Category: Ivan Garcia

The writer Orlando Luis Pardo (OLP), 34-years-old, is like a box with buttons.  You press a button and out comes a stream of ideas.  OLP is bursting with talent.  He has published several books of stories.  He has a pair of blogs, among the best being done in this 21st century Cuba.  He’s a high-flying photographer and a few weeks ago I attended an astonishing performance where OLP presented one of his formidable poems.

He’s a quiet type and excessively paranoid.  As is usually the case with any person born under an abnormal regime, where everything is suspicious and criminal.  Orlando Luis doesn’t remember the exact moment he started his personal intifada against the sinister machinery of Castro’s power.

It is likely that it happened when the “mystery” croquettes disappeared; one never knew what they were made of.  Perhaps that slimy grey mass with its tiny red-colored bits inside, at the end of the ’80s, was the point of departure for his personal rebellion.

Because Orland Luis has publicly confessed that he ate tons of the popular croquettes.  And their disappearance, along with the tasty yogurt and the Russian jams, in the hard years of the Special Period, may have sparked OLP’s serious contradictions with a regime closed lock stock and barrel to disparate opinions.

In 1993, with the daily 16 hour black outs, more mystery meat and soy hamburger, Orlando escaped the madness by reading like one possessed and pouring out his undeniable talent in poetry and prose on some old invoice forms from some business on which he could only write on one side.

In addition to real hunger, OLP was far beyond the cojones of Papa State.  He still remembers, of course, his first blue jeans, and the day he tried Coca-Cola.  Like one who brings a valuable treasure, a sailor friend of the family appeared with a bottle of the soft drink wrapped in gift paper.

The whole family sat down to celebrate the even around an old table, long and rectangular, of dark mahogany.  The father took the first shot.  Then, the bottle was passed around and everyone took a sip.  Only one.  Like something sacred, they saved the bottle of Coca-Cola in the old Philco refrigerator.  OLP remembers that it lasted nearly a week; after dinner everyone took a tiny sip.

So much spiritual and material misery turned him into a skeptic about Fidel Castro’s Real Socialism.  Today he is one of the best voices among young Cuban writers.  With his fears and doubts on his back, with the red lantern of paranoia always lit, with his overflowing imagination OLP fires his missiles from the neighborhood of his birth, Lawton.

He does not know how to change the status quo.  He only knows how to be a free man.  Getting good with himself.  Being happy in the dark and starless early mornings with his girlfriend, while waiting for the P-2 bus that will take them home.  And believe me, he is getting there.

Iván García

Not yet having overcome the gray and cold, with little bread and scant shelter, which we Cubans have passed through in these days of January 2010, news of the earthquake in Haiti came to us.

With the passing of the hours, we learned the magnitude of the catastrophe, a tragedy that grows daily.  The entire world mobilized, but as a consequence of the chaos and the lack of infrastructure, the airport and port facilities in Port-au-Prince that are insufficient for the number of planes and ships coming from five continents bringing every king of humanitarian aid.  The faster they can arrive, by air and by sea, the more lived can be saved.

Once more, disaster falls on Haiti.  Not because they are black or the descendents of Africans.  The evil in Haiti is not of this origin.  Given their history of struggle for emancipation from slavery and freedom, they should be one of the most prosperous nations in the Caribbean.  However, for more than two centuries, Haiti has been bleeding.

If today it is the poorest country on the American continent and one of the poorest in the world, it is because of the successions of misgovernment.  Ungovernability summarized in two words: repression and corruption.

Dictators and incompetent leaders are to blame for the backwardness and evil current endured by the Haitian people.  Illiteracy and unemployment have been a breeding ground for the emergence of gangs, machete in hand, who perpetrate violence, theft and crime, all common in the streets and neighborhoods.

A share of the guilt also belongs to its neighbors in the Americas, the closest and the furthest, like the United States, who when not intervening to support coups d’etat, preferred to look away and block their ears.

Better late than never.  Now, we’re grateful that President Barack Obama has made Haiti a White House priority.  A decision supported by the generous response of the American people, poor and rich, anonymous and famous, atheists and believers, civilian and military.

Let us leave Washington and return to Havana.  The truth is, of the few nations in the region who have always stood by Haiti, we find Cuba.  It’s logical.

We share more than 200 years of geographic, historic, cultural and ethnic background.  The veins of thousands of Cubans run with the blood of Haitians, especially the people of Guantánamo, Santiago de Cuba and Camagüey, three of the provinces where there are major Haitian communities, and whose children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren keep alive the language, music, religions, food and other traditions.

Many of these Haitians or their descendants achieved fame on the Island.  It is impossible to mention them all and therefore we have chosen one name, that of Martha Jean-Claude.  With her we pay tribute to all the Haitians who have made Cuba their homeland.

When the earthquake struck, around 5:00 in the afternoon on Tuesday, January 12, more than 400 Cuban helpers, mostly doctors and nurses, were already in Haiti.  To date, only three Cubans have been reported injured, two mildly and one seriously.

The love story between Brazil and Haiti is more recent.  It began in 2004, when under UN mandate, Brazil assumed responsibility for coordinating the United Nations Mission for the Stabilization of Haiti (MINUSTAH).  Brazilian president Lula made that responsibility his own, and many Brazilians began to get involved.  And as happens in the fairy tales, for a few hours everyone was happy.  In 2005, when the Brazilian National Football (Soccer) Team went to play a friendly match in Haiti, the video shows what happened:

Despite the critical economic situation in Cuba and the deteriorating living and nutrition standards of a great part of our population, many Cubans, according to man-on-the-street opinions, would be willing to go to Haiti to help in the reconstruction.  A so urgent and necessary work that at this time, against the clock, is being done by volunteers, firefighters, rescue workers and sniffer dogs from Mexico, Spain, Japan and China among other countries with considerable experience in earthquakes and natural disasters.

So far, three pieces of good news were announced on Friday, January 14.  The Department of Homeland Security in the U.S. reported that Obama granted temporary resident status (TPS) to all undocumented Haitians in its territory, allowing them to reside and work in the United States for 18 months.

For its part, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that the Island was ready to cooperate with all countries, including the United States, to help save lives in this emergency situation.  Showing this was more than mere words, the Cuban authorities announced they had authorized U.S. planes to fly over the eastern territory of the country, to evacuate the wounded from Haiti to the Guantanamo Naval Base, where there is a hospital.  This authorization saves 90 minutes of flying time.

The third piece of good news came from Port-au-Prince.  The heroes were two Spanish firefighters who rescued a two-year-old Haitian boy whose photograph circumnavigated the globe.

Along with this good news, a rumor circulating for some days in Havana was confirmed, that some twenty mentally ill patients had died in the Psychiatric Hospital commonly knows as Mazorra, located in Rancho Boyeros, where the thermometers had fallen to 4 degrees Celsius.

The terrible event, that had been publicized by the dissident National Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, was confirmed by the Minister of Public Health.

There were 26 dead.  A true scandal. People are shocked and hope that those guilty of such negligence will face trial.  And that the response will not be limited to distributing blankets, clothes and food with more calories.  Cubans want, once and for all, to free Mazorra from the Dante-esque fame it has always had.

Returning to Haiti.  Among so many dead and such ruins, we are sure that the green grass of hope will begin to sprout.

Iván García and Laritza Diversent

Photo:  Chicago Red Cross, Flickr

These are the Dog Days.  With the fine and constant rain and the overcast sky the color of a gray mouse.   Likewise, a freezing cold.  We throw to one side in this January of the new year the postcards of brilliant sun that show us a happy, festive, and warm city.

Since January 1st, the first serious cold front entered the capital, the streets of Havana have become a carnival of poor people.  A population accustomed to an annual average temperature of more than 27 degrees Celsius is not used to having adequate wardrobe items to tolerate low temperatures.

The solution for many is to layer items of clothing over each other.  Three, four, and up to five, and to top it off, a sweater, with gloves and an old coat.  It’s nothing compared to the intense snows in Europe, Canada and the north of the United States.  But for the Habaneros, Sunday, the 10th of January, was frightening.

Too much cold for a tropical city.  The wind chill was 8 degrees.  The people look like inflated balloons with so much clothes.  The most humble protect themselves from the cold with jackets from the era that Cuba traded with the CAME, more than 30 years ago.  Some dusted off wool sweaters and jackets, used by fathers and grandfathers before Castro came to power.  The most elderly and needy garnish themselves with overcoats like those used by Humphrey Bogart in his films.  The children and youth were also disguised.

The streets are deserted.  The beggars and demented that have made the doorways on the corn er of Carmen and Calzada streets their home since the 10th of October, had rushed to less frozen spots. What blew through this corner wasn’t a friend.  According a neighbor, vehicles from the public health division recognized the beggars and interned them in the Psychiatric Hospital,  an asylum more commonly known as Mazorra, located on Rancho Boyeros, halfway to Jose Marti International Airport.

I’m not sure if it is true.  The people from the capital have a tendency to exaggerate.  What *is* true is that in these “polar” days, many bakeries have closed due to lack of flour.  You see, bread, like rice is a primary necessity in the current diet of the Cuban.  The state ration card grants us a miserable bread roll of 80 grams per person.  Then, people head to the bakeries of the Cuban Chain, where in the free market, one can buy half a flauta of bread for 5 pesos, and for 10, a whole flauta.

The administrator of one of these establishments commented “that several bakeries that offer free sale of bread have closed because of a shortage in the distribution of flour, because the government has reoriented it to prioritize rationed bread, that sold on the ration book.”  Outside, a long line of people wait for an hour hoping to leave with bread.

With the cold hunger rages.  And with a half-empty fridge, the most common thing is to buy bread and eat it with anything.  It may be jam, if the family is “wealthy”, or with tomato, tortilla, oil.  Or just dipping it into coffee, or milk, something those under 7 do, the only ones the State guarantees a daily quota of milk to on the ration book.

Pablo Pacheco, 30, independent journalist condemned to 20 years in prison in the Black Spring of 2003, told me by telephone from Canaleta, the prison in the province of Ciego de Avila where he is serving the unjust sentence, the temperature fell to 7 degrees Celsius.  “The prisoners wrap themselves in two or three quilts, and even so your teeth are chattering like castanets.  Add to that there is little food and it is terrible,” he told me.

Due to a lack of adequate clothing and of a hot breakfast, many families in Havana have stopped sending their children to school.  In my daughter’s classroom, of 20 students, there are six or seven students, no more.  In the rest of the country, where even the cold is more intense, the school situation is the same or worse.

The lowest temperatures report up to now, according to the Meterological Institute, have been at the Jose Marti International Airport, in Havana (3.7 degrees Celsius);Isabel Rubio, Pinar del Río (4,0); Tapaste, La Habana (4,2); Aguada de Pasajeros, Cienfuegos (5,0); Bainoa, La Habana (5,2); Batabanó, La Habana (5,4); Bauta, La Habana (5,5); Güira de Melena, La Habana (5,9); Güines, La Habana (6,2) and Santiago de las Vegas, Ciudad de La Habana (6,5). In Jucarito, Granma province, considered the hottest place in the Cuban arh=chipelago, the thermometer reads 12.7 degrees!

Although these January days, with the gray skies and cold have dominion over the landscape of the entire Island, the star meteorologist of the Island, Jose Rubiera, calms the innumerable rumors and affirms that the temperature has never fallen under 0.6 degrees Celsius, as happened in 1970, in all the national records.

Nothing to do.  Little bread and a lot of cold is not healthy.  And what’s worse, without sun.

Iván García

Even the president of the United States, Barack Obama, senses that the opposition on the island squanders its talents and energy in sordid and fruitless struggles. In response to the questionnaire sent by the blogger Yoani Sánchez, the American leader, among other aspects, commented that the Cuban opposition did not agree among itself.

It’s true. They quarrel too much about trivial things. They seem like big spoiled children. Full of lust. And with overflowing egos. They are given to defamation and, at the first exchange, act like animals in heat when they feel they are losing prominence.

It’s an immature and undiplomatic opposition. A banana republic dissidence. If these dissidents with more ego than talent are going to be those governing the destinies of Cubans, I will be the first one heading into exile the day the regime of the Castro brothers disappears.

The background of the misunderstandings between the numerous groups of the opposition is almost never determined by a specific political project. The boxing match is either for money or for having more influence in the leadership of the opposition on the Island. They fight furiously to appear as valid interlocutors with the US government or the European Union.

It’s lawful and healthy to differ. And each party, organization or movement shows that its future strategy is more viable. Fine. What I don’t understand is why, when someone doesn’t agree with their proposals, ta volcano of mud and a waterfall of insults falls on that person or group.

The internal dissidence has a worth that no one can deny. Opposing a government like that of the Castros is worthy of applause. Besides being harassed and infiltrated by State Security, they are threatened with laws, like Law 88, the gag law, that can put them behind bars for 20 years or more, just for disagreeing and asking for a political space.

But at least for me, the dissidence has lost its way. Also its perspectives. Busy as they are, fighting and swearing, they have not noticed the absence of a viable and robust project for this future that is upon us.

They’re like hunters on private reserves. Focused on the foreign media and the western leaders, doing little or nothing to expand their partisan bases. Lacking space in local media–for obvious reasons–they don’t try to convince, speaking eye-to-eye, the Cuban on the street, weary and disgusted after 50 years of an inefficient system that meets the personal expectations of almost no one.

Instead of unrealistic and outlandish proposals, it’s better they roll up their sleeves and use the little loophole in the Constitution of the Republic to get more involved in community affairs. And in the varied and multiple problems of material scarcities and lack of values that affect everyone.

Literally everyone. Be they supporters or not of the Castros: liberal, socialist, Marxist or Christian; of the left or the right. From the rising violence, the lack of drinkable water, the poor state of the roads and housing, the plummeting quality of teaching, and the pitiful decline in public health, in the proud epoch of Fidel Castro, one of the showcases of national socialism.

The dissidents need to make themselves known among their fellow citizens and assume a leading role, open to a democratic debate. Changing the discourse and respecting the differences between them would be a first step. To continue the current state of affairs would mean continuing to be moored in mediocrity and disrepute.

Obama, perhaps for diplomacy, did not pursue the theme. There are numerous people within independent journalism and underground groups and intellectual young people, who are as tired of the stale Castro government as the peripatetic positions of the Creole opposition.

Not only must we change the system in which we have lived for half a century. We must also transform local dissent. Continuing on with the distribution of pamphlets, the litany and personal caudillo-of-the-hour politics, will burden the future Cuban society yet to be born.

Yes, there will be a change of names and people in the country’s direction. But it will be like having a Fidel Castro in plain clothes. For me, at least, I don’t want this future for my country.

Iván García

Photo:

Greetings to all the “Twitterers” and thank you to those who are following the blog Desde La Havana.

Iván

Nothing is easy in Cuba. Even menstruating is a headache. If you doubt it, ask Marlene, a 23-year-old computer expert, who suffers when her period comes, every 28 days. On the island, sanitary napkins are known by the name, “intimates.”

They are rationed. They are sold in the pharmacies, to women previously registered, between the ages of 10 and 55. At the rate of one package of 10 sanitary napkins per head, once a month, at 1.20 pesos.

“They are awful quality, break easily, and don’t work. Then you have to buy them on the black market or in the dollar stores,” an angry Marlene explains.

“Under the table” the same packet sold in the pharmacies can cost 10-15 Cuban pesos (50 or 75 cents in CUCs). In the “shoppings”, or dollar stores, there is more choice and the quality is better. But for one package of imported sanitary napkins you have to pay from 0.90 to 1.30 in CUCs. Converted into Cuban pesos, the national money, that’s between 22 and 30 pesos. Twenty-two pesos is two days’ wages.

“It’s like a punishment for being a woman and bleeding every month,” Raisa, a 27-year-old housewife, says indignantly. “And if you don’t have “intimates,” you use pieces of old clothes, which you boil in hot water and put out to dry in the sun to disinfect them.”

According to commentary on the National Television News, In Cuba there are about 4 million women of fertile age. When interviewed, Gladys Vásquez, an official in Interior Commerce, the ministry that controls what is distributed by the ration book, takes the easy way out.

The same old thing. The Party line. The calamity of the Cuban economy is the fault of the “Yankee Blockade.” It’s to blame for everything. It’s the same if you don’t have potable water, a decent living place, your kids don’t have toys or women lack sanitary napkins. The fault lies with the “Blockade,” as they call the embargo in Cuba.

Young women like Yailén, 17 years old, a college student, ask themselves why products so necessary as sanitary napkins are sold in hard currency. The journalist does not ask the official this question, and if she had, I doubt she would have had a response.

“In Havana, everything is fine,” declares Suchitel, 32 years old, a shop employee. “In Santiago de Cuba, where I live, there are no sanitary napkins during certain months. If you don’t have money to buy them in hard currency or on the black market, then the options are to use rags, the leaves of some plant or a home-made tampon, put together with the cotton padding that they use for mattresses.” (There is also a shortage of cotton on the national market).

The same Gladys Vásquez, the official from Interior Commerce, recognizes that “deliveries have been incomplete, owing to the lack of prime materials, which are bought in China or France.” And of course she repeated the slogan: It’s the fault of the Blockade.

Many on the island are against the embargo. In addition to being inefficient, it has been a pretext for the Castro brothers to justify the country’s disasters for more than four decades.

Few believe that the day there is no embargo, there will be an abundance of ham and beef. Or that we will be able to buy Tylenol in the pharmacies. Or that high-quality sanitary napkins, like the Kotex used by Cuban women before 1959, will be sold on the ration book in the stores. With or without the embargo, the government lacks something: money. And the women, “intimates.”

In Cuba, everything is negotiable. Even death. This is what happened two weeks ago to the Qunitana family. Their mother, an elderly woman of 71, had died of renal failure. After the doctor certified the lady’s death, what the family lived through was a tragedy with overtones of black comedy.

The night of the wake, there was no water, and the ration of coffee allowed by the government could not be made. The guy in charge of making the coffee did not have enough gas in the stove and his coffeemaker was broken. The sad-looking fellow in charge of dressing and putting make up on the body did not have enough sawdust to stuff the recently deceased.

Five CUCs (convertible money=120 Cuban pesos) made the miracle happen, and the missing sawdust appeared. Later when it was time to buy the flower arrangements the tragic events continued. In the flower shop, a very sleepy and obese woman explained to them, grumpily, that she did not have the ink to write the names on the ribbons which would identify those who sent condolences.

The obese lady was going to return to her improvised bed, among faded flowers and roaches that infested the place, when a green bill with the red “5 CUC” changed her mind. At 3 am, at almost 1 km from the funeral home, they decided to walk along 10 de Octubre Avenue with the six flower arrangements on their shoulders, since there were no signs of cars for hire in the deserted street.

By morning, the state cars that had been previously rented arrived around noon. After expressing their condolences to the family, one of the drivers, a black man in his fifties who was smoking a cheap cigar, justified the delay by saying that “the gasoline truck had not arrived at the base.”

Just when everyone thought the mishaps had ended, a frightening downpour broke in the same instant that the funeral procession reached Colon Cemetery. One of the two gravediggers charged with performing a Christian burial for la señora Quintana, alleged that with “such a downpour we have to wait, I am catching a cold.” His work mate complained to the disgusted family that they had gone 27 hours without sleeping, and “I believe he has the H1N1 flu.”

All the relatives held their tongues and flinched as if they had seen the Devil himself. “Well,” said the elder son of the deceased, “he who hopes for much can wait a little.” One hour and a half after the rain stopped, they slipped 40 pesos under the table to each gravedigger, and la señora Quintana could finally rest in peace.

As a finishing touch, one of the gravediggers told them calmly that after two years they would have to come up with more money in order to place the bones in an ossuary and to have flowers placed on the vault.

“Only here, even after death, do you have to keep paying money,” shouted one of the upset sons of the deceased. The gravedigger, embarrassed, shook his head nonchalantly and pronounced the sentence: “Sir, business is business.”

Photo: Jack 1962, Flickr

Hacer media–literally “to do half”–in Cuba means to do nothing. Taking “ten,” an opportunity, a break….gossiping about something that happened. Talking about the latest telenovela. Making fun of the bosses. Criticizing the government. Checking out the new girl or boy at work. Finally, just making do.

In any workplace on the island, people work in slow motion, at a snail’s pace. As if on a permanent strike. People get to work at 8 am, but if it is a service company, they usually open an hour later. Then they do the bare minimum. If you ask for or require any assistance, they put on an Al Capone face and answer rudely.

Nothing interests them. Neither the clients nor good treatment. Only that the 8 hours go flying by, in order to go home. And to see what they can steal from the workplace. A little oil, if they work in a food center; samples of shampoo or soap, if they are maids in a hotel. Paper, paper clips, if you work in an office. Cables, screws, a hammer or a hand saw, if you are a worker or a builder.

To work efficiently does not make sense for a Cuban. The pay is miserable and the State, which controls everything, does not offer incentives to do a good job. Thus, in the Socialist Republic of Cuba, most of the production and the services are slow and clumsy.

Three times more material is wasted to build something, since cement and rebar are stolen to try to make minimal repairs in homes. People are indolent for the simple fact that they feel cheated and mistreated by Papa State. The compensation: to steal everything they can.

The logic of the workers is simple and pure. If the government does not worry about them, then they don’t give a damn about the State and its problems. And everything is about daydreaming. Covering up. Pretending. Faking. Deceiving. In order to be able to appropriate the largest quantity of state goods.

Thus, in the middle of procrastination, theft and manipulation, “pinching” (working) the least possible, the work days go by on the Castro brothers’ island. It doesn’t matter that General Raúl dissuades us and demands that we work more and better, so that in the hypothetical future that never arrives. we can live like God commands.

The people are now tired of the same old story. Tomorrow they will applaud wildly in the Plaza of the Revolution, and later, in the afternoon, they will go back to being lazy. Making do. Seeing the time go by. Looking for what they can steal. And furtively taking a sip of rum or alcohol. All the rest can go to hell.

Bringing four plates to the table for four mouths is a mission impossible for Ana Carballo, 37, a teacher at a secondary school. With a little luck she gets a chunk of pork and some beans. But then she is missing the meat and the vegetables. And dessert? Forget it.

The food, as Cubans call the evening meal, and the snack for her children are her biggest anxiety. She gets up at 5 in the morning to buy bread on the ration book. A bread roll cost 3 pesos if it’s soft. If it’s hard, 10 pesos for the whole loaf, and 5 pesos for a half. “I have to buy extra bread on Mondays and Fridays, to be able to prepare the snack for my two children, 8 and 10,” Ana says.

The school snack is a puzzle for almost all parents. The children are in school for 8 hours and the lunch is a real hodgepodge. As a result, the little ones take bulging backpacks, as if they were going camping every day.

Tomás Díaz, 56 years old, driver for a business, takes advantage of his bosses’ minor negligence and with the State car takes himself to the closest farmers’ market, to buy meat, beans and vegetables. And if the money is flowing, one or two pounds of pork or a leg of lamb. Like Tomás, the number of workers who use the work day to leave and resolve the food problem is high.

Because the hours for businesses, shops and farmers’ markets don’t help in the least those who work for the State. They are usually open from 9 in the morning to 6 in the evening, but always, with the habitual sloth of our workers, they open a half-hour late and close 30 minutes early.

Even the official press, which usually sees everything through rose-colored glasses, has published reports on this subject. But nothing has changed. Any day of the week you can walk through the center of the city, and you will see the streets and shops full of people. Trying to get sustenance with the national money (the Cuban peso).

When some CUCs (convertible Cuban pesos = “hard” currency) fall their way, they’re used to buy bouillon cubes, seasoning, oil or some cheap sausage, like hot dogs (“little dogs”), made out of chicken – a pack of 10 costs 1.10 CUC, the equivalent of about 30 pesos, almost three times the daily salary of a worker. A typical meal for the poorer classes in Cuba is rice with black or red beans, and an egg in all its variations: fried, boiled, omelette, or scrambled. The middle class, composed of those Cubans who receive remittances or in some way manage to get hard currency (CUCs), is also used to eating rice and beans, but accompanied by pork meat or chicken, and a tomato, lettuce or cucumber salad. If they recently received dollars from their relatives, they can give themselves the luxury of buying the desired beef on the black market, or fish like sea bream or garfish, or shrimp.

The table of the upper class – government officials, successful artists and hotel managers, among others – has nothing to envy from their equals in Miami or Madrid at dinner time. They even have white or red wine with dinner. But these are the minority.

A large percentage of the Cuban population has to scratch their heads every day, and their pockets. And one more time draw out the count, to see if that night they can eat something hot. Beginning in 1993, when Fidel Castro took away the penalty on the American dollar, many Cubans could get food, clothing and shoes of better quality, almost all imported. Of course they couldn’t do it with the frequency they wanted, but when they had dollars, they got the consumer bug. If nothing more than to buy flat-screen televisions or computers.

Although, according to an employee in one of the shops at the Comodoro commercial center in Miramar, the elite Havana neighborhood, every time there are more prostitutes and Cubans, she can’t figure out where they are getting the money. They buy very expensive furniture, electronic articles and construction material to repair their homes.

At the other extreme is Lourdes Garrido, 59 years old, who only goes to the shopping centers to press her nose against the glass windows and look at what she cannot buy. She and her five-year-old grand-daughter go every Saturday to visit the shops in Havana, like Zara, Adidas or Mango. There they fantasize about the pretty clothing and the good perfume they would like to have.

While that moment lasts, Garrido and her grand-daughter feel happy and are satisfied that they can enter, free, into these exclusive shops and see things that for the moment they can only dream about. But they hope that some day they can buy them.

Josefina Miranda, a 67-year-old housewife, has worked her whole life like an animal. Her moments of happiness can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

She is a fat, soft, black woman with a weary gait, who lives in the marginalized, mostly black neighborhood called Diezmero, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón, northeast of the heart of Havana. She could not be more poor; she lives day-to-day.

She is always improvising. She has four children, three girls and a boy, but the Old Woman Miranda is the one with the last word in the concrete, aluminum-roofed hut where she has lived for 40 years.

Under the same roof live three distinct generations. The house has three narrow rooms with little ventilation. At the entrance, behind the door, there is a clay bowl full of necklaces and other smaller bowls with left-over food and cigarette butts.

“It’s an offering to Elegguá, to see if our lives will change. That is my struggle, day after day, cook to earn a buck and help my children and grandchildren who are working or studying in school. Later I watch TV, but by 10 o’clock at night, I am asleep on the sofa.”

She tells this story while rice is cooking in a big pot. She earns a small pension of 193 pesos (8 convertible pesos), which quickly disappear buying garlic, onions, green pepper, tomatoes and meat. Two of her children are in jail.

“The girl, because she was an accomplice to an armed robbery, is in Manto Negro, the women’s prison, outside of Havana. The boy, who is 34 years old and is the youngest of my four sons, is in the prison in Boniato, in the province of Santiago de Cuba, for killing cows.”

Josefa keeps talking without stopping her cooking. Now, in a pressure cooker, she prepares some beans that smell so delicious they make your mouth water.

“And that, even though I never have a ham bone, bacon, chorizo or blood sausage to make them the way they should be made.”

Miranda’s family life is boring and devoid of fun. The two daughters who live with her earn low salaries. When they get home from work, along with their mother, they prepare 12 or 13 servings of food that they sell in the neighborhood for 25 pesos. The only thing their husbands know how to do is to drink foul rum, play dominoes and fight.

“Here in my house, we love each other, a few are lazy, the women in this country bear the hardest burden in this miserable country. Look, on top of having to find food and cook to earn a few little pesos, we have to wash, iron and take care of children, grandchildren and also our husbands. They should dedicate a monument to us.”

The government of the Castros hasn’t thought about that. Cuban laws rarely favor women, no matter their age or status. When they divorce, the law calls for monthly payments to parents who are typically between 50 and 60 pesos (2 or 3 Cuban convertible pesos).

“That amount is a joke. That money is just enough to pay the cafeteria in elementary school,” says Esther, Josefa’s daughter, wryly.

Also family violence is increasing. Cuban society has touched bottom not only by its endless economic crisis, but by the social and moral devaluation as well. Cuba is a country where the majority of families are divided by the migratory exodus, the lack of stable marriages, the high number of divorces and domestic violence against women.

As a result, the misery and material shortages make many households small living hells. At the slightest setback, a storm will break. Whether a relative takes the bread that belongs to us from the quota or eats one of the 10 eggs assigned each month per person by the rationing booklet.

But so it goes. If anyone has suffered more intensely from poverty and disillusion for the lack of a clear future, it’s the Cuban women. In particular, if they are retirees and single mothers. Like Josefa Miranda, the housewife who lives in the humble neighborhood of San Miguel del Padrón.
Life for her is an infinite vicious circle: Take the grandchildren to school, cook and try to get a handful of pesos to survive in the hard conditions of Cuban socialism.

Despite few moments of happiness, Josefa Miranda is attentive and hospitable to visitors. If you spend time in “Diezmero”, be sure to try her red beans. Without bacon, chorizo, or blood sausage. But they are finger-licking good.

It spread like wildfire all over Cuba. Beginning November 1st, potatoes and split peas would be available without rationing. They would now be sold at higher prices than what they cost through the rationing system since the State would no longer subsidize their cost.

A pound of potatoes that costs 0.40 cents in Cuban pesos (less than .05 dollars) will be sold for one peso, and the cost of a pound of split peas would rise from .16 cents in Cuban pesos to 3.50 pesos (or about .20 dollars).

The measure has been carefully viewed by part of the population. As far as Noel, 56 years old and an employee of the power industry, is concerned, “I will have to see if the potato and split pea supply will work without causing a deficit. Personally, I doubt it.”

Like him, many people doubt the capacity of the “generous State” to guarantee quality and quantity. Estella, a 67-year-old housewife, is ready to blow her top. She receives a paltry pension of 194 pesos (around 8 convertible pesos or CUCs) “and if they free up a variety of food products and sell them according to supply and demand, the big losers will be us, the people at the bottom of the ladder who don’t receive one dollar in family remittances.”

For Marlín, a 35-year-old state employee, it doesn’t bother him that the ration book is going to disappear, “but I think they should raise the wages to cope with an immediate higher cost of living.”

In general, in Havana, those consulted want the famous ration book eliminated at the stroke of pen, but they have serious doubts about the inefficient State apparatus guaranteeing a steady supply of basic food.

The ration book, as it is known on the island, is a 10-page medium size booklet where entries are made by the clerks at the grocery store, bakery, butcher shop, or the milk store on the assigned day, week or month for one’s corresponding ration of rice, bread, eggs, or milk (it is worth noting that milk rations are only for children aged 0 to 7 years of age).

Every person born and officially registered in the Republic of Cuba has the right to purchase every month 7 lbs of rice, 3 lbs. of white sugar, 2 lbs brown sugar, 20 oz. of red beans and 20 oz. of black beans, also, a packet of spaghetti, and a half pound of vegetable oil and two 4-oz. packets of coffee. The sale of bread is rationed daily; one 80 gram roll per person.

The benefactor State gives every Cuban living in the “worker’s and peasant’s paradise” the right to buy, each month, 1 lb. of chicken, 10 eggs, half a pound of fish, 5 chicken hot dogs, and half a pound of horrible-tasting soy “ground beef.” To this socialist distribution, add one bar of bath soap and another for washing clothes that take from 2 to 3 months to reach the grocery or state stores.

Cubans have to make do with this war-time basket of goods. Under the best of circumstances, goods available through the rationing system last between 10 and 15 days if one eats in small quantities. The rationing system was implemented in March 1962: This is a Guinness record!

It should be noted that no food rationing system has lasted 47 years anywhere in the modern world. It appears that the government of General Raúl Castro wants to break that record. It is yet to be seen if the state can guarantee, without bumps, the distribution of food at prices that are not excessive. We’ll have to wait and see.

At the time, in the farmer’s markets visited in early November, neither of the two products that were in the news were available, for a population waiting for a laughable government gesture.

In the 1970s, Cuban children would chant a curious slogan: “Viva Cuba Libre, la papa por la libre.” [Long live free cuba, potatoes for free]. Decades later, that slogan has become a partial reality. There are potatoes for free. But freedom is another matter.

Photo: Adalberto Roque, AFP