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the mill to pieces, filled trucks with material that
ended up feeding a lot of people. It was so sad to
see those huge trucks drive through the middle of
the sugar mill area towards Havana with all that
scrap.”7
Gladys does not limit her use of the term ‘cannibalism’ to “the people from around here,” but instead applies it to the State as well. And, it is not
difficult to imagine that the State involved itself
with this massive destruction in order to create an
enormous supply of remains with which “the people from around here”—or the “vultures” of
which Reynaldo Castro spoke—are the only ones
who can hope to make a killing.
The legacy of Maylan Álvarez
With La callada molienda, Maylan Álvarez joins
a group of writers who have studied the phenomenon of sugar cultivation in Cuba and its importance for the nation. Testimonies are
invaluable tools for the social sciences and, with
the passage of time, have also become a subgenre
in historiographical research, too.
The Pablo de la Torriente Brau Cultural Center
gave La callada molienda an award: making the
Center the first to acknowledge this kind of historical rescue accomplished through compilation
of personal testimonies. In a statement to the
weekly magazine Bohemia, Víctor Casaus, the
Center’s Director, affirmed: “Some in Cuba think
that any reflection of country’s reality should be
somehow sweetened, as if there had been no conflicts. Yet, contradictions are what really move a
society and its ideas. The testimonial genre can
show this to us like no other. If they are encouraged to deal with our reality in a critical, participatory, responsible way, testimonies still have a
great deal to tell us.”8
That strange phenomenon known as the Cuban
revolution, inspired by a kind of justice that did
not pay attention to its procedures and which naturalized crime in order to achieve its objectives,
was overridden by the fraction of people who

committed such acts and garnered for itself
power, violence and fortune.
It seems that Maylan Álvarez’s purpose was, in
part, to isolate some pure and clean element of the
revolution, if there is one. Yet, La callada molienda does not purposefully focus on the bad to
cover up exclusion or the movement of collectivism to a celebration of isolated individuals—
which is another of the author’s many virtues.
Both are also a product of the revolution, and Castroism made them its destiny.
Notes:
1-Temas 61 (2010): 94.
2-Another participant in the same debate has a
similar opinion. Armando Nova underlines: “After the Triumph of the Revolution, the much desired agrarian reform is carried out. First, the
1959 version, and then the 1963 one, all this
through many laws. This brought about significant structural changes…since it gave land ownership to those who worked the land but did not
own it, whether they were squatters, tenant farmers, sub-renters, etc. That was a very important
step; but the Agrarian Reform did not really distribute all the lands belonging to expropriated
landlords, which meant that by the end of 1963,
the State controlled 75% of the land, controlled
all of production, distribution, sales, etc.
This was not favorable for the tie between rural
people and the land. Instead, it actually contributed to their separation, and provided continuity
to inheritable land. It was another kind of latifundismo (land ownership based on large estates),
quite different it terms of its end result, but it also
alienated agricultural workers.”
3-ÁLVAREZ, Maylan (2011). La callada molienda. Ediciones La Memoria. La Habana, 174.
4-Ibid, 92.
5- Ibid, 105.
6- Ibid, 186.
7- Ibid, 184.

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