Category: TRANSLATORS

During the massive exodus of 1980, Mariel was one of the 19 municipalities of the old province of Havana. But now, with around 45,000 inhabitants, it’s one of the 11 municipalities of Artemisa, one of the two provinces that popped up on January 1, 2011 (the other is Mayabeque).

Among other installations in Mariel is El Morro, the old cement factory; a thermo-electric plant with Soviet technology, inaugurated by Fidel Castro in 1978; an export terminal for raw sugar; a shipyard, and the Occidental Naval Base of the Naval Marina of Cuba.

In the gloomy backstreets of La Boca, the asphalt shimmers and the stray dogs take refuge from the heat at a ramshackle bus stop. In the distance you can make out four enormous cranes, painted olive-green, and a container ship that’s being unloaded in the publicized Port of Mariel.

The anchorage, a stellar work of Raúl Castro’s government, cost 957 million dollars and was constructed by Odebrecht, the company implicated in various corruption scandals in Brazil that have shaken the foundation of President Dilma Rousseff’s Workers Party.

The residents of La Boca observe the port of Mariel as trespassers. “You can’t get in there. There are guards at the entrance, and inside the demarcation zone are soldiers who give orders. I have a daughter who works there. She earns 1,000 pesos a month, but the controls and the distrust make her take days off. The port is a prohibited zone, to be seen from afar,” says Pastor, who sells tamales for five pesos.

No one in La Boca has seen foreigners or sailors drinking like pirates in any local bar. “The truth is that very few ships come in. Right now there’s only one. It’s a sign that the country is in crisis. The port is more propaganda than anything else,” affirms Arsenio, who works at the cement factory.

Two years and six months after the inauguration of the Port of Mariel, the harbor functions at half throttle. A port operator says that in all this time fewer than 100 ships have docked.

“Forget the huge Post Panamax freighters that were promised. At the entrance to the Bay there’s an enormous piece of marble schist that impedes the access of deep-draft boats. They wanted to dynamite it and almost took that shit down. Now the port is more wrecked than the formation. At best they’ll solve the dredging problem, but they’ve already finished the expansion of the Panama Canal, and Mariel has been left behind in the war of the ports in the Caribbean and those on the north coast of the United States, which are designed to attract large ships,” comments the port worker.

The independent journalist, Pablo Pascual Méndez Piña, has investigated the technical problems of the Mariel port and its huge construction cost. In the report on the Mariel surcharge, published in Diario de Cuba on April 11, 2016, Méndez Piña points out:

“The big question is why it cost 957 million USD: a loading bay that, according to official reports, has a surface of barely 28 hectares, a docking bay of 700 meters, four STS super Post Panamax cranes, 12 cranes with RTG pneumatics, 22 tractor wheel wedges, two tugboats, a maneuvering basin of 520 meters diameter, with a mooring draft of barely 9.75 meters. Add to that the remodeling of a little more than 30 kilometers of roads, the construction of 18 kilometers of highways and 13 kilometers of railroad lines, plus the pay for a discreet group of civil workers together with the more than 6,000 national workers who participated in the construction. You arrive at the ludicrous sum of 20 million USD for three years of work.”

For Giordano, a construction contractor, “If we compare it with the expansion of other ports, like those in Costa Rica, Colombia or Miami, with more work machinery, higher prices for real estate and high salaries, the cost of the Port of Mariel probably doesn’t reach 500 million dollars. The other money was embezzled.”

But the cost of the port doesn’t interest most of the inhabitants of the municipality of Artemisa. Almost three kilometers from the shantytown of La Boca is the town of Mariel.

Cubans like Marcos, a worker, thought that moving a large part of the port operations to Mariel would bring with it an important added value that would benefit the people of Mariel.

“But it’s all been just talk. The municipal Communist Party officials said that in 20 years, Havana would grow up to here. And from Baracoa to Mariel there would be tall buildings, hotels and new cities. But I don’t believe that will happen with this government.”

The taxis that arrive from the capital end their trips in a desolate park in the heart of Mariel, a town barely five blocks long, which ends in a small pier. It’s a flat neighborhood of one-story, stone and wood houses with tiled roofs.

For 10 pesos, you can visit the town in 20 minutes in a bicitaxi. “Brother, tourists don’t come to Mariel, and I don’t know where they put the sailors, since they don’t come here. We have only one quality private restaurant; the rest are stands that sell hot dogs and soft drinks. The place is dead. There’s no money, no life,” says Oriel, the driver.

Mariel doesn’t seem like a dead, lifeless place. The same as in other places on the Island, and considering that it’s a work day, many people are walking up and down the streets, lingering for little private negotiations or standing in line to buy chicken by the pound, offered in a local market.

In front of a park that’s a stone’s throw from the bay, there’s a roundabout. A drunk guy sleeps in the shade. Nearby, several people drink cheap rum or beer. After going through an iron gate, facing the sea, there’s a narrow square with a Che sign in front of a small plaza, where there are parties with recorded music on weekends.

“There’s little in the way of entertainment here. You buy rum from the shop, and on Saturdays you sit on the bay wall to flirt with a chick, and then they kill the time by telling us lies. Whoever has money goes to Havana to wander around,” says Ridel, a shop manager, while he continues watching the large, far-away cranes of the port.

For its citizens, the Port of Mariel is foreign territory.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Of course it’s also used to flirt with a foreigner, commit camouflaged prostitution or request money from a cousin in Hialeah. Darío, an old man of indefinite age, among the hubbub and heat, sells salted peanuts at one peso a cone.

The peanut seller remembers that three months before, on Tuesday, March 22, a disproportionate police deployment in the park scared off the hustlers, prostitutes and marginal people.

“It was already known that Obama was going to give a speech in the Gran Teatro of Habana, on Prado between San Rafael and San José, beside the Capitolio. The whole zone was taken; I never saw so many security guards together. In the neighborhood they said that Obama was going to walk along the San Rafael boulevard and talk with the people. The police let pass only those who lived around there. They told people to remain at home,” recalls Darío.

Erasmo, who resells Internet cards, comments that “on that day the businesses were basically quiet. Throughout Central Havana there wasn’t a prostitute, drunk or beggar scavenging food in a garbage bin. I went up to the roof with a friend, and with my mobile phone, I recorded the moment when The Beast — Cadillac One — arrived at the San Cristóbal paladar [home restaurant], on San Rafael between Campanario and Lealtad,” he comments, and he shows his video as evidence.

“I’m never going to erase this from my phone. This was the most important day of my life,” Erasmo adds.

After crossing Galiano, the multi-colored, narrow streets of San Rafael are less agitated. Ruined shells of buildings, women always selling something and a swarm of private shops.

Roger, nicknamed “El Pali”, is an extroverted, talkative guy who sells bananas and meat in a State agro-market on the corner of San Rafael and Campanario. He confesses that he’s an “excluded.”

“I was a prisoner in the U.S. Then I was released, but I went back in the tank for a robbery in New Jersey. In any event, I’m more American than Cuban. Before they sent me back to Cuba I was in the U.S. for 22 years. I even have a son over there. The day the President arrived,” — his work buddies laughed their heads off — ” I planted myself on the balcony of a friend’s house with an American flag and yelled in English. I don’t know if Obama heard me, but before he went into the paladar, it looked like he saw me on the balcony,” said El Pali.

On the same block where the private restaurant, San Cristóbal, is located, there are seven small family businesses. Barbara rents out rooms, and in a narrow apartment which looks out on the street, Sara, an old retired woman, sells freshly-ground coffee. Just in a house next to the paladar, a poster indicates that the president of the CDR resides there.

“But the woman never does anything. She also was with the neighborhood people at the party, getting drunk with those who came to see Obama,” says a blond in denim shorts and rubber flip-flops.

In the doorway of the San Cristóbal paladar, at 469 San Rafael between Lealtad and Campanario, the doorman, a corpulent negro dressed in a red shirt and dark pants, is on the hunt for clients with a menu in his hand.

But his excessive prices horrify the average Havanan. A plate costs around 30 dollars. And a good mojito, six. “Eating there can give you a heart attack. But you have to go with a suitcase full of money,” says a neighbor.

The doorman, friendly and relaxed, was there on the night of Sunday, March 20, when Obama’s wife, two daughters and mother-in-law went to dine at San Cristóbal.

“There was tremendous intrigue in the neighborhood. The zone was full of police. In the morning some gringos came and told Raisa and Cristóbal, the owners, to reserve all the tables, that some American officials were coming for dinner that night. No one imagined that it was Obama. I saw him from the same distance that I’m talking with you. The President and his wife shook my hand. I went for a week without washing it,” he says, smiling.

Ninety days after Obama’s visit, Carlos Cristóbal Márquez Valdés’ business has benefited. “A lot of foreigners want to sit at the same table and eat the same meal as Obama. Thanks to Saint Obama, the paladar is always full,” affirms the doorman.

Walking in a straight line down San Rafael, leaving the boulevard and going down the busy street of Obispo up to Oficios, in a small garden at the back of the Rubén Martínez Villena municipal library, Michelle Obama, her daughters, Sasha and Malia, and her mother, Marian, planted two magnolia bushes.

“The magnolia is a shrub that survived the epoch of the dinosaurs. An American told me that the variety planted belongs to the Magnolia virginiana. On the morning of March 22, I had the luck to see the First Lady and her daughters when they came to plant the flowers. I was very happy, since in the late afternoon on Sunday the 20th, it rained a lot, and I couldn’t see Obama at the Plaza de Armas and the Cathedral,” relates Alberto, a used-book seller in Old Havana.

Michelle Obama, a sponsor of the Let Girls Learn project, on Monday, March 21, joined a dozen students in the Fábrica de Arte Cubano, on Calle 26 at the corner of 11th, Vedado. The meeting barely was mentioned in the press, and it wasn’t possible to identify any of the young women participants.

Although the trivialities and the sensationalism caused by President Barack Obama’s travels throughout the world also affect the people of Havana, many think the most impressive part of his visit was the speech he gave in the Gran Teatro de La Habana. And they are sure that after March 20, 2016, Cuba will not be the same.

Martí Noticias, June 20, 2016.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The rainy season has become a calvary for the residents of Havana who live in the low zones, where the housing is in poor shape, or in any of the 80 unhealthy neighborhoods that proliferate in the capital.

In a hot, windowless room with a half-dozen plastic buckets and junk, Luis Carlos tries to trap the drops of water that filter through the corrugated roof.

“On days of pouring rain, I pray to the Lord that the room doesn’t fall down on me. I’ve already sealed the roof twice, but it continues to leak,” he says, and with the help of a nephew, he tries to patch a hole.

When the rain pours down in Havana, the people who live in dilapidated housing or on streets that are close to the coast, become sailors, bailing out water inside their homes or escaping to safe places in precarious boats.

On Tuesday, June 7, at 7:30 in the evening, while Richard Weber, the President of the New7Wonders Foundation was unveiling the Wonder City plaque on the Esplanada de La Punta, a stone’s throw from the Malecón, Reinaldo Savón’s family was loading its furniture and electrical appliances into a horse-drawn cart, with water skirting the  middle of San Ramón, a neighborhood that suffers like no other from the rainy periods, for lack of an adequate infrastructure of drainage.

“I don’t know which wonder city those bastards awarded. I invite them to come live in San Ramón on days like these. After they see how peoples’ houses are flooded and how they lose their things, they will change their opinion. No one thinks about this part of Havana. It’s been more than 20 years since the Government promised us a solution, but everything stays the same, only promises,” Reinaldo says.

The Office of the City Historian, directed by Eusebio Leal, a regime official, who managed to save various valuable buildings in Old Havana from disaster, prepared a free cultural program. From June 7-11, you could enjoy, among other things, performances of the Teatro Lírico, the Ballet Folklórico, the Tropicana Cabaret, the Ballet Lizt Alfonso, a parade of singers, musicians and dancers on the Paseo del Prado, and a concert by the Orquesta Aragón on the corner of Prado and Neptuno.

But Havanans like Lourdes Pérez, a resident of a marginal neighborhood adjacent to the José Antonio Echevarría Technological University, in the Marianao municipality, isn’t much for parties.

Four years ago, Lourdes came to the capital from Santiago de Cuba with her three children and her husband in search of better luck. He sells corn tamales and clothing from Ecuador, and she takes care of elderly sick people.

Legally, Lourdes and her family are clandestine in Havana. They don’t have a ration book, and their hut, with a dirt floor and an aluminum roof, doesn’t have a bathroom or drinking water. They live poorly, eat little and drink cheap alcohol.

“We don’t have anything more. When we get a few pesos, they go for food and rum. The money isn’t enough to build a decent house. We barely survive with what we earn,” says Lourdes’ husband, who spends time gathering raw materials in the dump on Calle 100, west of the city.

Since December 17, 2014, after the truce with the United States, the old Cold-War enemy, Cuba, and especially Havana, has received a stream of famous visitors, investment projects, a runway of Chanel fashions, Hollywood filmings and even a mega-concert by the Rolling Stones.

Press passes are everywhere, but the benefits are invisible to the average citizen. The shortages sting like a whip; the infrastructure of the city is Fourth World; garbage is piling up in the neighborhoods; thousands of buildings threaten to collapse; public transport is chaotic, and finding something to eat continues to be the main preoccupation, not only for people in Havana but for all Cubans.

Orestes Ruiz, an engineer, can’t believe that Havana is a wonder city. “Too many shortages. Anyone who has traveled abroad will see that even the cities of Third World nations, to which they should compare us, have more hygiene, better Internet connection and more efficient public services.”

Nadine López, a university student, considers that it has to do with the excess of news in the international media, or it’s an operation of marketing or simply a joke in poor taste.

“You have to have a lot of imagination to reward Havana as a wonder city. I don’t know why there’s so much celebration. For those of us who live here it’s more of an offense than a recompense,” she says, while the rain dies down in a doorway on the Calzada Diez de Octubre.

Although the leaders promise a “prosperous and sustainable socialism,” and the media focus continues extolling Havana, a large segment of those who live in José Martí’s small fatherland wait for more palpable changes that will improve the quality of their lives.

For now, all that remains is soft music in the background. And press credentials.

Hispanopost, June 9, 2016

Translated by Regina Anavy

“It’s a farce. Those insolent people (the Regime) don’t give us private taxi drivers even a nut and now they come to demand that we establish fixed prices. They have even put up a telephone number so people can snitch on us. Why don’t they put up a telephone number for people to complain about the high prices in the dollar stores and the low salaries?” says the driver of the ancient taxi.

“Where do they put the money that they collect in taxes? Look at how messed up the streets are (and he points to the road). The blame for the poor service of the transport is theirs. Now, the same as with the truck drivers and the middlemen for the agricultural products, they want to set us against the people. If the buses ran every three minutes and there were a flotilla of taxis at low prices, there wouldn’t be problems. They don’t resolve any damn thing, and all they know how to do is prohibit, raise taxes and fuck someone,” insists Guenady, and he takes a small drink of water from the bottle.

Let’s go step by step. The poor public transport service isn’t the fault of the private drivers. It’s been a pending subject since January 1959, when the bearded Fidel Castro arrived in Havana.

There are a few small oases, but in one way or another, urban transport is chaos in Cuba. In the country there is no metro, and the suburban train barely functions.

In the ’80s, a parking lot of more than 2,500 buses, 100 routes and 4,000 taxis didn’t satisfy the service. Later, in the ’90s, the great economic crisis arrived, and with it, the Special Period: blackouts, little food and inflation through the roof. Public transport collapsed. And the high cost of gas provoked owners into keeping their cars in garages.

With the arrival in Miraflores of the paratrooper from Barina, Hugo Rafael Chávez, luck changed for the dinosaurs of the Palace of the Revolution. They exchanged oil for doctors and sports trainers, and the Government began to receive around 105,000 barrels daily of petroleum.

They even began to export part of the fuel on the world market. When a barrel surpassed 100 dollars, the Regime never offered information about what they used that money for.

The owners of automobiles, excepting professionals, were allowed to obtain taxi licenses. Havana was flooded with old United States cars and those from the Soviet era.

Today, according to a transit agent, there are more than 12,000 licensed taxis in operation, circulating in the capital. “But there are about 2,000 that are illegal. With this campaign, it’s possible that there will be more,” he warns.

The taxes on taxi drivers have been increasing gradually. Also the obstacles. “In the ’90s, we paid 400 pesos. Between 2010 and 2013, from 600 to 700 pesos. Now we pay 1,000. And the ONAT [National Tax Administration of Cuba] is always looks for a way to get more money out of us,” points out Roger, a taxi driver on the Havana-Santiago de las Vegas route.

Seventy percent of private taxi drivers rent the cars from their owners. Orlando, the owner of several trucks and cars, gives more details: “There are 30 or 40 people, like me, who are proprietors of small flotillas of cars. And we have set up medium-sized companies with two work shifts. The business gives good benefits. In a month, clean, you can make 90,000 pesos. But we’re in a judicial limbo, because the Government doesn’t recognize us. When they want to fuck us, as you see now, they make us spread our legs.”

Carlos, a sociologist, believes that the Regime’s old trick of confrontation between private individuals and regular Cubans is now worn out. “The private owners are not to blame if a pound of beef, of pork, costs 40 pesos, or if to take a bus you have to wait an hour at the bus stop. The Government should negotiate with them so the people aren’t affected. Then, if tomorrow, for violating the ordinances for fixed prices, they take away the licenses of half the taxi drivers, the transportation crisis will get worse. They attack only one part of the phenomenon but don’t go to the root. And the worst is that they don’t have a short-term solution.”

After General Raúl Castro announced new austerity measures, the urban bus service cut back on their trips. “The P-10 used to have a frequency of 10 minutes; now it’s 25 minutes,” commented a driver at the Santa Amalia terminal, south of the capital.

Raquel, an office worker, considers that they shouldn’t “crush the ’boteros’ [taxi drivers of fixed routes] any more. The few State taxis that exist charge the same. And the dollar taxis have doubled their prices.”

Ricardo, who drives an air-conditioned taxi, says that “practically all the dollar taxis are leased. We’re modern slaves. We work 12 or more hours in order to be paid 55 CUCs daily that we must turn over to the Government. That’s brought with it the increase in prices. A trip from the airport can cost 40 CUCs. It’s as if we were living in the jungle, trying to survive, and the ones who pay for the broken dishes are the people who earn the shitty salaries.”

In the middle of the traditional crisis of urban transport, above all in Havana, the greed of hundreds of private taxi drivers irritates the population. Even the authorities have reactivated a telephone line, 18820, to receive complaints from people who have had to pay more than 10 or 20 pesos, the cost of a trip according to the distance.

Luis Carlos, a taxi driver, says that “we have always bought fuel under the table. Before, at 7 or 8 pesos a liter of gasoline. But, progressively, it’s been going up on the black market, and after the new savings measures, a liter costs 20 pesos. That impacts our pockets. If the State is so generous, I wonder, why is it selling a liter at one CUC when on the world market a barrel of oil costs 30 dollars?”

The summer promises a new struggle between private taxi drivers and the Government. A war, which beyond the victor, always has a loser: the Cuban on the street.

Iván García

Martí Noticias, July 18, 2016.

Translated by Regina Anavy

With this mechanical way of functioning that the much-extolled participative democracy trumpeted by the olive-green Regime has, two Party functionaries from the municipality of Cerro, together with the secretary of the union from the business, quickly read the introduction of the new Castro evangelism. “Then it was put to a vote,” says Emilio.

As usual, all the workers of the business voted unanimously in favor of everything in the tome, without knowing or analyzing its contents. Then the party continued, listening to Reggaeton at full blast and drinking alcohol like pirates.

On June 14, in the editorial, “A debate for the future,” published that day in the newspaper, Granma, the organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, the process of consultation for the “construction of a prosperous and sustainable socialism” was kick-started. The debate will extend up to September 20.

It deals with — and here the jargon starts — the “Conceptualization of the Cuban Economic and Social Model of Socialist Development” and the “National Plan of Economic and Social Development up to 2030: Proposal of the nation’s vision, ideas and strategic sectors.”

In the editorial it’s argued that the texts, of “transcendental importance (…) are not the fruit of improvisation but are the result of a collective elaboration, under the direction of the Party, in which university professors, academics, researchers from the economic and social sciences and officials of the Government and the Party participated.” And it underscores that “they [the texts] were debated in meetings of the Political Bureau, in two plenary sessions of the Central Committee, submitted for consult to all the deputies of the National Assembly of People Power, to several thousand more people, and then exhaustively examined in the Congress.”

According to Granma, after the Communist conference “approves in principle both documents,” it will “order the Central Committee to carry out a consultation process, with the clearly defined proposal to enrich and perfect them.” And it stresses that “they are comprehensive documents of great complexity that will mark the course of the Cuban revolutionary process, the Party and society,” looking to the future.

The main Cuban State medium clarifies that “680,000 copies of a 32-page tabloid were printed,” destined for “the organizations of base and the collectives where they will be debated.” Another 200,000 copies were sold to the population and also are available on the Party’s digital sites, in the newspaper, Granma, and the portal, Cubadebate, so they can be “studied in a society that is more and more computerized.”

As if that weren’t enough, the first Vice President of the Council of State and Ministers, Miguel Díaz-Canel, announced a “novel application created by professors and students of the faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Computation, belonging to the Marta Abreu Central University of Las Villas.” The application was qualified as an “instrument of extraordinary value,” since it would facilitate discussions about the documents in question.

In its editorial of June 14, Granma predicts that “these steps will contribute to making the discussions fully democratic, rich in content, concrete in ideas and projections.” It explains why the Seventh Congress “won’t be able to finish the elaboration of the National Plan of Development up to 2030, owing to its great technical complexity,” an objective that “it should attain next year.”

And it reminds us that “as Congress ordered, this version will be submitted to the Central Committee for its definitive approval and sent for analysis to the National Assembly of People Power, the legislative body that will make it legal.”

The Communist Party of Cuba, through its official organ, “invites the active participation of millions of Cubans, militants or not, convened for this consultation, essential for consolidating consensus about the future of Cuba.”

Before the beginning of what it defines as “ample national discussion,” the editorial already predicts the intervention of “enemies, skeptics, doubters, those who echo the campaigns of detractors from the Exterior against the Party and the Revolution, and those who dream of returning to a society subject to Yankee desires and pretensions.”

I don’t think any larger amount of delusions can be condensed into a newspaper article. Although it supposes that the future of Cuba might interest Cubans, such verbal alienation frightens even its followers.

In Sueño de pais [Dream of a Country], the journalist, Giselle Morales, in the newspaper, Escambray, from Sancti Spiritus, writes: “You don’t have to give it so many twists: the tabloid that is being submitted to popular consultation this June 15 and up to September 20, with two texts coming from the Seventh Party Congress, is a dense document. Dense and difficult to understand for a citizen who isn’t seasoned in abstractions and strategies.”

Probably, for their mental health, a wide segment of compatriots aren’t reading the State press, or they turn down the sound of the national news about “science fiction politics” when its presenter, Rafael Serrano, starts to spout nonsense.

Believe me. I tried to converse with friends and neighbors to get their opinions about the Party document that designed the future of the nation. But no one wanted to give an opinion. Or they didn’t read the tabloid; or it simply didn’t interest them to comment about what they consider an absurdity.

I ran into Ramona, retired, in a tobacco shop in the slum of la Víbora buying several copies. “No, man, no. I’m not going to read this crap. I use it to wrap garbage or as toilet paper.”

Ricardo, a driver of a collective taxi from La Palma to the Parque Fraternidad, commiserates with me: “Brother, it’s really hard to be a journalist in Cuba. People don’t want to give an opinion because they know that all this is a joke. We’ve had almost 60 years of the same devil. Write something else,” he counsels me.

Among those who are reading and analyzing the new official Bible are dissidents, alternative journalists and political analysts of diverse tendencies. “It’s still too soon to give an opinion,” an independent press colleague told me.

I would like to be objective. But to pick apart, point by point, the incongruencies and the colossal absurdity that Raúl Castro’s government is selling us as a future promise requires time and patience.

“The document doesn’t even have validity as a bad joke,” affirms Ricardo, the taxi driver. For that reason, a majority of Cubans on the street aren’t bothering to read it.

Martí Noticias, June 22, 2016

Translated by Regina Anavy

No one has an answer. On the Island, the topics of hard-currency income and defined expenses are State secrets. It’s supposed that in a normal country the government officials offer this information to its citizens.

But Cuba isn’t a normal country. It’s an anachronistic autocracy ruled by the military and a gang of friends who, 57 years ago, descended from the Sierra Maestra promising to restore the Republic and rescue democracy.

Neither one nor the other happened. For decades, the calculations on the Island have never added up. Hypothetically, taking as a reference the economic growth beginning from 2000, the national economy has shown a numeric chain of progression in its GDP that not even the so-called Asian tigers have achieved.

If we add up the growth in GDP of the last 16 years — which in some years was greater than 10 percent — we arrive at a simple conclusion: If we believe the official report, Cuba has been the nation that has grown the most on the planet.

Into what accursed black hole has this “growth” fallen? A specialist I consulted bored me with figures and macro-economic data. And finally, as always, he blamed the Yankee “blockade.”

Okay. So we can’t have highways like those in Germany, or as many cars as the United States or a State of Well-being like Norway. But according to Eduardo, an ex-official of foreign commerce, “from the concept of exporting products and services, [and the receipt of] donations and family remittances, the Government, each year, brings in around 14 to 16 billion dollars.”

“So, where is the money?” I asked him. His answer is an invitation to do the math.

“In 2015, Cuba earned 2.7 billion dollars from tourism. Although the exact figures for the export of medical and professional services is not known, it’s calculated that it must be above 9.0 billion dollars. The exports of nickel (we’re going to discount sugar, since its production has been rickety for five years), tobacco, coffee, shrimp, vegetal charcoal, bee honey and other sectors, would round off to some 1.5 billion dollars. And as far as remittances, 3.0 billion. The result adds up to some 15 billion dollars,” emphasizes the ex-official.

But it doesn’t add up. The State earns hundreds of millions of pesos in taxes just on the more than 500,000 private entrepreneurs. Add the tax on cigars and alcoholic drinks, the silent tax on the salaries of State workers and the tax — between 200 and 300 percent — on products that are sold in convertible pesos in the dollar stores.

To all these taxes we must add the petty milking of the pockets of Cuban emigrants, who must pay hundreds of dollars in order to renew their passports, the inflated price of flights from Cuba and the abusive customs fees. And although this past March the Cuban foreign minister announced that the 10 percent penalty on the U.S. dollar would be eliminated, this “revolutionary tax” once decreed by Fidel Castro continues in force.

Nor is this the only way of taxing hard currency that the Government has. If a relative abroad sends a package that weighs more than one and one-half kilograms, there is a tax established by the General Customs of the Republic, and when you go to pick it up at the post office, you have to pay 20 Cuban convertible pesos [roughly $20] for every kilogram over that weight. A veritable robbery.

Being conservative, the sum total of all these taxes in both monies surpasses 20 billion pesos. And I believe I’m cutting it short.

And the expenses? Of course, as in every country in the world, the three hungry lions that devour an important part of the GDP are education, public health and defense.

But since Raúl Castro assumed power in 2006, few new schools have been built, and the existing ones are poorly repaired. Salaries for professors and teachers don’t exceed 20 dollars per month.

Healthcare is self-financed from the export of medical services. The amount of money it generates permits the design of an efficient health system. But it doesn’t happen that way in most of the hospitals. Some well-equipped clinics exist for ministers, high-ranking military officers and foreigners.

But the majority of hospitals and polyclinics need thorough repairs, and there’s a deficit in the supply of equipment and medications. A doctor earns a salary equivalent to 60 dollars a month, and many live in precarious conditions.

For 27 years, the Government hasn’t invested in buying combat weapons. But it wastes an enormous sum maintaining the colossal apparatus of repression and social control. The Regime never offers details about this.

The hypothetical expenses for defense, education and public health can reach the sum of 6 billion dollars, another 2 billion to buy food and some 5 billion for investments in tourism and industries that generate hard currency.

For 10 years, General Raúl Castro’s administration hasn’t spent its millions on public works or on the construction of housing. Any serious calculation that would be done would always reveal a surplus.

Where does all this money end up? There are two possible scenarios. The evil-minded one is that it goes into a Swiss bank account or a fiscal paradise. If we give the Government the benefit of the doubt, we can suppose that a good part of the money goes to create an important reserve of hard currency.

Not included in the national budget is the resale of some 25 percent of the petroleum sent by Venezuela to Cuba, which can reach around 8 billion dollars a year.

With the income from exports that the Government admits it has, and the studies on the income from family remittances, about which the Regime never informs us, it’s not understood how it spends 1.9 billion dollars a year to guarantee the annual supply of petroleum.

Nor can it evade the issue of donations made by millionaires from Middle Eastern countries for renewing the networks of aqueducts and sewers, and credits from China, Russia and other countries for constructing industries, hotels or golf courses.

Cuba, financially speaking, has achieved considerable guarantees. In spite of the embargo, since 17 December 2014, after the diplomatic renewal with the United States, a dozen nations have forgiven a substantial part of its debt.

Like the retired civil engineer, many Cubans wonder what the Cuban government is doing with the money. Any hint would be very valuable.

Diario las Américas, July 16, 2016

Translated by Regina Anavy

Beyoncé remembers that three years ago they summoned her to the municipal recruitment committee to take a medical exam that endorsed her admission to General Military Service.

“When I arrived dressed as a woman, an official sent me home. With an angry tone, he told me: ’You have to be dressed appropriately when you come before State institutions.’ Among other things I told the Cro-Magnon: ’Boy, and perhaps I’ll show up nude.’ Then I asked him: ’We gays don’t have the right to defend the homeland?’ The soldier turned around and left,” says the Havanan transvestite.

According to Beyoncé, the recruitment office didn’t even bother to summon her. “I don’t like military life, but it would be an interesting experience to be surrounded by so many males. You can imagine the number of men I could sleep with. They would call me ’Beyoncé the canteen’,” she says, smiling.

Serguey’s story was different. He always suspected that he was imprisoned in the wrong body. “From secondary school on I liked men. But I led a double life in order to not disgust my parents. I played basketball, I talked like a tough guy, but no woman interested me. I kept my homosexual relations hidden. When I finished pre-university, they called me for military service.”

Serguey continues remembering: “That was at the beginning of the ’90s. When the time came for the physical exam, I had to get naked and open my cheeks. Then the doctor who was there called me aside. It was like a police interrogation. I told him that yes, I was gay, but I didn’t want my family to know. They told me they wouldn’t tell, but an official told my father anyway. It’s not that I was interested in being a recruit, but I always wondered why a homosexual couldn’t be a soldier.”

Yosvany, a captain in the armed forces, points out that “according to the military regulation, gays, ex-convicts and counterrevolutionaries aren’t permitted to join the institution.”

When they ask him for the reasons, he explains: “Let’s speak clearly. Just because they tolerate homosexuals now doesn’t mean that we have to accept them everywhere. In the army as in the police, you need virility and responsible behavior. A criminal isn’t going to respect a police officer wearing feathers. And in the armed forces a gay could be more patriotic than anyone, but he’s a hindrance because of his inappropriate conduct. That’s the norm not only in Cuba. I believe there’s no army in the world that accepts gays in their ranks.”

Argelio, a former Major in the armed forces, recognizes that among the officers and recruits, “from time to time a fag slips through. It happens. I’ve been in units where there were cases of homosexual relations. But when it happens, ipso facto, the solider or officer gets a dishonorable discharge.”

Osvaldo, a historian, considers “that military institutions tend to be very retrograde. Although in the history of Cuba there are examples of revolutionary leaders with homosexual conduct or moral standards, it doesn’t agree with society. There is credible proof that José Martí, our national hero, the fruit of an extra-marital relationship with Carmen Miyares, fathered María Mantilla. Also, among some mambises (guerrilla Cuban soldiers who fought against Spain in the wars for independence) there was homosexuality. The most rumored was the supposed loving relationship of Antonio Maceo with Panchito Gómez Toro, his aide and the son of Máximo Gómez. Whether true or false, they are never going to stop being heroes of the fatherland.

Fidel Castro, a bulletproof homophobe, since his university years was the friend of the deceased Alfredo Guevara, an explicit homosexual. Carlos, a sociologist, recognizes that “the Cuban Government has taken a huge leap in recognizing the LGBT community. But it’s taking only half-measures to legalize homosexual marriage, accept gays in the army or promote government ministers who are openly homosexual.”

Norge, a retired doctor, remembers “that in the middle of the ’60s, research commissions were created to study the causes of homosexual behavior and their possible cures with hormonal medication. In the UMAP forced labor camps, many gays served as guinea pigs.”

Mariela Castro, the daughter of the autocrat Raúl Castro, who has undertaken a national and international crusade in favor of the LGBT community — if and only if they don’t dissent from the regime — hasn’t managed to get the Council of State and the one-note National Parliament to authorize homosexuals as members of the armed forces.

The intransigence toward accepting people with a different sexuality doesn’t affect only military institutions. Inside the dissidence in Cuba, explicit homosexuality is also taboo.

In a macho and homophobic society like Cuba’s, where the Government prohibits political differences, gay and lesbian opponents don’t openly reveal their homosexuality. And they bet on staying in the closet.

Translated by Regina Anavy