Before Fidel: The Cuba I Remember

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR The presidency of Carlos Prío Socarrás suffered all the ills of the previous Auténtico administration without retaining the few safeguards that had prevented the country from plunging into total chaos between 1944 and 1948. Now as the 1940s were approaching their end, Cuba seemed more like a large raft adrift at sea than a securely anchored piece of land, and there was no sense of political measure or proportion that anyone could discern. Street shootings increased in frequency and intensity, and official corruption reached heights never experienced before; the more outlandish and bizarre the act, the more likely it was to be committed. Politicians no longer bothered to go through the motions of disguising their actions, like the minister of the treasury who brought a truck around to pilfer the public vaults and who, without any bureaucratic circumvention or legal smoke screen, just took the cash home; or the mayor of Havana who carted away the City Hall furniture after running out of things to steal; or the ordinary policemen who supplemented their salaries by hitting on every merchant in the neighborhood for goods or cash or both. The president himself was believed to be on drugs because there was no rational explanation for his behavior and for his apparent total lack of control. The few public figures who voiced outrage got nowhere in an atmosphere saturated with cynicism and apathy. Even the traditional guardians of public honor and idealism, university students, had fallen prey to thievery and assassination. The island resembled an asylum for the criminally insane where the inmates were free to go about as they pleased, while an orchestra played their trumpets and their maracas and their drums in a deafening raucousness of uncoordinated sounds that seemed to bother no one as it conjured an air of hysterical ebullience and glee. 50 But cynicism and apathy were largely masquerade, cover and escape valves for pent-up anger and frustration, ways to avoid facing up to the pitiable reality we all knew we were living. Tango is pure melancholy expressed in language that aspires to poetry, and its lyrics and its music are perfectly matched for conveying a sense of unavoidable and irreversible sadness, and the Portuguese fado exudes irrepressible gloom in sound and melody, but traditional Cuban popular songs often manifest a sort of schizophrenic malady in which the sadness of the lyrics conflicts with the gaiety of rhythm and beat, and sometimes, after a lachrymose recitation of sorrows and calamities, the exuberance of the music pushes sadness aside, and the song ends with melody and lyrics in a mood totally different from its beginning; the original gloomy temper ignored, discarded, supplanted by a beat and rhythm that keep no connection with the initial unhappiness, as in “Lágrimas Negras” (Black Tears), which goes: Aunque tú me has echado en el abandono aunque tú has muerto todas mis ilusiones en vez de maldecirte con justo encono en mis sueños te colmo de bendiciones. Sufro la amarga pena de tu partida Siento el dolor profundo de tu traición y lloro sin que sepas que el llanto mío tiene lágrimas negras tiene lágrimas negras como mi vida (Although you have abandoned me although you have killed all my illusions instead of condemning you with just anger in my dreams I shower blessings upon you. I suffer the bitter sorrow of your departure I feel the deep pain of your betrayal I cry without you knowing that my cry has black tears black tears like my life) and then, radically and suddenly shifting rhythmic, lyrical and emotional tempo: ch apter four 51 Tú me dices que sí y yo te digo también contigo me voy mi santa aunque me cueste morir (You tell me, yes and I also say yes with you I go my sexy girl even if it kills me) Although in inverse order, the feeling Cubans expressed during the years of the Prío administration ran with parallel logical disjunction between careless cynicism and romantic idealism, and it was like being at a party where everyone was desperately trying to have a good time while they could because they all knew that it was going to end up in a brawl. Relative to its number of inhabitants or square feet of territory, Cuba must have had the largest pantheon of heroes of...