The New Man in Cuba in Search of Anabolic Steroids

The New Man in Cuba in Search of Anabolic Steroids / Juan Juan Almeida
Posted on June 15, 2014

You don't need to be an expert critic, clairvoyant sociologist or a wise
politician to understand that when you grow up in a totalitarian and
absolutist country like Cuba, flooded with numerous afflictions, it's
normal to feel small.

Thus, because of the great restrictions on individual freedom, the
meager access to modernity and a determined idleness, every day more
young Cubans, trapped in the wrong time of an epoch that doesn't move
on, however much it's announced, and doesn't arrive, evade reality by
finding refuge in sex, drugs, alcohol, emigration, robbing, lying and in
a new sickness that, although it's not recognized as such by the
international medical community, is now all the craze.

The consumption of anabolic steroids has grown into an epidemic,
especially among adolescents and young people, who want to improve their
physical and esthetic qualities. They also are sure they will lose body
fat, which is in vogue.

In large measure, the creators of the problem are the media of
communication. Cinema, television, literature, magazines, trying to sell
a gallant beau, aren't aware of what happens later. Prosecuting them now
leads nowhere; what's worrisome is the increase in young people cared
for in the emergency rooms of Cuban hospitals, affected by severe liver
and multiorgan failure, brought on by the consumption of anabolics,
because the desire to look good, even as a form of social nonconformity,
draws them to spend money for these substances that exaggerate their
musculature.

Primobolan, Proviron, Winstrol, Parabolan, Anadrol – young people talk
about the brand names and doses without having the remotest idea of the
secondary effects.

The Cuban government knows about this, has the information, even has
referred to the subject in extensive editorials that sound less
convincing than Mariela Castro's curriculum; but understanding that it's
a matter of an invisible hurricane, they prefer to practice their
habitual sedentary politics of explaining and not acting. As if
Poseidon, the Greek god of the sea, couldn't stop a tsunami.

The Minister of Public Health, with total shamelessness, assures that
the market for this type of substance is controlled; but it's certain
that young people can obtain it without much work in pharmacies,
hospitals, sports schools and connections in the black market. But the
principal providers of this "destructive spring" are some Cuban
functionaries with the medical mission in Venezuela, who through a dark
back-route and in complicity with officials of General Customs of the
Republic of Cuba, send and let pass the product into the national
territory by treating it as regulated but lawful trade.

The "Trafficking and holding of toxic drugs and other similar
substances" is well-represented in Chapter V (Crimes against public
health) of the Cuban penal code; but its sanction is poor, and by
association, the business is easier, more profitable, less prosecuted
than trafficking in cocaine, and it guarantees an equal number of
dependent clients, creating a host of young people trapped between the
weights and this addiction, scientifically called muscular distrophy or
vigorexia, which obliges them to fall into the constant nightmare of
raising their self-esteem. My aunt always repeated, "Mijo, don't let
yourself be fooled; there are no roses without thorns."

Translated by Regina Anavy

2 June 2014

Source: The New Man in Cuba in Search of Anabolic Steroids / Juan Juan
Almeida | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/the-new-man-in-cuba-in-search-of-anabolic-steroids-juan-juan-almeida/