Fernando Arrabal
LETTER TO CASTRO
First Day of 1984
and the last of the first quarter century of the Castro Government
Senor Don Fidel Castro Ruz
Cuba
Carfsimo Senor:
With the same mad hope and the same fear with which
I once wrote to General Franco,
I write to you today, Caudillo.
Listen to this weak voice trembling as it comes to you.
Don't hide your heart behind your shield or your reason behind
the unreasonableness of your cause.
Acknowledge my message in the midst of your courtiers' loud
clamorings.
It is amazing to see the servility that sticks to your chariot.
From dawn to dusk dressed up like a soldier,
your appearance says everything, gets everything
for the uniform does make the commander.
You live in violence, never satisfied,
not even when guerrilla wars turn into big wars.
As if a centripetal fury were whirling you around.
A hoarse one-eyed horse who's lost touch with tenderness,
drowned in a cataract turned sour.
You promise
death
to the "intellectual rats,"
you promlse
"the entire American continent"
will burn because your own life is being consumed.
Editor's Note: This article was written on the occasion of the Cuban Revolution's
twentieth anniversary and first appeared in 1983 in France as
Lettre
Ii
Fidel Castro: An
"1984,'
published by Christian Bourgois Editeur. It is translated from the Spanish
by
Edith Grossman.
