6.16.2005

Retrato de un sable / Héctor Silva Michelena

Portrait of a Sabre

Beginning with an old machete and with the official's beret beside which he stands out, a Cadet who swore to use his sabre in defense of freedom, according to legend was always riding a horse between history and myth. The imposing figure of the Hegemon finally appears, transformed into a Magistrate, who goes armed with an axe to assassinate an old usurer, to kill a "useless and harmful" louse, like he says. The old usurer, according to his whims, represents the past, which smells rotten to him. His artistic embryology and his ideological evolution, which made him feel faint and sweat blood, were developed in a prison under the heat of a Marxist-Lenininst-Stalinist-Maoist-Castroist-and even Saddam Husseinist trinket.

Today, after great efforts which began amid neoliberalism, his speech acts decant in Socialism.

He said loudly: "Socialism hasn't died, it was off partying." His entourage of autistic thinkers (Oh, Rodin!) advised him in a conclave: "You have to say that true Socialism has never existed and thus it cannot have died. We will invent the new Socialism." Yes, gentlemen of the conclave: since we have close relations with Cuba, we deduce that Castro has created the true Socialism, which thus does exist.

The Hegemon lives a paradox: his crime (the coup d'état) is not that but is instead a praise-worthy military rebellion that guarantees human acts. In another aspect, the economic, the crime is a simple operation aimed at reestablishing the natural balance of money and rectifying its defective distribution: the assassination of the old usurer who guards in her safes a wealth which should flow generously toward the people, this is his absolution. How can that be called a coup d'état? His hegemonic humility leads him to assist a prostitute and he becomes piety in the flesh. And a symbolic cross hangs from his chest.

The prostitute whispers into his ear like a Christian: "Rectify, oh great Magistrate; that old woman wasn't a louse, she was a human being." But the Magistrate doesn't understand. The only thing he understands is that he is an extraordinary man, a genius who is authorized to violate the law. That's the reason for his popular charisma and the impulse that took him to prison. Olympian irrationalism convinced this Magistrate, even though he mocks it. He pronounces against any who use reason and persuasion to look for consensus. That's why it doesn't matter if they call him Robespierre or Napoleon, or if they consider him a simpleton, even though he's read Marx or Lenin. Regardless, it's noteworthy that he'll praise the communist prison where he was, where the individual is treated, if not like a louse, then like an ant, against those individualist excesses. To enter that communist paradise one has to pay for the right of entry: to sign a RR. What would he think of Stalin, who made all of Russia a prison without demanding that right of entry? A word against his sabre was enough. Our Magistrate could achieve an absolved language by merely grinding down the others until they become cosmic dust.




{ Héctor Silva Michelena, TalCual, 23 May 2005 }

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