AUTHORS – Page 732 – Translating Cuba

“I Live Happy Because I Live Without Fear” / 14ymedio, El Sexto

Map of the 4H Company in prison hand drawn by Danilo Maldonado, ‘El Sexto’

El Sexto tells of his incarceration in the Valle Grande prison

14YMEDIO, Havana, 28 January 2015 — Danilo Maldonado, the graffiti artist known as El Sexto, finished a month in prison this January 25. He was arrested while riding in a taxi whose trunk was carrying two live pigs. The animals were painted green and each bore a name written on his side. On one could be read Fidel and on the other, Raul.

The artist’s intention was to release them in Central Park in order to recreate a rural tradition in which one tries to catch pigs with the added difficulty that their bodies are smeared with grease. His frustrated performance art was entitled Animal Farm, in Memoriam.

The light blue Lada that was transporting him was intercepted by three Revolutionary National Police patrol cars. The agents took away the identity cards of Danilo and the vehicle’s driver and took them to the Infanta and Manglar Station. Two days later, they transferred the artist to the Zapata and C unit where a prosecutor told him that he would be taken to trial. He stayed in those dungeons seven days until he was transferred to the central police station of Vivac de Calabazar, where he spent another seven days.

It happened that Vivac was the destination for dozens of arrestees accused of trying to participate in the performance announced by performance artist Tania Bruguera in the Plaza of the Revolution last December 30, which was interpreted by authorities as a counter-revolutionary provocation. Some of those arrested, who learned of his presence at the place, shouted, among other slogans, “Freedom for El Sexto.”

From the Valle Grande prison, where he is now, Danilo has sent us some jail anecdotes and a couple of drawings.

The Tank

When I arrived at Valle Grande they took blood samples for the lab, shaved my head and beard. They also photographed me. During my stay in Vivac, they had diagnosed me with pneumonia, for which reason I was carrying antibiotics with me, but they took them from me and have not seen fit to return them to me so far, nor has a doctor listened to my chest to find out if I am the same, better or worse than when I arrived here. To make matters worse, I am surrounded by smokers who do not care at all that I am sick and asthmatic. continue reading

I am in Company Four. They call this place “the tank,” and there are all kinds of people. I met four dissidents from Alturas de la Lisa. Yorlay Perez, Yusel Perez, Santiago Perez and Hanoy.

Fidelito

One day a boy came into the tank who said he knew me from the park and that he followed my work on the streets. This swarthy young man of small stature surprised me when he took off his pullover revealing on his back a tattoo of the face of Fidel Castro. I explained to him that I am an opponent of the Castro regime and that the gentleman he wore engraved on his skin was the one responsible for me being a prisoner.

He responded that he had no family and that he was a “son of the fatherland,” for which reason Fidel had given him a home, and that was not happening anywhere else in the world. I told him that was true, that if he had been born in another country no one would have given him a home, but maybe he could have sought it for himself and that really he owed nothing to Fidel. I told him of the case of Amaury Pacheco, who with a family of six children was harassed into an eviction from an abandoned house in the Alamar suburb, where they had gone so far as to refuse him water and electric service.

Later I found out through another boy, whom I met in Vedado, that it was said that he was with State Security and that he always had a pistol under his shirt. His acquaintances nicknamed him the Hoarse One, but I called him Fidelito.

This son of the fatherland was prisoner for falsification of documents, something he had done in order to leave the country. In a single night he tried to hang himself twice.

Yusel, the Opponent

In one of the constant inspections that they carry out here, a major and a second lieutenant thought that the fingernails of one prisoner were too long and that he had to cut them. He explained that he had no nail clippers, much less scissors. The major took a knife from his belt and threatened to cut his nails by force. The boy resisted and then the major told him that he had to bite them off.

When they passed by the place where the opponent Yusel was, they noticed that he wore a white bracelet with the word Change on one of his wrists. As he did not obey the order to take it off, they forcibly snatched it from him. Then Yusel started yelling, “Down with the Castros, down with the dictatorship.” The second lieutenant cornered him against a bed to beat him but the rest of the prisoners got in the middle and prevented it. Things got hot but did not go further because the major started screaming that they were not going to beat him. Only then did the prisoners relax. Yusel was in a punishment cell for four days, but they did not beat him.

‘The Cigar’ that urinates

The Cigar arrived without a noise. Strong, tall, he must be between 60 and 70 years old, and he does not sleep. He said that he was a prisoner because he had threatened with a screwdriver some teens who were throwing a ball against the wall of his house. No one got close to him because he did not bathe. One day he urinated in the middle of the hallway, which was understood as “blackmail” for the other prisoners who would have to clean his filth. When they demanded that he wipe up that puddle, he said that he would do it with his clothes but they did not let him because that would mean enduring an even greater stench from him. We understood that he was going crazy the day that they read out loud the cards where our names and crimes appear. Then we learned his case: child sexual abuse.

To my Facebook friends and blog readers

I want to tell you that I really miss finding out about your trips and other events that are reflected in your accounts. I would also like to thank everyone who supported my cause and confess that none of my crazy things would have been possible if I had not known that I was not alone and that I count on the support of many of you. It is possible to fill hearts with hope. Evil will never overpower good. Retrograde minds will never overcome free minds. Violence will never overcome art and reason. Death will never overcome life and love.

I am going through an ordeal that has only been the legitimization of a good work and the confirmation of an iron dictatorship, which must be combatted with wit and cunning.

Believe me, sometimes I laugh alone in this dark place of 18 by 100 feet with 37 triple bunks, that is to say between 118 and 190 people plus those who sleep on the floor. I laugh even though the toilets are stuck next to each other without any privacy. I live happy because I live without fear and, although they persecute and harass my family, they will never manage to make a dent in my creativity. This time I believe they have been ridiculed like never before by anyone. Although they kept the pigs from getting to Central Park, all of us who have an imagination can see them running with their names engraved and people behind them like a true Animal Farm.

Ha, ha, ha. Hugs to all, and I wait to be able to read you.

Danilo Maldonado Machado

Translated by MLK

The spy who never wanted to be one / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

The unusual story of ‘Granma’ journalist sentenced to 14 years in prison

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Santiago de Cuba, 27 January 2015 — Just outside the building, a ditch carries sewage down the street. Several children jump from side to side of the stinking canal which later runs through Micro 7, a neighborhood in the José Martí district of Santiago de Cuba. For a few years now the neighbors have pointed to number 9 on one rough block and said, “That’s where the Granma newspaper journalist lives.” Today the family bears the stigma of a journalist who is in prison, where he is serving a sentence for espionage.

The steps are rough and uneven. At the top improvised bars cover the door to the house. I knocked for long minutes, but no one answered. Mayda Mercedes, José Antonio “Tony” Torres’s wife, only received me another day, with a certain tremor in her voice while looking up and down the street. There I managed, for the first time, to see the court ruling that twisted the fate of this man, as a bolero says, “like a weak tin rod.” continue reading

The official government reporter never imagined that on his 45^th birthday he would be behind bars. After graduating as a journalist in 1990, he’d known nothing but success in his career. He served as deputy director for Tele Turquino, correspondent for the National Information Agency, for the National News, and later for the newspaper Granma. He was a sports commentator, secretary general of the Communist Party’s Santiago de Cuba Correspondents unit, and his work was even praised by Raul Castro. Everything pointed to rising to professional heights closer to power and to better remuneration.

All this ended, however, on 8 February 2011, when they arrested him and – after three months in State Security’s Villa Marista prison and transfers to other prisons and exhausting interrogations – a court sentenced him to 14 years in prison for the crime of espionage. In the file of Case No. 2 of 2011, it says he is accused of having written a letter to Michael Parmly, who was then the head of the United States Interests Section in Havana (USIS). The document also states that the accused wanted “to get a personal interview with this person to provide him (…) sensitive information (…) that could endanger national security.”

Tony says that the idea of writing this letter was the child of spite. His wife had been a victim of injustice at work and, according to the journalist, he decided to get revenge on the authorities. A revenge that consisted of pretending to have secret data that would destabilize the Cuban government. His defense attorney said later that there was “no real danger to State Security,” and Torres confessed that he “made everything up.”

A scaffolding of lies that ended up falling on him, because the crime of espionage in the Cuban penal code includes “anticipated completion.” The mere suggestion to a foreign state of sensitive information carries a sentence.

From late 2005 until January 2007, he wrote a long text on a neighbor’s computer in which he claimed to have sensitive information about “the Elián González case (…), classified materials of a military character (…), information about government corruption (…), scandals in the ranks of the Communist Party (…), original documents from the five spies (…), defaults on economic contracts with China” and much more. An explosive list of topics, to which he added his own resume as a journalist to give the matter greater credibility.

With a meticulousness unusual in these parts, he also devised a complicated code of passwords and keys that included “half of a moneda nacional one peso note,” that Michael Parmly could only complete when the two of them were face-to-face. A postcard of the Casa de la Musica in Miramar, also cut in half, would reaffirm the identity of each party. On the brightly lit scrolling ticker across the top of the US Interests Section building in Havana where headlines and news were displayed, after the receipt of the document the US was to display the code “Michael 2003” if the official accepted Torres’s full proposal, and “Michael 6062” is there was only interest one a part of it.

Reading, today, about this methodical system of alert and verification, it’s hard not to smile at this apprentice James Bond, who ended up a victim of his own cleverness. But Tony didn’t seem to calculate the seriousness and danger of his actions. So in early 2007 he asked his brother to travel to Havana and put an envelope containing two diskettes with copies of the letter along with the halves of the peso and the postcard, in the Interests Section’s mailbox. The countdown that would end in his disgrace had started to run, but he wouldn’t know it until four years later.

In a cell in Boniato Prison, one of the Cuban prisons with the worst reputation, Torres has nurtured for years now the illusion that some journalist to whom he could tell his story would visit him. He has refused to despair because someone will shed light on his situation. In the middle of last year he added my name to the list of those who could visit him in prison, to personally narrate for me his version of a story that at times seems taken from The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, and at others from The Joke by Milan Kundera.

So far the meeting hasn’t happened. The political police monitored the calls and “accidentally” lost the list with my name on it to visit him this weekend. So, after a long journey, I found myself in Santiago with no opportunities other than to reconstruct the “Torres case” through court documents, the testimonies of those who knew him and the letters that he regularly sends me from prison. A jigsaw puzzle, which at times seems more literary than credible.

Tony is punctilious when he tells his story over the telephone, his job as a reporter shows in every detail. He has tight handwriting that fills pages and pages that he dispatches here, there and everywhere. He soon turned me into a recipient for his desperate writings. Phone calls crossing the Island’s geography ring in my fourteenth floor. “Sometimes I have to buy access to the phone with cigarettes,” he tells me.

The former official spokesperson is now clinging to independent journalism and the opposition like the shipwrecked to a precarious life. He has left behind the opinions expressed in an allegation that he never read before the trial court and in which he claimed that he had requested money for information that he would supply the United States to make them believe he was an agent in the service of a foreign government because “no counterrevolutionary is respected if he doesn’t look for or use the path of that conduit of dollars.”

The rigors of prison later lead him to seek the support of the Patriotic Union of Cuba and its leader, Jose Daniel Ferrer. His disappointment in the system of which he was a part has also been felt in his writings. In the middle of last year, in one of his letters, he described the Cuban people as “wounded by the disappointment, with their patience exhausted, sick and tired of scarcities, badly fed, with a ton of postponed demands, crammed into the eternal limbo of unkept promises.

Last week, his despair led him to write a letter to Barack Obama and another to Pope Francis, asking them for help

Last week, his despair led him to write a letter to Barack Obama and another to Pope Francis, asking them for help. The letters have already begun their journeys to their destinations, but this time they do not carry keys nor currency cut in half. The prisoner hopes, at least, to see his name on the list of political prisoners of conscience, which several groups among the Cuban dissidence have drawn up. However, his case “is difficult to defend,” say several human rights activists, while others reproach him for his long official past.

On the morning when they began the release of the activists derived from the secret talks between Washington and Havana, my phone rang early. “Do you know about the releases,” inquired the pompous voice of a television announcer. I took a deep breath, and provoked him, “They are going to release a spy who served the United States for years, but it’s not you… it will be Rolando Sarraff Trujillo.” His scathing laugh barely let me finish the sentence.

Ironically, when José Antonio Torres demands to be considered innocent and not to be classified as an American intelligence agent, he is also distancing himself from the possibility of being included in a spy swap. His main argument in defending himself, and with which he demands justice, could also be the greatest challenge to achieving his release in the near term.

While I was knocking and waiting for Mayda Mercedes to open the door, a neighbor climbed the stairs carrying a bucket of water. She walked carefully and slowly, as if she was carrying a newborn in her hands. In July 2010, Torres had written an extensive report for the newspaper Granma where he denounced the irregularities, the “negligence” and the “bad job” being done on the repair work of Santiago de Cuba’s aqueduct. The city was full of holes and broken streets, but the delivery of water still hadn’t stabilized after months of work.

“The gagging is so strict that we have converted a force of pressure into innocuous prisoners of repetition and compromise”

A tagline from Raul Castro was published along with the painstaking report, in which the general affirmed that he “disagreed with some of the focus,” but did “recognize the Santiaguan journalist for his persistence in following the work.” In government journalism circles it is still rumored that it was that article, and not Torres’s masquerade as a spy, that marked the severity of the subsequent conviction against him.

While the world read the article as if it were a signal of information glasnost in Cuba, State Security already had surveillance on the journalist’s house from four different angles. By then, Torres was repenting of his absurd action and believed he would never be discovered. Everything indicates that it was in that moment that the act of revenge conceived by the writer of that missive in the past ran smack into the vengeance of others. The journalist would have no chance to walk out with an acquittal.

A couple of years later, from prison, Torres would analyze the official press with the self-criticism that has been part of an artifice for a long time. “In this country (…) the press doesn’t know, nor do its duty. The gagging is so strict that we have converted a force of pressure into innocuous prisoners of repetition and compromise,” he wrote in a letter that managed to make it out of Boniato, when his hopes for release were at their lowest.

Antonio Torres's diploma in journalism — Antonio Torres’s diploma in journalism

The arrest occurred on a February morning. His youngest daughter was crying while they conducted a thorough search of the house. They took video cassettes, notepads filled with his precise handwriting, eight sheets detailing the work on the Santiago de Cuba aqueduct, a work notebook on the balance of the public health sector, weather reports, documents with ideas delivered to the military sectors during Bastion 2004, photocopies of letters from the spy Antonio Guerrero to his son, two letters from Torres to Raul Castro, among other materials.

His belongings didn’t exceed what any journalist would have in his files. None of the data collected by the court points to his possessing “State secrets.” According to what was shown, he didn’t even have the letter where he offered his services as an informant. It’s not clear how the letter “appeared” in a garbage can outside USIS and not in the mailbox where Torres’s brother had supposedly placed it. A prosecution witness, an agent from the Specialized System of Protection S.A. (SEPSA), said that he found the envelope there with the diskettes.

He didn’t even have the letter where he offered his services as an informant

Torres tried to base his defense on the inviolability of diplomatic correspondence, but the court focused the accusation on the “sensitive information of interest to the enemy.” Even today, the journalist appeals that his act was only an attempt that would never have transpired if the USIS mailbox was not “under observation by the Cuban intelligence services.” His self-defense does not claim innocence, but poor procedures in obtaining evidence. But the appeal to reassess the sentence was declared “without merit” in late 2012. A bucket of cold water fell on his hopes of seeing a reduced sentence.

In Section 4 of the Boniato prison they call him “The Thermometer.” The prisoners have given him this nickname because he “is always hot” because of the fights between the inmates and the violence that prevails in the place. In the midst of this, a man who talks like a TV anchorman now spends his days. Once, long ago, he narrated the socialist paradise – and the stains that should be eradicated to perfect it – with his voice and his writings.

At night, when the guards turn off the light and call for silence, he places under his mattress the sheets filled with tight handwriting that will later be put in improvised envelopes. On this passion for writing letters from prison, he now hangs all his hopes of being set free.

Obama and Castro Are Playing in Different Leagues / Ivan Garcia

Events are moving quickly. At least that is what Nivaldo, a private taxi driver who owns an outdated Moskovich car from the Soviet era, thinks. “Don’t slam the door or it will come loose,” he tells the passengers he drives from Playa to Brotherhood Park in the heart of Havana.

Nivaldo and a large segment of the Cuban population are trying to follow the latest news on emigration and the negotiations taking place in Havana’s main convention center.

“This (the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States) has been tremendous,” he says. “Before December 17 the United States was the evil empire and the cause of every malady afflicting the country. The first thing to change was the tone of news coverage. It’s a healthy development that two women are leading the negotiations. Political machismo has caused a lot of harm in Cuba. People are tired of all the testosterone and the testicle-driven rhetoric.” continue reading

Nivaldo continues talking as he stops to pick up a passenger. “I don’t know if this new situation will bring immediate improvements in the lives of average Cubans or not. I hope so. I work twelve to fourteen hours a day to support my family and save money to celebrate my daughter’s fifteenth birthday. If things change, maybe I can get rid of this jalopy and buy a new Ford. The question that many on the street are asking is how and in what way will the government implement a series of measures that benefit people,” he says as he raises the radio volume to hear the evening news.

Average Cubans are following events with excessive expectations while some express a die-hard optimism.

Rogelio, an umbrella repairman, is eating a hamburger at a McDonald’s with long lines. “When the embargo is lifted,” he says, “stores will be well-stocked with quality merchandise. I hope the government allows direct imports by the self-employed and the banking system offers more generous credit terms. Stores will allow customers to pay in installments like in any modern society.”

Others are more cautious. “Yes, it’s all well and good to be able to buy rice, chicken and smart phones from the United States, but by necessity the Cuban system must change. There is too much centralization and control, which stifles the economic independence of small private businesses. Then there are the issues of low salaries and the dual currency. How much will the average citizen be able to pay for a home internet connection or an American-made computer?” asks Rosario, an automated systems engineer.

A large segment of the Cuban dissident community considers the strategy adopted by President Obama to be misguided.

At a 2:00 PM press conference announcement on January 23, the prominent opposition figure Antonio Rodiles and a sizable group of dissidents express disapproval of the White House’s recent moves. “I would like to know where they are getting their information,” he says. “I am afraid they have become disoriented. They are betting on a continuation of the Castro regime and are concerned with national security.

“They have undertaken these negotiations without input from the island’s opposition. I don’t see why a regime with a history of political rights violations should change. Obama has given up a lot and gotten very little in return. If the international community does not insist that Cuba ratify United Nation Human Rights Conventions, there will be no change in the status quo. This will translate into the arrests of activists and some opposition figures could end up back in prison.”

There are notable differences in outlook between dissidents and ordinary Cubans. The average person on the street thinks it was time to bring an end to the ongoing political chess game between the two countries.

Cuban citizens believe the new direction in U.S. foreign policy makes perfect sense and pokes through the tired pretexts used by the country’s military overlords to justify the economic catastrophe and ideological madhouse they created fifty-six years ago.

But there is one thing that “black coffee” Cubans and some members of the opposition have in common: each is looking out for its own interests. And the regime knows this. It hopes to perpetuate the system by changing its methods.

President Barack Obama and General Raul Castro are clearly playing in different leagues.

Ivan Garcia

Cartoon from El Legarto Verde.

24 January 2015

And the Conceptualization…? / Reinaldo Escobar

Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 27 January 2014 – It’s been three years since the Communist Party of Cuba’s First National Conference. As can be expected, few are the people, including a great part of that organization’s own militants, who remember what was agreed to at that meeting and, to an even lesser extent, which of the adopted accords remain unimplemented. But, who cares?

The “Work Objectives” approved by the Conference, point 62 of Chapter II, titled “Ideological and Political Work,” outlines the need to “work especially on the conceptualization of the theoretical fundamentals of the Cuban economic model.” Eight months prior to that Conference, the Communist Party of Cuba’s Sixth Congress had revealed the Guidelines (Lineamientos) that would govern the country’s economic and social policies. All pointed to the fact that, since conceptualization could not be the source of inspiration for the Guidelines, it could at least be its after-the-fact theoretical justification.

However, the task of theorizing seems to be more complex than the practical application or, to say it in official jargon, “the implementation” of the Guidelines, which have a structure led by Mr. Marino Murillo, Minister of the Economy. Who is responsible for the conceptualization? What entity is committed to undertake it? No one knows. continue reading

The term “update” has been chosen to define what, in less official settings, is referred to as “reforms” to the Cuban economic model. The genesis of said model was designed based on those economic theses which, in 1975, during the First Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, put in practice the so-called Economic Direction and Planning System. But, that framework collapsed when in 1986 the comandante unleashed the Process of Rectification of Errors and Negative Tendencies. All that has come since then has been a chain of improvisations filled with patches intended to find momentary solutions — to keep “resolving.” Today, when speaking of “updating,” no one explains clearly what has aged or where the novelties have come from. That would be the task of conceptualization!

Today, when speaking of “updating”, no one explains clearly what has aged or where the novelties have come from

The first condition needed to achieve this mission impossible of conceptualizing what has been outlined by the Guidelines would be that the formulations bear some coherence to the principles of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine or, at the very least, with one of the vague statements made by the historic leader. Not even Cantinflas would be able to do it. Unless, of course, some enlightened graduate of the Ñico López National School of the Party has found the keys to the new revelation. But the evolution of our reality demands another kind of theoretical orchestration. To appeal to the conceptual tools that lie at the origin of our problems cannot result in the emergence of solutions. That would be like trying to uphold geocentric principles using string theory or explaining Cuban “Bufo” Theater with the Stanislavski System.

We’re a little over a year away from the Communist Party of Cuba’s Seventh Congress. If only as an elemental formality, the conceptualization should be presentable before that event, so that it may be discussed and approved. But, who cares?

Translated by Fernando Fornaris

The Betrayal of Humboldt 7 or the Legal Art of Looting

Humboldt 7* in Havana, Cuba.

Christmas is a tradition which goes beyond the limits of the Catholic religion. Before the birth of Christ, the Incas used to celebrate the 25th December as their Cápac Raymi (a religious prehispanic celebration in honour of the sun); and also the ancient Romans, with their Natalia Solis Invicti or, “The birth of the unconquerable sun”.

There is agreement between various cultures; it is a celebration of family joining together and happiness. But, this Christmas not everybody received the gift of happiness. My friend, Osvaldo Fructuoso Rodríguez, (son of one of those young people who accompanied José Antonio Echevarría on March 13, 1957 in the attacks on Radio Reloj and the Presidential Palace) had his application to visit his sick mother in Havana turned down by the Cuban authorities.

What was the reason, or caprice, which justified some nobody in denying the legitimate right possessed by Cubans to travel to our country? continue reading

Some say that he is not allowed to enter because, in effect, Osvaldo took part in the organisation of the dramatic and almost incredible escape of Alina Fernández Revuelta, daughter of Fidel Castro, in 1993. Others consider that Fructuoso Rodríguez Jr. is simply paying for having close and affectionate ties to the deceased General José Abrantes Fernández, ex Minister of the Interior, who was for years a staunch enemy of the current leader, Raúl Castro.

And obviously, those who like over-hyping things associate the unjustifiable refusal with an article entitled “Humbolt 7 and the man who betrayed my father”,
written by Osvaldo Fructuoso in April 2007, in which he questions certain people linked to the upper echelons of the Cuban military.

I don’t personally share any of these arguments. I don’t believe they are confused; but they are only following an incorrect line of reasoning, since, on the one hand, the ex Minister of MININT died, was killed, or left to die, in January ’91; and Fidel’s rebellious daughter today travels regularly to Havana without being bothered by anyone.

As far as I am concerned, this travel permit refusal has less to do with the past than the present, and with a phenomenon which is growing in dark corners of Cuban society.

The word “theft” is an important noun in the national sound effects, and the Cuban leaders, experts in the art of looting, achieve the loudest notes in a network which functions with the precision of a top of the range Swiss watch, and with the complicity of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security, the Ministry of Justice and other institutions.

The business deals with finding people, preferably elderly, and with no family in the country, who are sick or with some kind of mental incapacity. With the help of social workers, hospitals, nursing homes and CDRs, they register them and convert them into targets.

The intention is to take control of the lives of these defenceless and unprotected individuals and rob them of all their possessions, with the support of the law. After identifying them, a select group of lawyers enter into this mean little game with the strategic mission of disinheriting the heirs, altering, changing or falsifying wills, powers of attorney and guardianships, in order to totally sever any legal link between the victims and their families.

This happens every day all over Cuba, and we need to take notice. Sra Marta Jiménez (mother of Osvaldo) is one more victim; alone, with a house in Nuevo Vedado, a house in Varadero, and a significant art collection, which, as you can imagine, featuring among others some important work of the vanguardista painter Servando Cabrera Moreno, became extremely valuable.

The ideological glasses get misted up, this is a major crime, committed in the murky environment of government power where money cannot be tracked and the illegal is made legal.

*Translator’s note: Humbolt 7 refers to a massacre which took place in April 1957 when the National Police killed certain revolutionaries who had survived a failed earlier attack on Batista’s palace as well as the taking of a radio station.)

Translated by GH

6 January 2015

The New Scenario / 14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar

Roberta Jacobson at a press conference at the residence of the head of the US Interests Section in Havana (Luz Escobar)

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, 23 January 2015 – The possibility that some day the dispute between Cuba and the United States would ever be solved, the discussion about how to accomplish it having been successively postponed, seemed so remote.

If we were to identify in a simple form the background of the disagreement between both contenders, we would have to say that it can all be reduced to the intention of the Cuban government to implant a socialist regime with a single party and without private property, in the face of the geopolitical will of the United States to maintain in the region a homogenous system of representative democracy and market economy.

The fact that Cuba became the first socialist country in the Western hemisphere sustained the dream of Nikita Khruschev to some day see the hammer and sickle flag waving over the Capitol in Washington. Perceived from afar, the problem qualified as one element of the contradictions of the Cold War. continue reading

But, observed from within, the conflict could not be reduced to a brawl between Cubans and Americans replicating the East-West conflict, rather it starred Cubans with different ways of thinking. The imposition of the Marxist ideology provoked an internal schism in Cuban society and in the Cuban family. Under the guise of a growing class struggle, appeared victims and victimizers, and an enormous quantity of silent witnesses.

To those who proposed to align the Island with the countries of the Socialist Camp, it wasn’t enough to confiscate all American-owned properties, in addition, in less than a decade, they swept away the last vestige of private property. They implanted a ferocious “scientific atheism” and prohibited any political or ideological display that didn’t maintain absolute fidelity to the principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The enemies that process engendered, inside and outside, ended up joining forces. There were armed landings, groups in the mountains, bombings and sabotage. The prisons filled with political prisoners, and the terror of suffering the consequences of dissent brought faked obedience. The great majority of victims of the Revolutionary laws left for exile, while socialism in Cuba continued to produce the dissatisfied.

One fine day, McDonald’s arrived in Moscow before the flag of the proletariat was hoisted in the capital of the empire, and as a consequence, the construction of pure hard socialism on the Island ceased to seem a Utopia to reveal itself as an absurd aberration. A Special Period that nobody dares to put an end to, the uncertainty about whether the leadership is a delirious dying man or a pragmatic conservative, the inability to produce, the insolvency to buy, the lack of an attraction for interested investors, the absence of an understandable definition of the way forward, the total exhaustion of old slogans, a crisis of values never before seen, an unstoppable emigration, the decline and aging of the population, the insecurity that Venezuela will continue its support with energy and financing, and a thousand more reasons, have placed before the Cuban government the need to sit down and talk with its oldest adversary.

These talks have found enthusiastic defenders, enemies and skeptics. These tendencies, with all the imaginable gradations and with greater and lesser visibility, are present in all environments: at different levels of power in the United States, in the apparent unanimity of the Cuban Government, in the exile, in the internal exile and, of course, in the gagged protagonist that is the Cuban people.

The enthusiastic defenders can be localized easily in that group of people on the Island who have as a priority achieving material prosperity and being legitimated as an emerging middle class. In the exile, there are those who would like to invest with guarantees in the innumerable niches that can be opened; from government positions, those who dream of recycling generals into managers; and from the environment of the opposition, the few with the healthy naivety to believe that, as a consequence of dialog, political dissent will be decriminalized and they will soon be seated in parliament after winning the votes of their constituents.

The enemies of the rapprochement are found among the hawks of the U.S. military sector and in that part of the exile that dreams of violently overthrowing the Cuban Government and making them pay with blood for their multiple and unpardonable crimes. They can be seen emerging in the internal opposition among those who suspect that if the government is sitting down to negotiate with the Americans, they will no longer have to talk to them.

They argue that their demands, their just demands, particularly with respect to Human Rights in Cuba, will fade into the background relative to the claims prioritized by the American executive branch. In addition, there is the group of those who aspire to be included in the refugee program, or to be beneficiaries of “help” from the North, and fear that all of this will disappear before the flowers that today adorn the negotiating table wither.

Paradoxically, those in the Island’s power structure who totally reject the reestablishment of relations appear to be at the controls of the repressive bodies; those who would be left without work and, still worse, without privileges, on the day that, by virtue of the presumed dismantling of the exterior harassment, Cuba can no longer be considered besieged and, in consequence, dissidence ceases to be treason. Along with this troop, are the gallant combatants who refuse to abandon their trenches, the ones where they won their medals and merit points that one day served to get a house, a car, a job and even public prestige.

Skeptics lack confidence in anything that some group of anonymous negotiatorss have agreed to in secret. There are abundant reasons to believe that the only thing the American government wants is to regain its hegemony in the region, or that the only purpose of the Cuban ruling elite is to save their heirs. They are everywhere, though they don’t speak up, or do so with due caution.

The issue of the reestablishment of relations, with everything that rests on it, will be an election issue in the campaigns of Republicans and Democrats; it could lead to political purges in the Communist Party, the government and the parliament; it could rearrange alliances in the exile; and delineate with greater precision the divisions in the internal opposition. But it will be a reason for hope in the crowded buses, in the lines for “chicken for fish,” in the private taxis and private restaurants, and among all those who have a relative on the other side.

We Cubans should never find ourselves in this extemporaneous and foreign dilemma. The real problem continues to remain unresolved and it is the dispute between the people and its government.

Neither optimistic enthusiasm nor sterile skepticism is any use, much less the intention to reverse what seems inevitable. The script is written for four hands by those who are already quantifying gains and losses. The only certainty is that there will be a new scenario where new rules will come into force and every actor must rearrange his or her strategies.

Alan GGross / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The Silence of Alan Gross

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

We live not in the civilization of media, but of the mediocre. And from there directly we inhabit the miserable.

Cubans desperately need witnesses to our tragedy. In the absence of politicians on the Island, we pin our hopes on any alternative voice: bloggers, musicians, graffiti artists, performers, etc.

Just recently a supposed North American hostage has been released. Alan Gross completed his role in the democratic-totalitarian theater of legitimization of the Castro dictatorship. He is now free, but he remains stuck in the labyrinth of his lawyers and the six-figure compensation with which they have invited him to recuperate and remain reticent. In the United States, he will not for one moment stop being a true hostage. continue reading

Cubans therefore ask why Alan Gross does not speak to us. Does he not feel shame for his irresponsibility towards our nation? He has not asked for forgiveness–that is, if he were to consider himself guilty. Nor has he accused his olive-green tormentors who, according to him, drove him to the point of suicide and stole five of the possibly fewer years of life he will now enjoy in liberty.

Alan Gross was another of our sterile hopes for drawing attention to the criminal cruelty that hangs over every Cuban. But he has come out–along with his unhinged gaze–determined not to expend even one drop of saliva on the Revolution. He is the “sixth hero”* of this complicit comedy of trade and trickery. And he has no problem with the G-2.

Thus is perpetuated the impunity of the 56-year-old regime imposed upon Cuba by a gerontocracy and by millions of North Americans–and soon, by the “millions” of the North Americans. Except for the Cubans–including the agents of influence and the spies–socialism is loved in America. This is consummate statistics. And the month of muteness of Alan Gross is one of its most sensational symptoms.

Why does he keep silent, and what is he silencing, our USAID contractor in Havana? How was his trial behind closed doors? Was he tortured physically and verbally? What are the repressive buildings like inside, where he was disappeared even from his biography? With whom would Alan Gross speak in Cuba, and what did he know of the world during his time on the scaffold in unreal time? While in Cuba was he threatened with death or the death of his family if he did not cooperate? And, now, in the United States, what is the retaining wall that keeps him betraying us, while saving the very regime that destroyed him?

The meat grinder will not cease even when the Castro regime falls. There is no justice that can withstand such violence and vileness which were inculcated in us, between paternalism and panic. The world will never be as scared of the Castros as we are, their executors who in turn will be executed. Among the people there are too many Alan Grosses.

*Translator’s Note: The five Cuban spies who were serving prison terms in the US and were released in December, 2014, are labeled in Cuban government propaganda as “The Five Heroes.”

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

13 January 2015

2015 Partial Elections: an Old Woman Wearing Rouge / 14ymedio, Miriam Celaya

Billboard for the 2008 parliamentary elections. "Cuba in elections: without masters, without impositions" — Billboard for the 2008 parliamentary elections.
“Cuba in elections: without masters, without impositions”

14ymedio, Miriam Celaya, Havana, 19 January 2015 – Next spring, Cuba will hold the first election process after the announcement of the restoration of relations with the imperialist enemy. Everything indicates that the authorities of the Island are ready to stand the test of what the democratic makeup should look like to create an impression of positive change. For this reason, they are rushing to create their own mechanisms for “approval” with the democratic systems in the region.

If the US President wants to see democratic change in Cuba, the regime’s double-dealers are working on it. After all, the old adage has already stated it: “It is not enough to be Caesar’s wife; it is a must, in addition, to appear so.” Though we Cubans are aware that the innovations brought about by the hand of the same government that curtailed civil liberties are only imitations of those dilapidated and unkempt old buildings in order to prolong their existence, and that, in the popular jargon we refer to as “an old woman wearing rouge.” continue reading

Last January 5^th, the official Cuban press published a call of the State Council to the midterm elections, “as established in the Constitution of the Republic and Law #72 of October 29, 1992” in which delegates to the municipal assemblies of the People’s Power will be “chosen” for a “mandate” of two and a half years, subject to revocation.

The next day, the 17 members of the National Electoral Commission took up their positions and received appropriate accreditation. They must “organize, manage and validate the electoral acts”.

Granma newspaper reported the start of a “political and strengthening process on the 55^th Anniversary of the CDR [Committees for the Defense of the Revolution]”, at the municipal level, as part of which “assemblies at the popular board level” were held on January 8^th, and on the 12^th, they were held “at all zones of the CDR’s.” Such assembly process sought to “improve the functioning of the leadership structures of the CDR” from the grassroots level –on each city-block up to the municipal and zone-specific committees, and at the same time the “conditions of individuals who occupy charges at different levels of management” were evaluated. According to the national CDR coordinator, Carlos Rafael Miranda Martínez, this process ensured, among other objectives, “to help support the election process and the incorporation of young people.”

Election campaigns and political parties are expressly prohibited, but the PCC really runs the election process de facto

The first round of the process will take place on April 19^th, 2015, the second round, “at those constituencies where none of the candidates have obtained more than 50% of the valid votes cast,” on the 26^th.

The current Electoral Law in Cuba states that any citizen can be nominated as a candidate for delegate by a show of hands in the assemblies of each constituency, and subject to popular vote at the polls to exercise that capacity. Election campaigns and political parties are expressly forbidden, so it’s not a requirement that delegates and deputies belong to the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), but the PCC really runs the election process, plus governs the country de facto. Therefore, all levels of government of the popular power are subordinate to the PCC. In fact, party militancy is often a relevant qualification when proposing a candidate for delegate.

In the succinct proposal process, selection of the candidates and voting for the delegates of the electoral districts, all “democratic possibilities” are exhausted. Cubans are deprived of their legal capacity to choose, not just a President to rule the country for a reasonable defined period, but they won’t be able to opt directly for governor of their municipal district, city, or the province where they reside.

The “delegate” thus embodies the living exponent of the beginning and the end of the (popular) citizen power in Cuba. In this way, from the actual implementation of the first revolutionary electoral system, established in 1976, Cubans have strictly voted for a district representative – barely a portion of a neighborhood – whose function is mainly centered on receiving complaints from his constituents and passing down to them the decisions or guidelines emanating from the Municipal Assembly. That’s where the functions and powers of electors and elected at the grassroots level cease.

A possible ban on using the Little Pioneers as agitators often sent by the presidents of polling stations to citizens’ homes to go to the polls

A few days after the decree for partial elections in April 2015, seminars have begun to be taught in the capital to those called “trios” – composed of three individuals, members of the Communist Party, subject to the municipal committee of the PCC – who are responsible for driving and controlling the grassroots electoral process.

At these seminars, the trios are being instructed in the new guidelines that will begin to be applied to Cuban elections, whose main component is the addition of two new figures: the observer and the supervisor. This information has not been published in the official media. Also not published to the seminar attendees is what organizations will be in charge of watching and supervising the elections in order to validate their transparency.

At this point we could only speculate that the Cuban government requested the presence of observers from allied organisms as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) or the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), since Cuba is not a member of the Organization of American States, an institution that has its own mechanisms for such effects. This will allow the Cuban government to evade the direct supervision of those entities more discerning in matters of democracy.

Another detail of these elections will possibly be banning the use of the Little Pioneers (i.e. children) as agitators, who are often sent by the presidents of the polling station to citizens’ homes to get them out to the polls, a practice guided by the directorate of the municipalities of the PCC to each electoral table, which has been in effect since the establishment of the system.

“In these elections, voters will not be able to be pressured to go to the polls so that election stations may close early,” an instructor of a seminar directed a large group of trios at the Centro-Habana municipality. He also made implicit reference to the coercion that has been exerted on the electorate – who sometimes vote as to “not stand out,” so their own will not be harmed, or with lesser knowledgeable sectors who might believe that voting is a mandatory exercise – when he stated that a voter may show up when he decides to do so, and that they should not be pressured into being forced to come out and vote. If 10 show up, then it will end up being 10. Whatever. Nobody is required to vote.”

Translated by Norma Whiting

Yes to Regulation, No to Control / 14ymedio, Henry Constantin

Filmmaker Fernando Pérez during the interview with Henry Constantin

14ymedio, Henry Constantin, Camagüey, 21 January 2015 — I interviewed Fernando Pérez in a small room of that little movie theater is still left in Camagüey one day after the premiere of his latest production, La pared de las palabras (Wall of Words), a stellar film about which I didn’t ask a single question. I decided not to interview the film director and instead question the intellectual, the public figure who contributes more than just his works to the daily life of Cuba.

Fernando Pérez deserves, and can handle, any difficult question one can think of. His films, never boring and with noteworthy depth, reveal a certain level of social nonconformity and demonstrate high cinematographic and intellectual capacities that transform the slim and modest man into a very serious subject. Despite being thoroughly deserving, the cinematographer isn’t inflated with the airs of a great artist or a prominent public figure and treats with kindness both his public and the press. continue reading

I had to ask him a complicated or daring question in the scarce minutes of my interview because there was little I hadn’t heard following his eloquent speeches before the camagüeyano audiences that had welcomed him in various places throughout the day.

Constantin. Following the prohibition of privately owned movie theaters, do you, cinematographers, still include in your proposals for the Cinema Law the independent distribution and showing of films?

Peréz. We’ve advanced a proposal that, of course, includes the distribution, showing, and preservation of our patrimony.

Regarding showings, there are very few venues that meet the requirements of a real movie theater. There are generations of youths that don’t know what a real movie theater is, even in a moment where the ways of showing and distributing films have diversified, for better or for worse. Rescuing the quality of movie theaters is fundamental. I can watch a movie in a smaller screen, on a laptop even, I don’t oppose that, but its true place is in a movie theater, not because it’s dark or because it is projected on a larger screen, it’s because of the energy generated from watching it alongside a live audience. It’s as if you were living within another movie altogether. Our movie theaters have either lost their intended purpose at the expense of other varied activities or, due to decay, have ceased to operate completely.

“Personal initiative would generate better results than having to wait for centralized decisions to be passed down.”

On the other hand, distribution is still centralized within The Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC). We need to debate an editorial policy that is concrete and safe because there are national works – and I’m not talking about the international ones – that are not shown due to an editorial policy that is unclear. That needs to be regulated as well; it can’t be subjected to circumstantial or temporary decisions.

Q. Does your proposed Cinema Law conceive the ICAIC as the sole entity charged with distributing and showing films in Cuba?

A. Not exactly, although we don’t have all the answers, but distributing and showing is an extensive process that depends on a financial framework that we neither manage nor will. But, we are considering and analyzing the possibility of a breakup, a decentralization of many of these activities, where independent initiatives, regulated but not controlled, can generate improvements and also experience a more dynamic growth themselves.

I think that beyond Cuba’s audiovisual industry, having a centralized pyramidal social structure has caused many aspects of our reality to be plagued by processes that delay, that don’t find solutions, that aren’t dynamic, and that are bureaucratized because they depend on centralized decisions that cannot respond to everything. More freedom to operate and act would facilitate personal initiative, and personal initiative would generate better results than having to wait for centralized decisions to be passed down.

This structural relaxation has to somehow be envisioned as part of the system we would like to have. I can’t give you concrete solutions because we are, in fact, debating. We don’t want them to come only from us; we want to explore them with other regulatory entities in our country. Not everything will be feasible immediately.

We feel like that policy is not yet outlined, or like we don’t know where it’s going, or that it’s too centralized, that it starts on a routinely straight line that is very difficult to divert.

“Maybe Tania foresaw that it wouldn’t happen and that was the real performance, none at all.”

Q. From what I’ve seen within your work, you strike me as a person who believes that art can serve to change the world you live in. How do you see the relationship between art and politics?

A. Art needs to relate and mingle with life and also have its own discourse within that relationship, holding the person at the center of it all. While politics delves into the general, art targets the particular. Politics can serve art, by always upholding the freedom of expression that art needs, and art can serve politics, by rendering its reality more complex without becoming propaganda. If art becomes political propaganda, its reach becomes limited.

Q. I asked you that question because I was interested in knowing your opinion regarding Tania Bruguera’s performance and all that occurred around it.

A. Tania Bruguera’s situation has been very, very, very complicated. I think that it is possible that at some point an open microphone can be placed on Revolution Square. What happened was that Tania proposed it at a time when she knew it wasn’t possible. For a performance to have a deliberate result, it needs to account for its possible reach. Maybe Tania foresaw that it wouldn’t happen and that was the real performance, none at all. So, the performance was the whole process, the waves of detentions, censorship… it wasn’t the microphone for people to speak through. That will happen someday, but not now.

Translated by Fernando Fornaris

A Letter to Fidel Castro from ‘A Revolutionary Cuban’ / 14ymedio

Fidel Castro billboard: "Fight against the impossible and win" — Fidel Castro billboard: “Fight against the impossible and win”

Dear Fidel,

I know you’re dead. Despite their attempts to hide it from me, to deny it or to lie about it with false letters bearing your signature, I am convinced of your death.

I don’t believe you capable of abandoning us now, at the moment when we need you most, because that’s not what you have accustomed us to. I can’t imagine you sitting back on your recliner enjoying a good book, listening to music or eating your favorite dishes knowing that the course of this country is changing at a vertigo-provoking speed that we are not used to and that we are now faced with the impossible task of writing a new chapter in our history without a leader. I can’t picture you oblivious or indifferent, absent as if you were roaming on an adrift cruise ship, or wandering some faraway lands, ignoring what happens on this island that gave you life, that gave you glory, and made you universal. I also know that you would never cower like an ostrich or a rat before the dangers that stalk us.

I know that if you were still alive you would be, right now, exhorting us to defy these dangers like you always have. You would be warning us of the threats that, invisible to us, only you are capable of seeing. If you were alive, we would have seen you, filled with emotion, embrace your Cuban Five, your heroes, for whose freedom we rallied behind you in every campaign, march, parade, and act. If you still held on to life, you wouldn’t allow the threat of the empire to fly again over our heads, except this time closely, too closely, and with new arms and combat tactics for which we are unprepared. You wouldn’t allow savage capitalism to return to Cuba nor for those whom we once vanquished by simply throwing eggs at them to come back as proud victors. continue reading

If even a drop of life were to still inhibit your body, you would give your people a dignified goodbye, that people that has supported you in everything: in the liberation war, by cleansing the counter-revolutionary threats that hid in the Escambray Mountains, working the arduous sugarcane zafras, repudiating the “worms”, the “antisocials”, and the “scum,” betting our lives in Angola, Nicaragua, or Venezuela with rifles, notebooks and pencils or white coats, on volunteer work, giving what little we had to others and receiving nothing in exchange, and battling today, defenselessly, your most recent detractors. Right now, it’s your obligation to stand with us and you know it.

You surely haven’t forgotten (I haven’t) your favorite slogans, like “Homeland or Death” and “Socialism or Death”, those that you pronounced at the end of every speech in a firm tone, and that we followed with cries of “We will be victorious” before we applauded you in passionate approval while exclaiming “Long live Fidel” and “Long live the Revolution.” If neither the Homeland nor Socialism interest you any longer, the only logical explanation is that death has won against you in that final battle and we should not be kept in the dark, we should know, if at least out of respect for those that have supported you unconditionally, so that we may grieve you and honor you with a humble but heartfelt tribute.

And if your death not be true, excuse my sincerity Comandante, I’d rather continue thinking you’re dead because it’s simply the best option I have to keep my faith as a Revolutionary.

A Revolutionary Cuban, January 16 2015

3 and 25 p.m.*

*Translator’s Note: Fidel Castro signs his writings with the time expressed in this way.

Translated by Fernando Fornaris

14ymedio, 23 January 2015

“To remain entrenched” / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez

Cuban and US Delegations at the Convention Palace in Havana (kkkk) — Cuban and US Delegations at the Convention Palace in Havana (Fotograma)

14ymedio, VICTOR ARIEL GONZÁLEZ, Havana, 24 January 2015 — We didn’t have to wait too long for an answer. “Yes, we have an enemy” was the title of an opinion article published some days ago by Pinar del Río’s Guerrillero, perhaps in honor to the provincial newspaper’s bellicose name. In any case, this was how the spokesman of the only political party in Cuba’s westernmost province appraised the country’s rapprochement to the United States, which started on December 17: “when the enemy is in your home, he becomes even more dangerous.” continue reading

However, today the Island seems committed to dialogue with the United States regardless of how “dangerous” it might be. On Thursday, a first round of talks regarding the reopening of embassies and “other topics of bilateral interest” took place in Havana. That same day, Granma, the country’s official newspaper, dedicated almost an entire page to an analysis of the current diplomatic process, noting that “diverse are the tendencies that can be observed; from the slightly naïve views of those that think that with it all our problems will be solved, to those that frown upon the recent developments and prefer to remain entrenched.”

Looking back, it turns out that less than two weeks after the local newspaper Guerrillero called for “a new kind of confrontation” with the United States, Granma would publish several lines calling for moderation. That some Cubans prefer “to remain entrenched” does not sound like a positive attitude.

It certainly is not. What’s interesting is that it be recognized as such by a generally intransigent medium like Granma. At risk of seeming infected with the current excessive enthusiasm, I would even say it is a good precedent. Yes, it’s time to be moderates, because this attitude is the only way of negotiating solutions.

Even government officials have recognized certain adverse conditions in Cuba’s quest to resurface undefeated – that is to say without needing to make any concessions – from dialogue with the United States and therefore to remain exactly as we have known it. Among the difficulties are “years of material scarcity, certain weaknesses in the social formation of younger generations, and the loss of some values.” But, the greatest challenge is not a return to a “dependent relationship” with our Northern Neighbor; it is redefining the concept of enmity. And, alongside that, controlling the hope generated by the easing of political tension without seeming a spoilsport.

“There have been and there continue to be deficiencies in the social formation of our children and youths,” says Granma. However, even for those who “are not so young anymore” it seems that “the past no longer exists” and that’s the biggest worry for an ideology that, faced with limited perspective, clings desperately to its past, invoking a disagreement that has lost it followers. In any case, “the reserves of our identity” should save us against those disadvantages.

Both the solitude and fatigue of the Island’s rulers become more tangible with each passing day. The character of the Cuban government has cost it many friends; but currently, as dialogues with the United States unfold, it seems that the regime will also lose its most valuable enemy, the wild card it used to excuse its – many – failures. To remain entrenched is the instinctive response of those who are afraid, even of their own shadows.

Translated by Fernando Fornaris

Angelito Santiesteban Does Not Believe Himself the Center of the World / Luis Felipe Rojas

Graphic: Sonia Garro Alfonso, recently freed Lady in White. Collage over a piece by Rolando Pulido.

The writer and blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats, from the prison where he is serving an unjust sentence, just published–thanks to the help of a friend on Facebook–a brief post expressing his thoughts about the recent releases of political prisoners. As always, Angelito is filled with Light and strength. May my embrace reach him though the faithful reproduction of his text.

Ángel’s post:

I have received the expressions of pain from many friends, my publisher, and my relatives–some stupefied, others offended–over my exclusion from the list of prisoners recently released by the Cuban government.

Upon completing almost two years of unjust imprisonment, I can assure everyone that never have I asked the correctional authories or, even less, the officials from State Security who have visited me, when I will be released. I will never give them that satisfaction, just as I have never inquired whether I will be given the pass* which is granted to all “minimum severity” prisoners like me, who am sentenced to five years. continue reading

Nonetheless, although I know that I am not on the noted list, my joy is infinite at knowing that those who were on it are now free. My suffering is universal. I feel all Cubans to be an extension of me, or vice versa, above all those who have suffered and do suffer for an ideal–and in particular that of freedom for our country.

I also believe that the list that so gladdened me was missing the names of other political prisoners who deserved to have been added. There will always be some who are excluded because government’s sleight-of-hand is very swift and, when it already has one list compiled, it as another of recently-apprehended inmates.

It is unfair to think that they should have taken one name off to insert another. Rather, they should have added to the list, because those who were freed deserved it, just as do those who still remain in the totalitarian regime’s jails–some shut away and subjected to inhumane treatment for many years, for whose imminent freedom I pray.

By the same token, and referring again to the recycling of political prisoners, we must now clamor for the immediate absolution and liberation of El Sexto, Danilo Maldonado, whom they keep in the Valle Grande prison for a crime of “disrespect to the images of the leaders.” This is a further proof of how jealously they hold on to their power, and of what they are ready and able to do to safeguard it. Power and its dictators are untouchable, and to live is to see it.

I will not live long enough to infinitely thank those who clamor for my release, and those who suffer because of my imprisonment, but we must clamor for all–just as my publisher entreats on the blog, “The Children That Nobody Wanted,” and my family through social media. At the least, may I be last on the list, as I will complain no more.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

January, 2014. Jaimanitas Border Patrol Prison Unit, Havana.

*Translator’s note: In an earlier post Ángel explained the Cuban penal system that allows prisoners with shorter sentences to leave prison every so many days for extended (overnight) home visits. He was granted one of these passes when he was in the Lawton Settlement, a work camp, but future passes were withheld.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

22 January 2015

“It is up to Cubans decide their future” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, 24 January 2015 — In October of 2013 I had a conversation with Roberta Jacobson, via a Google hangout (videodebate), on democracy, technology and the role of women in activism. On that occasion, we interacted through a screen in the company of internauts interested in our chat. Now, we talked with a few inches between us, in a visit of the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs made to our independent daily, 14ymedio, in Havana.

Proximity has allowed me to confirm what I had already felt in our previous conversation, that this loquacious woman with an attentive gaze has a profound knowledge of the Cuban reality. It is no wonder that she has led the first round of conversations between Cuba and the United States after the December 17th announcement about the reestablishment of relations between both countries.

Several members of our editorial board along with some collaborators met with Jacobson on the 14^th floor of the Yugoslav-style building where our headquarters are located. Following is a transcript of a conversation, where we tried to address a wide spectrum of topics.

Yoani Sánchez: Do we have reason to worry that pragmatism and the politics of rapprochement prevail above all else, and that the issue of human rights and civil liberties will be relegated to the background? continue reading

Jacobson: The goals of our policy are exactly the same as before. It focuses on achieving a free country, where Cubans have the right to decide their future. The most important thing is how to get to that point, and we are aware that we have not been successful with the previous strategy. So we’re trying to use a new policy of having diplomatic relations because we – and especially President Obama and Secretary Kerry – feel that it is important to have direct contact with the government.

The most important thing is how we can empower the Cuban people in a more effective way and offer you more telecommunications opportunities to modernize your computer systems, to have access to information and to be part of the connected “global village.” It is a complex process, that is going to take time, but we are not going to set aside the issue of human rights and of democracy because they are in the center of this new policy as well.

Reinaldo Escobar: The Cuban government has so far only put on the negotiating scale the release of 53 people – and I emphasis “release” because they are not liberations, because the majority have only been placed on parole. Can we expect new releases derived from these conversations?

Jacobson: That was part of the conversation where we showed an interest in several people in Cuba. What was agreed in this process was the exchange between intelligence agents, one who has traveled to the United States and three who have returned to Cuba. The rest have been policies of each side, gestures, of self interest. We are going to continue implementing policies according to these interests, which we believe support the Cuban people.

Reinaldo Escobar: We have learned that in Cuban prisons some of the prisoners who are on the list of political prisoners but who haven’t yet been released are promoting a hunger strike. Should they have any hope?

Jacobson: I want to say something more: In the discussions of recent days, we have agreed to hold dialogs of many kinds. About cooperation, about the environment, anti-narcotics, etcetera, including the issue of human rights which was proposed by Cuba last year and which has now been accepted by us.

We have different conceptions of this dialog and participating for us will be the experts on those issues, but we have said several times that we have never thought that after more than fifty years of this problem, it would be resolved overnight. We know that there are more people in the prisons and there are more elsewhere fighting for their rights.

Eliezer Ávila: Some media have shown that in these conversations the formula is human rights versus economics. However, I understand politics as the mechanism for people to live more freely and to live well, so I see no conflict between one subject and another. Do you share that view?

Jacobson: We totally agree that they are, not only complementary, but are essentially linked. We have talked, and we have heard the president, Secretary of State Kerry and Vice President Biden talk, about reaching a democratic, free, secure and prosperous hemisphere.

Those are things that are all linked. How can we talk of a hemisphere that is prosperous, but does not have freedom? Or that has freedom but has nothing to eat? Or where there is plenty to eat and freedom but you can’t walk the streets because of insecurity and other dangers? These are things that are linked, but some are the responsibility of the governments to protect their citizens and to guarantee their fundamental rights, and others have to be met by the citizens themselves, but in a civilized society we have to talk about all these things.

Eliezer Ávila: Hence also the importance of access to telecommunications and information…

Jacobson: Yes, citizens must have access to information not only on issues of freedom and rights, they need access to information for their economic life. It is very important and this is one way in which they can have greater prosperity. So we are in total agreement that the economy and human rights are closely linked. There is no contradiction between them, none at all.

Dagoberto Valdés: From January 21-25, 1998 we had the historic visit of Pope John Paul II to Cuba. For Cubans it was a visit of expectations and yours now is also. What do you think is the role of the Catholic Church as a mediator in the dialogue not only between the governments of Cuba and the United States, but the important dialogue that must take place between civil society and government of Cuba?

Jacobson: First I want to say that the role of Pope Francis and the Vatican was instrumental in our process with the Cuban Government. We know that the Vatican is always important in a process like this, but I would add that this pope is special to this region… “We are all Argentines at this moment…” So we appreciate the role of the Church.

In the future, I think the role of the Church in Rome as well as the Church in Cuba will be very important. I had a conversation with the Cardinal and there are several initiatives by the Cuban Church in several areas, aimed at changes in economic, educational and other areas. In the Church, as in the field and the media, it is for Cubans to decide, not Americans.

Yoani Sánchez: Thank you for your visit to our editorial offices. We deliver a printed version of 14ymedio with a weekly selection, which we do to circumvent censorship. We hope that one day our newspaper will be on newsstands nationwide.

Roberta Jacobson: Thank you, I have felt very comfortable here, like with family.

New U.S. Measures on Cuba Not Featured in the Island’s Headlines / Ivan Garcia

On December 17 Noemi and her coworkers at the telecommunications company ETECSA were surprised to hear their boss hastily reading “the day’s top news story” to their entire workforce in a tone of voice that was intended to sound solemn.

“Comrades, after the conclusion of agreements with President Obama, three of the five heroic Cuban prisoners unjustly incarcerated by the Empire are today en route back to their homeland. They are returning as was promised by our undefeated Comandante,” he said the business manager, barely taking a breath.

At noon later that day all the employees gathered around an ancient Chinese television to listen to the speech by General Raul Castro and to hear the news about the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States after fifty-four years. continue reading

Although the news conference focused only on the return of the three imprisoned spies, ETESCA employees clandestinely copied onto flash drives online posts outlining the White House’s new direction for U.S. foreign policy, which is intended to help empower Cuba’s emerging civil society and small business sector.

The country’s military rulers reacted with astonishing indifference to Obama’s new strategy and executive actions as they relate to the embargo. The Castros live in a parallel universe.

They are not sure what to do with the ball at their feet. The best thing the Communist Party bureau that controls the news could do was to present a rosy portrait of the three espionage agents.

As the drama was quickly unfolding, it became clear that Obama was taking his landmark decision seriously. On Thursday, January 15 Washington announced a package of measures clearly intended to benefit ordinary people as well as Cuba’s emerging private business sector.

In this instance Noemi and her colleagues had to do their own searches for the information. “At first there was a sense of celebration over the return of the three spies, but not now. It’s not being talked about it. We had to secretly surf the internet and copy news articles that are important to Cubans,” she says during her lunch break.

There were no reports on the story on national radio and television news shows. By 1PM the top headlines were the new denominations of Cuban currency, the preparations for the January 28 torchlight march and, in international news, the annual United Nations’ water conference in Zaragoza, Spain.

Despite the poor media coverage, Osmin, who owns a candy store in the Santos Suarez neighborhood, was commenting on the good news with some clients by 2PM.

“I found out about it from a neighbor who has an illegal cable antenna. It’s unbelievable that the government still has not reported the news. I get the impression they are a bit disoriented, that it has not sunk in yet. These measures open the door to small business being able to secure credit, though it won’t be an option if they don’t authorize it,” he points out.

In a shopping mall at Puentes Grandes and 26th Avenue, four young men with garishly colored headphones around their necks are surfing the web in an internet cafe. Though engrossed in the match between Real Madrid and Atletico match for the Copa del Rey, they had heard the scoop.

“I think it’s great that the Americans have changed course and adopted a new strategy. Now we’ll see what our government has to say. It’s pointless to import information technology and cell phones if the state sells them at unaffordable prices,” says one of the young men.

His comment provokes a small debate. Osvaldo, a doctor who regularly goes online once a week to send emails to his son in Ecuador, thinks the government’s reaction is deceptive.

“The focus has been only on the release of the agents. Everything else, including the measures announced today, evokes more fear than joy. It’s not in tune with the average, ordinary citizen, who is usually optimistic about each new breakthrough. For fifty-four years the government has blamed all it failures on the United States. People need the government to provide its official version of events and outline the strategy it plans to follow,” says the Havana resident.

Josefa, a housewife, heard the news during a phone call from Miami at the time she heard about the birth of her grandson: “I was told they are thinking about revoking the airlines’ licenses. I hope this lowers the cost of a ticket. Flying from Havana to Miami is too expensive: 422 CUC for a flight that lasts less than an hour. To make this happen will require good will from the Cuban side. But I am afraid these people (the regime) are only interested in money and power.”

In a small park in Casino, a neighborhood in the Cerro district twenty-five minutes from central Havana, two friends kill time playing chess. “I heard about it at breakfast,” says one. “The government couldn’t care less about Obama’s policy; they will adopt only what suits them. And, apparently, they want to retain control of the economy, finance and people’s lives. As long as this caste of elders remains in power, nothing will change. The best thing about Obama’s policy is that it unmasks them.”

It remains to be seen whether the new measures adopted by the United States will be able to destroy the Castro regime’s potent blockade of economic autonomy and political freedom for its citizens.

A month after December 17 average Cubans are no longer quite so optimistic.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: A woman wearing clothes featuring the American flag walks through Havana. At one point such actions were prohibited, so Cubans often wore hats, shirts, shorts and leggings with American symbols cautiously. As of December 17, however, they are on open display in streets throughout the island. Source: Terra, EFE.

17 January 2015

The Most Rehearsed Funeral in Cuba / Juan Juan Almeida

So much passion and apathy for “Our Country or Death, We Shall Overcome” has ended up creating a certain inclination toward false patriotism and a funeral mentality. This was in evidence at the end of last week, when yet another widespread rumor of the ex-ruler’s death came to light.

With this new passing, the tagline “Fidel Castro Dies” stands out from other trending topics on social media, triggering a kind of hypnosis, a carousel of emotions. It is like a wistful zombie apocalypse in which fabrication becomes information.

It is not the first time nor will it be the last that rumors swirl around the former Cuban politician. This is why I find the widespread alarm so odd. I had the same exaggerated reaction when I turned twenty-five and had to face the loss of my childhood and my hair. It seems that, rather than wanting to forget, there is a need to preserve this ancient, ubiquitous presence who, because of age and illness, saw fit to withdraw from the scene.

One day he will die, like all human beings. But I doubt it will be on a day when Alejandro Castro Espín, one of his nephews and the most powerful man in Cuba, happens to be strolling through Greece, as was the case in this instance. In fact, the odds are better at winning the lottery. continue reading

As dictated by the protocol, the death will not be announced to journalists at a press conference in the International Press Center (CIP), but through an official statement issued by the Council of State and Ministers of the Republic of Cuba. At a time to be announced, all coverage on national television and radio will be linked, as happened on the night of July 31, 2006.*

It should come as no surprise that the funeral has already been rehearsed (even by the future deceased), which I discussed some time ago. There will be the twenty-one-gun salute, the eulogy, the mournful ceremony, the complete soundtrack with maestro and orchestra. As expected, some will be dressed in black, others in military fatigues. It will also include popular participation, foreign guests and a plan to “safeguard the physical integrity of the nation and preserve order.”

Several official documents indicate that, like Juan Almeida and Raul Castro, Fidel is to be buried at his command post in the Sierra Maestra, out in La Plata, along the foothills of Pico Turquino. But that could all change. I recall on one of my visits to Biran, the birthplace of the Castros, a guide pointing to a nonexistent spot. Like a soothsayer in a trance, he prophesied, “Here, next to those of his mother, will lie the remains of the commander-in-chief.”

I would like to point out that Santa Ifigenia is not an option. Fidel Castro is not about to share it with Jose Marti. And if someone decides to fix up this historic Santiago de Cuba cemetery, it won’t be to bury Fidel Castro but rather because January 28 marks the 162nd anniversary of the birth of Cuba’s “Apostle.”

I do not have a crystal ball and we are living in unusual times but there is also another option yet to be determined and it would be during one of those Sunday family lunches in Rinconada (Raul Castro’s house) in which the future of Cuba is decided.

The Castro family (which embodies the state, the nation and the government) which may decide to give Fidel an intimate funeral and quiet burial. He is no longer head of state, no longer first party secretary, so a low-key death would not be a violation of protocol.

And as in those dark novels that deal with injustice, Fidel Castro might remain the only dead person who never passes away. A thousand prerecorded programs and scripted epitaphs would be erased in one fell swoop. As my grandmother used to say before she began her prayers, reality always trumps fiction.

*Translator’s note: On this date Fidel Castro temporarily transferred the duties of the presidency to his brother Raul as he underwent a surgical procedure.

14 January 2015

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