 No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment, for the patch will pull away from the garment, making the tear worse. Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. Matthew 9:16-17
For some years now I have exchanged views with some of the principal apologists in Cuba, of the so-called “Socialism of the 21st Century,” and I know the members of the Group called “Critical Observatory Network,” which brings together those who proclaim the reformulation of the Socialist system.
From the first time, at a conference I attended in the now defunct Institute of Biblical and Theological Studies (ISEBIT),in my rebuttal I referred to the Gospel of St. Matthew. Because how can one conceive that a system that has proven to be unworkable, because it goes against the essence of being human, can be redesigned and supported in the XXI century?
The proposals and related approaches of the alleged “Socialism of the XXI Century,” reminds me of an experiment conducted more than forty years ago by a married couple, both psychologists, at Harvard University. It earned them the Nobel Prize for demonstrating the mechanisms of perception.
For the experiment they took a litter of newborn kittens and divided then into two groups. One group was reared in a room where all visual stimuli were horizontal. The other in which the stimuli were vertical. When both groups grew, respectively, some perceived only the horizontal elements in the environment while the others perceived only the vertical.
In Cuba, from nursery school to university, we receive a political-ideological training designed to demonstrate the benefits of socialism. Thus, many people are indoctrinated to see only the socialist forms of organizing society. In contrast to the reality. That is, they perceive what they are conditioned to see.
 On Saturday, May 12, the “Critical Observatory Network” called for a rally in support of the “Outraged” of the world. It was to be held at 2 pm at Karl Marx Park, located on the corner of Carlos III and Belascoain in Central Havana. Given that the day before the 11th Havana Biennial — an Art exhibition filled with performances and other events — had begun, I decided to go to see the performance they had prepared.
On arriving, I was aware of the presence of police and people in civilian clothes around the site, which I told me that the political police was guarding the place. Knowing that my friend Miriam Celaya was also planning to attend, I looked for her and saw that the police had arrested her. I went to her.
This caused the people dressed as civilians, who directed the operation of State Security, to order me to stop me, as well, and they asked me for my mobile phone. On my refusing to give it to them, as they were in plain clothes and did not have such powers, they handed me to another one dressed as a cop, although he did not have any identifying badge, and he pushed me up against a patrol car. There I stood, and with my hands up, feet wide, while they took my backpack, mobile phone, camera and video recorder and I put me in the patrol car.
In the back seat to my right sat Miriam and on the left sat a policeman. I told Miriam: don’t worry that we go as a couple, as in Noah’s ark. We were taken to the Playa on Calle 42 and Avenida 33. where they stopped the car and told us to get out. They gave us our property and tore out of there, gone. Miriam and I wondered, what do we do? And I told her, “On the other corner is the “El Alamo” cafeteria, let’s go have a beer and cool off.
 I’ve described because it happened to show that the repressors are very worried about public discontent in the streets of the city. While walking with Miriam, the police who were taking her repeated: nothing can happen here, nothing can happen here, like a mantra.
Members of the “Critical Observatory Network” were just 12 apologists for the “Socialism of the 21st Century.” Which they summarized in two separate posters: “If you think like a bourgeois you will live like a slave” and “Down with the capitalists.” It turned out, that after we were taken they sang the anthem “The Internationale”. Everything took less than 15 minutes.
What do they fear? That 68% of citizens, according to a 2011 survey by the Veritas Group, believe that we must change the economic-political-social. That the truly “outraged,” in Cuba, take the initiative and, instead of a XXI century socialism, they demand loudly on the avenues, streets and parks of the city the structural changes that our society requires.
May 15 2012
Yaremis Flores
Sandor Perez, A 29-year-old Rastafarian, had no reason to celebrate this May 1st. In February he was dismissed from the Communal Services of Havana East, where he worked as a street sweeper. His boss told him: “If you don’t get a haircut, you can’t keep working with us.” Sandor had bought with his savings his own little cart for picking up trash.
His long hair curled under a turban does not meet the ’good behavior and appearance’ requirement for belonging to a state entity. Graduated with an associate degree in Naval Construction; he did not exercise thattrade because of the institutional rejection of his beliefs.
“I have applied for several jobs,and generally they don’t choose me because of my appearance,” said Sandor. “The only possible optionsfor the Rastas in Cuba are to work cleaning streets, in agriculture or in construction. I don’t know anyone who is a doctor, teacher or delegate of the National Assembly,” he added.
A four-year old girl depends on the young Rasta. During the month of March he sought work on the ’Hanoi’ Organoponico in the capital neighborhood of Alamar (a place where agricultural products are cultivated and sold), but the answer was, “Come another day to see if something appearsfor you.” He went 10 consecutive days, with the hope of getting a job.
On the morning of the eleventh day, the boss of the Organoponico told him, feigning sadness, “The job vacancy is already filled; if you had come yesterday. . .” Sandor replied: “Look, don’t pay me with money; I can do with a daily bundle of lettuce for my I-tal (natural foodproper for the Rastafarian diet).” The proposal was not accepted.
Carlos Cantero, a Rasta of 36 years of age, also worked as a trash picker some weeks ago. “I was expelled because of my dreadlocks” (Rastafarian hair style). Moreover, he assured that some of his Rasta brothers have not withstood the pressure and have had to cut their hair, which goes against thecommands of the religion.
Without precise official statistics, some Cuban Rastas affirm that the unemployment rate of the community is high. In order to subsist, they are obliged to fulfill the stereotypes imposed by the socialist society. Is it for everyone, the happiness of celebrating the work of the Revolution on the International Day of the Workers?
Translated by mlk
May 16 2012
Pork is one of the dishes most commonly served on every Cuban table. The absence of it in State stores has given rise to innumerable criticisms from the population. The little meat that is sold right now, is done so in a clandestine way in homes and patios at fairly high prices.
This past weekend on a visit to Santo Domingo, located just 20 miles outside the city of Santa Clara, the lens of my camera captured some snapshots that show how a few pieces of pork are brought someplace in this town.
The meat is transported in a cart pulled by animals, known as horse wagon, a cart that goes along with pieces of this meat hanging off one side, accompanied by a good collection of insects. The destination of this meat was an establishment known as The Blue Tent, a commercial establishment that will subsequently sell it to those who come there for the sole purpose of tasting one of the traditional dishes.
We might well call the dish made from this meat product, “Pork a la Flies.”
May 14 2012
 From: “www.intereconomia.com” Delfi is an almost obsolete computer programming language, and in reverse almost a man’s name I don’t care to mention, although in this writing I allude to one who still governs or influences the destiny of Cuba and who reappears in public on occasion talking about the end of the world. This would-be Messiah of the olive-green mentality, who became a “peaceful guerrilla” in pursuit of a Nobel Prize, took the world to the brink of World War III. Among his political priorities have been his own image, remaining at the head of Cuba and of the model he founded and built, the export of his ideological pretext — including logistical support to friends and guerrillas — to come to power, or to perpetuate himself in it, the constant criticism of the rich countries, particularly the United States. He has worn out Cuba socially, politically and economically, and he still meddles in the problems of others offering them his theories in exchange for support, even if it is just propaganda and patronage. Venezuela is the economic exception that replaced the former Soviet empire in this line.
But I refuse to attribute all national problems to him, because he is a symbol, an icon: the caudillo of a team of people who have conspired with him to keep him, for decades, in the seat where they have habitually committed the dishonor of violating the rights of a whole nation. So they insist on the illogic of the single-party system and maintain the closed circle of the clan, where there is no room for questions, only obedience.
To this working group he always gives privileges and perks in exchange for the worship of his person and he made them stewards of the current problems of Cuba and those to come. This practice is still maintained because in him is the survival of the failed, but stubbornly defended political model and the continuation of the well-being of his “friends in the cause” and family members.
I know that Delfi enjoys this widespread cult of personality that has captured headlines and he still appears in the international press with his name and surname — keeping in mind that the dauphin and current president is his brother — but it’s not enough. The Castro clan and the “Castro dynasty” continues castrating the fundamental rights of Cubans, postponing our legitimate aspirations and needs for political pluralism, and deifying the image of the dictator with appearances, historical images of the guerrillas, constant references to his person in the national media, and presentations to foreign audiences along with the local elite.
It’s not that I would like to “play with the monkey and the chain,”* the facts are the evidence that he is still there, with his group of accommodating sculptors of the myth, preventing the current Head of State from having too much prominence, or ruining it all with openings or reforms, this political monotheism and cult of his personality for which he and his stalwarts have worked for more than fifty years.
Many think it is best to ignore him, but in doing so, I feel I’m missing a fundamental part of our history, restricting my freedom of speech, and going along with those who harass us, and that is not intellectually honest.
*Translator’s note: From a popular Cuban saying: “Play with the chain but not the monkey.”
May 16 2012
 Archive photo Chauvinism has been an evil that has always accompanied us, exacerbated in the last 50 years, with the objective of making us forget our small, medium and large problems, on altars of resolving those of humanity, as the different and chosen people that we are. This aims to explain and validate our direct or indirect participation in dozens of countries, as much in times of war as of peace, at the cost of human lives and material resources.
Nevertheless, if we review our history, in spite of being rich in facts and important people — like any other country — this strange self-valuation has not contributed much. Not because of caprice did Spain place on its shield its famous phrase: The always loyal Island of Cuba, without forgetting that we were one of the last colonies to free ourselves, when all the rest had already managed it.
Our first armed uprising against Spain was organized and directed by a Venezuelan, General Narciso Lopez, on disembarking in Cardenas in 1850, with the majority participation of foreigners, principally North Americans, and only five Cubans. No inhabitant of the place swelled his forces, and he had to re-embark, pursued by the Spaniards.
On his second landing, by Pinar del Rio, 10% were Cuban, but the Hungarian General Johann Pragay and North American Colonel William Crittenden formed an important part of it. It failed, being captured by a Cuban patrol in the service of the Spaniards, and the majority were executed.
In 1868, in the uprising of Yara, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes commanded; Maximo Gomez and Luis Marcano, both Dominicans,participated, Marcano was second in command (substituted for Bartolome Maso). Afterward they were joined by General Modesto Diaz, also Dominican. The post of Chief General of the Liberating Army, on producing the division of powers in the year 1869, was occupied by the Cuban General Manuel de Quesada, who had fought in the Mexican war against the French, but afterward the North American General Thomas Jordan arrested him for a short time — in the Ten Year War, and General Maximo Gomez — during all of the War of Independence.
In these suppressed wars the brigadier Henry Reeve, North American, and General Carlos Roloff, Polish, stood out in addition to some other lesser known foreigners. In more recent times, an important role in insurrectionist triumph belonged to commander Ernesto Guevara, Argentinian.
As can be appreciated, although I have only referred to the military and have not made reference to medicine, education, architecture, the arts, etc., on many occasions we have needed foreigners for the achievement of our goals. This does not diminish the role of the Cubans, but it puts us in our just place, without nationalist outbursts of any kind.
Neither is the cowardice well founded that some attribute to us in recent times for not being capable of fighting for an exit from the profound economic, political and social crisis that overwhelmed us more than half a century ago. Without a doubt fear exists in society, but it is an induced fear that has deformed a great part of the population, making it accept and even be complicit in a bad government, forgetting their most elemental duties as citizens.
Ultimately, like everyone, we have lights and shadows, good things and bad things. We are neither different nor chosen, but simple human beings.
Translated by mlk
May 15 2012
 The market is almost empty. It’s still very early and someone is writing the new prices for a pound of pork on a blackboard. It seems a simple gesture, that of the hand that has changed only one digit in the price of the ribs, the legs, or the processed fat. But in reality, what is expressed on that slate — with its numbers traced in chalk — is a real market cataclysm. The internal Cuban economy suffers from a weakness such that the slightest price increase for a pound of steak or butter is enough to disrupt our fragile commercial framework. A few centavos added to the price of a food sends the thermometer of daily anxiety upward, raises the barometer of concern.
Indeed, a certain state of alarm is running through the country lately. Pork is scarce because of the dearth of feed; its import has declined and local production barely gets off the ground. The self-employment sector suffers from a scarcity of the product which forms the basis for the so-called “little boxes,” which almost always include rice, some kind of starch, and a little meat. This lunch “in hand” is the mainstay of many Cubans who work far from home, and also constitutes the basic unit for the private businesses selling ready-made meals. When the price of this lunchbox rises it pulls everything with it. The shoe salesman adds a bit to his merchandise to recoup his loss on the midday snack; the shopkeeper who paid more for her sandals tries to make up the difference from unsuspecting customers who don’t count their change; and the retired housewife writes to her son in Frankfurt or Miami asking for a bump in her remittance, because life is very expensive. And this whole sequence of problems and angst begins in a pigsty, the place where feed and care should be converted into pounds of meat, but are not.
16 May 2012
 On my planet dominoes have been and continue to be the most popular table game.
Game played with twenty-eight rectangular tiles, generally white on the face and dark on the reverse, with each divided into two squares, each one of which is marked with from one to six dots, or with none at all.
Thus says the Volume I of the Encyclopedia Espasa-Calpe, sa. Madrid 1035 (third edition).
But we Latinos, we like to do more complicated things, we add to make it fifty-five tiles in total, and there reigns the dreaded, unwanted, hated and sometimes loved double nine.
I remember papa Manolo, Cubanized-Asturian, passionate lover of this game, who for many years proudly wore a belt with a wide buckle of silver and enamel that said champion. In the first years after 1959 he sold it, who knows for what paltry sum of money, to put food on our table, back in the seventies when we could barely manage one meal a day. All this led me to think that our country, by the work and grace of a personal utopia, was becoming a metaphor for this game:
Double Standard: To express in public the exact opposite of what you really think, and say, behind closed doors.
Double Currency: One, with which they pay our meager salaries and retirements, which has barely any value, and another which, even though it’s only good inside the country, at least can be used to acquire most of the basic necessities, and that must be gotten and spent at your own risk.
Double Health: One very precarious and lacking in resources, which is offered to the people. Another more specialized, with a wide range of medicines and better facilities for the leaders and foreigners.
Double Education: One very deficient, with schools in a terrible state and most improvised teachers. And the other with very good conditions and qualified teachers for the diplomatic corps and a very few privileged Cubans.
Double Market: One, with little variety in products and prices extraordinarily inflated (more than 250% of costs), and the other in the so-called Cuban Convertible Pesos.
And another only for diplomats and senior leaders, with more varied products and better prices.
Double Migratory Law: One, draconian and violating human rights, which is applied to the population in general, and another, more expedited and economical, that favors only the leaders and high officials.
Double Supply: Almost nothing for the people’s markets, and another with home deliveries in record time, for the ruling elite and selected officials.
Double Justice: The surprisingly cruel, pompous and media focused applied to citizens who violate the law, and another quiet, almost secret and less aggressive, applied to officials who have committed crimes against the economy.
Double Information: One, transmitted to the population through all the official media, and another of antennas and Internet, fiercely persecuted, which only a few privileged have access to.
As you see, there are various doubles. Now we just have to focus on the table, calculate how many tiles are still to come, and above all, try to guess who is crouched over the double nine, because in any moment he can play it and that’s the game!
As I told you, this may be the most uncomfortable and surprising tile, of this other twisted entertainment.
May 15 2012
 Everything I am capable of writing, again makes me sound so naive until I translate this fury I hold onto. And this is what we can say is the real horror of the Cuban Revolution, outside the political prison, the sin of naivete. What happens when, in a society, it becomes widespread conduct to ignore responsibility, to convert the individual conscience into a collective conscience dictated by the figure of a leader with no fear of God and without respect for men.
This is the Revolution and the degrees of villainy increase from the most public spaces to the most “exclusive” which are the Cuban prisons. Jorge Luis García Pérez “Antúnez” has a book titled “Boitel Lives.” It is a testimony of his lengthy political imprisonment, of the beatings, the real hell of the Cuban prisons closed to the rapporteurs of the International Human Rights Commission, the Red Cross, and Amnesty International.
It is so easy to offer a moral discourse, as he has done all these years of the Cuban Revolution. It is so irresponsible that much of the world wants to confuse his protests against the wars of the Pentagon with support for this Revolution, which has imprisoned so many men and women… for the crime of persevering in their existential freedom, of conscience, and their responsibility for themselves and for others.
Cuba is not a good place to live. It’s terrifying in the sense of the insecurity of the individual faced with the ruthless machinery of the State that does not truly represent us and condemns us if we don’t serve the interests of keeping power in the hands of the worst plague in the history of Cuba. I can only commend myself to God, but I will not shut up. The darker this evil that plagues Cubans the more hope I have in Christ, the Son of God, Savior, who knows suffering and will always create a path of salvation for us.
May 16 2012
By Yaremis Flores
The fate of Alberto Lairot Castro changed on August 28, 2007, when he was just 28 years old. Two soldiers, Hector Luis Osorio and Frank Ochoa Pérez Angulo, applied a technique not allowed in the self-defense programs of the Ministry of the Interior. It caused irreversible consequences.
The young man was celebrating that day at the Calixto Garcia Baseball Stadium in his native Holguin. He had drunk some alcoholic beverages, but had no weapons and hadn’t bothered anyone. He had a confrontation with some police officers and was taken to the city jail for an alleged crime of resistance.
At the station, the policemen took Lairot Castro to the holding area. Alberto refused to enter the cell. His large size necessitatedaction by several guards. Second Lieutenant Frank grabbed him from behind and immobilized him with a “Double Nelson” hold. Hector, the captain, took him by the feet. Both placed the prisoner in the call.
“I felt my neck snap. After a few minutes I started to scream because I didn’t feel my legs,” admitted Alberto, who had surgery immediately.
Medical terminology does not adequately convey the seriousness of the matter. It might be more understandable if I said that Alberto has a spinal cord injury and cannot move his legs. His muscles have atrophied. Immobilityhas predictably resulted in the appearance of bedsores.
The Military Prosecutor considered sufficient a sentence of 2 years in prison -conditionally suspended – as punishment for the police officersfor the crime of Serious Injury. At the hearing, doctors Jaime Oliveros and Frank Fernández concluded that the injury was caused by the use of the “Double Nelson” and the subsequent transfer to the jail cell.
But these statements were dismissed. The judges of the Military Court of Holguinnoted in their decision “the police applied the technique in a timely and professional manner.” They added that Lairot Castro caused his own injury bystruggling and resisting placement into the cell.
The defense attorneys invoked the innocence of the officers. They took refuge in the argument that “causing injury in the line of duty does not carry criminal responsibility.” That is the moment when any lawyer can be ashamed of their profession.
There was no shortage of praise for the accused. Referring to Perez Osorio the judges state “he fulfilled his duties as Deputy Chief of Police ofHolguín, has been a disciplined soldier, and is not violent.” As for Ochoa Angulo, “he enjoys prestige and authority, outstanding in the struggle against crime.” The opinion of the judges about Lairot Castro was different. “He was aggressive, well-known in the neighborhood for his physical strength, and wearing tight clothes to show off his muscles.”
The court acquitted the policemen. Nearly five years later, Alberto Lairot is still not well. His strength is deteriorating day after day, under the pained gaze of his mother, who remains with him in the hospital. His days as an athletic youth are past. But the deed remains unpunished.
May 14 2012
Photos: Francis Sanchez
I went shopping in search of a hoe.
Perhaps it was suddenly suggested to me by the partisan propaganda which always lays a guilt trip on the will of the majority — yeah, the runaway slaves who can’t be allowed to govern themselves — while the saving ideas inevitably fall from above, from that select club of the intransitive neurons.
Perhaps proving the burden of remorse like that state of deep coma that socialist agriculture crosses being only the fault of those who are closest to the earth, those below — as the great novelist Mariano Azuela would say — in this social pyramid where the bureaucracy gives orders.
At best I was beating my conscience, living as I had always lived in the midst of an extraordinarily fertile savannah, for not having ceded to the State my part in this social contract — not of work, but of simulation — that is summarized by a useful and popular saying in Cuba, symptom of the post-classical era or of eternal bankruptcy: “We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us.”
I definitely had never employed many hours of my life even in that metaphysical wage relation, comparable to the poetry by which the “beautiful pretense” marks the count of Salinas. I could repent suddenly for not have participated either in many voluntary working days under the precepts of Che Guevara, in search of the New Man throwing to the ground all the molds, those “Red Sundays” in which the united proletariat dispersed the fossil fuel and marched from the city to the field to get the harvest from the scrubland using the happy method of the gods Orpheus and Bacchus together: singing, dancing and drumming with agricultural instruments.
 The truth is that, one morning, desiring to see what kind of means of production, specifically hoes, the governmental apparatus had put within reach of the people to make more realistic the new act of contrition to which it called the masses, after labeling them as stupid masses, whose support cost two eyes from the face: you get sick of vagrancy, indiscipline, unproductivity, and finally, being like “pigeons” with beaks always open. . . I went through the stores to see what hoe we had within reach of our wallet for ridicule our yearning for leisure.
I walked through the city with the suspicion that my search would be in vain. But, by luck, I had been mistaken. In the last establishment on my list, a little hardware store, I finally located the service of sale of hoes to the people, or better,to beexact: the sale of one hoe. There it waited, alone, abandoned. With the digits of the price it was enough to explain to me its marginal status among the merchandise, because it could barely be seen placed in a corner. It cost $22.45! Without doubt that seemed more like the number that identifies the photo of an assassin behind bars. With reason my hoe had its head down.
As is logical, I deduced that the exposed sample in the pillory of the ridiculous prices did not gather all the responsibility, it would be treated only as a sample, representing the shame of many more tools of its kind that would wait neatly inside of boxes for the return of the collective faith in agricultural work. But that clerk caught me in my error. There existed no more in the warehouse. This was the only one, or maybe, a Platonic archetype and, at the same time, its concrete manifestations: the Hoe. I wanted to make myself the discovering fool, apparently upset, if the scarcity was due to high demand, and the sharp clerk got me from my disguise with a crafty smile, telling me the price in case I had not seen it: “$22.45!” We laughed together.
No one remembered when it had arrived there, even if it was in the way among the other products, like a dead animal that would not decay, nobody claimed it but neither did the administration send it to the other world. Obviously, neither did I make a sign of paying for its rescue, because I was dissuaded by that prohibitive figure, the equivalent of more than an average monthly salary.
Hereinafter I inevitably became accustomed to visiting it each time I passed nearby, to see how it was doing. One day I asked if the price was an exclusive karma or if the ones that came later would cost the same. Of course, still no employee of that establishment could know it, first one had to begin to come out of there. One afternoon I found that they had reduced the sentence from $22.45 to $14.20. I had the slight impression that curiosity ended up acting on its destiny.
Some days and weeks have passed, the Hoe is still hanging there. Some other time I will come closer to the counter to look at it from top to bottom.
The documentary images of the great Agrarian Reform show the happy faces of those farmers with almost no teeth, almost with no speech, that raised for the first time, thanks to the Revolution (1959), a property title to the land they worked. Nevertheless, in those rural pictures of multitudes that shook awake the memory of Robin Hood, there is missinga figure just as good-natured. If the epic camera man could repeat a portrait of the same group through the years,registering the morphological changes, we would see him come out of anonymity and overshadow, each time more, the poor people who apparently disappear behind his embrace, growing fat and at the same time polishing their manners, meanwhile decking himself out with the highest technology of the bureaucracy itself, including demagoguery.He is the most favored figured with the great share, because since then it would grow indefinitely at the cost of its advantages as alegal person: the State. The Commander-in-Chief already said it then: “If they question us, what are the earthly limits of the State? We answer them: They extend from the Punta de Maisi to the Cabo de San Antonio, and they embrace the lands included between the north and south coasts of our island.”
In the end, one must ask oneself: Will there not be something working in a twisted way under the very same earth? Will there be a curse that the Utopia will return to the ideal of the primitive community as far as making the excess production rain the same over everyone, not catching, just sprouting on this coral island? In a country where the need for progress always encouraged the cultivation of the noble crust, after consummating the seizure of the map on the part of the supreme will to uphold the common good, supposedly, above all every individual interest, increasing the literacy rates, education levels and hygiene, with the result that everywhere this same social control rises to the surface in the form of a chronic ruin.
At the same time it slowed and frustrated the access of natural people, that is, of flesh and bone, the control over the means of production — with this, so individual and difficult to collectivize: a real hoe, handy, truly serviceable — and its direct benefits, the omnipresent State channeled the maximum instruments of its institutions in stimulating, rewarding, socializing other types of “hoes.” We ourselves found in a very illustrative dictionary, Popular Cuban Speech Today1 , that “hoe” is an adjective and common substantive with the meaning “sycophant” and many synonyms: asskisser, minion, bootlicker, brownnoser, groveler, flunky, doormat. There are “multiple intellectual servants” making “the protective ring of power and carrying out its orders”2 , weapons of pleasure for the autocracy, with an effect much more illusory and indigestible, parasitic, sterilizing in the long run.
These other “tools”, belonging to the sector better “read and written,” they give to themselves by the ton at every crossroad of a society whose roads all lead to State ownership and, through it, to a centralized bureaucracy. They satisfy only the high demand for luster in the social superstructure, while the economic base continues being the unpromised wasteland.
1 Argelio Santiesteban: El habla popular cubana de hoy, Ed. de Ciencias Sociales, La Habana, 1985, p. 243.
2 Ángel Rama: La ciudad letrada, Ed. Arca, Montevideo, 1998, p. 32.
Translated by mlk
March 31 2011
Everyone who lives in Cuba or has ever visited it knows that from one end of the country to the other, wherever you go, you will be accompanied by an army of peculiar posters. They are useless in a practical sense, because they don’t offer any in formation. They have a distinctly ideological character and what you read on them is often mediocre and absurd.
They come in every possible size and form. And they are made of different materials, ranging from a piece of a cardboard box, to a cafeteria tray, to a huge concrete and steel structure. They are found in the doorways of a house, in any institution, on the street, or on the side of a hill  written in colored stones. The one sure thing is that they are everywhere.
Who posts them?
Most of these posters are the work of the Department of Propaganda of the Cuban Communist Party (PPC) at all levels. To accomplish it they need material resources, brigades of men, allocations of fuel, budgets, etc…
Also working in their favor is that mass and political organizations working for the Party itself, as well as the nuclei of the PCC and the Young Communist League (UJC), are present in every workplace in the country.
Thus, it can be affirmed that, in  one way or another, the Communist Party is behind every sign.
What do the signs say?
Generally, they are the same everywhere. There is a basic and recurring harangue that is repeated ad nauseum. Phrases about Fidel, Raul, Che, and another collection of old and new slogans that occur to those at Headquarters and spread like a virus to every corner:”YES WE CAN,” “UNITED WE CONQUER,” “VICTORY IN VICTORY,” “THE PRINCIPAL DUTY: PERFECTING SOCIALISM,” etc…
What are those responsible for the signs trying to accomplish?
They seem to believe in the influence this form of propaganda can have on people at a psychic level. They also want to give the impression to Cubans and to visitors that there is the same “Revolutionary fervor” alive everywhere. Apparently, “the people speak” through these banners, but everyone knows that no Cuban has the resources, time or desire to keep on making them.
Another ob vious purpose is that the authorities at the base of the political organization want to remain on the good side of their superiors: commonly it is more important to have enough colorful posters than to produce quality goods and services. The more billboards erected, papers printed, and walls converted into newspapers “important visitors” find in their path, the better opinion they will have of those responsible for the “directed tasks.”
 Is it working?
It’s difficult to determine. But it’s clear that is created certain reflexes that are accentuated and complemented using the same discourse in the media. Millions of Cubans can not count on keeping themselves well informed, and day after day they have right before their eyes a flood of posters that transmit pieces of the government’s version of the world and of what “we have” in Cuba. There must be some effect, and I don’t think it favors the individual. Wha t clearly is noticeable is that using these messages for such a long time causes overload, stress, boredom and rejection.
Can anyone else, outside the PCC, put up a poster?
No. Not even in their own home. Only the Communist Party, which about 7% of Cubans belong to, can post this overwhelming amount of propaganda. No citizen of the other 93% can put up any sign with their own ideas, proposals or complaints without falling victim to the most important apparatus of the system, that which ensures its perpetuation: State Se curity.
How much is spent to fill Cuba with these political signs?
We have to take into account that this country does not undertake studies nor publish statistics that would clarify, in particular, the costs of any political material. But it’s clear they are spending millions. If you were to take a trip from Havana to Guantanamo and count, one by one, the largest signs, you could see the hundreds of tons of steel, construction materials of all kinds, painters, human capital, salaries and time that have been used up over the more than 50 years of this practice.
On one occasion I personally was present at the entrance to a farm that was going to be visited in a few days by members of the Politburo. They had built some 30 concrete structures with concrete panels to describe, almost syllable by syllable, Fidel Castro’s “concept of the Revolution,” so the delegation would be reading it as their cars advanced along the road to the place. These initiatives have innumerable copies appearing in every town.
All these resources create a huge need given the critical situation of the country with regards to building and repairing houses, roads and other infrastructure of real and rational need, for which there is almost never any “possibilities” of a solution.
Have no doubt, when this and many other things are analyzed, it is as Manolite Simonet says in a popular song: “In Havana there are loads of locos.”
Originally published in Spanish in Diario de Cuba
15 May 2012
 Copied from: “spanish.alibaba.com” Rafa and I go out many times in order to shop for provisions, which in Cuba must be daily. It is not that we like to walk, it is that because of the instability of the scarce supplies in the state stores; the offers grow scarce, and there is little variety. So although the foods we eat generally are average and nationally produced, we must “stomp them” as if we were epicures of the palate and pay exorbitant prices for them.
Many of us in Cuba have listened to sales clerks from some state shops say that “in a few days” products will arrive and assure that they are “expecting the boat;” and we shrug our shoulders because we don’t know if it’s a joke or irony concerning the boat that each day tires our patience more.
Anyway, although my husband and I are transparent and publicly say what we think and write it, too, we acquired years ago the habit of going out to walk — basically at night — in order to “dispatch” some matters concerning our way of thinking and activities. Because it is good to walk but not to facilitate the “omnipresent ones” who harass and listen to us in their job of conveniently transferring our talks to their respective headquarters. May they sweat their salaries and “stomp” the information like Rafa and I with the food. I think.
Translated by mlk
May 14 2012
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