbearable than I was. I imagine her trying to comfort them in her arms, trying to give them the love and affection she so seldom had time to give me, or perhaps was ashamed to show.