Chronicles of the Northwest I

About the Author

Fr. Alberto Reyes is a Catholic priest assigned to a seminary and group of parishes near Camagüey, Cuba.

There's one thing that makes me really proud of my people. We are a people who have decided that difficulty is a challenge and not a disgrace. And just as we face hurricane after hurricane, we get up, over and over again, reinvent ourselves, outperform ourselves and refuse to die. But like every virtue taken to the extreme, there’s a flip side to the coin. And the flip side is that the Cuban people, absorbed in the constant fight for survival, have become unable to pause for a moment to consider why we continue to live like this and are unable to say: Enough Already.

A Summary of the Chronicles
            Upon my return to Cuba from my studies in Madrid in August 2009, I left behind many dear people with whom I had the firm intention of continuing to stay in touch regularly. However, soon it became clear to me that there weren’t enough hours in the day to allow me to correspond individually with everyone.  As a result, the "Caribbean Chronicles" were born, where I summarized my daily life as a priest in Cuba.

After six years in Guáimaro, my first post-Madrid parish, I was relocated for Maisí located at the easternmost end of Cuba.  That is where the “Caribbean Chronicles” became the "Chronicles of the Far East", where I described everything we went through in the aftermath of Hurricane Matthew.
            I would have stayed in Maisí forever, but within two years of living there I was asked to return to Camaguey as a trainer at the St. Augustine Propedeutic Seminary, converted into the National Propaedeutic Seminary. I worked full-time at the Seminary until September last year when I was asked to minister to the parish of Esmeralda, northwest of the diocese of Camaguey, in addition to my duties at the Seminary.
            So now I live between two passions: the formation of those who take their first steps on their journey to priesthood at the St. Augustine Seminary in Camaguey, and my life as a parish priest in Esmeralda, which was my priestly "first love" many years ago and now has me as parish priest again.
            Welcome, then, to the new chronicles: the Chronicles of the Northwest, which I hope to send out on the first day of every month.

To the Limit
            I have a friend whose WhatsApp status reads: "Working hard for something we're not interested in is called stress. Working hard for something we love is called passion." Fortunately, what I do is my passion. Although it is true that trying to fully live two passions at the same time is complicated, and sometimes I feel at the limit of my strength.
            Every reality has a core and many peripheries. The core of the Seminary life is to prepare, teach, and spiritually guide seminarians. The peripheries of Seminary life show up, for example, when I am stirred by a perfectionist spirit that raises my expectations of the optimal level, or when I feel responsible for the rate of progress of the seminarians and I lack the patience (and perhaps faith) to wait for the seed to grow and mature according to its own rhythm. Or those times when young men in the process of discernment want to talk with me and I can’t seem to make the time.
            Then the unexpected happens. Like all of a sudden finding out that one of the seminarians in reality works for State Security, and suddenly realizing that someone you had accompanied on his journey as a seminarian and to who all doors had been opened was there to report on you, to collect photos, to spy. It hurts especially because this young man was not really a bad person or had dubious intentions at first. But he lacked the strength to resist the pressures of State Security. It hurts because this young man will now never be a priest and his dream is gone forever, and his life could have been a wonderful adventure that will now never be.
            Then there is parish life. To begin with, the parish is almost 120 km from Camaguey.  It is accessible only by roads that seem to have been bombed. I minister to ten small towns, and thankfully there is another priest who helps me with these duties. The core of a parish life is abundant: masses in all towns every week, baptisms, visits to the sick, organizing catechesis and faith formation, direct or indirect interaction with the different parish groups, etc.
Obviously, the core of parish life also includes the "strong moments": Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, Novenas to our Lady of Charity, all with their respective celebrations, retreats, confessions... Who said a priest's life is boring? And we have not yet talked about the peripheries of parish life: people (parishioners or not) who want to talk about problems, or funerals (taking into account that there are people who are most inopportune, even at the time of their death).  And let’s not forget the car, affectionately called "the second parish", which causes both feelings of thankfulness because it still works after more than 30 years of uninterrupted rattling, and the desire to incinerate it every time the “breakdown of the month” occurs.
And in the midst of all this activity, there are also the handyman duties, because otherwise the house would collapse on you. It's so exciting when within a few days the freezer stops working, then the fridge, then the washing machine...

Reality Surpasses Any Fiction
            I think this is my favorite quote from Gabriel García Marquez, because in the midst of my already unpredictable life, COVID made its triumphant entrance shattering the previously known ordinary life of the whole galaxy and, of course, of Cuba.
            Cuba, which already had enough to preoccupy itself with, has now outdone itself. The long lines to buy everyday necessities were already our daily bread, but now they are a continuous and ubiquitous institution.
            The duration of a Cuban line is unpredictable.  It can range from four hours to buy a bottle of cooking oil (because buying more is not allowed), or it can last an entire night just to keep your place in line so you can buy it the next day, or it can last several days with the respective moments of "rectification" of the number of people that are allowed to be in the queue. If you're not in line at the time of “rectification” you lose your place.
            Human beings are creative by nature and sometimes we think we've seen it all, but that's never true. There are people who queue up in a line "just in case". It works like this: you are walking down the street and you see a line. You stop and ask, "What are you lining up for?" The response is "We don't know, but there will be something available.” "Something" can be anything from chicken to candy, but that doesn't matter. The person then joins the queue, even if he has no idea of what "something" will be, a word that never in his life he thought would have an esoteric meaning. But there's more, the "something" can change; when the queue started it was for soap, but then the soap ran out and now burgers are for sale, which run out as you get to the front of the line and now you get to be the first to buy cookies.
            What is plainly obvious is the scarcity of items we consider basic: soap, toothpaste, cooking oil, detergent, shampoo..., and of course, food. Now, with the introduction of stores that only accept US dollars all these necessities that were previously scarce have re-appeared exuberantly and miraculously.  But they are locked behind glass cases with bars, only to be unlocked for those with green banknotes. If there is no green, your prospects are grim, or as we say here: "grey with black stitching".
            In addition to scarcity, everything has become stratospherically more expensive. The pound of rice used to cost four Cuban pesos, it is now considered cheap if you find it at ten; the package of detergent that used to cost 0.60 CUC now you can find at 6.00 CUC.  In so not a distant path, as any good Cuban would say when stopping by someone’s house for a visit: "How about you brew us some coffee?" Now you arrive and, timidly, you ask, "Do you have coffee?"
            Necessity forces improvisation.  We use liquid detergent as shampoo, salt as a substitute for toothpaste and newspaper (conveniently crushed) as toilet paper. Toothpaste tubes are carefully squeezed and when it already seems that the tube has given everything it had, the bottom is cut out and the tube is opened flat, and voila, we now have toothpaste for a day or two more.
            There are families who have been blessed with having someone in the family who is always available and whose new and vital function is solely to stand in line to secure items for the family.  But not everyone is that lucky. Most people have to juggle the lines (which at times are like capricious and unpredictable animals) with their daily jobs, meetings and other obligations.  Imagine, for example, a quiet and serene nurse who all of a sudden runs out of the clinic transformed into a sweaty and wild creature running desperately to queue up in line before the detergent runs out.
            But this new multi-personality way of life isn't the most dramatic thing we are experiencing. In my opinion the worst thing is the shortage of any type of medicine. There's no medicine, this is the stark reality. We can survive without cooking oil, we can endure a headache with chamomile tea, but infections do not heal without antibiotics, the mentally ill are not stabilized without antipsychotics, and chronic illnesses are not managed without daily medication. And the Cuban people manage the scarcity, and they endure, but enduring is not living.

An island Made for Hurricanes
             Cuba is in the path of hurricanes that form deep in the Atlantic, and it is an island that defies hurricanes. Just as the Cuban people are born and bred to defy struggle.
            It is said a parishioner asked a priest:

• Father, I have two questions for you, one easy and one difficult. Which one do you want first?
• Let's start with the easy one…
• Okay, help me understand the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
• Wait, if this is the easy one, what's the hard one?
• Where's the chicken?

There's one thing that makes me really proud of my people. We are a people who have decided that difficulty is a challenge and not a disgrace. And just as we face hurricane after hurricane, we get up, over and over again, reinvent ourselves, outperform ourselves and refuse to die. But like every virtue taken to the extreme, there’s a flip side to the coin. And the flip side is that the Cuban people, absorbed in the constant fight for survival, have become unable to pause for a moment to consider why we continue to live like this and are unable to say: Enough Already.