Luis Felipe Rojas, Translator: Raul G.
It is an outrageous race, a trip which has no other alternative than to
return home with a lump of bread, a bottle of soda, or whatever bit of
money to at least go to bed with some dignity. In this Eastern area of
Cuba fortune tellers, herb specialists, and women who clean-iron-cook
have swarmed up once again, all for the sake of getting a plate of food
or making ten pesos in national currency. Plumbers, lawn cleaners, and
stove repairmen- professions that are normal- are also abundant. But
there have also flourished those who purchase gold watches,
silversmiths, and those who specialize in knocking down coconuts from
trees. In cities like Holguin and Santiago de Cuba, neighbors who work
in the Immigration offices and who are seeking a bit of money even offer
to fill out the countless forms which the countries' bureaucracy
requires be submitted with no errors.
Two of the best cellphone technicians I know are not older than thirty.
A young woman, contemporary in age with them, has a very long line
outside her house every day: all those people want to get their
computers out of hell, wake the motherboard, speed up its operating
velocity, or change the internal modem. Being a technician who has not
yet graduated, she tries to assist them and earn her living. For some
time now in my neighborhood, there is also a young girl going around
offering pedicures. Discrete, clean, and with wholesome values, she
assured me that she could only tend to three clients every morning, for
there are many elderly people who request her services. In the afternoon
she receives English lessons and at night she helps out women who work
during the day.
Musicians, spiritualists, leather workers, dollar traffickers, tobacco
makers, and aged rum specialists. These are some of the services which
dodge state inspections. They are a mass of men and women who walk in
silence off to their first job of the day, the first hard currency which
weighs in their pocket and which assures them a piece of bread, a soap,
a pound of pork meat. They are an army which cannot be detained by
walls, absurd prohibitions, or mental barbed wires.
Translated by: Raul G.
14 August 2011
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