Author: Irina Echarry

The Rapid Response Brigades were created from worker “volunteers” to put down “malicious” expressions by people. Be it with words, or if necessary with blows, their role is to convince people of their mistaken actions.

Ricardo is a neighborhood hero. One time he brought home two jars of olives for an old woman who complained about how she hadn’t tasted them in ages, and another time a bottle of rum for the farewell of a friend who was leaving for Europe.

Our work with the turtles was carried out at night. We would wait for them to come up onto the beach, where we would leave them alone until they begin laying their eggs. We would then count the eggs, mark the nest and put a tag on its right flipper to be able to identify it at another time.

Since I was little, I’ve always heard the expression ‘There’s strength in unity’, but sincerely, I hadn’t seen it practiced for many years. We Cubans are so accustomed to negligence that it seems something normal, something we need not complain about.

Children were pulling up plants: “death to the weeds,” they were saying, even though it was chamomile, aloe and oregano. I explained to them that what they were doing was wrong because those plants have curative properties. They didn’t listen.

During the day we dedicated ourselves to hiking, making camp, swimming in the sea, inventing a way to cook with firewood (at times we had to gather the firewood from far away) and relaxing a little. At night came the work with the turtles.

A neighbor cut up an old bra that she had in storage and used one cup for a homemade surgical mask; she forced her nephew to put on the other one. Apparently the kid got upset with her dimwitted behavior. “Adolescents don’t understand epidemics,” I told her when she recounted the incident to me.

At lunchtime we found the La Terraza Restaurant, visited by Hemingway in his time. It was decorated with stuffed swordfish, fish tanks set into the wall, and fishing nets. At certain tables you felt as if you were eating on the sea. The menu: fish and shellfish, of course.

Dead people don’t say what they feel, and they don’t allow others to. They’re the people who don’t grasp that we can be dead by inaction, by disillusionment. A person who expresses themselves out loud is alive. Nor do they fear death; to the contrary, they cling to life and fight for its betterment.

At first I thought that they had trapped a pickpocket; then it seemed to me that perhaps the woman was shrieking at one of those people who take advantage of any uproar to touch us where they enjoy it most. I found my spot at the end of the line, and for lack of anything better to do while waiting for the bus to arrive, I searched out an advantageous spot to find out why the woman was screaming.