The Uncertain Legitimacy of Insult
By Eduardo N. Cordovi Hernandez
HAVANA TIMES – In Cuba, as in any other place in the world, there exists something like an unwritten code that determines that: one should be scandalized by certain incidents. Perhaps more so by some than others, but these are not crimes provided for and punished by law, but rather certain infractions or presumed indiscipline for which nothing extraordinary happens. However, if you commit them the people present or nearby stop and look at you or at each other, in a way that denounces a state of disapproval as if you were a threat, and they were on the first step of insult.
It would be overwhelming to establish a series of such circumstances. I’ll give a couple of examples as evidence that they are solid models that at one time seemed immovable; however, decades later they faded away and gave way to others.
Before the year 1959, at least in Cuba and as far as I know; if a woman got divorced, it was almost a tragedy, because the act of separating from her husband left her in the crosshairs of discredit, marked her as an easy prey, somewhat less than a prostitute. Not because prostitutes were women who had the whole town shouting insults at them wherever they went, but quite the opposite, they were practically ignored or treated with hypocritical, not ironic, visible respect. Everyone knew who they were and they knew what people thought of them, even if it wasn’t said. People looked at them, and they were looked at. Period! And that was enough disaster because that was the offense.
The divorced woman was also like an insult to decent people. She was morally dirty, fell into the limbo of the danger of becoming just anyone, for two reasons. One, if she was the one who separated, it was evidence of doing it very consciously. That was more than a fault already; and two, if it was the husband who rejected her, well, what greater certainty! That already stamped her. The status of a divorced woman was synonymous with being a free woman, it was a moral scab, for her and her family; and decent people felt the duty to silently take offense, as befits someone worthy.
Nowadays, getting divorced is an act of freedom, and even divorced women are cheered and encouraged, and those suspected of not having a happy marriage are encouraged to divorce.
On the other hand, in the mid 1960s, in Cuba, possessing dollars was a crime punishable by a loss of freedom; I don’t remember for how long, or if it meant being imprisoned or just working on a farm. The point was that the police would come and some neighbors had to go to the house of the alleged lawbreaker, to participate as observers in the police procedure and to witness the veracity of the crime committed. Having dollars was not only the violation of an ordinance, but the manifestation of contempt for the dictates of the Revolution, something much more serious than being a common criminal.
Everyone knew, without ever being warned, that that family had fallen into something as unfortunate as a black hole, and it was perceived that the neighbors looked at those people who until a few hours before were, also, like other neighbors, as if they were extraterrestrial beings – but the bad kind – caught in the act.
That was the first time I saw dollars in bills. I was then a fourteen-year-old boy and, therefore, knew the coins of the US dollar, one, five, ten, and twenty-five cents that had been in circulation in the country since the founding of the republic, but what really surprised me! was seeing pocket radios that worked with batteries! And that, indeed, gave me the impression that something very serious was happening.
Undoubtedly, a family with such a high standard of living, in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, was something shameful, for the time; it was like an offense to the people, to the proletariat… It was commented that Manolo – who, because he had dollars saved (I never knew how many) – was imprisoned for almost a year, until he began to be let out on weekends; he was a CIA agent, a spy, in short; a definitely dangerous guy. How shameful! And that individual lived among us, as if he were a normal person. There couldn’t be anything more horrible.
Before the year he began to be let out on weekly passes and months later he was released. Manolo, although he managed to enjoy the glory of heroism upon being set free, ended up, like so many others, settling with his family in Miami.
A few decades later, in the mid-nineties, we all had dollars again in Cuba! Since then and until recently, having them was something everyday, permitted, authorized, and absolutely legal. But it continues to be a big problem, although not a legal one, the issue today is to acquire them.