Nobody hears here anymore the voices of Burayr, that devastated village. Some elderly just repeat the official version, convinced by the power of being able to back it up with bibliographic quotations. A few just talk, ashamed, about a vague trip of 5 men, with rifles, in fact young boys scared to death. The new Israeli historians state that the inhabitants of that village were undoubtedly expelled with violence. The broken floor tiles that we found in our country walk seem to corroborate that. But the story of the young men scared to death is there, too.

I read in Wikipedia that the village was Israeli and its name, then, was Beror Hayil. Afterwards, changed its name and owners: Burayr, Buriron and once again, Beror Hayil. Each one of those changes meant a conflict, with their own broken floor tiles. I believe in Wikipedia as much as I believe in History: knowing that facts are shifting, built up, altered. History is just a play dough that everyone shapes into their own wishes. A millennial Wikipedia, always re-written from the winners. The same winners that were before defeated. The same defeated that will be victorious.

If something can be learned from hackneyed history, is: everything that is today a certainty tomorrow will become a deep lake, doubtful and surrounded by a trail of violence. I ask myself shivering, if this kibbutz will keep changing its name. May a family in their weekend walk ever find these houses’ floor tiles?

Translation: Ralph del Valle

It’s the perfect morning to take the bike. Sometimes, walking or cycling help my thoughts to create a rhythm… I start imagining possible mental routes of the city, that might help me with my own story about History.

I don’t really think there’s any historical truth, because truth itself is never one, and, as we already know, History is written by power. There are, that’s true, different stories of History. And as long as History is alive, in perpetual motion, it allows us to take our part and to modify it.

For example, look at this square, full of railings. All squares in town are in prison! It’s strange, but I think History can be read in these gestures; these gestures are those, which weave a city’s tale and tell us a story.

And look, here’s the Congress, the National Congress, and just a few metres away is May’s Square, where the Mothers make their famous round with handkerchiefs in their heads, the Town hall where our freedom and everyone’s equality were declared, and there, a couple of metres away, Roca’s monument. Among so many democratic symbols, the city tributes the racist genocide who established slavery in 1879, before eliminated by our progressive Year XIII Assembly. And there is General Roca, who even has a museum (named as him) full of pictures of all the First Nation people he massacred. That’s the own history that carved bodies and cities, and our bodies and our city were shaped by repetitive terror since 1930 from our military governments, which were almost as many as our civil governments.

Then, if I had to map the city today, I would do it from these symbols, a national hero in every avenue, a railing in every square, places used at the last military dictatorship as clandestine detention and torture centres, just to end, straight away, with the current, savage and systematic evictions operated by Macri’s Buenos Aires government (just to satisfy his real estate millionaire business) against community centres, retrieved by social and neighbours’ organizations that promoted culture, memory and social and political thinking as only aims.

Look, here was Almagro’s Assembly, over there Orgázmika’s Orchard, there Trivenchi’s Cultural Centre, in that building of Chacarita more than eleven organizations were operating, and there, at Villa Urquiza, were Casa Zitarrosa and 25 de Mayo cultural centre, and many others…

That’s the story, the natural semantic of a city that severely addresses me.

But in this mapping I would also include the other side, all resistance spaces, collectives, organizations and different projects, which cast doubt upon hegemonic system from their headquarters.

To cast doubt upon this, is start thinking History against the nap, is generate thinking spaces to represent the world, and they are essential to define a critical position.

I do cast doubt upon schoolbooks, lying maps, intoxicating information monopolized from economic groups, a divided country, History made from stories told by those who dominated, institutionalized stories, institutions itself, those stories which place out of the map the First Nations, the weak, the different and the poor, those who literally fall off the map.

And in that other side, the most powerful symbol is those women, Mothers and Grandmothers of the Mayo Square, insubordinate and disruptive, who recovered for the whole country a social imaginary of resistance against an oppressive system, of struggle and confidence in unity and solidarity from both individuals and people: to me, they are the specific example that change is possible and that, as Osvaldo Bayer says, “in History Ethics always win”.

Translation: Ralph del Valle

A different image of Havana. Photo: Lizabel Mónica

When the Word “Cuba” arises, it’s easy to think in USA’s economic embargo against the island, in the Cochinos’ Bay or Playa Girón battles (“first defeat of imperialism in America”, states offical propaganda), in the Castro brothers and in organopónicos. For some, Cuba still represents that left-wing icon where loads of tourists, impelled by an excessive enthusiasm, experiment an exciting approach to what’s somehow announced in Che Guevara’s T-shirts. Some others keep however a conviction: it’s a red and populist nightmare urgently needing capital injection. Truth is: for me (born when the Cold War started getting progressively warmer, raised up as a teenager in between disappointment and dispair –those seem to be the two new big rules of civic coexistence, in substitution of the common superior point of view of proletarian utopia-, and finally an adult just in the 21st Century), there’s no sense at all in my parents’ enthusiastic beliefs or in the epic and watered-down vision of a story quickly loosing credibility.

To state that national history promoted from a state, is not absolutely true is like agreeing on that we human beings have changed the planet’s ecosystem: both are irrefutable truths, and as such they have to be kept half hidden, half visible. Anyway, it’s not something about certainties, but about which policies are being applied. The disapproving look from state’s guards taught me mainly how to negotiate with my own opinion about facts. Here an excerpt. Cuba was the last colony that reached independence (end 19th Century), arriving just on time to be a neo-colony of the United States of America. After Gerardo Machado (who resigned from his post as President in 1933 due to demonstrations), all legal bonds to USA were revoked, and the nation just went through other governments until Fulgencio Batista’s dictatorship came with blood. He was defeated by a guerrilla war operated from Sierra Maestra and by Fidel Castro. The victory of the Cuban Revolution from 1959 was, until then, a national coalition of different opponent groups and a movement supported from the middle class; but it was progressively fragmented, depurated and finally turned into a monolithic whole, which took its political final path on April 16th 1961, when Fidel Castro declared “the socialist nature of the Revolution”, a few minutes after bombers played their prelude at Playa Girón. From there onwards, all had to be submitted to this political manifesto.

I’ve learned that History sounds different when it comes from a Spaniard, different in turn when it has a North American voice, and definitely racy when it comes from a carefree statement of a Cuban. And it develops unsuspected nuances when told from an immigrated to that parallel Cuban capital, geographically overseas: Little Havana. History will be different according to who tells it. Those who survived, who won, who have the power in their hands are the ones telling us how things happened. Now, behind the pen, there’s a Cuban woman (anybody saying that genre has nothing to do with geopolitical issues, please have a look in this Caribbean island through the Internet, they’ll find a more forceful answer than my arguments); a white Cuban woman (in this case I would recommend to add the cultural and imaginary category “race” when browsing); professionals’ daughter and myself a professional (you might have noticed that Cuban bloggers are mainly young and educated bachelors, no matter if independent or regime-supported); and not a resident in a poor, outlying area of Havana, but neither in privileged city downtown (nevertheless, living in Havana is already a downtown statement, try to add while browsing “Cuba+sex+race” the simple, and apparently innocent word “city”: almost every blog, specialized and institutional websites are generated from the capital, while upon the rest of the country lays a thick blanket of silence, that closes the road in bit-code). Of course, a complete profile story won’t be here reflected.

My first History lesson, which I remember with affection, was when a teacher told me: “relax and leave the books there, we’ll do a time warp”. I once found an odd passage in an alternative travel guide: “Cuba is a unique country with a lot of distinctive features. You don’t need just a passport, money and a tough backpack to travel here; you also require flexibility, creativity, a good mood, patience and a healthy feeling of adventure…”. Curious thing about History: it doesn’t talk just about the past, because it has the ability to transform radically our present’s experience. Do you want to know Cuba? Welcome onboard, bring your luggage, let your books at home… And if you’ve got any questions, do not hesitate to ask the Captain, but ask the boiler-man too.

Translation: Ralph del Valle