{"id":41752,"date":"2015-02-04T08:30:42","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T13:30:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/oncubamagazine.com\/?p=41752"},"modified":"2015-02-08T17:27:57","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T22:27:57","slug":"intimate-homelands-of-internationalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/cuba\/science-cuba\/health-in-cuba\/intimate-homelands-of-internationalism\/","title":{"rendered":"Intimate homelands of internationalism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reynaldo \u00a0\u00a8Coqui\u00a8 Villafranca must have died ten years ago, on the main promenade of Los Palacios town, when a very macho man, feeling mocked, stabbed him in the belly several times. Minutes earlier, in the town\u00b4s cabaret, Coqui had made of the would-be murderer the target of a playful gay joke; perhaps a mild flirtation or a somehow spicy compliment, nothing too evil.<\/p>\n

\u00a8My son was always like that\u00a8, Justa Antigua says and moves her hands in the air, loosening them, \u00a8 a practical joker\u00a8<\/p>\n

He stayed for weeks in intensive care, technically dead.<\/p>\n

\u00a8They put him plastic bowels and saved him\u00a8, Alicia Cordero, stooped and small, says-. \u00a8But then we started to worry, because Coqui had to fart, and was not doing it. And we all wanted him to finally fart to see if the surgery had worked. Then, he finally did it. We partied.<\/p>\n

The story is petty, but if he had died that time, not now, in January 2015, his death would have its advantages. He would have been buried in the town cemetery, a few blocks from his home, surrounded by many other known dead, not of those strange dead people that accompany him today, who must turn everything even more inhospitable for Villafranca.<\/p>\n

Although the death by stabbing would have had its weaknesses . It would have not been international news, would not even have gone from being what deaths are in small towns: some initial curiosity in his case, a little more, since it would be a murder, some heavy nostalgia, and after much tedium, until another dead come to replace it.<\/p>\n

We are on January 28. Villafranca, in brief, died ten days ago, from malaria with cerebral complications. He had just turned forty-three years old. He was a nurse, and one of the 165 members of the “Henry Reeve” Medical Brigade that since early October 2014 the Cuban government sent to Sierra Leone to combat Ebola. It is the second member that dies, and the first of health professionals.<\/p>\n

That is the reason for my being in the living room of the house of Alicia Cordero – 19\u00aa, 28th<\/sup> street where Villafranca rehearsed many times in from of the TV set his singing in English of Cindy Lauper, and Whitney Houston songs, to then cross-dress and participate in evening activities organized by the municipal authorities in the Ranch\u00f3n of Los Palacios.<\/p>\n

\"Alicia<\/a>
Alicia Cordero \/ Photo: Carlos M. \u00c1lvarez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Everything legal, Nereida Hernandez, Chief District, says.<\/p>\n

That\u00b4s why I’m crossing the street, entering a tenements building, knocking on the number 16th<\/sup> door, asking permission to enter, moving through the living room, filled with broken dolls, Santeria shrines in the corners, then the bedrooms, stinking, dark, the kitchen, badly painted in dirty blue, walking out into the patio, to find a hose dripping, clothes on a line, a rusty water tank, an dfinally getting to the hovel where Villafranca used to sleep, segregated from the rest of the family, a very miserable wooden structure.<\/p>\n

\u00a8I told you, it is a kimbo (mud dwellings seen in traditional Angolan villages) Nereida whispers<\/p>\n

For the first time, Justa starts crying inconsolably. She asks for her son to be back. It is logical, but it amazes me. Justa has spent the afternoon saying that we must settle for what God determines. And if Coqui escaped much worse deaths, and came to die now, suddenly, it was because it was written. To me it seemed clear that such an equation — unexpected death of a child-Almighty\u00b4s supreme decision-resignation of mortals, hid a powerful dose of cruelty, and very little love. But now I see her mourn with that peculiar cataleptic crying of mothers, and I think of what this lady has gone through, and does, clearly justifies her for having kept an impassive attitude or just relaxed before death, at least in appearance.<\/p>\n

I try to comfort her and, at the same time, look around, capturing the state of affairs. There is an iron table with a tablecloth of flowers, an electric burner on, another rusty and broken stove, muddy pot of beans, a greasy rag, a coffee pot without lid, several jars of different sizes, an empty bottle of beer, orange skins, and clumps of rice on the tablecloth. There, on a smaller table, a Russian TV set, apparently broken.<\/p>\n

-Think that your son was a symbol for many, I say, and feel disgusted. But anything to comfort her.<\/p>\n

‘That I myself have explained her, Nereida says.<\/p>\n

The transcendence of death, which is always rude when compared with death itself, seems to calm her a bit.<\/p>\n

I step into the room. Two broken fans and old clothes: a cap with bent brim, a pair of rolled up pants. In the closet, a bundle of clothes intermingled, as if the closet were the lair of a dog. There are wooden boxes, crates, nets, a sink that was not installed, a powdered bed, a tattered curtain with seals of MLB teams. And in the bathroom, a broken toilet.<\/p>\n

Now, to all this, that, though a mess, does not seem so alarming, let’s add one or even two layers of filth, let us add scab, patches of soil, grease stains. To clothes, to fans, curtains, the tablecloths. Much neglect, much grayness, much God know what.<\/p>\n