Decrepit Cuba

Decrepit Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Posted on June 9, 2015

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, 15 May 2015 — Cuba's sun beats down on
everything. Shrinking the eyes. Crushing the skin. Dehydrating us,
making us seem older than we have always been.

And it's not only Cuba's sun. It is Miami's sun, too. Which is
indistinguishable with so much uncivil barbarity.

Below that continuous light without gaps, which flattens out forms and
extinguishes colors, we Cubans have very little to do. That excessive
luminosity is called Castroism, and it existed before and will exist
after Castro.

There are no hues, there is no texture nor context. Nothing is subtle or
mysterious. Everything is body and corpse. Cuba like a great Castroite
caiman, from San Antonio to Maisí (that is to say, between Maceo and
Martí: the violence that decapitates and the violence of the demagogue).

From that country without shadows is what we Cubans escape. From its
history of eternal day, without nights in which to be oneself. With no
space for pleasure, understood as freedom and not as animalism. That is
why there is no possible return to an Island without imagination, where
everything is factual yet fictitious, where our life passes us by in a
kind of restless sleep yet it is impossible to dream.

Cuba has no State and has no God. In its midst, there does not yet exist
the first Cuban man who will survive that oversaturated absence of
light. (When one is born, they assassinate him in the plain light of
day.) To speak of hope in Cuba is to spit upon the remnants of our
intelligence, and even upon that instinct for self-preservation that
disguises our cowardice as dignity.

He who respects his love will leave Cuba immediately. To love in Cuba is
to betray love.

Go, Cubano. Go, Cubana. For you. For him, for her, for love.

Do not perpetuate with your pathos that Cuba that is only body and
corpse with no heart.

Source: Decrepit Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/decrepit-cuba-orlando-luis-pardo-lazo/