Socialist slump, church, cemetery, and explosions

 

Yesterday I went through what we call jokingly in the house a “socialist slump.” For the first time in my time here, I’ve had to do real, serious work that stresses me out—I’m writing an essay for my Marxist-Leninist philosophy class, for a professor I respect a lot, who I’ve been meeting with outside of class, who I really want to impress. Also, maybe this essay will end up being the prologue to my thesis or something (translated to English, of course). The point of all this is that I’m a little academically stressed for the first time, and suddenly long hypocritically for the comforts and convenience of capitalism. Just two days ago I was yelling at a friend about how sick and disgusting the dual economy was, and how sick sick sick it was for tourists to come to Cuba and only use the expensive goods that are completely inaccessible to most Cubans. But yesterday all I wanted to do was dish out some CUC for some salad, or even better, to walk a block to a 24 hour CVS and buy some chocolate, cheese crackers, and beef jerky with my debit card, and then go to a library and spread my shit out on a wooden table and nibble on processed, exploited-labor food while writing my essay on overthrowing capitalism.

 

Today I am mostly over that, but filled with tons of other explosive, irrational emotions. The weather has been strange, it’s been chilly (I’m wearing pants!) but not rainy, and I feel very unable to express or understand myself. This morning I went to a church service at the crazy Methodist church that I had gone to where I saw people speaking in tongues, but this was a normal service. I had written down some things last weekend in Santiago that I wanted to remind myself to do or think, and I tried to read them over but they didn’t make any sense to me anymore. Anyways, one of them was to go to church, and since that was one of the only really concrete ones I decided to do it, and hoped that in the middle of the action I would remember why I wrote it down in that frenzy of self-whatever. The service was pretty good, in a cultural experience sort of way, because there was a lot of music and singing and dancing, and it was Cuban music (you know, salsa-like stuff, Son-based), people spilling out into the steps and standing room only, and it was just a big party in Church, people were shouting “Cristo! Cristo!” and punching their arms into the air. And then the singing stopped and they brought some American pastors/missionaries up, apparently they had been in Cuba before the revolution, preaching to the yanquis who were living in Vedado at that time until Fidel kicked them out, and now had somehow managed to come back. They started talking in English, with drawls, and there was a lady translating (poorly, and her voice was unpleasant) and they were saying nothing—literally NOTHING, and then they started to speak in broken awful gringo Spanish (he forgot the word for Tuesday) and told a silly joke about Chinese tourists, and I couldn’t stand it anymore and left.

 

Then I watched some American TV show (Madmen), and I’ve also been reading the New Yorker because my roommate’s mother came illegally and brought thousands of New Yorkers, and we’ve all been craving reading things in English /hearing about the world outside of Cuba for a while. Then I went to a really spooky cemetery nearby with famous people buried in it with my boy and it was very spooky because it seemed like a graveyard of a graveyard. All the stones and mausoleums were so beautiful, with wonderfully crafted sculptures and reliefs that impressed me (that is, they moved me), but everything was more or less falling apart, the tops of the gravestones were falling apart, lots of the doors to the mausoleums were broken, and some of the graves too, so that you could see inside of them. We found one where there were tons of bones and some dentures inside, and I talked the boy out of stealing a bone. Also, in each grave they put entire families, stacking them one on top of another, and we saw a hearse come in and then some people took off the top of a grave and lowered a coffin in and put the top back on. Around the entire graveyard there was a yellow wall and then the city, which means some crumbling buildings with ghostlike clothes hanging out on the balcony. Like I said, it seemed like a graveyard of a graveyard, like we were walking through some type of ruin or movie set. And then we played around and did our homework under a tree and then went home. Listen, it was all very strange, and I can’t really express it. I think the wind’s blowing in something weird. At dinner I thought I would explode. Now I am watching Madmen with a friend, succumbing to capitalism and the world I know how to maneuver, and can succeed in overwhelming by only knowing how to maneuver it, without actually understanding it.

 

Conclusion: I feel a little like Satan’s got me.

This is how healthcare should be

This afternoon I experienced first hand the miracle of Cuban healthcare. I had to see a doctor, and although we have this special tourist health insurance that Harvard made us purchase, and can go to a special tourist clinic in Miramar, I decided that I wanted to go check out the neighborhood Cuban clinic, mostly because I didn’t want to have to take a maquina out to Miramar.

 

This is what happened: I got to the clinic, asked around (looking a little silly and foreign) as to where I should go to get an appointment. Various people told me to sit on some chairs and wait for the doctor to come. The doctor did not come for about an hour, which was okay, because I had brought reading to do, anticipating that I would probably have to wait some time, since this was Cuba. The doctor finally came. I went into his office, we talked, he was extremely kind, clear, and patient. He explained to me various times how to use the medication, gave me a box of pills, wrote down my name, and told me to come back if there were any problems (he would be there every Wednesday afternoon).

 

I left the clinic with all my medical inquiries answered, my Lukacs reading half done, and a box of pills in my purse, all without paying a cent, filling out any forms, talking to any receptionists, checking in or out, showing any identification or health insurance cards. I literally walked in, waited, told the doctor what I needed, got it, and left. No bureaucracy, no paperwork, no policy numbers, no doors leading to doors, leading to waiting rooms for more waiting rooms, no talking to a receptionist, then a nurse practitioner, then a resident, then finally a doctor, who would send me to a specialist, who I would have to call with a referral to make an appointment in two weeks and leave my insurance number and pay a large copay for the appointment and then the medication. In America, I usually get really stressed out going to the doctor because it’s such a long torturous complicated process, with many confusing papers and number, and thus avoid hospitals as much as possible.

 

I had prepared myself today for the stress too, but it was almost too simple. I left the Cuban clinic amazed and satisfied. I had never had such a hassle-free hospital visit in my life. Furthermore, no one had thought to question, even once, my right to access these hassle-free and payment-free services, although I was clearly a foreigner. Health care was given to me because I was a human who needed it.

Villa El Salvador

Villa El Salvador is a district in the outskirts of Lima, not too far from the center but very different. It is a super-organized, super-planned city (unlike much of the rest of Lima), it is a socialist/communist oasis in the middle of a very market-oriented country, and it is much poorer than other parts of Lima, like the place I am living, Miraflores–a prime example of the socioeconomic disparities in Peru. But it is also much better off than some of its neighbors, because of, according to residents, the strong ideology of community, and strong central planning. Really, to me, it seemed like a place full of promise, with bustling business–perhaps more “developed” than my abuelita’s pueblo in China. The biggest problem seems to be the dry climate–most of the land is very dry, almost beach-like, so that the whole place is dusty, and agriculture is difficult. But really, it cannot be written off simply as a place brimming with poverty, or as a place that is truly developing and getting richer. Just as the difference between Lima Lima and Villa El Salvador is drastic and extremely tangible, the difference between the bustling mercado of Villa El Salvador–including the industrial zone, where some very high-end furniture is produced and sold–and the outskirts, where houses are half-built and look abandoned (though they are apparently not) is also very drastic. This picture above is of the graveyard of Villa El Salvador, overlooking the city itself. Near the graveyard, many families from the selva or sierra (which are areas that are economically much worse off) have moved in and set up camp in very floppy shacks made out of a cheap, thin material made from bamboo, because no one will tell them to leave in the graveyard. The picture below is of “El Pintor”, the man families go to to paint the graves of their loved ones, painting a new grave.

el pintor