Category: Sol Garcia Basulto

Many of the works show a nonchalant character and the authors have had to deploy a greater imagination to supply the missing resources

The winner of the Grand Prize was video artist Hamlet Armas Perez, 27, who explained to 14ymedio the difficulty of “creating art right now in Camagüey” because of the lack of materials.

Many of the works show a nonchalant character and the authors have had to deploy greater imagination to supply the missing resources, since the Cuban Cultural Property Fund, the largest supplier of materials in the province, has stopped supplying art products.

This situation is suffered in particular by painters, says Armas Pérez, although video art makers also have “difficulties in finding resources.”

Kevis, a young graduate of the School of Art Instructors who could not finish his work in time for the exhibition, laments the high prices of materials, as well as the complexity of finding them. “I’m paying for a tube of white oil now 5 Cuban convertible pesos (roughly $5 US) on the street,” he protests.

“Some of the education and culture warehouses keep materials for more than 20 years.” Those are the resources that are circulating in the province according to Kevis. “The tubes of oil are sometimes hard and you have to put them in hot water to make them soft.”

Angel González Fariñas, director of the gallery, thinks that the predominance of mixed techniques is more related to “the authors’ instinct for experimentation” and takes for granted the “lack of materials especially in the prints and mountings.”

The artist Jorge Luis Pulido Álvarez, who won the Salon’s third prize and three collateral prizes with the trilogy In the habitat of my art, says that his work was done with mixed technique and that in spite of the shortages “the artists overcome these difficulties with the passion they feel.”

Lewis was unable to present his work because he could not get the mounting that he needed: a frame and glass

Lewis, an art instructor in the visual arts, said that he could not present his work at the event because he could not get the mounting that his work needed: a frame and glass. Lacking the necessary resources to dedicate himself to painting has pushed him to dedicate himself to drawing.

Another artist who has abandoned painting, in his case for a better remunerated technique — carpentry — is Pedro. This former professor at the School of Art Instructors says that he has dedicated himself to making coatracks and shoe racks because “you have to eat.”

However, despite the adversities, the organizers of the show have managed to maintain a high standard.

The curator and critic Pavel Alejandro Barrios Sosa sums up his perception of the work of the artists: “Art for art’s sake, the amusement of the artist, quotes, versions, allusions, the relationship between culture and popular expression, between the national and the universal.”

OVF: At the beginning, an independent worker was seen as a dissident, an opponent. They gave us the name of “Merolicos” after a character in a [Mexican] telenovela from that time. At that time everything that was outside the state was viewed badly because with the triumph of the Revolution here, everything disappeared, even the shoeshine boys**. But I have been a person who never had a desire to leave the country, on the contrary, I have preferred to stay here and to continue to defend it. To me, the idea is to better it, not to criticize the government.

14ymedio: What types of articles do you produce.

OVF: Almost everything used in a house, from electrical boxes and spare parts from different appliances, such as washing machine agitators and pullies and even spools of thread.

14ymedio: Did you receive training for this work?

OVF: My work has nothing to do with what I studied, I was a technician in a machine shop. However, everything I use for my work I make myself, from the tools and molds to the machines to shape plastics or rewind cable reels, all in a general sense, I do it not only because I need to, but I like to make things.

14ymedio: What role does independent work play in Cuban today?

OVF: A high percentage of society lives off their own work. In addition to the official worker, the helpers benefit from it, those who sell the product, and their families, children, and the elderly.

14ymedio: Do you think the State appropriately values the work of the self-employed?

OVF: The State could be more appreciative of the work of entrepreneurs. I have seen electrical boxes made outside the country, stamped with “Made in Italy.” These electrical boxes come from the State warehouses and agencies, the State imports them but they’re no different from the ones I make. Why go to another country to find these products, if there are independent workers producing this type of item? We do it with the same quality and the with recycled plastic, which is more ecological and economical. But the State fears the people getting rich.

14ymedio: Do you think the category* “producer-seller of useful household articles” really defines your occupation?

OVF: The term with which they define me doesn’t seem right. I consider myself more of a goldsmith, that is the profession that includes manual labor. Before, we paid 100 pesos for a license to be an artisan that includes almost everything you can make and sell, but now you need about five licenses to do the same thing, because that way the National Office of Tax Administration (ONAT) gets more money. It allows the inspectors to have greater control over the worker. But the State fears people getting rich.

14ymedio: What role will the private sector play in the development fo the country?

OVF: The future of this country is in independent workers, because despite being persecuted by inspectors, we are less within the reach of the State and it restricts production, even in its own companies. But the independent worker is not in their hands. I can work however I want, with whatever raw materials and when I want, this gives me a wider margin for creativity.

We are also more aware of the needs of the people. This is a point in our favor because the State is distant from others, isolate, but the independent worker knows what they can sell, because it is what they themselves need, their family, their neighbor, the people they know.

14ymedio: And how does the US embargo affect your work?

OVF: The blockade is a political strategy that the leaders of this country use to justify everything bad they do. They caused the blockade to become law when they shot down the American [Brothers to the Rescue] planes in 1992. They did it precisely for that reason, to have an external enemy to blame. However, the blockade has benefitted the self-employed workers. Thanks to it Cuba has not experienced the consumer society and so it has developed the independent worker.

In developed countries people use things and then throw them away. Here we have learned to live thirty years with a Russian washing machine. When it breaks an independent worker is the one who has the parts. We have learned to engineer it and that makes us stronger. When an independent worker can develop their industry everyone wins. Now all that’s lacking is that they let us do it and it has nothing to do with the United States blockade.

Translator’s note:

*Cuba has a limited list of allowed lines of work for which people can get licenses to work independently. This is one of them.

** Fidel Castro moved quickly to nationalize major industries and foreign-owned business, and finally, in 1968 in the so-called Revolutionary Offensive, eliminated all private enterprise, taking over “mom and pop” businesses and, notably, even shoeshine boxes.

“They never gave me an explanation of why I was being arrested,” she said, in a telephone call to the 14ymedio newsroom in Havana. “At the unit I resisted giving them my belongings because they wanted to take my cellphone and my documents.”

“Six people seized me violently, five men and a woman, and took away everything I had, except for my passport.”

“I have to go every Wednesday to the State Security unit because I am charged with disobedience,” she detailed. If she does not appear, “a retentive measure will be applied,” she reported.

Basulto Garcia was heading to Havana to visit the newsroom of this newspaper and to begin the paperwork to travel abroad. The reporter would have gone to the Panama consulate on Friday to request a visa to participate in a course on investigative journalism, at the invitation of the Latin American Press Association.

A contributor to the magazine Hora de Cuba (Cuba’s Hour), and a reporter focused on cultural issues, García Basulto has been harassed in recent months for her work as a freelance journalist. In February of this year she was interrogated and threatened by the political police and told not to continue her work.

“They don’t like my work,” the reporter wrote in an email previously after suffering various pressures. “They warn me that I am constantly watched and that I am in their hands,” she said at that time.

Siria’s creations end up with ordinary Cubans, not on the shelves where tourists buy souvenirs of their trip. It was not her decision, but that of the bureaucracy. She didn’t have the prerequisites – an academic background as an artist and membership in the Cuban Association of Artisans and Artists (ACAA) – to place her works in the commercial areas of hotels, bazaars and boutiques.

Not being a member of ACAA limits the economic dividends Siria can get for her work. So after several decades of weaving the fiber, she doesn’t live much better than those who receive a salary for working eight hours a day for the state. If she takes a day off she has to sew more when she returns to her machine. There are days when she wakes up dreaming that someone will knock on the door and take a mountain of hats, to be able to put something on the dinner table.

In the family workshop, everyone helps out. There are sisters, grandchildren and neighbors who work with the drying, taking care “not to spoil it,” says Siria. After the leaves open “you have to make the yarey fine” and only then can you make the braid, like a belt, with which all kinds of objects can be woven.

“A hat for an adult has a braid of 15 or 16 rounds, and that’s a full day’s work,” says the artisan, without taking her eyes off the long fiber she is feeding under the needle.

She and her siblings learned to work with the yarey from their mother, Petronila Mendoza, who learned it in turn from her mother and she from hers. “We have worked for generations,” says Siria, who shares the workshop with her older sister while acknowledging that “everyone who comes by the house helps out.”

The palm fronds must be bought from farm workers, some of whom exchange them for hats or baskets for later use in the fields.

Sometimes there are some bad fronds, but this woman’s sharp eye sees them at once. “The weather affects it, the best hours for weaving are in the morning and at night, because the rest of the time the palm is too hard because there is less moisture in the air,” she explains.

A man’s hat can sell for a price that varies between 30 to 40 Cuban pesos, depending on size. “Anyone can buy this, of any profession, whether a farmer or a vendor,” she adds. She remains hopeful that the tradition of weaving yarey palm fronds will not die out because there are a lot of young people “interested in learning.”

Sometimes Siria gets up feeling pessimistic and thinks about leaving her work with this natural fiber. “It’s too hard,” she comments, but then immediately recognizes that her work is entertaining. “I start weaving and it clears the mind and I forget the pains.”

The event set out to make Camagüey a a “stronghold in the creative use of new technologies related to the audiovisual culture.” Among its highlights was a panel moderated by Yoan Pico on the importance of media libraries in the digital revolution, with the presence of Jorge Santos Caballero, Luis Alvarez Alvarez and the host. The discussion concluded that the computerization of Cuban culture is imminent.

Digitizing books for the Net generation, born in the digital age, is the only way to guide young people to a healthy and well-informed consumer environment, the panelists pointed out. In this event they listed some of the aspirations of the project with regards to audiovisual dissemination, among them, “reaching a wider audience with cyber-literacy and new technology resources.”

Participants were able to access a digital media library, from which it was possible to download, from the wireless network in the lobby of the Casablanca cinema, the fifth installment of “A Thousand and one Texts,” a compilation from the researcher and critic Desiderio Navarro. Also available was a compendium with “The 220 best movies in the history of the cinema” selected by the Saiz Brothers Association.

The workshop addressed tricks and ways to get information and distribute audiovisual material in a session on the experiences that made up a part of the technology encounter. The public had the chance to question, criticize and suggest ideas for new digital literacy projects to representatives of the institutions involved: the State telecommunications monopoly, the Youth Club, the Information Faculty at the University of Camagüey, Citmatel, Portal Príncipe, and the Cuban Union of information Scientists.

Also invited were the so-called Wifi instructors, staff prepared to provide information and advice to users in the different Wifi zones that provide wireless access to the internet. These young people explained the importance of their work, which they defined as supporting “the population on a journey away from digital ignorance.”

There was no discussion of the sites censored on national networks, several of them made within Cuba. Some of the attendees believe that the next session of the event should include representatives of other sectors that work in new technologies and not only figures from the cultural audiovisual scene.

However, it seems to have unleashed in Camagüey one of the first battles for “technological emancipation,” as defined by Garcia Borrero, an initiative that “will demand long term collaborations and contributions from people who are immersed in the digital computerization supporting Cuban culture.”

At the end of the event, the manager of this First Meeting on Audiovisual Culture and Digital Technologies wrote in his blog that the dreams raised “now seem elusive,” but “it doesn’t matter how few there are, for now, involved in the enterprise.” In his judgment, “we must continue doing things however shocking that others ignore.”

The community of Las Casimbas, in the Najasa district in the province of Camagüey, is one of those places officially outside the area served by the Electric Company in the district it is a part of. There are 20,000 homes on the island without electric light. This last November, the Minister of Energy and Mines, Alfredo Lopez Valdes, assured that they would have this service in 2017, and that, at the end of this month, electricity would reach 33 settlements – some 1,610 homes – most of them in Plan Turquino and areas difficult to access.

The state company did not want to respond to 14ymedio’s question about the reasons why power has not yet reached Las Casimbas. However, an official of the Electric Company who preferred anonymity said that he was aware of the initiative taken by the villagers in the area to “light their houses and be able to enjoy other advantages of electrical service.” People there are afraid of reprisals from the Electric Company and the biggest nightmare right now in Las Casimbas is that the costly wire they have strung will be cut by orders “from above.”

Despite its simplicity, the structural quality of the engineering work organized by their own efforts is surprising, and supplies electricity to more than 30 families. Residents paid out of their own pockets for teams of professional to optimize the quality of service, according to the project coordinator, a farmer in the area nicknamed Toño.

“The transformers, cables and insulators were used, but in good condition. Some friends of mine who work in the utility bought them,” said the resident. He adds: “In this place, there has never been power. Only wealthy people had the privilege of illumination fueled by oil, but the rest of us were born and grew up with our nostrils blackened by candle smoke.”

Toño owns two caballerías of land – about 66 acres – that he inherited from his parents, but is not considered among the so-called “haves,” because, he says, it takes a lot of work to exploit the benefits of the earth because of “the lack of agricultural products.” The lack of electricity is added to these obstacles, making it difficult to pump water and do other work in the field.

“We pushed for power because it is very necessary, we need it for everything, for light, to watch TV,” says another local resident. Considering that, for decades, people in the village “knew nothing about the world… If someone was talking about a soap opera, we had to remain silent, without being involved in the conversation. This is why people gave the money without protest to buy the equipment and cables.”

“They put solar panels on the clinic and on the little school of San Ramon – a nearby neighborhood – but the houses didn’t have light, or any appliances, except radios and flashlights that use batteries,” says Toño.

In this area, the price of a battery of the kind most used for flashlights and radios is 20 Cuban pesos, the equivalent of two days of work in the field. “Things like the rice cookers and electric pots and ovens that they have been distributing for years mean nothing to us. Here the women cook with wood or charcoal, people don’t know what cold water (from the fridge) is, nor do they have cellphones. It is not out of ignorance, because you go out and see how people live in town, but because without power it’s impossible,” he points out.

According Toño, the new alternative does not solve the entire problem. “The voltage is too low, refrigerators only freeze late at night. We bring the current from a line like this. The transformer is what makes up the voltage, but at peak times it cannot supply all the houses.”

However, the experience of Romelio, another local resident, is positive. “We have improved a hundred percent, we were living here like the indigenous people in caves, in Cro-Magnon times, with no distraction at all, when night came you went to bed,” he explains. He says that without cell phones, when anyone got sick there was no way to call an ambulance or a doctor. “This is a place that is very isolated and so we struggle to live as people.”

Among those waiting to update their identity card was Gabriel Villafaña Bosa, whose previous document had deteriorated through use and the passing of years. This Camagüeyan believes that the new format is “stronger and more durable,” so that the number of times it needs to be replaced because of damage will be reduced. However, to get it he had to overcome a long wait.

Yosbani Martinez commented, “I still don’t have the new card because everyone in the world is here.” Living near the office, the young man says that he has passed by the place at four in the morning, “and the line goes to the corner.”

Trying to reduce the avalanche of requests, the authorities have warned that the document can only be replaced in case of loss, damage, change of address or reaching the age of majority. In statements in the official press, several officials have insisted that it is not obligatory to possess the new card, because the two prior formats continue to be valid.

The dissatisfaction with the long wait even made the pages of the local newspaper Adelante this last September whenthe journalist Yasselys Perez Chaos commented to a friend, “after waiting five days in nighttime lines I was allowed to enter the office, where a single unhappy looking official was able to issue only three to twelve cards a day.”

The delays mean serious problems for those who have lost their identification. “Imagine a police officer stops me and asks for the card. When I tell him I don’t have it they take me to the station for fun,” said Villa Faña Bosa. The lack of the document has even affected his collection of remittances. “What do I do if my dad sends me money? How can I collect it at Western Union without the card,” the young man asks, standing in the middle of a long line.

Others resist losing patience despite the obstacles. This is the case with Adalberto Perez Arteago, who says, “It’s the first card I have, because I spent 25 years in prison and didn’t participate in the prior change of format.” The man also feels that the design of the new document, “looks better.”

Among the changes in the document is that the identity number is embossed, there are security features, the content is printed in invisible ink, the bars are machine readable, and there is a ghost image on the back.

The most repeated complaints also address the continued interruptions in the service of delivering the new cards, for various reasons. This Tuesday the building was being fumigated, which paralyzed the process in the only office authorized to issue them in the Camagüey capital. A couple waiting for the process so they could get married decided to return another day, earlier. “It’s already five in the afternoon and look at the number of people who are here. We lost an entire day on this,” the woman pointed out.

As of last June, 380,645 new-format identify cards had been issued in the entire country; that covers 4% of the population over age 16. In Camagüey the numbers are more modest; with a population of 717,686 adults, only 5,746 had obtained the document by that date, some 0.8% of the local population.