The Visitors I Prefer

The Visitors I Prefer / Fernando Damaso
Posted on August 9, 2013

If there is one thing that has always bothered me, it is the annoying
habit that most politicians, scientists, cultural figures, athletes and
others visiting the country at the invitation of the the authorities
have of telling us Cubans how good we have it, how happy we are, what
wonderful health care and education systems we enjoy, how productive and
well-developed our agriculture is, how much we have achieved in culture
and sports and other nonsense of this sort. This is like "showing a top
how to spin." They repeat the official propaganda lines like trained
parrots, displaying a complete ignorance of our day-to-day reality and
putting people off.

It is repeated so often that it seems to have become a global pandemic.
The contagion has affected people from Latin America, the Caribbean, the
United States, Europe, Asia, the Arab world and elsewhere.

At times I think it is nothing more than a "diplomatic wildcard," a way
to court those in powerful with the goal of securing more invitations
and future support. A form of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine."

If they realized that these simplistic and irresponsible statements are
immediately seized upon and repeated in the official media as part of
its continuing and systematic ideological propaganda campaign against
the population and how bad they sound to the citizens who have to put up
with the system they are praising, perhaps they would act differently.
But this would be like "trying to get pears from an elm tree." It is
precisely because they behave in this way that they are routinely
invited back and find themselves on the "friends list." That is to say,
friends of the government, not really of the Cuban people, whom they do
not know.

I prefer modest visitors, the kind with backpacks slung across their
shoulders, who stroll through our city, dirty and in ruins, mingling
with ordinary Cubans and asking them questions, eating ten-peso pizzas
for which they have not paid in hard currency while sitting on a carton
in the street, drinking from plastic water bottles because they are
aware of the dangers of drinking from the tap, and using the inefficient
public transport system. Those are the people who know us and can say
who we are and how we live!

9 August 2013

Source: "The Visitors I Prefer / Fernando Damaso | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-visitors-i-prefer-fernando-damaso/