To Mark Half a Century of Revolution: Chavez Sent Me a Hamburger

Celebration and mincemeat

To mark the half century since the first of January 1959, we Cubans could buy, through the ration system, half a pound of ground beef. The sense of humor that frequently saves us from neurosis did not spare the unexpected delicacy which was baptized as "the picadillo sent by Chavez," an allusion to the obvious economic shoring-up that comes from Venezuela.

A political process of the magnitude of a socialist revolution should aspire, for its fiftieth anniversary, to more ambitious results and more pompous parties, but there is not much to give. Although it seems a frivolity, for many Cubans the sale of that beef was the most significant event that happened lately. Its flavor will be the memory we will keep of a gray December and a January equally haggard, where there were not even promises of possible improvements and reforms.

Yoani's blog in English translation is here.