Young Communist Makes Street Art

It was the year 1988 and I was a restless young Communist in Havana; a Che Guevara worshiper and a Fidel Castro follower, formed in the trenches of ideological conditioning as any other good Hottanovich* twin member was in those years. The soviet block of socialist countries were under great turmoil at the time. The USRR was collapsing and the Eastern satellites countries were disintegrating. Cuba was entering a so called “rectification process” followed by a “special period”.  My worldview was shattered. My psyche couldn’t take no more that the believe system I grew in, which included a vision of a world of communist perfection, was a huge lie.  Not knowing what to do; I had no resource but to let my disappointment and frustration come out in the form of a street painting.

 I armed my self with a bucket and several oil paint tubes, turpentine and brushes. Walked to 26^th street at the intersection with 11^th and set myself to paint a huge mural, about 7 feet tall by 25 meters long, In that part of El Vedado neighborhood in Havana, 26^th street runs into an old iron bridge that cross the Almendares river and that is used by scores of young people to reach the rocky beaches of Miramar; famous among them La Playita de 16 and Cristino Naranjo club. In the hot summer days that I started my work on the huge wall I was positioned in the most appropriate way to reach them.

The mural was divided in three sections, in the first one I painted a pair of legs wearing some sort of fatigue pants and boots trying to raise up from the ground; in the middle section the legs are walking from left to right and in the last one the legs are falling again. This was a metaphor for the history of the Revolution and Socialism in general. I littered the background of each section with names of heroes and personalities of the independence wars against Spain; names of Cuban and world thinkers; politicians and historical figures.

Some hours after I started painting a cop came to me and asked me what I was doing. I answered that we were in a period of political turmoil because of the events in the Soviet Union and that I was trying to address my confused generation and infuse them with a cry of faith in the Cuban Revolution. Some sort of speech like that I gave to that cop, who accepted my answer, wrote some notes on a paper along with my name and address and left. By the second day the cop was there again, asking more questions, all of which I passed successfully. Also, a beautiful girl that was coming from the beach approached me in the afternoon and started a conversation, something that made me very happy since I realized that my art could have been useful for more than political things; but I was too busy to keep giving my attention to her; she left and I was glad since she could also have been an informant for the state security apparatus.

By the third day the mural was almost over and I have to put the final touches on it. I went to a friend of mine who lived nearby and had a camera with a zoom. He has been following my whereabouts for the last days and I told him that the mural was almost over, except for a final performance that I was going to stage. I asked him to help me by taking some pictures, something that he could easily do with his unique telescopic lens. I knew this person for years and I trusted him. After that I went to my apartment and got dressed in white overalls, the kind that mechanics wear, with suspenders that go across the shoulder and are bracketed at the level of the chest; with nothing under but my underwear and a pair of boots. I walked from my apartment to the mural, happy that that day was the last day of my efforts. Once I got there I started writing some final words. I wrote Fidel in olive green, next to it, in another section of the mural the name of Adolf Hitler in black. I realized that by this time a crowd of hundreds of people has been gathered around to watch the mural . The police are also there, but this time not just one cop but several police cars. My friend is few yards away with the camera. I have to put the final word, which for a young Cuban Communist cannot be any other than Che, the symbol of authenticity against the Soviet block. But now I’m surrounded by several cops and there is a huge crowd around me eager to watch the unfolding events. I got kind of nervous, mixed with my outrage to the collapse of the USRR and my worldview. I took off my boots, wearing only my white overall and bare footed I drew a razor blade from my pocket and cut my fingers, three of four of them, and with blood wrote the word Che on the wall. Right after that a civilian clothed officer, a boss at the security state department I’m sure, ordered the cops to grab me. They handcuffed me and threw me in the back of a police car. Not without me being able to stain the clothes of several of them with blood.

They take me to the police precinct at calle Zapata and O. After some hours there some sort of specialist arrives and check my overall clothing. It is stained with paint and he suspects that the colors could be some kind of chemical trap. I tell him that is only paint. They take me into the basement, where the jail guards are waiting for me. I see two of them, one saying to the other that I’m a counter- revolutionary element, a contra.  He asks me to undress which I dutifully do. They request to lift my arms, show my armpits, pass my hands through my hair, turn around and touch my toes. I realized that he wants to see my asshole in order to see if I have a hidden weapon or something in it. I feel too embarrassed and I said that I’m not going to do so. After three times of asking and me saying no, the one at the right, who looked like he was from the Eastern part of the island, like all cops in Havana are, jumps in the air, Bruce Lee style and land a stern kick of his boot on my face. I fell to the floor and the martial arts movie is now a sequel when both start beating me and kick me all around. Then they lift me and draw me into a small cell full of common criminals. All the while me yelling to them that they, the cops, are the real counter revolutionaries.

The cell is too small, certainly for so many people in it, about twelve. Mostly of my newly acquaintances are black. I remember particularly one of them, a skinny guy with long unruly hair that looked like a disheveled palm tree after a hurricane. He was somebody who must has been there for weeks or months without even been taken into court. We are seated on the floor next to each other. The one with the unruly hair, who seem to be the boss, is laying on a stone naked bed at my right. I’m by the door, seated on the floor leaning my back against the iron bars. A very young guy, a child about 12^th years old ask me what was the reason I was there. I said that I was painting a revolutionary mural on the street.

Like about midnight a prison guard opens the door and ask me to follow him. I go upstairs and see my mother, who hugs me and tells me that she has been the whole day crying and making phone calls asking for my release.  Apparently she has convinced the authorities that I haven’t done anything wrong and that I should be freed. So I’m granted freedom and my mother tells me that I have to get my brushes and oil tubes back from the cops that decommissioned them. I say to her: mom, forget about the brushes and lets go home.

To be continued…

* I’m referring here to the Bokanovich process that Aldous Huxley so wonderfully describes in his “Brave New World”.

( To be continued….)