Iván García

Free Journalism From Havana / Ivan Garcia

For a Cuban reporter, in addition to mastering the narrative techniques of modern journalism, it’s good to have in hand Oriana Fallaci’s book. To read the chronicles of Gay Tallese or Rosa Montero. These days, seems essential to own a laptop, tablet, and a digital recorder and camera.

But, please, keep in mind you are engaging in journalism in an autocratic country, where according to its laws the professions of spy and unauthorized reporter are almost synonymous.

Yes, we must learn to use 21st century tools, Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, but in Cuba it’s ore useful to have a network of friendships located in different strata who can give you first hand information.

Not being able to confront the information, or verify it through other sources, we have to have confidence in our intuition. We’re always going to lack a specific date, or a concrete figure that could round out the note.

Not having access to official statistics, it’s impossible to contrast the news and look for other points of view to balance the story. In my experience, after working as an independent journalist for 18 years, on the island we have to throw in the trash certain rules established like canons of the profession.

Let me give an example. If we try to have a hooker tell you about her life, it’s advisable not to show her a microphone or camera. Or she’s not going to tell you a story. Then the most sordid stories flow. continue reading

Not being able to record, take notes, or take photos, a good memory is fundamental. When an interviewee quotes outside the law, what is important is to get across the essence of their opinions.

To do journalism inside Havana’s marginal world comes with its risks. One journalist note can bring down a police operation on a guy who sells drugs or a girl who sells herself. So you have to be very careful to camouflage the identity, place of residence or where there person usually operates.

I’ll tell you an anecdote. In the past year, Diario de las Americas published a story of mine about transvestite prostitutes. Every night they sit in a doorway on 10 de Octubre avenue. After I published the work, the police discretely evacuated the place.

These unadorned stories carry a risk in Cuba: any person mentioned could be arrested and end up behind bars.

An old butcher told me about a common method among the DTI (Technical Investigations Department) officials when they detain someone, to avoid a conflict, is to say they got the information from an article by an independent journalist.

Although at times the publication of a story helps the affected. In December, as a result of strong downpours assaulting Havana, a neighbor, living in a destroyed room in a tenement, told me he’d been asking for decent housing for his family for 20 years.

“After you mentioned my case, the authorities talked to me. They told me that if I stopped offering statement, they could resolve my problem,” the neighbor said.

On Friday, 10 January, the independent journalist León Padrón Azcuy published on Cubanet a report about the private restaurant Starbien, owned by José Raúl Colomé, son of Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, Army General and Minister of the Interior.

On Monday the 13th, Colomé Jr. visited the journalist at his home. He told him he was very annoyed with what was reflected in the article and promised to take charge of the matter personally. On 15 January Cubanet revealed that the minister’s son’s restaurant had been entered on Spain’s Merchant Register as Starbien Investment SL.

When you do journalism outside the State, you have to be well-informed and can’t try to wield the “journalistic stick” or compete against the international news agencies stationed in the country.

A journalist, according to Kapuscinski (Poland 1931-2007), above all must be a good person. To do good reporting work and, in the case of Cuba, to describe this reality hidden by the regime with objectivity.

Iván García

Photo: All the independent journalists who live in Havana, at least once a week go to the Esquina de Tejas, by foot, bus or taxi; this is where four of the most important streets of the capital meet: Monte, Infanta and the Calzadas del Cerro and Diez de Octubre. Taken from Primavera Digital.

22 January 2014

The New Cuban Rich / Ivan Garcia

Plaza de la Catedral, festooned for the Year End Grand Dinner and which some new Cuban rich must have attended. *See below for dinner menu.

They are not as ostentatious as the new Russian rich who buy compulsively and empty the shelves of Marbella. Nor do their lifestyle and expenses have to do with a Qatar millionaire who for pure pleasure buys a bankrupt European soccer club.

The new Cuban rich have a different stripe and behavior. “There are several castes. There are the life-long privileged: ministers, managers of healthy businesses or generals who have exchanged the olive-green uniform for a crisp white guayabera. They may eat shrimp and drink Spanish red wine,” says an ex-official.

In his opinion, it is a very special class. “It is accessed by family genes, loyalty or sycophancy. But it is an exclusive preserve. Depending on their rank, these revolutionary burghers may have a yacht or even a Hummer.”

A person who knows about power says they usually go to Ibiza or Cancun on vacation. “They are above the law and the Constitution. By divine decree, they can have cable antennas, internet at home and several cars. They don’t need to turn off the air conditioning to save energy, and when the dollar was prohibited, the supposed enemy’s banknotes were in their wallets.” continue reading

There were and still are other kinds of “rich.” People call them “flowerpots.” It is a colorful fauna of petty thieves with white collars who swipe a few million pesos and abound in various levels of government ministries.

“They carry the party card for convenience or pull you into a lecture replete with revolutionary slogans. This caste has learned how to spin the system,” says a lady who was a servant in the home of a manager.

Common and ordinary Cubans know that they ride in State cars, with gasoline from the State and that they steal from the State. That they invest in family businesses. And under the mattress they keep dollars and euros, among other currencies. “The most intelligent defect on an official trip and with stolen money set up a discreet business in Florida,” asserts the ex-official.

The man on the street also knows that the number of private entrepreneurs who are earning quite a bit in their businesses is rising. Also, that in Cuba there exist the “body smugglers.” People who have always lived on the margin of the law. Selling drugs, brand name clothes, pirated perfumes, houses or cars.

And with the money saved, the ’body smugglers’ open a cafeteria or rent rooms to foreign tourists for 30 dollars a night. Other privileged people are the rich “de flay,” that is, “the Cubans who thanks to remittances sent by relatives in Miami, who in order to sustain the way of life of these bloodsuckers, often have two jobs,” says a retired teacher.

They all, from the olive-green caste to the rich “de flay,” demonstrate the difference from that vast majority of the population that eats a hot meal once a day and relieves the heat with a Chinese fan.

The new rich can afford the luxury of dining three times a week in a private restaurant and paying 150 CUC for a set menu at the Plaza de la Catedral in order to eat delicacies and await the new year listening to Isaac Delgado.

Some envy them. But, in general, Cubans accept the new rules of the game. They see well that their neighbor may have a business, make money and stay at a Varadero hotel.

And that the State may sell cars and permit you to travel abroad. They applaud the elimination of the absurd double currency and ask for better salaries, with the hope that someday they too might eat in expensive restaurants or visit Cayo Coco.

What people reproach is the hypocrisy of the regime’s leaders. That they speak in the name of the poor while they live and dine like the new rich from Russia. That’s why, when many Cubans see Raul Castro, it seems to them that they are observing Vladimir Putin. Maybe it is an optical illusion.

*Dinner Menu — In 2012 the set menu cost 100 CUC per person (about $110 US), but in 2013 the business Habaguanex raised it to 150 CUC, a worker’s salary for seven and a half months. What was offered on the menu would have filled the stomachs of the residents of any block from Central Havana, Marianao, Arroyo Naranjo or San Miguel del Padron.

Welcome cocktail: Creole mojito or San Francisco (without alcohol). Large chef’s assortment plate: mixed salad of fillet of beef, fired pork bun a la Camagueyana, marinade of three cheeses and cured ham crepes. First plate: main: Tower of turkey and glazed fruits, green and black olives over marinated vegetables. Main plate: Center cut beef tenderloin with extra virgin olive oil, plum and rosemary sauce and Crianza Cabernet wine. Side dish: Creamed potatoes.

Variety of rolls and breadsticks accompanied by pate with cheese flavored with basil and pimento. Desserts: Cheesecake and guava with candied apple and coffee caramel sauce. Assortment of Spanish nougats and good luck grapes. Brews: Cuban coffee and varieties of tea.

Beverages of your choice all night: Mineral water, fruit juices, soft drinks and national beers, white, rose, red and sparkling wines, anejo rum, whiskey and from Cuban mixology, Mojito, Cuba Libre, Cubata and Habana Especial. Also: Mixed grill of pork, turkey and roasted vegetables, creole stew with red mangrove, three kinds of paella (shrimp, rabbit or vegetable) and grand cake flambe with cognac. As amusement, a Magnum of champagne opened with a saber.

Ivan Garcia

Translated by mlk.

11 January 2014

New Years in Havana / Ivan Garcia

The State brigade arrived in Vibora’s Red Plaza and in no time at all erected a slapdash wood and metal platform. On the nights of December 31 and January 1, a crowd fueled by cheap rum and bad beer will see in 2014 dancing to a Cuban timba orchestra.

The guys who set up the stage, ex-prisoners and amateur carpenters, under the blazing sun, had a good time drinking rum and tossing out rude compliments to the neighborhood women who do their shopping in nearby stores.

“It’s not easy working when almost everyone is celebrating, raising their elbows,” says Yaison, who have serving five years in prison for butchering cows, and not having too many job offers, enrolled in a People’s Power Brigade charged with looking after the equipment for the various political and musical activities. continue reading

In each of the 15 municipalities of the capital will be celebrations to commemorate the 55th anniversary of the Revolution on January 1. Joshua, 16, a student, reviews the cultural scene. He thinks about going to a concert where Buena Fe or Descemer Bueno will perform, his favorite artists.

“The last thing we are celebrating is the anniversary of the Revolution. For young people, talking about Revolution is talking about the past. Something that no longer exists. Today, the reality is a badly managed country, with an economy in the tank, and a ton of young people who want to leave Cuba. I go to these concerts because I have no other options. Going to a good nightclub costs 10 CUC and my parents can’t give it to me,” says Josué.

Raudel, 19, dressed like a reggaetoner, with retro wave glasses and a body-fitting shirt, plays dominoes and drinks Havana Club out of plastic cups with three friends in a doorway in 10 de Octubre Street. Meanwhile, they listen to reggaeton at full volume on a small battery powered radio.

“We’ll greet the New Year with Alexander, El Micha or Los Desiguales, playing in Alamar or Marianao. It’s the only chance we fans with little money have to dance to our reggaeton idols without paying a dime,” says Raudel.

Apart from the economic crisis, the question mark of a future and the high cost of living, the refrain of ordinary Cubans is: bad weather, a good face.

On Carmen Street, a stone’s throw from Red Square in Vibora, thanks to private businesses or remittances from Miami, three families are repairing their homes. Due to the disbursement of hard currency , they will see in the new year modestly with chicharrones, fried plantains, beer, rum or red wine.” I’ve spent 3000 chavitos (CUC ) and I still have covered only half of the arrangements. I have to prioritize the repair of the house,” says Diana.

These days, thousands people search through the city’s farmers markets looking for pork, cassava, tomatoes, lettuce or cabbage, to prepare the traditional dinner: roast pork, white rice, black beans, yucca and salad. And, if all goes well, a couple Spanish nougats.

In 21st century Havana few talk about the Castros’ Revolution. Some, when they do so, it is to criticize the state of things. Daniel, 35, feels that he has no power to change the system so he lives in the present and enjoys whatever he can.

“The Revolution and its leaders are no longer the brilliant heroes they were three decades ago. They’ve faded. We see them as nostalgic old men clinging to power. In the era of the Internet and globalization, we deserve modern leaders. Many of those who celebrate the coming of 2014 in activities organized by the Party, if given the opportunity to emigrate, would do it without a second’s thought, they wouldn’t think twice,” Daniel affirms.

With two and a half million inhabitants, Havana is the heart of the island. In its streets, parks and corners, this New Year, people prefer to talk about telenovelas; the good showing by the Industriales in the National Baseball Championships; whether Messi will soon rejoin Barca; or if Cristiano Ronaldo or win the Ballon d’Or.

Even the cash-strapped see in the new year with a dinner. This is the case for Renato, an old man beset by ailments who sells plastic bags at the entrance to a bakery.

“We are four friends and we each bring something. Then, on an old Russian radio, we listen to traditional boleros and sons. What we have in common is that our relatives have forgotten about us,” confesses Renato in a weak voice, muffled by the noise of the cars on a filthy Havana street.

Iván García

Photo: Buying pork in a specially authorized booth in Havana. From independent journalist Víctor Manuel Domínguez, for Cubanet.

3 January 2014

Who Can Buy a New Car in Cuba? / Ivan Garcia

Walter had his doubts. He was vacillating between a US-made Willys Jeep from the ’50s, with a Toyoto diesel engine, German air brakes, recently painted and restores, for 32,000 convertible pesos (about $35,000), or wait until January 3, to see if the State would sell the jeep more cheaply.

“I don’t think they’re going to sell a Cherokee or a Hummer, because of the blockade (embargo), but perhaps the government will offer something French- or British-made. I’m thinking perhaps I would like to use it as a taxi. And with the bad state of the roads on the island, I don’t think the modern jeeps can stand up to it like the suspensions of the American cars from the ’40s and ’50s, which are true war tanks,” says Walter.

The official announcement of the marketing of cars by the government still has not led to a substantial lowering of prices in the private market where 95% of the cars sold are used. Aurelio, after showing his 1957 Chevrolet which he maintains like a jewel, says “I won’t sell it for less than 35,000 chavitos (convertible pesos or CUCs).” continue reading

If you check on the capital’s car market, you’ll see that any antique out of Detroit from six decades ago, right now costs between $12,000 and $30,000, depending on how well it’s preserved.

If it’s one like Aurelio, which still has its factory engine and the original upholstery, you’ll have to pay at least $40,000. On on-line sites like Revolico.com, new or second-hand, fluctuate between 25,000 and 50,000 CUC.

In Havana, it’s common for an old car to cost more than a new two-bedroom apartment. The prohibition against selling cars, except those made before 1959, raised the prices in an absurd way.

Between 1970-80, the authorities sold Russian cars at 4,500 pesos, less than 200 CUC in current values. These same Ladas or uncomfortable Moskovich today cost between 10,000 and 15,000, depending on their technical state. Then they couldn’t change hands. Their owners couldn’t sell them. In the case of death, the child or other family member inherited the car, and they could not sell it either.

Of course, in the underground Cuban economy Ladas and Moskoviches were sold and even tractors were sold by the piece. In 2011 the regime understood that so many misguided prohibitions contributed to feeding the exaggerated prices.

And they authorized the sale of cars. But established a bureaucratic hurdle: you could only buy and sell old cars, US- or Russian-made. New and second-hand cars could only be acquired through a letter granted by an official.

Which is what happened. On no few occasions, the letters cost more than the vehicle you were going to buy at a state agency. A colossal web of corruption emerged. To put the brakes on the dance of notes under the table, as of 3 January 2014 the regime will involve itself in the business.

According to the official notice, the government will open agencies at current market prices in Cuba. Daniel, a self-employed worker who wants to buy “an economical little South Korean car, nothing spectacular,” put his hands to his head when a friend tells him that a model that costs no more than $3,000 in the U.S. or Brazil, sells in Havana for 9,000 CUC, almost $10,000.

The pretext of the regime for maintaining inflated prices is that the earnings will be dedicated to buying buses. In 55 years of “revolution,” the country has never had decent but service. It could seem like a good idea to subsidize public transport through the sale of cars.

Suppose the regime will undertake some market research. Perhaps 200,000 Cubans can buy new cars costing between 9,000 and 30,000 CUC. Let us assume that 200,000 citizens can purchase at an average of 10,000 CUC. That would be a net sale of 2 billion CUC.

Excluding the purchase and freight, the profit would be a billion dollars. With this money we could acquire 10,000 articulated buses at 100,000 dollars each. It would seem to be a magic solution; a handful of people, let’s call them the middle class, would provide the public transport that for 55 years of the Castro regime has always been a disaster.

Will they also allocate money to repair and expand the worn out roads. But we live in an autocracy that answers to no one. And to demand transparency from its institutions is synonymous with “counterrevolution.” So we will never know how they are going to invest the earnings that come from the sale of cars.

Walter was one of the first to tour the places where they are displaying the different car models. When he saw the prices, it was clear: he will by the restored Willys jeep for 32,000 convertible pesos (CUC).

Iván García

Photo: Cubans look in one of the parking lots in Havana turned in to retail auto lots. the cheapest sold the first day was a 1997 BMW at 14,457.60 CUC, and the most expensive, a 2010 Hyundai minibus at 110,000 CUC .

Official price list

2013 PEUGEOT for sale in convertible pesos (CUC)

PEUGEOT EXPERT TEPEE 2013 ………………… 212,940.00
PEUGEOT 4008 2013 ………………………………… 239,250.00
PANEL PEUGEOT PARTNER TEPEE 2013….. 145,612.50
PEUGEOT 206+ 2013 ……………………………….. 91,113.00
PEUGEOT 301 2013 ………………………………….. 108,084.00
PEUGEOT 301 2013 ………………………………….. 109,684.00
PEUGEOT 301 2013 ………………………………….. 109,699.00
PEUGEOT 5008 2013 ………………………………. 232,193.50
PEUGEOT 508 2013 ………………………………… 263,185.50

Other NEW VEHICLES for sale in convertible pesos (CUC)

GEELY CK T/A 2010 ……………………. 26,550.00
GEELY CK T/M 2009 ……………………. 25,950.00
GEELY FC 2009 ……………………………. 37,500.00
GEELY MK 2009 …………………………… 30,000.00
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/A 2011 ………… 45,000.00
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/A 2009-2010.. 37,500.00
HYUNDAI ATOS 2009 …………………… 21,450.00
HYUNDAI 110 T/A 2009 ………………. 29,250.00
HYUNDAI 110 T/A 2009 ………………. 31,500.00
HYUNDAI 110 T/M 2009 ……………… 25,000.00
HYUNDAI 110 T/M 2009 ……………… 28,500.00
KIA RIO 2011 ………………………………. 42,000.00
SEAT ALTEA 2008 …………………….. 45,000.00
VW JETTA 2010 …………………………. 51,000.00

USED VEHICLES for sale in convertible pesos (CUC)

MICROBUS HYUNDAI TQ12 2009-2010 ……. 110,000.00
JEEP HYUNDAI SANTA FE 2009-2010 ……. 90,000.00
JEEP SUZUKI JIMNY 2008 …………………….. 69,195.00
JEEP SUZUKI JIMNY 2008 …………………….. 30,000.00
AUDI A4 2000 ……………………………………….. 45,000.00
BMW SMOD 1997 ……………………………………. 14,457.60
CITROEN C3 2008 …………………………………. 46,025.10
CITROEN SAXO 2003 …………………………….. 26,431.65
CHANA-ALSV ALSVANA 2010 …………………. 31,950.00
DAIHATSU GRAND MOVE 2000 …………….. 22,000.00
FIAT PUNTO 2008 …………………………………. 28,950.00
FIAT UNO 2002 ……………………………………… 18,000.00
GEELY CK 2010 ……………………………………… 26,149.95
GEELY CK 2010 ……………………………………… 26,150.10
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/M 2007 ………………… 35,000.00
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/A 2011 …………………. 45,000.00
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/A 2009-2010 ……….. 37,500.00
HYUNDAI ACCENT T/M 2011 ……………….. 45,000.00
HYUNDAI ATOS 2007-2009 …………………. 21,450.00
HYUNDAI AZERA 2009 ……………………….. 75,000.00
HYUNDAI GETZ 2009 ………………………….. 32,250.00
HYUNDAI SONATA 2009-2010 …………….. 60,000.00
KIA PICANTO 2011 ……………………………….. 38,285.40
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 40,854.60
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 41,486.40
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 37,189.80
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 37,782.45
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 35,000.00
KIA PICANTO 2008 ……………………………… 28,000.00
KIA PICANTO 2011 ………………………………. 42,000.00
KIA PICANTO 2009 ……………………………… 35,000.00
MERCEDES BENZ 2006 ………………………. 60,000.00
MITSUBISHI LANCER 1997 …………………. 20,000.00
PEUGEOT 406 1999 …………………………….. 28,000.00
PEUGEOT 106 2003 …………………………….. 16,222.95
PEUGEOT 206 2008 …………………………… 85,227.60
PEUGEOT 206 2004 …………………………… 30,000.00
PEUGEOT 407 2004 …………………………… 30,000.00
PEUGEOT PARTNER 2008 ………………… 25,600.00
RENAULT CLIO 2005 ……………………….. 25,000.00
RENAULT SM3 2008 ……………………….. 46,116.30
RENAULT SM3 2008 ……………………….. 30,000.00
RENAULT SM3 2008 ……………………….. 31,500.00
RENAULT SM7 2008 ……………………….. 90,000.00
SEAT ALTEA 2008 ………………………….. 45,000.00
SEAT CORDOVA 2008 …………………….. 31,500.00
TOYOTA COROLA 2006 …………………… 39,224.80
TOYOTA YARIS 2003 ………………………. 25,000.00
TOYOTA YARIS 2002 ………………………. 25,000.00
VW JETTA 2010 ………………………………. 51,000.00
VW PASSAT 2008 ……………………………. 54,000.00
VW PASSAT 2010 ……………………………. 67,500.00
VW POLO 2007 ………………………………. 25,000.00
VW POLO 2007 ………………………………. 25,000.00

4 January 2014

What do Cubans Hope For in the New Year? / Ivan Garcia

December is a month of epilogues. 2013 brought new things for Cubans. After the 14th of January, those born on the island could travel abroad without so much government oversight.

Even the dissidents. Although with exceptions. Opponents, hostages of the Black Spring of 2003 who are considered by the olive green-autocracy as being on parole, cannot leave Cuba.

In business new legal concepts have emerged. Service cooperatives have been created and the State leases premises to individuals. In the Mariel port there will be a special zone with a different wage and tax system.

In 2013 Hugo Chavez and Nelson Mandela died. The two had repercussions on the island. If Mandela is on an altar, the death of the Venezuelan leader brought worries.

And if the national industries work and do not produce extensive blackouts, it is thanks to the agreement that Chavez initialed with Fidel Castro, by which Cuba pays with doctors and advisors for more than 10 thousand barrels of oil a day.

And although Chavez does not have even a trace of Mandela’s symbolism and the people on the street are not loyal to that social experiment that the Bolivarian called as 21st Century Socialism, typical human selfishness to not lose benefits make many Cubans, simply to keep the status quo, prefer the unseemly Nicolas Maduro.

Maybe Maduro would get votes in Cuba than in his country. And when people have lived 12-hour periods without light and someone offers it to them, in spite of Venezuela being mired in chaos and Caracas being a jungle of violence, people are capable of voting for Satan.

In 2013 Cubans continued on their own. News of the protests in Kiev, the gag law in Spain, the re-election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the global electronic espionage by the United States denounced by the analyst Edward Snowden or the apprentice dictator of North Korea executing his uncle, passed almost unnoticed.

Through illegal satellite antennas, SMS or those that pay 4.5 convertible pesos for an hour of internet — finally commercialized in 2013 — people prefer to be up to date on the latest record by their favorite singer, to see Brazilian soap operas, the films that are chosen for the Oscar, to see who will win the Soccer World Cup, to see the games of LeBron James’s Miami Heat or MLB baseball games in which Yasiel Puig or Arnoldis Chapman are playing.

Although for three years Cubans have enjoyed more economic liberties and now can stay in a hotel, buy or sell a house or get a car, in relation to political matters, people prefer to stay on the sidelines.

The ready arrests of dissidents, beatings of the Ladies in White or the acts of repudiation they keep watching from the sidewalk across the street.

The opposition continues being a particular clan. They say and write things that the majority desire or lack, but the average Cuban sees it from as a great a distance as an Australian tourist.

In the syndicate meetings they get mad about the miserable salaries and ask out loud for a change in the system. But if you suggest creating an independent syndicate, they look you up and down as if you were a strange insect.

Ask any Cuban what he wants for 2014 and he will tell you a better life for himself and his family. Earning a decent wage and being able to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

The workers for their own account want more autonomy, a wholesale market, lower taxes and less State interference. That 3D cinemas return and cheesy shops re-open.

The dissidents long for the Castro era to end. For Cuba to enter the ring of democracy. And that liberties be respected.

They have spent decades demanding it. But they dedicate very little time to political proselytizing of their neighbors, which is whom they must convince.

Ivan Garcia

Translated by mlk.

20 December 2013

Cuba: Diplomacy and Repression / Ivan Garcia

While General Raul Castro, a president handpicked by his brother Fidel, squeezed the hand of the United States’ leader Barack Obama at the State funeral of Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, the special services and combined forces of the police mounted a strong operation around the home of dissident Antonio Rodiles, director of the Estado de Sats, a project where diverse political and civic strands that coexist in the illegal world of Cuban opposition come together.

Also on December 10, while the headlines of the dailies of the world media highlighted on their front pages the leaders’ unprecedented handshake, the hard guys of the State Security were repressing activists in the eastern region of Cuba and detaining some twenty Ladies in White in Havana and dozens of opponents in the rest of the country.

All this happens under the indifferent gaze of ordinary Cubans, whose central objective is to try to get two plates of food to the table each day. Neither for the corner grocer, the individual taxi driver or people waiting for the bus at a busy stop was the greeting newsworthy.

The regime knows that an elevated percentage of the population remains in the bleachers, observing the national political panorama. What is of the people is to subsist, emigrate or see the way to set up a small shop that permits one to earn some pesos.

Meanwhile, the olive green autocrats clamor to negotiate. But with the United States. It does not matter to them, for now, to sit down to dialogue with an opposition that has unquestionable merit: the value of publicly dissenting within a totalitarian regime.

It has paid its price. Years in jail, exile, and repression. But neither the right which it should enjoy — of being considered a political force — nor the acts of repudiation and beatings, have cemented a state of favorable opinion within a majority of citizens disgusted with the lousy governmental management by the Castros for 55 years.

Here is the key. By being focused on the exterior, the dissidence does not count on popular support, on men and women who before the regime’s gross injustices throw themselves into the street to protest. That weakness is what permits the authorities to not take it into account.

I do not believe one owes a handshake to a ruler who represses those who think differently. This December 10 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory, turns 65.

No high flying political strategy has paid off after a series of steps that democratic countries have taken trying to push Cuba.

Neither the Ibero-American Summits or leading CELAC pro tempore have impeded the Havana Government in continuing to repress the dissidents with laws and physical violence.

Fidel and Raul Castro have dismissively mocked everyone and everything. They initialed the Economic, Cultural, Political and Civil Rights Pacts in February 2008, and later did not ratify them.

Cuba is the only country in the western hemisphere where the opposition is considered illegal. And the only nation that does not hold free elections to elect its presidents.

Cuba is not a democracy. Obama well knows it.

If behind that handshake, the second in a half century by a president of the United States (the first was that of Bill Clinton with Fidel Castro at the Millennial Summit in New York, September 6, 2000), there exists a discrete message about future negotiations to repeal the embargo or improve relations between the countries, ordinary people and a sector of the dissidence would not see it as a bad thing.

Maybe the greeting does not come to be something more than ceremonial and isolated. Or maybe a change of policy by the White House. The gringos have always been very pragmatic.

In a serious negotiation, both sides must give. The bad news is that the regime feigns change, but continues repressing the opposition. Diplomacy on one hand, clubs on the other.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: One of the Ladies in White detained Tuesday, December 10, during a peaceful demonstration for the Day of Human Rights on the downtown corner of 23 and L, Vedado, Havana. Taken by ABC.

Translated by mlk.

17 December 2013

When Cuba Had No Christmas / Ivan Garcia

The first time Juan Carlos saw a Christmas tree, he was 43-years-old and working as a bricklayer inside the house of a top counterintelligence officer.

“That was 19 years ago. Those were the harsh years of the so-called Special Period. People had nothing to eat. Avocado was a luxury and a pound of rice was 60 pesos. Due to all sorts of vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, men and women succumbed to illness and some even lost their natural teeth. Back then, I was a civilian worker for the Department of the Interior and our crew was asked to work on painting and remodeling the home of a State Security bigwig. The guy was living at full throttle luxury. His kitchen was a quarter size bigger than the tenement room where I was living. That was the first place I ever saw a Christmas tree.

Cubans are not atheists or Muslims. No, sir. Before Fidel Castro’s autocratic regime, the poor and rich celebrated Christmas if on different budgets.

The same could be said for Three Kings Day (Epiphany), and Easter celebrations. But our radical commander launched a crusade against reproducing the slightest hint of the bourgeois lifestyle. He opened fire on the Church, on free thought and on abstract painting. Down with the Three Kings. Now, our New King Magus dressed in olive green fatigues.

In 1959, Fidel climbed aboard an aircraft and made it rain toys for children of the Sierra Maestra who’d never owned such a thing. But in one fell swoop, by the end of the 60s, he eliminated all mom and pop shops and Christmas.

Gustavo, a 72-year-old retiree, remembers, “Only New Year’s Eve parties were left standing, and even those came to be used to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution. The pretext used to eliminate Christmas and the Carnivals of February was that such events shut down sugar cane production. In his madness, Castro had invested all of Cuba’s resources to attempt the production of ten million pounds of sugar per year. The effort failed. Cuba’s economy payed dearly for such folly.

Just like the State openly frowned on the Afro-Cuban and Catholic religions — Castroism was the only acceptable religion — Christmas had to be suspended until further notice. Of course, you can’t really change anyone’s beliefs by edict.

“Some neighbors would very discretely place Christmas trees in their family rooms. They’d also shut the windows so neighborhood whistleblowers who patrolled for the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) couldn’t see any of the tiny Christmas lights. When pig was roasted, the aromas were carefully masked and Christmas Carols were barely audible,” reported Aida, a 69 year-old housewife.

It was a long journey through the desert. Even parties had to be authorized by the state. The government tried to micromanage every detail of your life.

To avoid being singled out as a counterrevolutionary, you had to attend political meetings and participate in government parades. If you aspired to housing, a Soviet TV or an alarm clock, you had to list accumulated merits in the workforce and enumerate your revolutionary accomplishments.

You gained points if you’d fought in Angola or Ethiopia, if you were militia, if you worked lots of volunteer hours, and if you could quote good chunks of the Maximum Leader’s (Fidel’s) speeches by heart.

You lost points, if you owned a Bible, went to church, got mail from relatives in Miami, listened to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, liked Levis blue jeans; with these characteristics you did not qualify to buy an Inpud refrigerator or two-speed Karpaty motorcycle.

To blacklist you, any envious neighbor or political extremist could turn you in to Special Services if you were caught celebrating Christmas or giving your kids any toys on January 6 to celebrate the day the Three Kings (the Three Wise Men) arrived at Jesus’ manger.

To keep himself in power, Fidel had to do all kinds of ideological backflips. In Europe, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the U.S.S.R. — the mecca of Communist looney wards — had disappeared. Somehow, he had to cling to whatever branch could sustain him.

The regime eventually sealed a pact with a docile Catholic Church. People who once professed a belief in Yoruba syncretic spiritualism (Santería) again nailed old and familiar amulets on their doors.

In December 1997, Pope John Paull II visited Cuba and Christmas returned.

But all along, the official Nomenklatura never stopped celebrating Christmas if you take into account all the roast pork, all the traditional sweet Spanish nougat and all the wines consumed.

Maybe those folks could indulge because they thought of themselves as being above the rest.

Iván García

Photo Credit: Front cover of winning lottery number sporting a Criollo Christmas image and published in the magazine Carteles in 1959. Up until 1959, we had Christmas cheer on the Island. You could find the popular A Cuban Merry Christmas postcard celebrating the Cuban book and reading fair, and the advertising sign for A Boy’s Cuban Christmas printed by the Ministry of Culture and with pictures of the Three Magi done by René Portocarrero. The Book of Cuban Recipes, launched for Christmas and edited by the Ministry of Education, carried a special introduction: “This Christmastime, a book of traditional Cuban recipes was especially created so every young city-dwelling housewife can come to know and enjoy the traditional cooking that forms part of our national heritage and still endures in various parts of the country.”

But during the 60s, Christmas started to disappear from the life of Cubans, and only a few kept up with the tradition from behind closed doors (Tania Quintero).

Translated by: JCD and others
17 December 2013

Obama – Raul Handshake Overlooked On The Island / Ivan Garcia

In Cuba, most news reaches us via Miami. Look, given such limited access to the internet where one official hour puts us back a whopping 4.50 convertible pesos (i.e., the equivalent of one week’s pay for a laborer), people resort to foreign short wave radio or whatever illegal cable connection the neighbor down the street managed to set up but charges 10 cuc to let you listen to the news.

Don’t ever think you’ll get any real news about Cuba from local newspapers. Out of the six pages of dull newspaper made from sugar cane pulp, the national press only publishes Pollyanna stuff and overly compliant economic indicators.

Out on the street, we think of our newspapers as pure science fiction. Good for nothing except to help keep track of the baseball season, to get a peek at the TV guide, or as a good substitute for toilet paper.

The cut and paste ordeal to get information is a lengthy process. While Barack Obama and General Raúl Castro were shaking hands in the Johannesburg soccer stadium, Rebel Radio a.m. (Radio Rebelde) went on and on about the sugar cane harvest and the great and successful efforts made by our cooperative social service units.

Moraima, a 29 year-old housewife found out about the event because she’d been watching TV through some illegal cable connection. She comments, “every day, I watch channel 23 News and a few Oscar de Haza programs. That’s how I get a whiff of unreported local Cuban news ranging from the latest crime, to another dissenter arrest, to the North Korean ship in Panama or to the handshake between Obama and Raúl.”

While the Obama-Raúl thing sent a large part of the exiled Cuban-American community living in Miami into an uproar, in Havana the whole thing was little more than just another bit of news. Gerardo, a 74 year-old retiree thought the encounter was positive, but his main morning concern was being able to buy a leg of pork.

“Pork meat is sold in agro-markets for 24-25 pesos per pound. But I was hunting for the 21 peso bargain I’d get if I could find a state slaughterhouse carrying it. I was in line for an hour and a half, but I finally got my pork leg for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe the handshake will bode well for the future — I’m not really certain — but the good news is that I’ll have food to last me for a few days. Politics is a dirty game. Government reforms do not benefit retirees. I don’t have relatives in Yankeeland, so no one sends me dollars. Whether those two shake hands or tell each other off doesn’t really matter to me.”

Common folks in Cuba are just tired, that’s all. Tired of a bunch of stuff. Of bad government. Of the now ancient embargo used as a pretext by the regime to justify depriving us of scarce goods and services. And worst of all, tired of not having any political voice or say.

A 38 year-old teacher, Zoila feels like a pawn for the State. “Whatever we think about the future we’d like to have is nothing the government cares to take into account. Any one act like Obama’s handshake can easily morph into cheap and superficial politics. Our government leaders don’t want to change. All they are doing is stalling for time.”

In Parque Central located in the heart of Havana, people could be seen rushing around stuffing plastic bags with whatever they could find. A loaf of bread. Two and a half pound of tomatoes. Maybe some dry fruit.

On baseball hill just next to the statue of José Martí, countless fans argued over baseball or predicted results for the European Champions League soccer matches.

At the Payret, about fifty people queued up waiting for the movie theater to let them in to see an Argentine flick brought in by the International Festival of New Latin American Film.

Meanwhile, beggars were sorting through garbage cans. And a pair of very old people begged for money right next to the Inglaterra hotel. And workers hired to repair the Capitol building were selling their own lunch for 25 pesos.

Obispo street was a beehive of pedestrians swarming in and out of stores. Some discreet street vendors offered cigars. Others, girls. Blondes, mulatto, black. Young men were also an option.

Our bus service is still in crisis. Bus stops are stuffed to the gills, and people feel antsy and are upset about not being able to get where they need to go. And even at the cusp of winter, temperatures in Havana still hover at unbearable 86 degrees of Fahrenheit humidity.

When people are forced to live like this, it is logical that a greeting between two heads of State might be overlooked. That’s a fact even if the two men happen to be Barack Obama and Raúl Castro.

Iván García

Photo Credit: Martí Noticias.

By request, we are resubmitting the article, “Nothing To Do With Mandela” taken from Spain’s newspaper, El País on December 11, 2013.

At Nelson Mandela’s funeral service, more world leaders came together in one fell swoop than world history can recall. Despite rainy weather, one hundred world leaders collectively sat on bleachers at Soweto’s soccer stadium to pay tribute to a man of principles.

The man had the strength to fight in the name of freedom, the level-headedness to redress his thinking, the courage to disagree among his own rank and file, the empathy to step into his opponents’ shoes, the magnanimity to embrace forgiveness, the brains to build bridges, and finally, the decency to accept a timely retirement.

In light of Mandela’s track record, why would leaders stomping on the core ideals of the South African leader wish to render tribute? Case in point, the three ogres: Raúl Castro, Robert Mugabe and Teodoro Obiang. Front-row-center, the fearsome threesome certainly hardened the mood and turned all the magic in the air sour.

Right on cue, Obama drove the point home: “There are leaders here today who praise Mandela but silence protest.” The words were intended for iron-fisted leaders who gravely overstep to crush human ideals, religious beliefs or the acceptance of gender preference. Only official protocol could possibly explain how despots were invited to attend and got the opportunity to grandstand for absolution under Mandela’s glow. Tyrant and apprentices filled the gallery. Simply review the list of shameful human right violators from anywhere: All were in Soweto.

Well, almost all human rights violators went to the funeral. A few hardliners stayed at home. For instance, the President of Sudan, Omar al Bashir was absent, but probably due to the fact that the International Criminal Court is hot on his trail.

Fortunately, Caucasus strongmen ignored the news and the event. Also absent (for reasons of their own) were big human rights abusers like Russia, China and Iran.

But it was Czech Prime Minister, Jiri Rusnok, whose silent microphone was on long enough to record him saying that a full agenda made going to a funeral out in the “boondocks” inconvenient and something for which he was not in the mood. No way to save face with mourners after that kind of faux pas. Rusnok apologized, of course. But he, at least, certainly expressed an honest opinion.

Translated by: JCD

14 December 2013

All Pay Homage to Mandela in Cuba / Ivan Garcia

For Josefina, a 71 year-old housewife and south-of-Havana local, first comes Jesus Christ then Mandela. She’d been cooking supper when the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize winner’s death broke through on the radio.

“Among books set by my bedside, I have a biography of Mandela which I’ve read three times. Jesus Christ, Mandela and Martí are the three men whose principles and convictions I most respect,” is what Josefina tells us while sifting for the best grains of rice to make her supper dish.

On the island, authorities have officially declared three days of national mourning following Mandela’s death, and President Raúl Castro has sent his message of condolence to South African President Jacob Zumba. In the missive, Castro II noted that, “one must not refer to Mandela in the past tense.” During our three days of national mourning, all government buildings and military compounds will fly the Cuban flag at half-mast.

Produced by Telesur Network, Cuban television station channel 6 aired a documentary about Mandela’s life. And just after 10 p.m., the station also broadcast the film Invictus starring Morgan Freeman in the role of Mandela.

On a scale from one-to-ten, if you ask any Cuban to pick and rate any idol, few would mention a modern political figure. Most would bet on celebrities, musicians, or sports figures like Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo.

In Cuba like in most nations around the world, politicians are rated very low. But when you speak about Mandela that is another thing.

Look, some people are loyal to Castro while others idolize Che. Ask anyone and many just simply hate both of them. But with Mandela something unique happens: Irrespective of ideology and religion, all revere him.

Niurka a Cuban doctor, spent two years volunteering her medical expertise in South Africa. “I was deep in South Africa, a great nation very rich and where people from different ethnicities coexist with different beliefs and different cultures. In spite of the differences everyone respects Mandela. After my return in 1997, I was involved in an event where Mandela shared a few words of gratitude with us. He was a cordial man who would look at a person’s eyes while he spoke to them. His diction was perfect and he was soft spoken which is something that caught my attention. I belong to that Cuban generation who grew up with Fidel Castro shouting slogans from a soapbox using sometimes profane language. Mandela’s image is forever engraved in my sight.

Even at the heart of his opposition, Mandela was able to gain considerable ground. And in Cuba, Antonio Rodiles — Director of Estado de Sats, a cultural and social project where diverse aspects converge, and perhaps the most promising Cuban dissident — considers that Nelson Mandela’s political legacy is nothing less than remarkable.

Rodile comments, “Following 27 years of imprisonment, Mandela’s message was about constructive dialogue and remained free of hatred. We could all stand to learn from him. Cuba is Mandela’s friend, but what’s more, he might also become the example our government needs so opposing factions can learn to mend ways and work on behalf of the Cuban nation like Mandela did when confronted with critical moments in South Africa’s development.”

At night on Avenida G in Vedado, youth of any sort — emo rockers, freaks, hard rockers, haggard hippies, reggaetoneros and Joaquín Sabina, Pablo Milanés or Fito Páez groupies — are loaded on Parkisonil pills and cheap rum but what they celebrate with irreverence and spontaneity is Mandela.

A life-long self-ascribed friki, Osmany, 36, hums a popular 80s tune which demanded the South African leader be set free, and also takes the opportunity to show me a tattoo on his back quoting the first black President of South Africa: ’What kind of freedom can you offer me when as people we are not granted the right to public assembly? Only a free assembly of men can negotiate.’ “Like Mandela, I too want to be a free man,” says Osmany.

Cuba is a country where no one agrees on anything and everyone insists on being right. But men like José Martí and Nelson Mandela are examples that live beyond the good and evil in us.

Iván García

Photo credit: Greg Bartley Camera Press, taken from the New York Times.

Translated by: Adriana Correa and JCD

7 December 2013

In Cuba We Would Have Needed a Nelson Mandela / Ivan Garcia

The greatness of Nelson Mandela clearly shows the deficiencies of the world’s current political class.

If the Fab Four from Liverpool revolutionized music, and the Scottish scientist Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin one morning in 1928, which definitely slowed the deadly pandemics, Madiba leaves as a legacy a master class of how to do politics in difficult times.

The current statesmen should take note. Given the hesitations and weaknesses of Obama (who does not want, does not know how, or is unable to deal with a hostile Congress and is overwhelmed by the worldwide spying of his special services around the globe), the gross mismanagement of Mariano Rajoy in Spain, or a dyed-in-the-wool autocrat like Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, who continues to slaughter his own people, every self-respecting statesman should learn from the political strategies of Nelson Mandela.

Mandela was not perfect. He was labeled a communist and disruptive, and until 2008 the FBI had him on their list of “terrorists.” But he knew how to maneuver in the turbulent waters of a nation where state racism prevailed, in the intrigues of his party, the African National Congress, and to achieve the miracle of national unity in South Africa.

The colossal undertaking began in jail. From a cell in Robben Prison, where for 27 years he was behind bars, until 1994 when Madiba became president, he understood that in conditions of political fragility, his mission was to make sure that everyone saw themselves represented in the first democratic government of their country.

He was a president for all South Africans. Not just for his supporters. He could have taken revenge. He had the majority. He controlled all the levers of power that would have allowed him to polarize society and adopt strategies of retaliation on behalf of justice for his people, where a majority of 27 million blacks were excluded and oppressed for decades by a regime that represented 3 million whites. He did not. He overcame hatred. He learned to forgive.

In his five years in office, Mandela sat chair of his magnificent policy. His ethics, honesty, and transparency were his hallmark. He was a partner of one and all, without ever compromising his political perspective. A man of diplomacy and respect for others.

His great friend in the Americas, Fidel Castro, retired from power, could also learn some lessons in transparency from Mandela’s conduct.

No one can doubt the sincere friendship that joined Castro with Madiba. Months after leaving prison, in July 1991, he visited Cuba. The Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, where Cuban and Angolan troops destroyed several South African columns, was the final blow to the hateful apartheid regime.

But the two statesmen are nothing alike in their methods of achieving national harmony. If Fidel Castro had been like Nelson Mandela, he long ago would have been sitting at the table to negotiate with his political opponents.

First he would have visited with the dissidents. Then with the White House. If Mandela had been Castro, the embargo would be ancient history. That ability of Mandela’s — to adapt to changing times and live with democratic rules — is something the former Cuban president does not have.

The first Castro still thinks like a fossil of the Cold War. The current dissidents should also take note of the attitude and strategies of Mandela.

If Madiba had been leader of the opposition on the island, he would have done more than send messages to the outside world denouncing violations of human rights. After analyzing the internal situation, he would have opted for a bigger and better job of social and political campaigning in neighborhoods and communities.

What could a guy like Mandela not have accomplished, if upon talking to ordinary people he had noticed that 8 out of 10 Cubans are tired of the old government and disgusted with the economic mismanagement of the Castros?

In Cuba we would have needed a Nelson Mandela. His precepts should be written in Gothic letters. And the devalued Criollo politicians, or those who aspire to be, should read them once a week. As if it were a Bible.

Iván García

Video: On June 27, 2008, Nelson Mandela and his wife Graça Machel attended the celebration of the 90th birthday of the man who changed history in South Africa. Fifty thousand people gathered in Hyde Park in London. At the outset, actor Will Smith spoke this phrase by Peter Gabriel: “If the world could have a father, the man who we would choose would be Nelson Mandela.” A highlight was the presence of Amy Winehouse (1983-2011). She sang “Free Nelson Mandela,” by Jerry Dammers, released on March 5, 1984, by the English group The Specials A.K.A., and which circled the world seeking the release of political prisoner 46664. It is one of the most famous songs dedicated to him. The others are: Ordinary Love (U-2), Mandela (Hugh Masekela), Nelson Mandela (Youssou N’Dour), Public Enemy (Prophets of Rage), Mandela (Carlos Santana) ; Freedom Now (Tracey Chapman) and Asimbonanga, by Johnny Clegg, written in English and Zulu. In this video you can see Mandela dancing and waving to the author and to the public in 1999, when he was 81 years old. — Tania Quintero

9 December 2013

Cuba: Drawing Room Dissidents / Ivan Garcia

Never before have Cuban dissidents had it so easy. Fifteen or twenty years ago publishing a political document was a sure path to jail.

If you were an intellectual — I can recall professor Ricardo Boffill, the writer and poet Raul Rivero and the poet María Elena Cruz Valera — it was not enough for them just to disparage you with an editorial in the newspaper Granma.

You would lose your job. Your friends would not even say hello to you. You would begin to live clandestinely. Harassment by cowboys from State Security would make you paranoid. It was unbearable. They would disturb you at all hours, you would receive nasty calls in the middle of the night and, since they had absolute power, they could detain you as often as they saw fit.

Certainly, we still live under the Republic’s absurd “Gag Law,” a legal tool that allows the government to sentence you to twenty or more years in prison just for writing a newspaper article without state approval. However, from 2010 until now, 95% of arrests have been of short duration, lasting hours or days.

Of course, dissidents are still subject to karate kicks from plainclothes policemen dressed as peasants, beatings and verbal assaults in front of their homes.

Being a dissident in an autocracy while supporting democracy and political freedom carries a cost. Being subject to insults and death threats is never pleasant, but Cuban dissidents accept them.

But even if the repressors’ behavior seems savage and intimidating — which it is — fifty years ago you would have gotten the death penalty for the same things they are doing now. It isn’t much, but it’s something. The island’s dissident movement now enjoys recognition by democratic nations.

Outside the island they are more visible today. They communicate using blogs, websites, Twitter, Facebook and other digital tools. Some have received awards for their activism, and as of January 2013 they can travel and lobby American and international institutions. They chat with and take have their pictures taken with politicians.

They can also take classes that increase their knowledge. This is all positive but current circumstances in Cuban society require something more than speeches, periodic reports on human rights violations and drawing room meetings among dissidents.

The local opposition should try to reach agreement among themselves and devise a coherent political program that is inclusive and modern. Disagreements, egos and posturing should be set aside.

All dissidents agree on one point: Cuba must change. We must then work towards a common goal. It seems to me that this is the moment to be of one mind and to focus our efforts within the country.

Eight out of ten people with whom I spoke disagree with the regime. Even in official blogs by such writers such as Alejo, Gay Paquito and Elaine Díaz the complaints against previously sacred institutions reveal unhappiness within the society.

The things on which the opposition and a wide segment of the population agree are significant. Dissidents, whether they be workers or professionals, all suffer from the same material shortages caused by poor management by the government.

In our neighborhoods plumbing lines are broken and streets are full of potholes. The buildings where we live are in need of repair, the hospitals were we are treated are decrepit and in our children’s schools the poor quality of education is palpable.

It is necessary, however, to prioritize work within communities and neighborhoods. Although a high percentage of the population is in agreement with the dissidents, the divide between the population and the opposition is clearly evident.

Because of negative government propaganda directed against dissidents, many ordinary Cubans do not trust opposition figures. They see them as opportunists and demagogues.

Political proselytizing by dissident activists must be directed to the Cuban on the street. There is no point in publishing an article in a foreign newspaper, making statements on Radio Martí or giving a seminar at an American university when the audience we must convince is at our doorstep or on the sidewalk in front.

Another issue on which the dissident movement must focus is the subject of money and aid provided by foreign institutions. Transparency is paramount. It would be beneficial if they were to account for every centavo spent or resource received.

On official US government websites you can find out about contributions made by American agencies to the Cuban opposition. I am in support of this aid but not of the silence from dissidents who accept it without providing information on how it is being used.

The Cuban dissident movement should also try to find its own means of financial support. For example, it might start small, legally approved businesses that could subsidize its efforts as well as help others by providing employment.

Sometimes dependence on foreign institutions leads to undesirable compromises. A drawing room dissident movement is necessary but, I believe, now is the time to go out and look for followers in the streets.

Iván García

Photo: Unlike Cubans, Ukrainians took to the streets of Kiev to protest a political decision by their government. A majority of Ukrainians want to join the European Union rather than be affiliated with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. From La Jornada de México.

4 December 2013

Fashion and Reality in Cuba / Ivan Garcia

If, like 22-year-old Yoan, you consider it a priority to dress in the style of a male fashion model and you spend all your spare time in the gym sculpting your body, then the bill could exceed your income.

Yoan maintains a lifestyle similar to an average middle-class guy in any developed country thanks to his family in Florida.

A European fiancé and a Canadian lover allow him certain whims and niceties such as frequent lunches in good privately owned restaurants and mojitos in exclusive bars.

Bisexual and discreet, he prides himself on being a high-end male prostitute. He does not work as a gigolo nor does he have a Hummer parked in his garage, though this is his dream.

He has a closet filled with expensive jeans, Italian loafers and athletic shoes. He is well-stocked with Chanel No. 5, Heno and Prava soaps and American-made Colgate toothpaste, which he acquired for six dollars on Obispo Street.

He likes to buy brand-name clothing in high-end stores in Havana’s Miramar district and the Hotel Saratoga, places whose prices rival those of Manhattan. He just bought a pair of Diesel jeans for 120 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos), a pair of Nikes for 127 CUC and a Puma pullover for 93 CUC.

This comes to 340 CUC, the equivalent of a year and a half’s salary for a professional on the island. And believe me, his story is not some surrealist portrait of Havana in the 21st century. Yoan is not the son of that privileged class made up of the Communist Party politburo elite. By no means.

There is in Cuba a segment of young people of both sexes who can can afford to dress stylishly and polish their figures with the money they earn selling their bodies to foreign tourists.

Successful artists, communist businessmen and slackers supported by a constant flow of dollars from relatives in Miami are also able to maintain their wardrobes, but they are the minority.

Most Cuban families try to buy clothing and shoes at a discount. The state does not give them many options. After Fidel Castro took power, he introduced two types of ration cards in 1962, one for food and one for manufactured goods. Every Cuban was allowed a yearly pair of shoes, a skirt or pair of slacks, and two shirts or blouses made of unremarkable fabric. Their prototypes were created by decree, without originality or quality.

It was the period of social equality and uniformity. This socialist form of poverty provided Cuba with Minsk refrigerators, Aurika washing machines, Selena radios and Lada cars, all from the former Soviet republics. Other manufactured goods came from Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Albania.

At the end of the 1970s the Cuban exile community in the United States began travelling to Cuba, packing their luggage with jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes, things that were novelties in the island of the Castros.

Trafficking of clothing has always been good business on the underground market. The 1980s saw the emergence of a network of speculators who bought dollars at a time when possession of foreign currency was illegal and then used them to purchase inexpensive fabric from shops intended for diplomats and foreign technical workers.

Prices were high. At the time the lowest salary did not top 120 pesos. However, a pair of denims cost 150 pesos, a pair of Cast shoes was 120 and a “bacteria” shirt went for about 130 pesos.

After 1959 dressing fashionably in Cuba was an aspiration whose costs could not be defrayed with the average monthly salary. After it became legal to possess dollars in 1993, shopping malls were opened that sold clothing bought in bulk from free trade zones in China and the Carribean.

A high-powered segment of the consumer market has access to boutiques with heart attack inducing prices. They carry brands such as Mango, Zara, Dolce and Gabbana and — in a mockery of the embargo — Guess jeans and items by Nike, Reebok and New Balance.

The average Cuban often has to turn to hard-currency stores where the regime sells low-end clothing at high-end prices.

A pair of pants, a shirt and a pair of jeans of questionable quality costs a total of 60 CUC, three-month’s salary for the average worker. The now-outlawed private clothing stalls provided some relief. Cubans with family members overseas continue to benefit from the packages they receive, which contain essential items such as shoes.

Cubans care for their footwear as though they were precious jewels. Shoes are expensive so, when they wear out, people take them to shoe repair shops. In any given neighborhood you will find people who specialize in recycling and refurbishing shoes that in another country would be thrown in the trash. Athletic shoes have uses their designers never imagined.

They are repaired several times and are usually worn by kids, teenagers and young people who play baseball or football in the street. Yoan the hooker knows. So when they get new shoes they give the old ones to the neediest neighbors.

Except for the revolutionary aristocracy, who live in exclusive enclaves, one finds in Cuba hookers, johns, police officers, doctors, self-employed workers, dissidents and agents from State Security all living in the same block. And all know first hand of the cost of dressing decently.

Iván García

1 December 2013

Arturo Sandoval: I Have Fulfilled My Dreams / Ivan Garcia

To speak about music in Cuba is an analogy. Cuba is the music. There are nice people, splendid weather, the smell of salty residue, and there’s always a reason to party. Other things, like the shrimp, tropical fruits, or beef are a luxury after 54 years of misrule. Cuba lacks essential liberties, but the music goes on.

Fidel Castro tried to scrap the Sunday calls to retreat and replace them with arrhythmic marches calling for combat. The olive-green regime planned to transform music. To bury guaguancó, toque de santo, and jazz.

But he couldn’t. In addition to inventing parameters to measure the quality of a music, in the medias sent to censure the greats like Mario Bauzá, Celia Cruz, or such a Lupe, only because they chose to observe from the distance the ideological folly established in the island.

And the music, like poetry, doesn’t let you break. The trumpeter, pianist, and composer Arturo Sandoval (Artemeisa, 1949), knows this very well. In the flesh has lived the holy war that political and cultural commissioners, scribes and historians, unleashed in 1990 when he decided to move away from the Communist madhouse. According to official decree, Sandoval was to die.

It’s rained a lot since then. The times are different. It’s been 24 years, indignant Berliners in the night demolished the wall that divided a same nation. Castro had to change politically. He spoke of socialism or death on a Havana platform, but from the sewers of power, sent especially trying to make negotiations with magnates of capitalism. He had to make accords. With the Catholic Church, the Afro-Cuban religion and with the selfsame devil. He cracked the social discipline and the fear was lost.

And in full view you could find blacks on a Cayo Hueso lot, in downtown Havana, between rounds of rum and dominos, daring to listen, at full volume, to Celia Cruz, Willy Chirino, Paquito D’Rivera. or A Time for Love, disco from 2010 by Arturo Sandoval. I was a witness.

On November 6th the Cuban trumpeter turned 64. On the 21st of this month his name may be announced in Las Vegas as the winner of a Grammy, the tenth in his career, to go along with 6 Billboard Awards and an Emmy. Although the most moving of all will be the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which will be presented to him in December by Barack Obama, along with fifteen other figures, including former President Bill Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Mexican scientist and Nobel Prize winner in chemistry Mario Molina. Despite his busy schedule, Arturo Sandoval graciously answered a questionnaire from Diario de Cuba.

Arturo, I was a boy when your name rang out with force on the island. I remember you taking complete notes on the trumpet while Irakere was making Bacalao with bread. Would you be able to summarize your artistic trajectory?

“I have to give thanks to God every day because in my career I’ve been able to accomplish my dreams. Look, coming from a dirt-poor family, where nobody was linked to art, and me having been able to be in the best situations and share with the musical greats. I think that sums up my trajectory: a dream come true.”

He doesn’t say it out of modesty, but another dream come true is the Arturo Sandoval Institute, proud institution of Cuban music on two shores.

Looking back, Arturo, what did Irakere mean to you?

“Before belonging to Irakere I was a member of the famous Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music. When I joined the orchestra, I was 16. I started at the bottom, being the sixth trumpet, until I made first. Without a doubt, the Cuban Orchestra of Modern Music has been one of or the best ever formed in Cuba, with musicians of great magnitude, like Luis Escalante, El Guajiro Mirabal, Paquito D’Rivera, Chucho Valdés, Guillermo Barreto and Juan Pablo Torres, among others. I and some of these latter would form the group Irakere. To me, Irakere was a source of inspiration. The combination of rhythms that we could make gave new sounds to Cuban music. Through Irakere we had the chance to make ourselves known throughout the entire world, including winning a Grammy.”

Was Dizzy Gillespie the musician that influenced you most?

“Definitely. Dizzy has influenced me the most, and not just as a musician, also as a person and friend. We struck up a great friendship, we got to be like father and child. His teachings have been and continue being standards to follow in my life. I’ve had other musicians who’ve influenced my professional life such as Duke Ellington, Clark Terry and Clifford Brown, among others. The list would be unending, for I’ve also had classical influences like Rachmaninov, Ravel and many more.”

Your records arrive on the island on flash memory or pirated CDs. I know a DJ in Carraguao who, for 10 CUC, will copy your discography. How do you feel, knowing that despite censorship, Arturo Sandoval stays alive in the memories of many compatriots?

“It’s very sad to think that somebody has to sneak around to buy a record by an artist from his own country, that my music is forbidden and that in the land where I was born and continue to love, nobody can hear it. I feel proud that my compatriots want to hear my music, but at the same time I’m saddened that they have to hide out to do so. It’s sad that the music of a lady like Celia Cruz or a Willy Chirino and many more have to be listened to in the shadows, as if it were a crime. This shows not only political ineptitude, but also social and cultural incapacities of this regime.”

In Cuba, some criticized your opposition at the performance of Juanes in the Plaza of the Revolution in 2009. Do you still maintain that while democracy does not exist in Cuba, all cultural interchange is propaganda for the communist autocracy?

“I continue to hold the same opinion. I believe that cultural exchange cannot be one-sided. If Juanes could play in the Plaza of the Revolution and was received with fanfare, why can’t Gloria Estefan, Willy Chirino, Andy García and others — including myself — do the same? Stopping off in the Plaza of the Revolution and freely expressing our feelings through music. The obsolete regime of the Castros is afraid, and by that I don’t mean of cultural exchange. They’re afraid we’ll speak before the people and might say that which Juanes and others did not say when they had that opportunity: the truth of what this communist regime represents and has represented for 54 years.”

Would you support an authentic cultural exchange, political or sporting where the Cubans from both shores might be able to offer concerts, games, or debates in their country without permission from the regime? With the Castros in power, do you see yourself giving a concert in the Karl Marx theater or in a plaza in your native Artemisa, now a province?

“Without the Castros and with a democratic government, I suppose so. With the Castros and without democracy, NO.”

Do you believe the shipwreck of the national economy has reduced the quality of Cuban music?

“There is a lot of talent in Cuba. Cuba has always been an inexhaustible source of musical talent, with and without communism. But look, since the triumph of the Revolution there aren’t specialized houses where a musician might go to buy an instrument or a music book. Nothing. Luckily, in Cuba music grows wild, but it’s sad that a person who wants to study music should have these kinds of limitations, not a single place to go and buy a book with staves.”

When you lived in Cuba, the people spoke against Fidel Castro, muttering in their living rooms. Now no. In many places they carry on about the malfunctioning of the government. There are those who continue seeing the game from the bleachers, but cases like Robertico Carcassés’ happen. What kind of value do you place on the controversies and public criticisms against the regime that take place today among the intellectuals and also the everyday Cubans?

“I am proud of all of them and believe that it’s going to be the only form the world will come to know; that Cuba does not assent to continue being dominated by a group of inept opportunists and crazy people.”

Your opinion about the intention of Chucho Valdés to regroup the musicians of Irakere and offer a nostalgic concert.

“Chucho supports the communist regime in Cuba. I am a US citizen and I defend the liberty and democracy. Irakere is not just him, to be the authentic Irakere, he’d have to count on all the musicians who are alive. Speaking for myself, they won’t count on me.”

How do you see this post-mortem homage that they want to give to Bebo Valdés in the next Havana Jazz Festival?

“Bebo deserves all kinds of recognition, but in this case it’s a flagrant act of demagoguery and hypocrisy. Bebo was a bitter enemy of this system and never came back to Cuba because he did not agree with the regime. They had to have recognized this while he was alive, for this they’ve had enough time.”

What have you got new for the next few months?

“I just finished the score for three movies, in one of them with Andy García and Vera Farmiga in the protagonist’s role, and in another the actor Beau Bridges is appearing. I finished producing the last record of the great Peruvian singer and composer Gianmarco, it’s a jewel and it’s nominated for the 2013 Grammy as Best Album of the Year. I finalized another record, “A Century of Passion”, that I dedicated to the Fuente family, famous Cuban-American tobacconists, nominated at the Latin Grammys as the Best Tropical Album. I recently concluded a tribute to Armando Manzanero and now I’m starting two more projects for film scores, but I still can’t say their names while we’re in the midst of contract negotiations.”

Arturo, with your hand over your heart, are you coming back to a democratic Cuba one day, or do you believe it will continue being a utopia to whomever it’s worth the trouble of continuing to struggle?

“Hope is never lost, our country deserves something better. I believe it is not a utopia. It’s worth the trouble to keep struggling, I know that Cuba will shake off the dead weight of the Castros and their henchmen.”

Iván García

Video: Havana, 1985. Dizzy Gillespie and Arturo Sandoval in Night in Tunisia, composed by Gillespie en 1942.

Translated by Boston College Cuban American Student Association – Carlos Fernandez

16 November 2013

Antonio Castro, or the Diplomacy of Baseball / Ivan Garcia

Antonio Castro, son of the bearded man who governed Cuba for 47 years and nephew of the president hand chosen by his brother, told U.S. channel ESPN, “I don’t think it’s a bad thing that our baseball players leave the country to go play in the best league in the world.”

Tony Castro, of course, isn’t a dissident or dumb. He’s trained to be an orthopedist and is a lover of beautiful women, the good life and baseball. He grew up without a ration book in Zone Zero (the residential complex where his father lives, in the Jaimanitas neighborhood west of Havana), with a cow in the yard where each child of the commander could drink fresh milk. He got first-class medical attention and had the possibility to go see the World Series, while the rest of Cuba’s baseball fans were forbidden to do so.

“He’s a good guy,” his party-going friends assure. He likes to play golf, a sport that his father and the Argentinian Ernesto Guevara banned, ostensibly because it was bourgeois and racist: they said that the caddies were always black.

The talk of Cuban autocrats is a complex exercise of deciphering messages. To those who look at the Revolution with nostalgia, the only things that remain are the sporadic Reflections (as Fidel’s articles in the newspaper are titled), where the leader announces atomic disasters, the end of capitalism or that the moringa tree would be the food of the future.

If you aren’t an ideological fanatic and interpret daily life in Cuba in a reasonable way, we reach the conclusion that each step in the timid reforms of Raúl Castro or pronouncements of his relatives, the real mandarins, have buried Fidel Castro’s wilfulness a hundred meters under the ground.

Maintaining the bored phraseology and ideological symbols has been a masterpiece of political witchcraft by Castro II. Without celebrating a Stalinist opinion, he has shifted all of the ruses enacted by his brother.

The furniture changed drastically. Fidel’s confidantes are either prisoners or have easy jobs. Or, like Felipe Pérez Roque and Carlos Lage, they’re working in a factory, the biggest punishment for any ex-minister.

For some time now, homosexuals are revolutionaries. The boarding schools in the countryside were suppressed, because they intended to supplant the family. The security guards at the borders opened the gate and allow us to travel abroad.

We also stay in hotels, buy American cars from the ’50s or old Russian Ladas. We sell the house and legally engage all of those businesses that previously we engaged in on the side, yes we have money, of course.

They have told us why all of this was forbidden for so many years. It’s nobody’s fault. But the specialists in dissecting the magic realism inside the power in Cuba know that the mud continues flooding Fidel Castro, the promoter of this political jargon.

Even his son jumps at his precepts. And he announces that the old “traitors, deserters, and stateless people of the Cuban exodus” are now welcome. Surely they could be enlisted in future national teams and begin businesses, while they pay the tax collector, of course.

The olive branch, in any light, is a capitalism of the family. A technocracy. Now the problems of government can be spoken about in a taxi or bar in the neighborhood. But you go to jail if you evade taxes.

Tony doesn’t want to get left behind when the cake gets divided up. The ex son-in-law of Raul Castro and his generals control 80% of the actual economy, not the one of bread and croquettes, that never will ruin the country, but rather the one of oil and of the port of Mariel, tourism, exporting of medical services, and other tax collecting and hard money businesses.

Behind Tony Castro’s words there is no light or rebuff. The leaders are sending a message: we want to negotiate with the United States. Taking as a model Nixon’s ping pong diplomacy of the 70s with China, Tony intends to seduce the market of the Big Leagues. He has the cards in his favor.

In 2013, the Cuban baseball players have left as a group. They have had their best season. If we add up their salaries, we see that it adds up to about $600 million. And the smart ones back in Havana send in their bills.

If one day the embargo disappears, around 300 Cuban baseball players, who learned in academies patronized by the MLB, can nurture baseball organizations. For all of them, the economic blade will tax them with high fees. And the zeros in the banks of relatives and friends will grow.

Of course, to reach that dance of the millions and sell the loot of a nation, you need the obstinate gringos to lift the embargo. Therefore, it’s time to pull levers.

Diplomats wear out the soles of their shoes in Florida to convince Cuban-American business owners of the favorability of a new investment law. For the fifteenth time, the chancellor of the ONU has said that the bad guys of this movie are the Yankees, who don’t want to get rid of the “criminal blockade” and refuse to sit down and civilly chat about business like a good capitalist.

In this piñata that Cuba has turned into, Antonio Castro pretends to be the boss of professional baseball’s future on the island. Well, that’s the way it is now.

Iván Garciá

Video: Interview from October 27, 2013 with journalist Paula Lavigne and Antonio Castro in Havana for the show Outside the Lines of ESPN.

Translated by: Boston College Cuban American Student Association

11 November 2013

United States: Famous People with Cuban Roots / Ivan Garcia

Alberto Salazar, who was one of the most distinguish runners in the United States, today is a highly paid trainer in long distance running around the world.

The best informed on the island know that Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s Executive Director and owner of the Washington Post Newspaper, had a stepfather born in Santiago de Cuba. Ryan Lochte’s mother is from Havana. Alberto Salazar, Mo Farah’s trainer, was born August 7, 1958 in Havana.

Or that Isabel Toledo, the designer of the dress that Michelle Obama wore in January 2009 at her husband’s first presidential inauguration, is from Las Villas where she was born in 1961. And that the first lady has wore models from Narciso Rodriguez, son of Cuban immigrants that arrived in New Jersey in the 1950’s. Narciso was raised in a family very attached to their roots.

Due to the lack of access to the internet, magazines or foreign newspapers, many in the island would be surprised to discover that Dudley, Cuba Gooding Jr.’s grandfather was a Barbado’s native and that in 1936 je traveled to the island and there fell in love and married a Cuban. After her passing, Dudley wanted to remember his love’s homeland naming their son Cuba, who at the same time continued the tradition naming his first descendant Cuba.

Another actor, Steven Bauer, Melanie Griffith’s ex-husband, was born in Havana in 1956, and his real name is Esteban Echevarria. Marcia Presman, Miami’s socialite, is the mother of Brett Ratner, movie director and musical producer. She was born in Cuba, in the center of a Jewish family which in 1960 immigrated to the United States. The famous blogger Perez Hilton (Mario Armando Lavandeira) also has Cuban roots.

Baseball fans follow the news related to Cuban baseball players who decided to compete and earn seven figure salaries in the MLB (Major League Baseball), like Yasiel Puig, Kendrys Morales, Yoennis Cespedes or Aroldis Chapman

But not all know that the Puerto Rican Jorge Posada, ex player with the Yankees is son of a Cuban father and a Dominican mother. Pitcher Gio Gonzalez is son to two Cuban fans. Jon Jay, center field for the St Louis Cardinals was born in Miami; his father was from Santiago de Cuba and his mother from Matanzas. Since his first and last names tend to offer confusion he has said: “Yes, I am Cuban. Of rice and black beans, palomilla steak and cafe con leche”. Perhaps Justo Jay, Jon’s father, might be related to Ruperto Jay Matamoros (Santiago de Cuba 1912-Havana 2008) the largest exponent of naif painting in Cuba.

Of course, Cubans know about the saxophonist Paquito D’Rivera and trumpet player Arturo Sandoval, both American citizens today; they were born on the island. That Andy Garcia came into this world in Bejucal, a town 26 km south of Havana. That Eva Mendez (Miami, 1975) is the youngest of four siblings, all children to Cuban immigrants. And that Cameron Diaz (California, 1972) is the daughter of the American Billy Early and Emilio Diaz, now dead, famous entrepreneur whose parents settled in Tampa.

Also Carlos Leon, the father of Lourdes Maria, Madonna’s daughter, was born in Cuba in 1966. Armando Christian Perez, alias Pitbull, son of Cubans who immigrated to Florida, is heard among toques de santo parties, with white rum and marijuana in the poorest and largely black neighborhoods in the capital.

Willy Chirino (Pinar del Rio, 1947) is almost an “asere” from the neighborhood. His hit, “New Day is Coming” has become a hymn in Cuba. People rent gossip magazines to read about the model and actor William Levy, born in Havana in 1980. Or about Gloria Estefan (Havana, 1957) and her husband Emilio (Santiago de Cuba, 1953).

On the island there are some people who believe that the Cuban-American composer Jorge Luis Piloto is related to the binomial author Piloto & Vera. Which doesn’t stop people from El Pilar, the neighborhood where he lived in the capital, from knowing the lyrics of his songs sung by Luis Enrique or Chayanne.

The regime, in his campaign to discredit Cubans in the exile and their descendants, hide their triumphs in the United States. When they mention names of the ex-president of The Coca-Cola Company, Roberto Goizuete; the Bacardi family or the Fanjul, among others, they link them to the national bourgeoisie or the dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The politicians with Cuban origins that swarm mayor positions or other institutions in Florida or other states or the US Congress, are target of criticism from the regime. Disparagingly they call them the “Miami Mafia”.

The message is understood. Since 1959, when Fidel Castro gained power and started piecing together the most successful autocracy of the continent, the immigrants are considered enemies. Those that choose to leave the ideological madhouse had to endure humiliations, delays in their immigration dealings, go to work in agriculture, or withstand insults and eggs at barbaric acts of repudiation.

Fifty-four years later, the Castro government attempts to masks their treatment of the exiles, wielding an inclusive and moderate speech. They need it. That’s an important source of their economic support.

1,785,547 Cubans or 0.6% of the United State’s population, per the 2010 census, generates ten times more riches than Cuba’s GDP, one of extreme poverty, with a population of eleven million. It’s an incontrovertible statistic.

Iván García

Translated by LYD

11 November 2013

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