“How are things going in Cuba?” he shot Yolexis on WhatsApp, after asking him how he spent Father’s Day.
“How are they going to go, brother?”, he answers me without much enthusiasm. “You know how things are around here. “Don’t act like the foreigner that you were the other day.”
Yolexis insists that in the couple of months that I have been away, the island has remained the same, perhaps worse. That the blackouts continue, the heat, the economy at the bottom and prices through the clouds. And I believe him. However, I tell him, even if I can get an idea, imagining it is never the same as experiencing it firsthand.
Furthermore, I point out, even in a short time things can happen that shake the atmosphere: “Look at all the push and pull about the dollar that has people crazy, or about the Russian flotilla that was in Havana. I missed that.”
Three ships and a nuclear submarine from the Russian Navy arrive in Havana
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“That’s true,” my neighbor, a former colleague in the chicken lines and soccer clubs on the corner, father of “a girl who grows every day” and one of those increasingly “rare” Cubans who has He kneels on the ground and assures that he is not leaving the country, because – he always clarifies – his wife will not leave without her parents, who do not want to leave, and he will not leave without his daughter or his wife: “It was my turn.”
To prevent the conversation from taking such a thorny turn, I ask him again about the ships and the Russian submarine that were in Cuba. If you saw them up close or if you went to visit them when they allowed it.
“No way, brother -he answers-, the Russians put the visits after noon and at that time I’m at work. To make matters worse, it has been raining quite a bit. Maybe if they had let the submarine in it would have given me an escape, I don’t know, but they only let the frigate on, from what they told me.”
“But I read about people queuing and everything on Avenida del Puerto. And I even saw photos on the networks,” she added.
“Well yes,” he tells me, “you know there are many people who have plenty of time and we Cubans are capable of standing in line under a downpour to board a warship, just to see something different from everyone else.” the days”.
“I would have gone on Saturday with Dania and the girl, but I regretted it. My brother went on Friday and he told me that people were queuing since the morning, so imagine Saturday, which was the eve of Father’s Day,” he explains to me. “What’s up, I wasn’t up for that. In the end it is a ship with cannons and some Russians there and that’s it.”
“Well, I don’t think it’s even that much,” I tell him. The frigate, as I read, is state-of-the-art and launches hypersonic missiles. And the submarine, Kazan I think it’s called, is from the other day, so to speak. It is powered by nuclear propulsion and also fires cruise missiles. “They weren’t going to let you in even if you paid them in rubles.”
“Likewise, the way things are going with Russia, with visits and agreements all the time, those ships, or perhaps others, may soon return to Havana,” I console him. Yolexis, however, doesn’t really like the idea.
“It is better that they do not continue sending warships or submarines, because that does not solve anything for us and, furthermore, makes the Americans nervous,” he points out. Did you see how they immediately sent a submarine from up there to the Guantanamo naval base? “That guy probably wasn’t walking around here.”
“Here they immediately ‘bleeped’, but, in short, the Americans ‘clean themselves’ with that. And, furthermore, the Russian submarine arrived first…” he adds.
Cuba declares its displeasure at the presence of a US submarine in Guantánamo
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“If the Russians really want to help us,” he maintains, “what they have to send is food, oil, fertilizer, trains, parts for thermoelectric plants, things like that. In short, if we are going to get into debt with them, let it be for things that help people live a little better. Or do they pay us for this naval flotilla?”
“I don’t think so—I disappoint him. It seems to me that they said that the visit was due to an invitation, or because of friendly relations, so get off that cloud. Maybe we are even the ones who are paying them with that. Remember that Cuba owes the eleven thousand virgins and Russia is not the Soviet Union, which gave us things at both hands until it went down and we were left naked.”
“Now that you say naked,” Yolexis changes the subject, “did you see the video of the Russian woman who stripped naked in a store here in Havana? That does have people revolting on the networks these days. Incredible that something like this happens, brother”.
“Yes, I found out, of course, but I haven’t seen the full video,” I reply, “just a piece that a partner shared with me when giving me the news. I read that they filmed it last year, when she was visiting Cuba, but it seems that it was now that they released it, or that they moved it again in the networks, taking advantage of the boats and the submarine in Havana. Tremendous bomb.”
“The bomb is the Russian, a porn actress who is not bad at all, to be honest,” my neighbor tells me jokingly, “but the video is tremendously shameless. The ball girl walks around naked in front of everyone, like that, as if it were nothing; “She drinks rum and licks and fingers some cigars provocatively, with Martí and the Cuban flag in the background.”
“There is even a brother There he translates for him, and talks to him about Fidel, and the bartender and other workers continue so cheerfully, even the women. And meanwhile, the Russian continues doing her thing, happy, with all the parts of her in the air, with her giggles and her struts in front of the camera,” she tells me, obviously annoyed.
“To be honest, I didn’t find the video funny at all. There are those who have taken it at risk, but if something like this can happen in a place in the State – because that was in a state store, the Legendario rum store in Calzada del Cerro, according to what they say on the networks – what would not Can it happen in Cuba?” asks Yolexis.
“There ‘malanga’ was in the play,” he answers when I agree with his point of view. “The Russian woman wasn’t passing by by chance, they were waiting for her in the store. Even a few people from the store up had to know that. And everyone ‘got wet’ safely. No one can act stupid or tell a story there.”
“I suppose that right now there must be a few ‘thunderers’ because of that grace.” “It’s the least that should happen,” I tell him, although without much conviction. I don’t think the Government is going to sit idly by, do they?”
“Well I shouldn’t, but I don’t even know anymore, brother —he answers me, skeptical. There are many other things that should not be, and are, and I do not think this is one of the most important, no matter how symbolic and worrying it may be. If the actress were American, maybe they would even read a statement in the news. But the comrade is Russian.”
“But you know what? —he changes the subject again—, we’d better talk about football, I’m not in the mood to get my head around too much these days. Finally, who are you going against in the Euro Cup? Have you been able to see any games there in Dubai?”
