Charges Laid Against Manual Cuesta Morua / Leonardo Calvo Cardenas

HAVANA, Cuba — On the night of January 30 Manual Cuesta Morúa, spokesperson for the Progressive Arch Party and coordinator of the New Country project, was finally released after several days of arbitrary arrest which was a part of the repressive wave unleashed by the Cuban authorities in relation of the celebration in Havana of the Second Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). Threats, undisguised persecution in the street, dozens of arrests and cases of regime opponents besieged, were all a part of this escalation that reaffirms the panic of the State that derives from the lack of political and moral reason that afflicts the Cuban leaders.

The opposition leader was arrested on a public street on Sunday, January 26, when while touring the city to finalize details for the Forum Parallel to the CELAC Summit, organized by several opposition organizations in coordination with the Center for  Opening and Democracy for Latin America (CADAL), whose director, the Argentine activist Gabriel Salvia, was arrested on the afternoon of Monday 27 at Havana airport and expelled via El Salvador. Cuesta Morúa was transferred to the Fifth Station of the National Revolutionary Police on 7th at A and 62nd in the Havana municipality of Playa.

For several days the Social Democratic leader underwent numerous subsequent interrogations and threats by several top officials of the political police. According to the testimony of Cuesta Morúa, the law enforcement agents were very irritated by his convening and hosting the Forum in parallel to CELAC, and pressured him to abort the call in exchange for his release. continue reading

On Thursday the 30th, the recently released independent lawyer Veizant Boloy — who has been arrested on the afternoon of Monday the 27th — became engrossed in the development of a Habeas Corpus petition which was finally presented at the Provincial Court of Havana at noon by Gloria Llopiz, Cuesta Morúa’s wife.

In the afternoon several leaders and activists appeared at the Fifth Station accompanied by Cuesta Morúa’s mother, with the intention of gathering information, interviewing the detainee, and pressing for his release. After more than four hours of fruitless waiting without being able to see her son, Mrs. Mercedes Morúa was dismissed with the promise of the quick release of the opposition leader.

Opponents gathered outside the police station remained in constant contact with international media and institutions interested in  Cuesta Morúa’s situation, and propelled the global campaign for his release, not believing the false information supplied by the agents of the People’s Revolutionary Police on the alleged release of the detainee.

Before being finally being released in the evening hours, Cuesta Morúa is informed by his captors that he will be criminally prosecuted in Case No. 5 of 2014 for the alleged crime of “dissemination of false news against international peace,” under the weak argument of several articles and texts published by the opposition on racial and academic problems in Cuba, which, according to the official, distort the Cuban reality and “the work” of the Revolution in support of racial equality.

A precautionary measure was imposed requiring Cuesta Morúa to report his  presence each week at the same police station where he spent several days under arrest, which by the way will prevent his meeting various political and academic commitments abroad. This is an unfortunate consequence of this new judicial arbitrariness, in fact unsustainable by the weakness of charging arguments which fall apart before the Cuban reality and the strength of the increasingly growing challenges in this sensitive and complex issue for the present the future of Cuba.

The unjust detention of Cuesta Morúa generated a worldwide wave of revulsion against the intolerant and hypocritical behavior of the Cuban authorities, who, in the plenary of the Summit of CELAC, spoke of respect for diversity and pluralism, while in the streets they unleashed a frankly fascist inspired repression.

Recently there have been many expressions of sympathy and support that have come in various forms from many parts of the world as a sign of increased sensitivity to Cuba’s complex reality that is generated in the democracies of the world and in contrast to the indolent and complicit attitude of the vast majority of democratically elected presidents at the CELAC Summit.

Cubanet, 31 January 2014,

I’ll Skip My Turn / Juan Juan Almeida

It is natural and deferential that General Raul Castro invited Mrs. Dilma Rousseff, President of Brazil, to the opening ceremony of the first phase of the container terminal in the industrial area of Mariel; after all, Brazil is its largest investor.

Also, complying with the rules of protocol, and a little excess in praises during his opening speech, the Cuban president praised the presence of other leaders who are attending the summit of CELAC. Typical “prostitute” tactic to attract new investors.

But what I didn’t understand was why Raúl merged, in his inaugural address, CELAC, Mariel and the 161st anniversary of the birth of Martí. I was left like Evo Morales, head in the clouds.

28 January 2014

Cuban Cynicism as a Form of Survival / Angel Santiesteban

“In each neighborhood revolution” CDR (Committee for the Defense of the Revolution)

Pretending has been the best weapon of survival developed against the dictatorial model of the Castro brothers. Lying was a requirement that always made them happier than constructive and professional criticism, which was not in favor of their caprices. Thus they educated our post-revolution generations to exercise and perfect the art of lying.

A friend’s CDR president maintains herself through the family remittance sent from the north, after her sons reached that country on a raft. Nevertheless she is ready to snitch on someone who defends a social change, not for ideology — she has no opinion of this — but to assume the role that she has played and to exercise the saying “Every man for himself.” The important thing is to survive. Some benefit could come from harming other people. This has been demonstrated in most of the mid-century dictatorships, through vigilance and persecution.

Beginning with the decade of the ’70s, disguising what you think and feel has been the theater of the Cuban human species. From those flags that they hand out to receive the presidents of the socialist camp beneath the sun — bearing up under thirst and hunger, without the right to abandon the scene and return home because you would be branded an enemy and a traitor for the sole fact of being tired and trying to return to your famiy — amorality began, along with the loss of social and individual values. continue reading

Many of those who abandoned the country faked a posture of sympathizing with the regime until the day they emigrated, “in order to not call attention,” they say. Worse even are those who abandon their country, their house and family, and today say that they are economic emigrants, in order to not recognize that Fidel and Raúl Castro, with their bad administration, are guilty of their fates. Fear still chases them. Amorality is in their education, and still they want to obtain benefits, like visiting the country without problems. These are the people we have to deal with.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014

Have Amnesty International declare Ángel Santiesteban Prats a prisoner of conscience.

To sign the petition click here.

Translated by Regina Anavy

3 February 2014

Goodbye to the Self-employed Worker / Gladys Linares

caption
Dragones and Galiano after prohibition of imported items — photo by Gladys Linares

HAVANA, Cuba, January, www.cubanet.org — For the majority of us, January generally is a month of privations. For decades people often have been heard lamenting in the first days of the year about how difficult their situation is, but never like now. This 2014, according to some, the scarcity is felt more than at other times.

Many think that this is due, in great part, to the arbitrary measure applied to self-employed workers since the November 2, 2013, news brief in the Granma newspaper announcing the prohibition of the sale of articles imported or acquired in the state commercial network. In addition, it gave a brief term of 59 days (until December 31) for liquidating merchandise. This order caused the failure of many of the self-employed because in spite of having good demand from the population, the term was not sufficient.

One of the damaged sellers — who did not want to identify himself — had a license as a producer-seller of several items for the home. A great portion of his merchandise was acquired through a friend who travels to Ecuador. For three years inspectors visited him, always looking for a way to find some fault, but they never told him that he could not sell imported items. continue reading

Another one injured used to sell clothes imported at the Virgen del Camino fair; she commented — anonymously — that although she is unionized, she did not approach the union because it answers to the Government. Also, she adds, “If I make a claim, I stand out; better to keep selling behind closed doors.”

Many times the Government tried to blame shortages on the self-employed who “monopolized” the stores in the absence of a wholesale market. Nevertheless, in the opinion of the great majority, now the falsity of this hypothesis has been demonstrated because after the new prohibition, the shelves of stores, kiosks and state containers are emptier than before.

With the fever of self-employment, Havana came to life. Fixing and painting dwellings and facades and taking advantage of idle or under-used spaces for new cafeterias, small restaurants, second-hand shops, or kiosks, hanging cheerful posters of all kinds advertising offers and causing the comings and goings of onlookers and customers, it is indisputable that those who began to test their luck changed the urban landscape.

Among those new places, the Caridad fair came to be one of the most attended in Central Havana. It is located on the corner of Dragones and Galiano, on land equipped by the Government for renting to self-employed but that today is found vacant given that the majority of the stands were devoted to the sale of imported items.

Space equipped by the State, now empty -- photo by Gladys Linares
Space equipped by the State, now empty — photo by Gladys Linares

But the sellers are not the only ones hurt with this measure. These self-employed meet many needs of the people who now have nowhere to go because historically the State has not be able to provide us with certain products.

One of the affected clients is a neighbor who needed two water faucets, but since the sellers of plumbing supplies in Lawton closed their businesses, he had to go to Central Havana to see if he could find some. On returning in the afternoon, tired from walking and without faucets, he commented: “The stores are empty, the stands and kiosks, ’bare.’  First they authorized the self-employed to sell and now they prohibit them. In short, as Cantinflas* would say, ’There are moments in life that are truly momentous.’”

*Translator’s note: Cantinflas was a hugely successful Mexican comedic actor, on the level of a “speaking” Charlie Chaplin (Chaplin called him “the best comedian alive”).

Cubanet, January 31, 2014,

Translated by mlk

Mariel: Another Mockery of Cuban Workers / Leonardo Calvo Cardenas

HAVANA, Cuba  – The first 700 meters of dock of the Mariel mega-port are inaugurated by the presidents of Cuba, Raul Castro, and Brazil, Dilma Rousseff, in parallel to the II Summit of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States).

Rousseff ’s government — Cuba’s the second largest trading partner after Venezuela — has funded 75 percent of the works. Four years ago it gave the island a credit of $600 million and is studying whether to award a second. The center of the project is the mega-port. The bay of the capital will be reserved for cruise ships.

These business partnerships with foreign capital appear to be the main option of the Cuban authorities to rebuild its battered economy. A multimillion dollar investment from the Brazilian government assumes the greatest weight in the reconstruction and modernization of the port of Mariel, located several kilometers west of the capital. The investment seeks, in a short time, to turn the port enclave into a space for international shipping.

From the technical point of view, the project includes, besides the port for large Post Pamanax vessels — capable of carrying over 12,000 containers — built by the Brazilian company Odebrecht, an industrial and commercial zone covering 180 square miles, and facilities for the movement and storage of goods, establishment of industrial production plants, formerly known as maquiladoras. continue reading

Beyond the possible success of this new economic salvation that the regime seems to cling to, there are concerns about its human and social implications. Two “socialist” governments have joined together to once again exploit and cheat Cuban workers. On one side, Lula da Silva and the Brazilian Workers Party (PT), and on this side the everlasting Castro brothers, present us a design in which the socialist-impresarios maintain monopoly control, while Cuban workers only receive crumbs from a huge business and, above all, continue to be deprived of basic rights and economic and employment benefits.

Cuban authorities report, without even blushing, on the recruitment of labor through an employment agency and, naturally, with a salary that has nothing to do with their work contribution. Added to this is the absence of union protection suffered by workers here, victims of a single union, which only acts as an instrument of control and manipulation to serve the regime.

According to testimony from workers and neighbors, labor and management inconsistencies that undermine both the business process and the interests of Cuban workers have already begin to manifest themselves. There is already talk of desertion by Brazilian executives and specialists, who, they say, can not stand up to nor understand how Cuban workers can tolerate such poor working conditions.

The fleeting and almost surprise visit in recent months made to the enclave by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, seems to confirm that everything is not going without a hitch in the ambitious project. In any event, investors in Brazil are responsible for their investment and the risks they take to join such bad partners.

Suffice it to recall the example of the huge Canadian company Sherritt, which, after years of economic association with Castro, and investing in Cuba during the crisis of the nineties, at the cost of seeing their executives suffer damages of the United States’ Helms-Burton Law, now do not even know if they can recover hundreds of millions of dollars owed by their Caribbean partners.

It remains to be seen if the expectations of great benefits prevents these Brazilian “comrades” (once militant trade unionists and anti-employers) from seeing how the Cuban government exploits its workers and how it crushes the emerging small businesses with confiscatory taxes and draconian and arbitrary rules. Or how much inhuman indolence their partners demonstrate to the elderly, the unemployed, the single mothers, who have to face the enormous challenges of the current economy without any support, or the thousands of self-employed thrown into helplessness and hopelessness.

We do not know what will happen in the Mariel project in economic terms. Will this ambitious project become another failure and another resounding scam? But what is visible now is the shameful attitude of Brazilian politicians, hardened in social struggles and with obvious achievements in this area, who accept the benefits of a  business where access to labor is politically conditioned.

An attitude so reminiscent of the nineteenth century European colonialists, many of whom were liberals in European culture and monarchists and slave-owners in their American possessions.

Cubanet, 27 January 2014 | 

Montesinos3788@gmail.com

An Undignified Old Lady / Regina Coyula

This weekend I devoted to music. I had told my friend Karen, a likeable Brazilian twentysomething, that I like watching films knocking around the house, but it was Karen’s last night in Cuba, and under the influence of a forecast cold front which never arrived, we went with Rafa as chaperone to the Yellow Submarine. We saw the performance of Tierra Santa, (Holy Land) a cover group with a singer who is a cross between Ozzy Osborne and Geoff Tate, and a voice which, while not approaching that of either of those performers, has a good shot at it.

On Friday, now without Karen, Rafa took me to Maxim Rock to see Ánima Mundi (Soul of the world). It is a privilege to see this group, never mind that the sound system is not very good. In the first part they did interpretations of some of their original material. While waiting for the second part, I heard Miel con limón (Honey and lemon) and the band La vieja escuela (The old school). I sang along to famous songs, the stranger in that place where everyone seems to know everyone, and with everyone else singing from memory. I enjoyed both bands, especially the second, a forward preparation for what came next.

Shine on you, crazy diamond was the start of a short trip through Pink Floyd. Only musicians like Ánima Mundi would also take on Money, Another Brick in the Wall, and Wish you were here; a little of EL&P with Lucky man, to finish off in an amazing way with Rick Wakeman’s Arthur.

After this lavish dose of rock; Saturday blend in El Sauce. I persuaded my son to take me, as my husband is impossible in matters musical. Rafa argued with me because for me present day Habana Abierta (Open Havana) is like a cover group for the original Habana Abierta, but what are these young kids going to know about that concert in the Salón Rosado nightclub of el Tropical? I enjoyed the enchantment of the live music and, despite my son’s scolding, I was able to make myself look silly without any bother.

… And don’t ask me any more about the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States Summit (CELAC) which doesn’t affect me one way or the other.

Translated by GH

3 February 2014

Goodbye to a Summit to Forget / Ivan Garcia

cumbre-celac-en-cubaIf you walk through the marginal and mostly black neighborhoods of Havana, you will not hear people talking about integration, inequality, human rights, democracy or freedom of expression.

They are hard neighborhoods. Their priorities run toward having containers full of potable water: it’s been decades since the precious liquid arrived in their precarious dwellings through the obsolete pipes.

Residents of these slums, like Gerardo, who pedals a bike-taxi 12 hours a day through Central Park environs, feel satisfied when they have food for a week, deodorant, tooth paste and detergent.

Poverty in Cuban is not just overwhelmingly material. It is also mental. A sine qua non for a wide segment of the population. It does not matter if you proudly hang an engineering or law degree in the living room of your house.

The system designed 55 years ago by Fidel Castro has been a champion in socializing poverty. For almost everyone. He is to blame for salaries being symbolic and unworthy.

But the worst is not the crude material poverty that shames you when, for example, you travel through one of the more than 60 destitute neighborhoods, real slums, that arm themselves on a night on the outskirts of the city. continue reading

The big problem for the majority in Cuba is that they do not have legal tools for changing the state of things. That’s they way it is. And people know it.

That’s why the solution for many is to emigrate. Or to do political juggling acts, pretending to applaud the official discourse, legal snares and to steal all they can on their jobs.

The wear and tear of a regime that still governs after five decades of economic failures disgusts a growing segment of the citizenry.

It is already known that in autocratic Marxist societies networks of commitments, information censorship, fear and police effectiveness are woven in an effort to contain the internal dissidence.

But the power of Fidel Castro, almost absolute until the 1980’s. has been eroding. Now the people do not keep quiet about their disagreements or unease about the State’s gross mismanagement.

Today on the island, in any line, park, corner or public transport, you hear racy criticism of the Castro brothers. And an interminable list of complaints. Nevertheless, those querulous debates go no further.

A high percentage of the population does not trust the mechanisms of government. People power is a mere adornment. Letters to a newspaper, a minister or any Central Committee office that attends citizen complaints do not usually solve or manage the disparate problems raised.

For some years Cuba has been living in a time out.  Many believe that the solution to societal and economic structural problems is biological, and that they will be resolved by magic, when the Castros die.

As bad as they live and for lack of a future, a wide segment of Cubans is indifferent to meetings like the recently completed CELAC Summit. They feel like a tropical political comedy.

In the modern world forums and meetings between nations abound and lack concrete actions and practices. Right now, politicians of the whole world live at a low ebb. They have not learned to manage the needs and desires of their people.

On the American continent corruption and extreme neo-populism abound. To their credit they are democratically elected presidents. Except Cuba. A contrasting difference.

Also striking is the anachronistic discourse of the Cuban regime when compared with that of other regional politicians.

The speeches of the island’s representatives seem like outputs from the age of the dinosaurs. You listen to how Pinera, Humala, Santos or Rousseff openly express needs that affect their countries and their tangible bet on democracy and human rights.

Raul Castro, out of focus in his inaugural speech, analyzed poverty, inequality and other phenomena in Latin America as if Cuba did not also suffer from them. He tried to seem like a teacher holding class for a group of students.

The future of the world is increasingly of blocs. It is positive that Latin America is seen as an inclusive entity. The great merit of the Second Summit was declaring Latin America a Zone of Peace.

But there are many challenges ahead. The continent continues to be the most unequal and violent region on the planet. Caracas, Michoacan or Tegucigalpa are true slaughterhouses.

Neither can one get around the tendency of the governments of Ecuador, Venezuela or Nicaragua to reform the Constitution at their convenience. It creates a harmful precedent: that of politicians endorsed by institutions saturated by colleagues and buddies from the party that are perpetuated in power.

Demagoguery floats in several nations of the region. Political honesty and frankness is a rare bird.

It is not possible that none of the 31 governors that were at the Summit in Havana, elected in democratic plebiscites, with opposition parties and free press, have not questioned the Cuban regime about its lack of freedoms and its repression of the dissidence.

Like a Russian doll, the olive-green autocracy tries to regenerate itself and govern without respect to the democratic clauses of CELAC.

If they are committed to integrating the Cuba of the Castros into the Latin American and Caribbean community, ethically, some leader should let them know. And not exactly in a quiet voice.

Iván García

Translated by mlk.

3 February 2014

Project Varela / Rolando Pulido and Rosa Maria Paya

Poster by Rolando Pulido
Poster by Rolando Pulido

But Cubans are tired, Cubans want changes. More than ten years ago, more than 25,000 Cubans proposed a project of legal reform called the Varela Project, to hold a plebiscite and ask the people whether or not they want free elections. The Cuban constitution establishes that if more tan 10,000 people support a legal proposal, then under the constitution the government if obligated to respond.” Rosa Maria Payá

Remove the secrecy and make censorship public in Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C. 1959. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Fidel Castro arrives MATS Terminal, Washington, D.C. 1959. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Contrary to what you might think, people in Cuba actually miss having censorship. This attitude isn’t one of irony, but rather a strategy for freedom.

Is it worth-while to focus on the last images and letters coming from the inside of the last living utopia on Earth? Is Cuba by now a contemporary country or just another old-fashioned delusion in the middle of Nowhere-America? A Cold-War Northtalgia maybe? Can we expect a young Rewwwolution.cu within that Ancien Régime still known as The Revolution? I would like to provoke more questions than answers.

We live in a country held hostage by despotism and the single-party government in power—the Communist Party. We live in a country where, since the very beginning of the Revolution, the press has been the private property of the military elite. For the average citizen, there’s not much that can be done against such a backdrop, but an initial step that would surprise even the authorities would be to demand public censorship in Cuba in order to make it visible in the midst of our society’s secrecy. The second step would be to instate a public official in the position of Official Censor. continue reading

My experience of being a censored writer in Cuba is phantasmagoric; censorship leaves no footprint and the next generation won’t believe my experiences. No editor has ever directly told me to censor any of my lines, nor given me any explanation or written record of why I was expelled from the Cuban literary field. No one signed an order for my books to be removed from publishers’ catalogues. In reality, I was condemned to be an autistic rather than an artistic writer. That’s why we should call for the restoration of Castroist censorship, at least while we’re not yet able to completely dismantle the island’s lingering system of repression.

Let me be clear: The island doesn’t have a specific Department of Censorship. The state press—the only legal press—has never published any serious criticism of the Revolution, and there’s no one else we can complain to about this intellectual silencing, either. There aren’t even any bureaucratic regulations in place to define what can and cannot be published. It’s precisely this fogginess that allows for maximum impunity, since everyone begins to censor everyone else, starting with the self-censorship that every author personally humiliates himself with in order to avoid institutional humiliation.

For there to be freedom of expression under totalitarianism, perhaps we have to start by introducing democracy’s mechanisms of censorship. Thereafter, we would have to fight for the right to minimize the spaces occupied by censorship, which currently encroach upon Cuba’s whole atmosphere, preventing us from breathing.

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

From Sampsonia Way Magazine

3 February 2014

ETECSA, the Beggar Phone Company / Miriam Celaya

clip_image002HAVANA, Cuba Just months after Graham Bell patented the telephone, an invention of the Italian Antonio Meucci, Havana hosted the first telephone conversation in Spanish, an event that took place in October 1877.

137 years after the event that would favor the island with the use of a device that definitively contributed to global development, and 132 years after the inauguration of the first telephone service in Havana, the monopoly of the totalitarian system of more half a century over communications and control of the telephonic infrastructure – besides being insufficient — has taken the Island to a brutal technological underdevelopment in this area.

On the other hand, cellular phone service, which has been implemented globally with all the features offered by the development of new information and communication technologies, remains a primitive and embryonic service on the Island, and despite that, extremely costly for most people.

Such a technological gap is not due entirely to the objective lack of capital on the part of the owner/State for investing in the necessary infrastructure to develop communications, but also to a policy bent on keeping Cubans outside sources of information and rights which in today’s world technology enhances. continue reading

clip_image004Privilege of the Dictatorship

Despite this, there are those who think they see signs of change in official policy. I recently got a phone call from a radio station in a Latin American country.

The friendly colleague wanted to know my views on “the new provision of the Cuban state telephone ETECSA allowing payment from abroad for Cubans’ home phones”. Apparently, he considered this a very significant measure.

I offered some brief opinions, without much fanfare. The tendency to magnify the “reforms” or “flexibilities” of the Cuban government by some foreign journalists always amazes me, as if any of them really meant a remarkable achievement, an attempt to improve the living conditions of the population or major progress towards human rights.

The dictatorship’s privileges are: half a century of strict control over Cubans and the country, turning any crevice into an illusion of an opening. I would like to know if most of this reporter’s fellow countrymen have the ability or inability to pay their own phone bills, or if they require an authorization from their government so that they can be paid from abroad.

From my personal perception, every little step that the government takes towards what it has nicknamed “updating the model” — although no one knows exactly what model it is referring to — evidences, first, the accumulation of limits and boundaries that weigh over the Cuban people, asphyxiating their liberties and, second, their inability to afford their full practice.

In principle, any opening, however small, undermines the wall of totalitarianism to some extent, so it is positive, in that sense. However, pondering matters at their true value avoids the temptation to overvalue the facts and their scope.

clip_image006Profiting from misery

Previously, Cuban wireless Telephone service (CUBACEL) introduced the option for recharging Cuban accounts from abroad — with regular “promotions” that double the phone’s call balance from a 20 CUC recharge — and we Cubans have benefited since then from the solid generosity of friends or relatives who have increased our ability to communicate in the midst of the Castro plateau, so that the current measure of allowing payment of land-line phones is an extension of the former, rather than a novelty.

Recently, an article published in the official organ Tribuna de La Habana stated, with a lot of fanfare, the coming implementation of internet and e-mail service through cellular phones, which is “mainly due to the inflow of fresh foreign funds into the country”, and also as the result of recharges from abroad.

Furthermore, they will make “adjustments in costs for voice, international messaging and local voice service…” We will have to pay attention to this announcement that will possibly imply an improvement on the technological possibility of Cubans, beyond whatever controls will be associated with it.

But it is actually the deep economic crisis and the urgent need for foreign exchange earnings which forced the government, first to “liberate” communications services previously available only to foreigners – such as cellular phone service contracts, up to then available only in “convertible” currency — and later to introduce these allowances with the misnomer of “reforms” that are only explained from the viewpoint of the expense they represent to the pockets of Cubans for sustaining a service that has no relation to the income or the purchasing power of the people.

Which is to say that the regime has literally scrounged profits out of Cubans’ misery, disguising as flexibility what is really shameful, and — even worse – it has found a certain audience to give it a round of applause. Cosas veredes, Sancho…* Apparently, in the midst of such shambles, not everyone realizes that the true secret of Raúl’s economic strategy is begging.

*”Something is surprising.” Though attributed to Cervante’s Quijote, ”cosas veredes, amigo Sancho, que farán fablar las piedras” (you see such things, Sancho, that will make stones speak) the phrase never appeared in the famous novel. Most likely, a minstrel voiced it in Cantar del Mio Cid quoting Alphonse VI “Cosas tenedes, Cid, que farán fablar las piedras”. (you come up with such things… etc.)

Miriam Celaya, Cubanet, 28 January 2014

Translated by Norma Whiting

 

“I’m For Sale From the Neck Down” / Camilo Ernesto Olivera Peidro

Habana, Cuba.- The girl rests beside me, as naked as a country without rights. She turns tricks on weekends to keep alive her mother, who became infected with HIV when she herself was a prostitute over a decade ago.

“My mother had to do it to raise me, when things got tough during the nineties.  Now it is my turn.”

She may be called Adriana, Yusimi, Anisley… Prostitution has thousands of faces; many are feminine but many others are masculine or transsexual. I ask her if she knows anything about a regional meeting of heads of state that is to be held here at the end of January. She looks at me in disbelief and answers:

“I saw something about in on Telesur, but I don’t see any benefit in their meeting. Other countries may fare better, but here we are going downhill, every day its worse…”

Soon, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will meet for the fourth time; this time in an impoverished Havana. Raul Castro and his court of generals will try to combine the art of “Political Prostitution” and “tick  techniques*” on the backs of the economic integration groups. Now that the European Economic Community “seems to be feeling squeamish” toward the repeal of its Common Position on Cuba, CELAC emerges for the Castro leadership as the ideal house pet.

The Chinese, for their part, come to play the role of the developed countries at the Port of Mariel. They won’t be alone, but they want to ensure a convenient springboard for foreign trade in the area from the Caribbean area to Latin America.

I explained all this to the girl, who looked at me puzzled. After listening intently (I think), she turns over and asks me to scratch her back. When I think she’s not going to say anything, she confides, continue reading

“This government knows that as the only one it can continue to sell the country. What it’s doing is creating a paradise where the yumas — the foreigners — can earn a ton of money and the Cuban people continue to be fucked.”

“All those presidents,” she continues, “come to see how they’re going to share out the cake those here are offering, and the result will be more money for the government and more poverty for us.”

Then the girl stretches out her body, and sighs with the nonchalance of someone who knows she has nothing to lose except, perhaps, the next minute.

She looks at me and smiles:

“Most men don’t even talk to me. You at least try to make me feel comfortable. We hookers can’t afford the luxury of being noble, just like we can’t stop earning money. Me, from the neck up, I don’t let anyone in… What I sell starts here,” and she places both hands on her clavicles.

Cubanet, 22 January 2014 | 

*Translator’s note (Thank you to Ernesto Suarez)

“Tick techniques” means pretending to solve the problem while perpetuating it to profit from it. It comes from an old Cuban joke: There was an old country doctor whose son was also a doctor.  The father had not taken a vacation in a very long time, and the son convinced him one day to take a holiday in Havana.  Off went the old doctor, and the younger one took care of his patients. Within a few days, the old one receives a telegram from his son: “All is well in the town. Cured Mr. Garcia’s earache. It was a tick.”  Mr. Garcia was the richest man in town.  The old doctor flies into a rage and fires back a telegram: “You stupid idiot. That tick put you through medical school!”

Translated by: Antonio Otero Saínz

22 January 2014

The People of Havana Return to Their Routines / Ivan Garcia

mercado-negro-negra-vende-mani2-600x330Now Eduardo is back. In the wake of the Second CELAC Summit, an omnibus with police and paramedics made a sweep of the beggars who were camping out in Vedado or Old Havana.

“I was in a shelter known as La Colonia, in Boyeros municipality (20 kilometers west of the center of the capital). The treatment was harsh. It looked like a jail. But at least they guaranteed lunch and food,” said the vagabond, who usually bets on an image of San Lázaro to ask for money at the entrance of a complex of exclusive shops in the Habana Libre hotel.

After being warned by the police, a group of alcoholics and beggars who usually sell used clothing and old books on the corner of Carmen and 10th of October in the slum of La Vibora, stayed away for a week.

“They told us we made the city look ugly. A police official said we should get lost until the end of the Summit. The important visits, like that of the Pope or meetings of presidents, together with the cold, are a pain in the neck for us, because we have to go to places outside the city. We live like gypsies. Almost all of us sleep in cartons in some doorway. In the neighborhood of la Calzada and 10th of October, we find a few pesos by doing metal plating, cutting stone, and some neighbors give us food,” remarked Ariel, a hopeless alcoholic. continue reading

Barely did the CELAC Summit end, when the beggars and dumpster divers returned to their work.

These events are also usually trouble for those who live on the margins on the law. Like Ramiro, a part-time transvestite, who prostitutes himself on the central avenues after work.

“During those days you walk around wound up. The police get very nervous. A client told me that they were mobilizing, since they expected groups of human rights marchers or public demonstrations. Once it was over, I returned to the struggle,” says Ramiro.

Hookers in the suburbs in the style of Gisela, pretty and with an easy laugh, also make sacrifices. “I’ve been arrested twice for prostitution. I have to be careful. When they celebrate meetings like this, I “nail myself in” (stay at home). Later I go back to the routine.

Numerous dissidents, among them the intellectual Manuel Cuesta Morúa and the attorney Veizant Boloy, should now be returning to their homes, after several days of detention in police dungeons, to prevent them from holding a parallel forum.

Other members of the opposition, independent journalists, alternative bloggers and human rights activists were prevented by State Security from leaving their homes, and their cell phones were cut off.

The Second CELAC Summit, celebrated in Havana from January 25 to 29, didn’t bring too many benefits to the people of Havana. Among the lucky ones were the residents on San Lázaro Street, from the University staircase up to the Fragua Martiana Museum, in the Cayo Hueso district.

Owing to the presence of a torch parade in honor of the 161st anniversary of the birth of José Martí, a coat of paint was given to the facades of some buildings and homes, and several streets got new asphalt.

Owners of private restaurants and family businesses in zones neighboring PABEXPO, were closed on the days of the event. “I have a cake business, for weddings and parties, that I had to close, because of the exaggerated police presence and prohibitions for the circulation of autos. The clients disappeared,” indicated Alexander, the owner of a sweetshop in Miramar.

The “fat” expected by owners of private restaurants, craft vendors, and private taxi drivers remained far below expectations.

“The truth is that almost no one who took part in the Summit came by here, unless it was one or another first lady, say,” said a seller of paintings on the Plaza de la Catedral.

Paladars of caliber like La Guarida, located in the heart of the marginal neighborhood of San Leopoldo, kept hoping for reservations by the heavyweights. In November 1999, when the Kings of Spain attended the IberoAmerican Summit celebrated in Havana, the Queen Doña Sofía dined in the famous paladar (as private restaurants are called).

Josefina had more luck, with her hair salon in Old Havana. She gave a haircut to the indifferent Secretary General of the United Nations, the South Korean Ban Ki-moon. Though how much he paid for the cut isn’t known.

Iván García

Photo: Old Havana. While the woman trumpets her cone of “peanuts, toasted and hot,” very close to her are a policeman and a man having an exchange of words. Taken from Cubanet.

Translated by Regina Anavy

1 February 2014

CELAC vs CERELAC / Juan Juan Almeida

I was going to comment, or more to the point gossip, about the recently concluded Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, but I’m fed up with the topic, and I think you are too. We spent more than a week on this old song… that if Argentine president Cristina Fernandez lunches with you-know-who, that if Ban Ki-moon gets his hair cut in the historic district, that Raul Castro makes nice with Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, and there are even toasts to the health of the Mariel mega-project, so it won’t turn into salt and water. And to top it off,when I say CELAC, I immediately think of its relationship to Cuban CERELAC (a baby porridge), and it shocks me just to mention it. Trauma not overcome.

1391130195_cerelac31 January 2014