Author: Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

An acquaintance of mine traded his one-and-a-half-room apartment for an even smaller one and a little cash, to ease his alcoholism and misery. I never entered his house and so I was unaware of his poverty. His furniture looked like shabby junk, which was probably — as in most Cuban houses — bought before the triumph of this guerrilla model that installed itself in power in 1959 and has been there ever since.

An oily film covers the surface of the dresser that was perhaps once covered in formica, the dilapidated cabinet narrates a history of old age and over use, as do his mattress and the remains of his sofa and Russian washing machine–from which he had to amputate the dryer–which are as revealing as the speeches of the Cuba’s leaders, their words blurred by neglect and demagoguery.

During the move, he took out a yellowed nylon bag with a ton of black-and-white photos to show his companions how beautiful the apartment had been when his father moved in 1958. Then the furniture seemed alive and the walls still wore an attractive and aesthetic coat of paint. Monochromatic sentiments showing the nostalgia on his face, pummeled by frustration and liquor.

His drinking buddies helped him carry out his things and let them in the sun for an hour waiting for transport. They were a dozen addicts invited to show “solidarity” and encouraged by rum, which served as fuel to maintain their enthusiasm. A truck from the thirties carried a part of the “skimpy” patrimony to the “new house,” which was clearly built before the Castro government and which sheltered, as in many other homes in Cuba, the ethyl-alcohol scandals of that part of society that drowns its disappointments and miseries with a cheap sulfuric homemade rum which is all they can afford.

The alcohol solidarity brigade turned themselves over to the care of the liquid treasure left int he bottle. The emptying of this was the shot that ripped through their own hardships accumulated over decades of governmental injustices, apathy, anti-democratic subjugation and social exhaustion. The delirium tremens, or tremendous delirium of trying to trick societies all the time with drunken ideological and economic theories, has failed worldwide.

Perhaps, in the quiet of their homes, before the bottle gives them the knockout blow, they pull from their personal yellowed plastic bags of history, photos that bear witness to that fact that once–before addiction had them tied by the neck–these were their houses and this was their country, before this evil government drove it to ruin.

17 April 2014

On March 14, the Cuban press spent another day with more grief than glory. Like previous years, some media guerrillas pledged to do more critical journalism. I wonder with whom. With society and grassroots leaders? So not fair! To criticize anyone but those responsible for the devastation of Cuba seems to be the motto of the soldiers of the media, because nobody wants to jeopardize their job and perks, which translated back to 1959 Cuban means, “let death take another.” The key is given by the fifty-five years of the of the Castro dictatorship in general and by the forty-seven of the original  dictator, who left the national caudillista scar of “as I say,” in a trail of verbal violence, disrespect and discrimination towards those who think differently. Then, what or who to criticize? Capitalism, of course, the United States, and all who are not aligned or sympathetic to the so-called Revolution.

The group is power always had ears receptive to their own interests and deaf to the real demands of society. The monopoly of information in Cuba is in the hands of the state, which officially prohibits the circulation of independent publications, freedom of association and a multiparty system.

The most chilling test starred the journalist Arleen Rodriguez around 2005, in the days when the price of a kilowatt had risen. On a visit by Fidel Castro to The Roundtable show in which she participated, she complained about the high price of electricity in front of him, and he, clearly annoyed, and with the veiled threat of “your husband is my friend,” appeared the following day at the beginning of the program, with a written text to make no mistake nor to say a single letter more than needed, and clarify that “what she wanted to express was…” It goes without saying, the writer and poet Heberto Padilla, founder of the Origins group, who in the 1960s was made to publicly denounce his peers and commit harakiri with a blade rusted by extortion.

Personally, I reaffirm what I have said before, that while our communication professionals do not have and feel the freedom to express what they really want and that concerns some or all of the people, there will be no true information transparency that facilitates and stimulates the freedom of expression of the workers in the industry and of the society in general. From themselves, without changing the violence that ended the democratic structures, which remain in order to perpetuate themselves in power and a dependent and manipulated press, couldn’t obtain what the leaders of the government want: instead of “dropping political flirtations” to the model in the Cuban media, creating the props for a media theater to send the world the false messages that there is freedom in Cuba.

25 March 2014

Adolfo Suárez, lawyer and Catholic Spanish politician, finally extended his hand to us in a physical goodbye. From now on, we will resort to memory, to photos and videos, to salute with a kind gesture his unwavering gallantry in the fight for democracy in his country. History records him as the architect of the Spanish transition.

For me he himself is the foundation and pillar of the magnificent democracy and of the whole process of political development taking place there after the death of Francisco Franco. As a public man and decent statesman, he worked for reconciliation between the Spanish, to eradicate the dictatorial vestiges in Spain and to help lift his country, not to put it on its knees, and dictators and their supporters in uniform usually do.

His warm smile as a gentle man, a leader with no rancor, who didn’t hide behind the knife of vengeance, but the embrace of reconciliation, earned him the respect of the whole world. He led the formation of a democratic monarchy and gave lessons in respect for the institutions and the laws with the alternation of power that has been maintainedfrom1976 to today.

We Cubans, who have suffered a dictatorship for fifty-five years that defeated another dictatorship of seven years to remain in power longer and ruin Cuba, value the moral stature of politicians who serve their countries and their societies, not those who use the pedestal, as Jose Marti say, to rise about the others.

I remember during my childhood how the Cuban dictator criticized the caudillo of El Ferrol [Francisco Franco] for his years in power and with the passing of time broke the record for being installed in the highest position in Cuba.

Democratic societies are in mourning these days for the eternal rest of this citizen and politician who showed the world that intentions “are demonstrated” in deeds, they are not “shown” with words. May he rest in peace this illustrious son of Spain and exemplary disciple of democracy.

27 March 2014

On March 7th I returned to Cuba from Miami and they seized seventy pounds of food from me. I doesn’t matter that I bought the ticket at the travel agency, sent the money and packages to my Country through “Go Cuba,” which is rumored to belong to the Cuban government and that currently offers 100 pounds free of charge. It was a traumatic flight on a Gulfstream Air Charter, for which we checked in to the terminal in Miami at 9:00 AM and left for Havana twelve and a half hours later.

Even before the new travel and immigration law went into force in January last year, for an ordinary Cuba to face the predators at customs, is not a setback when it comes time leave for abroad. The problems arise when you come home with the “junk” and other material needs to relieve some personal and family shortages with some of the “enemy’s money” in your purse.

The foreigners and Cubans living abroad run into the same luck when they travel to Cuba. It’s the government of my country that has converted the capital’s Jose Marti Airport into a stress chamber, psychological torture and extortion border for many travelers coming to this country.

I imagine the same happens with the other air terminals around the country. You have to face the arbitrariness, helplessness and caprice of a raw crude tyranny, where the law is an exhibitionist who walks naked through the streets and the airfields, nothing more. A return with the excitement of a reunion and here they seize our things with enthusiasm.

I returned melancholy about the family I was leaving behind, but compensation by the reunion with the family I founded almost 32 years ago: my two sons and my husband anxiously awaiting my return, who had announced they would be picking me up. I was among the first to get off the plane and also to collect my bags when they were spit out from the belly of the plane.

As I was going through the last control they announced the seizure. The food that my mother and sister, people with low resources living in Miami, had collected for months, was stolen by the Cuban border officials with their complex cheating Chinese-style thievery. Is it true that the authorities make laws so convoluted in order to facilitate the corruption of their officials, or were they “sent to kill” by the political police? And if so, why?

What did I do or say that upset them so much that they took reprisals on my arrival in Cuba? I told them everything humanly possible based on what I’d been told by General Customs of the Republic in New Vedado, whom I consulted repeatedly prior to leaving and whose telephone number is 881-9723.

I replied, but I couldn’t insist too much to avoid their taking reprisals and making it worse. It seems that the customs laws are one thing and those at the airport are something else. Even so, they tried to coerce me into saying I’d brought a router, which is simply prohibited to Cuban citizens to import.

Before my argument–which showed evidence of computer skills– that it was a wireless car, they chose to remain silent without consulting a specialist to confirm my explanation. Or is it, that thought I was meek and were pressuring me to upset me and get even more advantages? The other lady they also took things from that night broke into tears at the announcement of the confiscation. As she was an elderly lady, the attended to her quickly and gave her special treatment to avoid a medical emergency. She is living in Miami, and like me, was not allowed to pay for excess baggage.

However, behind us the people on the same plane went through the door laughing with their carts piled higher than ours, leaving behind officials who had attended them with smiling faces.

The sent me off to a corner of the terminal and punished me by making me stand there for three hours. They ignored that I’d been traveling since 9:00 AM in the Miami airport. When the airport emptied of passengers, the chief came with a gentleman with a green sack into which they threw all my mother’s and sister’s food. Looking at the color of the bag I could only think that it was a messages. I left there about one o’clock in the morning.

It wouldn’t surprise me if in a short time they make widespread the pillaging of the suitcases which weigh a certain amount when the tourists leave home and weigh “a few kilos more” per capita when they land at Cuban airports.

In addition to the confiscation, they fined me 1,450 pesos and to told me that I had a month to claim it. I decided that despite my indignation, I’m not going to challenge the customs authorities, because in Cuba there is not a State of Law. Nor will I put myself in the orbit of the bureaucracy and complicity with the entities in the industry, because all that happens when you engage with such machinery is that you wear yourself out. Also because the situation can occur that “winning” the case sends the wrong message about my commitments and loyalities.

This new setback only reaffirms for me that I’m on the right track when it comes time to fight and denounce the arbitrariness of a dictatorship that’s teetering. My appetites are freedom, democracy and social justice for Cuba, which contrasts with the petty and unjust greed of those who, like the customs workers, symbolize the “boogeyman,” stealing the pants off the trapped travelers through questionable and abusive legal figures. Bon appetit!

20 March 2014

In recent weeks we have heard some information in the United States media about the possibility of selling medicines produced in Cuba in that country, particularly Heberprot-P, a drug for the treatment of diabetic foot. On the other hand, the Cuban authorities continue to express themselves about the obstacles facing them in buying certain medications and medical instruments produced in the US, due to the restrictions occasioned by the politics of the US embargo on the island.

There are different opinions about this issue, both for and against, dismissing the urgencies of those priorities which should be considered: the diabetics in the United States who could be treated with Heberprot-P avoiding, in some cases, dangerous amputations of their extremities, and of patients in Cuba who can’t access treatments to cure them or to improve their quality of life because some medications and specialized instruments produced in the U.S. can not be purchased by Cuba.

Faced with any discussion on this issue, it is important to take into account Articles 12 and 15 of the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the “Declaration on the Use of Scientific and Technological Progress in the Interests of Peace and for the benefit of humanity,” among other things.

For all these reasons, the undersigned, Cubans and Cuban Americans, members of independent civil society and citizens in general, affirm our determination to support, from a vision of respect for human rights, the possible analysis that would permit the expansion of everything related to scientific exchanges in the areas of drug development and medical techniques. Also, the marketing of medicines and specialized instruments for these purposes, in order to meet the medical care needs of people who need to be treated in both countries.

Julio Aleaga Pesant — Indepedent Journalist

Hildebrando Chaviano Montes — Indepedent Journalist

Manuel Cuesta Morúa — Progressive Arc

Siro del Castillo Domínguez — Solidarity with Cuban Workers

Gisela Delgado Sablón — Independent Libraries

Eduardo Díaz Fleitas — Pinar del Rio Democratic Alliance

Reinaldo Escobar Casas — Indepedent Journalist

René Hernández Bequet — Cuban Christian Democratic Party

Rafael León Rodríguez — Cuba Democracy Project

Susana Más Iglesias — Indepedent Journalist

Eduardo Mesa — Emmanuel Mounier Center

Marcelino Miyares Sotolongo — Cuban Christian Democratic Party

Héctor Palacios Ruiz — Liberal Union of the Republic of Cuba

Oscar Peña — Cuban Pro Human Rights Movement

Pedro Pérez Castro — Solidarity with Cuban Workers

Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado — Cuba Democracy Project

Wilfredo Vallín Almeida — Cuban Law Association

21 November 2013

The farm products we consume today in Havana, whether those offered by the self-employed itinerants — carters — or those sold by the State at the farmers markets, have a characteristic in common: they are all shrinking. So I see at different points in the city where I go.

I wonder why, if even two years ago, residents in some areas of the capital had the alternative to buy in two kinds of farmers markets, now we are forced to only one option. For example, in Vibora we residents could buy fruit at the Monoco markets — more expensive — or the one on Sevillano, where there Youth Labor Army (EJT), conscripts serving their obligatory military service who work for the State for a salary, and whose products are cheaper and supposedly smaller and of lower quality.

A few years ago they closed Monoco plaza because they said there were collateral businesses and irregularities there. They delayed — as always happens in Cuba –  around four or five years before re-opening it,with a visible reduction in the sale area and a distinctive feature that now all goods are as famished as praise of the EJT was in the past.

That is, the “fix things” to break them? There is no doubt that the people always suffer, because for more than fifty years, they’ve suffered a permanent blockade put in place by their own government.

19 November 2013

It has been two years since Laura Pollan abandoned her physical presence and became eternal.  Now she is in the Sta. Rita Parish, the Quinta Avenida walk, and in many Havana streets where they saw her walking invincible clutching her peaceful gladiola.  She is also in her family, who lived and saw grow her example of a small woman who demanded liberty for political prisoners and rights for Cubans in general and who confronted the paramilitary mobs however huge.

She is in the world, which followed her brave citizen journey and distinguishes and remembers her with the respect and dignity that she deserves, and she is also in all of us who pay tribute out loud through the media or in the anonymous silence of our thoughts.

From her clear eyes she gave us the clarity of a journey that is shortened more each day in order to truly institute respect for fundamental rights of all society and to democratize our country.

She contributed her integrity and efforts to shorten that distance and to make the government’s decadent hardliners release — even with the legal structure of their election — the Cuban political prisoners that had been sentenced to disproportionate penalties for peacefully dissenting from the Castro dictatorship.

This October 14 we faced again an act of repression, intransigence and abuse on the part of the Cuban government against the Ladies in White.  The violent eruption of pro-government gangs at #963 Neptune Street, the headquarters of the organization that was Laura’s home, when they were about to carry out a tribute for the second anniversary of her death, is a proof of how much some government leaders exert themselves to feed the infantile fairy tale of “citizen justice” that “spontaneously” defends the inefficient government that ruined Cuba and that “sacrifices itself” in command for more than 50 years.

That well-crafted, although unworthy strategy of turning society against itself is a tall tale designed to intimidate people and keep them paralyzed so that they can continue to easily exercise power and control.

Between the years 2010 and 2012 we lost several comrades in arms.  They were three consecutive years that made the world pay more attention our country and be concerned about those deaths so opportune for the Cuban regime.

Laura left us in 2011 and the future of Cuba is still being decided between ineluctable changes that will necessarily come, the minimum proposals to day from  Raul Castro, which do not solve Cuba’s big problems and the potential ones which the government undertakes in trying to carry out in order to keep or recycle the fiefdom that they inherited from their relatives and staunch supporters from the highest military ranks.

The year 2013 is almost over and he offers Cuba true and false signals that the authorities detail in order to confuse the international community, but mainly in order to prevent the country’s senior management from changing hands.

Laura, like many, knew this, so from the field of flowers where her daughter stands alert, combative and victorious, and her example is multiplied and many other gardens of gladioli continue to march to achieve a real democratic state of law in Cuba, and to prevent another group of dishonest men from kidnapping the country’s government.

24 October 2013

It is not my invention, it was on Cuban TV where they announce the creation of national social network called “The Clothesline,” for domestic users. Do you think they’re finally respecting our rights to have Internet? Hopefully! But in any event it wouldn’t be a “half respect” nor even a half measure of respect, but the total lack of it, for them to limit or prohibit our access to sites like Twitter and Facebook to constrain our social, virtual and mental frontiers.

To force us to interact entirely within the country is a violation of a fundamental human right and also, ironically, almost like inviting us to a prison to take part in a conference about the freedom that will be offered to someone condemned to 55 years in jail.

A friend — the very best of friends — and reader called me on the phone to tell me about Cuban social mesh. She noted the coincidence with a writing of mine that she couldn’t remember the title of, but she did remember the metaphor.  I remembered it too, but I had no idea of the approximate date nor the context in which I used it.  Later I hunted for more information and was able to recall it.  I put the noun “clothesline” in the XML code I keep the blog in and it appeared in the post SOS: The Weapon of the Word, which I published on 16 August 2011.

In the third paragraph of the text I stated: “But here we are and will be as long as God allows it.  I will continue using the clothesline — in the original text it’s not in bold — of WordPress to hang my opinions without letting myself be intimidated by those who come along with their shears, cutting freedoms to feed despotism.”

Coincidence or inspiration?  Don’t know if an official “liked it” and borrowed the term, like Aida says.  If that is what happened, I think it’s a real shame that they don’t have the same ’ears’ when it comes to paying attention to the multiple political and economic proposals that we, the opposition, have been working on throughout the years; proposals whose implementation would help untie the knots of many of the problems which, as a country and as a nation, we suffer.

However, I invite them to continue visiting the websites of the political organizations — illegal according to the dictatorships — and the blogosphere of the emerging alternative civil society, and which there are many talented people who have spent decades offering antidotes and paths in an endless stream, preventive and therapeutic solutions and ideas.

Let’s drink from our own source in a respectful, participative and diverse dialog, including the range of cultural identities.  No matter what the discriminating historic leaders say, we still have more, “much more to give!

27 October 2013

Dear cyber-accomplices and visitors in general:

My writings reappear now that circumstances allow me to return to publishing. It has been more than fifteen days — I don’t know if it was a technical problem or one of censorship — that I haven’t been able to administer the blog. Now, thanks to a friend, we resolved the problem and I’m going to continue my democratic psychotherapy, draining my freedom of conscience through the blog.

My apologies for the outdated texts; it’s as I said once before, I want to express my opinion or position vis-a-vis certain topics.

My respects to everyone always,

Rosamaría

24 October 2013