Bidding Farewell to the Year 2023

January 1, 2024

By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez

HAVANA TIMES – Well, the year is coming to an end, and I haven’t finished writing any of the several books that I already have quite advanced. I don’t think it has been a bad year for that reason; I would say it was sufficiently productive but inefficient in the finishing process. I believe that the year 2024 is going to be effective for completions, which predisposes for other beginnings.

That’s the dynamic of life, according to those who know.

No! I have to repeat what I told a friend; I am not predicting anything. People hear you speak, and they think you’re saying things you haven’t even thought about. And even if you deny it, they think you’re denying it as a joke. As if I had a crystal ball or had ever claimed to be a fortune teller.

It’s not for nothing because, without making a fuss, everyone is inside knowing that times are tough, and things are not going well. I think that, for many years, perhaps since the financial crisis of the early 1920s, known as the “lean cow” years, Cuba has not suffered such a severe economic crisis. Of course, this one still doesn’t compare to that; but if we consider the traditional legend that economic crises come in seven-year cycles… well, brace yourselves because tough times are ahead! As an old cha-cha-cha song by the America Orchestra used to say, in times when Enrique Jorrin was leading it, the father of this musical genre.

Regardless, you have to be with the times, because a shrimp that sleeps gets carried away by the current, and it’s better that they say: here ran a coward than here died a brave person, even if many want the opposite because the real issue is that nobody wants to take the bull by the horns.

There are a thousand theories to explain everything, but, in the end, the matter is not about making philosophical interpretations to categorize what is happening. Things are heating up in Havana, and when things are like this, nobody wants to get involved because nobody is looking for trouble. Those who have fully engaged have gotten burned and hats off to those who deserve it!

But one must understand, one must think and realize that the entrepreneurs, the willing ones, those who could play a certain leading role in the movie, are dedicating their enthusiasm, very democratically and very deservedly, to… What’s the term now? Oh, yes! Making their dreams come true. I say this without resentment. It seems to me that we are all selfish enough, and selfishness seems just fine… it’s worse for those who are egotistical, egomaniacal, and egocentric because not everyone is the same, and everyone should know the role they are playing.

Not that I want to become the guy with proverbs, but, gentlemen, the one who pushes isn’t the one who gets hit. And I understand perfectly the urgency of some, just as I understand the haste of others. Because these social, political, economic situations, where culture, traditions, and generational, psychological, and interpersonal levels have so much influence, creating biases of opinion and interests of all kinds, always create, as they have throughout history, resentments, misunderstandings, ambitious positions, dirty games, and manipulations, where the one who usually loses is the one who deserves it the least. As the old Darwin, whether mistakenly or not, who said, that’s not what’s on the table now. Hey! The big fish always eat the little one, the stronger dominates the weaker, the rich are there to live off the poor, and the white person is there to lead those of color. But what a cunning old man he was!

What needs to be done? Well, I don’t know about that. Did I announce that I was going to give some recipe? But something, yes, will happen at some point. Sooner or later? But what do I know? What I can tell you is that it never rains without clearing up, that it’s not always early even if you wake up early, and whatever it is, it will sound. The old Cuban farmers were wise; I always heard my father say that you can’t put the cart in front of the oxen.

And even a Chinese proverb brings, let’s say, a bit of comfort; to say something, although I know that many are already getting desperate. Especially from abroad. And one can even understand them and give them reason. But things will happen when they must happen because reality is what it is and not what one would like or what we like the most. It rains when it has to rain, and the person you like loves you if they want to, and if they don’t want to, you have to deal with it, even if it gives you a tantrum, so it’s better to save yourself. Well, the Chinese already said it, that’s what I wanted to say: if your ailment has no cure, why hurry? And if it has a cure, why hurry?

I leave you with a couple of quotes to think about, regarding anything that is felt, heard, said, and commented on about Cuba, and why not, also about other parts of the world:

“We were never freer than under Nazi occupation,” wrote Jean Paul Sartre, at the beginning of his work, “The Republic of Silence.”

“Being on the left is, like being on the right, one of the infinite ways that a person can choose to be an idiot: both, indeed, are forms of moral hemiplegia,” from Spanish philosopher Ortega y Gasset.