Category: Yoani Sanchez

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 30 September 2014 – Memory can rarely be put to rest. Memories don’t understand permissions or authorizations, they return, period. For a quarter of a century the Chinese government has tried to erase the events of Tiananmen Square, but now the thousands of young people who are protesting on the streets of Hong Kong evoke them. It’s hard not to think of that man with the shopping bag stationed in front of tank, while looking at these people who demand the resignation of an official as servile to Beijing as he is unpopular.

Twenty-five years of trying to clean up the official history of what happened in that other social explosion that ended in the most brutal repression hasn’t accomplished much. Those streets full of peaceful but exhausted people show it. However, there are also great differences between the 1989 revolt in the Asian giant and the current demonstrations in their “special administrative region.” The fundamental change is that we are participants—from our televisions, digital newspapers and social networks—in every moment the people of Hong Kong are experiencing. The lack of information that surrounded the Tiananmen Square protests now has its counterpart in a barrage of tweets, photos and videos coming from thousands of mobile phones

For how many years will the Chinese government try to erase what is happening today? How will they strengthen the Great Firewall within the country so that people don’t know what is happening so close by? The violent repression of last Sunday only serves to add to the determination and the number of protestors in the streets of the ex-British colony. However, despite the multitudes and the numerous digital screens shining in the Hong Kong night, memory persists in taking us back to one man. An individual who was returning from the market and decided that the treads of a tank were not going to crush his remaining civility. Twenty-five years later, reality is echoing his gesture.

14YMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 19 September 2014 – At an artisan fair near the Malecon a seller offers unusual wallets. “Designed for a country with two currencies,” says the skilled merchant, while demonstrating their two separate compartments. Accustomed to living among convertible pesos (CUC) and Cuban pesos (CUP), we barely even notice any more the complications this duality brings us every day. The additional calculations, the long lines at the exchange kiosks, and the confusions in speech, requiring that we always make it clear if we are referring to CUPs or CUCs… are just some of them.

This mess has been slightly eased with the emergence of stores and markets where you can pay with both currencies. It took them more then twenty years, from the legalization of the dollar, to eliminate the problem of going to the nearest CADECA—currency exchange—to convert our Cuban pesos into chavitos (CUC). This could be a clear example of the slow pace at which economic relaxations are adopted in the country, if it weren’t for the fact that there are other aspects of national life where things move much more slowly.

A few years ago a group of dissidents launched the excellent slogan, “With the same money,” to demand a correspondence between the currency in which wages are paid and that needed to buy products as basic as oil, soap and milk. I remember that on several occasions some of those activists were at a café or restaurant and, after eating, they asked for the bill and paid with the devalued Cuban pesos. This action brought them arrests by the police, threats and even beatings.

Now the government has inverted the slogan and seems to be telling us, “for the same product.” It doesn’t matter if the bill is expressed in the banknotes without faces—the ones with monuments—which are the convertible pesos. It is now possible to also settle the bill with those other pieces of paper, bearing the sober glance of the Apostle—José Martí—or the stern face of Antonio Maceo. What does difference does it make what we pay with, or how many security threads this or that currency has? The central problem remains the divorce between the cost of living and wages.

A few days ago, official TV broadcast an extensive report about “the good popular reception given to the measure” of allowing us to pay for things in both currencies. The Commercial Director of the CIMEX chain of stores, Barbara Soto, referred to the gradual extension of the prerogative to a greater number of stores throughout the country. Some customers interviewed said that the price of every product should be visible both in CUPs and CUCs. However, the media report continually avoided the main questions: Why should a professional work three days to be able to buy a quart of oil? Until when will a worker need a full week’s wages to be able to buy two pounds of chicken?

Do we live better now because CUPs and CUCs are intermingled in the cash registers?

Right now it takes two working days to be able to acquire a package of hot dogs, while a tetrapack of milk can only be bought with the fruit of three days labor. This morning at the market a woman was looking at can of tomato sauce and seemed to be thinking, “For this I need to sweat eight hours for half a week.”

In a society with such great economic distortions, paper money has lost the capacity to express the value of merchandise. The illegal market, the massive inflow of remittances, the diversion of resources and the invisible capital of one’s political standing, completely alter the valuation of each product. To calculate the cost of living you need to have at hand equations that include the time and effort required to get something. How many hours do you have to work to buy a piece of cheese, a soft drink, bath soap. After how many trips will a bus driver be able to afford a beer?

It’s true that from now on the wallets offered by that artisan are becoming less necessary. However, the financial distortion we suffer hasn’t diminished with the newly adopted measure. Has something changed because we can indiscriminately hand the supermarket clerk convertible pesos or national money? Do we live better now because CUPs and CUCs are intermingled in the cash registers? The answer is no. A “no” that bears the watermark of reality and ink of emergency.

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 12 September 2014 – The school bell rings and the children enter the classroom followed by their parents. The first day of classes triggers joy, although a few tears are shed by some who miss their homes. That’s what happened to Carla, who just started kindergarten at a school in Cerro. The little girl is lucky because she got a teacher who has taught elementary school for several years and has mastered the content. “What luck!” some of the little one’s family members think, just before another mother warns them, “But beware of the teacher, she demands every student bring her a bit of a snack from home.”

On the afternoon of September 1, the first parent meeting took place. After the introductions and welcoming remarks, the teacher enumerated everything that the classroom was lacking. “We have to raise money for a fan,” she said, unsmiling. Carla had already suffered from the morning heat, so her mother gave the 3 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) that was her daughter’s share, so she would have a little breeze while studying. ”We also need to buy a broom and mop for cleaning, three fluorescent tubes for the lights, and a trash can,” said the teaching assistant.

A list of requests and needs added some disinfectant for the bathroom, “Because we don’t want the flu,” said the teacher herself. The total expenditures began to grow, and a lock was added, “So that no one steals things when there’s no one in the school.” A father offered some green paint to paint the blackboard, and another offered to fix the hinges on the door, which was lopsided. “I recommend that you buy the children’s notebooks on the street because the ones we received to hand out this year are as thin as onion skin and tear just by using an eraser,” the teacher added.

After the meeting Carla’s family calculated some 250 Cuban pesos in expenses to support the little girl’s education, half the monthly salary of her father, who is a chemical engineer. Then the school principal came to the meeting and rounded it off with, “If anyone knows a carpenter and wants to hire him to fix their child’s desk, feel free.”

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 1 September 2014 – Today is Zero Day, the fateful date, the day the General Customs of the Republic enacts its new restrictions for non-commercial imports. The measure called to mind an old joke that circulated in the nineties and is still heard today. In this humorous story, a foreign journalist interviewed Fidel Castro and he listed all the obstacles we had faced. “The Cuban people have survived the collapse of transportation, the food crisis and power cuts,” the delusional politician said proudly. The reporter interrupted him and asked: “And you haven’t tried cyanide, Comandante?”

Nearly two decades have passed and they are still imposing limits and prohibitions incompatible with development and with life. As if in this social laboratory they want to test what they can do to get the guinea pigs—which are us—to keep breathing, clapping, accepting. The new experiment doesn’t come in the form of a syringe, but through customs rules governing the luggage of every traveler. Measures that were taken without previously allowing commercial imports that favor the private sector. As if in the closed glass box in which we are trapped, they are cutting off the oxygen… and watching from the other side of the glass to see how much we can stand.

And you haven’t tried cyanide, Comandante? echoed in my head while I read “The Green Book” with the new prices and limits applied to imports from electric razors to disposable diapers. We lab rats, however, have not remained calm and quiet, like so often in the past. People are complaining, and with good reason, that these restrictions are suffocating self-employed labor and the domestic economy. Everyone is upset. Those who receive parcels from abroad as well as those who don’t, because some of those bouillon cubes or rheumatism creams end up reaching their hands through the black market or the solidarity of a friend.

The reason is not an altered chromosome, but a system that has failed to maintain a stable and high-quality supply of almost any product … except canned ideology and the insipid porridge of the cult of personality

It’s not that we Cubans have a specific gene to accumulate things and—out of pure neurosis—throw stuff into our suitcases from toilet paper and toothpaste to lightbulbs. The reason is not an altered chromosome, but a system that has failed to maintain a stable and high-quality supply of almost any product… except canned ideology and the insipid porridge of the cult of personality. While the shelves of the stores are empty, or filled with the worse quality merchandise at stratospheric prices, we have to bring from outside what we don’t have here. A law on commercial imports was not what we needed and the knife of customs restrictions falls very heavily upon us.

That the measures have come into force is still more evidence of the divorce between the Cuban ruling class and the people’s reality. In their mansions there is no lack of resources, food, nor imported products! They, of course, have no need to bring them home in their luggage. To stock up they reach out to the Ministry of Foreign Commerce, to the official containers that arrive at our ports, and a network of transport that brings chlorine for their swimming pools and French cheese right to their doors. The customs rules do not affect them, because they don’t pay excess luggage fees on their luxuries, which are not considered sundries, household items or food. They live outside the law and watch us locked behind the thick glass of the laboratory they’ve built for us.

Have you tried cyanide… General? Perhaps it would be faster and less painful.

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 28 August 2014 – “I need some dark glasses,” Veronica told me one day when I ran into her on the street. Almost seventy, the lady underwent cataract surgery some months ago and now must “take care of my eyes,” as she explained to me. She works in the sun selling jabitas (plastic bags) to the customers of the farmers market on Tulipan Street. The harsh midday glare is hard on her eyesight, but that’s not the worst of her problems. “We have an alarm system to know when the police are coming, although sometimes they’re in plainclothes and catch us by surprise.” Last month she paid a 1,500 Cuban peso fine (roughly $60 US) for engaging in illegal sales, and this week she received a warning letter for recidivism for the same offense.

If you read articles like Randy Alonso’s about the absence of bags in the hard currency stores, you might come to believe this resource is being diverted into the hands of unscrupulous traders. However, it’s enough to simply know Veronica to understand that her business is one more of misery than of profit. For the four decades she worked as a cleaning assistant in a school, the lady now receives a pension that doesn’t exceed ten dollars a month. Without the resale of the plastic bags, she would have to beg, but she asserts that she “would die before asking for money in the streets.” She is not to blame, rather she is a victim of the circumstances that have pushed her into an illegal activity to survive.

Having to carry purchases in one’s hands in the absence of bags is something that annoys any buyer. But realizing that Randy Alonzo, one of the great spokesmen of the current system, doesn’t know the human dramas that lead to the diversion of plastic bags, is even more irritating. It’s not about callous people who are dedicated to enriching themselves through the fruits of State embezzlement, but rather citizens whose economic poverty leads them to resell whatever product comes into their hands. Right now Veronica is outside some business, wearing the old dark glasses they gave her, muttering “I have jabitas, I have jabitas, one peso each.”

14YMEDIO, Havana, Yoani Sanchez, 22 August 2014 – The phone rings and it’s a friend who works for a government publication. She’s content because she’s published an article that attacks bureaucracy and corruption. The young woman finished college two years ago and has been working in a digital medium that deals with cultural and social issues. She has the illusions of a recent graduate, and she believes she can do objective journalism, close to reality, and help to improve her country.

My friend has had some luck, because she exercises this profession at a time when the national media is trying to more closely reflect the problems of our society. The official journalist exists in a timid Glasnost, 25 years after a similar process in the Soviet Union. If that attempt at “information transparency” was promoted through Perestroika, on the Island it’s been pushed by the Sixth Communist Party Congress Guidelines. In this way, a more objective and less triumphalist press is pushed—from above. The same power that helped create laudatory newspapers, now urges a shift from applause to criticism. But it’s not easy.

The original sin of the official press is not the press, but propaganda. It emerged to sustain the ideological political-economic model and it can’t shed that genesis. The first steps in the creation of the current national media always includes an act of faith in the Revolution, It is also funded entirely by the Government, which further affects its editorial line. It’s worth noting that the official media is not profitable, that is, it doesn’t generate income or even support its print runs or transmissions. Hence, it operates with subsidies taken from the national coffers. All Cubans sustain the newspapers Granma and Juventude Rebelde (Rebel Youth), the Cubavision channel or Radio Reloj (Clock Radio)… whether we like it or not. continue reading

14YMEDIO, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 13 August 2014 – Evening falls and the sound of the sieves in the rolling hills trails off. The three men collect their belongings. They’ve finished the first day in their arduous search for gold. Tomorrow they will wake up early and with the first light of day return to dig, wash, sift and find the little nuggets among the mud and sandstone. “If I find at least one gram, I’m going to finish the roof of my house,” says the most experienced of the stealth miners.

The Rafael Freyre area in Holguin province attracts hundreds of people every year who dream that a mine will help them out of their economic difficulties. Is it need? A hobby? Or a real gold rush? Everyone experiences it in their own way, but the oldest people in the area say that when “people have gold in their eyes it’s like a demon that will never leave.”

The stealth miners have created their own working tools from few resources. Among the most important is the “car,” a sieve with a piece of rubber where the mud is deposited, that then falls through the screen. It is a team effort, requiring at least three strong men. While two shake the sieve, the other pours water over the mud collected in the excavations. “Then the gold dust is left, in particles like a kind of pea hull, although there can also be nuggets,” says Fernando Ramón Rodríguez Vargas who lives in Levisa, Mayari municipality, and for years has dedicated himself to the pursuit of the precious metal.

Those who spend a lot of time in these tasks have developed and eye for finding where the gold is, they don’t believe in metal detectors. “They aren’t very effective because they go off everywhere, in this area there can be a little piece anywhere. The most commonly used method is the same as it is used by industries. I take a sample of the dirt and I wash it to check how much gold it contains just so I will know if it’s worth the trouble,” Veredia Elcok says, revealing his secrets. He has participated in numerous fortune hunting expeditions. He claims that the Cuatro Palmas area in Holguin is the most famous for the size of the pieces found, and because the gold “is at ground level.” continue reading

14ymedio, YOANI SÁNCHEZ, Havana, 5 August 2014 – We had run around together in our Cayo Hueso neighborhood. His family put up several cardboard boxes in vacant lot near Zanja Street, similar to those they’d had in Palmarito del Cauto. His last name was Maceo and something in his face recalled that Titan of so many battles, except that his principal and only skirmish would entail not a horse, but a flimsy raft. When the Maleconazo broke out he joined in the shouting and escaped when the arrests started. He didn’t want to go home because he knew the police were looking for him.

He left alone on a monstrosity made of two inflated truck tires and boards, tied together with ropes. His grandmother prepared water for him in a plastic tank and gave him a can of condensed milk she’d been saving for five years. It was one of those products from the USSR whose contents arrived on the island congealed, after the long boat ride. My generation grew up drinking this sugary lactose mixed with whatever came to hand in the street. So Maceo added the can to his scanty stores—more as an amulet than as food—and departed from San Lazaro cove.

He never arrived. His family waited and waited and waited. His parents searched the lists of those held at the Guantanamo Naval Base, but his name was never on them. They asked others who capsized near the coast and tried to leave again. No one knew of Maceo. They inquired at the morgues where they kept the remains of the dead who washed up on shore. In those bleak places they looked at everyone, but never saw their son. A young man told them that near the first shelf he had come across a single raft, floating in nothingness. “It was empty,” he told them, “it only had a piece of a sweater and a can of condensed milk.”

Editor’s note: Today is the 20^th anniversary of “The Maleconazo.” You can read more about this uprising and the subsequent Rafter Crisis in previous posts:

• My Dirty Piece of the Sea / Yoani Sanchez
• The Maleconazo Seen Through the Blinds / Ignacio Varona
• Maleconazo Photographer Shares Links / Karel Poort
• 18 Years After the Maleconazo Uprising, What Happened to Those of Us Who Stayed? / Reinaldo Escobar
• The Malecon Uprising / Rosa Maria Rodriguez