Category: Ivan Garcia

I have good friends who completely support Castro’s revolution. I respect their opinions, as they respect mine. And there’s no problem. We have shared interests. We like soccer and baseball, white rum, and we love our children. We were born in Havana, which we love.  And each of us, from where we stand,  want the best for our country.

What separates us are the political opinions. I am convinced that of course individual rights are shamelessly violated in Cuba.  The government acts chaotically when the island is put on public trial.  But it isn’t a CIA campaign, or that the large media corporations have been cruelly baited with regard to the shortsighted policies of the Castro brothers.

No. It’s simply the actions of the system which provokes worldwide condemnation and the newspaper headlines. Following the death of the opponent Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the media, democratic governments, and social networks have aimed their cannons at the aged olive green government.

This death, the result of a hunger strike of one person, who the friends of the revolutions want to see as delinquent, who was at that moment serving a prison term for his politics, whose demands were purely political, was something that could have been avoided.

The system is very sensitive to internal or external criticism. It always sees an imperialist conspiracy. These are blows to the chest, and for them, no country has the moral right to criticize Cuba when it comes to human rights

And so it defends itself by going on attack. Personal rights are violated in almost the entire world, and this is   denounced by civil society groups. The same thing happens on the island. But it is the Cuban government that represses those who think differently.

It has not gotten to the point of extrajudicial deaths. Nor is there any need for that. They control the three basic powers of society, and if you go to a hearing on an alleged political crime, you are condemned in advance.

Not recognizing the opposition is the root cause of all the problems. All of my friends who support Castro in one way or another, live in societies where it is not a crime to be an opponent. It is not believable that an entire population supports a regime. Nor is it true that all who oppose it are a band of mercenaries at the service of the United States.

In Cuba there are many things that do not work. The Castros do not want nor do they permit other people to form a different political party with their own opinions. And then unfortunate events occur, like that of March 17 with the Ladies in White.

You can have whatever opinion you want about this group of women. But there is a truth which is like a fist: if their husbands, sons or other family members were not in jail, the Ladies in White would not exist.

Just as, if thousands of Argentinian children had not disappeared, during the military dictatorship of the 70’s, there would have been no reason for the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.  The Castro government is anti-democratic, and repressive at the time when it should accept different political opinions.

But it takes advantage of the freedoms of the democratic societies. For the crime of espionage, five agents are jailed in the United States and they spend the people’s money, which is very scarce, on travel around the world for their family members to defend the cause.

In the ‘monstrous’ country that is the United States, friends of the revolution have paid 50 thousand dollars so that a “poisoned” media would publish propaganda in favor of freedom for the spies. The Castro politicians, on their world travel, unite with opponents of governments elected by their people, and with revolutionary groups.

And nothing happens. I haven’t read any articles about Frei Beto or Lucius Walker, fervent Castro admirers, delineating how they have been whipped by the intelligence services of their countries. Maybe they are more subtle than the Cubans. Or it might be, as I believe, that these things are entirely permitted in free countries.

In the events of March 17, in the poor neighborhood of Parraga, in Arroyo Naranjo, the poorest part of the city, which has the greatest number of prisoners per capita in the entire country, there was physical violence and manipulation.

I don’t offer any categorical opinion despite what I have read or heard about the Ladies in White. I saw photos and videos in which you can see them badly treated by the soldiers, who arrested and almost strangled one of the women in the group.

As an independent journalist, I have been present at a few public demonstrations, including these Ladies in White, and not only have verbal lynchings occurred, but punches, kicks, karate blows.

Furthermore, simply trying to impede a demonstration is counter to the freedom of self-expression. And it is a lie, that the government amplifies, that the “people spontaneously” insult and slander the demonstrators.

Those who have lived in Cuba know this is not true. Since 1980 when these “acts of repudiation” appeared, against people who decided to leave their country, where they were beaten and insulted, it has become an habitual practice and strategy of the political police.

The authorities summoned these people in advance to denigrate the marchers as “mercenaries.” In Havana it is known that more than a few times in the work centers, in order to give the appearance of the “revolutionary masses,” workers were given a day off, so they could go and shout insults at the Ladies in White or others in opposition who decided to demonstrate in the streets.

In Cuba, on their own, nobody would bother another person for peacefully demonstrating. Even less for this spent revolution, where the support for the Castro project diminishes every day.

The government, with these events, is creating a thick smoke screen. There are strong rumors, with much credibility, that people at the highest levels are involved in scandals, bribery, corruption, and this is a giant headache for the government of the brothers from Biran.

It is not the opponents, the independent journalists, the bloggers or the Ladies in White who are creating the final political crisis of this regime. It is and will be the generals who have now become businessmen, who have grabbed the greenbacks with such pleasure.

The dissidents demand change, but in a peaceful way. You can insult them or beat them, but it is the participants in the “dance of the millions,”* living well and sawing out the ground from beneath the government, that really threatens the people at the top.

The real enemy who could overthrow everything are rubbing shoulders with power.   These are the dangerous ones. The others are just dust and straw.

Ivan Garcia

*Translator’s note: “The dance of the millions” refers to the period in Cuban history when immense wealth was created in the sometimes speculative development of the sugar industry.

Translated by ricote

The evening of March 17 my mind was elsewhere.  I didn’t have a cent in my pocket and I had to buy a vitamin-filled milk complex, which at the time cost 4 dollars, for my daughter Melany, who was barely a month and a half old.  The baby’s voracious appetite forced the pediatrician to order the vitamin-filled complex to complement the mother’s milk.

Back then I was an independent journalist working for the agency Cuba Press, which was presided over by the poet and journalist Raul Rivero.  I wrote for the web site of the Inter-American Press Society, plus chronicles and stories for Encuentro en la Red [Encounter on the Web], a web site created by Cuban immigrants in Spain, which was the best, journalistically speaking, that was being promoted outside of Cuba.

Payment for the articles arrived every two or three months.  The day before the government launched a raid against 75 opponents and independent reporters, I was barely treading water. It was a hot month of March.  The Iraqi invasion by the U.S. troops was imminent.  The previous night I had spoken with my wife regarding the possibility of selling some of my clothes and a watch so we could buy the food for the baby.

That evening I spent the night at the baby’s house to help the mother, who was very tired by little Melany’s habit of waking up in the middle of the night and then sleeping until dawn.

Around midnight, on Tuesday, March 18, I returned to my house, in the district of La Vibora, where I lived with my mother, my sister and a niece.  I felt the exhaustion of centuries and the bags under my eyes reached the floor.

I saw, on the balcony, my mother Tania Quintero, who was an independent reporter as well, signaling incomprehensibly to me. When I arrived she informed me that they had detained several reporters and dissidents.

My exhaustion was gone immediately.  The bad news did not stop there.  There were massive detentions going on all over the island.  The next day we found out that almost a hundred people had been detained and their homes had been carefully searched.

My mother and I were waiting for our arrest at any moment.  We were walking around with a toothbrush and a spoon.  I spoke with my wife and sadly told her that they could come for me at any time.

We held our hearts in our fists.  Those days were full of fear.  I did not understand the government’s reasons for jailing a group of people whose opposition was peaceful or who wrote without mandate.

Reporter friends like Raul Rivero, Ricardo Gonzalez, Jorge Olivera and Pablo Pacheco, by State decree, slept in cells sealed by the political police.  I listened to short-wave radio and the world-wide denunciation was spectacular.  Castro, in his calculated strategy, thought the Iraq war would divert the world’s attention from the matter.  But it did not happen that way.

As the days passed, a powerful wave of attacks was let loose by the Cuban Media against the opposition.  The circus began.  Trials without rights and where the people who had infiltrated the dissidence came out to the light.  I remember with horror that there were 7 prosecutor requests for the death sentence.

The crime was to dissent and to write articles that were not favorable to the government.  As “definitive proofs” the office of the public prosecutor presented typewriters, portable radios, books, blank sheets of paper and money.  They didn’t trouble themselves to show a single firearm nor any explosive materials.

“Castro has gone crazy” I thought.  The more that I analyzed different fact, the less logic that the conclusions made. What was certain: the government had prepared meticulously for the hit.

The Varela Project, of the dissident Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, had Fidel Castro by the balls.  Any democratic leader who traveled to Cuba asked him to fulfill the laws of his own Constitution, which authorized the reform of laws when 1000 signatures have been collected.

And that is what Paya’s movement had done.  In fact, the former US President, Jimmy Carter, in a speech given at the University of Havana in front of Castro himself, had demanded that the legal requirements be met.

This ended up exasperating Castro. Since 1998 five spies, from a ring of twelve, had been jailed in the United Stated, and no leagl maneuvering had succeeded in overturning the penality.  So he decided to play hardball.

He reformed to the Constitution to perpetuate his political system.  He created the scary Law 88, known as the gag law, which could send you to prison for over 20 years, simply for dissent or writings, under the accusation of working for a foreign power.

The conditions had been created to unleash the raid against the opposition.  The Iraq war was the smoke screen that Castro used to obscure the news.

No dissident of journalist was sure of his situation during the following months.  My mother and my family were forced into exile.  I preferred to watch my daughter grow up.  I felt I had every right in the world to be at her side and watch her say her first words in the country where she was born and where her parents and grandparents were born.  Fidel Castro was not going to stop me.  Even at the risk of going to prison.

Seven years after the fateful Black Spring, little has changed in Cuba.  Fidel Castro awaits his death in bed, writing his memoirs and a litany of personal reflections about anything going on the planet.

His brother Raul, without any big changes, has continued the same repressive politics against whomever opposes them.  He continues to disqualify and spurn them.  The intimidating Law 88 is still floating in the air of the Republic.  Whenever the government decides, they can jail the dissidents without any thought.

At this stage of the revolution and the logical erosion of power, the Castros are determined to remain power until death. Nobody is going to change their minds.  Not the international pressures, nor the honest talk of other countries’ leaders who wish for Cuba to join the group of democratic nations.

Seven years have gone by since the incarceration of dissidents.  Life here is still the same.  Nothing has changed.

Ivan Garcia.

Photo: La Víbora, a neighborhood of the municipality, 10 de Octubre, the most densely populated in Havana

Translated by Marfa Otano

I present to you Canaleta.  Not the famous fountain in Barcelona, where the fans gather to celebrate the victories of their soccer team.  No.  This is the Cuban prison, located in the province of Ciego de Avila, some 280 miles east of Havana.

Inside the Cuban Canaleta, in a narrow cell, dirty and poorly ventilated, in triple bunks, they have crowded 20 common prisoners and one prisoner of conscience: Pablo Pacheco Avila, independent journalist, sentenced to 20 years imprisonment during the crackdown of March 2003. His crime? Writing without government authorization.

A pen without mandate. A free electron. A humble man of the 9th of April neighborhood, Ciego de Avila, a degree in physical culture, who wrote sports commentaries and notes about the daily life in his city. A typical Cuban, a sip of coffee in the morning and a little tobacco to round it off.

Pablo Pacheco expiates the unjust sentence in that cell block, number 43, Canaleta prison. Next April 4 he will be 40. Far from his wife, Dr. Oleidys Garcia, a doctor by profession, and his son Jimmy, 11, who enters adolescence without the advice of his father.

In cell block 43, at eleven in the morning they lunch on a repugnant menu: rice not even cleaned, with a hint of fish stretched with soy made for animals. At four in the afternoon, the same disgusting thing for dinner. Pablo eats what his stomach and eyes permit. Or if he has it, the food his wife brings when she visits, every three months.

Pablo prefers to concentrate on writing. And taking advantage of the telephone minutes the regime allow to read his chronicles, news, and complaints to blogger colleagues or alternative journalists, who record the texts written in his cell.

In August 2009, Pablo Pacheco opened a blog, Voice Behind The Bars. A great chronicle of the hard conditions in Cuban prisons. In his articles he details the life of his unfortunate comrades. The bad treatment of the guards. And the rampant corruption of the militants in charge of the Canaleta prison.

Everything is there, in his blog. He tells us that in four years, 18 common inmates have committed suicide, desperate from the extreme conditions in the Ciego de Avila prison. And how dozens of the inmates mutilate themselves and make attempts on their lives, finding themselves in a dead-end street.

Pablo Pacheco has made journalism a priesthood. When friends read or hear his stories, sometimes they can’t help crying. And no wonder. The boy who slept under his bunk, unbalanced, suffering from Schizophrenia, he cut off his ears. He was taken to a punishment cell. Pacheco things that many of the convicts of Canaleta should be patients in a psychiatric hospital.

In cell block 43, a motley crew of convicts enjoys talking about baseball, politics and women. All have sinned, in some cases forced by necessity. Others knew what they were doing. His cellmates are a human trafficker, a pair of murderers and petty thieves who, in the dark of night, knife in hand, slaughtered cattle to sell its meat.

In the prison in Canaleta, in other cellblocks, also filthy and stifling, suffer four other prisoners from the Black Spring. They are Antonio Díaz Sánchez, Félix Navarro Rodríguez, Pedro Argüelles Morán and Adolfo Fernández Saínz. Recently, they have started to write and send their tapes also to Voices Behind the Bars, now a collective blog.

The poet and journalist Raúl Rivero Castañeda spent more than a year in these cell blocks; now thanks to pressure from the civilized world he lived in exile and Spain and writes for the daily paper El Mundo.

A few days ago, from cell block 43, Pacheco called me and told me that March 15 to 21, the prisoners of conscience of Canaleta will unite in a fast to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Black Spring and the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. They, and the common prisoners, are following the hunger strike of Guillermo Fariñas, now in the intensive care ward in a hospital in Santa Clara.

The prisoners in Canaleta prison know that, in the face of any abuse or maltreatment, there are 5 political prisoners who will fearlessly disseminate their cases. The prison directors know that there are five pairs of watchful eyes to report any signs of corruption among the prison guards.

Pablo Pacheco and the rest of the prisoners in the cause of the Group of 75, not only call for their unconditional release, but also demand respect for the integrity of the common prisoners. Although from chilly Europe no advocate for human rights is allowed to visit the prisons on the island, the political prisoners are doing everything possible to overcome the abuse and excesses in Cuban penitentiaries.

Prisoners like the deceased Orlando Zapata frequently passed up the chance to talk to their families and instead they used their telephone minutes to call an independent journalist and report abuses, committed against them and the other prisoners. Pacheco and the other political prisoners of Canaleta have done the same.

If you would like more information about how life is lived in a Cuban prison, please click on Voices Behind The Bars.

Iván García

The government of the Castro brothers has staked everything on one card. That of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, the strong man of Venezuela, a walking-talking comic strip, bursting out with some bizarre nonsense every minute. Chávez defies every canon of a balanced, sober and coherent statesman.

It could be a bible passage, or he might sing you folk song, or declaim one of his usual Maisanta poems, this Venezuelan fighter against the Spanish Colonialism of the 19th century. A deep and serious student, of course, of Simón Bolívar the Liberator.

And he has launched the strange theory that Bolívar died as the result of a complex Yankee plot. If he were a clown, comedian or a simple citizen of the state of Barinas, he would pass unnoticed. But he is the president of one of the major oil-producing countries of the world.

He has the hard currency to splurge on his extravagant projects, and considers himself a new Bolívar for the 21st century. He is committed to a different and humane socialism, but applies the same coercive measures his predecessors used to build communism.

Chávez is a confused ideological amalgam. He believes in God and Marx.  He is anti-Yankee, and since he came to power in 1999, he has radicalized his rhetoric, not only against the United States, but against all the countries of the first world.

His goal is to develop an entente among poor nations, who trade among themselves, use a common currency and who don’t rely for anything on the predatory trade with rich countries. He follows the usual custom of statesmen of “socialist societies,” who have the rare mania for perpetuating their own power, and who crush the opposition and the media.

Chávez is the classic bad boy of any meeting, debate, or world symposium where he makes an appearance.  He has no sense of moderation or respect. His brain is connected directly to his mouth. Any idea, no matter how absurd, spews forth without any processing by his mind. He has no clutch. Just an accelerator and a brake.

Let us add that the Red Commander runs his cabinet like a military barracks and distributes perks and positions among this friends and family, like every previous depraved Venezuelan president whom Chávez so frequently criticizes.

He came to power through the back door, thanks to a society paralyzed by the skyrocketing poverty and corruption in Venezuela. When democracies fail, they provide breeding grounds for these type of bullying strongmen.

From the Caribbean, Fidel Castro took note.  After the USSR said “see you later” to the bizarre communist ideology, Cuba found itself heading back to the stone age. Long blackouts, little food, a wartime economy and a large segment of the population angry and hopeless, whose only goal was to cross the Straits of Florida on a rustic raft or to marry some boring and lonely middle-aged Spaniard.

Castro had to make concessions.  Allow self-employment and small pockets of a mixed, market economy, but it wasn’t enough to move forward, though combined with the billion dollars being sent by families in Miami, it supplied him oxygen and precious time to keep his revolution from blowing away with the wind.

But the Castros worried greatly about a section of the population gaining independence. Money begets power, and makes people question the status quo. And so, the peripatetic Hugo Chávez seemed like a gift of the gods.

He had oil and money. He was a confessed admirer of Castro and had a handful of incendiary ideas that if used wisely could create a minefield for the gringos in Latin America.

Of course these were different times. Fidel Castro is a skilled political strategist, but to install a clone of the Cuban revolution in Caracas he would have to demolish the structures of civil society and free press. And obviously a segment of his dark-haired friends would not stand idly by and just watch their country go down the drain.

It is logical, than, that by February 2010 Chávez was having a terrible time. Closing a cable television station brought street demonstrations and violence. In eleven years under the commander in the red beret, the numbers tell us that there has been no reduction in poverty, corruption or violence.  Quite the contrary.

What has increased is the Cuban presence, in the form of doctors, trainers and military advisers. The Castros, worried about the situation of their ally, have sent their sinister minister of communications, Ramiro Valdés, former head of the Cuban political police and former Minister of the Interior, to see what actions can be taken to stem the disconnect among a wide sector of Venezuelans.

The official Cuban press hasn’t published one line about the latest events in Caracas, nothing about the daily four-hour blackouts, and almost nothing about the presence of Valdés. According to official media in the South American country, Valdés went to develop a plan for the power industry. Hard pill to swallow. Ramiro Valdés, fervent admirer of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first boss of the Russian Cheka, is a neophyte in this area. But if there is something he knows by heart, it is how to repress people.

If Chávez were to lose power, the Cuban economy, under siege, could not withstand the terrible blow of losing oil supplies. It is likely that among the counsels of Valdés are some messages from Fidel Castro, calling for restraint from the restless and unruly Bolivarian commander.

The Castros have bet everything on the Hugo Chávez card. From creating a trade organization, ALBA, or a common currency, the sucre, to depending on South American oil to keep the lights on in Cuba. For them, there is no way they can allow the rash Chávez to throw it all into the abyss. They are going to try everything. The fate of Venezuela is, in a very real sense, the fate of Cuba. And the Cuban government will do whatever it takes to keep the Venezuelan Santa Claus on the throne.

They bet on the wrong horse. But at this point, for the Castros, there is no turning back.

Iván García

Photo: Reuters. Hugo Chávez and Ramiro Valdés, Minister of Communications and Technology, during a recent visit to Venezuela.