{"id":290694,"date":"2023-10-27T11:07:48","date_gmt":"2023-10-27T15:07:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=290694"},"modified":"2023-10-27T11:22:15","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T15:22:15","slug":"apparentness-about-the-dialogue-with-emigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/apparentness-about-the-dialogue-with-emigration\/","title":{"rendered":"Apparentness about the dialogue with emigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

When my grandmother left Cuba, I wrote her a letter. She responded by appreciating that, being so young, I could understand the reasons for her departure, accompanying my closest aunt and her small children. Years later, like someone returning a ring or a talisman, my aunt gave me that letter, written when I was 19 years old. I keep the two letters as points of a dialogue that was never interrupted within me.<\/span><\/p>\n

A few days ago I tried to explain the dialogue with emigrants as <\/span>an encounter with many shores<\/b><\/a>. I referred to the policy initiated in 1978, its strategic meaning, its intra-history and its social context, dimensions that are not always aligned. But it is clear that this dialogue is much more than that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reasoning about the vicissitudes of our public debate in theater and cinema, I commented that the relationship with those who left has been among their main themes for a long time. I mentioned <\/span>Weekend in Bah\u00eda<\/span><\/i> (1987), by Alberto Pedro, where two characters who were in love meet again, and explain why she decided to leave and he to stay. Their dialogue in bed does not exactly resort to discourses about freedom or socialism, as is natural. The same author later vindicated <\/span>Celia Cruz<\/b><\/a>\u00a0and the music that unites us, in <\/span>Delirio habanero<\/span><\/i> (1994). <\/span>La familia de Benjam\u00edn Garc\u00eda<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(1990), by Gerardo Fern\u00e1ndez, had taken the bull by the horns, getting into the most sensitive part of the division, the family schism.<\/span><\/p>\n

The reader will notice that I put a date on all these works, because mixing the 1990s or the present with the Gray Five-Year Period (1971-76), in addition to ignorance or bad faith, gives rise to confusion. Indeed, if in such public media as theater and cinema, it has been possible to conquer that space, not to mention what the narrators have been able to say, without allowing themselves to be muzzled or having to ask permission. The underlying lesson, the same as in the social sciences and other fields of culture, is that what is worth, costs. Good justifications can always be used to go overboard or keep quiet.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cuban cinema did not stop portraying this relationship, from the separations of the 1960s to the returns of the 1980s. In <\/span>Lejan\u00eda<\/span><\/i> (1985), by Jes\u00fas D\u00edaz, the mother who returns loaded with cheap presents, and the son she left behind, don\u2019t understand each other; but the Cuban-American cousin does have things to talk about with him, even though they are both very different, whether they are dreams to share or diverse desires that manifest themselves when they start talking on a rooftop, away from the street noises and family grudges.<\/span><\/p>\n

On another rooftop, thirty years later, where <\/span>Regreso a \u00cdtaca<\/span><\/i>\u00a0(2015) takes place, with a script by <\/span>Leonardo Padura<\/b><\/a>, Cuban actors and staging, the one who left did so out of \u201cfear of becoming an informer and betraying his friends.\u201d Those who stayed, for their part, are nothing more than frustrated, opportunists or \u201cbelievers\u201d in the Revolution. The one who returns from self-exile and repatriates is because he decided, after sixteen years abroad, \u201cto do whatever he wants, and stop being afraid.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Among them, there is no \u2014 nor can there be \u2014 encounter with their presents or a resumption of lives, which have been emptied, but only a repertoire of memories and nostalgia of a past that is worth good times and youthful great times. Talking, yes. Dialogue, no.<\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, to build reencounters, \u201crecouplings,\u201d and dialogue, it is necessary to understand the political rupture and confrontation that precedes and contextualizes them. The field of art and literature also includes them in all their intensity.<\/span><\/p>\n