16
PARTISAN REVIEW
of scratching, sweating, suffering, they can see the stopped-up toilets
and the dirty water that contaminates everything.
In the Castellanos Ward of the National Psychiatric Hospital of
Havana, the floors are built on a slant; patients move their bowels
and when they are finished , the excrement is washed toward the hall
with buckets of water.
But you have made sure that those in charge enjoy Western air–
conditioned conditions when they fall ill.
The Frank Pais Hospital offers a most hospitable ward , since
it hospitalizes leaders, athletes and foreigners .
Where is that kid Fidel from the University of Havana who was
going to divide up everything?
One out of four people who die in Cuba kill themselves , if we
are to believe the statistics of the living and of the lively villains who
govern them.
On the Island even the rational do violence to themselves ,
thereby ending the violence all around them.
I read the 1980 annual report of MINISAP with the same right
that the Cuban people have to consult it,
that is, with no right ,
and only through an oversight.
It is a confidential report that is supposed to be seen only by
your confidants and confidels, but it came into my hands from the
hands of an exile.
In the chapter "Causes of death between 14 and 49 years of age,"
we learn that the number of persons taking their own lives is increas–
ing steadily on the Island - from 15 .33 percent of the total number of
deaths in 1968 to 22 .88 percent in 1980-perhaps because it is the
only thing that can be done freely in Cuba.
Shreds of memory eat away at life with the promise of hope.
It is a record of slaughter that reveals Cuba's misfortunes by
demonstrating the despair of its unfortunate people .
But there are the unlucky and there are those who happen to
have bad luck, and there is as much difference between them as
there is between those who commit suicide and those who have
"suicide" committed on them.
The poor in Cuba commit suicide without help from anyone,
but those of your class may be helped along to their deaths by
suicide .
The humble pass on to a better life by taking their own, but
perhaps the powerful have theirs taken away by "suiciding" them. In
