“General Sunhat” and the Moncada

"General Sunhat" and the Moncada / Miriam Celaya
Posted on August 7, 2013

HAVANA, Cuba, August, www.cubanet.org- A few days ago, I decided to to
explore around my neighborhood, Centro Habana, about people's opinion on
the evening of the general-president's speech to mark the 60th
anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks.

Neighbors, parking attendants, taxi drivers, forklift drivers,
self-employed jewelers, hallway drunks (their votes also count) and
known neighborhood persons, individuals spanning several generations
were the chosen sample to sound out opinions "from the bottom" They, the
"beneficiaries" of the violence of the past six decades, which has
become a source of legitimation of power, should have been the most
interested in the official dictate.

In vain. Of those questioned, none had seen the act, heard the speech or
witnessed the artistic gala. The wittier ones told me they had just
turned on the TV without the sound, waiting for the entire ceremony to
be over, so they said they had seen "Raul in uniform and a sunhat".
"Don't ask me anything, just tell me what you thought of General
Sunhat", one of the surveyed countered. It's marvelous what tact the man
on the street has to always discover the most obvious of any event.

Many of the members of the opposition and of independent journalism,
however, often listen to the official speeches. It is an exercise in
discipline or self-flagellation, depending on your point of view, in
which we train ourselves to read signs or to interpret the coded
language of the Druids in olive-green. Given the secrecy and the erratic
nature of official politics, there are few options left for us, so, at
the very least, we speculate about the intentions of the [ivory] tower.
However, this time we were left wanting: General Sunhat's speech
contributed nothing at all.

Obviously, only the attendees — guests or those obligated to attend —
under the punishing hot Santiago sun, and dissidents, set up at home in
front of our TVs, had the infinite patience to listen again to the
boring fable of what was really a clumsy attack on an army headquarters
of the Cuban Republic, once again glorified as an unparalleled act of
heroism in the most lackluster and deficient ceremony yet organized for
the occasion.

The speeches of the "friends" who attended the event, some presidents
and other individuals representing countries in the region, were also at
the height of the date: in the subsoil. Ignorance about the history of
this country, about the reality we live today and of the most painful
footprints on which Cubans walk today was obvious. It was no wonder, for
example, that the President of St. Lucia had the unfortunate idea to
remind us of the participation (interference) of the government of Cuba
in Africa during the war in Angola, according to him "an example of
solidarity and a feeling of racial equity" on the part of the Cuban
people. Some political leaders in the region can't understand that,
sometimes, the more proper thing is to remain discreetly silent.

As for the closing speech, its flatness stood out. Without any
achievement to celebrate, plans to announce, or ideas to propose on the
part of the government, this was, without a doubt, the most nondescript
of all speeches made in the history of the ritual embodied by the
revolutionary liturgy, held, this time, in a Santiago wrecked after the
passage of those other non-uniformed hurricanes, the natural ones that
have devastated the city in the past four years, and in the midst of the
embarrassing undeclared diplomatic crisis stemming from the detention in
Panama of the North Korean ship

Perhaps it would have been more propitious to delegate again the
uncomfortable task to the Dauphin Díaz-Canel, in his role as the
emergent du jour, in order to disguise, with the "freshness" of the
relay, the decadence that filtered through the commemoration, but maybe
the pressure of a closed anniversary forced the mandatory presence of
one of the protagonists of the epic. "There are still some of us left…"
said the general president himself, with a certain justified melancholy.
And those "some" have the difficult task, amid the national
ever-darkness, to continue selling the Moncada as a luminous dawn.

Thus, in the twilight of the lack of political or economic projects, the
chronic lack of productivity of the system, the failure of the reforms
and the general apathy, perhaps Castro II wanted to divert the attention
of public opinion by premiering his sunhat that contrasted sharply with
the well-pressed epaulets of his general's uniform. Something had to be
done, a touch of nonchalance in the midst of so much barren memory, so
those present would not fall asleep during the speech. Too bad that,
judging from the comments out there on the street, the results fell
short of the efforts.

But there is no need to be skeptical. Beyond the ridiculous, let's be
grateful: that unusual sunhat was the only novel touch throughout the
ceremony of the consecration of the past in a nation increasingly
strapped for the future.

Translated by Normal Whiting

5 August 2013

Source: ""General Sunhat" and the Moncada / Miriam Celaya | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/general-sunhat-and-the-moncada-miriam-celaya/