Between rains, floods, and the world in suspense because the American president no longer respects even the holy Pope of Catholics, last weekend Coffee Day passed without us Dominicans paying the well-deserved tribute to that nectar of the brown gods.
Almost all of us Dominicans owe too much to coffee and its bars. Thanks to Café Gijón, in Madrid one was able to meet Francisco Umbral and then interview him. Later, the same thing happened with Mario Benedetti in a disappeared café on La Gran Vía, in front of Callao. In the Café de Flore, in Paris, one was able to greet Sartre after he died. Just as I would not have met Borges, now deceased, if I had not entered the Café Tortoni in Buenos Aires, which is a kind of Café Central with a tango in the background.
Since the 19th century, coffee, and the bars that are called that, have been fundamental for everything important, as it has the magical gift of finding the “usefulness of the useless”, celebrating the blessed word. Over a cup of coffee the world has been destroyed, reinvented and rebuilt more than once.
An instrument of socialization of the first order, coffee has been fundamental for business, and especially for love, and let me explain: It is true that due to the facilities that exist today for the “holy fornication”, our young people are unaware that not long ago, when a shy and clumsy man in matters of love did not dare to invite a glass of wine to an elusive damsel, he first invited her to a coffee, with any pretext, political, literary or communication… and let the elders do memory and return to that San Gil del Malecón cafe, between walls and nostalgia, with the Caribbean Sea as the only witness.
Since his appointment with Danilo Medina went so badly, one advises the government to, on future visits, bring a pound of Café Gourmet Santo Domingo, from INDUBAN, so that, before starting to talk about unity to face this crisis of uncertainty, decadence and madness, they first toast the country. In the end, the agreement that does not achieve the aroma of a cup of coffee, there is no politician, witch, monsignor or biblical argument that can achieve it. A banilejo coffee for the country, for the country.
