Category: Yoani Sanchez

The rafter remembers each one of the 42 days he spent in the custody of American authorities. “At first we were in a smaller boat, but then they put us in at least three larger ships, known as ‘cutters’ or ‘mother ships,” he told 14ymedio by phone.

The repatriation occurred on 30 June, with the first stop in Havana, and on the 4^th of July, American Independence Day, the rafter was taken to Las Tunas, where lack of fuel meant that the police could only transfer him to Puerto Padre hours later. Others of those repatriated were returned to the same province, while two of them reside in Havana.

In the Cuban capital, immigration authorities and the police asked them some questions about the origin of the fragile craft’s engine. “They wanted to get information out of us,” said the rafter, who had to sign his statement but didn’t receive a “warning letter.” In the interrogations they never suggested to him not to repeat the illegal departure from the country.

While on the “mother ship,” Marrero Velaquez came to count 160 Cubans intercepted at sea who were returned to the island. “The amount of food they gave us was very small, like enough for a six-month-old baby,” he complained. “I lost 15 pounds during the days I spent there,” he said.

The young man, 20, said that when they protested the meager ration they were pushed and handcuffed. The hullabaloo raised by the group was not expected in such cases, but it did little good, he recalls. Situations like that led them to write a collective letter which they threw into the sea in a bottle, like desperate castaways.

“We have spent 37 days sleeping on the floor, the food is for dogs, they mistreat us to the point of violence and we have companions who are sick in the head, it is hell,” explained the two-page missive written by hand. The bottle was fund by a fisherman who didn’t even speak Spanish and who gave it to the authorities. Held incommunicado, without the ability to contact attorneys, that letter was the only chance the rafters had to tell about what they were experiencing.

The SOS message managed to get the case re-heard, and gave them the chance to travel to the Guantanamo Naval Base, an area administered by the United States in eastern Cuba. But the young man from Las Tunas preferred not to take advantage of that opportunity.

“In the interview we had with the consul, one by one, the paper they made us sign said that, if we went to Guantanamo as refugees, then we would end up in a third country.” The rafter said that they made it clear that with this option they would lose the right to enter the United States. “I decided to come to Cuba because it is very possible to try again,” he says with determination.

When the Cosco shipping company’s vessel Andronikos, from China, with a capacity of 9,400 containers passes from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the new facilities today, it will awaken the competition between the region’s ports to win the largest numbers of vessels using the canal.

In April of 2015, one of those responsible for the development of the Cuban port facility some 28 miles from Havana, said that the government aspired to convert the container terminal at the Port of Mariel into a “better choice” for transshipments in the region, once the Panama canal expansion opened.

A projection also confirmed recently by Alicia Barcena, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), said that the port will be “a major logistics hub and regional transfer” and stressed “the huge advances in the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZDEM) and its port terminal.”

However, the flagship project of Raul Castro’s government, intended to boost the national economy, generate exports and attract investment, is not ready at the precise moment when it might tap the huge flow of cargo through the improved Panama locks. Several sources consulted suggest that the the main cause for the delay is the poor dredging of Mariel Bay.

With 4,268 workers, including 454 technicians and 221 engineers, the Port of Mariel has not taken advantage of the nine-year duration of the work on the Panama Canal, including the fact that that project is more than 24 months late in relation to its initial schedule. A reality that belies Cuba’s official forecasts that placed the beginning of 2016 as the date for the opening of its terminal for Post-Panamax containers.

However, Miami-Dade County has done its work. Last year that port city served the highest number of containers in ten years, and has been preparing to welcome the large freighters that transit through the new locks. Officials there hope that port will become the first stop in the southeastern region of the United States, before the boats file through Panama.

The works in Miami have been mentioned over the past few days by the international media, linking them closely to the Panama Canal. Improvements in the port facilities include new railroad service, plus a tunnel connecting the port with the interstate highway system. While in Cuba, tons of rice and fertilizer have remain stuck in the Bay of Havana in recent weeks, in the absence of freight cars to transport them.

Significantly, the issue of the Port of Mariel has a diminished presence in the official Cuban media and the few reports that are transmitted avoid specifying the current volumes of activity. No ZDEM specialist or authority has explained to the national press how the country will take advantage of the opportunities opening from today, while Panamanians celebrate the inauguration of the work of the century.

Instead of information, we get only silence and rumors. The dark wall of secrecy installed around the Port of Mariel separates the official megaprojects from reality.

The dozens of entities and coalitions, whose initials, logos and premises surround us everywhere in Latin America, pompously hold inaugural summits with family photos filled with heads of state, but in practice and in real life they are of very little use. Latin America has not even achieved full freedom of movement for its citizens within its own borders, a theme that takes on a seriousness in the face of the strict requirements Cubans need to meet to visit neighboring countries.

The history of the political community called the European Union, even if one of its parties chooses to leave this week, is that of the hard road of conciliation, the journey of dialog with all its obstacles and its search for points in common. Why haven’t Latin Americans extended an embrace in our area to create a legal framework that facilitates easier migration, investment and exchanges for our inhabitants?

Few areas on this planet show so many linguistic, cultural and historical similarities as that found between the Rio Grande and Patagonia. These similarities make the fragmentation exhibited in so many regulations increasingly incomprehensible, in an area where many governments have chosen to join in their “little groups” based more on ideological affinities than on their responsibilities to their peoples.

The reason for so much disunity – contrary to the common points of our identity that work to bind us together – are a sign of the egotism of the executives and the shortsightedness of the foreign ministries.

The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), created to emulate the Organization of American States (OAS) while leaving out the “uncomfortable” United States and Canada, does not advance beyond symbolic statements. At its last meeting in Ecuador, held in January, its most “concrete” achievement was to express support for the states participating in the Colombia peace process and to congratulate the government of Juan Manuel Santos. After long organization and with the concurrence of the delegates from the 33 member countries, the intergovernmental organization didn’t move beyond paraphernalia to results and was incapable of taking on and proposing solutions to the great challenges of the continent.

Even worse has been the outcome of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), inflated by the temperament of a populist politician who thought he could redesign his country and go on to define the contours of the map of Latin America. With the death of former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, this regional entity, defined by ideological exclusion and political commitment in exchange for oil, is like a pricked balloon: it has deflated.

Even the Central American Integration System (SICA) demonstrated its ineffectiveness during the Cuban migrant crisis which, in late 2015, raised the political temperature on the border between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. Tension over the unilateral decision of Daniel Ortega to close his border to Cubans caused Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis to declare that “Costa Rica can not participate in these conditions in an Integration System that ignores solidarity.”

Mercosur, the alliance the has come closest to achieving the free movement of goods and services between its member states, is also faltering because it became too incestuous and too dependent on Brazil’s Planalto Palace, from which President Dilma Rousseff, one of its principal supporters, has departed as of a few weeks ago, in the midst of process in which she is accused of trying to disguise the country’s budget deficit.

Amid the rubble of so many failed organisms and so many acronyms condemned to the dustbin of history, the Pacific Alliance, comprising Chile, Mexico, Peru and Colombia, has chosen to “make it on their own” in a region where agreements are here today and gone tomorrow and organized groups bear more resemblance to gangs than to functional entities.

This Thursday, when the British decide to leave or remain in the European Union, at least they will have known the taste of coexistence, the bittersweet contrast that defines every marriage. We in Latin America remain chronically single, looking enviously toward the altar.

The omissions don’t end there. The press in the hands of the Communist Party delayed until Wednesday the news that two Cubans were among the dead, when it was already vox populi on the streets. Why the delay? Because they were gay or because they were emigrants? This double condition must be upsetting to some in the government and thus in their periodicals, which operate by way of ventriloquists.

Also surprising is that the National Center for Sexual Education (Cenesex) has limited itself to a formal statement of condemnation and has not called for a vigil, for flowers to be left at the doors of the mothers who lost their sons, or at least a symbolic action that reflects the pains of the Cuban LGBTI community.

None of that has happened, and not for lack of indignation or sadness, but from the same lack of freedom of expression that prevents a dissident from making a public demand, or any person from carrying, spontaneously, a banner that recognizes: “We were all at Pulse.”

Many state employees behave as if they are sugar cubes, or watercolors about to dissolve, or allergic to water when the rain comes. This reaction is laughable given that we live in a tropical country, but there is also a lot of drama involved in the serious damage the rains cause to millions of people. Over and over again, public services behave as if each rainy season was the island’s first.

The banking system, dysfunctional throughout the year, collapses almost entirely when two drops of rain fall from the sky. The Nauta email service – operated by the state phone company – is thrown into crisis, and urban transport outdoes itself in terms of problems. A drizzle and schools suspend classes, retail markets barely open, and even the emergency rooms in public health centers work at half speed.

All this without a hurricane, or 60-mile-an-hour-plus winds, or one of those heavy snows that keep nations further north on edge. The paralyzation of life here caused by the rains is more than a justification, it is an alibi, one that allows many, during these days, to do what they most desire: Nothing.

Along with the more than one thousand detainees who were sentenced to harsh penalties for showing their desire for change, China sent many other protesters to forced labor camps to be re-educated. Since then, significant resources and millions of hours of propaganda have been dumped on society, to suppress the idea of rebellion and stifle memories.

Recently, several activists who were trying to evoke the date have been detained by the government or prevented from leaving their homes to pay tribute to the victims. The gag-rule extends to virtual space, where China’s internet police have skillfully managed to erase many of the references to the events of Tiananmen Square.

However, despite the fact that in June 1989 the foreign press had been expelled from the area and the government restricted coverage of events, an iconic image was imprinted on the retina of humanity. A defenseless man with a bag, standing in front of a military tank, showed the absolute fragility of citizens under a totalitarian power.

That picture has never been reproduced in any Cuban media managed by the Communist Party. Thus the island’s authorities have joined in the attempt to erase history, vigorously led by their Chinese comrades. They are complicit in the attempt to create a hole in the past.

Today, along with China’s booming economy and environmental problems, there is a country where it is not permitted to speak publicly about its history. A nation that has been offered an unequal economic well-being in exchange for its conscience, but where, also, many have not accepted the deal. They are the ones who remeber that young man who was going to the market when his luck changed forever.

In the case of Cuba, the effort to force amnesia does not begin and end with the tragedy that took place in that vast and distant square. Cuba’s official media once hid from us the fall of the Berlin Wall, denied the Chernobyl accident for weeks, and “made itself scarce” in the face of Nicolae Ceausescu’s crimes.

The loyalty of the Plaza of the Revolution toward its ideological comrades includes the ignoble task of accompanying them in altering the figures, hiding the news, and burying the dead in silence.

Power outages, insecurity in the streets, food shortages, emigration of the young and professionals, along with the highest inflation in the world, are some of the signs of deterioration experienced by a nation trapped for almost two decades in a populism that has bled the economy and polarized society.

Corruption, mismanagement and a string of neighboring countries that have behaved more like leeches than allies, have drowned Venezuela in less than twenty years. Few still have the shamelessness to publicly support the delusional regime that has installed itself in Miraflores Palace and brought the nation to the verge of collapse. Even former fellow travellers, such as Spain’s Podemos Party, led by Pablo Iglesias, and former Uruguayan president José Pepe Mujica, have distanced themselves from Maduro.

A member of Podemos has criticized the Venezuelan president’s attacks against Spain, while the Uruguayan politician described Hugo Chavez’s heir as “mad as a hatter.” Others, like Raul Castro, remain complicity silent while, from the shadows, weaving the threads of support for the Bolivarian forces. No wonder Evo Morales has rushed to Havana to receive instructions about how to proceed in the face of his floundering comrade.

However, Chavism, and its bad copy “Maduroism,” has entered its endgame. Its motorized faithful can instill fear in the population and the National Electoral Council can delay ad infinitum the review of the signatures on the recall referendum, but this will not restore the popularity enjoyed in the times when a military coup hypnotized millions with revolutionary rhetoric interspersed with anecdotes and songs.

Nicolas Maduro is collapsing and dragging a nation down with him. In this fall into the abyss of violence, a military coup or other demons, he has not shown a single instance of the greatness that would put the interests of Venezuela first, ahead of his party and ideological affiliation. History will remember him in the worst possible terms and he deserves it. He has ruled from caprice and exclusion, ultimately inserting his name on that deplorable list of caudillos, satraps and authoritarians who have trampled our continent.

YS. Does a gesture of this nature from the US government benefit you or complicate your situation?

JAT. I can’t be any more complicated that I already am. Being a journalist with the leading newspaper in the country, with work considered excellent and even being congratulated by Raul Castro himself, what happened to me makes no sense. Having a contrary opinion in this country is, at times, very difficult, but there has to be space for all opinions. In Cuba we have to resolve our differences.

YS. Have you experienced difficult moments in prison?

JAT. I never should have been in prison with people who have nothing to do with my conduct, with kleptomaniacs, traffickers, assasins and murderers. I should never be with those people, because I have not committed any crime.

YS. What prison are you in at the moment?

JAT.  I’m in the so – called “trusted program” in Santiago de Cuba, which is on the road to Mar Verde. It is called Mar Verde Trusted Work-Study Center Work – Study Center.

YS. What is your prison regimen today?

JAT. It is a regimen of low severity and I stay here for two months, between 45 and 60 days, then I have a pass for 72 hours to spend at home. I have been held under these conditions since April of last year, when Barack Obama and Raul Castro spoke at the Summit of the Americas [in Panama].

YS. Do you harbor hopes for a reduction in the sentence?

JAT. A reduction in the sentence is very difficult, I do not think they will do it. Only international pressure will bring me out of jail. It is precisely the press, my colleagues, who so far have been silent, those who could do it, those who hold the key against intolerance.

YS. Are you still maintaining your innocence?

JAT. Absolutely. Here they have said many times that there are no political prisoners. But if there are no political prisoners in Cuba, what am I doing as a prisoner here?

YS. Have you kept doing journalism?

JAT. I have a long article titled The Weight Of Hope that I would like to send to the American press. Also other texts from prison on various topics such as the rapprochement between the United States and Cuba, from the perspective of a journalist who is captive.

YS. Do you still consider yourself a man faithful to the Cuban government?

JAT. I consider myself loyal to my country. Cubans have been talking in Miami, Washington, Madrid and France because they do not let us discuss the issues we have to discuss in Santiago, Santa Clara, Camagüey and Havana. To the Government I have nothing to say, there is a phrase: decent people can not accept a government that ignores them.

YS. What journalistic media would you like to work in in the future?

JAT. (laughs) Maybe 14ymedio would be a good space. Anyway I have an additional sanction that says I can not practice journalism… at least in the official press. I would like to work as a correspondent for a foreign press, I have no other choice. To publish in The New York Times, El Nuevo Herald or Spain’s El País, that is among my aspirations.

YS. Do you plan to leave Cuba once they release you?

JAT. Where we have to live our life is here in Cuba. I have a lot of pressure on me, but I will do everything possible because it is right here in Cuba where one can put up a fight.

• Raul Castro erupts in fury at a press conference when asked about the existence of political prisoners in Cuba, he gets entangled in his earphones and comes out with some rigmarole a few feet from Barack Obama, who looks like the owner and master of the situation.
• After the visit of the United States president, the government media releases all their rage at him, while Barack Obama’s speech in the Great Theater of Havana is number one on the list of audiovisual materials most requested in the Weekly Packet.
• Two Cuban police officers arrive in uniform on the beaches of Florida, after having navigated in a makeshift raft with other illegal migrants who helped them escape from Cuba.
• A group of Little Pioneers, dressed in their school uniforms and neckerchiefs, contort in sexually explicit movements to the rhythm of reggaeton at an elementary school. They are filmed by an adult and the video is uploaded to the social networks by a proud father who thinks his son is a dance genius.
• Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez accuses Obama of having perpetrated an attack on “our conception, our history, our culture and our symbols” a few days after receiving him at the airport and without having fearlessly said any of these criticisms to his face.
• An obscure official at the Cuban embassy in Spain says in a chat with “friends of the Revolution” that this is “the most difficult moment and its history,” and calls the coverage of Obama’s visit in the foreign media as a “display of an unparalleled cultural, psychological and media war.”
• Raul Castro is unanimously reelected as first secretary of the Communist Party for the next five years and choses stagnation. Thus, he loses the last chance to pass into the history books for a gesture of generosity to the nation, as late as it might be, instead of for his personal egoism.
• Fidel Castro appears at the Congress’s closing ceremony, sheathed in an Adidas jacket, and insists that “we not continue, as in the times of Adam and Eve, eating forbidden apples.”
• A few days after the end of the Party Congress, the government announces a laughable reduction in prices to try to raise fallen spirits. Now, an engineer no longer has to work two-and-a-half days to buy one quart of cooking oil, he only has to work two days.
• Thousands of Cubans throng the border between Panama and Costa Rica trying to continue their journey to the United States, without the government of the island investing a single penny to help them have a roof over their heads, a little food and medical care.
• An economist who explained to the world the benefits of Raul Castro’s reforms and their progress, is expelled from the University of Havana for maintaining contacts with representatives from the United States and passing on information about the procedures of the academic center.
• Two young people make love in the middle of the San Rafael Boulevard in plain view of dozens of onlookers who film the scene and shout obscene incitements, but the police never arrive. The basic clay of the Revolution escapes in the individual and collective libido.

The credits start to run and in the room where this lousy film is being shown only a few viewers remain. Some grew tired and left, others slept through the long wait, a few monitor the aisles and demand loud applause from the still occupied seats. An old man is trying to feed a new, interminable, filmstrip through the projector… but there is nothing left. Everything is over. All that’s left is for the words “The End” to appear on the screen.

The Panama Papers involve not only doubtful transactions by political leaders such as the prime ministers of Georgia and Iceland, the King of Saudi Arabia and the president of Ukraine, but also reveal the shady dealings of close friends such as Russian president Vladimir Putin and Syrian president Bachar Al Assad, figures close to the Havana establishment and beneficiaries of favorable coverage in the local media.

The Plaza of the Revolution prefers to tread carefully before the avalanche of names of heads of states and governments — newly inaugurated or already retired –mentioned in the documents leaked by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). The monopoly maintained over the written and broadcast media allows Cuba’s Department of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR) to present the version of the scandal that is later repeated in chorus by its reports inside and outside the island.

However, the plot has just begun and there may be other names. The ICIJ has warned that the investigators will demonstrate which of those involved have no legitimate way to maintain offshore accounts and thus have committed a crime or violation of the law. For now, all those mentioned are in the eye of the hurricane of the public diatribe, but it is up to the organs of justice to determine their guilt.

The threads of the skein, now being untangled by 370 journalists and 107 media companies in 78 countries, start with the documentation from an anonymous source delivered to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, and also involve the soccer player Lionel Messi, King Juan Carlos’s brother Pilar de Borbon, and the movie director Pedro Almodovar. It is expected that in the coming weeks the scandal set off by these leaks will cause resignations, judicial proceedings and who knows if there might be a suicide.

Cuba’s official daily Granma will juggle to hide the fact that Adrian Jose Valasquez Figueroa, former head of security at the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, opened a bank account in the Republic of Seychelles a few days after Nicolas Maduro’s victory in the presidential elections. The faithful former captain of the Bolivarian army now lives in the greatest luxury in the Dominican Republic with his wife Claudia Diaz Guillen, a former nurse to Hugo Chavez. A story that will not be mentioned by the official press.

However, the Panama papers are more than a scandal of public figures who hide their money and evade tax obligations. Above all it is a test of truth and transparency in a world where there are ever more walls, secret codes and masks. This massive leak of documents also restores hope to journalism, a profession in crisis that has managed to stand out through perseverance and teamwork.

Hiding the revelations, silencing the names of those involved, will only end up sinking the official Cuban press, incapable of reflecting its own reality and that of others.