Category: Ivan Garcia

In the Havana of the ’80s, many of us young people were living without a future. Between guitar chords and conversations, at the foot of the bust of Jose Marti, at the entrance to the La Vibora Institute, we gathered at night to drink alcohol diluted with water, which cost 5 pesos a bottle from the house of a black woman, Giralda.

I took a blow. I don’t remember what the dissident picketing boys were protesting with a way of life that tried to turn us into Revolutionary leaders, but I borrowed a book by Mario Vargas Llosa, covered with a photo of Fidel Castro smoking a cigar and laughing like a hypocrite.

It was the City and the Dogs. At that time, so as not to attract attention, people used to cover the “banned” books with Revolutionary covers. I read it in one sitting. And now I confess I never gave it back. I was seduced by the Peruvian writer to the point that I have reread it at least ten times.

Later, when they threw me out of History class because I disagreed with the professor when he assured us that, for capitalism and the Americans, their days were numbered. I went to the school library. Hiding there, I read The Green House, published in 1965, the year I was born.

Nearly two decades later, one dark and warm night, I was going home when a police patrol, after searching me and checking my ID, with a big heavy Russian flashlight, reviewed in great detail the book I was carrying.

“Whose book is this,” asked the angry nervous officer. I thought of answering that he could see with his own eyes who the author was, but he was in a bad mood and I didn’t feel like sleeping in a cell at the police station that night.

“The author is a friend of the Revolution,” I lied. “He tells the story of an attack on Trujillo, the Dominican tyrant.” It was the Feast of the Goat. The cop looked me up and down disdainfully, and then threw open the door of his Russian Lada and told me, “Disappear mulato, the oven’s not for cupcakes.” It was March, 2003.

Eight years earlier, in 1995, I had started as an independent journalist at the Cuba Press agency. In this time I’ve had a number of inspirations. My mother, Tania Quintero, who gave me her love of journalism. Raul Rivero, poet and teacher of the craft, with his agile prose. Reinaldo Escobar, deep and analytical. Luis Cino, for his culture and mastery in Spanish. Claudia Cadelo and Laritza Diversent, two blogging lionesses.

But there are some special people who engage me to the point of delirium with the way they write.

At first, I tried to imitate them but over the years I learned that the bar had been set too high. Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Carlos Alberto Montaner are two of those. Mario Vargas Llosa is the other.

October 29, 2010

A couple of days ago I was walking with a friend to my daughter’s house and a cop car stopped us and asked for our IDs. Dog-faced like the usual Cuban police. They frisked us on the public street like common thieves. They wanted me to open an envelope with some magazines a Brazilian friend had sent me.

Accustomed to this, one sees it as something normal. If you are young, have a backpack, or are black, you have all the characteristics the cops look for to ask for your ID.

They check us out and call us into the central computer to see if we have records. We come back clean. But in my case I hear one of them say, “The subject has a high and worrying standard of living.”

The officer looked be over carefully, on good and dressed in cheap and sensible clothes. Maybe he thought he’d made a mistake. When he handed me back my documents I asked him what that term meant.

“It signifies people who live well but don’t work.” And is that a crime, I asked. “It’s against the rules of this society,” said the official sitting in the latest model Lada.

Before leaving I wanted to know: And what if the person receives money from abroad? What it they follow the same absurd laws despite the government’s call for self-employment and a million people who are going to become unemployed?

Now his face showed contempt. “And why do you want to know so much? Maybe because you are a lawyer and a journalist?” He put the car in gear without waiting for my answer.

In their control of the citizens, the agents of authority blatantly violate the rights established in existing laws. It so happens that neither the police or the ordinary people know what they are.

Ignorance with respect to Cuban laws is proverbial. It disturbs me that the police open a file on someone because they are able to maintain an acceptable standard of living without stealing or violating the laws.

According to the island’s owners, anyone who doesn’t work for the State and who eats lunch every day and who, on the weekend, spends time with their family, calls attention to themselves and needs to be watched and investigated.

The rigid police bureaucracy keeps their accounts. Those who work receive some 20 euros a month and with this salary they cannot afford these “luxuries.” According to the authorities, someone who works 8 hours cannot drink name brand beer, eat at good restaurants, fix their house or buy a plasma TV.

If you receive money from abroad, even if it is justified, but you’re not working for the State, you’re always on a knife’s edge. The suspicions of the police and some of the informants of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) fall on these people, whom they think of as possible suspects, for supposedly having a higher than average purchasing power.

Nobody on the island may have a high standard of living if it is not authorized by the regime. This causes many people to live surrounded by paranoia and phobias.

I know a friend, a ministry consultant, who advised me throw trash in bags of nylon that are not so transparent, so that neighborhood informants do not know if I use products purchased in foreign currency. He gave me a camouflage manual. Participate in activities of the CDR. Give soap to the snitches on your block. And never drink beer or eat at places near your home.

I refuse to live with that guilt complex. I’m a journalist and I make money with my work. My family lives in Switzerland and sacrifices sends me money.

Only in a closed and sick society like Cuba’s could it be dangerous to eat twice a day, take private taxis for ten pesos, and try to make sure your daughter lacks nothing.

So I’m living all wrong. The Russian TV I have in the living room broke years ago. If I have not thrown it out it’s because I use it as a place to put the books I’m reading. In the photo you can see that. Next to it, the old fan.

I aspire to live better. But above all I consider myself a free man. And that is where a person can be dangerous in Cuba. Precisely that question.

Iván García

CLARIFICATION

Since October 2009 Ivan has received money for his contributions to the on-line edition of El Mundo/América, most of which goes to the apartment where he has lived since 1979, which is in very bad repair. He need to fix it so that his wife and daughter can come to live with him (currently they both live in her mother’s house). He needs to fix the wiring and kitchen, and purchase materials to fix the bathroom. A lengthy and costly process, delayed now for several years, because in addition to the kitchen and the bathroom, the apartment has a living/dining room, three bedrooms, a hall and a terrace. After it’s all fixed and painted he will need to buy furniture, little-by-little, as poor people in Cuba do these things. The rest of what he earns goes to support his 7-year-old daughter; so that his mother-in-law, a cook, can buy food; for internet cards (every two hours costs 15 CUC and he needs an average of three to four a month because, as you can see, he is an independent journalist who writes from Havana), and to change 20 CUC for pesos to pay the rent, light, telephone, gas and water, and to be able to take a private taxi costs ten pesos. When I can I send money from Switzerland (I receive the minimum pension of a retiree and political refugee), which goes to help my granddaughters and my 90-year-old uncle. (Tania Quintero)

October 27, 2010

The Carlos III shopping center in the heart of Havana looks like a giant beehive. From the time it opens, after 9:30, A tide of people are hurrying about their business. The bespectacled white-haired old grandfather has the convertible peso cents to buy a packet of milk powder.

Beside him, a sweaty fat lady does not know which shirt to buy her son who is going to be 12 the next day. A gang of crooks drink beer in the cafe on the ground floor, while looking lasciviously at the abundant rear ends of some mulatas wearing shorts that show more than they cover.

Inside and outside the mall business is conducted. A private army of vendors will rent you a car same rent you a car for 5 convertible pesos (6 dollars), or offer you the widest variety of services. Clowns for kids parties. Manufacturers of beds and mattresses. Skilled masons. And first of all, cheap merchandise.

Sometimes, outside the shopping complex are people who will offer the same products sold inside but at lower prices. But beware: in the vicinity of the Carlos III shopping center scam artists and pickpockets also abound, are looking to see if they can relieve you of your wallet in a heartbeat.

If you are an observer, inside the “mall” — as capital residents call it, using the English word — you can classify the buyers. In the departments with Everything-For-A-Dollar the lines stretch forever. In the boutiques with designer clothing, the bored sellers yawn.

As in almost all Cuban “shopping” — another common English usage — a legion of spectators will watch and not buy. It breaks my heart to see children stick their noses against the window displays of toys, perhaps dreaming that one day their parents may buy one.

Outside, the heat is fearful. People loaded down with bags, hunting is an old almendrón (an American car operating as a shared taxi). Or getting on a crowded bus that goes near their house. The lucky ones are those who live nearby and can walk along the wide and linear covered walkways. They are dilapidated and dirty, but protected from the bestial sun.

The Cuban spends much of his time going to markets and shops. And having hard currency is another matter. Then comes the adventure of trying to buy what you need. Sometimes you have money, but what you want isn’t in the shops. Or vice versa.

Either way, shopping is part of the tradition of Havana. Of a whole lifetime. And people have always enjoyed it Whether or not they have money.

October 15, 2010

Youtube video-Cuba, Hospitals (Hijas de Galicia, Luyano)

Armando, 71, was admitted at “Miguel Enriquez” Hospital, in the Havana’s suburb of Luyano, for what was supposed to be a low risk surgery in one leg.

Armando, who is diabetic, was hoping to leave the operating room with no complications and say goodbye to his daughter with a traditional meal and rum. She would be returning to New York — where she has been living for the past 12 years — the day after his surgery. It didn’t happen.

After the apparently successful surgery, he repeatedly had seizures and loss of consciousness. After being checked, the doctor found out that a rapidly growing bacterial infection had already started to devour his body.

Nothing could save his life. The doctor met with the family and, staring at the floor, informed them that the patient had only a few hours to live. “You can say your ‘goodbyes’ now,” said the doctor.

Between tears and surprise, the family kept wondering where he got the lethal bacteria. And the answer left them in awe: right there in the hospital.

The worse part is that this is not an isolated incident. A person who preferred to remain anonymous said that in this year, in the “Miguel Enriquez” hospital, about 30 patients have died after contracting lethal bacteria. “In the bathrooms and in the operating rooms is where they are contracting those bacterial infections,” added the person.

I went to several hospitals and urgent care clinics in Havana and what I saw scared me. With the exception of the National Hospital which was recently remodeled, the former Covadonga Clinic, and the “Luis de la Puente Uceda” urgent care clinic, the rest of the medical facilities’ buildings are in a deplorable state and in embarrassing hygienic conditions.

And the bad news keeps coming. The Cuban public health system is also sinking in the areas of pediatrics and OB/GYN facilities. It was confirmed to me by an employee of the OB/GYN hospital “Hijas de Galicia” in the 10 de Octubre municipality. According to her, last year five newborns died in that hospital due to viruses they caught in the same hospital where they were born.

Adela, mother of a three-year-old admitted in “Hijas de Galicia,” said she spent the night killing the roaches that were all over the room. “It’s an embarrassment. The bathrooms are depressing. The food is disgusting. And, as usual in Cuban hospitals, patient’s relatives need to bring everything from home; fan, sheets, towels and containers to save water. If my son has to go to that operating room, he could get an infection there.”

Despite the deterioration and lack of minimal hygiene, in the hospitals that I visited, there was always a team of doctors in the ER. They lack everything, and they still do everything they can.

The former “Dependiente” hospital is bad, but the absolute worst on the list is the “Miguel Enriquez” hospital. The interior ceiling is nonexistent and you can see perfectly all the electrical wires and AC ducts. On rainy days, the housekeeping staff spreads containers everywhere to catch the water filtering through the roof. Floors are being cleaned with no soap or disinfectant. Where there is some, they usually leave the premises in the personal bag of the employees.

In mental institutions and nursing homes for the elderly, the picture is even worse. One just needs to remember that in January 2010, 26 patients at the Psychiatric Hospital “Mazorra” died of hunger and abuse. In many nursing homes, the elderly have to go out to the streets to sell newspapers and cigarettes, and with that little money they make, the go to some state-ran small eatery to eat a meal as poorly prepared as the one at the nursing home, but at least a little bit bigger.

Without making a big fuss about it, the government of the Castro brothers has tried to do something about it. Last July they fired the public health minister, Jose Ramon Balaguer, one of the Revolution’s “historical figures.”

But things are still bad.

Because of the evident lack of money, the hospitals are repaired in baby steps. People can’t understand how Cuba can send medical help to other countries when the island is in need.

The excuse of the ’embargo’, when it comes to the purchase of medicines and equipment put forward by the government is questionable. In clinics designated to treat people from the outside, like Cira Garcia or in facilities for the Miraculous Operation patients, a project for eye operations for Latin American people, the hosting conditions and the food are of a great quality.

“Of course, they pay with dollars and the care we receive is free,” explained Joaquin, who has been waiting for two years for an operation of minimum access to his knee. Also the military high hierarchy and the government officials have well equipped clinics and latest generation medicines.

The Cuban public health care is one of the achievements the revolution most boasts about. If the situation is not reversed soon, everything achieved could be lost. That, for a Third World country, believe me, has not been a small achievement.

October 13, 2010

From Canaleta prison in Ciego de Ávila, Pedro Argüelles Morán political prisoner, 62, called me on Friday the 22nd and said a State Security had told him he could be released this Sunday, October 24.

Other relatives of the dozen of prisoners from the group of 75 who, like Argüelles Morán, do not wish to migrate, also expect that in a few hours they will be home with their loved ones, after 7 years and 7 months behind bars.

The news would confirm the Cuban government’s willingness to release the prisoners of the group of 75 who refuse to leave the country, not only before the scheduled date of November 7, but before the meeting that the EU has scheduled for Monday the 25th in Luxembourg where, among other topics, they will discuss if the 27 member countries should maintain a common position on Cuba.

Another hot topic, on the national scale, is that prisoners of conscience who are to be released soon and who want to stay on the island, disagree with the conditions and guarantees offered by the government for their release.

They refuse the parole they expect to be granted because the regime would still consider them prisoners. And in any adverse circumstance, they could be sent back to jail. It is the legal monstrosity offered by the authorities to the dissidents who prefer not to leave their homeland.

Lidia Lima, wife of economist Arnaldo Ramos, 68, on the last visit to the 1580 prison on the outskirts of Havana, learned that Arnold intends to remain in prison until the government changes the terms of his release. And he will only accept unconditional release.

The authorities have remained silent on whether or not they will hold to the parole. The jailed dissidents intend to stay at home and continue their political work, journalism or human rights activities. But they want the government to commit to wipe out the legal aberrations that would free them but with conditions.

Also a broad sector of the opposition believes that the EU should put pressure on Castro to repeal the evil Law 88, the gag law, that allows them to imprison a person for more than 20 years just for disagreeing with the regime.

With a sinking economy and a group of opponents who claim full rights, the Cuban government looks with a certain expectation toward what will be the position of the European Union.

October 23, 2010

The “blockade,” as the Cuban government calls it, is real. It’s a trade embargo by the United States declared in 1960 and implemented rigorously since 1962. It caused the machinery from American to become scrap metal.

Later, the damages were minor. The former Soviet Union connected a pipeline and oil and rubles flowed from Moscow to Havana. The cold Eurasian country supplied the tropics everything from trucks and tractors up anti-aircraft missiles and MIG-29 aircraft.

All this was paid for by sugar cane, candy and marble. Or, without paying a penny, in the case of weapons. Knowing that the northern neighbor had imposed on us a “criminal blockade,” in the words of Fidel Castro, the logical thing would have been to try to streamline the flow of money and resources that came from the Kremlin by decree and to try to design a profitable industry and an efficient infrastructure. But that went.

In the period from 1975 to 1989, when the island survived on resources from Eastern Europe, the effects of the embargo were hardly noticeable. Then the Berlin Wall fell. And Cuba had not invested in development. We knew only how to spend and spend.

Then in 1990 came the inevitable economic crisis. The euphemistically named “Special Period.” A war without deaths by bullets, but with the same consequences. Hunger, blackouts of 12 hours a day and an economy returning to the primitive.

That was when Castro started speaking again about condemning the embargo. The entire world bears witness to the injustice, in its annual votes in the United Nations. But if Cuba had efficient agriculture and industry and coffers filled with money, the U.S. embargo would have been a useless tool.

But blaming all the ills of the Cuban economy on the embargo is not fair. We are lethally ineffective because a structural problem in the system. The “blockade” is also a sieve. Stores in Havana are selling products Made in USA, such as Coca Cola, Del Monte juice and Dell computers in foreign currency.

Since 1959, America has been and still is, the number one enemy of Fidel Castro. That has not stopped the country from selling more food to the island in recent years.

The real embargo, but three times more violent, is the one the regime has implemented against its own citizens.

No free-flowing information; the Internet is a luxury to be paid for in foreign exchange; to leave and return to your own country you must wait patiently for the government’s permission; and you can end up behind bars if write your opinions or start a political party.

Not to mention the obstacles placed on the flow of parcels from the outside. Following the three hurricanes that hit the island in 2008, it was permitted to send up to 11 pounds of medicines and other items. The first thing the Cuban Post Office did was to raise the import fee from 20 to 70 pesos, half of the pension for many retirees.

They take advantage of an unfair measure, such as the embargo, to put their citizens’ necks in the wringer. People are tired of the embargo, but also of their ancient government.

Half a century ago, on October 19, 1960, Eisenhower ordered the seizure of goods to the island to begin. Just two months later, on January 3, 1961, Cuba and the United States broke off diplomatic relations. A year later, on February 3, 1962, Kennedy signed the document that formalized and extended the trade and economic embargo against Cuba.

It is the chronological summary of two countries which, in the first 59 years of the twentieth century, had maintained good relations, always with a strong American presence in all spheres of national life.

Fifty years later, from a Cuba ruled by two authoritarian elders who have never adapted to the end of the Cold War, you can not expect miracles.

By their own initiative, the Castros will never make profound political and economic reform. They have become a pair of dinosaurs, and in the words democracy, internet and globalization they see an imperialist monster.

As for any who oppose them, they accuse them of being paid in gold by Washington. Breaking the inertia and creating a climate of dialogue and trust with their government is not easy. They are textbook paranoids.

But we must try. The fragmented internal opposition, as well as having their hands tied by the regime, is more about making noise, gossiping and undertaking extravagant projects, than presenting worthy ideas.

If the U.S. think tanks are salivating over the idea that in Cuba people will be thrown into the streets by the harsh economic measures, they may be disappointed.

It will hardly happen. What could happen, with the intensifying the domestic situation, is that in a massive and disorganized way, thousands of Cubans may throw themselves in the sea on top of anything that floats, heading towards the coasts of Florida.

A stampede the Americans don’t want. So, other alternatives to release pressure and keep the pot from blowing its lid have been tried. Madrid has tried, through its Foreign Minister Moratinos, to look for a gap in the Castros’ wall of mistrust and fear. To date, he succeeded in getting the release of 52 political prisoners. That is no small thing.

But it’s the United States that the brothers want as a partner of dialogue. For reasons of historical, geographical and political reality. Obama continues playing deaf.

Beaten down by a severe crisis that has gripped the pockets of consumers, an economy that does not recover, a number of unemployed that remains in the red, November elections in which Democrats are fighting hard, and a wayward and dangerous Middle East, it’s natural that the American president pays no attention to the conversational desires of former guerrillas.

The tenant of the White House barely cares about the problem of Cuba. But he should pay attention. It is a much simpler case than the other conflicts on his agenda. All he has to do is pick up the phone to chat with them. He can do nothing. But only through consideration of lifting the embargo and repealing the Cuban Adjustment Act can he initiate the beginning of the end of the olive-green dictatorship.

The embargo, for the simple reason that it is the hackneyed excuse of the Castro regime to justify its poor economic performance and pass on the responsibility for everything that doesn’t work in the entire country to the old “blockade.”

To abolish the Cuban Adjustment Act, which grants automatic residence to Cubans who touch U.S. soil, would be a strategic move to prevent a mass exodus.

When America ceases to be the “enemy,” then the regime will have two choices: open and urgently needed changes, or drop the mask and continue its personal rule, without freedom, without concessions to the opposition, without presidential elections.

At times, politics is easier than it looks. Between the two countries there is no secular hatred, nor have there been any major wars. Only imperial cravings from the 19th century to the 20th, and a clumsy and almost always outlandish diplomacy.

The White House has in its hands the potential to stimulate a package of political and economic reforms in Cuba. For now, the key is still in a drawer in the Oval Office. For now, Obama prefers to leave it there.

Photo: Pete Souza, official photographer of the White House. Obama straightens a picture in the Oval Office on May 10, 2010. Taken from The White House’s Photostream on Flickr.

October 23, 2010

It had already been leaked to Cuban dissidents that the journalist and psychologist Guillermo Fariñas enjoyed a big lead in the voting for the 2010 Sakharov Prize. Among the local opposition the distinction has received more applause than criticism.

Still, ‘Coco’ — as we call him — was surprised and the phone in his house in the La Chirusa slum, 150 miles east of Havana in Santa Clara, Villa Clara province hasn’t stopped ringing.

Fariñas told me that when the phone rang in the middle of the night he thought the worst. Usually when the phone rings at that unusual hour it’s for bad news. But this time it was not.

The Cuban poet and journalist Raúl Rivero, exiled in Madrid, was the first to congratulate him. Then pandemonium broke out. His cell phone didn’t stop ringing. From Australia, Prague, Moscow, Miami, Santiago de Chile, Reykjavik and even Greenland. While his friends started to invade the house.

People in the neighborhood, where ‘Coco’ is very popular, seeing the flood of people thought the worst. When Fariñas himself announced the good news,they erupted in celebration with a bottle of rum that some late night kids brought him from one of the discotheques in the city.

By nine o’clock the house was  already swarming with journalists, dissidents, friends and family. When we called from Havana, Coco interrupted the improvised celebration to say a few words.

“This award is for all those who have opposed, in one way or another the government of Fidel Castro. To the citizen rebellion. I’m thinking now of the opposition in the early years of the Revolution, they saw what we took time to understand. To the many anonymous people who do not bow to the will of a regime. ”

In his appreciation, ‘Coco’ did not forget Pedro Luis Boitel, a Cuban political prisoner who died in 1972 after a long hunger strike, and all his fellow independent and opposition journalists.

“To all of them, this award is dedicated. To the brave Ladies in White, who were granted the distinction five years ago. But most especially, I tell you frankly, this is a prize for Orlando Zapata and that giant among women, Reina Luisa Tamayo, his mother. Zapata is and will be a precursor. When, in the future, Cuba has a democracy, we will always remember his attitude and the path that was opened by Orlando,” he said, visibly moved.

Fariñas is the third Cuban to receive the Sakharov Prize. Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, founder of the Varela Project, won in 2002. And in 2005, the Ladies in White.

“I hope to go to Havana to celebrate the prize with my brothers in the opposition who live in the capital. There are only a few days left for the government to meet the deadline it gave for releasing all the prisoners. As I have already announced, if on November 7 the 12 prisoners from the Black Spring of 2003 have not been released, I will begin another hunger strike the following day,” Guillermo Fariñas Hernández, the psychologist and independent journalist warned.

Friends and family hope that another strike will not be necessary.

October 21, 2010

In the vicinity of Fraternity Park, near the Capitol in the heart of Havana, private taxi drivers passionately debated new regulations to self-employment.

They’re mad. Carlos, owner of a dilapidated 1949 Ford, flies into a rage. “I have to take it in stride, because it could give me give a heart attack. It is unfair that the government is planning those high taxes. What are they thinking, that those of us who work for ourselves are rich! As always, the ‘Mayimba‘ (leaders) don’t have their feet on the ground,” he says aloud.

Noteworthy is the disgust of those who work on their own. In addition to the very high taxes, there is little legal protection, they have no supplies of raw materials from wholesalers and there are no bank loans.

“The State offers nothing to individuals and intends to collect their earnings as if they were feudal lords. They have moved from socialist paternalism over-exploitation of capitalists,” says René, who fills cigarette lighters in the La Vibora neighborhood.

The government of General Raúl Castro doesn’t have it easy. The economy is taking on water. And the measures to assist people are very unpopular. It is true that they are necessary. Any government that wants to get the country moving would have to apply shock therapy.

Fifty years of apathy, with an inefficient social system par excellence, the situation becomes more serious. Dimas Castellanos, dissident scholar, believes that the measures are necessary, but are poorly implemented.

“There is no reference point; the regime has no opposition with a reasonable alternative proposal. In the absence of political disagreements, the opposition is the government itself. When Fidel Castro abolished all vestiges of private work in 1968, he made a big mistake, now we are paying. He never should have closed the small businesses. When, in 1994, he authorized self-employment, he did so faced with the difficult social situation and not because the government saw fit to welcome private initiative. Now the same thing happens. My opinion is that it won’t work,” he predicts.

Castellanos thinks that if you want the particular sector to flourish, the first rule is to keep taxes low. “I do not see how the government will sell raw materials and supplies to the self-employed. Where will the money come from to provide bank loans. Ideally, they would make radical changes, recognizing that the current model has failed. But it is asking too much. From my perspective it is betting on an outdated version of savage capitalism,” says the opponent.

Not only the dissent sector is pessimistic. The ordinary people will not see much sense in getting a license and having to pay between 25% and 40% of their income in taxes. In the Carlos III shopping center, Herman, retired, is trying to make a living as a parking attendant.

On a good day takes home 30 convertibles pesos. But that is not every day. “I agree with paying taxes. But they should not exceed 10% of the profits. The current taxes are arbitrary and will force people to break the law” he says while reading an article in the Granma newspaper on the subject.

In Havana, many feel distrust toward government. After self-employment was approved in 1994, with the result that many people raised their standard of living, they began implementing a series of regulations and excessive control by state inspectors.

At its peak, 200,000 people were working for themselves. At present, it’s no more than 40,000. Hounded by the taxes that began to rise gradually and various prohibitions, licenses began to be returned.

Now, with the taxes through the roof and some leaders fearing that people will make money, new game rules issued by the government are not appreciated by hardly anyone on the island.

With over one million unemployed workers around a year from now, and with few legal guarantees offered to the exercise of private activities, the solution of the problems will be a personal matter. People will have to continue living through “invention” (theft) and illegalities. As always.

The feeling palpable in the streets of Havana is that the measures are too little too late, and too harsh. It’s like losing a game and in overtime.

Text and photo: Iván García

October 15, 2010

Reina Tamayo, mother of the opposition prisoner Orlando Zapata, with family members in Laura Pollan’s house, site of the Ladies in White in Havana.

I remember when my mother was doing the bureaucratic paperwork to emigrate to Switzerland at the end of November 2003, She told me she had seen a strange acronym — HP — on the cover of a folder that the immigration officials used to identify her case.

Of course the government is not giving free advertising the Hewlett-Packard. In “good Cuban” HP stands for “hijo de puta” — son-of-a-bitch. We already know how the regime uses its macabre humor to refer to dissidents or to Cubans who simply wish to emigrate.

For many years they were called “gusanos” meaning “worms.” The more than 120,000 Cubans who emigrated in the Mariel Boat Lift in 1980, after “exemplary acts of repudiation” were carried out against them, were given the epithet “scum.”

Against opponents and free journalists they have a collection of insults in the drawer: traitors, sell-outs, lackeys of the empire, mercenaries, employees of Washington.

I have no doubt, from the time the authorities told the Catholic Church to serve as the negotiating partner with the Ladies in White and the political prisoners who would be released, the strategy to undertake an operation to clear the opposition from the island had already been designed.

The Castros had a strong and reasonable hypothesis. In general, human beings don’t have a vocation to be martyrs. They are not made to be heroes.

If we add to this the premeditated harassment by the Security Services against the majority of the opposition, acts of a verbal lynching and beatings carried out by the mobs against the Ladies in White and their marches, and the harsh conditions in Cuban prisons, then, reasoned the smart guys, very few imprisoned dissidents are going to resist the temptation to leave their country.

It is logical that this happens. With all malice aforethought, in a kind of mental and psychological torture, the 8 or 10 political prisoners who have decided not to leave Cuba have been left at the end of the line.

Imagine a man who spent more than 7 years in prison, caught in the dilemma of what would happen if the Castros changed their plans for and for some tiny little reason decided to renege on the releases.

Although the released dissidents have made that decision on their own will, in practice it is a kind of diplomatic exile that reaches them by phone in the pleasant voice of Cardinal Jaime Ortega or another high figure of the Cuban Catholic Church.

Now, seeing the success of their maneuvers they have proposed to a certain number of dissidents, Ladies in White and independent journalists, in desperation, that they go into exile.

Now Monsignor Emilio Aranguren, of Holguín province. about 500 miles from Havana, has contacted Reina Luisa Tamayo, the mother of the opponent Orlando Zapata, who died last February after 86 days on hunger strike.

Reina, the only one of the Ladies in White who will not see her son knock on the door, duffel bag in tow, in a wise decision — there is no doubt that she is one of the people most harassed and vilified by the groups loyal to the regime — has declared that she will only leave her native Banes when the government delivers to her the mortal remains of her son, Zapata.

The regime wants to kill two birds with one stone. In the new phase of difficult economic conditions ahead, it would not be a good thing if hundred of opponents were on the march in the country.

It is already enough to have to deal with a great number of unhappy people with no jobs. They had to release the pressure on the pot. The trick of encouraging a maritime emigration to Florida is a non-starter. The gringo generals have said that any wave of migration would be understood as a declaration of war by the Cuban government. The Castros are not naive. They play with the chain, but not the monkey.

And they have considered it prudent to cleanse the green crocodile of its dissidents, sending them to the U.S. or any other country that will take them.

The measure has more benefits than costs. When, at the turn of the year, the prisons are emptied of political prisoners, for a time they’ll lose the stigma of being human rights violators. And the tough guys from State Security won’t have to work overtime to control the internal opposition.

They are trying to decrease the size and strength of the dissidence. The proposal to leave Cuba could be expanded to other people the government finds inconvenient.

If they can consolidate a dissidence that takes flight like the swallows, it would be a triumph for the authorities. It’s a difficult decision, because it involves the future of your family. In my case, unless I am threatened with imminent imprisonment, nothing would make me leave Cuba. That is my position.

October 18, 2010

The Cuban Ministry of Education prohibits teachers’ use of any punishment, whether verbal or physical, on students of all levels of education.

However, although the official media do not report it, through word of mouth from independent journalists, alarming cases of school violence have come to light. In almost all cases they appear to involve teachers with little experience as educators.

A decade ago, Fidel Castro himself made a crusade to produce teachers for the country. Urgently, and with accelerated courses, in one year they trained thousands of “emergent teachers” as they are officially called.

The aim was to overcome the deep crisis in which the national education system was, and is, mired. The low salaries of teachers in primary and secondary means they often spend little time in the classroom, quickly moving on to other jobs.

They desert their profession to work where they can earn foreign exchange, as porters at a hotel or cleaning bathrooms in a restaurant. Into one of these vacant positions 19-year-old Fernanda moved, as a teacher at October 10th Elementary School.

Fernanda lives with her family in an uncomfortable two room house, with three generations under one roof. Breakfast is almost nothing, when she even has it; her salary of 325 pesos (13 dollars a month), does not cover her expenses. She enrolled for a little excitement and to earn some money and become independent. But she doesn’t really have a vocation for teaching and the poor pedagogical skills she acquired don’t help her in her battle with some twenty children between six and eight-years-old.

In her case, as in others’, they often make up for their deficiencies with insults and profanity. And when they run out of patience, they try a smack of ruler or a stick on student’s head or shoulders to make them be quiet and pay attention.

A parent who requested anonymity said her daughter refuses to have anything to do with the teacher Fernanda and she had to take her to a psychologist. And that’s not an isolated case. Norge, 36, a father of two who are in the 3rd and 5th grades in another school in the city, said the verbal and physical violence is alarming.

On top of all this, there is the poor quality of the education. Parents pay between 10 and 20 convertible pesos (12 to 25 dollars) a month to retired teachers who give their children “refresher courses” so that they can learn something.

When a teenager finishes high school and doesn’t make it into the university, he has the choice of studying Teaching or Medicine, the least demanding of the courses of higher education. They’ve been devalued so much that they call them “junk careers” or garbage.

Violence on the part of teachers has led to tragic events. On February 1, 2008, 21-year-old Joaquin Torres, “emergent teacher” at Domingo Sarmiento secondary school, in the Lawton neighborhood of Havana, threw an iron chair at a 12-year-old student, Daniel Castaneda, killing him.

That same year at Antonio Aucar Secondary School in Santa Clara, the “emergent teacher” Yaniel Basail, punched the student Daniel Castellanos and kicked him in the face for refusing to eat the bread with mortadella and a glass of soy yogurt offered through the government’s “Battle of Ideas” program.

Not a few parents who have lost patience have taken justice into their own hands, and have gone to the schools to beat the young teachers.

On November 13, 2009, Leafer Perez reported on Cubanet, “School violence that shook up several secondary schools in the 10th of October Municipaility, has reached new levels, which worries the students’ parents.

“In the first days of November, a fight involved dozens of students at Cesar Escalante and Jose Maria Heredia schools. In the dispute, a teacher was wounded in the arm with a knife, and several students received grave injuries. It all started as a challenge between the two schools, which grew into an exchange of gestures and verbal insults, culminating in a huge brawl.

The school principals met with the parents to ask them to check their children’s backpacks, to make sure they weren’t carrying knives, awls and other aggressive weapons to school. Students who repeatedly resort to violence will be dealt with by officials from the Department for the Care of Children in the Ministry of the Interior.

“The addresses for these centers met with parents to ask them to check their backpacks, to prevent their children to carry knives, punches or other articles used for aggression. Students in violent repeat offenders will be treated by members of the Child Care Department of the Ministry of Interior.

“On the other hand, the boys say they have sex in the bathrooms, and the kids who are a part of the subculture known as “emos” get together during recess to cut themselves. They don’t cut their veins, rather they cut into their legs because they can cover the wounds with stockings.”

The Education Minister, Ena Elsa Velázquez Cobiella, has not spoken publicly about the increased violence in Cuban schools. The official silence does nothing to curb the situation. On the contrary, it aggravates it. The government should take action on the matter. As soon as possible.

October 13, 2010

Communists or dissidents, famous or unknown, Cubans love awards and competitions. Of all kinds, national and foreign. They delight in being chosen and enjoy the glory they feel when they win.

It doesn’t matter if the prize is a diploma or a work of art. The money, yes. In pesos, it’s not bad, but in foreign currency, it’s ideal. If the money is enough, it can resolve a thousand personal and family problems.

Three Cuban writers have won the Cervantes Prize: Alejo Carpentier (1977), Dulce Maria Loynaz (1992) and Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1997). The athlete Javier Sotomayor was awarded the Prince of Sports Award in 1993. The list of musicians and composers, living on the island or abroad, who have earned a Grammy is longer: Celia Cruz, Bebo Valdes, Israel ‘Cachao’ Lopez, Gloria Estefan, Paquito D’Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, Chucho Valdes and Omara Portuondo, among others.

Since its creation in 1901, no Cuban, in any category, has been awarded a Nobel Prize. One of those who deserved it was Dr. Carlos J. Finlay, the discoverer of yellow fever.

That was in the twentieth century. In the twenty-first, with the stagnation of the economy and scientific and social research, due to the perennial economic crisis in the country, where Cuba has a chance is in the Nobel Peace Prize.

It is unknown if ultimately the Ladies in White candidacy when forward, and whether they were one of the 38 organizations nominated in 2010. It is not the first time that Cuban dissidents have dreamed of the prestigious award and its monetary support, amounting to one million euros.

In other years opponents like Oswaldo Payá, Oscar Elias Biscet and Marta Beatriz Roque have been proposed. Both in Norway and Sweden, the two countries that annually award the Nobel, they look kindly on fighters for freedom and democracy. In recent years it has been awarded to four prominent dissidents and human rights activists: the Russian Andrei Sakharov in 1975, the Polish Lech Walesa, in 1983, the Burmese Aung San Suu Kyi, in 1991 and the Iranian Shirin Ebadi, in 2003.

Nor is it known if Fidel Castro appears among the 199 personalities nominated in 2010. Acceptance of course certainly lends itself to self promotion. An interest in winning the Nobel Peace Prize explains his emphasis on speaking and writing about wars and nuclear threats. That’s one way to draw the attention of scholars in charge of evaluating the dossiers submitted.

According to rumors, on more than one occasion the comandante’s name has reached Oslo. And no wonder. Stalin was twice nominated in 1945 and 1948. Earlier, in 1939, Hitler had been proposed. This ‘select’ list was inaugurated by Mussolini in 1935.

Being the good partner of China that Cuba is, the rulers of the court and their spokespeople have been going crazy since the Nobel Peace Prize fell into the hands of Liu Xiaobo, an imprisoned “criminal.” Nor have they applauded the Literature prize being given to the “apostate from the left” Mario Vargas Llosa.

When the bearded ones came to power in 1959, Vargas Llosa was one of Latin American intellectuals who supported Fidel Castro and his revolutionary project. In 1965 he traveled to Havana to serve the jury for the Casa de las Americas Prize. So far so good. But when the Cuban poet Heberto Padilla was arrested in 1971, with wide repercussions in Europe and Latin America, the Peruvian writer decided to break with the Castro and his dictatorship.

Since then, Vargas Llosa swells the blacklist of “enemies of the revolution.” A list that now includes the Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo.

October 11, 2010

Maybe he was surprised that Chavez was defeated in the popular vote. In Havana alarms went off. The unstoppable South American Santa Claus is a very valuable asset for the Cuban political strategy. He is its strong man.

He’s also fundamental for supporting an economy that is foundering. The frenzied Chavez offers the oil the island needs, to avoid slipping into and age of darkness, at rock bottom prices.

That’s why the leaders pamper him despite his drivel and verbal incontinence. Maybe his political mentor, Fidel Castro, is upset because of the Caracas autocrat’s mania to hold elections every time he feels like it.

It’s a known fact that Castro does not believe in that damaging vice called democracy, nor in holding referendums. Even less in holding a referendum just to lose it. Tough guys like the mythic bearded one only hold elections if they know for certain that they’ll win more than 95% of the votes.

That strange habit of the swarthy caudillo’s trying his luck at the ballot, keeps the island’s rulers on their toes. It’s a known fact that the fall of the Soviet Union threw Cuba suddenly and without warning into a crisis which has lasted for 21 years, and which in its darkest days took us close to the stone age.

Castro knows that the Cuban government can’t allow another violent worsening of conditions, with food shortages and 14-hour blackouts. That could be the end of his revolution. Already, advisers are looking through their files for contingency plans, just in case Chavez loses power in 2013.

To stop being the beggars of the Caribbean, living off the resources of another country, it’s urgent to get the weakened internal economy rolling again. This is the time for the fans of the Chinese Model. They’re probably on edge.

They think this is the time to speed up the reforms and economic openings. It’s a task for titans. And there’s little time. The red commander could lose his post in three years. There aren’t many options at hand. The most feasible is to bet on the market economy but keep a tight hand on the reins of power, like China does.

Playing two cards. Capitalism on the outside and socialism on the inside. Of course, that needs improved relations with America, and Obama lifting the embargo.

The wise make their estimates. Maquiladoras — cross-border factories — would come by the dozen, and the hundreds of thousands on unemployed would work for a pittance. Like the Asian Giant, Cuba offers a cheap, docile workforce, with a union that will not encourage them to protest or strike.

In that economic model, with the worst of wild capitalism, fans may forget a little detail. Cuba is not China. It doesn’t have an internal market of a billion people and Cubans do not work like slaves.

Whatever it is, something must be done to take the local economy out of its slump. Chavez is no guarantor. Maybe it’s time to speed up the changes. It would also reveal if the policies of the Castro brothers are aligned or not.

If stagnation continues, it would risk their continuity in power. And that is a powerful incentive to speed up the reforms.

Translated by: Xavier Noguer

In this Cuban autumn of 2010, with memorable rains in the center and east of the Island, we breathe the air of pessimism. A new crisis. Another one. Fed up with material and spiritual shortages. We are one of the countries of the world best prepared to suffer. A benefit of the Castro brothers’ revolution.

Before going to school, children under 7 drink a glass of milk; up to that age it is guaranteed by the rationing system. The older children, unless their parents have money, plain coffee or whatever they can get for breakfast.

Milk is a luxury in Cuba. Cows are a luxury in Cuba. The alternative, for those who can afford it, is powdered milk, at 5.25 CUC for just over two pounds (about $7 U.S.). Or on the black market, 30 Cuban pesos ($1.25 U.S.) for a pound. When you can find it, which is almost never.

Now, according to the shopkeepers, the State proposes to eliminate coffee from the ration. No big deal. Some ten ounces a person, of horrible quality, every two weeks.

But it’s the breakfast of choice of ordinary Cubans, it’s all they have. Even coffee off the ration is in danger of extinction. It we believe the official press. Cuba had to spend 40 million dollars to buy coffee on the international market.

So, there have to be cuts. And as it’s always the people who suffer the consequences… goodbye coffee. In the 1960s, Cuba produced 60 million tons of coffee. In the 1940s Cuba exported coffee.

Forget Fidel Castro’s outlandish idea of growing coffee the length and breadth of Havana so the capital could become self-sufficient. The problem is, anything he touches disappears.

And he turned his hand to coffee. So it is starting to become scarce, we have to have hard currency to buy it. Who can do that. But what with the poor people, without access to dollars or euros, drink when they get up in the morning? Maybe hot water with lime or something like that. Or “rooster soup” (hot water with brown sugar).

I’d like to know if the black nectar has also disappeared from the offices of the Communist Party Central Committee and the other senior agencies, where the leaders take a little cup of the brew and save the rest in their large imported thermoses.

Strong coffee, good quality. Of course the bosses don’t have to cinch in their belts. They’re the leaders. They’re different.

Photo: Inflekt, Flickr

October 9, 2010

Forget the New Man Che Guevara dreamed of one day. We said goodbye long ago to that guy dressed in a uniform twelve hours a day and on the weekends we would prefer to read realistic Russian works like Volokolamsk Highway and How The Steel Was Tempered, before having a beer and listening to the geniuses from Liverpool. That New Man never put down roots in Cuba.

This incorruptible man with his unlimited hatred of the imperialist enemy, who didn’t enjoy drinking rum with coconut water on the beach, a hooker at his side, could not be cloned on the island of sugar cane.

Guevara must be turning in his granite and marble mausoleum where his remains rest outside of Santa Clara, some 200 miles east of Havana. Now, in 2010, teenagers and young Cubans see Che as a marketing fetish; clothes and objects with his image on them clutter the foreign exchange stores.

Yesenia, 19, loves rock, detests the Castro government, but wears a Dior T-shirt with the face of the guerrilla saint. “I read that in real love Che was rigid, authoritarian and violent, but the Argentine was charismatic because he wanted to be different from the rest,” says the girl, sitting with her friends listening to music on their Mp3s.

The children of those who waged war on African soil and who instead of the Bible read Che’s Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War, are closer to his time than their parents. They are allergic to slogans and revolutionary marches. No one can inculcate them with the idea of voluntarily working to clear the marabou weed without charging a cent.

These grandchildren of Che think of visas to the United States or Spain. They go to good discotheques. Drink Coca Cola and quality whiskey. Dress in the latest fashions. Dance to Shakira’s waka-waka, and if they have hard currency, they take a snort of cocaine.

The most nonconformist in Cuba today are precisely the young people. They want to live in a democracy. For them, Ernesto Guevara is a myth. And a legend what can be worn on a watch or tattooed on an arm, like Maradona.

The current generation of Cubans now prefer to sit in the park or on the Malecon with their iPhones or Blackberries, sharing psychedelic music and talking nonsense. They don’t hate the gringos. On the contrary. They fight for Made in USA products.

Forty-three years after his death in Bolivia, the New Man dreamt of by Che has become a boomerang.  At least in Cuba.

Photo: volkerfoto, Flickr

October 9, 2010