Identidades in English No 4, December 2014 | Page 112

most basic freedoms and the right to build a family farm, the more the spirit of our short independent history’s greatest moments demands that we
Cubans understand an idea of nation that requires
us to overcome a totality of the worst conditions.
For Reynaldo Castro, who, unlike Albert Perret,
was reborn at around the time of the revolution’s
earliest days when Castroism was unthinkable,
the abandonment of sugar workers is extremely
sad. Among the elders interviewed by Maylan Álvarez, it is his testimony that best allows us to feel
the tension that comes about from having been
faithful to Fidel Castro’s revolution, only to witness the deterioration, abandon, and oblivion to
which this affinity relegated industrial sugar
workers:
“If I had the power, I would have left them closed,
repaired them, greased them up, and waited to see
what happened. I would not have demolished
them. They were not deactivated; they were demolished… They cut the huge pieces of iron with
torches and sold them as scrap material… There
were even thefts… There are people here who
have made money by selling scrap metal. Who
has scrap metal in this country? The State. There
were people who looked like bands of vultures
hovering over a dead animal: picking at the iron
with oxygen and acetylene. Who does the oxygen
and acetylene belong to? Also to the State. These
actions were tolerated, these barbarities were tolerated.”5
If the decision to destroy our sugar centrals or preserve them was not in the hands of worker Reynaldo Castro, as he says, it is not hard for him to
understand that it was not in the hands of any
worker, given his history as a cane cutter and political leader. Neither is it hard for him to understand that in a country where all human categories
were sacrificed in favor of a single one that defines everyone as a worker, the future of our principal agro-industrial structure was decided
without any input from Cubans.
Yet, when Reynaldo Castro talks about those who
ordered the destruction of the sugar mills and the
centuries-old landscape of so many towns, he
does so without using words he is willing to apply

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to certain people who, in seeking personal benefit, joined the destructive wave unleashed by the
State. The revolution is not barbaric, nor is Fidel
Castro a vulture. But the people for whom it is
easy to position themselves to benefit from decades of Castroist damage - and its attempt to
muddy the difference between criminals and political dissidents - certainly are.
The intellectual tension experienced by men like
Reynaldo Castro, who were committed to the revolution, can also be found in the words of Pedro
Pablo Castañeda, who in an interview with
Maylan Álvarez, stated: “After they stopped the
mill, people felt really sad, as if they’d suffered a
loss of life. After the mill stopped, people lost
hope. But we still embrace our revolutionary
thinking. But, the happiness we felt when the mill
was producing sugar, decli