Carlos Manuel Álvarez - The Tribe (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2022) ****½

I had never heard of Carlos Manuel Álvarez, and to all expectations you probably did not either. He's a Cuban journalist who cofounded the online journal "El Estronudo". He received many literary awards, and was arrested by the police for some of his journalistic activities. "The Tribe" fits in no literary category whatsoever. It is partly journalism, partly fiction, partly political analysis, and all three are written with incredible penmanship. Every sentence of his is a treat, a pleasure to read, despite the deep agony of many of the subjects in the stories. 

I will give a few examples here, because they are sufficiently eloquent to make my point: 

"A throng of brothers, cousins, nephews and neighbours are waiting for the homecoming of the prodigal son. Also waiting for him is a lechona - a fifteen pound suckling pig - transformed by the carver's art to create perniles, masas, brigade, rabo, cabeza, pork stew and a mountain of crispy chicharrohnes" (p.34)

The story of elderly Candida: 

"In 1996, Hurricane Lili destroyed Candida's house. She received a government grant for reconstruction materials, but they never showed up. She stayed in the house, which was almost a complete ruin, until someone in the neighbourhood emigrated to the United States. Before the government could confiscate their property, Candida made it her own. "I'm a force to be reckoned with. I take life on and I'm not afraid, that's how God intends it. I went up onto the roof, got into the little patio, broke the seal and snuck into the apartment where I live today."  When the Housing Department tried to get her out, the neighbours protested. Candida deserved a decent home. She didn't know whether or not she deserved it, but what she did know, as she stood there, machete in hand, was that nobody was going to kick her out. She denounced the police, went to the Party and the government, insul­ted any and every official they put before her, and in the end she won the battle." (p. 198)

A paragraph on the sordid fate of the Cubans who eventually manage to stay in the United States: 

"People who have never learned to ride a bicycle will have to buy a car and learn to drive within the week, to negotiate the broad ex­pressways that zigzag through the city, to negotiate with dealers, to work ten hours or more a day, pay rent and taxes they barely understand, adjust to the gruelling habit of punctuality, of obeying superiors, of applying for debit and credit cards, and other things about which they know nothing.  And they will thrive, because they carry within them a memory of the place they came from, a country that sa­dly had little to offer them, but it won't be a piece of cake. There are almost no documented cases of Cubans who legally travelled to Miami later deciding that they made the wrong decision. Fewer still for these people, who have burned their bridges. " (p.243)

Or on his disappointment with the Castro family regime:  

"It is a personal defeat, where­as we are talking about the defeat of a people. And that's something sacred, it's a tragedy. Cuba is a patchwork of capitalism and socialism that is worse than useless. Go try to buy some food. You won't find any. Just look at the prices. Is the blockade to blame? It's fucking ridiculous. It's just not serious. Does our food come from London? Do yams come from Paris? No. Life is constantly in mo­tion and it's like a game of chess. With every move, the board changes. You can't stay still. Things are the way they are because Fidel and Raul are in a standoff with the United States. And the whole thing is a barefaced lie. Raul says: "We can hold out for another fifty years." Well, yes, obviously, you can hold out. But the people can't hold out" (p. 247)

He describes the situation in a neighbourhood of Havana when there is suddenly again a delivery of eggs to the shop of the butcher who is called Fidel: 

"This explains why, on the day the eggs reach their points of sale - small markets, grocery stores, cafes - there are genuine pitched battles between shoppers. Today is one of those days in this Cardenas neighbourhood. There is a horse cab stand just on the corner of Fidel's shop, and half-starved horses are constantly trotting down the road, wearing down the tarmac with their hooves. Spurred on by necessity, residents from every rung of the ladder hurry out. Word has spread. The neighbour­hood is a chaotic hive. A long, restless and disgruntled queue of thirty people gathers halfway down the block from the shopfront. It's early in the morning, and it's al­ways the same clients arguing over the eggs on free sale - generally housewives, punctilious grandmothers and retired old men. It's a picturesque local scene, touching somehow. Fidel knows every one of them and they all know Fidel. The queue unfurls and at certain points gets tangled up in knots of three or four, or it curves and curls around itself, like a boa digesting on the pavement. People's fabric bags are hanging from their forearms and their disposable bags are scrunched up in their fists or in their back trouser pockets" (p. 269)

Carlos Manuel Álvarez tells us about the lives of famous and less famous Cubans. The personal story is always the starting point: a baseball player, a musician, a gay man, an elderly lady, ... presented with a strong sense of empathy and respect for these people who sometimes manage to break out of the political and geographic shackles, sometimes not, but every personal story is about human nature, its resilience, its inventiveness, its capacity for creative solutions in the face of adversity and political regulations, and then again to lift it a level higher to a general criticism of the Cuban regime. 

You get nineteen stories, nineteen captivating stories that are more literary than journalism, more factual than literature, and written with a great sense of composition and wording. 

I also want to congratulate the publishing company, Fitzcarraldo, for their effort to translate the best of international literature into English. I bought the book because I trusted the publishing company. And they did not disappoint me yet.