IDENTIDADES 1 ENGLISH IDENTIDADES 5 ENGLISH | Page 83

The Unusual
Emigrant
Armando Soler Hernández
Journalist
Havana, Cuba
‘Listen, what I’d like to do is to get outta here and go to a country where the police will
not jail you for saying what you think.’
Unidentified person to another on Galiano Street, Havana
Coming face-to-face with reencountered reality
He asked us to call him Jorge. He lives
in Miami and has just returned from a
vacation. He wants to see the neighborhood, friends, and confesses to me that
he really wants to go to Monaco, a sort
of motley shopping plaza called Monaco because of the old Monaco Theater,
which is still standing. It was one of the
most modern in Havana during the
1950s.

he remembers how the place was very
well. To convince me, he invites me to
accompany him and eat some ice cream.
By now, the short walk along Mayía
Rodríguez Avenue begins to shock him.
He is bothered by the smell of garbage
on the corner of Carmen Street. It was
already picked up, but a bunch of trash
accumulated during the week and was
rotting under the strong sun.

What’s special about the Monaco for
you, I ask him? He says it’s a very pretty place where he had many good times
when he was younger. Jorge is 37 years
old. When I ask when he emigrated he
answers over two years ago, almost
three. Confused, I say that this place,
where many of the stores and businesses
still exist, hasn’t changed much, except,
maybe, for the small selling stands that
overflow in the parking lot in front of
the old and almost empty grocery store.
Yet, he shakes his head ‘no.’ He states

“Damn! Everything is so abandoned
and dirty!” he admits. And he’s not only
referring to the surroundings. In spite of
a few private businesses I point out to
him along our way, I begin to feel that
all is not well with the way he is remembering things. Many of the people
we run into seem quite aged to him, as
are the homes along what used to be a
beautiful, still tree-lined, avenue.
Yet, it seems that it is the sight of the
very center of Monaco that finally destroys his memory of things.

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