The Cuban Writers Club / Luis Felipe Rojas

Víctor Domínguez. Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

Men who believe themselves to be free manage to break the bars imposed on them by authoritarian regimes. The Cuban Writers Club (CEC), established in Havana in May 2007, is an initiative that arose from the desire for free literature, poetry out loud, and a way to rub up against life as if they were living in a free country. A couple of weeks ago I had the good fortune of having lunch and chatting with one of these free men, Víctor Domínguez. Armando Añel delivered him through the crazy Miami traffic.

“A group of writers, some of the members of the official National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC), others from the Hermanos Saiz Association (AHS), but all of us marginalized from the institutional spaces because of ideological problems, realized we needed our own independent space. We are more than fifty writers from the whole county, and twenty of us have published works, which is an accomplishment,” says Victor Manuel Dominguez, co-president of the Club.

Dominguez is one of Havana’s veteran independent journalists who survived the hardships, arrests and police harassment. “Twice they have expelled Jorge Olivera Castillo and me from literary and cultural meetings we were attending — once it was in the Cuba Pavilion — and we have to say that we are here and we are going to continue doing our literary work despite the repression and censorship,” said the author of the banned and still unpublished novel, “Operation Cauldron.”

The fruits they already taste

Jorge Olivera Castillo is one of the independent journalists who has survived hardships of every kind. He is the founder of Habana Press, a banned press agency born in the long past year 1995; he was sentenced to 18 years in prison in the well-known Black Spring of 2003, and today has nearly a dozen books published by helping hands around the world.

“It was prison that made me turn to literature, and especially being at the side of Raul Rivero, unfortunately now in exile. I was in solitary confinement for a year, in a cell in Guantanamo, six hundred miles from my home in Havana, but literature helped me to survive,” Olivera Castillo said with pride.

The award of the Franz Kafka Novels from the Drawer Prize to Frank Correa Romero in 2012 for his work “The Night is Long,” and that fact that 2010 was “a great year” for Olivera Castillo, made them realize they were beginning to reap what they had sown.

Jorge Olivera Castillo has published nearly a dozen books of poetry and prose. Publishers from half the world have helped him, not because of his having been condemned to 18 years in prison in the 2003 Black Spring, the only criterion is the quality of his writing. Olivera saw his book of poems appear almost a decade after they were written: “Lit Ashes” (Polish-Spanish, Lech Walesa Institute, 2010), and from Galen Publishing (French-Spanish) “In Body and Soul,” which had been published in 2008 by the Czech Pen Club.

The world, all the worlds

In Havana, the Swiss, German and Czech embassies have opened their doors to these bards to develop their literary gatherings, blocked by the authoritarian regime. The German Romantic Period, the work of A. Von Humboldt, the dramas and poetry of Polish writers, as well as readings by their own members, are part of this unique Writers Club.

The digital magazine Puente de Letras (Literary Bridge) contains all of this flood of creation: the list of its members, the prizes they have won, fragments of works half done and on their way to publication, are part of the mission of this attractive digital site.

Authors such as Luis Cino Álvarez, Juan González Febles, María del Carmen Pino or Manuel Cuesta Morúa have presented their stories, poems or essays on the Puente de Letras magazine and website.

Looking ahead, they have made this bridge to the future. “This is a source of feedback, you write and life gives you these prizes: the books, the friendship, the sharing,” Olivera concluded.

2 December 2013

Cuba and the Association for Freedom of the Press / Luis Felipe Rojas

The Association for Freedom of the Press (APLP) is an organization to disseminate the work of independent journalists in Cuba. Recently I spoke with José Antonio Fornaris, one of its officers, and with Juan Carlos Linares Balmaseda, manager of public relations and it’s well worth taking a tour of its site.

Recently they gave out the awards for their contest: Newsprint. The winners were Augusto César San Martín, in the genre reporting; Filiberto Perez del Sol, chronicles; Ernesto Santana (member of the government-sponsored Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), in interviews; and Dimas Castellanos, in op-ed. Special mention went to Sergio Esteban Vélez in interviews.

The prize for the winners consisted of a certificate, 250 convertible pesos ($225) and a statuette carved in wood, which — according to the artist Iley of Jesus — its Greek column represent democracy, the wings represent freedom and the pencil,  freedom of expression. For the honorable mention the award consisted of the certificate and the statue.

In conversation with the public relations person, Linares Balmaseda, he said: “We are driven primarily by desire to tell the world what is happening in our environment, in a dictatorship that blocks our right to freedom of information. But most important is to say it from within the island, because they are the ones who are reporting on the changes that must occur on the road to democratization, that is what makes the APLP,” he said.

12 November 2013

Graphic Artist Supports Cuban Rapper on Hunger Strike / Luis Felipe Rojas

Poster: Rolando Pulido

Once again the graphic artist Rolando Pulido echoes the suffering of Cuba and has prepared a poster calling for solidarity with Angel Yunier Remon Arzuago, who as of Thursday has completed 22 days on hunger strike, in protest of a prosecutor’s request for an eight year jail sentence, for a supposed attack.

In conversation with the wife of the controversial rapper, Yudisbel Rosello said that they had put a tube in the rapper’s neck to feed him, because he could no longer bed fed through tubes in his arm.

The young woman also reported that Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Provincial Hospital in Bayamo, where her husband Remon Arzuaga has been admitted, is completely guarded by police and State Security.

The organization NetForCuba called a protest: Thi Friday, 8 November, at 7:00 PM we will gather at the Versailles Restaurant in Miami to protest for the release of the rapper Yunier El Critico.”

#FreeElCritico

7 November 2013

One Year Outside Cuba, Within The Country / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: “Self-Portrait of exile. Nostalgia machine.”

It is exactly one year ago to the day that I left Cuba to enter the other Cuba. They gave me a kick, manu militari, and so I came to fall on this side of the lost country.

Miami gave me the opportunity to speak in the tongue of my grandparents, to return to the preferred palate of my grandparents.  I have achieved the dreams of my grandmother Maria: I drank Jupiña, I tried Materva and I ate again the guava pastries that my godfather Mayaguez used to make.  In that sense the nostalgia machine is still oiled, as always.

Here I have been bored since the police don’t ask me for my identity card nor do they ask for how many days I’ll stay in Little Havana.  My children Malcom and Brenda don’t have to put their hands to their foreheads in each school activity and say that they want to be like Che, that Argentinian fan of multiple and foreign deaths, foreign lands, foreign women, foreign families, to live a borrowed life, to jump from melancholic guerrillas to adolescent T-shirts.  My children are free because they are learning how to be.

It’s been a year since I came to a country that is a lot more generous than it is described to be, from the hand of Lori Diaz and the International Rescue Committee (IRC, “Ay-Ar-Cee, how can we help you?”).  I came to a Miami even more generous, where civil society is so organized that there was no need for a campaign for a foreign lady to give me the first $40 in her checkbook for the month and she treated us in a café.  From the hand of Ivon, Berta, Idolidia and Mario we all went through the first and hard hurricanes of red tape and we came out sane and happy, thanks to God and to them.

Miami gave me back my bicycle and a pain in my calves the first months; the bus and the fright of the next stop.  Here again I published a book and read poetry without demand for political ideology affiliation, at least that’s what Idable and Armando have shown me.  Miami gave me a microphone and a website so I can talk to Cuba at every second as if I was a ubiquitous man, Borgian, and I have been able to interview people from Baracoa, Puerto Padre or Jaimanitas without being afraid of the police attacking my house.

For the past year I’m happy playing dominoes and war. Twelve months I’ve been lounging on Saturdays in the grass with my wife Exilda, (at Tropical Park) looking at the sky to give thanks and ask for another wish: like two children, or two fools, but happy as never before.

P.S: There are other names and beautiful sunsets to mention, but no thanks.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

25 October 2013

We’ll Always Have an Ode (Fuck)* / Luis Felipe Rojas

I had to let a year pass in order to compose this ode (fuck) which is not for Enrisco and his refrain of throwing it all to hell.  This is the story of a one-eyed but happy man.  I was in the Havana room of my friend Roberto Gonzalez, eating bread and tons of ice cream because there was nothing else, while I read ”We Will Always Have Madrid”.

I did it in one go, as the best jokes are read and about every twenty pages La Chipi would appear with the jugs of ice cream.  I believe I’d returned to the best of Marcos Behemaras, to the most spicy Zumbado that was taken from us “by accident” and all that was seasoned with the Madrid stories which will never be ours (nor Enrisco’s) and a Havana that was no longer mine because I was leaving Cuba.

But no sooner had we followed the food and that digital version, than it occurred to me to write to the “prof” and give him the bad news that his book was already being pirated between the corsairs and the cyberpirates, in a capital that wouldn’t recover, this Havana simultaneously virgin and whore.

“We will Always Have Madrid” is a linear story, since humans at the end always come back to the scene of the crime, or of ridicule, and the value of this book is that, in not stopping to laugh at the misfortune of the cold, the naiveté of a just arrived immigrant, or the sons of b… that destiny reserves for us at each step. The turbulent Havana of the 90’s is like an old movie, fading into black but without credits.

When this character, who years later will delight us in “Encuentro de la Red” with those disparate stories, left the Cuban capital, a half-Cuba missing the best and the worst of the so-called “Special Period,” and to sympathize with us Enrisco and his troops walk alone in a Madrid of a thousand demons

I will not share with you any of the jokes that are related to loneliness and estrangement to the point that on some occasions our respective tears fall. If anyone decides to buy the book or the books, I’d recommend that you do it right now. I wanted to look like a “yuma” or a “pepe” — a foreigner — and I bought “wine, bread and sausage” and went down the hill until I came to the end.  What a good time.

*Translator’s note: In Spanish “ode” can be turned into “fuck” with the addition of a single letter.

2 October 2013

Three Cuban Women Under the Boots of Crime / Luis Felipe Rojas

Signs: Throw something at my house because I have more honor than you. Political officer throws excrement at my house under the dictatorship
This appeared on the house of Caridad Burunate after being pelted with eggs by a mob.

“On October 4, they had me in a choke hold, it was the Special Brigade.  There were men, I was talking to one of the big men, they took me to the door of the house, inside the house.  They came with their uniforms.  Some men dressed in overalls painted the house in asphalt, five times they have done it, without taking into account that there are minors here,” that is the testimony of Damaris Moya Portieles, President of the Central Opposition Coalition, resident of Santa Clara.

Violence against women, dressed in white or not; with or without gladioli in hand has become recurrent all over the island.  It has to do not only with the hate sessions like the Acts of Repudiation, the physical mistreatment and the torture are “a piece of cake” in the containment measures against the opposition.  Damaris herself relates:  ”Some months ago I was admitted into the Arnaldo Milian Castro hospital, the result of a beating that the State Security officers dealt me,” she says, and offers the name of the oppressors:  ”Yuniel Monteagudo Reina, Erik Francis Aquino Yera and Ayor vigil Alvares, plus Pablo Echemendia Pineda,” she concludes.

Fourteen Sundays Under Rocks and Words

She is a hardworking woman and always likes to prepare the best dishes for her family; one day she decided to do it for the poor.  Caridad Burunate hosts each week in her home some twenty elderly and destitute people to give them a little ration of food.  She does it under the project “Capitan Tondique,” and the name of the anti-Castro guerrilla fighter has cost Burunate, in Colon, Matanzas, the well-known acts of repudiation, beatings, arrests and the painting of her house black.

“The mobs prepare, they are criminals, and they cuff us, fight us.  Even prisoners have been brought from the Aguica prison, because they tell them that they are going to give them passes, they even kick us.  When we arrive at my house from the walks (every Sunday with the Women in White), they wait for us with bags of rocks, eggs, they even painted my house because they wrote, “Long live Fidel, Long live the Revolution” and I wrote to them on top of that:  ”Down with the Revolution” and “Down with Fidel.”

The president of the People’s Power, Dignora Zenea Sotolongo, brought a jeep full of eggs, which are non-existent, people do not have them to eat, and they threw them at my house; and of course, she has almost all her family in Miami.  This house they bathed in eggs and asphalt.  They give eggs to children for them to throw.  I made myself an opponent because we have no rights, and because I have always enjoyed expressing what I feel, I did not do it just for myself, but also to help others,” she concludes.

A Violent Beginning

Tania Oliva Chacon resides in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba.  She received the first beating “in March of this year,” when she joined the Ladies in White.  ”On October 10 I found myself at a friend’s house and we were about to watch the class they broadcast on TV every day, but the house was surrounded since early morning, and when we were about to sing the national anthem, they threw themselves on us like beasts, like animals.

They knocked me down with a kick to the leg, and injured me.  They immobilized me for 21 days, but I had no way to heal.  The one who kicked me is Captain Arsenio, the chief of the sector Police.  One of my companions was badly hurt, they got him in the ribs and he is still in a very bad way.  On many occasions they come dressed as special troops in order to impress us.  I was in my last year of studies for a Bachelor’s in History, but as I began to demonstrate and to tell about the thefts that were happening, then I “fell ill” and could not finish.  My son has graduated and has not been able to get a job,” she said.

Translated by mlk.

21 October 2013

A Cyber Cafe in Cuba? No chance.

Illustration: photomontage The Singularity of the Island.

Under the heading “Protect Internet Cafes in Cuba. Julian Assange Bungles It,” the website  http://www.lasingularidad.com offers good advice for Cuban citizens and digital non-conformists wanting to get around censorship restrictions.

Every time that I receive questions from activists in Cuba about the internet browser rooms, I never tire of repeating the phrase “Begone, Satan”, “Good riddance”, “Take them winter wind”, or any other interjection I can think of at that moment to make it clear that they should run as though from the devil himself. Like moths to a flame, they are designed to attract the unwary, who are bedazzled by its radiance.

The Cuban regime took its time designing these “booby traps” and — in what it considers a masterful sleight-of-hand — is attempting to make itself look good in the eyes of the modern world, which increasingly considers internet access to be a basic human right.

In fact, it has already reaped some rewards this week by successfully recruiting a “figure” of no less international stature than Julian Assange to proselytize politically on behalf of the Cuban regime. This is a completely surreal and incomprehensible development since, supposedly, the hacker’s code of ethics mandates fighting for free access to information.

His support for one of the world’s most repressive communist dictatorships — one known for restricting access to the free flow of ideas on the internet — is a senseless action that will very probably cause Assange to lose face in the eyes of the hackers who support him. Will Assange turn out to be one of those typical useful, misinformed fools or an opportunist looking for free vacations in the Caribbean? Whatever the answer, the betrayal of the ideals of hackers like Anonymous will not go unnoticed.

Why is Nauta a trap?

1 – Price censorship.

The cost of one hour of access to the internet in these rooms is 4.50 CUC, some $5 US if we convert it. Considering that the average salary in CUCs is approximately $20 per month, we can calculate that one hour of internet use costs Cubans close to 25% of their monthly salary. In a country where the salary is barely enough for one or two weeks’ worth of food, very few can afford to visit these rooms. By way of comparison, if in the United States or Europe one hour of internet cost more than $1,300, social network sites like Facebook would be very bleak places…

2 – Total lack of security, privacy and basic functionality.

To be able to buy a Nauta card, users have to display their identity cards. Their names, addresses and surnames, together with the identification code of the cards sold, are registered in a database. In this same database all their activity is stored: the sites they visit, passwords they enter, screen captures and general captures of all that they type (keyloggers).

The computers available are in fact thin clients* running a modified and highly restricted version of Windows Xp, an operating system so antiquated that it will soon be discontinued by Microsoft, which will no longer issue updates for it.

Short Restrictions:

It is not permitted to right click with the mouse. This reduces functionality for those who are used to cutting and pasting text using menus and eliminates all the information that right clicking in Windows provides. Hint: You can use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+C to copy, ctrl+X to cut and ctrl+V to paste.

It is not permitted to run any programme from USB memory sticks.

It is not permitted to run any programme from command lines (CMD.exe).

Task Manager is disabled, the Ctrl + Alt + Del and don’t even dream of administrator access in order to install some program that you may need.

Overcoming Nauta

The number one rule is : If you can avoid it, DO NOT USE IT. In Cuba, there are many other alternatives: Access from work centers, much less restrictive network dial-up access, illegal accounts shared by foreigners, friends who can send your emails as a favor, and of course access to offline internet content like the Web Packets Weekly Mulitmedia Packets that reign across the island.

If you have no other option you can protect yourself using these simple tips:

1.  Use disposable email accounts, ask your contacts to do the same if possible. The value of your messages lies not only in their contents but also in those to whom they are directed and from whom and from where you receive them (Metadata).  Never use your name or personal information to create an email account or to search websites on the Internet.  If you use false data and a fake name it will be much more difficult for government analysts or their spy programs to determine if your mail or user profile is worth the effort of analyzing.  These spy programs are used by almost all governments, including the United States and, of course, Cuba.

2.  Mask “complicated” words in your messages by using spaces, repeated letters and punctuation signs at random.  This will prevent automated software or analysts that search for key words from being able to flag your messages or profile as being of interest for analysis.  For example, instead of writing “the dissidents screamed liberty at the demonstration” write “the di. Si-dde :ntes shouted lib. ee.r t y in the demi. str *ati-on”  A text search for the words “dissident” and “demonstration” will not detect your messages.  Government agencies in other countries like the C-I. A and the N-S. A will not appreciate this advice, either.:)

3.  Mask your messages by excess information.  For example, began your email with several paragraphs of weighty poems and by prior agreement let your recipient know in which paragraph will be the true message.  The poor analyst that has to read your email will simply go to the next when he sees your long poem. The idea is to make his work difficult all the time.  Remember to mask words as explained above.

4.  Be aware that everything that you type and capture on-screen is being recorded on your user profile.  If you are forced to use a personal password, mask it with random fillers that you will then remove with the mouse and the Delete key. For example, if your password is “freecuba123,” write “iwantfreecub123456.”  Then select “iwant” and “456″ with your mouse and hit delete.  This is not 100% safe with advanced keyloggers but it will make it hard for the analyst who is watching your information to discover which is the true password.  There exists no completely secure protection in the world of information nor in the real one.  It is like protecting your home:  the more difficult you make it for the thief, the less likely your house will be the one in the neighborhood that gets hit.

5.  Use PHP proxies for accessing web pages whose navigation is censored and that you do not want to be kept in your navigation history.  Write on Google:  ”php proxy list” to access web pages that keep lists of proxies that constantly change in order to prevent them from being blocked.  These proxies will permit you to navigate as if your were in another country and will hide the website addresses that you visit.  Nevertheless, remember that your screen is being recorded and if you do something that calls attention they might check your user profile.

6.  Https is your friend.  Always prefer web pages in which the URL or address begins with https.  This means that all traffic between your navigator and the web page server is automatically encrypted in a secure way, hence the letter “s.” However, remember that what you type is being recorded so you cannot stop using the tricks listed above or better still, if you can avoid it, do not enter your search information on any page from Nauta.

If you have other ideas and suggestions for the protection of privacy and security of users in browser rooms in Cuba, write them in the comments below.

Archived in Cuba

*Translator’s note: Computers or computer programmes which depend heavily on other computers (their servers) to fulfill their computational roles.

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy, mlk

30 September 2013

A Che Not Printed on Money / Luis Felipe Rojas

I now see how an asthmatic who was too sick to travel became someone who could kill and command his own army of troops. But twenty years would have to pass before I would be able to write such a simple statement. When you are six Februaries old and they force you to bring your hand up to your forehead in a salute and say that you want to be like the Argentinian Rambo… (the good guy), who killed Batista’s henchmen (the bad guys) and wanted all the countries of the third world (?????!!) to be free, then you think, he is not only Rambo, he is Elpidio Valdés.*

The Che I learned about in school made his way through the intricate byways of the Sierra Maestra, teaching his men how to read and use rifles while “slapping around” the knuckle-heads and brown-nosers among his troops. According to textbooks he was the one who captured Santa Clara and organized the army of bearded men who entered Havana in 1959. But then came the other Che, the one introduced to me through books wrapped in newspapers by dissidents in the 1990s. In pamphlets and newspaper articles the other Che (no longer a guerrilla hero) arranged executions at La Cabaña, screwed over Virgilio Piñera and called forth a river a blood in an attempt to overturn capitalism.

Five years ago I saw a photo of a bearded man dirtied from months spent in the jungle. I was with Javier Palacios, the Peruvian nephew of a former guerrilla army leader. The Peruvian man and his family want nothing to do with the icon immortalized by Alberto Korda and his camera. The stories they have heard about him are horrifying. They have buried once and for all the idyll of internationalism manufactured in the offices of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party.

A guy who bullies, curses, walks around all day in a bad mood and years later seizes on several Cuban families (almost all of them peasants) with the story of doing away with imperialism…cannot be a nice guy. A guy who did not sing, did not laugh and did not play a musical instrument cannot be a nice guy. About five years ago a Spanish newspaper published a photo of his corpse lying in a laundry in La Higuera, Bolivia, all the veils fell away. The songs of adulation which had been sung for decades, the sea of ink and even the famous letter of farewell no longer mattered, even if you find out at the end of the story that it was read ahead of time as an order to kill. To Cuban ears it sounds like a settling of scores, like high-spirited taunting. Like saying, “You can go straight to hell.” As the saying goes, “He who lives by the sword…”

*Translator’s note: The hero of an animated television cartoon for children from the 1970s and 1980s who fights in Cuba’s 19th century armed struggles for liberation. 

8 October 2013

Chepe / Luis Cino Alvarez

Oscar Espinosa Chepe in Madrid. Photo courtesy of ABC, Spain
Oscar Espinosa Chepe in Madrid. Photo courtesy of ABC, Spain

HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – I met Oscar Espinosa Chepe in 2002, at the home of the poet and independent journalist Ricardo González Alfonso, an ideal place to establish good and lasting friendships.

Between dreams and fears, we worked on the magazine De Cuba. I remember the first collaboration Chepe sent to us for the magazine was titled “The splendor and decline of sugar in Cuba.” A few months later, Chepe was one of 75 prisoners of the crackdown in the spring of 2003.

In contrast to his articles on economics, which I always thought it was a rather dry and difficult subject, talking to Chepe was very enjoyable. Even when talking about economics. You were never left with any doubts about issue that would be discussed, however complex and how many figures were involved.

Chepe used to refer to episodes from when he was very young, in his hometown of Cienfuegos, when he enlisted in the fight against the Batista dictatorship; or when he dared to contradict the anti-economics nonsense of the Maximum Leader (Fidel), the punishment imposed was to collect bat guano in a cave, where he contracted an infection that almost cost him his life.

It was there that his disenchantments with the Revolution began, a Revolution for which he had once been willing to lay down his life. But Chepe spoke of his disappointments without rancor. Not even prison could change the character of this noble and generous man. As the poet said, “In the best sense of the word, good.”

But the best was when Chepe told anecdotes about his travels through the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Especially Yugoslavia. Thanks to Chepe and his wife Miriam Leiva, deeply knowledgeable on the subject, I was able to understand, beyond the self-interested manipulations in the newspaper Granma, the intricacies of the conflicts between Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Kosovars and the disintegration of that prison of nations artificially created by Marshal Tito.

It gives me pleasure to evoke Chepe, friendly, a good conversationalist, lover of dogs and the music of Sinatra, in the room crowded with books in his tiny apartment in Playa. I’ll always remember him like that.

By Luis Cino Alvarez, luicino2012@gmail.com

From Cubanet

23 September 2013

Another Birthday for Malcom / Luis Felipe Rojas

Today is Malcom’s birthday and we went to a nearby bank to change the coins and notes that he and Brenda had been saving for a while in a glass container. It’s not a “knob” (jar) as we say in Cuba. Or it is but with an electronic lock that allows it to count the savings. It’s like a miniature bank. In the bank we are tax-free, but they don’t change it, that dependence has ceased to be.

They do it at a supermarket, and I feel strange writing these words new for me. Malcom and the girl who smilingly helps him complete the transaction. I’m left out for the first time. Malcom receives an envelope with the amount accumulated.

This is a different Malcom-birthday. We even go to an Office Max because he’s going nuts for a Tablet (the cheap one, eh?) and we’re going to buy it. The clerk settles me in the line and two ladies clutch their purses between their arms and hips. A boy fidgets for a bit until Malcom comes and they talk. He has come for his iPad.

The clerk asks me for my ID and related things. Surprisingly, I don’t have to participate in the transaction because the almost teenage clerk and my barely 10-year-old son understand each other wonderfully and my inadequate English would only get in the way of this just created relationship. They’ve become pals in the store (so to speak), the girl wishes a long life (to the device) and that the boy will enjoy it.

We have a new lodger. We don’t talk for two hours because it’s hard, today, to pull him away from the wonder.

23 September 2013

Novel by Imprisoned Cuban Writer Wins Prize / Luis Felipe Rojas

 C218162E-DBBC-40CA-BC59-CE6E82DB56BB_w640_r1_s“He deserves it twice over, for suffering an unjust imprisonment for his gifts, as status as a narrator,” said the writer Jorge Olivera Castillo in celebration of the news that his colleague Angel Santiesteban-Prats received the Franz Kafka Novels From the Drawer International Prize, awarded to censored writers by the Czech Republic.

The Summer When God Was Sleeping, focused on Cuban rafters trying to escape the country, is the winning work and will be presented this Friday in Berlin at the Cervantes Institute in the German capital

At the event José Manuel Prieto, Jorge Luis Arzola and Amir Valle, Cuban writers in exile, will take part in a discussion moderated by the German editor Michi Strausfeld, where they will talk about issues of Freedom and Creation in Cuba.

The Franz Kafka Novels From the Drawer International Prize was first awarded in 2008 in the city of Prague to the writer Orlando Freire Cuban writer Santana for his novel The Blood of Freedom, and its name “Novels from the Drawer” is from the need to promote those authors that are censored by the authorities.

Olivera Castillo, former Cuban television editor and author of several books of short stories and poetry, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the Black Spring of 2003, believes that Santiesteban’s award shows “his caliber as a writer.”

Santiesteban-Prats is serving five years in prison after a trial full of irregularities which has been denounced by his colleagues and several independent media within the island, as well as relevant international organizations.

His literary work won important awards from Cuban institutions such as the House of the Americas, the Prize of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the “Alejo Carpentier” prize granted by the Cuban Book Institute of the Ministry of Culture, until he decided to publish his blog, The Children Nobody Wanted, openly critical of the situation in Cuba today.

“Previously he won the three main awards for stories, which is something unheard of, for someone who is barely 50 years old,” says Olivera who chairs the Cuba PEN Writers.

Other Cubans writers who have been awarded the Franz Kafka Novels From the Drawer International Prize are Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, for the novel Boring Home; Frank Correa, with The Night is Long; Ernesto Santana, for The Carnival and the Dead; and Amel Hechavarría for Training Days.

The Czech library Forbidden Books Czech, dedicated to documenting the literature of the anti-communist Czechoslovak dissidence, and initially the Independent Libraries of Cuba (Founded by Ramon Colas and Berta Mexidor) are responsible for editing and promoting award-winning books inside and outside Cuba.

12 September 2013

Where is Robertico? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

This is the question many are asking after the events at the “Protestdrome,” where the Cuban musician Roberto Carcassés let loose with good things.

The first thing that happens in these cases is a silence that is scary … the repressed and repressor (for different reasons). Although they haven’t taken physical measures, Robertico knows what the tools of torture are. They’ve just told him that he would not be performing any more for a while. But he knows with what pliers they’ll tie his jaw shut, what is the substance they smear on you so you stink for a thousand miles and not even some of your colleagues in your own band will come by the house.

It happened recently to the painter Pedro Pablo Oliva, it has happened to a lesser or greater extent to Pablo Milanes, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, Ana Luisa Rubio, Rafael Alcides and Antonio José Ponte. Maria Elena Cruz Varela and Carilda Oliver fared no better; Antón Arrufat, Fausto Canel, Marcos Miranda, Cundo Bermúdez and Reinaldo Arenas lived a hell of  full of thorns when in their way they also said, like Robertico: “I want / remember that I always want.”

There is a big distance between the poems for which José Mario went to labor camps and this timba-with-swing where it seemed the leader of the Interactive musical group was going to dedicate it to the 4 remaining spies imprisoned in the United States … or five because Ana Belen Montes is imprisoned due to the inexperience of Castro’s intelligence apparatus.

This time it is not a documentary like PM, a magazine like Diaspora, the  troubadour intimacy of Pedro Luis Ferrer or the rawness of Lichi Diego, informing against himself (and the family, partners and all the rest divided). The last straw came under the Mount of Flags (hehehehehe, so great that) with the United States Interest Section in the background, presided over by the freed spy and the story of the yellow strips. Fiesta and dance, the best of the Communist youth danced and shouted against President Obama and the killjoy Robertico was seen with the tight note, the peg leg, the red flag, the witchcraft and the creole tripe.

A few weeks ago the poet Rafael Vilches was expelled from a cultural institution for joining up with the disaffected with the government. Angel Santiesteban receives a prize for a novel in prison, the PEN Writers in Cuba continues to operate even though squeezed into Johny Feble’s house, and Alina Guzman Tamayo continues offering some really good performances from Alamar, without the help of anyone, according to what I’ve been told.

Robertico will appear and those of us who love the irredeemably crazy music that he makes with Interactive (or without the partners) will sing: “I want / remember I always want.”

16 September 2013