Reason 1 (Part Two)

Photo: Ciro and me entering ETECSA at 19 and C, Vedado.

On Monday I went to ETECSA for the third time to see if the “Reason 1” was still in effect and if I would be without a telephone. Before going there I contacted some of “my sources” who, even though they couldn’t help me very much, made me feel better because having some “sources” is most reassuring.

The girl that met with Ciro and me asked me if we were “those disconnected by a decision of the Commercial Office” and sent us directly to the administration on the second floor. There we talked to a very kind woman who gave me her name and surname but I’m not going to put them here because I’m sure that she did what she could and even what she couldn’t, and she sounded quite unhappy with her world: throwing in the towel at State Security.

According to the latest information, in fact my phone wasn’t disconnected by any Commercial Office, but rather by an “unknown error someone ordered it disconnected.” When the office reconnected it, another “error” disconnected it again and since then “there have been many errors” every time they’ve tried to connect it. I was quite upset and told her it might be true of errors two and three, but regrettably she didn’t believe me about the Primary Error, or Reason 1 (the origin of everything that came after, a kind of “Big Bang” or “First Idea”). I was sorry it was she who had to endure my outrage, when in fact the one I wanted and should have been talking to was “The Creator of the Errors.” She was patient with her tired look and asked me to come back on Thursday, to see if the “problem” could be resolved.

She called me at the house an hour later.

- Good Claudia, your telephone is now connected.
- Thanks, we hope there won’t be any more problems.
- We hope.
However, even if my contacts couldn’t do much to help me, even one who said the phone was connected and was lying, I learned some details.

MLC: Moneda Libremente Convertible [Freely Convertible Money] (I was sure that it was Monitoreo de Líneas Conflictivas [Monitoring of Conflicted Lines] but I was wrong). I will never understand why they call it MLC if I don’t have any service in the assigned currency… phone company mysteries.

The other is a little sad and shows the impunity of the Secret Service on this little island: it turns out that once a week, at one of the ETECSA offices in this city, State Security arrives punctually. The workers leave the offices and wait outside some two hours, they (the faceless ones) do their work (no one knows what it is), thank the workers for their help, verbally of course, and then withdraw.