By Yahily Hernández Porto
July 23, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
CAMAGÜEY: Both were close in their professions, but they never stopped their routines to get close to each other. An occasional greeting was their only relationship at the Agramontine military hospital.
But since the beginning of the year, their concern brought their lives closer, because the pandemic that had just emerged in the Asian giant was taking away their sleep, as it did for thousands of Cubans.
Last March, when Covid-19 entered Cuba, their paths intertwined as they worked in the red areas of the hospital and made a decision that surprised many people.
“After experiencing that life can escape without fulfilling some dreams, we decided to get married as soon as the bio-security measures allowed it,” Ana María Nápoles Salas, 26, a stomatologist by profession, comfided to JR.
The emblematic Palacio de los Matrimonios in Camagüey celebrated its first post-pandemic wedding.
Just last July 7th JR witnessed the first post-pandemic wedding in this city, in the colonial Palace of Marriages. While the bride was talking to this reporter, the general surgeon, Major Germán Antonio Guilarte León, 36, took the opportunity to give her a mischievous surprise kiss.
THE QUINCEAÑERAS GET READY
With the same impetus as this couple, several teenage girls from Agramonte take up their dreams again and project the rescue of their Quinceañera, which they saw interrupted with fear and frustration: the parties and the traditional photographs were postponed due to the pandemic, but since the second phase many have returned to the beautiful palace or are taking turns in private homes dedicated to this celebration.
Quinceañera Yadianis Beltrán did not hesitate to resume her celebration.
“I always knew that when it all happened I’d have my party. Now I’m doing my hair to look good in the photos,” said a smiling Yadianis Beltrán Gutiérrez, who had to settle for a family meal on April 28.
In the contract office of the beautiful institution in Camagüey, several girls, along with their parents, wait for their turn to renew the date, Others are just looking for information to choose from, because there are many options in the City of Tinajones, where even quinceañeras from other provinces arrive to eternalize memories.
Jennifer Yadisley Cabreja González and Yarenmis Mendoza Flores are waiting in line to celebrate their Quinceañera on July 31st and August 29th, respectively.
The former said to this newspaper that “despite the activities suspended during the pandemic, there is no problem with work shifts”, and Yarenmis was relieved by her “luck with her birthday”, and showed solidarity with the girls who served in the midst of social isolation.
Such is the story told by Katia Faife Dorca, mother of the teenager Yuliagnis Zaldívar, who had to postpone the big family reunion, scheduled for May 4, and is currently reorganizing it so that loved ones who are abroad can attend, when everything is back to normal: “It is a comfort to know that everyone will have their chance without setbacks,” said this mother.
According to Isabel María Abad Mena, administrator of the Palacio de los Matrimonios, when the institution closed last March all weddings and quinceañera and birthday celebrations already reserved were suspended, in addition to those planned for April, May and June.
To the happiness of many, the multiple services of the Palace are now available and interested families may hire them, provided they are presented at least one month in advance.
Young Yaremnis Mendoza is happy because her contract is secured for August.
“Several biosecurity measures have been implemented that must be strictly adhered to within the center, but none of them affect the quality of what’s available and the well-being of those who come to celebrate their big day,” she insisted.
She stressed that contracts with clients from other provinces, including those outside the country, will be carried out as long as the measures taken at each stage and in each region allow it. “That’s why now in our palace we only accept clients from Matanzas to Guantánamo, the rest of the West will have to wait”.
Abbot Mena pointed out that the capital reparations in the founding house was not interrupted during the pandemic period. At present, for the sake of quality and variety of the photographs, several exterior locations of the mansion have been added, where a natural, original and distinctive scenery is projected to embellish not only the portraits, but also the formal act and the toast.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR OPENS ITS DOORS
In addition to the Palace of the Married Couples in Camagüey, other family businesses that carry out this activity with creative passion are favored by the recovery of these festive services. This was corroborated by JR’s visit to some very popular and well-established private establishments located in the historic center of Agramonte.
At number 69 Avellaneda Street is the house Ilusión Estudio, which closed its services in March, despite having several weddings and fifteen celebrations scheduled. Its owners, Yuleidy Cabrera and Anuar Rodríguez, even canceled the quinceañera of their own daughter, Viviana, who was looking forward to celebrating on May 17th.
The Ilusión Estudio family returns to normal after their daughter canceled her quinceañera.
“Our daughter understood the moment in which the country and the world were living. Now we are restoring services according to the conditions and possibilities of each family that chooses us,” explained Yuleidy.
Equally demanding were the owners of the Iris V/S Alex studio, one of the oldest in Camagüey, at 586 Pobre Street: “My father-in-law, Jesús Peña, started the photography business in the 1980s, and he assures us that he had never experienced anything like this before. We have been disciplined with the measures and now we are restarting the services to satisfy the clientele according to the resources we have,” said Iriannis.
The Iris V/S Alex studio house also opens its doors to the public. Photos: Yahily Hernández Porto
During the months of confinement, both she and her husband Alex dedicated themselves entirely to “spoiling” the family. Now they are creating conditions for the reopening of their small business, like so many entrepreneurs in the non-State sector in Camagüey, who are gradually opening their doors to the public, eager to celebrate their anniversaries… and life is preserved despite the tense situation.
By Ricardo Ronquillo Bello
ronquillo@juventudrebelde.cu
June 20, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
It’s not normal, it’s not normal, it’s not normal… I was repeating as in the chorus of an endless serenade by a well-known Cuban politician several months ago. He was doing it when the coronavirus still seemed no more than a disturbing little strain licking itself with its appearance in a market in faraway Wuhan and its unexpected and mournful Bib bang was not spreading it at lightning speed across the four corners of the planet.
Normality versus abnormality, here is a question, we could define a peculiar Cuban Shakespearean drama, which feeds on strains, some as strange and imposed on us as the very COVID-19, and others very much made in Cuba, made in Cuban socialism, as much as they make us proud in some cases, or beat us Theophilus-like on the chin of our welfare in others.
Because of the above, while a good part of the world is heading towards the renamed “new normality” – despite the fact that the daily death of thousands of people and other misadjustments, which some romantically believe will be corrected by the arts of the coronavirus, discredit or unmask it – in Cuba we should better assume that the country, with its first phase of de-escalation, is advancing towards its new “abnormality”, yes, as you read it, abnormality.
In this regard, the aforementioned Cuban politician can be justified not “in part”, as the vocabulary of the Creole bureaucracy is accustomed to saying, but in all his parts, which he repeats, repeats and repeats, and it is not a “rattle” of any kind, that much of what we live, enjoy or suffer in this archipelago is definitely not normal, although some people might like to believe it or even make us believe it for sometimes very devious purposes.
Let’s take an example, of those that were heard in passing and unfortunately without any major media outbreaks, in the fight against the coronavirus: in Cuban prisons there were no cases of the virus detected and, consequently, no deaths. Compare this with what happened or what is still happening in other places, or with humiliating snapshots of prisoners in the region that have shaken the world’s conscience.
The same could be said of the gesture made by the Cuban Government and people – quite silenced, by the way, even by the powerful international media of the most benefited country – to the MS Braemar cruise ship passengers. A later report by Ignacio Ramonet would highlight Cuba’s rare horizon in the tragic fate of many of those strollers adrift in the ocean of selfishness and lack of solidarity framed by COVID-19.
It is not normal in this pandemic world -it was not so before and, despite all the good omens, it will surely not be so common in the future- that the human being comes first, that definition contained in all the documents that give shape to the aspirations of Cuban socialism in the 21st century and that, due to repetitions and hackneyedness, sometimes become pedestrian slogans.
It is worthwhile “baldly” to compare those two previous pearls with the Malthusian reason that spread throughout the world at the same rate as the coronavirus to try to defend that the economy – it would be better to say the capital of the powerful – should be above the value of any life.
From the philosophy of disposable beings did not escape even prominent nobles, from whom at least a rationality as high as their humanism would be expected. However, some calmly justify, without any charge of conscience, that throughout Europe the number of deaths from COVID-19 is similar to that which occurs in a very strong flu season. Something like that is pure waste to form so much international fuss for what is nothing more than a common cold.
It is also very suggestive that the proposals that the highest Cuban authorities are offering to their announced de-escalation – already in the first phase in most of the national territory – point more towards a new “abnormality”, than a return to the previous normality, which would be like continuing to carry old atrophys and vices. We had already made progress in the midst of the virus.
This is out of tune with the dismissive way in which it seems that the lessons of the coronavirus will be assumed worldwide, from which an infinite number of currents and conceptions could be armed, from the most reactionary to those that claim to humanize capitalism or warn of reconfiguring the role of states and public and private actors.
The new “normality” here would be to return to that situation, for moments of levitating resistance, in the face of the U.S. blockade, without really aiming -with forcefulness and rigor- at a program of national development that, although it does not prevent the criminals and growing branches, definitely overcomes them more successfully than in the past. It would be to continue to rely on boats to fill the plates and as many thirsty tanks.
The new normality would be to settle for the scandalous resilience of old knots, which tie us to worn-out and repetitive ways of overcoming serious structural problems. It would be to continue feeding the criminal chains as opposed to the legal and necessary chains between the public and private sectors of the country. It would be to ignore the modern rules of communication -based on closeness and transparency- in order to continue clouding them with prejudice and instrumentality. It would be, it would be, it would be…
And nothing that was announced in the country for the post-COVID-19 escalation resembles the above, because it would be to resort to the old and worn-out normality, when what we need is to rush, overwhelmingly, towards a revolutionary abnormality.
But,” the politician would say, “it would be blissfully normal, right, normal…, although it does speed up a little, as Formell would say.
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