Alchemy and Lies / Yoani Sanchez

“The Alchemist” – Oil by Mattheus van Hellemont

We live in a society of alchemists. They don’t turn iron into gold, but they are skilled at replacing ingredients and adulterating almost everything. Their goal is to cheat every client or to steal from the State itself. To achieve this they use even Mendeleev’s periodic table in search of elements that can be replaced by cheaper ones.

Some of these ingenious formulas deserve an Anti-Nobel in Chemistry, especially for their negative effects on human health. Such is the case with a lengthy recipe for tomato sauce that includes beets, boiled sweet potatoes, spices, cornstarch and red hair dye. When a curious observer asks, “And the tomato?” the inventors respond, almost scolding, “No, there’s no tomato.”

So the streets are full of glue sticks that when you press them only contain air. Bottles of shampoo mixed with clothes-washing detergent. Soap with plastic shavings added by the employees at the factory who resell the raw materials. Bottles of rum that come off clandestine production lines with hospital alcohol and burned sugar to simulate aging. Bottled water, refilled from some tap and offered for sale on the shelves of many markets. continue reading

Needless to say the imitations of Cohiba cigars and other brands are sold to naive tourists as if they were authentic. Nothing is what it seems. A good part of the population accepts these deceptions and feels a certain solidarity with the cheaters. “People have to live somehow,” they justify, with even the most injured treating it like a joke.

Within the long list of what is falsified, rationed bread occupies first place. This is the most adulterated product in our basic food basket, its formula lost decades ago due to standardization and the diversion of resources.

In the bakeries, the “alchemists” have reached the heights of true genius. They add huge amounts of yeast to the dough to make it rise so much that we get “air bread,” which leaves us with sore gums and unfilled stomachs. And don’t even mention the substitution of baking flour for other uses in the making of pasta and noodles. With this process we end up with something in our mouths that is hard, dry and flavorless. Best not to look before you eat, because the appearance is worse than the taste.

If Paracelsus were resurrected, he would have to come to this Island. He would learn so much!

8 January 2014

No Commitment / Yoani Sanchez

Photo by Silvia Corbelle

Red and black, these are the colors of the newspaper Granma. But unlike Stendhal’s famous work, in Granma’s pages the reader will not encounter realism, simply proselytizing. When the official organ of the Communist Party chooses a headline, its intentions are to impose an idea, not to report on it.

So it was with the phrase highlighted on the front page of this newspaper last Thursday. Taken from Raul Castro’s speech in Santiago de Cuba, the words stressed that, “The Revolution will continue just the same, without commitments to anyone at all, only to the people!” With this cover page, both the orator and the editors wanted to emphasize something which, in reality, they don’t make very clear. It’s worth trying to decipher its meaning.

Fifty-five years have passed since the start of the so-called Cuban Revolution, so this reference to possible commitments should not refer back to its origins. One imagines that the General wasn’t alluding to the rupture of and ingratitude for certain endorsements and subsidies made to the rebels half a century ago.

It does not sound, then, like an adiós to the former fellow travelers who put their shoulders, and pockets, to the wheel to sustain this system for decades.

Who, then, is this “anyone” whom Raul Castro strips of any chance to make demands? Clearly it’s not aimed at the Miraflores Palace in response to the huge subsidies that Cuba receives from Venezuela. For this economic support has generated more political ties to the government being maintained than the one maintaining it.

To think that it’s an insinuation of a setting aside of the political responsibilities of belonging to the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) would be naive, at the very least. What, then, was this man in his military uniform talking about, with his hackneyed phrases and written speech? What is he referring to? The answer points both to the White House and to Brussels.

Every negotiation or conversation needs a minimum set of obligations to fulfill. Any party involved in an agreement is assured that the other party cedes an equal or greater measure than it does. It’s clear that in 2013, both the United States and the European Union took steps to moderate the diplomatic temperature between themselves and the Plaza of the Revolution.

Winks, relaxations, announcements of a new path, entered the speech of some politicians with respect to the largest of the Antilles. The table was set for a feast of agreement and dialog. In response, the ungrateful guest has come and overturned the table.

“No commitments…” screams Raul Castro, and rushes to frame it in the red letters of the newspaper Granma. We already know to whom the phrase is directed; they can consider themselves warned.

7 January 2014

Living Illusions / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef019b045318a8970d-550wiAt midnight, she closed the door, turned off the lights, and ran her hand over the mannequins. December came to an end and with it her business in imported clothing. Like Helen, dozens of vendors all over Havana waited until the last minute of 2013 for some good news. But it never came.

The government maintained the unpopular prohibition against the sale of imported products. The deadline to liquidate the businesses in clothes and other accessories ended just as the twenty-one gun salute heralded the new year. Meekly, although muttering their annoyance, the proprietors of the so-called boutiques, collect their merchandise, take down their lit signs and advise their clients not to return.

The next day, along with the lethargy that comes after every celebration, the city also woke with a changed face. In the doorways where before the hangers flapped with shirts, pants and children’s clothes, there was nothing left. The rooms converted to dressing rooms had disappeared along with the racks which until last week offered sunglasses or scouring sponges. continue reading

Not a single vendor has challenged the order, not one has kept their stand open.

In parallel, there have not been any union meetings to demand compensation for the lost investments, nor protests demanding a permit that encompasses merchant activity. Not even the frequent buyers have raised their voices in solidarity with those who supplied them with cheaper, more modern and varied products than available in the state stores. All have remained silent.

The explanation for this frightened silence is obtained simply by asking. “Don’t worry, you’ll see that this measure will be rolled back,” some predict. Those believed to be well-informed because they have contacts in the government said, “In a few days they’re going to permit this and much more.”

The underlying message is chilling: “complain and it will be worse,” so “better to wait and not make problems.” Meanwhile, Helen has been left with her mannequins that no one looks at and with a four-figure debt.

The illusion of a possible step forward, slows the reaction to this step back. Those affected want to believe the State will rectify it. However, the real motive for such meekness is the fear of confronting power with their demands.

6 January 2014

Stuffed Toys / Yoani Sanchez

On the couch there’s a stuffed dog missing an eye and losing an ear. Thirty years ago he was the plaything of a little girl who now has two children. Neither of them is old enough to have experienced the ration market when it offered manufactured products. So when their mother explains that the dog was a “basic category” toy, they look at her as if she’s speaking Chinese.

For them, everything is different. Since they were small they’ve known that toys are only sold in hard currency. Sometimes when they go to the big market in Carlos III Street, they press their noses to the glass in front of a pink pony and a plastic house with a fireplace.

The two distinct generations are united by a similar unease. In her thirties she experienced the era of Soviet subsides and regulated distribution of everything… or almost everything. Her children, for their part, have lived in times of a dual currency system and scarcities. For her, Three Kings Day isn’t celebrated on 6 January, rather it was officially moved to July and given another name, but her children have seen the frantic rebirth of many traditions. continue reading

In the eighties the grandmother of that little girl with the stuffed dog whispered to her the story of Balthasar, Melchior and Gaspar. Once she grew up she taught her own offspring — openly — the ritual of the letter with requests and the water ready for the thirsty camels.

Today that girl of days past greets the dawn outside a toy store very different from those of her childhood. No employee will demand a ration book with coupons to tear out and checkboxes where the number assigned to each product is entered

Now there are convertible pesos — that hard currency she doesn’t receive her salary in — the only money that will give her children access to the dolls, the toy cars, or simply to some marbles.

She manages to buy a plastic flute and the tiniest stuffed dog. He has big floppy ears and blue eyes.

6 January 2014

Speaking of Resolutions / Yoani Sanchez

To climb to the sky… you need a big ladder and a little one. Photo: Silvia Corbelle

Any day is a good day to start a project, to realize a dream. However, at the beginning of each year we repeat the ritual of setting goals for the coming twelve months. Some of them will be met, others will remain unfinished and added to the agenda for the following January. There are those that address personal matters, like having more time for family, playing sports, making that postponed visit to the dentist… but the list can also be tilted toward professional aspirations such as changing jobs, finishing some research, getting a degree in a new subject.

I’ve asked some friends and acquaintances what their desires are for 2014 and the answers are a kaleidoscope of intentions.From “get strong in the neighborhood gym,” “sell the biketaxi to buy a motorcycle,” “fix the roof”… to “finish my university degree,” “reunite the whole family in Miami,” “make a video,” or “open my own snack bar.” Visas to emigrate remain among the commonly shared desires, particularly for young people. To the point that many professional plans are primarily aimed at accumulating resources so as to be able to leave the country. Nearly six years after they were begun, the so-called “Raul reforms” have not managed to significantly improve our individual standard of living or the national economy. continue reading

Personally, after a 2013 that changed my life, my sequence of projects is so diverse as to be impossible to complete in its full scope. I will continue offering courses to teach people how to use the new technologies. This year my dream of an independent digital media will finally see the light, a project that has had me running all over the place the last few weeks. Like all births it will bring rupture, pain, joys and anxieties. In the coming weeks I will publish the schedule for the “birth.” Stay tuned.

In my room there is a mountain of books that I would like to read for the first — or the umpteenth — time. How deluded am I  to believe I will have the free time to do it?! I want to return to the pages of the masterful Kapuscinski, reconnect with Truman Capote, and find some texts of Javier Cercas that are missing in my library. I will continue to devour magazines about apps, gadgets, software… because, I confess, every year I am little geekier.

Friends and readers have an important place in my annual plans. Hopefully I can pamper you a little more, spending time in good conversation with a coffee in front of us. To those who are far away, I only hope that “the gods of technology” will take pity on me and give me greater access to the Internet so that I can answer your emails. But you already know, Olympus is capricious and Zeus does not release the lightning bolt of connectivity.

My house, my little family, my plants and animals, which complicate my life and make it happy, are also among the priorities. I can’t complain, really, because they don’t ask for much and they give me everything. I hope to review with my son his first lessons in philosophy, and to bring Reinaldo to that “dirty piece of sea” we made ours twenty years ago. I will focus on them. Because in times of increasing pressure, they have been the people I love who have helped me to keep smiling.

The center of all my plans is my country. Without it I would have neither home, nor family, nor friends, nor things to write about, not plans to make… nor even a potted yagruma to care for. Although I know that home can be anywhere, mine, I have decided — for good or ill — is located on this Island. I stay, despite so many acquaintances having departed and the continued blocking of the great national potential by an outdated and intolerant power. I stay, also, to help create, through journalism and information, a free, democratic, prosperous and inclusive Cuba.

As you can see, I have in hand the list of resolutions for 2014. I will have to cross some out along the way. Which? I don’t know. But for now I like to think that all of them are possible.

2 January 2013

 

Mattresses / Yoani Sanchez

A woman shouts from the balcony and they stop, along with the cart they are pushing. On the sidewalk itself they set up a workshop. On some boards and in sight of everyone. The broken springs are replaced, enormous needles sew up the edges and the old lining, stained here and there, is replaced with another made from the cloth of a flour sack. Their hands move quickly. In less than an hour they’re done and continuing down the street looking for new customers. A mixture of dust, lint and the accumulated odor of years of intimacy floats on the air.

Mattress repairers always have work, a lot of work. In a country where many still sleep on the same bed their grandparents slept on, this work is vital. These days experts in padding and bedframes are everywhere. With their spools of thread, they loudly shout out their promises of thirty-day guarantees after the renovation. They repair that which passed its expiration date decades ago, returning a comfortable sleep to those who find some out of place spring poking into their backs every night. continue reading

Also abundant are the scammers. Creators of an illusion that barely lasts and leaves the buyers with pains all over their bodies and in their wallets. They stuff in successive layers of dry banana leaves, plastic fibers or sawdust. Then they cover them with brightly printed fabric, taking special care to tightly stitch the edges. They situate themselves near commercial centers and assure people that their merchandise is “just like in the store.” In a country where a professional needs a year’s salary to purchase a marital mattress, the offerings — outside the state stores — are cheaper, and always very tempting. However, much of the time the advantage turns to frustration in a very short time.

The scenario repeats itself when the repairers come to a neighborhood. A mother is annoyed by the urine stains that her youngest child has left on the bed. Others are embarrassed because the neighbors will see the successive patches that have been made to their mattress over the years. Phrases such as, “It’s not mine, it belongs to a relative, but I’m doing them the favor of fixing it,” are common. Some appear with an amorphous structure, lacking defined corners and sunken in the middle, that needs more than magic to restore it. “Let me make it like new,” says the repairer, and he starts to move his hands, sink the blade in a few points, and finally name a price.

More than a restorer of mattresses, he is a restorer of dreams.

30 December 2013

December Again / Yoani Sanchez

Twelve months and here we are again. Days to weigh our accomplishments and to postpone to the new year everything we failed to finish. What has changed in Cuba — and in each one of us — since December 2012 which we also put on the scales? Very little and so much. In the small space of my personal live, it seems that everything has moved at an unprecedented pace; in the life of a nation, however, it is barely a tremor, the blink of an eye. January started with the Immigration and Travel Reform, and in the following months there were many times we said goodbye; now without that sense of no return we had before, of final departure and exile for life, it’s true, but we continue to remove names from the telephone book at a worrying speed. Our condition of an “island in flight” grew, this time within a legal framework that allows and increases it.

Social differences were sharpened. The number of beggars and dumpster divers grew. However, many modern cars began rolling down our deteriorated streets and more than one nouveau riche spent their vacations on the other side of the Atlantic. If anything characterized 2013, it was the polarized stories about it that we hear. Anecdotes of families who opened luxury restaurants in the heart of Havana and of others who can no longer drink coffee because they can’t afford the unrationed price. Of some waiting outside a boutique to buy Adidas sneakers and others waiting outside a dining room to be given the leftovers to take home. We live in a time of high contrasts, days of photos discolored by the laboratory of life. A year, also, in which the ideological discourse distanced itself even further from reality.

Repression, for its part, increased. To the same extent that civil society grew and began to take certain spaces. The battle for the monopoly on information was lost by the government in 2013 and won by clandestine networks of audiovisuals, news and digital libraries. We were better able to learn what was happening, but, with that as a starting point, the power to convene ourselves and come together is still lacking by a long stretch. Life is more expensive for everyone, privileges and perks are concentrated in an elevated elite and the fight against corruption reached some but avoided others. Remittances from family and friends abroad, plus the subsidies from Venezuela, allowed us to avoid collapse, but the red ink proves that the economic reforms have failed. At the very least they have been unable to offer Cubans a better life, a motive for staying here.

The world offered us some lessons, among them the images from Kiev where so many have lost their fear. Fidel Castro faded a little more in his long living-death that has already lasted seven years. And freedom? This, this we are going to see if we win and achieve it in 2014.

24 December 2013

Letters are Letters / Yoani Sanchez

Photo by Silvia Corbelle

The morning’s news left Raidel speechless. Just when he was going to buy a car at a subsidized price, they announced the end of this mechanism of privileges.

Just to get the authorization letter, with signatures and stamps, had been the work of long months  trekking from one office to another, one bureaucrat to another. The hardest thing was to demonstrate that his income came from the State sector, proving the origin of every penny earned from  decorating tourist resorts. With permission already granted, he had endured four years on a waiting list of over seven thousand potential buyers. Until this morning, when his dreams of going to pick out a low cost Peugeot or Hyundai went up in smoke in the time it took to read a brief announcement on TV.

Recently, the Council of Ministers agreed to gradually implement the sale of modern cars — new or used — to any natural person, whether Cuban or foreign. Two years after the implementation of Decree 292, reality has forced them to widen the strict limits of this regulation. To the legalization or vehicle sales between individuals, they have now added the acquisition from agencies of cars with zero miles, or with more recent model years. We are going from permission only to trade in second hand products, to being able to obtain a “new package” with certain technical warranties… but yes, from State retail networks, at a price determined by the government and probably paying in cash.

A measure of this kind benefits the emerging middle class, eager to own ever more modern status symbols. As an immediate effect, it increases the social differences that have been growing dramatically in the last five years. Although the political discourse continues to speak of equality and opportunities for all, this relaxation is directed at those who have high incomes in convertible pesos. They are the big winners of the day, while the losers are Cubans like Raidel, whose authorization letter to buy a car barely has value as a museum piece. People who after years of applauding, faking and working hard, understand that today the market as been imposed over their professional and political merits.

19 December 2013

Old Lazarus / Yoani Sanchez

Saint Lazarus

At the entrance to the house is a life-size sculpture of a man with a beard and crutches. Everyone crosses themselves before him. Also of wood, there are two carved dogs as his side: skinny submissive strays. The image of Saint Lazarus plays a special role when the festivities for his day approach. He is one of the most venerated saints in our country and generates widespread displays of popular devotion. His sanctuary, in the town of El Rincón, is busy every December 17th with pilgrims, promise payers, flower sellers and police. All around him gather the hurting, the neediest, those who have tried everything to no avail… those abandoned by luck, science, or love.

When I approach El Rincón I feel this energy that comes from pain and faith. The leprosy asylum with its sad stories, the illegal settlements that have grown up on both sides of the railway line and the whiff of the always burning candles. It is not a place for smiles. At times I’ve accompanied some friend bringing an offering promised for a favor that has been fulfilled. Other times, I’ve gone with that curiosity provoked in all of us that we can neither understand nor explain. On at least two occasions I’ve arrived under the roof of the temple at midnight on the 16th and have experienced moments difficult to forget. Someone is crying, screaming, and many are praying, the heat is tremendous and everyone is sweating, it smells of open sores and poverty. There isn’t room for one more soul in the Church.

Today I left the house and very near by they have placed a purple cape and an image of old Lazarus. An old man who passed in front of him leaned over to whisper something in his ear. He had a rough beard and his clothes were from the time of the Soviet subsidy, when the ration market offered manufactured products. Looking from his parched face to that of the saint I noticed a similarity. Both were in the last stages of their lives with only the clothes on their backs and few reasons to laugh. The two of them so close, but one on the altar and the other in the street. One surrounded by promises to keep, the other knowing that all those they had made him are already broken.

16 December 2013

Bedtime / Yoani Sanchez

One more! One more! One more! he demands, while leaning back against the pillow and stretching his legs towards the ceiling. The mother has to quickly make up a new story, weaving the tale that puts her child to sleep. So she mixes the creatures of the Brothers Grimm with others, pulled from national cartoons, to narrate a nice fairy tale, moral included. The bottle falls to one side, the feet relax and the eyes start to close. Finally, the child is asleep. On the other side of the door are several hours of housework. The dishes to wash, the water to be heated for her husband’s bath, and the beans to be softened in the pressure cooker. But at least the child is now asleep.

Despite the speed of modern life and the hardships of housing, many Cuban parents still tell their children stories at bedtime. Some prefer to read them, while others make them up or recall those they heard in their own childhood. Video games and Disney movies have contributed new situations and characters to relate. It’s not unusual for Tom Thumb and Buzz Lightyear to be friends in these stories, or for Harry Potter to fall victim to a poisoned apple. When it comes to mixing the genres, it’s also not surprising for a bit of reggaeton to emerge from the mouth of some kingdom’s wizard or the bad witch of the story. The point it to make the eyelids heavy and sleep to come as soon as possible.

A few days ago a friend told me that his daughter had asked for a new story. “One, papá, that’s not in any book,” she specified. The father, tired out from his workday and unable to invent a new fiction, decided to tell her his own routine. “Once upon a time there was a man,” he started, “who got up every morning at six.” While he was talking his daughter’s eyes were hanging on every gesture, waiting for the protagonist to turn into a hero or a villain. “He went out to get the rationed bread,” he continued, “and then went to work on the bus that sometimes comes and sometimes doesn’t.” A small grimace of impatience started to play across the kid’s face, but the voice didn’t stop. “At the end of the month he would receive a salary that was barely enough to pay the electric bill and buy a little food, so the good man had to do some bad and illegal things to survive…”

A snort of frustration interrupted the monotone narrator. As the girl’s little hands tossed the pillow away from the bed, she shouted, “No, Papi! No! I want a story where the good guys win…!”

15 December 2013

Festivals, Festivals, Always Festivals / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef019b02cf1d16970d-550wiThere were no great crowds of long lines outside the movie theaters and it didn’t feel like December because of the high temperatures and strong sun. These are the days of the New Latin American Film Festival, but the whole context is very different from 35 years ago when it was founded. The loss of importance of this cultural event is obvious, as is people’s reduced expectations round the Coral awards for the best films. But.. what has changed more? The Festival or us?

The competition faced in Cuba for any movie is much greater now. Despite our material and technical limitations, our society has seen its access to films, documentaries and TV programs other than those broadcast by the official media skyrocket. Movie theaters have ceded space before home projections or private salons with flat screens and plastic chairs.

Despite recent prohibitions on the film circuit operated by the self-employed, the phenomenon of “non-institutional programming” is unstoppable. So the Festival of New Latin American Cinema is not a film oasis in the wasteland of Soviet films we experienced in the 80s. Now it must compete with more commercial and dynamic offerings that address a broad spectrum of tastes.

In the illegal market “combos” or “packages” proliferate, selections of series, reality shows and audience participation films. There are also abundant scientific and historic documentaries and big screen releases. We Cubans are true “Pirates of the Caribbean” when it comes time to copy and distribute recently released movies from other countries. One week after the film Avatar took New York by storm, the savvy marketers in our own backyard were offering a lesser quality — but similar impact — copy on local networks.

“The Festival” (period… as we call it), had a clear ideological focus from the beginning to promote creations filled with social criticism, a reflection of regional problems or the historic memory of the dictatorships that plagued Latin America. Hence, its current problems in competing for an audience that increasingly wants lighter entertainment — humorous or simply frivolous. From a mass phenomenon, the Festival has become an elite event that tries to compensate for the excess of Hollywood movies, today available everywhere.

Another element that marks the decline of this film event is the death of its creator and inspiration. Along with all that might have been controversial in the life of Alfredo Guevara, the Festival director, his drive and his personal relations shaped this film festival each December. Like every creature made in the image and likeness of man, the Festival received a very hard blow with the death of its principal author. However, in Cuba we’re already used to the survival of the most inert phenomena, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise in this case that there is another ad infinitum extension, another living-dead.

For the filmmakers as well, the Havana event has declined in importance. It has become more of a get-together, mojitos in the gardens of the Hotel Nacional, or simply a walk though this theme park of the past that we have become. But to get a Coral award feels more like a remembrance than a present honor. Other places, other festivals, have gained in prestige and media reach in recent decades, to the detriment of an event that hasn’t known how to keep up with the times.

Its political filter remains an impediment to the rejuvenation of the Festival. Although criticism has gained a space in its offerings, and its directors are not part of the institutional framework, it remains far from being a space without censorship. Another point on which it can’t compete — not even close — is with the underground movie networks, packed with controversial materials. But 35 years on, the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema continues.

However, it is worth asking whether this is evidence of its good health or the stubbornness of its organizers. Unable to compete with the illegal — and international — networks of film distribution, rocked by the passing of its creator, and given its apparent loss of popularity, this event needs to be renewed. Otherwise, it could end up like that moment of the year when we dust off our nostalgia, going to theaters with broken seats and noisy projectors, to evoke that time when we could only see good movies in December. Two weeks for longing and remembrance.

13 December 2013

Fear of the Word / Yoani Sanchez

These are bad times for the word, gray days for a philologist. The main problem is not the abundance of vulgar expressions, which can even be revealing in a linguistic and sociological analysis. The saddest thing is the decline of articulate speech, the fear of pronouncing words, the expanding silence. “A man who is a man doesn’t talk too much,” a vendor told me this morning when I insisted on knowing if the cupcakes were guava or coconut. Later I received a grunt when I inquired of an official about her office’s opening hours. To top off the day, I got nothing more than shrugged shoulders when asking where the bathroom was in a coffee shop.

What is happening with the language? Why this aversion to expressing oneself in a coherent manner with well-structured phrases? The tendency to monosyllables is quite worrying, as is the use of signs instead of sentences with subjects and predicates. Who said so many people talking is a sign of weakness? Do adjectives show laziness? The phenomenon is widespread among young men because in the macho code loquacity is at odds with virility. A punch, a sneer, or simple babbling, have replaced fluid and well enunciated conversation.

“I’m not going to discuss it…” boasted a man, yesterday, to a teenager trying to tell him something. Meanwhile, the latter was shouting, and instead of using words he was waving his hands around as a warning, the preferred code of slaps. The worst thing is that for the vast majority who witnessed the altercation, that individual was doing the right thing: don’t talk too much and get on with the fight. Because for many, talking is giving in, arguing is a sign of weakness, trying to convince people is cowardly. Instead, they prefer shouts and insults, perhaps an inheritance from so much aggressive political discourse. They opt for the almost animal growl and the slap.

These are bad times for the word, party days for silence.

13 December 2013

One Day More, One Day Less / Yoani Sanchez

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The tree of rights, hard to grow, easy to cut down #DDHHCuba

“Repetition is the mother of learning,” an old professor of Military Preparation in my high school used to say. He wasn’t, however, referring to the repetition of a phrase in order to learn it, or of a particular mathematical operation to memorize it. In fact, he was referring to punishment, the correction which, according to him, should be insistent to generate respect. So he overwhelmed us with shouts, unnecessary reports and even insults of “slackers” when we didn’t know how to handle a rifle or crawl through the grass. But instead of cementing in us the knowledge he imparted, we all feared and detested him.

This same logic of applying repression over and over again is used by the State Security apparatus every December 10th. On World Human Rights Day we live through 24-hours of clubs and threats. Every year it’s the same thing and a little more, because like all correctives it seeks to paralyze its victims. Arrests, besieged homes and threats delivered ahead of time to the members of the different civic movements are all part of this “ritual of terror.” They’ve also added cutting off cellphone service — with the complicity of the Cubacel company — and sending apocryphal messages to sow confusion among activists.

But the repeated penance isn’t working. The numbers of those who engage in some demonstration for Human Rights are increasing, not declining. The old pedagogy of beatings no longer serves as an example, but rather fans the reasons to speak out. On the other hand, there are people who don’t belong to any critical organization or to any dissident group who are witnessing and taking note of these repressive waves. Witnesses of the moment when some Ladies in White are forced into cars or when an independent journalist’s camera is taken from her. After seeing something like this, you can no longer say you didn’t know, you will no longer be the same.

The repetition of repression only stirs up nonconformity, it doesn’t dampen it. Insistent beatings don’t teach us… because the lesson of meekness is not one we want to learn.

10 December 2013