Mirrors (78 page)

The voice of Sankara echoed around Africa and out to the world:

“We propose that at least one percent of the fabulous sums spent studying life on other planets be used to save life on this planet.”

“The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund deny us financing to dig down three hundred feet for water, but they offer it to dig down nine thousand feet for oil.”

“We want to create a new world. We refuse to choose between hell and purgatory.”

“We accuse those men whose selfishness causes the misfortune of their fellows. In the world, no one is yet held to account for the murderous attacks on the land and the air that destroy the biosphere.”

In 1987, the so-called international community decided to rid itself of this new Lumumba.

The mission was assigned to his best friend, Blaise Campaoré.

The crime placed Campaoré in power for life.

ORIGIN OF CUBA

Revolution, revelation: blacks set foot on beaches formerly closed to any whose skin might stain the water, and all of the Cubas that Cuba held exploded into the light of day.

Deep in the mountains, deep inside Cuba, children who had never seen a movie made friends with Charlie Chaplin, and volunteers brought reading and writing to far-flung places where such strange wonders were unknown.

In an attack of tropical lunacy, the entire National Symphony Orchestra took Beethoven and his cohorts to villages that had fallen off the map, and the euphoric residents scrawled posters that invited:

“Come dance to the National Symphony! It’s hot!”

I was out in the East, where colorful snails fall like rain from the trees, and the blue mountains of Haiti peek over the horizon.

On a dusty path, I met up with a couple.

She was on a donkey, riding under an umbrella.

He, on foot.

The two were dressed for a party, queen and king of these hamlets, invulnerable to time or mud: not a wrinkle, not a stain violated the whiteness of their attire, which had been waiting years if not centuries in the back of a closet ever since the day of their wedding.

I asked them where they were going. He answered:

“We’re headed for Havana. To the Tropicana Cabaret. We’ve got tickets for Saturday.”

And he patted his pocket.

I CAN SO

In 1961, a million Cubans learned how to read and write, and thousands of volunteers erased the mocking smiles and pitying looks they got whenever they said what they planned to accomplish.

Some time later, Catherine Murphy collected their stories:

• Griselda Aguilera:

My parents taught literacy here in Havana. I asked to go along, but they wouldn’t let me. Every morning very early, the two of them would head off until nighttime and I’d stay home. One day, after so much whining, they finally let me. I went with them. Carlos Pérez Isla was the name of my first student. He was fifty-eight. I was seven.

• Sixto Jiménez:

They didn’t let me go either. I was twelve, I knew how to read and write, and every day I’d ask and argue, but no. It’s really dangerous, my mother said. And right then was when the invasion took place at the Bay of Pigs, those criminals came to take revenge, they came with blood in their eyes, those people, the ones who used to own Cuba. We knew who they were. In the old days they set our house on fire twice up there in the mountains. That was when my mother packed my knapsack. Bye-bye, she said.

• Sila Osorio:

My mother taught literacy in the mountains beyond Manzanillo. She was assigned a family with seven children. None of them knew how to read or write. My mother lived in their house for six months. During the day she harvested coffee, carried water . . . At night, she taught. Once everyone had learned, she left. She arrived there by herself, but she didn’t leave by herself. Imagine that: if it hadn’t been for the literacy campaign, I wouldn’t exist.

• Jorge Oviedo:

I was fourteen when the volunteers turned up in Palma Soriano. I’d never been to school. But I went to the first literacy class. I drew a few letters and I realized: this is for me. And the next morning I slipped out of the house and took to the road. I had the volunteers’ manual under my arm. I walked a long way until I came to a town deep in the mountains of the East. I introduced myself as a literacy teacher. I gave the first class, repeating everything I’d heard back in Palma Soriano. I remembered every detail. For the second class I studied the manual, or rather I guessed at what it said. And for the following ones . . . I taught literacy before I was literate. Or maybe it happened all at once, I don’t know.

PHOTOGRAPH: THE WORLD’S MOST POPULATED EYES

Havana, Plaza of the Revolution, March 1960. The bearded ones have been in power a little more than a year.

A ship has been blown up in the port. Seventy-six workers dead. The ship carried weapons and munitions for Cuba’s defense, and the Eisenhower administration would not permit Cuba to defend itself.

A multitude fills the streets of the city.

From the podium, Che Guevara observes so much rage concentrated in one place.

He has the crowd in his eyes.

Alberto Korda snaps the picture.

His newspaper does not publish it. The editor sees nothing special.

Years will pass. The photograph will become a symbol of our times.

COMEBACK KID

What is it about Che Guevara? The more they manipulate and betray him, the more he rises anew. There is no comeback kid like him.

Could it be because Che said what he thought and did what he said? In this world words and deeds so rarely meet, and when they do they fail to say hello, because they do not recognize each other. Perhaps that is why he is still so dangerous.

FIDEL

His enemies say he was an uncrowned king who confused unity with unanimity.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that if Napoleon had a newspaper like
Granma,
no Frenchman would have learned of the disaster at Waterloo.

And in that his enemies are right.

His enemies say that he exercised power by talking a lot and listening little, because he was more used to hearing echoes than voices.

And in that his enemies are right.

But some things his enemies do not say: it was not to pose for the history books that he bared his breast to the invaders’ bullets,

he faced hurricanes as an equal, hurricane to hurricane,

he survived six hundred and thirty-seven attempts on his life,

his contagious energy was decisive in making a country out of a colony,

and it was not by Lucifer’s curse or God’s miracle that the new country managed to outlive ten U.S. presidents, their napkins spread in their laps, ready to eat it with knife and fork.

And his enemies never mention that Cuba is one rare country that does not compete for the World Doormat Cup.

And they do not say that the revolution, punished for the crime of dignity, is what it managed to be and not what it wished to become. Nor do they say that the wall separating desire from reality grew ever higher and wider thanks to the imperial blockade, which suffocated a Cuban-style democracy, militarized society, and gave the bureaucracy, always ready with a problem for every solution, the alibis it needed to justify and perpetuate itself.

And they do not say that in spite of all the sorrow, in spite of the external aggression and the internal high-handedness, this distressed and obstinate island has spawned the least unjust society in Latin America.

And his enemies do not say that this feat was the outcome of the sacrifice of its people, and also of the stubborn will and old-fashioned sense of honor of the knight who always fought on the side of the losers, like his famous colleague in the fields of Castile.

PHOTOGRAPH: FISTS HELD HIGH

Mexico City, Olympic Stadium, October 1968.

The Stars and Stripes waves triumphantly on the highest flagpole, while the strains of the national anthem of the United States ring out.

The Olympic champions mount the podium. Then at the climactic moment, gold medalist Tommie Smith and bronze medalist John Carlos, both black, both Americans, raise their black-gloved fists against the night sky.