Erasmo Calzadilla’s Diary

In the dystopian novel I wrote about in my previous post, The Planet of the Apes, society stagnated for thousands of years because the orangutans – the planet’s teachers and custodians of the official truth – would pass down the same dogmas to their students, again and again. After giving the Cuban History high-school syllabus a quick glance, I’ve come to the conclusion that Cuba’s educational system – at least as far as its ideological aspects are concerned – is run by orangutans.

I have been a sci-fi addict ever since I discovered the works of Jules Verne, back in the tender years of my childhood. However, for a while, nothing interesting came my way and I got disconnected from science fiction altogether. Now, since I own a computer, I’ve been revisiting the genre more and more.

A few days ago, I had to do some repair work around the apartment where I live and had no other choice but to shut down the computer and bite the bullet. When I finished working every night, exhausted, I would ask myself how anyone in their right mind could devote their entire life to something like that.

One of the most significant socio-cultural events Cuba is witnessing today is something we could call the “Revolt of the Rabble”. This issue is cause for concern, particularly for those who feel most affected by it: the older generations, people who have other values and are unwilling to renounce them, intellectuals and those interested in social matters.

Thanks to movie pirating, the mockumentary Seal Team Six: The Raid on Osama Bin Laden, which premiered at the end of 2012, has already hit the streets of Havana. “What a great movie,” the buddy who lent it to me said. “They’ll never be able to show it in theaters or the TV here.”

I hadn’t seen a spectacle as ridiculous and sad as the now-concluded congress of Cuba’s Federation of University Students (FEU) in a long time. As I watched the young students speak their minds at the gathering (in the segments shown on TV, at least), I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Till recently, school and repression were for me synonymous. At least, this is how I felt about Cuba’s educational system, which devotes arduous efforts to inculcate distorted values in you from the time you enter pre-school urges you to follow in the footsteps of someone you don’t yet know from the first grade on and…

My portable Wikipedia is my personal plane and time machine, and boy do I enjoy using it! The other day, I used it to look up the year 1913, to get a sense of what was happening in the world a hundred years ago. I got sucked in by the article and went on to read a pile of really interesting things. Let me tell you about some of them.

There are many opinions I do not share with Yoani Sanchez (I don’t follow her blog much either), but if her provocations, complaints, brilliant ideas or cyber-gossip helps shake the permafrost, the frozen subsoil of Cuban politics, then, hell, my respects to the tube worm.

In spite of phenomena such as the proliferation of aggressive fish species, the creation of artificial land bridges, irresponsible sugar-cane harvesting practices, the use of transgenic products and the propagation of marabou across our fields and cities, Cuba continues to be a prodigious island in terms of biodiversity.