Me and the Soap Opera

Photo: Claudio Fuentes Madan

 

When a state decides to aim all its weapons at a citizen there is little he can do about it. Without access to the mass media, in a country with low Internet connectivity, with arbitrary laws against freedom of expression and with the impunity to defame, distort, lie and lay waste on national television to those who think differently, the possible victims’ options are limited.

On Monday it fell to Dagoberto Valdés, director of Coexistence magazine and also one of the brilliant minds of our battered civil society. Who’s next? No one knows.  Only when we see our faces discredited in trashy images on the program “Cuba’s Reasons,” will we learn whether or not we are actors in this drama.

I live on a confused island. There is nothing better than misinformation to sow confusion. So last week I was a bit upset: between the commentators on my blog who accuse me of being State Security, and State Security who accuses me of being a “rabid counterrevolutionary” -- the exact words said in an interrogation of a friend -- and the uncertainty of seeing myself on television, I was about to lose my cool. A luxury, of course, that I can’t afford because I have to take this, as the refrain says, “like a good sport.”

The era of the Serpas and Fontes is over for me. I don’t care who is and who isn’t State Security. I don’t care one whit what they put on TV. It makes no never mind to me if I’m sitting on the grass of G Street, or panic-stricken in a repudiation rally. I've hung up my gloves, I've said enough, this is as far as I go. I continue free in my blog, writing to be happy, to be grounded, and to dream of a new Cuba because, in any event, they’re already in retreat.