The Donkeys of the Sand Pit

The Donkeys of the Sand Pit / Lilianne Ruiz
Posted on September 13, 2013

Not one lonely statement from the Cuban intelligence services' spy
recently released from US prison after serving out his sentence
regarding political prisoners in Cuba. Nothing regarding Kilo 8, Kilo 9,
Boniato…[1]

A guy that calls for a campaign to create the illusion that an entire
people expects and demands freedom for his 4 colleagues, could well be a
man of peace, with empathy with all who are in prison for political
reasons. But, it was not like that.

This is the government's man. He looks like a carnival puppet, but he's
responsible for his actions for he articulates a message, and that
message is always on the government's side, a government that intends to
be there always, without really consulting us.

That is why no one should believe that our people have come out to
demand the release of 4 spies who tomorrow will ignore their suffering,
their hunger, their fear of losing whatever little they have or the
nothingness they possess; as does this already released spy, seen in
public demonstrations carrying little children. He wants to make believe
that this idea of the yellow ribbon was born from civil society, and not
the government, as if this human tidal wave that refuses to acknowledge
its right to deny itself could also be called a civil society. In
slavery there is no power structure.

But, he is there, in that intermediate space. Between the powerless[2]
and the State there is the political police, armed to prevent each group
from assuming the powers that belong to them.

In school, during the morning assembly of children, a teacher admonished
"Tell your parents to put a yellow ribbon in you tomorrow. They are
available for two regular[3] pesos at the neighborhood trinket store." I
saw people in my building who are waiting for a US visa to leave this
misery behind (and they think that they are leaving behind the only
misery….but, there are miseries that cannot be left behind)…dressed in
yellow.

Lastly, looking at the people dressed in yellow or wearing a yellow bow
– people who did not have that air of the functionary trying to get
ahead, simple people who do not want to know what they are doing – I
remembered what I had been reading the previous night to my six-year-old
daughter before bed, Platero y Yo (Platero and I).[4] I had taken in
this entire quote of Juan Ramon Jimenez's magnum opus:

"Look, Platero, at the donkeys of Quemado: slow, bent, with their
pointed red load of wet sand in which they carry nailed, as if to their
hearts, the green rod of the wild olive tree with which they are beaten…"

[1] These are the names of some of the most notorious Cuban prisons
where political prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions.

[2] In English in the original text.

[3] As opposed to CUC or "convertible" peso, the other official currency
of Cuba, artificially paired to the US dollar.

[4] Children's book written by Spanish poet, professor and Nobel Prize
laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez in 1917. It narrates the relationship of a
boy and his little donkey named Platero. It has remained extremely
popular in Latin America and Spain to these days.


Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

13 September 2013

Source: "The Donkeys of the Sand Pit / Lilianne Ruiz | Translating Cuba"
- http://translatingcuba.com/the-donkeys-of-the-sand-pit-lilianne-ruiz/