14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, February 16, 2024 — Alfredo Zayas is portrayed in Cuba as the most corrupt president of the pre-Castro era. To support this thesis, our school textbooks emphasize one event in particular: the Protest of the Thirteen. No one can deny that buying the old convent of Santa Clara for more than double its previous price was a very santa (saintly) or a very clara (obvious) thing to do. It is also true that the country was going through a profound economic crisis brought on by the collapse of sugar prices.
But Alfredo Zayas (a.k.a. El Chino, or the Chinese guy) was really no more corrupt that his predecessors. What there was, during his presidency, was greater freedom of expression. Everyone had carte blanche to publicly tear him to pieces. And that, at least, is certainly not something the last three people who have had their buttocks in the seat of power following the demise of the Republic can brag about.
Don’t tell me, “Yunior, you’re now going to defend Zayas!” Well, no. I am not related to the man though my relatives would have supported him. I won’t deny that he appointed himself the official historian, a job that came with a very nice salary, though he never did complete his promised History of Cuba. Nor will I deny that he had the astonishing good fortune to win the national lottery twice. I won’t ignore the fact that a statue of him was erected while he was still alive.
The eight-foot tall sculpture has one hand in its pocket and the other pointing toward the Presidential Palace. Cuban wags used to joke that the message was, “What I have in here, I took from over there.” In the place where that monument once stood, people now worship at a ship whose name [‘Granma’] means
