There Are In The Country of Solidarity, There Are No Foreigners / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Graffiti painted on a wall and later erased in Havana. (14ymedio)
Graffiti painted on a wall (left) and later erased (right) in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 12 October 2015 — Pepes, Yumas and tourists are some of the names we give to those who visit our country. For many Cubans, these travelers are their main source of income, through accommodation, transportation, dance and language classes. Some also share classrooms at the university, or work in a joint venture. However, in most cases their stay is brief, they are passing through, for only a few days or months. What happens when they come to stay?

A painting on a Havana wall addresses the contradiction between the official discourse that prides itself on the solidarity of a nation, but one where the immigrant has no place. This drawing of Che Guevara with a contentious quote – “In the homeland of solidarity there are no foreigners” – lasted just a few hours in its makeshift place, before the censor arrived in the form of a blue brushstroke to cover it over. For the government, when the foreigners arrive on their cruises, stay a few nights and leave their cold hard cash in the state coffers, everything seems fine. It is a whole different thing when they decide to come and stay. Then, the nationalistic hostility that characterizes the Cuban system shows itself. continue reading

Cuban immigration law is perhaps one of the strictest on the planet for a foreigner who settles in the national territory. For decades, living here was a privilege allowed only to the “comrades” of Eastern Europe, apprentice guerrillas, and political refugees from Latin American dictatorships. Diplomatic personnel and some chosen academics completed the map of natives of other countries who would stay in Cuba more or less permanently.

The island ceased to be a country of immigrants, where the crucible of identity joined together cultures far and near. Chinese, French, Arabs, Haitians, Spaniards and Poles, among many others, brought their customs, culinary recipes, and entrepreneurial initiatives to achieve the wonder of diversity. Today it is rare to see gathered around family tables people who were not born here.

At the end of 2014, the National Bureau of Statistics announced that the number of foreign residents in Cuba in 2011 represented just 0.05% of the population. A figure that contrasts with the 128,392 foreigners – 1.3% of the population – that we shared the island with in 1981. Two factors explain the sharp drop in foreign residents: the implosion, in the 1990s, of the socialist camp, whence the “technicals” of yesteryear; and, above all, because our country long ago ceased to be a nation of opportunities.

While foreign residents were leaving, temporary visitors were becoming an economic “lifeline” in the face of an increasing material misery. These latter were, for a long time, the only ones with hard currency, and with it the ability to buy shampoo in the “diplotiendas” (diplomat stores), and to experience the enormous luxury of enjoying a cold beer in a hotel bar. The tourist became the Prince Charming of many young Cuban women’s dreams, the son-in-law that every father-in-law wanted, and the preferred tenant of rooms for rent.

Even today foreigners are seen by many Cubans as wallets with legs who walk the streets, which must be emptied of every coin. It is difficult for a foreigner in Cuba to determine to what extent the friendliness they come across in the streets is the natural kindness of our people, versus a histrionic performance the objective of which is to get one’s hand in their pocket.

Cubans have lost the habit of living – equal to equal – with “the other.” Sharing jobs with immigrants, accepting that people speak different languages on a public bus. Our kitchens have been impoverished by lack of contact with other gastronomic experiences, we have become less universal and markedly more “islanders” in the worst sense of the word. We have lost the capacity to tolerate and welcome other ways of doing, speaking and living.

How will we react when our country becomes a destination for immigrants? Will they be condemned to the worst jobs? Will xenophobic groups emerge that reject those who come from overseas? Will there be NGOs to protect them? Programs to help them integrate? Politicians who don’t fear them? All these questions need to be answered in a shorter time frame than we think. Cuba could again be, very soon, a nation of people who come from many places.

The Pioneers Are Retiring / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Nearly half a century later, children who begin studies in Cuban schools are forced to repeat the anachronistic slogan: "Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che!"
Nearly half a century later, children who begin studies in Cuban schools are forced to repeat the anachronistic slogan: “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che!”

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 8 October 2015 — The ceremony is solemn. The national anthem echoes from the loudspeakers and an adult with a serious face ties the blue scarf around the student’s neck. Little has changed since my childhood, when that initiation turned us into members of the youngest mass organization in Cuba. A piece of cloth and a slogan sealed the commitment: “Pioneers for Communism, we will be like Che!”

These days the initiators of the Cuban Pioneers Union, renamed as the José Martí Pioneers Organization (OPJM) in 1977, are applying for retirement at their workplaces. They no longer have that glimmer of hope one saw in their eyes long ago, nor do they even speak about “communism,” a concept that the Party in power itself has forgotten to mention in the Guidelines issued by its last Congress. continue reading

Meanwhile, Ernesto Guevara, who inspired the motto of the Pioneer organization now celebrating its 47th anniversary, has become the face on T-shirts, paintings and ashtrays sold to tourists. In the midst of a political scenario where the Cuban Government serves as a mediator for peace between the Colombian guerrillas, Guevara’s call to create “two, three, many Vietnams” sounds like the advice of a madman eager for the Apocalypse and dreams of the end days.

Those enthusiasts who inaugurated the OPJM, today sneer at the Pioneer salute that obliges the fingers of the right hand to join together “demanding the indissoluble union of the peoples of the five continents.” The military gesture must be performed with the elbow at a 90 degree angle to ratify that “collective interests are put above the personal.” This, in these times of “every man for himself,” driven by the economic shock therapy decreed by the Government itself.

In this time of makeovers, where Cuban television broadcasts homilies and speeches by American officials, it is surprising that they have not eliminated this purely ideological organization that absorbs Cuban children. In the midst of so many daily priorities, we parents have also strongly demanded that our children not be soldiers of a political experiment from such a young age.

The OPJM also brings with it decades remote from reality. Like in 1991, when in the midst of the collapse of the Special Period, the first Pioneer Congress was held under the slogan, “We are happy here.” People still had the energy to mock the phrase and there are those who insist it was painted along the outer wall of Colon Cemetery in Havana. An awkward joke, but so was, and is, the pioneer movement.

And the mockery hasn’t ended. In the room of a friend from elementary school there is a fading photo of his Pioneer initiation day. It is black and white, although time has given it a golden tone that makes it more unreal and distant. “That was a time when I could not see,” jokes the forty-something.

He alludes sarcastically to the popular joke of a boy who comes to school and tells his teacher that his pet cat just gave birth to ten kittens. A few days later the concerned teacher asks about the health of the litter and receives the unusual response, “Five of the kittens opened their eyes, and the rest remain communists,” said the boy sharply. “I was like that, I didn’t see what was in front of my nose,” my playful colleague explains. Now, he has a look that scrutinizes everything, tacitly accepting nothing.

Nearly half a century after the creation of the OPJM, children who begin their studies in Cuban schools are forced to repeat its anachronistic slogan. The mothers who sheltered them in their wombs also shouted it, and even their grandparents did, with their neck veins swollen, full of conviction that Communism would arrive any minute now.

The piece of cloth that on this morning of 8 October is tied around the necks of thousands of Cuban children still has the shape of an isosceles triangle in which the vertices mean “study, work and fight for the conquests of the Revolution.” The ritual, which has become routine, keeps intact its burden of ideology and imposition. It is the gesture of the winners that marks the children of the vanquished, the hot iron stamping conqueror on the offspring of the conquered.

Cuba and Mick Jagger’s Kiss / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Mick Jagger in Deauville in 2014. (Georges Biard / Wikimedia Commons)
Mick Jagger in Deauville in 2014. (Georges Biard / Wikimedia Commons)

14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 5 October 2015 – We never got to hear Michael Jackson and Whitney Houston on our national stages. Freddie Mercury died without touching down in Havana, and when The Beatles broke up, we were a country where English music was considered ideological diversionism. We followed the career of Elvis Presley from a distance and the charismatic Amy Winehouse slammed the door on life without stepping foot on this island. However, now we are about to regain part of what was lost: Mick Jagger’s emblematic mouth is here, the eternal youth of The Rolling Stones has arrived.

While the analysts debate, looking for signs of change in the Cuban political or diplomatic scene, transformations are capricious and take another direction. This country is not going to change itself into a new nation because John Kerry visited, nor because of the third visit by a pope in less than two decades. But Cuba is changing when people like this British rocker, icon of good music and of the greatest possible irreverence, touch down in Havana. continue reading

The vocalist, 72, has made his way through the streets of Havana leaving a trail of incredulity and beating hearts. It is not, admittedly, the excitement provoked by Beyoncé or Rihanna with their escapades in this theme park of the past, but Jagger’s visit has more profound connotations. For several generations of Cubans he represents the forbidden, an attitude toward life that was denied us by an obsessive police control.

For a political system that tried to form the “New Man,” with a Spartan spirit, “correct” and obedient, this skinny guy with his turbulent life signified the anti-model, what we must not imitate. However, the laboratory man hawked by the pedagogical manuals didn’t work out… and Mick Jagger won the battle against the prototype of the militant boy, hair cut short and willing to denounce his own family.

A friend close to seventy came out into the streets this Sunday with the energy of girl celebrating her fifteenth birthday. “Where is he?” she asked the guard at Hotel Santa Isabel, where the official news reported the idol of her youth to be staying, but the man gave her no details. Like an obsessed schoolgirl, she walked all the streets around the hotel looking in the windows, to try to see the lean figure of the leader of the Rolling Stones.

Mick Jagger won the battle against the prototype of the militant boy, hair cut short and willing to denounce his own family

The lady displayed none of these reactions toward the American secretary of state, nor before the Bishop of Rome. For her, all these exalted visitors were in the range of the possible, no longer surprising nor moving. But Jagger… Jagger is something else. “I don’t want to die without seeing him,” she told me on the phone, with the conviction of one who will not tolerate leaving this world without “closing an era,” putting the capstone on her “best years,” she told me.

My friend infected me a little with her enthusiasm, I must confess. No sermon in the Plaza of the Revolution, no speech to open an embassy, caused my stomach to jump this way, a sudden feeling of living in historic times. A nervousness that will last until we see the legendary British band play next March at the Latin American stadium, in front of a crowd that will try to recover its lost years.

Jagger is much more than the living legend of rock and roll presented by the media. This beanpole, all mouth, all energy, all life, embodies a time that they snatched from us, an existence that we could have had and that they took from us.

It seems a shame to me that the political analysts don’t realize it: the future Cuba could start with the Rolling Stones in Havana.

El Sexto: He Who Laughs First, Laughs Twice / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Danilo Maldonado, "El Sexto," painting the balcony wall of Yoani's apartment
Danilo Maldonado, “El Sexto,” painting the balcony wall of Yoani’s apartment

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 3 October 2015 — There was no mistaking it. It was the same face that smiles defiantly from some paintings in which it resembles an unrepentant Christ. I had seen the signature of El Sexto at bus stops, followed his ironies on Havana’s walls, and wondered if this young man really existed, putting so many dreams, so many screams into his midnight strokes . But there he was, standing in front of me, in a T-shirt with a spray can.

“You cross out my stuff, I cross out yours,” said some of the artist Danilo Maldonado’s first paintings. It was when the police were using pink paint to hide his graffiti. Walking down Linea Street you could guess that behind those colorful patches in the middle of a wall that had gone decades without maintenance, the irreverent artist had left a drawing.

So when I stumbled upon El Sexto, thin, rebellious, talented, it seemed I had rediscovered a well-known face from my family photos, someone I had shared colorful nocturnal moments with, insolent and clandestine. With time I discovered that I was also facing a man who would not give in to fear and who would use his own body as a canvas for disobedience. continue reading

He declared himself “El Sexto” – The Sixth – of the “heroes” and shamelessly demanded “give me back my five euros,” in a mocking allusion to the official demand for the “five heroes” to be returned to the island.

When we were drowning in the Castro regime’s longest campaign, demanding the release of the five Cuban spies in prison in the United States, Maldonado confronted this hemorrhage of slogans and billboards. He declared himself, at his own risk, “El Sexto,” The Sixth of the “heroes” and shamelessly demanded “give me back my five euros,” in a mocking allusion to the official demand for the “five heroes” to be returned to the island.

The nickname stuck, although the former prisoners – sent home from the United States last December – are now fat and bored in their endless national tours and public events. And so the graffiti artist went from being “the sixth hero” to being the only hero of this story. A few days ago Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience. This same restless boy who launched flyers all over Havana, inviting people to tear up and destroy their own fears.

But it would be the playful side of El Sexto that most annoyed the prudish Cuban officialdom. The capacity for laughter, to ask an apparently naïve question that infuriates the repressor trying to interrogate him. The mischief of turning a traffic signal into a work of art. El Sexto made us big in his hands, although many of us were still watching him like a friendly and playful child who was beginning to leave his signature in the city.

Has there been anyone in Cuba as devoid of comic timing and the capacity for merriment as Fidel Castro? Probably not. And so the system created in his image and likeness reacts with self-consciousness and intolerance to sarcasm

But the authoritarians lack humor. To them, laughter is an offense. Any joke plunges into their chests like a knife and hits them in the face like an embarrassing slap. Has there been anyone in Cuba as devoid of comic timing and the capacity for merriment as Fidel Castro? Probably not. And so the system created in his image and likeness reacts with self-consciousness and intolerance to sarcasm.

The two piglets El Sexto was preparing to release in Havana’s Central Park last 25 December, painted with the names Raul and Fidel on one side, were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Every day of his long confinement in Valle Grande prison, they had to make him pay for the great audacity of that performance which he titled “Animal Farm.” But they don’t realize that he who laughs first laughs twice, and Danilo Maldonado has always been the one who initiated the fit of laughter in this story.

Danilo was born when many Cuban children were saying goodbye to their parents as they left for the war in Angola. He put on the neckerchief, recited at every morning school assembly that slogan we proclaimed, “Pioneers for communism,” concluding with the commitment “We will be like Che.” What when wrong with the process to tame his clay?

Poverty and exclusion shaped his life. In the letter he wrote from his cell, during the hunger strike that he carried out for 24 days, he wrote, “My family is very humble; I lived in Arroya Arenas from the time I was four; in Chafarinas, Güira de Melena; in Covadonga, Las Tunas: a village still without electricity; Guáimaro, Camagüey and Arroyo Arenas, La Lisa.” He wore Cuba on his skin before he painted it.

He worked for several days, filling the place with the smell of sweat and paint. Over his colorful rainbow of plurality, an angel asks for silence and a police inquisitor still looks out at us with reserve.

Then he knew the pain of police handcuffs when they tightened them around his wrists, the cell where they locked him up when Benedict XVI visited Cuba and that time he was detained for almost four days to make him confess that it was he who had painted those arabesques and rubrics. That sequence of clashing with reality forged the artist, in a more authentic way than the academy does other professionals of the brush and canvas.

I’ve never had a Christmas tree as beautiful as the one this young man, born in Nuevitas, Camagüey, painted on a cardboard box for a group of bloggers and independent journalists to celebrate the coming of the new year. It was rangy, beautiful and he did it in a stroke, without even taking a breath. Because if something springs from El Sexto’s every pore it is this capacity to turn the ugly and forgotten into a work of art.

One day we offered him the wall of our own home. The one that separates our apartment from the abyss, on the balcony fourteen floors up. He worked on it for several days, filling the place with the smell of sweat and paint. Over his colorful rainbow of plurality, an angel asks for silence and a police inquisitor still looks out at us with reserve.

Every morning I look at that wall as a daring orange sun rises over it. I imagine the cell where Danilo Maldonado is now, the mattress they give him to sleep for barely five hours a night, the heat and the overcrowding. There are no spray cans there, no colored pencils nor oils. But who knows if after he is released, in some corner of the prison, they will find one of his graffiti made with the metal of a spoon or a piece of coal. El Sexto will be laughing then, for the umpteenth time, at his jailers.

Are We Cubans More Unruly Than Other Peoples? / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Telephone with the handset ripped off
Telephone with the handset ripped off

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 30 September 2015 – “Nobody takes care of anything,” raged the lady in line at the cash register of a State butcher shop. She was referring to those who leave the refrigerators open or who put their shopping baskets on the glass counters. However, she didn’t seem to notice the lack of air conditioning, the stench coming from some of the freezers where the goods were spoiled, or the single employee taking payments, while the others looked on with their arms crossed. The customers are to blame, according to the feisty woman.

Social indiscipline has become a recurring theme in reports and interviews in the national media. Vandalism is blamed for everything, from problems with public transport buses to the deplorable state of planted areas. Official journalists raise the accusing finger more and more against the pillage, while barely addressing the educational and political system that has molded these citizens so bent on looting and destruction. continue reading

Social behavior is shaped by one’s environment. On a spotless floor, a clean sidewalk, in a cared-for city, many will imitate the environment and avoid dirtying, destroying or degrading it. Context greatly influences people’s attitude toward public spaces and common goods. But when the environment is dirty, assaulted by carelessness and becomes hostile, those who inhabit it will neither respect nor care for it.

Cubans are no more unruly than other human beings and yet, right now, a park filled with children’s play structures needs to be guarded like a bank, so that the swing seats, the iron from the carousels or the ropes from the climbing nets aren’t stolen. In poorly lit areas of the city people defecate or urinate, microdumps rise in thousands of corners and a stream of dirty water can fall from any balcony, directly on pedestrians below.

When the environment is dirty, assaulted by carelessness and becomes hostile, and those who inhabit it will neither respect nor care for it

The situation has gone on for so long that many have come to believe that it is in the DNA of our identity to not care for our surroundings. “This city couldn’t have a subway, because imagine the stink in those tunnels with people taking care of all their needs down there,” states a gentleman with the tint of a shabby official, while waiting at a bus stop.

With his words, the man suggested that we Cubans cannot enjoy the privileges of modernity and comfort, because we are unable to maintain them. However, this same “unredeemable exterminator” that we have become can get on a plane, go to New York or Berlin, and in two weeks in those place be throwing trash in the bins, not lighting up in public places, and cleaning the mud off their shoes before entering an office.

Vandalism is a problem present in all societies. Laws and control regulate it and keep it in check, but there it is. It is a part of our human nature that a moment of rage makes us take a blade and inscribe our name on a recently painted wall, or rip the fabric of a movie theater seat. Fines and other penalties should keep this vulture we all shelter within us from getting out of hand.

However, the context has to encourage people to care for things. It is not enough to call for discipline and formal education, the individual has to feel that it’s worth the trouble to preserve his or her surroundings. A street full of potholes, a late and overloaded bus, a sidewalk plunged into darkness, its single streetlight broken years ago, are the ideal components for depredation and pillage.

Many, like the lady who complained at the butcher’s, no longer perceive the scenario of constant attacks on the rights of consumers and citizens that our society presents. So accustomed to the abuse, the inefficiencies, the breakage and the high prices, they throw all the blame on those “unruly Cubans” who couldn’t “live anywhere without destroying it.”

Raul Castro, The Altar Boy / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Pope Francis greets Raul Castro on his arrival in Cuba. (EFE)
Pope Francis greets Raul Castro on his arrival in Cuba. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 22 September 2015 – The Cuban leader, Raul Castro, has accompanied Pope Francis at all his Masses during his tour of the island. From the one celebrated in Havana’s Plaza of the Revolution to the words pronounced at the Santiago de Cuba Cathedral. Like one seeking absolution for a long list of sins, the General President has traveled from the capital to the east of the country, following the papal entourage.

Castro appears to be fulfilling, in this way, the notice he gave in Rome last May. He said then, “If the Pope continues speaking like this I will go back to praying and return to the Church, I’m not joking.” The return to the faith appears to include not only him, but a part of his family that has accompanied him, along with the executive branch of the island and officials from the state press. continue reading

Despite the sudden mystical fervor, national television carefully avoided showing images of the Cuban president when the faithful were reciting the Mass, making the sign of peace, or repeating some prayer when he was present. The cameras only focused on his arrival and departure from temples and plazas.

Some television newscasters who participated in a special ‘magazine’ feature, broadcast during these three days have faced a particular plight. Several faces well-known for their staunch ideological discourse have had to moderate their vocabulary, and are salting their phrases with psalms, biblical allusions and reverence for religious figures.

The pirouettes performed by these presenters and journalists, to avoid words like “revolution,” “communist” or “comrades,” have also been worthy of the political circus they represent. All that was missing in the studio was a crucifix and a Bible, but they weren’t necessary.

The excessive incense of these days is not appreciated by many. “This goes from the sublime to the ridiculous,” a 63-year-old Communist Party militant who lives in my building told me. “From atheism to religious servility,” he added, referring to the attitude of the Cuban authorities and the broadcast of complete Masses in the national media.

Now, all we need is to hear Raul Castro’s next public speech, to see if he also has replaced the bellicose “Homeland or death!” with the more concise, “Amen!”

Francis And The Flight Of Skullcap / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Francis Pope, without skullcap, greets Raul Castro on his arrival in Cuba
Francis Pope, without skullcap, greets Raul Castro on his arrival in Cuba

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 21 September 2015 — A popular joke about the arrival of Pope John Paul II to Cuba referred to the wind blowing away his skullcap and its falling into the sea during a walk along the Malecon. Fidel Castro then walked on the water and rescued the silk cap. The next day, the newspaper Granma’s editorial declared that “El Comandante is God,” while L’Osservatore Romano asserted that the pontiff was responsible for the miracle and the Miami press concluded, “Castro can’t even swim anymore.”

On Saturday Pope Francis came to the island and a playful wind snatched his skullcap from his head as he was descending the stairs of the plane. It was just nature, the Havana breeze making itself felt. However, this unexpected little thing could symbolize his visit to Cuba, a journey where the moments outside of protocol will define the success or failure of his stay in this country. continue reading

Jorge Mario Bergoglio has a busy schedule of activities programmed, but certain “surprises” have already obliged him to diverge from the official program. After the daring breeze that greeted his arrival, the pope had to listen to a combative welcoming discourse from Raul Castro, where he made it clear that there is no need “to intervene, directly or indirectly, in the internal affairs of any other state.” In simpler language, “Mind your own business and shepherd your flock.”

Although the Cuban government has publicly praised Francis’s role as mediator during the secret talks between Washington and Havana, it also wants to make clear that the papal arbitration ends when he begins to ask for internal changes on the island. Equipped with the latest measures relaxing travel and trade with Cuba, just approved by US president Barack Obama, the Bishop of Rome could invite Raul Castro to put things in order in his own house.

In this diplomatic action, Francis should advocate for respect for freedom of the press, expression and association, an end to any vestiges of political imprisonment, and the restoration of citizenship rights to exiles. If he managed to push these changes, the Pope would score a historic mediation: one between the Cuban government and its own people.

The Cuban government wants to make clear that the papal arbitration ends when he begins to ask for internal changes in Cuba

Even the words almost whispered into the ear of the General President are within the protocol, part of the program. But the shouts of the four members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba arrested in the Plaza of the Revolution diverged from the program. Francis acted initially as pastor, putting his hand on the head of one of the regime opponents and seeming to listen for a few seconds, but then State Security dragged the dissident beyond the range of the cameras and, as of now, his whereabouts remain unknown.

Another event that has distorted the papal activities calendar is the arrest of the activist Martha Beatriz Roque on two consecutive days when she tried to honor an invitation to the Apostolic Nunciature to greet the pontiff. State Security appeared to have a parallel agenda for Francis and among its most important points is to block the Cuban opposition from any contact with him. Hence, they also did not allow the Ladies in White to reach the Mass in the Plaza of the Revolution.

On the other hand, a programmed part of his visit was the meeting with the former Cuban president. Unlike that popular joke starring Wojtyla, this time Fidel Castro did not jump vigorously over the wall of the Malecon, rather the Pope went to his house, where he was barely able to leave. The final photo of the meeting, taken by the dictator’s son himself, had certain airs of extreme unction, winds of finality. The Pope’s skullcap appeared firmly perched on his head, prepared for the political blizzard that awaits him.

Generation Y Behind Bars / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Men handcuffed(Luz Escobar/14ymedio)
Men handcuffed(Luz Escobar/14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerGeneration Y, Yoani Sanchez, 17 September 2015 — With the publication of the Official Gazette No. 31, there have been many published opinions about the pardons granted to 3,522 prisoners in anticipation of the visit of Pope Francis. Most of the criticism has focused on the fact that the beneficiaries include no one sentenced for political reasons. However, on reviewing the list of the released prisoners, another element jumps to mind.

At least 411 of those pardoned have names that begin with the letter “Y,” more than 11 percent of the total. It could indicate the we are talking about people between 20 and 45 years of age, because from the beginnings of the seventies to well into the nineties it was a fad in Cuba to give children names starting with the penultimate letter of the alphabet. Thus, we are in the presence of the “New Man,” born and raised in a society that felt itself part of “Utopia,” living under Soviet subsidies and excessive ideological indoctrination. How is it possible that so much of this human clay has ended up behind bars?

How is it possible that so much of this human clay has ended up behind bars?

Meat from the social laboratory and the skin of prison, Generation Y is far removed from what was projected for it. It has come to live in a different country from the one promised, and to survive in this jungle it has had to do the exact opposite of what it was taught. Although the list of released prisoners doesn’t include the crime for which each one was condemned, it is easy to adventure what led many of these Utopian men and women to end up in a cell.

Perhaps among them is Yoandis who killed a cow to feed his family, or a Yuniesqui who stole fuel from a company to resell on the black market to make up for his low wages. Who knows if some Yordanka was led down the road to marital revenge because of gender violence? Or a Yusimi, who learned from the time she was little in the tenement where she lived that it was better to strike first than to strike twice? From little Pioneers with their colored neckerchiefs, they passed to being inmates in gray uniforms; from the Cuba of Marxist manuals they fell into the real world.

A generation trapped by circumstances, forced many times to commit crimes, pushed at others to escape, and condemned to few opportunities. The 411 families of these children of the Cuban experiment will be relieved right now to see them return, as will the relatives of the rest of those pardoned. But, the society they will encounter on passing through the bars continues to belie that which was once explained in front of the blackboards and at the morning school assemblies. Prison has been a part of the social alchemy that has touched them.

Don’t Get Too Close, Brother Francis / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Works in progress to build the altar for the Pope in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana. (Luz Escobar)
Works in progress to build the altar for the Pope in the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana. (Luz Escobar)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 14 September 2015 — A Cuba of different points of view and clashing passions is what the Bishop of Rome will find when he begins, in a few days, his visit to the island. A country that wants to enter the future, but that remains clamped in place by a political discourse that died in the 20th century. This context will require all of the diplomatic skills of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, but it is worth advising him of the imposing verse from Ruben Dario: “Don’t get too close, Brother Francis.”

On his arrival in Havana a massive welcome and the corresponding family photos will await the pope. He will have to pose next to a power that decades ago ordered a the tearing off of scapulars, prohibited crucifixes, and forced the portraits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus to be hidden in the depths on our homes. The same government that blocked, under fear of reprisals, several generations of Cubans from being baptized or entering a church. continue reading

In the plaza where the face of the atheist Ernesto Guevara adorns the façade of the Ministry of the Interior, Francis will celebrate his Mass. He will come preceded by his reputation as a revolutionary within the Church, a conciliatory man willing to break with protocol. He also carries on his shoulders having been a mediator in 18 months of secret conversations between the governments of the United States and Cuba.

The responsibility he has taken on with a gesture such as this surpasses the glory he will receive for his intervention. Now, it is time for other interventions. Francis will know close up a society where a few have excluded the millions in making decisions. A nation where ideological differences are paid for with insults, repression and exile. A system that has cultivated the evil leaven of intolerance, and where the individuals who govern are supported by the wolf of intransigence.

A papal visit will not change Cuba nor does the Vatican Head of State have to carry the demands of its eleven million inhabitants

Bergoglio will visit ex-president Fidel Castro in his long convalescence, the principal architect of so many divisions and sorrows. But beware: “Do not get too close, Brother Francis.” This man and power in Cuba represent just the opposite of what a Holy Father wants to promote in his homilies and acts.

The Cuban government will seek from this visit validation and prestige. Without a doubt, it will gain something. It will show a better disposition toward believers, although deep down it continues its distrust of the Catholic Church and has not offered a public self-criticism for the years of excess against the faithful. On the other hand, it will pardon almost 3,500 prisoners, but it will maintain intact the penal code that sends so many people to prison for the simple act of killing a cow or opposing the government.

The faithful and the people in general will live days of hope and control. If the repressive blueprint of Benedict XVI’s visit is repeated, many will learn the content of the Masses days later when they emerge from the cells where there will have been held in “preventive detention.” They also will want the shepherd to intercede for them, to speak for them, to recognize their existence. Can Bergoglio gather up these demands?

We must remember that a papal visit will not change Cuba nor does the Vatican Head of State have to carry the demands of its eleven million inhabitants. “Go to your monastery, Brother Francis, continue on your path and your sanctity,” the Nicaraguan bard would have told him. However, this time, we need you to stop, to be aware, to calm this beast of political nonsense that lives among us.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

Leopoldo Lopez, The Freest Prisoner In The World / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Leopoldo Lopez waves from a window of the Ramo Verde military prison in Caracas. (EFE)
Leopoldo Lopez waves from a window of the Ramo Verde military prison in Caracas. (EFE)

Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 11 September 2015 — I met him and it was impossible not to notice him. He stood out among everyone: young, with an impressive energy and an intelligence that suggested he would go far. Yesterday he was sentenced to 13 years and nine months in prison by a court as biased as it was malicious. On hearing the sentence I started to calculate how old his two children would be when he left prison, but I immediately stopped short. Leopold Lopez will not serve those years behind bars, I told myself, nor will he disappoint the first impression I had of him.

The authorities don’t learn. They don’t take into account that the bars magnify a political leader and the pain suffered in the cells hangs on his chest like a medal won on the bloodiest battlefield. Leopold will leave there strengthened, while on the other side, a fearful Nicolas Maduro, will not know what to do with the freest prisoner in the world. Every day that he spends behind bars, this Venezuelan will hang like a shameful weight from the dying remnants of the Chavez regime.

I also remember the moment I met Lilian Tintori. A woman who had to leap over her own fears to become the citizen who last night read a message from her husband after the unjust sentence. There was a firmness in her that had not yet emerged in the first exchange of phrases we shared in Madrid. However, the absurdity that she has experienced has emphasized her strength, brought forward her resolve.

The authoritarians know not what they do.

Leopoldo will return. Young, energetic and rewarded for his pain. Lilian is already here, with this determination that makes us ask ourselves, would we be willing to do the same for our family and for our country?

The Sacred Way / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Reina Street in Central Havana. (14ymedio)
Reina Street in Central Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Generation Y, Yoani Sanchez, 8 September 2015 — The paint drips into the cracks and holes and over the rusted metal poking through the columns and the ceilings. A colorful layer that covers over cobwebs, cracks and dirt, like make-up masks scars and wrinkles. Havana preens for the arrival of Pope Francis. The facades along the streets are touched up where the Bishop of Rome will pass by and popular humor has derisively re-baptized the path “The Sacred Way.” It is an ephemeral blush, rushed, one that the rain and the months will wash away.

They have not been able to camouflage the people, however, with optimism. The strokes of the painters, rushing to meet their schedule, don’t cover the skin or the worries. From early in the morning, Habaneros go out with their bags hanging from their shoulders looking for food. “Not even the pope coming has put something in the shops,” complains a woman on the corner of Manrique and Salud, while a friend directs her to Galiano Avenue where, she assures her, “they have good hot dogs for sale.”

Bergoglio isn’t going to pass by the empty refrigerators in the stores, so the touch up doesn’t include pretending that there is food, or disguising the shortages. Thus we are saved from the cartons of chicken thighs and the powdered milk extended with sand! There are no cosmetics to cover up the economic downtown we are experiencing. The market stands and shelves remain indoors, far from all the pomp of the papal entourage.

Our Sacred Way is hollow, purely a stage set, with the crudest props, the least believable.

“You Have To Eat A Bread That Has Dignity” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Baker Alberto Gonzalez in front of 'Salchipizza’s' oven. (14ymedio)
Baker Alberto Gonzalez in front of ‘Salchipizza’s’ oven. (14ymedio)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 4 September 2015 — I just wanted to reach Carlos III Avenue. Pass quickly through Infanta Street, avoiding the propped up arcades, to catch a collective taxi and go home. This street, named for royalty, is too woven into the memories of my childhood not to lament every pothole, every sewer leak draining across the sidewalks, every balcony on the point of collapse. However, this week the avenue had a surprise for me, in the shape of a smile and the aroma of bread.

Alberto Gonzalez is an entrepreneur, “a little crazy” say those who predicted he would never launch his artisan bakery, much less in a neighborhood where many eat this staple only through their meager portion from the ration market. Determination, stubbornness and a good dose of optimism have combined so that Salchipizza, his private business, is efficient, well run, with varied offerings in the midst of this heir without the right to a throne that is Infanta Street. continue reading

Amid the bustle of customers who come to buy, Alberto gave me a moment for this interview about his personal history, the obstacles faced by the self-employed, and his dreams for the future. It comes to 14ymedio readers with the freshness of bread just out of the oven.

Yoani Sanchez. Chemical engineer, specialist in water treatment, and emigrant living in Italy for 14 years. Why did you return to Cuba?

Alberto Gonzalez. For the values ​​we are losing and because of the poor diet on the island. We Cubans eat anything. I think to open a business in a place as central as this, 562 Infanta Street between Valle and Zapata, I can help rescue those values, that culinary tradition that we have always had. A Cuban child today doesn’t know what an apple is, what bread tastes like… they only know what pizza is, or a hamburger.

A Cuban child today doesn’t know what an apple is, what bread tastes like… they only know pizza… a hamburger.

Sanchez. And why did you choose to open a bakery, when you trained as a chef and even achieved a Michelin star?

Gonzalez. I ask myself that question. Why bread? If someone searches the internet for the phrase “breads of Cuba” almost nothing shows up in the results. It is an offense that we don’t have on this island something that identifies us with respect to bread. When bread is identity, union, family.

Sanchez. Anything emotional uniting the flour, the yeast, the oven?

Gonzalez. When my grandmother died in 2011, the last phrase she uttered in life was “this is not bread.” She was in the hospital, very sick with cancer and I returned from Italy to see her at the hospital. She asked me for a piece of bread and I bought her one from one of the Sylvain bakeries. When I gave it to her to try she said, “This is not bread.” Then I ran home to knead her a special one, with her recipe for “whole wheat bread,” but she died before she could eat it. Because of this I told myself, “If I open a business in Cuba it will be to make bread.”

Sanchez. Why locate the bakery in Central Havana, a neighborhood with such precarious material circumstances?

“My biggest dream is to stand in a plaza and cook for thousands of Cubans. Whether in the Plaza of the Revolution with a giant kitchen, or in Infanta Street.”

Gonzalez. If someone wants to do something beautiful, they must start with the most ugly part. The values of the human being that we must rescue first are here. Here, people with a piece of high quality bread can begin to save themselves, to rediscover their values. It is not only about filling a hole of hunger with bread, but it has this personality. You have to eat a bread with dignity.

Sanchez. Is there a touch of madness in the decision to open this business?

Gonzalez. Yes, it’s crazy to go back to the raw ingredients. It is crazy to open a business as small as this, without resources, without knowing where you can find ingredients and having to deal with the amount of culinary ignorance on all sides.

Sanchez. I see on the menu you have cornbread, fine herbs, eggplant, fennel seed cookies and even whole wheat bread. How do you maintain such a range in the midst of the food shortages this country is experiencing?

Gonzalez. I am in the process of repatriation to Cuba and that only allows me periods of ninety days in my own country. After that the current law forces me to leave, so I go to Mexico and bring in many of the seeds, flours for those suffering from celiac disease, whole wheat, in my personal luggage.

Sanchez. What do you most need to bring in from abroad?

Gonzalez. Finocchietto (fennel), a very tasty seed that we put in some cookies.

Sanchez. You have an image here with a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. with his most famous phrase. And the dream of Alberto Gonzalez? What is it?

'Salchipizza' Bread, owned by Alberto Gonzalez. (14ymedio)
‘Salchipizza’ Bread, owned by Alberto Gonzalez. (14ymedio)

Gonzalez. My biggest dream is to stand in a plaza and cook for thousands of Cubans. Whether in the Plaza of the Revolution with a giant kitchen, or in Infanta Street. To unite all the cooks in Cuba to make a dish together and to have people come and eat for free.

Sanchez. What would you make in that case?

Gonzalez. A dish that unites Italy and Cuba: cornmeal made ​​with cheese and crab.

Sanchez. What is the main obstacle to private sector development and entrepreneurship in Cuba?

Gonzalez. The raw materials and inspectors. They still haven’t authorized wholesale markets to sell raw materials and they don’t allow self-employed people to import commercial products. There is no stability in the quality of the products. Sometimes the flour is good, other times it’s terrible. So I go to Mexico to bring the “core” and the yeast, which lets me make a higher yield bread than we offer. It I want to maintain my offerings I have to do it this way, because it’s very clear to me that the continuity of the product makes the work excellent.

Those are the major obstacles and also the taxes. For example, I have to pay a large sum—about three thousand Cuban pesos—on electricity for the oven, but I hoped that to pay taxes and be a good contributor, this bill would come with certain benefits, with discounts, but it’s not like that.

Sanchez. Are you licensed for a “bakery”?

“My license is for ‘preparer of light food.’ There is no license for a bakery. So I am always afraid of being told, ‘You can not continue in this occupation’.”

Gonzalez. The license is very general: “preparer of light food,” not something specific to bake and sell bread. There is no a license to own a bakery. So I am always afraid of being told “you cannot continue in this occupation.” I went several times to the National Tax Administration Office (ONAT) to see if they could make any adjustment in the law, but it’s still the same.

Sanchez. This coming October 10 is Salchipizza’s first birthday. What is your assessment of the health of the business?

Gonzalez. I rate it as good, because I have made myself known to people. This coming year I will sell a little more.

Sanchez. A tip for those who want to open a business in Cuba?

Gonzalez. That they think twice: first, “think about it”; two “think about it” … Three, “see if you can open it.”

A Child Writes the Tragedy of a People in the Sand / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Front page of Spain's El Pais, 3 September
Front page of Spain’s El Pais, 3 September

I am innocent and I have come to the seashore 
Gaston Baquero

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, 3 September 2015 – There is a boy on the beach, he does not move, he does not smile, he does not build sand castles. The life of Aylan Kurdi has been brief: only three years, but the drama of his people has lasted decades, centuries. A tragedy that sheds light on the displaced, on wars, on the overwhelming economic contrasts that mark this planet. The little head that rests in the sand encompasses the pain of those who flee, who leave everything behind, but who never arrive at their destination.

A people who escapes always understands better another who emigrates. They know the pain of saying goodbye to things that are left behind. Goodbye table. Goodbye tree. Goodbye window, from which every day they gaze upon the sunrise, and the horror. Goodbye friends. There is always a touch of innocence, of blind hope in those who leave, as if they are filled with the certainty that they will reach the other side. continue reading

The Mediterranean smells like a cemetery these days. In its water float many of those whose geographic fatality left them trapped in a war and who decided to do what human beings have learned from the days of the caves: find a save place, protect your family by taking it to a place far from danger. But the world now has borders, customs, immigration officials who inspect passports and, above all, the fear of those who come from a distant place, great fear.

The odyssey of Syria and other places in Africa belongs to everyone. Every inhabitant of this planet has a share of the responsibility

The odyssey of Syria and other places in Africa belongs to everyone. Every inhabitant of this planet has a share of the responsibility for those countries that are being dismantled right now, wracked by lawlessness, the brutality of the Islamic State and material scarcities. It is not only Europe’s responsibility to help ease this humanitarian situation and to shelter people desperate to emigrate. Where is the solidarity of other continents? Why do we not hear of the governments of Latin America, Asia, North America or far off Australia offering asylum quotas for those who flee?

The historical debt to Africa is one we all carry on our backs. When we enjoy the beauty of an ancient temple erected with the sweat of its people, or savor a spoonful of sugar bought at the cost of lashes and death for centuries. Even when we remember the applause we dedicated to the Arab Spring; that moment when the citizens of the region rocked the dictators and took to the streets with their cellphones and their enthusiasm, confident that a new era was beginning.

The solution to the immigration crisis that is engulfing the old continent should not be left only in the hands of those at the emergency summit called by the European Commission for 14 September. This problem must involve the greater share of the governments on the planet. Including the countries that people escape from every day, like this island in the Caribbean whose Mediterranean is the Florida Straits. No one should be oblivious to the drama of a boy dead on edge of the beach.

Cloud Seeding or the Sword of Voltus V / Yoani Sanchez

The Japanese anime Voltus V
The Japanese anime Voltus V

14ymedio biggerGeneration Y, Yoani Sanchez, 28 August 2015 — Undone, with the sparks of short circuits clouding his vision and the cabin smashed into smithereens, Voltus V faced the worst end against a fearsome enemy. However, at the last minute, he drew his sword and in a clean cut slew his enemy. Japanese anime, so popular on the island during the eighties, seems to have inspired the Cuban authorities in their tendencies to hold off on certain solutions until a problem has already resulted in the worst ravages.

This has happened with the recent announcement that, as of this coming September 15, a campaign will begin to “artificially increase the rain.” Through a technique known as “cloud seeding,” Pyrocartridges will be launched from a Russian Yak-40 plane so that the water vapor particles will condense, and this condensation will produce precipitation, according to the official press.

The first reaction of many on reading the news was to wonder why they hadn’t done something like this earlier. Did the country have to get to its current state of hydrological emergency for Voltus V to draw his sword? With the dams at no more than 36% of capacity and 25 reservoirs completely dry–at the so-called “death point”–now the experts from the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources (INRH) propose to bombard the clouds? continue reading

The answers to these questions not only alert us to the insolvency and inefficiency of our state apparatus to handle certain issues, but also clearly indicate that they have not been up to the task to preserve this valuable resource. As long as leaks and breaks in the country’s water system continue to waste more than 50% of the water pumped, no water project will be sustainable.

As long as leaks and breaks in the country’s water system continue to waste more than 50% of the water pumped, no water project will be sustainable.

On the other hand, it is worth questioning how water management has been approached for decades in our nation, which has prioritized the creation of large reservoirs. This decision has ended up damaging the riverbeds of the countless dammed rivers and has reduced the sediment they carry to the coasts, with the consequent erosion of flora and fauna in the deltas.

­Of course, many of these reservoirs–now below half their capacity, or totally dry–were built at a time when the Hydrologist-in-Chief made decisions about every detail of our lives. The marks of his excesses and harebrained schemes are still apparent in our country, excesses that failed to give our people more food, more water and more freedom.

The marks of excesses and harebrained schemes are still apparent in our country, excesses that failed to give our people more food, more water and more freedom

So enormous public works of damming the rivers and streams were undertaken to the detriment of other solutions that would have helped us to ease the current situation. Among them, investments in wastewater treatment and the desalination of seawater, which surrounds us on all sides. Every hydrological bet in the country was placed on one card: the rain. Now, we are losing the game.

If the announcement of “cloud seeding” had been made in a country with an environmental movement, we would see protests in the street. The method is not as innocuous as the newspaper Granma wants us to think. In fact, the critics of this practice consider it “an alteration of the normal rhythm of nature,” and argue that interference with moisture in one part of the country could compromise the rain pattern elsewhere.

Looking up to see whether or not the rains come, we Cubans are waiting for something more than a crop of clouds altered with a blast of silver iodide. We deserve a coherent hydrology policy, over the long term, without magic or spells, but with guarantees. May the next drought not find us like Voltus V, destroyed and thirsty, raising an arm to draw our majestic sword… that we haven’t carried for a long time.

The Missing Statistics On Women In Cuba / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Gender violence affects an unknown number of victims in Cuba every day, but the statistics of these reprehensible acts do not come to light. (Silvia Corbelle / 14ymedio)
Gender violence affects an unknown number of victims in Cuba every day, but the statistics of these reprehensible acts do not come to light. (Silvia Corbelle / 14ymedio)

14ymedio biggerGeneration Y, Yoani Sanchez, 25 August 2015 — In the neighborhood of Cayo Hueso everyone knew her as “the woman with the machete slashes.” You didn’t have to get too close to see the scars on her arms. These marks for life were made one night when her husband returned home with more alcohol than patience and, machete in hand, went after her. He was in prison for a couple of years and afterwards returned to the same tenement room where the fight had been. “He didn’t have any place else to live and the police didn’t get him out of here,” she said, apologetically. Gender violence creates an unknown number of victims every day in Cuba, but the statistics on these acts are not made public.

For weeks now, marking the 55th anniversary of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), we’ve had to hear on television and in the official press the numbers of women who have achieved administrative positions, who are at the helm of a company, a part of Parliament or who have managed to graduate from college. They stuff us full of only some of the numbers, to show that the women’s emancipation has reached this country, while remaining silent on the data about the dark side of reality, where the man commands and the woman obeys. continue reading

For a couple of years now I have been talking in a climate of trust with at least eight women friends, all of them graduates of higher education, with professions in the humanities and a certain economic autonomy. Most of them confess to having been beaten by their husband at least once, a couple of them have suffered rape within marriage, and three have had to flee “with just the clothes on their backs” to avoid domestic violence. Most alarming is that they tell these stories with the equanimity of “this is what we get for being women.”

They stuff us full of only some of the numbers, to show that the women’s emancipation has reached this country, while remaining silent on the data about the dark side of reality, where the man commands and the woman obeys.

If we move away from Havana, the problem worsens and takes on connotations of tragedy. It burns you up to hear about the humiliations women experience, the wife battering that is a much more common practice than is admitted in the statistics. Odieti, a peasant from a little village lost in the Cienfuegos countryside, drank a bottle of India ink to put an end to the ordeal her husband subjected her to. After hours of suffering, her life was saved and she earned the next beating for “being loose.” This is what he repeated while whipping his belt against her back.

Living in a country where there is no female circumcision or forced marriages, where women are not forbidden to drive a car, is not sufficient reason to breathe easily and believe that the serious problem of gender inequality is resolved. To display the numbers regarding professional development, integration into the workforce, and the responsibilities of millions of women throughout the island, doesn’t silence the drama so many of them are mired in.

They need to display other statistics. Those that reveal the number of kicks that fall on women’s breasts, backs and faces each week. They should clearly publicize the number of victims who have gone to a police station begging them to keep the abuser away from home and who find only a yawning duty officer who says, “you have to take care of that between the two of you.”

Where do they keep the inventory of the suicides, or of the suicide attempts, because of the indignities suffered at the hands of an abusive man?

They also need the numbers of those who are “slaves” to the stove after a full work day outside the home and it would probably match the four million number of members that the FMC boasts about. The numbers of single and divorced women with ridiculous pensions that aren’t enough to feed a child for even a week. Who includes these in the numbers reported to official journalists? And what about those whose partners have threatened, “If you leave me I will kill you”? Where do they show up in the statistics? How many have had their faces cut with a knife like one “brands” a cow, so that everyone will know they belong to the male, the man, the masculine, who cheats on them with so many others?

Where do they keep the inventory of the suicides, or of the suicide attempts, because of the indignities suffered at the hands of an abusive man? What is the number of those who have been harassed by a jealous boyfriend who follows them everywhere and beats them and causes public scandals? How many have to give in to pressures for sex from their bosses at work, because they know there is no other way to get ahead professionally? And what about the number who are harassed on the streets by those who think it is a virile obligation to accost a woman, touch her, to insinuate himself all the time?

We can only be proud of what has been achieved with regards to the dignity of women when we can begin to solve all these evils, evils that right now cannot even be publicly debated. Having autonomous women’s organizations is essential to achieve these demands. Shelters for abused women, a legal framework that forcefully penalizes the abuser, and a press that reflects the suffering of so many, are essential if we are to leave such atrocities in the past.