IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 3 ENGLISH | Page 96

it below the open window. It’s also far from the
embele dumba of the African primers, a ritual object. Why? Well, because a leaf with an equally
sized piece of gauze on it is like one of the most
lethal Ninja weapons in man-to-man combat.
Sometimes the street creates words that describe
magical purges, in the sense that in mentioning
scissors that domestic matron and cook is also
voicing the cure for bad influences and bad behavior. Sometimes it’s true that materialization
denies all spiritual logic over an object. It denies
the object itself. And scissor attacks are real. And
so is the ignorance about this mysticism that
maintains mundane relations.
We accept that a horseshow is a bladed weapon
whose owner called it a boar’s tooth. It seems that
it is because of the way it was used, from underneath, in the way the mammal defends itself documentarily on television. There was also an assassin loose in Cuba a few years back. He’d slit people’s throats with a sickle. The guy was going
around killing people with a sickle and raping
women.
The question of a bladed weapon is complex at
this time. The adaggio about foreign land being
respected, a teaching from times of yore, has been
spreading like wildfire in these times of danger.
And with that teaching, and cleansed with powder
and straw, that is, what is mean is being kept from
carrying weapons that would turn against us as we
transcend the disenchanted landscape of utopia,
looking for the mantel of right and our own actions in a sunny and emblazoned patio.
Today, we no longer talk about the value of daydreaming, like bottled-up ifrits, about touching,
caressing a weapon. What is in use today is decency: being better, for a better Cuba. Cuba
should not be what it is: an encampment. Much
less should it be a farm with a prison regime. Even
if the die-hards close ranks and prefer the worst
violence among us to be able to justify their legal
crudity, iron fists, unlimited ability to function,
and the tightrope act behind their posturing. Their
fiscal power, because they are sickened by daydreaming. That’s how they rule, basing themselves on fear.

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In times of violence, this is all very sensitive. After the film Conducta (2014), beer bottle tops—
with all their click-clack—are used as bladed
weapons. People’s imaginations have them cutting slices that release sparks and scratch corneas.
They even use the train rail to flatten them. And
they avoid being caught having them in their
pockets as if they were change or pieces of a musical instrument. They also imitate the sharpened
coins people used to use, by slimming (wearing)
down their thick sides. To this we