From the living room of her apartment in Cuba, Nelly has a direct view of what is happening on the island, she collects information from everyone who presumes proximity or access to the true circles of power, “I’m talking to you about Gaesa and the small group of soldiers, because Díaz-Canel is just a number, a little spoon, who neither pricks nor cuts.”
She speaks to me with tremendous propriety, sure of what she says: “The crab is by official decree, but Sandro’s clown comes with an alternative plan, they don’t want to sneak them through social networks.”
For her everything is a setup, “here nothing is coincidence, remember what Lisandro Otero said in his book Tree of Life, here what is not prohibited is because it is mandatory.”
The question is why the grandchildren and not the children? What happened to Mariela Castro and her brother Alejandro, who had played a role during the mandate of their father, Raúl Castro?
Nery has his explanation, “they are thinking about the future, about digging a shelter for Raúl’s favorite grandson, whom he has imposed as a first-grade officer without having fired a shot, or head of his personal security without doing anything other than accompanying his grandfather everywhere, but the guy allows himself to be guided by money, they have led him by the hand so that he believes he is a businessman, they addicted him.”
I don’t understand why you think that Sandro Castro’s offensive on social networks could also have the hand of Castroism guiding his disorderly steps. Until now, the most visual of Fidel’s grandchildren had emerged as a wayward beer drinker, defending his private business, with reckless comments and without the discipline or control with which Fidel’s children were usually pressured.
I remember the recurring gossip from the streets of Havana in the 90s with what had happened to Alexis Castro: Sandro’s father had bought a Chevrolet, a very old model, seeking to sneak into car conversions, the invention of the moment that allowed a few to convert those “almendrones” into a modern Chevrolet Lumina of which the tourism companies were deregistering from their rental fleet.
But they cut it in the middle, he found it cut into two halves in the workshop where he had taken it for repair, along the way they showed him a small Lada, already registered in his name and with his father’s message that that was the one he had.
Nelly believes that those were Fidel’s things, that the principles have changed and with Sandro there is total tolerance, “note that they haven’t chopped his Mercedes, nor have they broken the boxes of beer that he brags about”, she believes that they are selling him as the Castro of the new times, covering all the bases so that there are no gaps to sneak through.
“The bitongo went on television ranting about Díaz Canel and no one dared to touch him,” Nelly gives me another example, “They summoned the snitch from the program Con Filo to give his opinion, but the guy knows that this is playing with flames, he put on the seal suit and snuck up on the question as if he were in the aquarium, the guy says that he did criticize him but that they censored him on the air.”
I tell you that Alejandro Castro Espín was immediately sent to Mexico when Nicolás Maduro was captured. “They put it like fish on a pallet and they didn’t buy it, it was a failed attempt, so plan B was to move the crab, with a reputation for being rough and ‘bisnero’ and they did bite that bait.”
According to Nelly, Raúl Castro’s only son is feared by the military leadership, “the time they let him play with power was spent creating commissions that persecuted and investigated historical generals like Furry, Polo and Gondín. They kept the first two in pajamas, the third was killed by a heart attack.” According to her, the military and millionaires of the moment push for this line of succession to be skipped and prefer the malleable grandson. ‘The least the hierarchs want is for Alejandro to come and account for everything they steal.’
Mariela doesn’t see the slightest possibility, “too wayward, that’s nothing more than a social project, it’s like she didn’t grow.”
I ask him how all those succession plans would look now that Trump allowed the entry of a Russian ship with oil. “Many of us are disappointed with that change, on television they sell it as a victory for Putin and Díaz Canel, they gave oxygen to the regime,” he remains silent for a few seconds, reconsidering, “although the debacle continues, the whirlpool has a life of its own.”
I love Nelly’s allegory, he sees Cuba as a huge tail of cloud, a spiral of storm that continues to destroy everything it touches, with a life of its own, even though the original storm may have lost the intensity of the last few days.
A cone-shaped storm, on whose walls, at times, you can see the head of Sandro Castro selling himself as the Delcy Rodríguez of “the new Cuba.”
At other moments the gusts of the tornado reveal the crab, “the only way to talk to the true owner of the horses”: it refers to Raúl Castro, the senile general who, although more dead than alive, is still the cause of all the fears. “It’s like the Cid Campeador, who after he died was put on a horse to scare away the Moors,” says Nelly, “I can’t wait for them to put him in his stone, that seboruco who went up the mountain to hide his ashes, but they’re going to go up there to look for him to break the monument with mandarriazos.”
