50: An eternal summer

In Fernando Pérez’s film Life is to Whistle people yawn and faint. Cuban citizens (forgive the oxymoron) sometimes burn out the equanimity chip under their Caribbean skulls. Then some of them walk naked in the parks. Others jump off roofs or bridges. Some set themselves to rowing and rowing toward the maritime horizon. And some decide to take a nap in the middle of the street along the Malecón. They don’t want to stand up any more. They’re lying down. They’ve stretched out, surrendered. Like corpses. It’s called constitutional exhaustion, and it’s catching. Soon the Island’s repressive police will be dedicating themselves not to throwing Cubans to the ground, but rather to getting them up.

Lying down could be today’s most dangerous activity for a power that has spent half a century mobilizing the masses. Like a domino effect against despotism, a single Cuban could infect a whole people tired of summers spent in the vertical mess of the uniformed and bored with the thousand and one “volunteer” work activities.