The blue call

There is an island where people are kind and smile with their body, yet wear a tint of sad eyes in their faces. From this place, a silent cry-out hits the walls and gets lost in the ocean, where no one listens, and the line is broken.

The blue triggers many meanings, and many sides when trying to understand the Cuban reality.

On one hand it is a great color to photograph (in color therapy, the blue reduces stress and anxiety, that many travellers leave behind when travelling to this paradise on earth), and, on the other hand, the blue reminds me of the sadness. This sadness I see in many of the people walking in Cuba, with a hard reality on their soulders.

It looks to me that nobody (with the power to do it) really cares to take them out of this socio-political heavy background, and their call is lost in the ocean and the walls inside the island.

I wrote a short annecdote to explain my feeling: On this same island, on January 8, 1959, during the speech of victory, Fidel Castro stops his speech and asks one of his commanders: “Am I doing well, Camilo?” Some people claim he was just asking “Am I heard well, Camilo?”, checking the quality of the sound in the speakers. Who knows what happened? It's been years since that beginning of everything. I don't know what Camilo would answer now, in 2024, to that question from his friend, but to me it comes out: “we can't hear anything, Fidel.”