By Francisco Almagro Dominguez
Every New Year's Eve, it is customary to promise yourself some things for the new one who is just beginning. They are almost always the same, and they are ordered in silence while eating the grapes peninsular style, enjoying the fireworks in North American style, or preparing the suitcase to go around the block, a Cuban way of anticipating the trip. They are commitments that are repeated in silence in an obsessive, repetitive way, one would say with mystical insistence. And more or less, like any obsession, it is accompanied by an action, a compulsion to alleviate it.
The most frequent self-assigned oaths involve losing weight, saving, making a postponed arrangement to the house or car, and continuing or starting studies. The first of these is accompanied by other steps. Reducing body weight requires, in turn, the commitment to attend the gym more or walk every day for 30-45 minutes. Also, having a "healthy" diet requires a high consumption of proteins and fats and the absence of carbohydrates. On the other hand, specialists recommend not consuming red meat and abstaining from alcohol. The first thing the obsessive does is buy the weight and put it in the room or bathroom. The (un)fulfilled self-promise lasts less than the weight: after 15 days, it remains there, like one more obstacle in the room.
Another end-of-year obsession is saving. There is no way to increase capital at rest. So, the creative and proactive person makes an "accounting sheet" with expenses and income, and if he is computer literate, he makes an Excel spreadsheet to keep the balance. By the end of next year, you can take a trip or buy a new stroller. It works better than weight loss. In the second month, he has a mishap and covers the expense with part of the savings, promising to return the amount to the income column. You will not review unnecessary costs, the first and most effective form of savings. And it will not be possible because it always rains wet: every month, a "mishap" prevents saving what is necessary or replacing what is spent in the emergency.
Silently, someone agrees to fix the fence of the house or a small leak on the roof. He has enough money to hire someone to do the job. But if it's something simple, he prefers to do it himself. He wants to save. Those with enough money saved, such as the bank, often lend to those who prove they do not need it. So, in the first days of January, he buys the tools, boards, and other belongings. Coincidentally, every weekend, there is a different complication. The fence is about to fall, and the roof leakage increases with the rains of April and May. In the end, hire those who do the work frequently. Only now, because of the damage, the repairs cost double or triple.
Those who promise to go back to school or start school after a prolonged absence, buy school supplies: a climber's backpack, rules, calipers, and 20-color markers that are useless. The illusion lasts a couple of weeks. For some reason, he begins to arrive late and not turn in homework because he falls asleep or has a lot of work; the prescription of the glasses must be updated because he does not see the blackboard from afar. In the third week, he receives the first reprimand from the teacher. So the teacher is useless. Neither does school. They have it "caught" with him. And the promise to finish what had never been completed is over.
But if it is political obsessions, we Cubans are going through sixty-six years of frustrating oaths. The phrase "next year we celebrate it in Havana" is in every tragicomic work of a historical exile in the process of extinction, in every speech of a cornered politician, and in every businessman whose dream is to economically reconquer the island of his ancestors. There are always reasons to foresee the fall of the dictatorship because its dysfunctionality in almost all orders – except in the surveillance and control of the citizens – is profound. Contrary to what other Cubans observe from the Miami balcony, the fact that it is not functional and miserable – in the most "synonymous sense of the term" – has given it an uncommon survival against all odds.
Meanwhile, behind the Bagazo Curtain, they dream that the 82nd Airborne Division will return to Granada II at any moment; the Yankees, as the communists themselves have announced so much, will come to the rescue of the Cubans imprisoned on the island prison and appropriate a country in ruins. But the so-called revolutionaries, Castro-Canelists, by conviction or depression, believe that Socialism and the Guidelines of the Party-State will save them from cachexia. At the beginning of the New Year – while one in a smug voice reads the Official Communiqué on television – they ask that there be in the capital an unrevealed hidden formula or a magical Leninist method for development that not even Gorbachev himself has been able to decipher. To do this, they rely on hundreds, thousands of enlightened economists making lectures, degree theses, and, above all, trips abroad to corroborate the defects of capitalism. The Cuban Model will be the only one in the history of humanity that will achieve the miracle of alchemy: turning garbage and discourses into fish and bread.
Let's imagine two Cubans, one on each shore, asking in essence for the same thing: peace and harmony, reunion and forgiveness. This leads us to think that without a deep desire for change, without the tenacity to endure the pain and the Odysseys' "sirens" tied to the mast of the ship – the resources to resist temptation – there will be no weight loss, savings, repairs, or studies. There will be a much less Homeland for all Cubans. Fortunately, those of us who have asked for that for 2025 are an overwhelming majority, and so many obsessions shouted from the rooftops cannot be wrong.
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