From our Bureau of Dark Moments in History with some assistance from our Bureau of Meditations on Waiting for Snow in Havana
The world changed while I slept, and much to my surprise, no one had consulted me. That’s how it would always be from that day forward. Of course, that’s the way it had been all along. I just didn’t know it until that morning. Surprise upon surprise, some good, some evil, most somewhere in between. And always without my consent.
I was barely eight years old, and I had spent hours dreaming of childish things, as children do. . .
I don’t remember getting out of bed. But I do remember walking into my parents’ bedroom. The shutters were open and the room was flooded with light. As always, my father was putting on his trousers over his shoes . . .
As he slid his baggy trousers over his brown wingtip shoes, effortlessly, my father broke the news to me: “Batista is gone. He flew out of Havana early this morning. It looks like the rebels have won.
“You lie,” I said.
“No, I swear, it’s true,” he replied.
My mother assured me it was true as she applied lipstick. . .
“You’d better stay indoors today,” she said. “God knows what could happen. Don’t even stick your head out the door.“
That day was the first of January, 1959.
Fade to black.
Yeah, man . . . admit it to yourself. That didn’t happen 66 years ago. It’s what’s happening still, this morning and every morning. Yeah. Just like that film Groundhog Day. It’s become your entire life, that morning. Every single day begins with that piece of news your father gave you. Except it all takes place in Spanish.
Se fué Batista. Salió de La Habana en un avión esta madrugada. Parece que ganaron los rebeldes.
Mentira . . .
No, te lo juro, es verdad.
And because I’m eternally eight years old, every morning since that morning when I hear those words, I cry like a child, as children do . . . I bawl as only children can . . . I howl . . .
And so do my father, mother, and brother, in the hereafter. En el más allá.
Yes, this morning is a recurring nightmare. And, yes, there is crying in the hereafter too, and vast unstoppable torrents of tears.
But, aye, God counts each and every one of those eternal tears and turns them into snowflakes.. Eternal snowflakes that will some day make Havana gleam in glorious white, as dazzling as Christ’s garments on Mount Tabor, when he was transfigured. .
Jesus, source of all compassion, love unbounded, love all pure, visit us with your salvation, let your love in us endure.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s even worse fighting for Cuba at this point. The demographics of the island has changed. Also, the people left behind for the most part have become like cattle. They live to eat, have sex and party. Look at how the cubanoids gathered together and held vigils for El Taiger that POS Cuban rapper who was killed recently. These are people who wouldn’t dream of uttering a syllable against the regime and much less holding a demonstration to denounce the regime. And look at how the cubanoids filled that 20,000 person statium in Miami to see that other POS Cuban rapper who came from the island and then starting chanting “suffre Otaola” instead of chanting “abajo con Raul y Diaz Canel!,” or “libertad!”
They hate Otaola more than they hate the regime! They are seriously twisted and brainwashed rabble.
At least the current crowd has a far better excuse than way too many of those who were neither born nor raised under the “revolution” but still wound up stabbing Cuba in the back. There was too much envy and opportunism, ultimately too much perversity, and that was not Fidel Castro’s fault–he simply used it to his advantage. Basically, Cubans failed Cuba and failed themselves.