Category: Yoani Sanchez

We have had many ups and downs in the course of these four years. Many have joined, but not everyone can bear the pressures of the repressive forces.

UNPACU has members of all ages, but young people are the majority in our ranks, those between 18 and 45. A good portion of us are from the eastern provinces, Santiago de Cuba first of all, and we are humble people, working-class, young people who are unemployed and self-employed.

We have professionals and technicians, but the base is composed mainly of people who only finished high school, or even just the ninth grade.

Sanchez. The Cuban opposition has been strongly criticized for not being “connected to the people and not reaching ordinary Cubans.” How does this relate to the work of your organization?

Reyna.  For UNPACU, we reach out in so many ways to the people I mentioned, principally in the east and in the Cuban capital, to thousands of compatriots who look to us and ask us for help to solve many of their problems. They look to us to denounce the injustices they’ve been victims of, to avoid an eviction, to get them medications, to help them in the construction of a humble abode. They also ask to use our audiovisuals, to help them connect to the internet and many other things.

In Santiago de Cuba, for example, there is no person who does not know our organization. Young people and teenagers are humming the music produced by our artists and they even threaten the police that they will get UNPACU to come when they harass them or try to stop the weekend parties. If everyone who sympathized with us joined in a peaceful protest we would fill several plazas. The challenge is to turn sympathizers into activists.

Sanchez. Right now UNPACU is the opposition movement with the largest number of political prisoners. To what do you attribute such marked repression against you?

Reyna. Currently there are 21 and since September of 2011 we are the organization with the most political prisoners in Cuba. More than one hundred members of UNPACU have passed through the regime’s prisons in the last four years. Political prisoners and repression manifest themselves to the extend that pro-democracy public activism manifests itself. It is a law of physics: every action causes a reaction. The more our activism annoys the dictatorship, the more their repression. We are developing a diverse struggle in many areas. Some areas are more repressed than others.

They look to us to denounce the injustices they’ve been victims of, to avoid an eviction, to get them medications

 Sanchez. How does UNPACU view the normalization of relations between the governments of Cuba and the United States?

Reyna. Since last December we have said that we value the process of normalizing relations between the US government and the Cuban regime. We appreciate the solidarity of the US government with the Cuban people and independent civil society, and we are also grateful for the solidarity of governments and organizations of the old continent.

The protagonists of change must be Cubans, but solidarity is always necessary. In UNPACU we try to be realistic and never forget the feelings of the majority, the opinion of the people, our friends and the world in general. We always want to take the greatest advantage for the cause of freedom and open any space we can for freedom.

Sanchez. What do you expect from the visit of Pope Francis to Santiago de Cuba in September?

Reyna. We want to tell him that Cuba has not changed much since the visit of John Paul II and continues to be the same country that then Archbishop Pedro Meurice presented to the Polish pope. We hope that he can intercede for the political prisoners and be heard by Raul Castro. We will also tell him that the solidarity of the Church with the oppressed is always appreciated by many and that we hope his visit will be positive for our people and for the Church.

The official propaganda will run out of epithets. This has already been happening since the December 17 announcement of the reestablishment of relations between Washington and Havana took all of us by surprise. That equation, repeated so many times, of not permitting an internal dissidence or the existence of other parties because Uncle Sam was waiting for a sign of weakness to pounce on the island, is increasingly unsustainable.

Now, the ideologues of continuity warn that “the war against imperialism” will become more subtle, the methods more sophisticated … but slogans do not understand nuances. “Are they the enemy, or aren’t they?” ask all those who, with the simple logic of reality, experienced a childhood and youth marked by constant paranoia toward that country on the other side of the Straits of Florida.

Now that an official Cuban delegation has shared the U.S. embassy-opening ceremony with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, there is a family photo that they can no longer deny or minimize. There we saw those who until recently called us to the trenches, now shaking hands with their opponent and explaining the change as a new era.

And it is good that this is so, because these political pragmatists can no longer turn around and tell us otherwise. We have caught them respecting and allowing entrance to the Stars and Stripes.

The opposition must also understand that we are living in new times—moments of reaching out to the people, and helping them to see that there is a country after the dictatorship and that they can be the voice of millions who suffer every day economic hardship, lack of freedom, police harassment, and lack of expectations.

The authoritarianism expressed in warlordism, not wanting to speak with those who are different, or snubbing the other for not thinking like they do, are just other ways of reproducing the Castro regime.

“Are they the enemy, or aren’t they?” ask all those who experienced a youth marked by constant paranoia toward that country on the other side of the Straits of Florida.

A conflict of eras is unfolding in Cuba—a collision between two countries: one that has been stranded in the middle of the 20th century, and one that is pushing the other to move forward. They are two islands that clash, but it needs to happen. We know, by the laws of biology and of Kronos, which will prevail. But right now they are in full collision and dragging all of us between the opposing forces.

This Friday’s front-page of the newspaper Granma shows this conflict with a past that doesn’t want to stop playing a starring role in our present—a past tense of military uniforms, guerrillas, bravado, and political tantrums that refuses to give way to a modern and plural country.

When one scrutinizes Friday’s edition of the official publication of the Cuban Communist Party, it is easy to detect how a country that is unraveling clings to its past, trying not to make room for the country to come.

In this future Cuba, which is just around the corner, some restless grandchildren will ask me about one day lost in the intense summer of 2015. With a smile, I will be able to tell them, “I was there, I lived it … because I understood the point of inflection that it signified.”

This article was translated from the Spanish by Mary Jo Porter.

Bleeding-heart vampires alternate with martyrs fallen in who knows what battle. Soap operas of more than 100 episodes made in Brazil, Mexico or Colombia try to recover an audience that for the most part already knows that the bad guy married the good girl, because they already watched the series through the illegal “weekly packet.” Audience participation programs try to transmit freshness from a studio where even the applause is recorded and the dubbed music kills all the charm of a live performance.

Without any concept or order, TV is shaped by whatever comes to hand, what can be stolen from some foreign channel, and the stagnation of domestic productions

The comedy shows are not spared either, with the exception of the popular Vivir del Cuento (Surviving by Your Wits), the others range from vulgar to easy. Jokes copied from outside sources are the most abundant, given the impossibility of broadcasting on the small screen what really makes us laugh. Can you imagine a comic in front of the camera saying, “It happened once in hell that there were the presidents of the United States, Russia and Cuba…”? No, no you can’t. The humor we see on TV has become as boring as the news.

Without any concept or order, TV is shaped by whatever comes to hand, what can be stolen from some foreign channel, and the stagnation of domestic productions. The worst part comes when the domestic scripts try to compete with Hollywood, the Discovery Channel or History. That’s when they come out with these messes like “On the Trail,” where the police are always so right, honest and effective that you end up wondering how there can be so much crime in a country with such perfect police forces.

Nor are we saved by the sports broadcasts. You have to listen to the commentators who, for long minutes, assure you that the medal was stolen from some Cuban athlete “who did so well, but the referee favored the challenger,” while avoiding offering even one compliment to the hosts of some sporting event taking place abroad. The chauvinism takes the form of the pole, the ball, the bat or the hammer. The athletes become the spearhead of politics.

It’s been an hour since the end of the news broadcast and channel surfing confirms that Cuban television is a wreck. How many people, right now, are looking at one of the broadcasts on the national channels? I suspect very few.

And of course, the event would not be complete without the “Young Pioneer” girl on the verge of tears hysterically spewing out well-rehearsed slogans. Nor the reenactment of the assault on the barracks, 62 years ago, acted out by teenagers who only know the version of history imposed on them by the gentlemen seated in the front row. The only excitement was hearing their youthful voices crying “Down with the dictatorship!” The applause, almost syncopated, completed the spectacle.

The only excitement was hearing their youthful voices crying “Down with the dictatorship!”

The artistic gala, with its roughly gesturing men dancers and languid women, added to the historical cult. A dance style widely used at official events that mixex socialist realism with the kitsch of a circus act. In the words of the playwright and film director Juan Carlos Cremata, another of “the thousands of public events where masses of money is squandered and bad taste, ineffectiveness, falsehood and madness are encouraged.”

No announcements occurred during the “Revolutionary Mass.” Not even on addressing the theme of the reestablishment of relations with the United States did Machado Ventura go beyond what has already been repeated ad nauseam. The process will be “long and complex,” the functionary recited like a weary oration. Conspicuous for its absence in his words was any allusion to John Kerry’s upcoming visit to Cuba and the opening ceremony for the American embassy in Havana.

For its part, the speech of Lazaro Exposito Canto, first secretary of the provincial committee of the Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba, slid along the path of triumphalism. He boasted of the territory’s economic results, in an uncritical and obviously fake way. There was no lack of commitment to the founders of the cult, when he affirmed that “Santiaguans have never failed the Party nor the direction of the Revolution, because in Santiago, dear Fidel and Raul, always, absolutely always, you will be victorious,” without explaining that it would be a “victory” like that of those terrible early morning hours of 26 July 1953, on the feast day of Saint Anne.

Only one gesture departed from the script. Raul Castro, at the last second, grabbed the microphone and shouted, “Let Santiago always be Santiago!” A tired “amen” that few heard because they had already turned off the TV.

Tsipras has accepted what until recently he rejected. All his incendiary nationalistic rhetoric has ended in a pragmatic gesture of compliance. Political greatness? Awareness of defeat? A final grimace of goodwill before heading out the backdoor of power in Greece? It’s hard to know. Most importantly he has chosen not to separate Greece from Europe, to exorcise the demon of the “Grexit,” and in passing has disappointed all those who incited him to lead an entire nation to economic suicide.

The lines in front of the ATMs, the empty shelves, and the growing fear in the population have done more than all the winks of solidarity from other corners of the world that fell on this Greek, though the crisis has not marked his face with a single wrinkle, there is no ‘tic’ of concern. Even at the agreement table, where he spent his last political capital, he has been seen as imperturbable, beautiful, young.

The adversaries of the European Union will accuse him of having sold the country to foreign interests and those who never believed him will look on him with pity while muttering “we told you so.”

Now the diatribe rains down on him. The adversaries of the European Union will accuse him of having sold the country to foreign interests, and those who never believed him will look on him with pity while muttering “we told you so.” There is no way this Greek play where the Syriza party leader is the protagonist ends up as something more than a political tragedy for his party and himself.

Like a sublime statue, Tsipras has ended up trapped in the marble of his verticality; the populism he himself unleashed has devoured him. Some promises meant to charm the voters, when put into practice made the country fall below the point it had reached until now. The pantomime of a referendum was the ultimate gesture of vanity before reneging on his positions.

Tsipras will be diluted in the coming weeks, when the parliaments of the European nations, including Greece, discuss the agreement and approve its implementation. Every step toward getting the rescue and complying with its demands will extinguish this figure that dazzles a part of a nation with his rhetoric.

None of those who applauded his daring will pat him on the back to acknowledge he has chosen for his country and not for himself. For them, Tispras is the uncomfortable reminder of what might have been, the missed opportunity to project, through Greece, their own vendettas.

Cubans don’t appear scandalized when we talk about these floating behemoths that will arrive with sumptuousness and money, a lot of money. Rather, people calculate the benefit involved when the giant of the seas touches land and a flood of tourists descend with bulging wallets and overflowing sunscreen. Restaurant owners near the Port of Havana are rubbing their hands and tchotchke sellers are hoping to improve their sales.

“Carnival Cruise Lines is the last fig leaf that has been removed and it lays bare their shameless fascination with money, their own and others’.”

Others, like the gentleman with the worn out shirt and the chewing tobacco, will probably not benefit at all from Carnival Line’s arrival. However, unlike in the past when he had spit with anger at these “exploitative bourgeois who come to leave us their trash,” now he seems disposed to cope with such an exhibition of ostentation and glamor. Asked about his tolerance for others’ luxuries, the old man explained that, “There are people here who live like that, so grandly, but they’re up there,” as he pointed a finger skyward to indicate the nomenklatura. “Here the difference is that we will see them coming by sea and they won’t be hiding what they have,” he said.

To preserve the succulent assets associated with power, the government itself is changing its discourse regarding the wealth of others, and trying to attract those, “rich people, bourgeois, empowered,” whom they renounced and fought for decades. However, in order to reap the benefits of luxury tourism, they are sending a contradictory message to their citizens who grew up under calls for egalitarianism and austerity. Carnival Cruise Lines is the last fig leaf that has been removed and it lays bare their shameless fascination with money, their own and others’.

Will national television stop broadcasting those programs denigrating Cuban dissidents where they use images of them entering the Interests Section, now the embassy? Will the police no longer wait outside for independent reporters to confiscate their technologies or the diplomas they received from the journalism courses held there? Will they return to us that piece of sidewalk facing the sea, where today the police block pedestrians because of its proximity to the gate of the diplomatic site?

It will be enough to say “the embassy” for all of us to know they mean this site, by the sea, with the green-tinted windows, which has ceased to be “the enemy.”

Freedom of movement for American embassy officials should also be guaranteed, along with respect for their pouches and mailboxes. The ability to contact, visit and meet with civil society will have to stop being stigmatized. Now the diplomats of that country will be guests at commemorations and public acts. We might even see their faces in the Plaza of the Revolution during the May Day parade.

Hopefully, with the new diplomatic site we will also free ourselves from the enormous masts that disfigure the face of our city in front of the building’s façade, with which the Cuban government once wanted to cover the electronic ticker that displayed news items. Those times already seem long gone. The “anti-imperialist plaza” itself has lost a reason for being in a country whose president has smilingly shaken hands with the occupant of the White House.

The embassy will promote events, thematic film festivals, conferences with institutions, and concerts, as do those of other countries such as Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and Italy. Then we will see the stars and stripes on posters, flyers and invitations to cultural activities. Those who wear hats and dark glasses when they approach the place or contact its officials, now will arrive with uncovered faces and chins raised.

However, one of the most significant changes that will occur is in the language. People will stop the use of subterfuges to refer to the place and call it, directly, “the embassy.” Without nicknames, without specifying the country or detailing the ownership. It will be enough to say “the embassy” for all of us to know they mean this site, by the sea, with the green-tinted windows which has ceased to be “the enemy.”

Not to be outdone, the mocked one replied, “Yes, it’s true, all that’s left for me is ‘two shaves,’ but I want them to be with a Gillette.” With a pension of barely 20 CUC a month, a home that every day shows the passage of time and the lack of resources to repair it, the future emigrant won’t be stopped by gray hairs or old age. What is making so many seniors choose to relocate abroad despite age, health and the uprooting of their lives? They also feel the lack of opportunities, the day-to-day difficulties, and – most significantly – end up concluding that the social project to which they gave their youth has defrauded and abandoned them.

They feel the lack of opportunities and the day-to-day difficulties, and have ended up concluding that the social project to which they gave their youth has defrauded and abandoned them

“All I want is a peaceful old age, without having to stand in line all the time,” the determined old man explained to me. For him, his country is synonymous with shortages, problems getting food, an old age of racing to get potatoes and fighting against those who want to get ahead of him in the line to buy eggs. The apartment he built with his own hands for the enjoyment of his children now has peeling walls and a clogged toilet. “With my pension I can’t arrange to get things fixed,” he detailed.

Even the elderly are packing their suitcases on this island… and from the scale model that is this Yugoslav-style building, old people are also saying goodbye.

* Translator’s note:
For more information about microbrigades see page 26 of this report by Cuban architect Mario Coyula.

Four years after the installation of the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela, it seems that officialdom can no longer justify why we are among the countries with the least connectivity on the entire planet. On the other hand, American companies such as Verizon or AT&T, breathing down the neck of Cuba’s ETECSA phone company, are working as a catalyst to implement a data service that allows the Cuban telephone monopoly to hold on to the national market.

Conveniently, a document was leaked that puts into writing the national strategy for the development of broadband connectivity infrastructure in Cuba

The lesson of Isabel Dos Santos, the richest woman in Africa and the daughter of the Angolan president, should be keeping the dauphins of power in Cuba awake right now. They know that whoever gets a slice of the telephone and communications market will have a guaranteed fortune exceeding a lot of zeros. However, they are also aware that a company of this type requires agreements, roaming contracts, favorable rate packages, attractive offers for users. In the world we live in it can be summed up in one word: connectivity.

This reality is denied by the ideological outbursts, in the style of Abel Prieto when he claimed that he will give “free and open access to the Internet, and not to those who have money, but to those who need it to support their studies and research.” Mobile phone service alone shows that in the battle between politics and the market the latter comes out the winner. Cubacel users – save those who receive the privilege because they work for State Security or other strategic sectors – pay for it in convertible pesos. To purchase a cellphone requires the harsh practice of money in your wallet, not fidelity to any idea.

A few days ago, conveniently, a document was leaked that puts into writing the national strategy for the development of broadband connectivity infrastructure in Cuba. Despite the enthusiasm with which the text was received by those thirsting for the Internet, the deadlines proposed by the program are, at the very least, unconsidered. It talks about “reaching no less than 50% of households with access to broadband Internet by 2020,” while two years ago it was expected to have 100% connectivity “in Party organizations at the national, provincial and municipal levels, in State agencies, and in the Central Administrative Organs of the State.” It is not unlikely that right now there are people who are joining the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in order to attain access to the vast World Wide Web.

It is not unlikely that right now there are people who are joining the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in order to attain access to the vast World Wide Web.

On the other hand, Brett Perlmutter, director of Google Ideas, is visiting Cuba this week. His presence has been explained to the media as an exploration to “bring better Internet access to the Island.” According to a State Department official who asked to remain anonymous, “Google has made a proposal to the Cuban Government to help with the connectivity of the population,” adding, “we don’t know what they have proposed, but they have proposed something.”

Beyond what Google achieves, between official suspicion and postponements by Cuban functionaries, his presence on the Island reinforces the sense of urgency. He transmits to the Cuban Government the impression that its closing the doors to the sea of kilobytes not only is not working, but is under threat of being swept away from abroad and from within. Helium balloons, mini-satellites, WiFi antennas made from Pringles bags, clandestine wireless networks that share content, and even the irreverent weekly “Packet” of audiovisuals, are jeopardizing a structure designed for censorship, but inefficient in managing an opening.

There is a smell of rain these days. A gust of damp certitude that is wafting the bird of the Internet our way.

For its part, the scant representation from national guests at the meeting contrasted with the diversity of phenomena related to computing that exists in our country. From the “weekly packet,” a compendium of virally circulating audiovisual material, to the sweeping classified portal Revolico and the independent Twittersphere, to the clandestine wireless networks and the urban tribes huddled around video games or the impact of Facebook among the youngest. A vast and plural cosmos despite the limitations in connectivity that we suffer.

The Internet is not a fad or a luxury, much less superfluous, it is an imperative need for every human being of the 21^st century

However, the absence of the alternative sector wasn’t the only limitation that detracted from the conference. Its most striking failure lay in not objectively including the just demands of individual sovereignty and the protection of Internauts throughout the Island. Especially those who are moving to safeguard users’ private information against the intelligence services of the government itself. Global issues such as the cybersecurity of nations and the governance of the Internet left little space on the agenda for critical discussions about the existence of a cyber-police, the creation of false opinion matrices by the official machinery of state, and the sites censored for political reasons.

As a principal requirement in areas of technology and communication, Cubans today need access to the Internet. The demand for this connectivity, long denied, has grown in recent years and is not exclusive to the most computerized sectors of our society. From the hacker who wants to test his latest codes on the web, to the owner of a privately-owned snack bar who wants to access forums on food, a good part of the population feels the need to be interconnected.

Among the millions of Cubans for whom food, housing and economic pressures are overwhelming, the idea that a digital presence would bring more opportunities to their daily lives has also grown in the last five years. The Internet is not a fad or a luxury, much less superfluous, it is an imperative need for every human being of the 21^st century.

In the face of this urgency, the Cuban government has opted for caution and for doling out in dribs and drabs the advantages of this common good which is the World Wide Web. To support this policy of rationing and control they have used prohibitive pricing at the public Internet rooms, where right now an hour of navigating the web costs – at a minimum – the equivalent of three days wages, some 2.25 convertible pesos. To this is added an iron policy of censorship and vigilance over the web that has limited an entire nation’s access to knowledge, opportunities and information.

The role of the government should be to facilitate universal access to cyberspace and to guarantee that our rights to free information and association are met

Thus, the first demand in Cuba with regards to technology and communications is respect for the user’s individual sovereignty, on the base of which should rise national sovereignty in these conflicts. This latter cannot be seem as a contradiction to the spirit of convergence, the global village and interconnection that cyberspace brings us. The “conservation of our cultural and linguistic identity” that was brandished about in the recently concluded event should not constitute an argument for shutting us out from the influence of other cultures and nations. On the web you can’t play at being Robinson Crusoe…

Nor can the State set itself up as the authority to guide our steps on the web. It is not its role to protect citizens from “the dangers” of connectivity, nor to prevent us from being “infected” with trends, opinions or news that we find in our grappling with the network. The role of the government should be to facilitate universal access to cyberspace and to guarantee that our rights to free information and association are met both in the real world as well as in that other world made up of kilobytes.

By not delving deeply into these burning and crucial points, the International Conference on New Scenarios of Political Communication in the Digital Realm became another lost opportunity. A space that privileged the government voice above the demands of society. An event to project an Internet in the hands of those who want to control everything.