Clots of Pain for our Cuban New Year’s

Erasmo Calzadilla

HAVANA TIMES, Dec 31 — It’s the end of the year and parties are in the air here in Cuba. People seem happy, there’s elation and alcohol all around, and even enemies appear to hate each other a little less.

Soon the killing begins.

In the vast majority of cases they’ve been raised in dirty, narrow pens with inappropriate feeding, suffering terrible temperatures and having been unable to play or socialize*, something they would really love (you only have to see them when they manage to escape for a while).

Then one fateful day, some a descendant of monkey — a poor devil who’s not afraid of ripping out the entrails of a living being, someone who’s unmoved by the screams of terror, the wide eyes filled with fear and pain — takes a sharp object and cold-bloodedly slices their hearts out.

New Year’s dinner here always includes tasty and filling pork, but with every morsel, with every bite, we lose some of our humanity. To experience this simple pleasure, it doesn’t matter that we have to destroy the life of a creature that up until yesterday also looked at the sunlight.

It is a being that in a critical moment begged for mercy (in its own way), though we denied it our compassion.

With such an act, we join the “exclusive club” of those who look at the lives of others in terms of the pleasure they offer us, even when we possess sufficient intelligence to understand the wrong we’re committing.

Such disrespect for life places us well below the rung of pigs.

If you’re one of those who at the end of the year likes to eat pork, then you must know that every mouthful you swallow caused searing pain. Later we’ll grieve and complain when someone tramples on the life a human, but if someone exploits, abuses or kills an animal (or is complicit in such acts), we lack the morality to protest it.

Thanks for your attention. Carry on with your blood-fest.
—

(*) Due to their isolation these animals are unable to develop or enjoy their “pigness” (for us this would be our humanity), which is only achievable within a community of free pigs.

 

 

Erasmo Calzadilla

Erasmo Calzadilla: I find it difficult to introduce myself in public. I've tried many times but it doesn’t flow. I’m more less how I appear in my posts, add some unpresentable qualities and stir; that should do for a first approach. If you want to dig a little deeper, ask me for an appointment and wait for a reply.

3 thoughts on “Clots of Pain for our Cuban New Year’s”

  • Good article, Erasmo. It breaks my heart.

    I’ve often longed to be a vegan, and have attempted it several times recently, but there’s just no effective support system for it here in the United States.

    There are vegan restaurants here and there in the Santa Monica area, but they all seem to be oriented to clientele with plenty of money.

    This is one thing that mystifies me . . . that no entrepreneurs have developed a vegan fast food chain in the US. Where is the MacVegan?

  • Oh, the poor things. We are a very cruel people. OK. I didn’t think I would have a New Year’s Resolution, but now I have one. No more eating meat. I was a vegetarian for 10 years, but I haven’t been for the past 25 years. It’s time to return to my old ways.

  • Wow! I think you are a veg-e-vangelist! What are your thoughts on seafood?

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