Carlos Rios Otero is trying to write a note, but his black pen has run out of ink. He shakes it furiously, tries to scribble on a piece of thin white paper, and then tosses it on the table.
He shoots the pen a nasty glare, grabs it again, and flings it high into the air.
Carlos is frustrated. The pen is just one more thing that doesn't work in Cuba.
He is trying to change that, one word at a time. He is the rarest of rare on the island — an independent journalist.
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/2007-01-11/news/metro.html
It's not because the pen doesn't work that Otero is frustrated; he knows, like the rest of us, that a ballpoint pen will not write when it's run out of ink. What frustrates him is the fact that the pen cannot be easily replaced since the regime even in this instance controls "the means of production." In Cuba, it is easy to get a pen only in comparison to how impossible it is to get a computer.
One would think that the monies that the Bush administration alloted to restoring democracy in Cuba would at least buy Otero a new pen.
Or that, at the least, The New Times reporter would offer him his.
Posted by: Manuel A. Tellechea | January 12, 2007 at 08:48 AM