Reprimanding children in Cuba: "Asere means a bunch of stinky monkeys."

"Asere means a group of stinky monkeys." That’s how we were scolded as children in Revolutionary Cuba. With "asere," we meant "friend." Sometimes it was just a way to greet someone or express excitement. Immediately, the adults who heard us would respond with a disdain that we didn’t even realize we were inviting. It was the historical stench of systemic racism in socialism.

To make matters worse, the explanation came with the scientific authority of a health warning: “asere” could lead us to need a face mask, lose our teeth, and its widespread use might even cause halitosis (that is, bad breath).

I even remember having read that meaning printed in some brochures from that time. Perhaps it is a mistaken reconstruction, an unmistakable symptom of my sentimental castrismo. But I am not the only witness. In 2023, Ariel Pierucci described in Dialektika how teachers used that apartheid of stinking monkeys as a catchphrase to reprimand minors and halt the growing popularity of "asere."

Until 1989, Cuba was believed to be as white as it was before the Revolution. That lesson in etymology was nothing more than pure ethnic cleansing. Everyone, regardless of race, was taught to feel ashamed of speaking like a black person.

The best-supported explanation of the term "asere" takes us to the Abakuá tradition and the Èfik and Ìbìbìo languages from the African region of Calabar, in southeastern Nigeria, not far from the border with Cameroon.

In a study published in African Studies Review (48:1) in April 2005, Ivor L. Miller collects the correspondence between the Cuban "asére" and the greetings "esiere" (in èfik) and "asiere" (in ìbìbìo). This identification comes from linguist Bruce Connell. In ritual use within abakuá, Miller notes that "asere" is a kind of "I greet," commonly used in the afternoons and evenings. A crepuscular asere.

The Dictionary of Americanisms by the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language registers the variants acere and asere as Cubanisms, meaning "close friend, inseparable companion." The pair asere/acere is not considered a vulgarism; it is reported to be used mainly in popular speech and among educated speakers in a spontaneous and informal register.

In none of these sources is there any trace of monkeys. Much less of a stinking bunch of them. Half a century later, we Cubans look back and only now do we cruelly realize: the degradation of the worthy word "asere" must have been the doing of Fidel and no one else but Fidel.

Speculative logic is infallible: to intervene in the intimacy of speech to discipline those of us who grew up within it. In the process, to stifle any ebb and flow outside the jargon of state warfare, avoiding at all costs the contamination (or worse, the universalization) of the Lingua Totalitarismi Insularis, following the initials of the Lingua Tertii Imperii by Victor Klemperer.

The Communist Party aimed at a populace as the captive recipient of its top-down directives. Meanwhile, individuals producing their own meanings were stigmatized.

However, "asere" spread like wildfire without the need for campaigns. It became fashionable in defiance of the ideological guidelines set by the social engineering methodologists. After decades of battles for education, from sixth to ninth grade, the New Man insisted on presenting himself as a marginalized subject.

Moreover, the perfect counterpart was the ancient prejudices of the great Cuban family, always so eager to distance its children from the rabble. A miniature Ministry of the Interior was being nurtured in every decent household of revolutionaries, fueled by the domestic desire to distinguish themselves from the poor, the lowlifes, the 'negrada' (regardless of skin color).

Never has Fidel Castro's loquacious genius shone so brightly: taking a fraternal voice of third-world origin, twisting its neck with a tale from Punto Cero or the Kremlin, penalizing its use, and alienating its speakers.

Those children still dream today in asere. We grew older without losing the asere accent in our throats, although we haven't mixed as much as our genetics shows. Fidel knew what he was doing. That's why the commander in chief will not be forgiven.

Growing up within the insular language of Castroism was akin to talking for the sake of talking. We savored the underlying prejudices with which the state's monolingualism educated us. And where we took pride in our high cultural level, the Father of the Mother Tongue bequeathed us a master class in self-discrimination: do not speak like a bunch of stinking monkeys; imitate the official speech of the European white man who came to say everything for you.