Cuba: Mother, there is only one

By Ilse Bulit
It is an old joke, but it is often told. Pepito( like Dennis the Menace) is a leading character in Cuban stories, which are based on street philosophy and usually involve sex and politics. Pepito’s mother asks him to fetch a couple of soft drinks from the fridge for some visiting friends. The mocking and daring character goes against all social principles, places a comma after the vocative and shouts: Mother, there is only one! Behind this innocent joke there lies the duplicity of the so-called love for mothers. Of course, there is only one mother and there is also only one father, at least, until they are biotechnologically engineered. The joke came up a long time ago, when genetics was connected with atrocious acts committed in Nazi concentration camps, when women cried a lot at local movie theaters watching a stocky Sara García(Mexican actress) with her arms wide open to receive her black children-sheep, when criminals had hearts tattooed as a tribute to perfect, irrevocable and unique mothers, although these offenders could well be serving sentences for having killed any other mother.