Author: Maria Matienzo

Maritza is my favorite. She’s beautiful and intelligent. She’s one of the most talented women I’ve ever known in my short but intense life. I have nothing to say about her that isn’t positive.

Less than a month ago I was invited to write for a national publication. Four of us writers were willing to send in reviews on a weekly basis. On what? – art, theater, music, dance…whatever appeared.

Perhaps in other places they try to distribute the wealth by handing out bread and fish, like Jesus Christ did. But what saddens me here is the spectacle of what happens when one has to contemplate the distribution of poverty.

Though I who usually speak as an average woman when narrating a story, this time I prefer to speak as a government functionary: official X from cultural institution Z.

I’ve always believed that being an artist is an attitude. It’s not enough to create a work that is sold or published; it’s not enough that in certain circles of power you’re seen as an artist, or that you see yourself as different. You have to feel a sense of anguish when a certain amount of time passes without writing, without photographing, without painting – in short, without creating.

I believe in signs and good beginnings of the week. I also believe in people who I hardly know but who tell me their stories without inhibition and allow me to see what they’ve learned from life.

For those of us who suffer the “marble syndrome,” or who engage in the petrifaction of our heroes by transforming them into empty statues, we find ourselves face to face with a Marti who masturbates, who disregards the economic problems of his family, who lives off the charity of his good friends to pursue his dreams.

There are certain types of personalities who are repeated, like in the spiral of the history of a nation. For example, there were once overseers with certain levels of education who were hired by slave owners to whip the black slaves and thus ensure that sugarcane was cut; or those who served as mercenaries for the Spanish to track down members of the independence army. Some of these types are still around.

No one thinks about what a psychiatric hospital must be like inside or how it functions. We don’t think about how people who are mentally ill are treated, or how they got to that point, or if it’s reversible, or if once they’ve entered they can ever leave their asylum. Madness —like jail and death— is terrifying.

I just wonder: Does there exist only one way of thinking about Cuba? What type of education is it that attempts to produce homogeneity, some sole way of thought, that doesn’t allow questioning or diversity of thought and action? Am I misinterpreting what I read?