Panfilo Epifanio , the great chronicler of the everyday Cuba on television, was the unexpected Knight of one Roundtable that managed to surprise me: bringing his grumpy character played by Luis Silva to talk about aging in Cuba, is a milestone for a space that in more recent times is trying to have a taste of the national mood .
In his program Vivir del Cuento, Silva says what the press is silent about. As a young man he plays a credible old timer, those who rise early to get the newspaper or the checkbook. Panfilo was born in 2001, with the monologue of bread that make the University of Havana laughed to death. A student of Cybernetics is perhaps the most popular comedian of the moment.
A month ago I asked him at the Festival of Radio and Television how he came to take the place of journalists and he smiled: “It has been shifting, Panfilo emerged criticizing the bread and when Vivir del Cuento started I knew that there would be the thing. With humor I can make social criticism and address tough topics. As the ration card, for example. “
In its never better called “appearance” at the Round Table, Panfilo launched darts to the usual ration card. He pulled a nylon bag, the kind that used to pack yogurt or to plant a seedling, and read some notes he had written “on this page that is used infrequently,” alluding to the reserved for meat products.
“What is that of population aging in Cuba? Perhaps in other places people are getting younger? “He joked with false alarm, which makes valid that that the tougher truths get loosened by laughing. His style of suggesting is effective, and so he sneaks certain claims, such as when said in the Roundtable” which grandfather did not like his grandson to give him a car … a cart to run errands? ” .
After being part of the Roundtable, Silva says he only lacks to be allowed next to José Rubiera the meteorologist in National Television News. Incidentally, his imitation of announcer Rafael Serrano can relax the hardest sphincter…
Anyway, Silva hit the spot with Panfilo: is the classic old man who studied and now understands many things around, trying to adapt but retains values that make him get mad with many new phenomena , and others less so. Panfilo embodies a generation of Cubans who are not so old, but still tcan not understand some things…
That Panfilo performed in the Roundtable is evidence that the forum breaks its molds to diversify its audiences and attract the viewer’s attention on problems that are not pure academic fanfare as the alarming loss of values and the marginalization of the elderly, who often alone are left waiting for death…
Silva himself said then, and without his characterization, that with Panfilo he was inserted into that world: he works in nursing homes, visits people in bed to cheer them in a context that he considers “ambiguous ” because trying to make someone laugh whose relatives hard hardly contain the excitement and some pain .
According to the Roundtable, it was approved by the government a plan for housing repair and renovation of homes and nursing homes throughout Cuba, and by 2015 to open new centers that, over time, will decrease the subsidy and will have to pay like everyone service, and Social Security will take care of those who cannot afford them.
In turn, the opening private asylums in the future is not excluded, as the same are private nurseries as an alternative to poor condition of state facilities that now exist : it must be clear that not all homes are Santovenia , or the Convent Bethlehem. Near the Cordova Park there is one that give me the creeps
The song goes that a youngster can be anyone who wants to be, and in Cuba alternatives like elders circles are enhanced as well as the senior University and community projects involving the elderly. But to deny that here the outlook for many seniors is black would be to lie.
