The hypocritical “conversation” that Nicolas Maduro held with the opposition indicates the political temperature of what is happening in Venezuela.
Against his will, the dictator sat down at the table of dialogue. Although he does not want to recognize it, he did it at the demand of his Cuban advisors, and of Raul Castro himself, who in frequent phone calls from the Island, advises him not to give up, or show weakness or that he is desperate because of social pressure.
It is true that in Cuba Raul Castro is far from recognizing his political adversaries; further away still is the possibility of a dialogue between both sides. Many more Cubans will have to die before — at some point — we throw ourselves into the streets in order to demand what belongs to us by right and that they have stolen from us for more than half a century.
Circumstances, dictators and tyrannies are different, but on perceiving that the process imposed by the deceased Hugo Chavez is extinguished, and in spite of the power and abuses they make a disillusioned people suffer, they have also make them pay for their rebellion with more than 40 lives.
In order to avoid guarimbas (street clashes) in Cuba, the Castros have maintained their iron command, which has cost many lives of those who have opposed them. Here, if one breathes at a different rhythm than that stipulated by the leadership, the political police open a file and begin their constant persecution, waiting for you to breathe deeply to “bring you” your shares of anguish.
No fire is needed in the archipelago; the smoke of a lit match barely suffices to sound the alarm. Nevertheless, we keep dreaming of our guarimbas.
Angel Santiesteban-Prats
Lawton prison settlement. April 2014.
To sign the petition for Amnesty International to declare dissident Cuban Angel Santesteban a prisoner of conscience, follow the link.
Although article 2.1 of the current Republic of Cuba Penal Code says, “Only acts expressly described as crimes in the law may be sanctioned…” doctrine inoculated for more than five decades managed to change in us the concept of Fatherland, Nation, State, Country and Revolution; this served as support for decreeing that whoever exercises the right to publicly criticize the ineffectiveness of the government will become, by conceptual association, an anti-patriotic activist who must be repressed.
Then, on establishing the word “Socialism” in the words of our Constitution, any different ideology or inclination was isolated to a dangerous anti-constitutional margin.
Cause and effect. Today in Cuba, political prisoners are held incommunicado and sometimes, what’s more, deprived of the right to legal redress. Such is the case with a young black Cuban, Juliet Michelena Diaz, who is in prison just for performing the innocuous work of independent citizen journalist, which permits us to observe reality and disturbs the clouded transparency of a governmental press; which although it may become strong with effort, will continue for some time to be rigid, controlled and censored.
The First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba lied supremely when at the closing of the 8th UNEAC (Cuban Artists and Writers Union) Meeting he said unabashedly and brazenly, “I am the absolute enemy of unanimity.” Please, try that one on someone else.
Mister President forgets that his word may be command in the National Assembly, because it’s a political institution, but it should not be in trials or in courts. Nevertheless, based on honorable functions of watching over and protecting the citizenry, and sheltered behind the impudent excuse of maintaining the security of the people and public order, the Cuban authorities commit illegalities that allow them to prosecute, even using false accusations, not only people whom they wish to punish but also their relatives and friends.
Cuban shysters know well, they studied for this reason, that the guilt of a prisoner is personal and non-transferable and that under no circumstances should he be found guilty because of association, family relationship or heritage. Even when dealing with an invented guilt as in the particular case of Lady in White Sonia Garro and her husband Ramon Alejandro Munoz, who have spent more than two years locked in prison with no one caring, and nothing happens.
Apparently, the General, like his brother Fidel, wears dark glasses in order to protect himself from the sun and to keep blacks invisible.
I must clarify that with this writing I am not trying to be a judge or to promote a timely or opportunistic political crusade; I only want to make clear that while we move further from the majesty of the law, we will be permitting another “Don Juan de los Palotes” to keep distancing us from the road to democracy, respect and the real possibility of exercising of our full rights.
I apologize, I did not mention “Liberty” because even that is relative; and besides I am convinced that liberty will lose its value when it loses its obstacles.
Cuban police on patrol in Havana. Photo from Internet
HAVANA, Cuba – I recently participated in a course on Criminal Procedure taught by Dr. Wilfredo Vallin, an independent lawyer, to members of civil society. We learned what the law requires and how police are supposed to act when making stops, searches, seizures, or arrests.
Each one of us there related some personal experience of police misconduct. Dr. Vallin explained to us in each case what kind of violation of the law had been committed by the officers. We finally reached the conclusion that ignorance of citizens’ rights is the primary cause that encourages these infractions.
We learned that to carry out the search of a home, a warrant signed by a prosecutor and two witnesses is needed. The search warrant must describe the “specific object” being sought: they cannot seize any property other than that “specific object.” In addition, everything seized must appear on a list, and a copy must be delivered to the person affected. The confiscations must be presented in court, and if invalidated must be returned.
We had a slew of examples of violations of this law. As with the other one, Dr. Vallin explained: on the street, only a uniformed police officer can stop you, never a plainclothes officer. And to perform a search a police officer must present a warrant, or else take you to a police station and search you there. This is a law that is violated in Cuba every day; just ask the hundreds of street vendors who are stopped, searched, and deprived of their property in full public view.
We also learned that you cannot be detained in a police station for more than twenty-four hours without an arrest warrant. After that time an investigator must be assigned to you, who has three days to present the prosecutor with a report of the completed investigation. The prosecutor has three more days to issue a decision—of a fine, detention, or immediate release. Many of those attending the course complained of spending days in a jail cell without any compliance with this law.
I remembered the meetings of the Agenda for Transition, in Jaimanita. And how they detained me when I left my house in the morning so I could not cover the news! They locked me in a cell in the 5th precinct station, popularly known as “The Warehouse,” along with other dissidents also prevented from attending the meeting. Without a word of explanation, they left us among dozens of common prisoners until late afternoon. Then the “file folder” (receptionist) called us one by one, gave us our identity cards and let us go.
I also remembered the time I was on a corner in Old Havana, talking with my friends “El Mapa” and “Pulu,” when I saw boy dressed in a school uniform coming down the sidewalk, followed by a row of detainees. In his hand he was carrying a bundle of identity documents and asked us for ours and told us to get in the line.
I was stunned, watching how the men meekly followed single file toward the police station in Dragones, but when I started to protest, “El Mapa” told me:
“Don’t even open your mouth! He’s a policeman disguised as a student . . . and he’s vicious! Now they’re going to lock us up and search us . . . then they’ll let us go for a ’rebar.’”
Without understanding anything I followed the line to a vast courtyard inside the station. A captain ordered us to stand facing the wall and empty our pockets. We complied. They didn’t find any drugs, or weapons, or anything that would incriminate the men against the wall, who didn’t let out a peep.
Then he left, and we sat on the stones in the yard or on the floor, helpless, without an arrest warrant, without having committed any crime, and not knowing how to assert our rights . . . or to whom.
After a while I saw that the men began to leave, one by one. Before leaving, “Pulu” passed me the sign: the passage to the street cost a “rebar” (1 cuc, national currency equivalent to one dollar). This was well-known in the neighborhood about their police, but I, who believe that bribery is one of our worst crimes, was not going to contribute to it.
I remained alone in the yard, with three other poor devils who had no “rebar.” Our passport to freedom that afternoon was to carry a heavy iron tank between the four of us and load it on a wooden cart in the kitchen.
Afterward they handed us back our documents. Without even thanking us for loading the tank on the cart.
Will investors be able to save the conquests of the olive green caste by soaking their hard currency in the Castros’ holy water?
HAVANA, Cuba: In recent weeks, the new Investment law–the latest magic formula to overcome the endemic crisis of “the model”–has been preeminently occupying space in the official Cuban press.
Commentaries, interviews with officials and experts on the subject, and reviews that look at the advantages and benefits of assimilating foreign capital as the most expeditious way to finally give birth to the socialism that spent over 50 years in the gestation phase, emerge from the pages from government pamphlets and television news announcing that the good “new” capital is the philosopher’s stone for development. So let’s forget all the ideological catechism defended until now, because our rulers have discovered that soaking hard currencies in the Castros’ holy water will safeguard the “conquests” …of the olive green caste.
And it is precisely about the conquests of the elderly druids and their acolytes that the foreign investment law was born with congenital deformities that require deep reconstructive surgery if they really intend for it to work.
The most important flaw that is obvious from the outset is the legal aberration of expressly excluding the rights of Cubans on the island to participate as investors in their own country, an issue that is unparalleled in any civilized nation, and that alone disqualifies the best intentions beforehand. Another issue, no less twisted, is the exclusion of free contract (that is, allowing foreign investors to hire Cuban workers directly). Both elements are unsustainable since they are not justified or serve any function other than to maintain absolute control over the population to prevent the weakening of political power.
Dilma Ruseau and Raúl Castro inaugurate the Mega Port at Mariel
Therefore, the Castros’ hired applauders are saddled with the thankless task of challenging independent journalists’ criticism of the law, since new technologies allow other opinions to circumvent the official information blockade and reach the population. Fundamentalists will now take to the trenches to fight another battle against freedom of opinion.
So an obviously poorly trained journalist did take to the trenches when he approached the subject from an article in the Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) newspaper (“Good investments and ‘skeptical’ versions”, Yoerky Sánchez Cuéllar, Sunday, April 20th, 2014, pg.3), which misses the mark from its own opening paragraph, when referring to the authors of the inquiring articles as “preachers of a policy aimed at promoting foreign interests over national affairs”. This cluelessness indicts the rookie’s inexperience, when he refers in such terms to the critics of a law that precisely favors “foreign interests” at the expense of the Cuban people.
Havana’s International Commerce Fair
Yoerky’s errors did not end here. He obviously has access to the independent press but does not dare to reproduce the arguments of the criticisms of said law. It is untenable to be a representative of the people while advocating, at the same time, in favor of legislation that strips the people of their essential rights, contained in international pacts and declarations ofwhich Cuba is a signatory.
“One of the causes for the media’s ‘skepticism’ is related to the fact that the law prohibits foreign investors to directly contract with workers, a role that will be up to national employer organizations,” Yoerky indicates, and he explains to us that such a measure “protects our human resources, considered as the country’s most important asset.” Unfortunately, he forgot to explain how stripping Cuban workers of their capacity for free and individual contract constitutes “protection” for them and what “guaranties” this offers the investors.
“Who better than us to select employees, taking into account taxing requirements which will contribute to higher solvency and satisfaction to all parties…” wonders this Beefeater, immersed in a “collective us” that always emerges when the lords try to convince the herd about the need for sacrifice. Maybe he is ignoring that, when they sold us out as a “pseudo-republic,” foreign companies freely hired Cuban workers, who did not need a government agency to determine their suitability, their wage levels or the taxes they would pay to the State, so the current investment law implies a serious labor rights setback.
In short, far from being enlightening, the referenced writing stirs the murkiness of a law that holds more questions than answers. We continue to not know how the “investment portfolio” is defined, or what devices will manage it or prevent favoritism, influence peddling, corruption, patronage, and other ills.
There is no mechanism or information system that will allow Cubans–its supposed beneficiaries–to find out what items, who, and how to go about investing, much less verifying amounts, earnings, and how the wealth to be gained will be distributed. The “exceptional reasons of social interest or public utility” that will determine expropriations haven’t been clearly established either, and they will be left at the government’s discretion, while rampant widespread corruption–in spite of many battles and comptrollers–continues unabated and constitutes a threat to any investor in a country in which the actions of individuals are patterned for survival.
It takes a lot of magic to revive Cuban socialism
Yoerky does not say, perhaps because a servant is not able to understand it, that in the absence of civil liberties and democratic changes no palliative measure will be able to overcome the crisis. Undoubtedly, investors will always turn up who are ready for an adventure with the regime, and thousands of Cubans will probably flock to apply for jobs of “our own procurement” because nothing motivates a crowd as much as a poverty auction. Maybe by then this young man, an undertaking of the official media, will see this as another “victory of the Revolution.” I will not attempt to argue the point: I have spent 54 years attending them without any benefit whatsoever.
Translated by Norma Whiting
Cubanet, 22 April 2014 | Miriam Celaya
“Honor to those who deserve it,” said our José Martí, anticipating my mother, who inculcated in my education the culture of gratitude.
Many at the start of my imprisonment have stayed at my side in this passage that has lasted more than a year; but Reporters without Borders has been the most outstanding, when, from the beginning, after reading all my proofs presented in the alleged “trial” that they carried out, and later augmented in the Review, they decided to support me without flinching one iota in my defense.
In a personal letter, where I also thanked them for their honest and brave stance, I described to them the feeling that embraces us when, from the darkest cell, behind bars, abused by the henchmen of the dictatorship, we get a sign of encouragement from the organization that you lead, calling on the totalitarian President of State to restore the rights that were taken away.
In my personal case, it provided me this extra strength, after two weeks in the hole on a hunger strike, that made me feel happy for what I do although they advised me and begged that I consider my life first and never choose starvation as a way of struggle.
In spite of the suffering of being deprived of the most valuable thing for a human being, freedom, and of missing our families and the free consumption of art, we feel worthy of such luck, if the state without rights persists in our faces.
I want a country without censorship, and when that happens, we will be living a new political, social and cultural stage, for the Cuba we need to build with the force of everyone. Until then, a grateful hug to you and your work team, especially to the warm and selfless work of Camille Soulier and Lucie Morillon, always attentive to what is happening on our continent with the lamentable regression in the matter of freedom of expression and the persecution of professionals of information, particularly their compromise with Cuban journalists.
All your work is laudable and fundamental for the quest for personal and civic liberties of those of us who humbly wish to contribute a light of truth from the center of total darkness.
Mexico City is one of the safest places for the families of the kingpins of the Mexican mafia. In spite of having a corrupt government, the politicians know the importance of protecting the capital. Even though drug trafficking is out at the doorstep.
Alejandro has awakened — silence does not exist — the sirens of patrol cars, ambulances or fire trucks are part of the vitality of the city. He can check his cellphone for today’s smog index in the area.
Walking towards an OXXO store his eyes water because of the pollution. Today most residents will not go out into the streets unless necessary. Some vehicles also are prohibited from circulating in order to reduce pollution.
The decision to go out into the street intimidates him a little because of the stories he has heard, the violence and disputes of the mafia in that country. In spite of the rumors,
Alejandro begins to adapt to the Mexican climate and society (very polite). The mafia stories begin to form a part of a myth (it exists), but he is confident. Another day begins, and Alejandro walking to the bread store observes a display of federal police, awaiting some supposed protest march.
The image of the police does not affect him but the tranquility of expecting to close the streets with railing close to four meters tall. They do not permit passage but nor do they refuse the right to protest or demand something. That is something called DEMOCRACY.
In these times, when the great media of the press barely seem to survive the crisis, many are wondering, how can we make a good newspaper? The question includes not only choosing content, but also how to make it profitable and the dilemma between digital or paper formats. There are no clear formulas. Small websites become–in a short time–information reference points, while some of the news giants fall into the red and lose readers. No one knows for sure where the press of the future is headed.
We are used to technological advances and leapfrogging; Cubans will very like jump from an official press under the monopoly of a single party, to a multitude of media pushing to gain prominence. The day when non-government media is legalized, numerous publications–now underground–will be able to be read openly and even sold at the corner newsstand. Although that time is still to come, it’s worth it to begin preparing.
If I could highlight at least one indispensable feature of the press, I would choose interaction with readers. The close relationship between the writer of the information and its recipient is vital for a newspaper to meet the demands of modernity and objectivity. Right now in Havana, we are putting the final touches on a new digital media that will greatly help us to listen to your opinions. Without you, it would be only a medium talking to itself, ephemeral and inconsequential.
So back to the main question: How do we make a good newspaper? What are the topics that we should address in its pages? What sections are worth incorporating on the site? How can we involve you in developing the content? Which are the indispensable bylines we should include? What model or example should we follow? And the big question: Can we exercise quality journalism amid the current conditions in Cuba?
You can leave answers in the comments on this blog, on the Dontknow debate page, or on the CONTACT page. Thanks in advance for helping to give shape to the baby before its birth.
The first time I set foot in that scary place called Villa Marista, similar to Lubyanka Prison in the now fortunately disappeared Soviet Union, it was by my own will. I accompanied Manuel Cuesta Morúa to see Investigator Yurisan Almenares, in charge of Case No. 5, 2014, against Cuesta Morúa, after he was arbitrarily arrested on 26 January of this year to keep him from participating as an organizer of the 2nd Alternative Forum to the CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) Forum, held in Havana.
His detention ended 4 days later with the notification of a precautionary measure that was never delivered, but that obliged him to go to a Police Station every Tuesday and sign the document, for the supposed crime of Diffusion of False News Against International Peace.
But the precautionary measure was only shown to the eyes of the person it concerned once: on 30 January when he was released. In practice, Cuesta Morua was signing an unofficial paper. Imprecision characterized the situation from the beginning. The reasons for the arrest and the case they sought to bring against him had no direct relationship, which shows that the old school mafia of the Castro regime still rules in Cuba: studying the penal code in order to destroy their adversaries, manipulating the law until the punishment proves your guilt.
In Villa Marista I wanted to see the face of someone working there inflicting pain on other human beings. Punishing them, not for violating universal law, which could not exceed the measure of punishment, but for not expressing loyalty to the Castro regime.
For some reason I connected with the mother of Pedro Luis Boitel, who I saw in a documentary titled “No One Listens.” She said that her son, having been persecuted in the Batista era, always found a door to knock on, an opportunity to save himself from death. But in the times of Fidel Castro is wasn’t like that, and Boitel died after a hunger strike, imprisoned in the cruelest and most degrading conditions, in La Cabaña Prison.
Those were the times when the International Left granted the Cuban government impunity so that it could improvise a vast record of human rights violations. And Cuban society, terrorized, also looked the other way: escaping to the United States, while “going crazy” to step foot on the land of liberty. It’s not very different today.
Villa Marista is a closed facility. It can’t be visited by an inspector from the Human Rights Council, nor from representatives of civil society organizations–dissident and persecuted–to ensure that they are not practicing any kind of torture against the prisoners and are respecting all their rights. The government has signed some protocols and declares itself against torture, but we don’t believe in the government and those who have passed through Villa Marista’s cells bear witness that they do torture them there to the point of madness in order to destroy the internal dissidence.
And if someone accuses me of not having evidence, I tell them that’s the point, that it is precisely for this that the Cuban government opens its jails to the press, not controlled by them, and to the international inspectors and Independent Civil Society, because what the Castros present is fabricated by the regime itself.
Not only the dissidents are tortured. Nor do we know if it’s only with “soft torture” which is still torture. Also there are workers who make a mistake and are accused of sabotage, without being able to demand their inalienable rights or defend themselves against such accusations.
It made me want to open doors, to be very strong and kick them all down. To find a legal resource for the Cuban people to investigate–and the right to presumption of innocence–all those who work there. Even the cooks, responsible for having served cabbage with pieces of cockroach to a friend’s relative, a simple worker, who was kept there for long unforgettable days, who was interrogated like in the inquisition to extract a false confession from him. They didn’t even let him sleep.
But I have gone only into the reception area: polished floors, plastic flowers, kitsch expression to hide the sordidness of the jailers instructed by the Interior Ministry; the misery reaching into the bones of the prisoners down those shiny floors. Villa Marista is one thing outside and another inside, as the common refrain says.
Investigator Yurisan Almenares didn’t show his face. Perhaps he wasn’t ready for the persecuted to find him. He had no answers because those guys can’t improvise. They have to consult their superiors, not the law or their own conscience.
A smiling captain took us into a little room and explained, almost embarrassed, that the Investigator wasn’t there and she would make a note of what Manuel was demanding. So I watched as she carefully traced the words he was pronouncing.
We wanted to get notification of the dismissal of the case. There was no precautionary measure; ergo there should be no case pending. This not to say that the presumed case was unsustainable without the precautionary measure. Living in Cuba it’s impossible to escape the reality of power, however absurd and Kafkaesque it may be, like kicking the locked cell doors of Villa Marista.
Remember, the crime has a name as bizarre as Diffusion of False News Against International Peace. And the supposed false news deals with the issue of racism in Cuba, where the government teaches discrimination for political reasons in the schools, and talks about the issue of racial rights, not inborn rights, but as a concession emanating from the State dictatorship; and administered so that it can later be used for revolutionary propaganda.
But racism is still here, rooted in society like a database error that manifests itself in daily phenomena that shock the whole world. Growing, along with other forms of discrimination and masked under the cynical grin of power.
Manuel Cuesta Morua knows this because he has dedicated his life to record this phenomenon in Cuba, historically and in the present. Thus, he has written about it on countless occasions and takes responsibility for every one of his words.
We went there without getting answers. My mind filled with the memory of these people I don’t know who are imprisoned there, half forgotten by the whole world, their own attorneys in a panic.
One thing we can promise Villa Marista’s gendarmes and its top leaders, wherever they hide themselves: some day we will open all those doors, and after judging, with guarantees of due process, those who oppress us, the place will become a part of the popular proverbs turning Cuba into a nation jealous of the freedom of its citizens.
There is an abysmal gap between daily reality and the information offered by a clueless official press. Never in Granma, Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) Trabajadores (Workers) or any of the 15 provincial press organs was there news of the Castro regime’s flagrant arms smuggling to North Korea in violation of the United Nations’ embargo of the Pyongyang dynasty.
The boring and disoriented national press, print, radio or television, to date, has not reported about the spaces open for dialogue by the Catholic Church. Or local news that has had resonance, like the protest by self-employed workers in Holguin or the unlikely walk by a nude woman in the city of Camaguey.
They also ignore less tense or contentious matters, like the visit to Cuba by Big League ball players Ken Griffey, Jr., and Barry Larkin or by famous people like Beyonce and her husband, rapper Jay Z.
Neither does it interest them for readers or viewers to find out that Cuban artists and musicians resident abroad visit the island and give performances, as in the cases of Isaac Delgado, Descemer Bueno and Tanya, among others.
They don’t even publish an article to analyze the insane prices for car sales or internet services.
On international topics, the old trick is to show only a part of the event. For those who only read official media and do not have access to other sources of information, those who protest in Ukraine, Venezuela or Turkey are terrorists or fascists.
In Cuba it was never published that the dictator Kim Jong Un summarily executed his uncle. Likewise, they kept silent about the atrocities that happen in the concentration camps of North Korea. And about the degrading treatment of women in Iran.
Newsprint is usually occupied by cultural commentary and sports in an undertone, the television schedule, optimistic news about agricultural production or the good progress of economic reforms dictated by President Raul Castro and his advisors.
Apparently, they considered it inopportune to inform Cubans about the talks between the Cuban-American sugar millionaire Alfonso Fanjul and Chancellor Bruno Rodriguez. Nor did they think it convenient for the common people to know that Antonio Castro, the son of Fidel, plays in golf tournaments.
Or that recently entrepreneurs with bulging wallets paid 234 thousand dollars for a handmade Montecristo tobacco humidor at the 16th Havana Festival where the most well known guest was the British singer Tom Jones.
Local reporting is directed by inflexible ideologies that presume that behind the vaunted freedom of the press is hidden a “military operation by the United States’ secret services.”
And they take it seriously. As if dealing with a matter of national security. That’s why the newspapers are soldiers of reporting. Disciplined copyists.
For the Taliban of the Communist Party, the internet and social networks are a modern way of selling capitalism from a distance. The new times have caught them without many arguments. They assert they have the truth, but the fear the citizens testing it for themselves.
Reading of certain reports should be suggested by the magnanimous State. They think, and they believe, that naive countrymen are not prepared or sufficiently inoculated for the propagandic venom of the world’s media.
Not even Raul Castro has managed to break the stubborn censorship and habitual torpor of the official press. For years, Castro has spoken of turning the press into something believable, entertaining and attractive. But nothing has changed.
Destined for foreign consumption, official web pages and blogs have been opened. With their own voice they try to promote the illusion of an opening. The warriors of the word are for domestic consumption.
Since 1948, when the UN decided to adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, many organizations and activists of the world have hoisted that dignified flag confronting the daily violations of liberty, justice and peace that many people suffer for the simple fact of their human condition.
Unfortunately, in several corners of this jungle that we call Earth, human rights entered a dark period due to the infinite apathy of many of its residents. Barbarity is like our daily bread, and that makes it more or less normal.
In my country, for example, the topic is always a subject of controversy and debate; but today, I will not make reference to the rights of the living; I will speak of those who no longer exist, of our forebears, who are not the monkey, the Ardipithecus or the Australopithcus; but my mother and your grandfather.
Skulls, teeth, tibias, ribs, femurs, mandibles, vertebrae, pelvises; it is all found at the cemetery gate. The desecration of graves has gone from being a horrible act of vandalism to an almost daily event.
But, “why is the toti always saddled with the blame for everything*”; uninformed metaphorics and made up know-it-alls, instead of finding out at the time of judging, they launch the accusing roar towards the many practitioners of Afro-Cuban religions who make up our folklore and form part of our cultural heritage.
In Santeria and witchcraft there are very but very isolated rites that require a human skeleton; there also exist artisans who buy bones in order to construct objects with them that they sell for the price of gold; but the absolutely responsible party for this atrocity against our dear ones is, as always, the State.
Ad nauseum the thought is drilled into us that since 1959, the development of medicine has been the principal priority of the revolutionary government, and in fact, Cuba boasts the highest physician-inhabitant ratio in the world. Thousands of doctors are graduated each year on the island, and I tell you, each of these students, without regard to race, color, sex, language or religion (come on, like human rights), receives a bag with a skull and parts of human skeletal remains that if insufficient to study anatomy, then they get a card that they present at Cuban cemeteries in order to exhume from among the graves without owners the remains of those who in life were relatives of the unnamed, emigrated and exiled dead.
In order to have a slight idea of the desecrated graves, we would have to compare the number of bags delivered with the gross rate of Cuban mortality which, according to the reference published by the UN and sent by Havana, was 7.6 in 2012. The same year in which — according to the extensive editorial by the website Cubadebate — the largest of the Antilles Islands trained more than 11,000 new doctors, 5,315 Cubans and 5,694 from 59 countries. Scary. I do not favor statistics when I write, nevertheless the exception deserves it.
Just a day like today, April 7, but in 1985, one of the most renowned Cuban visual artists, Rene Portocarrero, died. His remains . . . I do not want to even think where they might be.
*Translator’s note: In “good Cuban” the expression is: “porqué la culpa de todo, siempre la carga el totí.” It means several things: that someone small always ends up being accused of what others did, or that the blame always falls on the same notorious people regardless or whether or not they were actually involved, and also, that black people always get blamed for things. The totí (a.k.a. Cuban Blackbird) is a small black bird from the Cuban countryside that is notorious for eating crops and other human foods.
All the hospitals I’ve visited lately have put up some eye-catching posters: “Your health service is free, but it costs.” I’ve seen these relating to ophthalmology, surgery, orthopedics, dentistry, and I recently saw a generic one for the Institutes. Then they enumerated a list of services, from the simplest and least inexpensive to complex procedures costing thousands of pesos.
For the citizen who made several unsuccessful visits before finally receiving a medical consultation after a long wait; for the person whose hospital admission is like moving day, having to take a tub and heater for bathing, a fan, a lamp, insecticide, and the major part of the food in the house; for the man resigned to the unwritten law that in order to receive appropriate health care he has to provide something extra, snacks for each shift, cigarettes for the nurse, a little “gratuity” to facilitate the ultrasound or the analysis—this colorful wall poster is nothing but propaganda. Propaganda and a neutralizer. It doesn’t cost you, so don’t complain.
(And I’m not saying whether it costs, with the pseudo-salaries and inflated prices.)
I admire the skill and dedication of the doctors, but the excellent service that we were promised as “medical power”—not because of the number of physicians per capita (although you can find that in the Amazon or in northeastern Brazil), but because of the quality of health service as a whole—was lost along the way. And no one can convince any Cuban that the fault is due to the blockade and the imperialist threat.
During a wait of over an hour for a scheduled appointment (visible through a window in public view) with of an employee whose function is to deliver laboratory results, a young man who decided to lie down on a bench and sleep through the wait—with that grace Cubans have for taking the edge off any situation—in front of one of the afore-mentioned signs, caused all of us who were waiting to laugh: The public health costs us, but because it’s free …
I just read an article titled “Shortages and Repression,” published by Alejndro Armengol in his blog Cuaderno de Cuba (Cuban Notebook), where he airs an idea that comes and goes in restless minds, but which has failed to scale the academic pantheon. I am referring to the Economic Opposition.
The first I heard of the expression was from a colleague Julie Aleaga, who mentioned the issue in a meeting organized by Lay Space. I remember Arturo Lopez-Levy, who was present, saying with a slight hint of disgust, that he didn’t recognize the existence of the economic opposition because he didn’t remember there being any academic reference to it.
I want to “contribute” to this new conception the elements that will have ot be considered stemming from the Foreign Investment Law, where there will be everything one can imagine, from money laundering to piñatas. That this is the desired opposition will be another controversy, but we have to reflect deeply on the matter, because the road to a new Cuba may be paved with the worst intentions.
Having no choice, the press has presented a ton of coverage of the VIII Congress of the Cuban Writers and Artists Union (UNEAC), which concluded with the presence of Army General Raul Castro, and which affirmed during the different discussions that the culture is committed to the Revolutionary forces to implement in every sector of the country the “new Cuban model.”
And, as “a picture is worth a thousand words,” taking a look at the published photos, we see the main auditorium of the Palace of Conventions with an audience only comparable to an overbooked hotel during Holy Week; the faces of those present reflect boredom, absence and “I don’t care.”
The curious note of the Congress was that, like someone coming out of the closet. the General defined himself as “the absolute enemy of unanimity.” So he leaves us to wonder if he understood what he said, or said it without thinking?
I have the pleasure to announce that my work, which won the 2013 International Franz Kafka Novels From the Drawer Prize 2013, “The Summer when God Slept,” will be reprinted in coming weeks by Neo Club Editions, an independent publisher located in Miami and directed by the Cuban writer Armando Añel.
Owing to the fact that the original edition, printed in the Czech Republic, according to the rules established for the award, is destined for the Cuban reader on the island, I agreed with Neo Club Editions to make this second edition, which will consist of a greater number of copies, with the idea of reaching what I consider, in addition to Cuba, natural markets for my work: Miami and Spain. The book, furthermore, will be available in ebook format and paperback through Amazon’s channels of international distribution.
Idabell Rosales – president of Neo Club Editions – together with Armando Añel, heads this project so that those of us who are censored and excluded for political reasons from cultural promotion in Cuba can publish our works in freedom and let them be known outside our country.
Thanks to this important and necessary idea, for example, a door has been opened wider to international promotion of the poetry of the writer Rafael Vilches Proenza, a friend enraged by the repression, which already on two occasions threw out works that he had in cultural institutions in Holguín and Santa Clara. The publication of the beautiful poem, “Café Amargo” (“Bitter Coffee”), besides rescuing the work of a writer censured for not bowing to official impositions, is an act of literary justice for one of the most outstanding poets of my generation.
When there’s another reunion on the island to celebrate another Congress of UNEAC in which, same as in the previous ones, no substantial change will happen that hasn’t already been predetermined, because now it’s known that the guild of creators responds only to the interests of the State and thus is converted into a useless and deceptive organization,
I will celebrate – thanks to the project and the generosity of Armando and Idabell – that my novel will be able to be read in the rest of the world, the same as the valuable Cuban literary production of Cuban writers in exile that Neo Club Editions includes in its catalogue.
The Eighth Congress of the Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) recently ended, yielding very poor results, which was not unexpected to those of us who have been following it before the run-up and during the proceedings.
It began with a doctrinaire address by its president, who stated that “UNEAC is the Moncada Barracks of culture” and “from its beginnings UNEAC has done nothing but serve the Revolution.” This came as a surprise to no one, especially given the presence at the event of important figures from the Communist party and the government, which guaranteed there would be no deviations.
Discussions among the more than three hundred delegates from all over the country were led by various commissions—culture and media, art, the market and cultural industries, urban affairs and architecture, national patrimony and sculpture, regulation and litigation—were restricted to rehashing proposals presented at previous congresses, most of which have never been put into practice.
We are inundated with rhetoric about issues related to creativity, the analysis of contemporary aesthetic trends, the need to rethink radio, television and film while taking into account the emerging needs and expectations of the population, to confront all forms of corruption, indiscipline, waste, disorder and vulgarity, the need for more effective mechanisms for commercializing art, the need to define and implement policies for the built environment, the need to chart a policy for the city and for architecture through national development programs and the proposed changes in the legal statutes. It’s really hard to separate the wheat from all the chaff.
Once again there were the “genetic censors,” seeking to solve problems by creating committees to review and approve, a ludicrous approach in the current context. It is evidence of generational stagnation and the influence of the exalted sayings of the National Orator—ever-present if not physically present—who is remembered as our “greatest intellectual.”
It was pure theater in which every one of the participants knew by heart the lines he or she was supposed to say.
