Instead of Joy, Getting Paid in Cuba Is One More Ordeal
HAVANA TIMES – I submitted four short stories to the magazine Diario de Cuba, which is published in Spain. I had the joy of seeing them accepted and published. But I couldn’t be paid because the funds were frozen under directives from Donald Trump. After a few months, I received the good news that they had sent me payment for two of the stories. Then a new challenge began, getting the money at banks in Cuba.
You can’t just go and get cash because in our banks there is no money. You must wait for someone to deposit that amount in euros in a bank in the city where you live. Then they call you and you can then go collect it. It takes a very long time. As Dr. Lagarde de los Ríos, the Mexican feminist, would say, “through the lens of history it may be a short time, through the human lens it is a long time.” For a Cuban, it is a very, very, very long time.
When you ask about your chances of collecting soon, they reply that there is a list of people waiting just like me. Foreigners who have decided to live on the Island, Cuban doctors who were on internationalist missions, and others. I argued: but my money is so little, do I really have to wait that long? They kindly gave me some hope.
You return home and tell your family (in my case, my retired mother who worked in Education and my retired aunt who was an accounting assistant in the Light Industry company) that yes, that you’ll “soon” get paid. And you begin to dream: a water pump, because the shortage is extreme and water at home must be prioritized; fixing your teeth, I have many cavities and each repair costs at least three thousand pesos (sometimes more); putting in a window for your room, since the one you have is almost completely broken… And I laugh because I don’t know if those euros can solve so much.
It’s been more than a month and I’m still waiting for the bank’s call. I hope they call me in human time and not in historical time; we know that a dynasty in China lasts 100 years, a century. That is nothing for Chinese culture. For Cuban culture, 67 years of resistance is an eternity.
Nonetheless, on principle, I am one of those who believe hope is not only the last thing to be lost, but that it must be preached until the end of time. Because it is our commission from our Lord Jesus Christ. Even here, on this communist, Fidelista, materialist Island.