Baby Ounces / Yoani Sanchez

He has sewn a double lining into the bottom of his pants. Big enough to hold the milk powder he sneaks out of the factory. So far he’s never had any problems, but every now and then they bring in a new guard and he avoids taking anything home for a few days. His work at the Dairy Complex has never been professionally interesting to him, but he wouldn’t exchange it for any other. To his place as a packer he owes his daughter’s quinceañero celebration, the new roof on his house, the motorbike he rides around the city. He has a job envied by many. An occupation someone with just a sixth grade education can do, but one coveted by academics, experts and even scientists. It’s a workplace where you can steal something.

Ingenuity and illegality are combined when it comes time to make a living. Hoses rolled up under a shirt carry alcohol out of the distilleries. Cigar rollers calculate when the security camera looks away to slip a cigar under the desk. Bakers add extra yeast to make the dough rise disproportionately so they can resell the flour. Taxi drivers are experts in fiddling with the meter; clerks steal a little bit from each tube of liquid detergent; farmers add a few small stones to each bag of beans… so they weigh more. Creativity in the quest of embezzling the State and the customer stretches across the island.

However, of all the elaborate and clever ways to “struggle” that I have known, there is one that stands out as remarkable. I heard it from a friend who gave birth to an underweight baby at the Havana maternity hospital. Both the child and the mother had to stay in the medical center until the baby gained almost a pound. The process was slow and the new mother was desperate to go home. The bathroom had no water, the food was terrible, and every day her family had to make great sacrifices to bring her meals and clean clothes. To top it off, my friend looked at the other low birthweight babies and they were putting on ounces rapidly. She expressed her desperation to another patient who responded, laughing, “Boy, are you stupid! You don’t know that the nurse sells the ounces?” That lady in the white coat who walked the halls every morning charged for entering a higher weight into the medical record. She was selling non-existent baby ounces. What a business!

After hearing that story, nothing surprises me any more, I am never shocked by the many ways in which Cubans “struggle” for survival.

4 October 2013

Self-Employed “Dandies” / Yoani Sanchez

10037230194_d505ae987c_zImage from Yoani’s Twitter: A listing of approved “professions” for the self-employed:

176: Caricaturist: Show off your drawing talent through caricatures of tourists.

177. Artificial Flower Seller: Sell artificial flowers with small souvenirs, carrying a basket and maintaining an appropriate appearance.

178. Street Painter: Through your art reflect the colonial architecture of the Historic Center.

179. Dandy: Dress in a suit of the era, with cane and hat. In the development of your work you can execute dance steps…

Merchant, That Dirty Word / Yoani Sanchez

Photo by Silvia Corbelle

If reality could personify itself, climb into a body, have physical contours. If a society could be represented by a living being, ours would be a growing adolescent. Someone who will stretch out his arms and legs and throw off paternalism to become an adult. But that beardless boy is wearing clothes so tight they hardly let him breathe. Our daily life has been compressed by the corset of a legality with excessive prohibitions and by an ideology as outdated as it is dysfunctional.  This is how I would draw the Cuba of today, this pubescent but repressed form would represent the context I live in.

The governmental trend is not moving to recognize our needs for economic and political expansion. Rather it is trying try to squeeze us into absurd molds. This is the case with the limited occupations allowed to self-employed workers, the sector that in any other country would be classified as “private.” Instead of expanding the number of licenses to included many other productive activities and services, the authorities are trying to cut reality to fit within the accepted list. The law doesn’t work to encourage creativity and talent, but rather to constrain the limits of entrepreneurship.

The latest example of this contradiction is seen in the operations against those who sell imported clothes, primarily from Ecuador and Panama. According to the official media, many of these merchants are licensed as “Tailors,” which allows them to market articles coming from their own sewing machines; and instead they offer industrially manufactured blouses, pants and bags. Violators are punished by confiscation of their merchandise plus heavy fines. The inspectors attempt, in this way, to force our reality into the straitjacket regulated by the Official Gazette.

Why, instead of so much persecution, don’t they authorize the work of “merchant.” Buying, transporting and reselling articles in high-demand should not be a crime, but rather a regulated activity that also contributes to the treasury through taxes. To deny this key piece in the machinery of any society is to misunderstand how to structure its economic fabric. The legal framework of a nation shouldn’t condemn it to the infancy of timbiriches — tiny Mom-and-Pop stands — and to the manufacture and sale of churros, but rather it should help us expand professionally and materially. As long as the Cuban government doesn’t accept the ABCs of development, our reality must grow and stretch its arms towards illegalities and the underground market.

22 September 2013

My Words at Forum 2000 / Yoani Sanchez

Good evening:

More than a decade ago Vaclav Havel’s book “The Power of the Powerless” fell into my hands for the first time. It came wrapped in a page of my country’s official newspaper, the Cuban Communist Party’s daily. Covering books was one of the many ways of hiding inconvenient texts forbidden by the government from the eyes of informants and the political police. In this way we had been reading, clandestinely, stories of what happened with the fall of the Berlin wall, the end of the Soviet Union, the Czech transformation, and all the other events in Eastern Europe. We knew about all these transitions, some more traumatic, others more successful and many of us dreamed that the transformation would soon come to our Island in the Caribbean, subjected to more than five decades of totalitarianism. But the transition most yearned for remains to be built. The processes of change don’t come alone, citizens have to spark them.

Today I am here, in the very city where Vaclav Havel was born, this man who summed up as few others have the spirit of the transition. I am also facing many people who have encouraged, pushed and personified the desire for change in their respective societies. Because the search for horizons of greater freedom is an essential part of human nature. Thus, it is twisted and unnatural for regimes to try to perpetuate themselves over the people, to immobilize them, to take from them the desire to dream that the future will be better.

In Vaclav Havel’s era, for Lech Walesa, and for so many other dissidents of the communist regimes, methods of peaceful struggle were effective: labor unions, even artistic creation was put to use for change. Now technology has also come to our aid. Every time I use a cellphone to denounce an arrest or write in my blog about the difficult situation of so many Cuban families, I think about how these gadgets with keyboards and screens would have helped the activists of previous decades. How far they could have cast their voices and projects had they had the social networks and all of cyberspace that opens today before our eyes. The Web 2.0 has been, without a doubt, a boost for the spirit of transition that dwells within us all.

Today, for the first time in Forum 2000, there is a small representation of Cuban activists. After decades of island confinement in which our country’s regime blocked many dissidents, independent journalists and alternative bloggers from traveling abroad, we have achieved the small victory of their opening to us the national frontiers. It is a limited victory, incomplete, because many others are still missing. Freedom of expression, respect for free opinion, the ability to choose for ourselves who represents us, the end of those acts of hate called “repudiation rallies” that still persist on the streets of Cuba against those who think differently from the ideology in power. However, many of us feel that Cuba is in transition. A transition that is happening in a more irreversible and instructive manner: from within the individual, in the conscience of a people.

In this transition we see the influence of many of you. Many of you who have arrived first to freedom and who have found that it is not the end of the road, rather freedom brings new problems, new responsibilities, new challenges. You who, in your respective countries, kept alive the breath of change, even risking your names and your lives.

Like the spirit of transition contained in that book by Vaclav Havel, wrapped — to disguise it — with the pages of the most stagnant and reactionary official newspaper you can possibly imagine. Like that book, the transition can be prohibited, censored, decreed to be almost a dirty word, postponed and demonized… but it will always arrive.

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16 September 2013

The Man in Front of the Microphone / Yoani Sanchez

Subtitles read:
Free access to information for me to have my own opinion.
I want to elect the president by direct vote, not by other means.
Neither militants nor dissidents, all Cubans with the same rights.
End the blockade… and the INTERNAL BLOCKADE.

The filters were useless. The many eyes watching the monitors of the “master switch,” with itchy fingers ready to cut the signal, turn off the audio, kill a camera and switch to another focused on the crowd… or even on the heavens…

The professionals were useless, even though they had been carefully trained in TV censorship to cut to a test pattern or superimpose a musical curtain, should any “spontaneous” thing be said that should not be broadcast live.

It was all useless because the man in front of the microphone made the decision of his life: he resolved to put honesty above his own artistic career.

Robertico Carcásses was at the right time and the right place. He couldn’t let the chance go by and so he let loose, on the main stage of the Cuban regime, what so many of us are thinking.

Thank you, Bobby, for your bravery, your originality and for seizing this great opportunity with your voice and your art. Thank you!

*Translator’s note: Carcásses was singing at a concert staged for the release of the “Cuban Five” (Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States) at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand in Havana, Cuba.

15 September 2013

When “The Bad Guys” Carry Calculators / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef019aff596ef3970b-550wiAmong the many phrases repeated over and over in the streets of Cuba, there is one that masterfully summarizes the affect of individual interests. Simply saying “they stomped on my callus,” is enough to let us know that they’ve touched someone’s soft spot, a part of himself that will make him jump, protect himself and go on the offensive. However, this same person will very likely remain silent when “they stomp on the callus” of someone else. Only his own pain will cause a reaction. A primer of human behavior, but one which, in certain circumstances,  fosters the selfishness of certain social sectors.

For months now, Raul Castro has unleashed a strong campaign against illegalities which has turned into a wholesale stomping on the calluses of those who, until now, had managed to keep their “feet” well protected. Thousands of inspectors in the street, tickets for fines being handed out right and left, and a general feeling that at any moment the police might show up. Resellers, the corner vendors, families remodeling their homes, self-employed workers and farmers, are  the focus of this crackdown. No one is safe. Dressed in plain clothes or uniformed, the soldiers of this new battle reinforce the feeling of constant surveillance.

Unlike other previous raids, this one has affected virtually the entire Cuban population. To the point that people are saying “the government has declared war on the people.” A crusade that breaks a tacit social compact, fragile, yet crucial to the survival of the current system. A certain level of permissibility for corruption, for the black market, and for the diversion of State resources has been built up over decades as a mechanism for political control. Faking an ideological loyalty to the regime has been the indispensable prerequisite to embezzlement, stealing, adulterating, without serious reprisals. However, the formula of screaming “Fatherland or Death” to ward off the inspectors and the police is no longer working. The stomp on the callus reaches even the publicly declared faithful followers of the Communist Party. Though it’s worth noting, not all calluses are equal… at certain heights, no one will stomp on your feet.

With this new offensive, Raul Castro’s government faces a growing unpopularity. It’s true that looking at the penalized illegalities, they are ethically and legally unacceptable, but anyone who respected the strict Cuban penal code, literally could not survive. Tolerating a certain level of transgression — or what we call “cimarronaje,” the culture of fugitive slaves — is an inseparable part of the the apparatus of subjugation to totalitarianism. Between the rulers and the ruled an tacit accord is established that implies ceding impunity in both directions. In a country where the president himself has had to recognize that salaries are not the principal source of income, the authorities know that tightening the screws against parallel paths of survival would, over the long term, be political suicide. The unwritten contract where citizens pretend to work and the rulers pretend to pay them is in crisis. The fight against corruption and indisciplines has touched a docile, but numerically very large, political sector.

A few days ago a street vendor of desserts, until recently a faithful follower of official politics, approached a human rights activist. With little preamble he snapped, “I want to make statements…” stunning the dissident, who considered this self-employed individual the Communist Party’s man. But the excessive taxes and the constant fines had caused him to change his ideas. “I can’t stop on any corner to sell my cupcakes because the inspector say I’m a roving vendor and I have to keep moving at all times.” Part of the absurdity that prevails in every State campaign is also evident in these raids against misdeeds.

They also “stomped on the callus” of Catalina when the police demanded “the papers” for the bricks and cement with which she and her family were remodeling their home. The illegal origin of all of it led them to offer to pay the official to forget about it. Because the fight against illegalities doesn’t take into consideration that the controllers, auditors and gendarmes also need to survive. Everyone has a price. Skipping a health inspection at a fast food business costs the owner between 200 and 300 convertibles pesos. A certain Housing Institute inspector is known as “Johnny 1500” for imposing fines of that amount, with the intention that the offender will offer a “bite” of at least half. The anti-corruption crackdown creates new forms of corruption.

For now, the alarm spreads, and the warning mechanisms for possible inspections and reporting become more sophisticated. Everyone passes on the alert when “the bad guys” — which is what we call those armed with calculators, ticket books, fines and the penal code — arrive in a neighborhood or workplace. They come ready to stomp on calluses, many calluses at a time. With each stomp, however, the Castro regime could be losing a pair of feet, many feet, which they rely on.

From El Pais

13 September 2013

Creole Block / Yoani Sanchez

Beto was one of those who handed out beatings in August of 1994. With his helmet, his mortar-splattered pants and an iron bar in his hand, he lashed out at some of the protestors during the Maleconazo. At that time he was working on a construction team and felt like part of an elite. He had milk at breakfast, a room he shared with other colleagues, and a salary higher than any doctor’s. He spent the years of his youth building hotels, but a decade ago, when his brigade was demobilized, he became unemployed. He didn’t want to return to the village of Banes where he was born, not him, nor many others of that troop ready to build a wall or break heads.

Several of these construction workers were allowed to settle in a makeshift neighborhood in the Havana suburbs. The received the benefit of permission to build a “llega y pon*” — a shantytown — near Calle 100 and Avenida Rancho Boyeros. A crumb, after so much ideological loyalty. Without the perks and high wages, many of these bricklayers had to survive on what they could find. Beto set up a workshop for fabricating “creole bricks.” Other neighbors in his makeshift neighborhood also dedicate themselves to building materials: sand, stone powder… bricks. With the new relaxations giving permission for the repair and building by one’s own efforts, the business of “aggregates” prospers, involving more people every day. The producers, transporters, brigade leaders, and finally the men who load the sacks on the trucks. A chain of work — parallel to the State’s — more efficient, but also at higher prices.

Beto doesn’t like talking about the past. In his shirt full of holes he walks between the stacks of Creole blocks coming out of his little factory. When he sees one that has cracked or that has a broken corner, he shouts at one of his employees who mixes the mortar for casting the molds. He carries an iron rod in his hand, as he did on 5 August 1994, but this time it’s for knocking against the blocks, checking the strength of his product. He frequently glances over to the little house he is building at the end of this unpaved street with no drains. For the first time he has something of his own, something no one has given him. He is a man with neither privilege nor obedience.

*Translator’s note: “llega y pon” is literally “arrive and put.”

Where Are Abela’s Guajiros? / Yoani Sanchez

Guajiros (peasants), Eduardo Abela

The composition is almost circular, compact. The eyes follow a spiral line that starts on the shoe of the man seated in the foreground and ends at the rooster held by another. There is peace, vestiges of good conversation, and in the background a village of wood and palm leaf huts. Six Cuban peasants have been represented in this painting by Abela, as well known as it is plagiarized. Their faces are tanned by the sun and vaguely indigenous. They are magnetic, irresistible. Our gaze takes us to the details of their clothing. “Dressed to the nines,” impeccable sombreros, long sleeves, perhaps with the fabric starched for the occasion.

Infected by the familiarity of the painting, I go to the countryside, put myself in the furrows where so many times I have picked tobacco, beans, garlic… I go in search of the primordial unity of Cubanness that is rural man However, under the scorching sun of August, instead of “Abela’s guajiros,” I find people dressed in military garb. Olive-green pants, shirts that lost their epaulettes long ago, old berets from some battle that never happened. They don the uniforms of the Armed Forces or the Ministry of the Interior to face the rigors of the fields. They don’t have many choices.

In the informal market it’s easier to buy an official jacket than a shirt for farm work. A police cap costs less than a straw sombrero. Belts made out of cowhide are also a thing of the past; today it’s easier and cheaper to find those used in the army. The situation is the same for shoes. Rubber boots are scarce and instead the men and women of the land wear shoes designed for the trenches and combat. In a militarized country, even in the smallest details the military prevails over tradition.

State centralization was drying up the autonomous production of clothes designed for farming. Not even the recent relaxations for self-employment have encouraged this production. It is not just an issue of economics or supply, this situation also affects questions of our national idiosyncrasies and popular customs. A current version of Abela’s painting would leave us with the impression of a looking at a militia group in tattered clothing posing for the painter in the middle of an encampment… about to sound the reveille.

23 August 2013