You might wonder, when you see where I am going with this text, what Perucho Figueredo has to do with electrical power or with food. What does it have to do with cell phones? How are we like those people who sang La Bayamesa from the first free city of Cuba 150 years ago?
Social scientists say that culture is more or less, what stays there, even when an entire generation dies. If we were to "save" Cuban culture in a closet, and we asked people, we would first put the obvious, what we don't want to be broken: the Hymn of Bayamo, a relevè by Alicia Alonso, La Jungla by Wilfredo Lam, a Strawberry and Chocolate cassette, a yellow copy of Cecilia Valdés, a score by Lecuona, a recipe by Nitza Villapol... I hope that they will last forever.
It would be the most beautiful collection in the world and we would open the drawers to sweeten our ears and try a pumpkin flan, hang pictures, read a couple of pages and be better. As the showcase of the grandmothers would be; that keeps the most valuable of all the houses, from the gold barrette that adorned their dress, to the contraindicated mercurochrome that we keep throwing on bad wounds.
After that list, we would not know very well what to keep, because one cannot hang on coat racks what one uses all the time.
If you ask a grandfather he will tell you what culture the boleros of his time were and not this one of now. If you ask a university professor, she will answer that it is a poem by Dulce María Loynaz. If you chat with a 15-year-old boy (methods need to be updated), he will recite something learned in history or Spanish classes. In addition, if you ask in the neighborhood in the middle of a blackout, they will take you for crazy.
Then you sit at home to "tabulate" the results with the task done. What do all these people have in common? That they learned to say "post" and "split" and "brother", but they continue saying "aplatanao" and "sirimba". That the rice and beans are the first two parts of the menu, and the spaghetti is just “for a change”. That after cursing (very Cuban-style) when the power goes out, they will sit in the room to be experts in thermoelectric plants or in economics.
That Barcelona, but the ball. That Netflix and the package, but the time of the novel. What a caipirinha, but canchánchara. That Facebook, but talk to the neighbors by the wall. Than in Europe, but eating fried banana. What an induction stove, but the same recipes as always. What differences of thought, but Martí and the flag.
Therefore, we went back to the beginning: I can't imagine Perucho Figueredo watching the soap opera, but he does have a chat or eat black beans. Moreover, we would start everything like in that October that we celebrate today, if we had to be there.
Because if Alicia, Titón, Lecuona and Loynaz are as valuable as grandma's gold pin; the beans, the sayings, and the "ajiaco" that is the spirituality of this country are, right now, an antibiotic for the soul.