The caviar of the left

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

The other day Ciro and Gorki gave an interview to an Italian communist. They didn’t know he was a communist, of course. But all the same they gave it to him because they were giving interviews to the whole world despite my advice not to do it, because it’s not easy to be giving an interview to the security services, when what they want is for you to rot in prison and there you are, nicely answering questions.
According to Ciro’s version, Gorki was upset when the journalist told him that there were many things he should be thankful to the Revolution for, while he didn’t get upset because he wanted to get information out of him. According to Gorki’s version, Ciro got upset when the journalist said that the dissidents were all getting money from the U.S. government, while he had remained calm so that he could listen and know what he was thinking. Both versions agree that it was lucky I wasn’t there, because had I been I would have sabotaged the interview, with the usual expulsion from my house of Compañero European Communist Journalist.
I can converse with Cuban communists, in fact I do it often because I know a few (my mother-in-law, for example). We don’t last long, either of us, but I can listen to some of their arguments and refute them and try to convince them.
But with the Europeans, Americans, or anyone in the developed Western world, I can’t. I even have patience with young Latin Americans, because I believe they’ve been brainwashed, just like us, and to top it all off they’re living in Cuba as if this was a paradise, while in their countries they sell this government as the model for the solution to all their problems… I only hope it doesn’t become a reality, for the sake of their children.
It makes me want to vomit when a Spaniard or a Frenchman or an Italian tells me that the Cuban Revolution is the bastion of the perfect society in this capitalist world where the selfishness blah blah blah… earning $5,000 a month and vacationing in Varadero, really democracy makes no sense!
Once at Claudio’s, an American about 50 told me that he felt very good that Cubans didn’t have the right to buy cars. “Why would you want a car if you don’t have to travel very far to get to work? Back in the U.S. I don’t have a car and I don’t feel the need to travel very far.”
The part about not traveling very far for work wasn’t clear to me, where would he have gotten such a statistic? But I left it and didn’t refute it. Why? The best thing was when his 15-year-old fiancée arrived. I had to ask her what she thought about the fact that her boyfriend was never going to buy her a car.