The X-Ray as Therapy

The décor seems haphazard, but that is the result of the crush of people—a waiting room filled with political slogans and a huge poster from which the Maximum Leader points his finger at you. Nobody looks you in the eye and few interact, as if they know that every word spoken in the Office of Immigration and Aliens will be recorded. Among those seated in the waiting room not one is an immigrant, much less a foreigner, but the euphemisms by which the island's official institutions are named is based on the science of encryption. You are not here to get an exit permit, the authorization to travel designed to remind you of your permanent condition as the child of Daddy State, who will never let you leave the house freely. In fact, you have come to the mansion at 17th and K in el Vedado district to perform—an almost theatrical enterprise where life gives you the script and you let yourself be led by it. There will be no applause, nor any exit permit.

You have a microphone in your pocket and a friend follows you—through the window—with his cell phone camera until they call your name. You know perfectly well what is going to happen in there: They will ask you if you have family members who have deserted, or if you own any property. They will inquire about whether or not you belong to any "little group" and will be a little more emphatic when they inquire about whether or not you are member of Las Damas de Blanco [a group of relatives and friends of political prisoners arrested in the Black Spring of 2003. Weekly since the arrest, they have marched silently in Havana]. Then you will have to tell them the reasons for your trip. A prize received from some place—you will say with very little hope—while the official who is meeting with you will make a gesture that can be translated as, "Ah...another counterrrevolutionary prize." Your only consolation comes from knowing that the tiny technological gadget in your pocket is recording every one of these words that lead—inevitably—to a new denial of permission to travel. You leave the place with your trophy, in the form of an MP3 recording. It is time to complete the staging.

Outside you extract the entrails, playing the recording as therapy—highly effective when trapped in a totalitarian state. The powers-that-be count on the victim's silence, for the stigmatized to simply turn the page. What worries the authorities are the exhibitionists, those who refuse to hide, under their clothes, the atrocities committed by others. Undressing in public does not have to be the shortest path to shame, rather it can be the key to protecting yourself and protesting against a system that wants to reduce you to obedience.

So, you post on the web, where everyone can see it, the recording you made in that dreary office, and with it you post your face, your ID card number, your whole life, in hopes that such an exorcism will save you. You cannot avoid the fact that, along with the viewers who identify with you, and those who are bored, there also will be the faces in the shadows, searching through your stories, looking for some weakness they can use to shut you up. And nobody thinks to drop the damn curtain!