The Ghost and the Ghoul

Happy & scary Halloween y'all!
And now a trip back to my memories.
This is a tradition that didn't exist in Cuba when I was growing up. But then, with the sweetness typical of the forbidden fruit, everything American had a special calling for us. I remember how we picked up the tradition from American movies, and from old stories in magazines... And we also took clues from Spanish magazines that translated Halloween as "la noche de las brujas" or witches'night. Very fitting, since all the old hags from el Comite were viejas brujas....
Nothing like donning a crude costume and a crude mask and write a quick abajo fidel in a façade with a piece of charcoal or with a piece of chalk pilfered from our high school, remember, you can't buy crayolas, spray paint or even chalk in Cuba. A few years after, I sent my nephew the mask I wore during my first real Halloween.
Imagine this, in Cuba to wear a mask even during the Carnavales is now verbotten. Well, Carnavales are now a defunct tradition, they have been sanitized to a meaningless rite of cheap beer drinking and people sweat and dance in escapism. The same way the slaves did in the original Carnaval, but without the authenticity and the hope. Imagine New Orleans without Mardi Gras, that's Havana without the debauchery of the Carnaval. So we were doubly transgressive. The mask and the chalk. That'd be a great title for a Halloween movie where some kid kill the bearded monster with a stake trough his rotten heart.
Halloween was the first real party that I attended when I broke free from kagasstro's chains. It was unbelievable, it was great. I cried under the mask for my friends and family left behind. Nobody noticed.
Somehow, the city of Havana provides a great scenery for Halloween. Nothing like the monumental cemetery of Colon. Or the old arcades in some central districts... or the narrow streets of Old Havana or Chinatown, with the Chinese men with an air that is centuries old. The Protestant Cemetery or the Chinese Cemetery are great locales too, the later is just across from raul caligula cagastro luxury apartment, he lives in a place surrounded by the three cemeteries I mentioned. One could feel the macabre nature of that beast, who loves to live in sight of the tombs of his victims.
These are the places that come back to my mind with photographic quality when this day comes... Oh, the memories... we had parties in those places, and in the ruins of the never finished National School of Arts, all very Gothic.
I have nothing against embracing new traditions. That's how culture enriches itself and evolves. I wish we embraced Mardi Gras, Halloween and Thanksgiving in a free Cuba. Thanksgiving would have a very special meaning, since Cubans should be eternally grateful to God once the kagasstro's course is dispelled.
Happy and scary Halloween, y'all!