(Re) visa

Roly was already looking for a plan B. Since the official statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba made it clear that the consular offices in Washington would close because they cannot operate their bank accounts, he began feeling an uncomfortable tingling, an uneasiness that even deprived them of sleep.

Roly is obviously Cuban, but for more than 20 years he’s been living in the United States. He decided to go one day and when given the opportunity came he didn’t look back. However, he left behind too many beloved, indispensable people. That’s why Roly returns whenever he can, as long as he has left enough dollars after so many bills and insurance, provided they give him the visa.

So when bilateral panorama between the island and the mainland darkened further, the first thought that went through his mind was that his passport was about to expire and that without updating he could not spend the end of the year with his mother. She expects him every December as adolescents expect their boyfriends, or rather, as the son who is gone for so long. His mother could not bear that kind of heartbreak. Not at her age. Not now….

And Roly was looking for a plan B that included his spending the last days of 2013 hugging and kissing his old lady, and her standing in the doorway with arms akimbo and always the same words: “my son, you came.” He was thinking that maybe the route could be through a third country, flights to Bahamas and then to Havana, half hidden, and begging the Yoruba pantheon and the heavenly court a little bit of good luck for everything to go well.

So when this morning the headlines were the restoration of the consular services of Cuba in the United States he felt his soul returned to the body, as the protagonist of those soap operas where it seems to die, but no. Actually he does not understand much, or does not want to give too much to understand what happens on both sides of the Straits of Florida. It seems that the rope is stressed in excess occasionally, but not broken, and regrets that the walkers are people like him, who only want to see his mom and spend with her the end of the year.

Roly think it’s ridiculous that a bank will deny a nation the ability to operate its accounts, because ultimately, what a bank is engaged if not in that, and it doesn’t do it for free. If there was an argument he could try to understand, but to date he has not read or seen anything that convinces him. The truth is that now he is packing his bags, but worried because you do not know if they will give him enough time to have his papers in order. Only encourages him the image of his old lady in the porch. His old lady who does not know which bank M & T is, and why after all this time its executives decided to cancel the service to the Cuban consulate. His old lady who does not know, even, what specific place in America Washington is. She only knows that December is the happiest month of the year.