ISLAND STASIOLOGY / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

ISLAND STASIOLOGY / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Translator: Claudia Diaz Alemany

Of Militants and Queers
Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

…s they have tried to call it. They weren't "five gray years." Much less
a "black decade." The '70s were the splendor, the Cuban Revolution's era
of luxury. The '70s are and will be the crystal clear incarnation of the
world totalitarian utopia, the twentieth century ideal. In those years
every concept was an absolute, including the atrocious poverty of an
island where, although no one died of hunger, food and civilized objects
disappeared as if by magic (or were treasured in expectation of a
luminous future of great tree-lined avenues where there wouldn't be
enough room for any of their proprietors). "Burn the ships," was our
poetic slogan. Aside from that, precisely in 1971 I was born. So please,
no more faggoty metaphors of opaque colors. Because the '70s here were
also a party, unspeakable, unrepeatable, and radiant.

In comparison with these times of decadent corruption and ideological
stupidity, I imagine that as a true era. Where sincerity could be neatly
murderous. Where everything overflowed the banks of the Revolution, from
literature to money. Where Fidel was a Faith with no expiration date and
paradise could be felt. I envy my parents' impoverished existence, with
their checked shirts and dresses and corduroy sweaters (they bought my
cradle on the black market). Rarely in their history have the Cuban
people been so close to a poetic and policed incarnation as they were in
the '70s. We are that, nothing more. José Lezama Lima knew it. So he
remained quiet. Not from fear (at that point he lived more in bitterness
than in panic), but as a messiah, as a mastermind.

And The Fat Man from Trocadero [Lezama Lima] discovered himself living
counterculturally his own fabrication. Never again would there be in
Cuba any frustration of political essence (nor aesthetic nor of any
other kind of essence). Nor would there be reserves of any royalty.
Everything was an invisible evaporation (reality swept by the
olive-green logo of a libertarian Oppiano*). The baroque reached its end
out of excess gravity in the island of micro-brigades. Every dramatic
conflict was superfluous and had to be resolved through the established
channels. Every desire was cauterized by the playful discourse of the
leader (in the 70s Fidel mourned martyrs the same way he made jokes from
his dais/court). Jose Lezama Lima shut up, also a liar. He forgot to
say, face to face with a homophobic state that yes, he was a fag (and
that Paradise, in fact, had no place within historic materialism; in
many senses this tome is the Anti-Bible and a Contra-Utopia).

Whoever ignores the truth of his own body, could easily sell himself to
the enemies of the homeland given the case of an invasion (and no one
laugh, damn it: the invasion is still imminent to this day). That is why
State Security brands him as a diversionist** in a pdf, for not having
the will to throw himself in front of the Revolution's crazy cart. For
his elusive elan. For being town gossip (they proved it to him with
recordings so that he wouldn't claim innocence in the middle of the
desert). For being such a loving Cuban and for hoarding so many dirty
little family secrets every time he would propose sex to a pupil, maybe
even to a pupil infiltrated by the G2: hence that they would scan his
unpublished manuscripts before the scanner (and in this our current
National Literature Awards are the primary suspects of such leak, our
lezama-gate or maybe wiki-lima).

What better temple than the Mecca of Cuban culture to make love to the
political police. The National Library was the spot by excellence,
clitoral axis between the marble testicles of the MINFAR-MININT and the
turgid phallus of Revolution Square. The den of so many notable
bookworms had to be the marked site. There, the mummy Lezama Lima
stopped being a contemporary writer, while still alive. He deserved it.
Silence gives consent. Communism was an aspirin the size of the sun,
said, back then, the pamphlet's newest poets, and it didn't make sense
to hide our emphysemas in an imaginary hole in Centro Habana (the
militia marched in front of Trocadero 162, low, and the Master of
Origins complained that they did not let him enjoy his nap, while
letters from abroad reached him already open: precisely to him, who had
attempted the Mail Reform of Cuba during the ephemeral euphoria of 1959).

Why hasn't anyone spoken of this brochure before? Had his colleagues
forgotten? Aren't there any survivors of the 70′s who worked at the
National Library? No. There we have the fundamental problem of
cuban-sophy. There are no survivors, there are rather accomplices of our
little horror of a scam. Jails, exiles, microphones, suicides. Only the
Security organs have a memory (although they are forbidden to narrate).
Our people were born literally and literary-ly yesterday. I come to my
desperation as a writer through this point: I cannot express my joy of
knowing ourselves so free in terms of nation. Without teachers or
martyrs. Without any more tradition than the reiterative treason. Alone,
spelling out the imprisoned prose of a little brochure of the DSE
(Department of State Security) where all of our future literature fits,
all of Orwell's Orbit with rum and neighborhood laughter, plus the
indispensable brothel penises in exchange for a couple of bucks. We are
that, nothing more. The militia won, the hetero dogma (not the
heterodoxy). José Lezama Lima found out too late. That's why he remained
quiet. Not because he was a fag (by that time he was already more
virginized than insulted), but for mercy towards himself: any word would
be used against him.

I cannot place an end period without declaring that, in full faculty of
my mental possessions, I find agreeable to declare that from being so
loquacious I have become a little crazy. So that I don't know which
reminiscences or resonances forced me to type and publish this post
immediately. Perhaps I have only pretended to get ahead of the officials
who tend to the CASE OLPL. Perhaps it is only the shame of having being
right (or of having lost my mind as a result of the dissimilar
despotisms since 1971 and until today). Perhaps it is on…

Translator's notes:
*Oppiano Licario is the title of one of José Lezama Lima's books.
**Ideological Diversionism: Anti-revolutionary propaganda in the form of
newspapers, radio, music, movies, etc. Cuban government claims this was
the weapon of the enemy and of anti-revolutionaries on the island.

Translated by: Claudia Díaz

June 11 2011

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