By Ana Hurtado on March 16, 2024
Sometimes losing is winning, as the saying goes. And there are friendships that over time one realizes are more worth losing than finding.
The “refraneros populares” are wise. The people are wise.
What would become of us, men and women, without friendship? It is true that it is possible to live a life without it, but it would be necessary to analyze what kind of life that would be. In order to live fully, friendship, like love, are indispensable values in the existence of human beings, nations and homelands.
Starting from the agreement that it is better to exist hand in hand with friends, I think it is right that we analyze what friendship is, or at least a healthy and true friendship. Who or what can we call friends?
A friend is the one who is there in the bad times; in the good times there is anyone. One who, without caring about getting something in return, stands by the side of those to whom he gives his friendship, which, to be true, must be unconditional.
It is the difficult times that show to whom this name can be given. And I am going to focus, at this point, on an approach of friendship with a cause. With a country. With an ideal.
Friendship with Socialist Cuba. It is not just any old thing.
In times of bonanza, it was the intellectuals of almost all of Latin America with its literary boom; and a large part of the world, who approached them. Because they knew that this was the Revolution of ideas and intellectuals. While the Revolution exported imaginary and humanist concepts out of the Caribbean Sea, while from the outside it was seen what socialism was capable of doing in cultural and social fields, many were those who came to boast of being next to the vanguard.
And then came the book of poems Fuera de Juego, by Heberto Padilla. And many of those who had come to Cuba to drink Revolution, began to express criticisms and opinions that had not been asked for. Padilla himself at the Union of Writers and Artists of Havana made a self-criticism, explaining that he had been detained because he had behaved incorrectly, destructive behaviors, behaviors that he himself recognized deserved a corrective.
And the same people who came to take pictures with Fidel and Che when the Revolution was coming to Latin America as a breath of fresh air, dared to criticize internal affairs of a house, which the protagonist himself ended up recognizing the rightness of the detention of his person by the government. It must have been painful to see geniuses of the stature of Sartre and Pasolini, whom I admire with my soul, sign that letter to Fidel in 1971, gratuitously and out of place. My sense of logic and consequence outweighs my admiration for them as intellectuals. I am not going to justify them, but perhaps, and I say perhaps, they let themselves be carried away by Vargas Llosa’s damaging spirit against everything that smelled of progress and socialism in the American continent, as he was one of those who led the letter.
I seem to remember that in one of the letters written by intellectuals to Cuba on that occasion, Gabriel García Márquez was introduced as a signatory without his consent -one of Vargas Llosa’s tricks, in my opinion. But Gabo’s decency was above any circumstance, demonstrating his loyalty to the island and to the Revolution, and disavowing that unauthorized signature.
Because Gabriel was a friend. A friend who understands the other side in difficult moments. Who does not position himself with the majority and with the generalized tendency to look good with the public opinion. Because a friend is one who is willing to put up with whatever comes against him, but who knows that fidelity comes before any condition or requirement.
There were similar cases in which the Cuban people were able to see what friends they had and still had, when the situation was heating up. There were many others who also called themselves friends, and who turned out not to be so. More like “not even a little bit like that”. A “message full of dignity for those dear friends who were far away” went out from Havana. Many of them had perhaps been victims of disinformation, of anti-Cuban propaganda and of the bad intentions that have always been directed against the island. But they signed another manifesto, which hurt Cuba.
And I have always thought: If you can’t do good, at least don’t do harm.
Cuba lives in war. There are people who still do not get that, who do not adapt it to their daily life. And living in war means behaving as in war. With a wartime communication. With a counter-offensive. Because the same thing that we see televised today in the genocide being perpetrated in Gaza and occupied Palestine, is experienced by the Cuban people in another form and method since they decided to be free and socialist.
Because he who in difficult times is dedicated to confuse cannot be called a friend. Perhaps he never was.
A friend does not criticize in public. He does it in private and with the best intentions. Out of respect for the people. The same one that Fidel said that someday we should build a monument to him.
Because it is better to have an enemy who comes forward and is transparent than a “friend” who gives food to the enemy, disrespects the people, puts himself in a position of superiority, flirts with shady positions and brings more harm than good to the cause. Such friendships are neither wanted nor needed.
Let them go. And also the mediocrity of those who applaud without even considering what the circus is called or who the clown is.
Cuba, socialism, will never lack real friends. Most of them are not even known. Not all of them are public figures like the beloved Chávez or Mandela. There are people in silence who, as Luis Eduardo Aute would say: “Their lives depend on it” for this people. And those, many anonymous ones, are the indispensable ones.
Source: Cubadebate, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English