In San Luis, a small town in Pinar del Rio, two young men caught the attention of State Security for distributing flyers for the Zero Violence campaign, and were detained.

Taken to the police station, one of them asked the repressor, “Are you in agreement with the violence?”

The cop responded no.

“Then, why stop me if all I’m doing is calling for no violence?”

The guy in uniform responded, “Because I’m not in agreement with what you’re distributing (the message). Give it to some other citizen to distribute.”

“Then I’m giving it to you, so that you will distribute it, among your people who are violent,” concluded the boy.

The Zero Violence campaign is an initiative from within the independent New Country platform, and is being conducted throughout the Island to create a change toward tolerance; which inevitably contradicts — disagrees with — Revolutionary politics; which is by nature intolerant and, let no one doubt it, violent.

“The authorities are trapped in their own contradictions. Between the image they want to sell of a calm and civilized country and their real conduct relative to repression,” says Manual Cuesta Morua, independent journalist, political analyst, president of the social-democrat Progressive Arch party, and national coordinator of New Country.

The victims of the repression agree with regards to the style flaunted by the agents: whether they’re uniformed police or State Security agents; even people recruited to carry out an act of repudiation try to ignore the existence of the other, the right to different, with an attitude masterfully defined once by Padre Conrado — recipient of the Tolerance Plus prize created by the same Platform — as “The Nullification.”

According to Cuesta Morúa, political violence, in Cuba, feeds on marginality, crude language, barbarism. People who are recruited to perform an act of repudiation are rarely the grande dames of the Revolution. Those who are mobilized to carry out these acts of verbal and physical violence are people who inhabit the marginality reproduced by the Revolution.

The Zero Violence campaign aims to work in marginal communities across the country, because from the moment that people learn not to use certain language and not to engage in certain behaviors, acquiring education instead of ideology, it is quite difficult later to break their own rules; also severed is the possibility of the State buying the attitudes of the marginalized for acts of repudiation, which are, as Cuesta-Morúa noted, “the suspension of politics.”

“When you become aware that you can’t, nor shouldn’t, project yourself violently against others, it quickly activated the culture of conversation,” says Cuesta Morua.

The culture of dialogue has been marginalized by the Cuban authorities, who need to be reminded of that phrase of the far-off Voltaire: I disagree with what you say, I completely disagree with that, but would defend with my life your right to say it.

“Violence in education is part of the organizational structure of State violence,” continues Cuesta Morúa. “Children in Cuba are taught to salute the flag with the slogan, We will be like Che.”

“El Ché,” as the Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Guevara is known, was a Communist and officiated for years, running the deaths before the firing squads of La Cabaña. Cuban mothers and fathers have never been consulted about whether they agree that this is the best educational paradigm. Cuban schools are State-owned, and are an investment in the ideological field. “When you teach a child to be like Che, he is subliminally instilling the culture of violence and disrespect for human rights,” added the activist.

The women who joined New Country created this campaign and are its main promoters. They have organized workshops to teach their peers how to defend themselves in situations of violence, whether domestic or institutional. Through the Zero Violence Help Line, a series of phones have been placed at the service of people who seek advice, literature, or who decide to report an act of violence to the coordinators of the campaign. The coordinators would be responsible for investigating the complaint and for ultimately entering into the Orange Report, created for that purpose, cases of violence that come to their attention. With the hope of seeing what they can do to reduce them to the minimum.

Each year, 18 to 25 November, the Zero Violence Festival will be held, which last year featured guest artists like the rappers the Patriot Squadron, Silvito the Free and the punk band known as Porno para Ricardo. The boys of Omni Zona Franca, who are engaged in poetry, slam, performance, have also joined.

The days of November 18 to 25 coincide with the international day against child violence and gender violence, respectively.

Paradoxical as it may seem, as we said above, there have been a number of arrests of activists and promoters of the Zero Violence campaign in the west and east of the island. They are political arrests, obviously.

Taken from Cubanet.

10 May 2013

After Decree-Law No. 302 went into force on January 14, health professionals in Cuba could now travel, at least in theory. However, in order to practice in the medical profession in other parts of the world one needs, logically, to be legally licensed in Cuba, in order to be recognized abroad, later. But the cost of this license, from Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs Legal Department, is $1,200 (U.S.), and the average monthly salary of a doctor in Cuba is 573 Cuban pesos, equivalent to about $25.

Tomas Rodriguez, a 43-year-old physician, has been invited by a friend to live and work in a foreign country. Tomas does not have his own home in Cuba, after 18 years of working in his profession. One of the expectations he had with this trip is that some day, if he decides to return, he can buy a house.

“I’m on the verge of despair. My friend is going to take care of my travel expenses and, at first, to give me housing. But this assumes that I should bring the title to practice my profession,” says Tomas.

The money required has the character of a “Tax.” The application for “Certification” costs 250 convertible pesos or cuc (more than $250 U.S.), and its legalization is 200 cuc. The request for your school records costs 350 cuc, and legal endorsement another 200 cuc. The General Medical degree can be had for just 200 cuc, because the person brings the document themselves and only needs to pay to have it legally endorsed, which costs the same for all documents. This is also true for other degrees from different specialties studied.

If Tomas comes to legalize the General Medical degree, he would prefer to renounce the other two specialties he has: “This opportunity isn’t going to last forever. Fortunately, they give you the degrees when you graduate. If I ask for a notarized school record for another purpose, they give it to me with a footnote that says it can only be used in the national territory,” he explains.

And he adds, “At least now we are free (in theory) to enter and leave the country. Assuming I could save my whole salary (24 cuc) without even spending 40 centavos for the bus, I would have to save nearly six years’ salary. No one can convince me that my education was free. In fact, I have  paid with these 18 years of public service as more than a doctor.”

We are accustomed to laws being promulgated in Cuba, by and from the State, which from the beginning don’t represent the interests of the citizens, so most people are not shocked by the price they have to pay for the legalizations of titles that support different professions. Simply, people try to get the money and then leave, as always, without protest.

All human migrations have the common denominator of struggling for life. Thomas concludes: “I don’t have 20 years. I can’t go and quit my profession. What am I going to live on, if the objective is to leave in order to work? They have recognized our right to travel, but only partially, there are still many obstacles and impediments like this.”

Lilianne Ruiz, Havana

4 March 2013

More than 40 children with their parents met on the eve of January 6th at the headquarters of the Ladies in White, at 962 Neptune Street, to celebrate the traditional “Day of the Three Kings.” Bertha Soler, leader of the Movement, began the event remembering Laura Pollan, who from 2004 celebrate this day especially dedicated to bringing the happiness stolen from the children of the political prisoners and in particular the 75 of the Cuban Black Spring. Continue reading →

A group of internal dissident leaders on the Island, led by Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, unveiled on Wednesday morning, January 9th, Project Emilia.

This initiative, like the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, arises from the incontestable fact that the Cuban State is not subject to the law. This, citizen freedom and human rights are undervalues and have succumbed before the needs of the Communist system as expressed in the 1976 Constitution, modified in 2003. Thus, the Emilia Project considers the Constitution and the National Assembly of People’s Power with its organs of State power illegitimate.

The document also calls for the Cuban people to subscribe to this project. Once the signatures are collected, it will be presented directly to the International Criminal Court, the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council.

The 2003 modification of the 1976 Constitution was the government’s reaction to the Varela Project, promote from Civil Society by the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, who died in July, 2012, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas

The Emilia Project takes its name from Emilia Teurbe Tolón, the fighter in the War of Independence who made the first national flag.

Listening to Dr. Biscet reading the document reminded me of a couple of sentences I had read recently in one of the winning essays in the Freedom Road Contest’s 4th edition. They bring light to the cause of freedom for Cubans, as opposed to the Battle of Ideas which is the Communist Party’s ongoing propaganda in the mass media in the country.

“All that freedom requires is that the individual can do something to restrict the actions of the government. I do not believe that imparting positive instruction to the government about what it should do is part of freedom, but the truth is that there can be no freedom if we can not exercise the right to prevent the government from doing certain things.

The only moral principle that once made possible the growth of an advanced society, has been the principle of individual freedom, which means that the person is guided in making decisions  by rules of right conduct and not by specific orders of another individual.” Friedrich von Hayek: The Road to Serfdom.

To be able to change Cuba in a non-violent way, is the aspiration of all members of Civil Society. It is the Communist State which is not in a position to cede territory because it will end up succumbing. Violence is an attribute of government where there is socialism, communism, collectivism, populism.

January 18 2013

The Stars of Our Time. From Cubanet

To enter and leave one’s country, while retaining one’s nationality, are rights that Cubans have not been able to access for decades, because of the prevailing political system and social theory in Cuba. One of the reforms introduced by Raul Castro is the implementation of a new Migratory Law, as of this coming January 14, which does not, however, eliminate government control over the “exit permit.”

Most Cubans discern the solution to the crisis of rights which confronts us within the Island as getting a visa to settle elsewhere. The exodus has not been effective, however, in changing the situation within the Island with regards to the State’s recognition of these rights.

Cubans don’t protest but they leave the country. It is a phenomenon that can be observed with respect, such as the right to remain indifferent to the political present and future of the country of your birth. It is not that Cubans are less ethical by nature. Vaclav Havel, who illustrated the complex situation in which the individual finds herself in these kinds of societies, imputed to the advent of responsibility in one’s conscience the determining step to overthrow this type of dictatorship.

Much has been written about the changes that occur in human nature when it is subjected to the violence, direct or covert, of a totalitarian system. One of the products of that violence is submission. The capacity for intimidation of the totalitarian system that has triumphed for 54 years in Cuba has been revealed more by the submission of the masses than by their complaints and protest. As it’s about surviving at all costs, leaving the country is the only solution that appears to be left to Cubans.

Solving the problem of Cuba only by sea or air is what seems to be available to Cubans at this time. The ballot boxes will remain closed as long as this silence endures. There is no lack of alternatives such as the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, or the New Country Project, and supporting them is the best investment in the future, which will arrive more or less immediately depending on our participation.

Human beings do not give up freedom willingly. Just as the Communist regime cannot renounce violence. To leave the country should be just a withdrawal that does not put an end to the controversy. As long as we have some shred of perseverance left in our original nature tending toward freedom, we are condemning the regime. But if we change such that we betray ourselves and even forget our conscience, we are giving our main aggressor the gift of perpetual triumph.

January 11 2013

I was born in Havana on November 30, 1976. I finished high school and wanted to study law but looking over the field, once I matriculated, I recognized the abysmal difference between what I understood about justice and the history of thinking and the textbooks. I immediately abandoned it, that was in 2003.

I stayed in the San Juan de Letran library reading books of poetry and mysticism as if looking at myself in the mirror, taking refuge in my inner world without any responsibility for the reality of my country, like so many people.

But when I became a mother I realized that responsibility is unavoidable and that I didn’t want to give my daughter my past as her future and that the problem of the totalitarian and ideological government in Cuba profoundly affects the spiritual life and fate of each person.

So I decided to participate in changing my country and transcending the boundaries of my own ego in the act of loving my neighbor as myself, as taught by the Gospels. The power that I find, and the hope, makes me believe in God.