In a nation that was first thought, dreamed, before being institutionalized, it is known that the flags that we represented at the dawn were not bought in a store, but sewn by Cuban women.
In a nation that was first thought, dreamed, before being institutionalized, it is known that the flags that we represented at the dawn were not bought in a store, but sewn by Cuban women.
Nor was it commercially as the rosettes on the hats of the mambises who often, half-naked, fought in unequal conditions against Spanish colonialism. Like the little flags made for the soldiers' seal when they returned to the island after fighting against apartheid in Africa, they were made motu proprio.
Despite their scarcity of clothing, there is no news of a mambí dressed in Spanish uniform, using the peninsular flag or wearing the striped clothing worn by Cubans fighting alongside the colonial troops.
I have always been struck by how the nascent Rebel Army endeavored to possess, from the time when it was still a small nomadic group, its own uniforms, bracelets and flag, which were carried to the Sierra Maestra, along with ammunition and medicines, confronting enormous vicissitudes, after being manufactured in clandestinity. They were the same uniforms used by the fighters led by Frank País on November 30, 1956 to take the streets of Santiago de Cuba.
Or how, in moments of great scarcity, the literacy tutors, who numbered one hundred thousand, had a single type of lantern, uniform, flag and even a paean, which is now mockingly recalled by some momentary reggaeton singer, which would add that in the hardest years of the special period Cuban children and adolescents, often supported by solidarity from one family to another, did not stop to attend schools wearing their uniforms.
But equally remarkable is the absence among us, even in more buoyant economic times, of what my friend Omar Valiño calls the "industry of the shit" and how important is as a reproductive in the daily life of symbolic elements. Omar usually associates it with the show of baseball, which in the new context has lost its mass and recreational character for students and workers, when most of the games are performed during working hours and not night, for reasons of energy saving, while in the same hours of energy as water, electricity and manufactured gas are paid at home rates subsidized by those who practice somewhat less healthy and substantially less popular activities, for being expensive and exclusive, in the increasingly private bars of the capital. It is absurd to oppose bars, including private bars, but it is not easy to understand the logic of restricting the energy of recreation for many, while others, who are enriching themselves, received subsidized services,.
Having the privilege of a rich culture and history and an audiovisual industry that managed decades ago to construct iconic images, including those aimed at children, the presence of our identity in the daily visibility is extremely poor. Even more, when it is not limited to national symbols or has to do with the availability and affordability of products that at a given time projects such as Telarte achieved, launching on the street elements of Cuban identity with a high aesthetic level. In this sense, the economic viability of successful cases such as the umbrellas illustrated with works of the National Museum of Fine Arts, marketed by Artex with a wide aesthetic fretboard, merits study; is the only industrial product that carries Cuban elements and managed to be hegemonic among us.
I think that in the memorable television series, directed by Rudy Mora, Doble Juego, there is a moment in which the teacher invites her students to see the National Ballet at the Gran Teatro de La Habana. They all come in their best dressing, because they have never come to such a place, and they are meeting in the outskirts of the coliseum, until the last one arrives - a teenager who usually has a very negative, abusive and insensitive behavior - and we see how everyone looks between the astonishment and the mockery until the camera shows us why: the newcomer dresses head to toe with the American flag.
From then on I have not seen in the Cuban audiovisual a similar treatment - intentional and intelligent - that has been more systematic in associating the guayabera - Cuban national production - to corruption and dogmatism.
However, on May 1st, when we knew about of the execution of a political provocation with the American flag, prior to the massive parade of workers, by an individual who according to the newspaper Granma "is unemployed since 2002 and was sentenced to five years in prison for a crime.
This time, the externally funded system of publications to promote Cuba's return to capitalism reacted beyond the Cuban-American congresswoman's: uniting her voice to the "concern" expressed about the exconviction by the State Department and the most Recalcitrant of Miami's mediocracy, making the delinquent the heroic victim of the "ideological war" of the Cuban government who in "puerile and romantic boast" succeeded in explaining with his provocation the connection between common delinquency, annexionism and counterrevolution.
Perhaps it would have been pertinent, just as it happened with the brilliant contribution of the Congresswoman of ultra-right that recently announced her retirement, to take to a television spot the performance of the clown of turn, or to turn it into a humorous character that embodies the values that wanted to represent.
Translation: Liubis Balart