The Muslim Store in Holguin, Cuba
HAVANA TIMES – I was tempted to talk about this issue of human conditioning by faith or religion. How the world of ideas or beliefs can not only influence but I could dare to say it determines much of our behavior, and with this, life itself. I wanted to talk about this because I learned that the relatively recently opened store by the Six Columns in Holguin is Muslim. It is currently offering discounts on its products.
It made me smile, with respect of course, but I found the fact fascinating. But how on the other side of the city, when coming from the east, we find the first store belonging to Jehovah’s Witnesses, which I had the opportunity to discuss in a previous text. I find it explosive that the other store in the same city, which you reach from the west, is run by Muslims! It’s interesting to note that this is not the predominant religion, nor even one of the most known.
Let’s remember that in Holguín, as in all of Cuba, Christianity —both Catholic and Protestant— prevails, as well as the Yoruba religions, which are also strong in the entire Cuban culture, espiritismo, yoga, little glasses of water, but not precisely Islamic religions. And that there is a store of a community that professes Islam in Holguín, and not a small one, possibly more popular than we think, can surprise even the most unsuspecting passerby.
I am talking about a location visible from the central highway. It has a single floor, and its façade may seem austere, only until you enter. Inside, it is vast compared to the rest of the stores in the city center. They offer everything that is generally offered in what we consider large stores. From household items, toiletries, clothing, toys, fishing gear, gloves for those wanting to learn to box, in other words, what a Cuban would confidently express: everything.
Their friendly salespeople, the guards as well, and their little shopping carts like those that were thought to be only for the State. At the entrance, there is a place to store bags, next to others in case you need them for shopping. Many people circulate through the aisles. The prices are affordable, which makes it even more pleasant. It’s a bit far, but it doesn’t matter, someone nearby tells you, giving you directions just two blocks from the central park where they have a branch. More or less with the same offers.
That other store is also one floor, much smaller, but you can buy many items that you surely won’t find elsewhere. The idea comes back to my mind again and again: it is striking that the two stores located at each end of Holguín belong to religious people. Where, of course, their values and principles are carried out, and everything that entails.
More striking is knowing that this happens in a country that has called itself Marxist-Leninist Materialist Socialist for more than half a century. Where it was allowed to persecute the entire church and believers in the most subtle and grotesque ways conceived. And, in this context, at the end of the story, it has turned out so different from how it was thought at its beginning. That’s why not a few think that the government, although it remains in power, has lost the battle. The battle of decades where they wanted to impose fierce control with consequences that turned out to be unimaginable.
On one occasion, Fidel Castro, the maximum leader of this totalitarian and disastrous policy, expressed: “that absurdity of the first world.” The history that they, the party-state-government, do not dare to recognize and even less to tell, demonstrated “that socialist absurdity,” “that Cuban communist absurdity.” Furthermore, many of us are now betting on change.