Angel and Regina

In Minority Report, the precogs were used in the pre-crime unit to predict possible murders. Already the presupposition is morally questionable while at the same time familiar as we have seen in our own Penal Code the “crime” of “pre-criminal dangerousness.” But can graphology emulate the precog, or at least can prove with scientific accuracy that traits of a criminal personality, or criminal, can be detected through handwriting? The answer is categorical and is negative.

I speak advisedly. Certified as an expert in documents at the Central Laboratory of Criminal Science, my specialty was handwriting. Many books have been written on the subject that “prove” that the handwriting reveals personality traits still hidden or that one tries to hide. Always using familiar characters, whose life history is closed and whose biographies have been widely documented to “prove” what their handwriting reveals in this or that characteristic. But nothing can be found in the wide literature on this subject with respect to a single systematic study of the relationship between handwriting-personality, and if there is, it is greatly subjective.

It is possible to establish the authorship of a document, because handwriting is a somewhat scatterbrained sister of the fingerprint in its individuality; by the same principle it is possible to detect a forgery, although there are fakes with a high degree of complexity and elaboration that shed a false positive. By the handwriting may know the approximate age and sex. Writing reveals, among other things, personality traits, cultural level, if a person is writing with their other hand, if they try to disguise their writing (for which there must be a comparison between two or more documents).

I find it irresponsible and manipulative to present at a trial an “expert” to certify by the handwriting of a paragraph, that a defendant has such and such a tendency in his personality. With a mere glance at a piece of paper copied reluctantly and under pressure, an expert certifies in court with his statement that the accused has the characteristics necessary to convict.

Graphology is a pseudoscience. No crime lab expert could offer an unproven statement by a photo-tableau illustrating their expert conclusions. To do so borders on the ridiculous: the case of my friend Angel Santiesteban, was judged in advance.

March 4 2013

The bus stop at G and 27th, three in the afternoon. Several people gather around a skinny seventy-something. He’s not selling peanuts, he’s not selling newspapers, he’s not selling candy bars, he’s not selling anything. He is exchanging one Cuban peso for 80 centavos. It works because although public transport costs forty centavos, in practice breaking a Cuban peso into smaller coins is difficult because Cuban pesos are only in the places selling on the ration book (at the bodega and the bakery) are fractions handled.

People prefer to make change with the skinny guy, outfitted with a cardboard box of his own invention hanging just below his chest, because with a peso you can only pay for one trip, and if you change it you can pay for two, others prefer to favor the retiree before tossing a coin in the farebox.

And so it goes! I say to myself annoyed at my camera. I try to speak to him but he crosses diagonally across G Street to the stop for the P-2, which starts its journey towards Alamar there.

I tried to calculate (you already know, numbers aren’t my strong point): With five people making change, he can buy himself a small coffee; with forty a pizza. How many hours a day will he have to dedicate to tramping from stop to stop, how many times will the police stop him. But in any case, the next list of allowed self-employment professions should include money-changer, coin-breaker, or something like that.

February 25 2013

Surely you no longer remember my Toothache from last year. It seemed that it was over with the anecdote, but like a soap opera, to keep the viewer they pulled a rabbits out of a hat, I’ve got… a piece of filling with its corresponding fragment of a molar. Yes, in the same tooth declared healthy, which bit the stone, which came in the bread, that I bought for ten pesos, that… I clean my beak to go to the wedding of my Uncle Perico.

Nice moment, that of eating lunch, and feel a wasp sting me in the gum, run to the bathroom and “island” dental floss (a plastic bag) I try to clean out what I thought was a piece of bone in chicken and rice.

That was three months ago. Good thing I didn’t rush to write about it. I went to the dentist for emergencies, they put a band-aid on it and gave me an appointment four days later. They filled it, I took advantage and had a check up and everything was fine, they scheduled me for a cleaning, and with that I was discharged.

Two days after the cleaning I lost the new filling. Back to the dentist for an appointment, an appointment I had to reschedule, because at the first opportunity, when I got to the clinic they weren’t providing services because they were cleaning the cistern. At the second try, the dentist drilled it out, filled it directly, which left me with a weak tooth but she told me was less likely the filling would fall out again.

The broken tooth and all the rest, just for the price of a loaf of bread. Good grief! The huge amount of money it costs to be poor.

February 18 2013

Last night I went to see Esther en alguna parte (Esther somewhere), Chijona Gerardo’s new film with a script based on a play of the same title by Lichi Diego I have not read. At the risk of screwing up, I imagine a Borges aura around the Lichi’s story, but the movie, with a splendid cast, is a succession scenes where Reynaldo Miravalles and Enrique Molina are marvelous, despite the awful sound dubbing and the darkness of the copy, technical defects added to the artistic defects that I truly regret, because the “old cinema” is a rara avis and I think Chijona missed a great opportunity.

It was not the first time I went to see the move. The day before the premiere, I tried to go to the six o’clock show but the theater administration decided not to open the door for me and another lady and someone else who had gone before. Last night we were more than twenty people.

A vague sensation of being at the end of an era that I had already glimpsed when I sent to see La película de Ana (Ana’s movie) materialized last night in the Acapulco. For having always lived so nearby, this theater has been my theater. From children’s matinees on Sundays, I’ve attended its successive transformations: when candy was sold from a rounded display case just next to the stairs leading to the offices; when the fifties amoeba-shaped glass on top of the facade was replaced by another on the side by the parking lot; when the phone booths disappeared from the upper floor; when the children’s potties that were my delight as a little girl and they I complained to my mother about not having at home disappeared; when the annex bar-cafeteria (which I was never old enough to enter) disappeared and reappeared much later as a video room, or when in the same place they opened a video rental (I think it still exists).

I waited for the credits to finish rolling, and when the lights came on I could see the deterioration of the carpet and the lower level, and I could see a couple of bats, restless under the sudden light. No, it wasn’t dirty, I mean, dirty with trash left by messy visitors, because the dust has made my movie theater its home. The bathrooms I haven’t entered in years, those clean well-lit bathrooms that were as clean as any public bathroom in the city.

Defeated by the film and the vision I’ve just described to you, I returned home with my husband commenting that not long ago I’d seen the Acapulco on the list of the ten most important (?), singular (?) of the world, I can’t remember why it was listed, but except during the Film Festival or some premiere, the Acapulco languishes, waiting for times better or worse, but definitely different.

February 22 2013

It is not the theme of my blog address the issues of other countries, but the fate of Venezuela is so interwoven with our own, that I make an exception. Years of learning “Granma Grammar”–the language of the Party’s daily newspaper–teach us that if there were a single publishable image of the Venezuelan president, it would already have been published, especially after the opportunity offered up by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

Chavez is dying of the complications of his disease, one doesn’t have to be a doctor to know that metastases do not remit. Those who are governing in his name have shamelessly manipulated him to hold onto him like the apostles holding onto Jesus. Continue reading →

We will not allow it.

I’m partial. Ángel Santiesteban is my friend. For more than twenty years when he was famous in the national literary workshop meeting held at the Bailen beach in Pinar del Rio, not for his literary virtues, later validated by prizes including the Casa de las Americas, no. Santiesteban was an unknown young man sitting in the background without being involved in discussions.

Presiding over that storytelling workshop was a writer much better known than Santiesteban — and than most of the people there — conceited and weighty. I will not mention any names, because what happens next in the case is the invaluable polysemic anecdote. The unnamed writer hammered the workshoppers with his translations, publications and prizes, to reinforce the phrase that doomed him: “If you don’t like it, blow me.”

He seemed to have made it clear to his young apprentice who was who in the literary hierarchy, when from the back, an unaffected and perfectly audible voice arose: “I’d rather blow you than read you.”

The unmentioned felt the need to respond to the affront with anger, and despite being attacked from behind, Santiesteban dealt him a blow that left his mark on the other guy’s face.

We’ve never seen each other regularly over the years, but always with affection. And now I’m filled with dismay by the possibility that my friend is facing five years imprisonment after a process full of irregularities.

My request to all of good will, but above all his colleagues: We advocate for the establishment of the truth, never forgetting the verses of Martin Niemoeller: and when they come for us, no one is left to protest.

February 8 2013

The imminent election and the omnipresent allusive propaganda, makes me dwell on what might the way in which democracy is manifested, not only in speeches television spots, but what the citizenship itself feels, as an entity that looks out for its interests and listens to their concerns and demands.

If arrogance and testosterone were not so abundant within the government (make no mistake, all those women who are candidates are bit players; in fact the majority are also), a candid look back would be enough to confirm the need to oxygenate or reinvent the People’s Power National Assembly.

With this fear of losing power retained for so many years, more than half of the current and future members, hold high positions in other areas of the party or the government, or both, and with the desire for island democracy they propose to represent unknown places, with those who don’t even have a job, to have a comprehensive slate for the election.

The work of the committees is not televised, but in these fleeting moments when the National Assembly meets, what we see is a chorus, which more than a reaffirmation indicates mediocrity. This conglomerated unanimity shouldn’t make decisions that affect the national life, this happy world far from the contradictions, but mostly far from the people they are so fond of invoking.

As to dream is also to live looking forward, I follow with interest the evolution of social networks, and with some good ideas taken from Open Government, it is evident that a tool like Twitter is perfect for the exchange (synergy sounds nice)between those elected and their voters. Despite the time they’ve stolen from us, the Internet will arrive for everyone, and the political interaction via 2.0 must be present.

The difficulty of the endeavor is its attraction. It would be great for us to shake off the apathy, and to hold neighborhood meetings warmed by opposing views, where the ablest and not the most loyal (to the Party) are nominated, where the votes are divided, the nominations are open and a Mr. Nobody with an attractive project can unseat a minister; where a student proposes that, in accordance with the labor laws, our octogenarian historical leadership retire. And all without one neighbor accusing another as being a mercenary or provocateur. Is it possible to make Cuba a country difficult to govern, without becoming ungovernable?

February 2 2013

Photo: Katerina Bampaletaki

Not since those trips to socialist countries in the 1970s and 1980s have Cubans had the opportunity to travel on their own as tourists. Not only will the new emigration reform allow this, the government plans to take advantage of it.

Havanatur, currently part of the Ministry of Tourism, will be the authorized agency for packaged tours. I do not know if the fraternal ALBA countries will be available as one might hope, but Panama, the Dominican Republic and Mexico, or at least Cancun, are some nearby destinations. Continue reading →

Regina, 3rd from left, proudly showing off her certificate from the MMS training

The phrase, attributed in Cuba both to Stevenson and Savon, the complete super greats of Cuban boxing, is my compass, my alpha-omega, my real reality since I deal with hardware, software, platforms, all to become technologically literate, struggling to reach the sixth grade.

Whenever I face something new — in this area, and that’s every day, and I, for my part, also find something worthwhile every day — my first reaction is to be stunned. I don’t understand anything, if it’s explained to me I forget it immediately, I am afraid to do something on my own and mess everything up. In therapy to overcome my inferiority complex, I have become a student of manuals, a watcher of video demonstrations, there is no instruction booklet I haven’t examined with a magnifying glass to read how to put the Ariel font in six-point type. It’s ironic because with this aura of knowledge, young people come to me for help, which gives me a tingle of insecurity: of losing the respect of those I try to help, and facing my own ignorance and affecting them.

When I already think like that, imagine last Friday when I got a double challenge: My cellphone debut and I also had to activate MMS to connect my Twitter account with TwitPic, the application for images. I spent a 10 CUC car and a little more (every MMS costs. 2.30 CUC [about $2.50 U.S.]), and I would have continued had a not received a very nice text message, I don’t know from whom: “Congratulations, Please, do not try to send any more Twitpics, you already sent the same photo three times.”

So my training ran between pride and embarrassment. Me? I’m not saying if the technique is the technique.

January 21 2013