The Poet / Rebeca Monzo

(This story is fiction, based on reality)

My friend was finishing transferring to his flash memory, the last poems that, like all, had left his heart exhausted. Each time that he put the last period on one, he said that it was like having given birth. It is clear that this hadn’t happened out of his own experience, this sublime pain, but being the older son, he was the witness of the birth, one by one, of his fifteen siblings, and he could appreciate in the sweaty face of his mother, how painful it was.

Meanwhile, in the other bedroom, his wife hastily put in the suitcase everything that she understood was strictly necessary. After returning, because she knew return was inevitable, they would come loaded with gifts, books, and glory, things that weigh a lot and that would make the overweight fees very costly.

Whatever the case, his slovenly appearance urgently needed fixing, a product of none other than the extreme necessity brought by the passing years, leaving for the last moment the fixing of his teeth. They paid dearly and in the black market economy so that it would be done well. He knew that upon arriving at the town where his books wold be launched he would be obliged to smile and say some words of thanks.

The outbound trip was good, because really he didn’t bring more than the clothes he was wearing and a change for his arrival. His wife, friend, confidant, lover and editor, did the same, so that the luggage would be very light.

After a very tiring plane trip, they took the train. In Groñolo, the destination of both, a massive reception awaited them, with a band, regional dances, and streamers. Meanwhile, from the sky, an airship let mountains of confetti fall from the sky. It looked like it was snowing in the middle of summer.

Suddenly, the music stopped and the multitude of people began to chant his name and clap. He went up to the improvised podium, with his blue suit that the mayor had sent him as a gift and started his speech. As he was getting excited with his own words, he started to notice his tongue getting a little slipped-up: he felt that something was moving inside of his mouth. Relying on the serenity and grandeur that had always characterized him, he continued his address. Then those closest to the platform stopped paying attention to his words, to stoop to pick up those little white and shiny grains, that at first they believed were falling from the sky. When, suddenly, one of those who were present, raised up his arm into the air to show everyone his discovery: “It’s a tooth,” he exclaimed enthusiastically, “A tooth from our great poet!” Everyone crouched down to eagerly look for one, to take it as a souvenir. The poet, growing even bolder and without losing his composure, said, “I haven’t only come to offer the most passionate verses, projecting from my mind and heart, I also left you a little bit of myself: those teeth that you will take today as a souvenir, and that with great pleasure I will autograph, because even though acrylic, they are part of myself since what I paid was so very expensive.

The crowd, in the face of such words, acclaimed deliriously that great man that came from a small island far away, not only to deliver brilliant poems to them, but also his shiny teeth, no less, as proof of his love and friendship.

Translated by: BW

June 27 2011

4th of July / Rebeca Monzo

Today we celebrate the 235 year anniversary of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America, a country of immigrants and grand opportunities, so defamed by some and so dreamed about by many. I, particularly, have some critics, who say that I am pro-American, they don’t offend me. It is true that I greatly admire that country. But, I was born, I grew up, and I educated myself feeling proud to be Cuban. That is contrary to others, who defame it, and they say they feel hate and resentment against it, but don’t miss the opportunity to shop in its famous stores, take their kids to Disneyland every time they can and dream that someday one of them will get a degree from one of its universities.

In any case, humbly from this, I join my space together to the happiness of the celebration.

Translated by: BW

July 4 2011

Guava Empanadillas / Rebeca Monzo

To sweeten tense afternoons a little.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups of flour.

3 eggs.

3 tablespoons of margarine, butter, or vegetable oil.

1 teaspoon of baking powder.

1 teaspoon of salt.

1 tablespoon of sugar.

3 tablespoons of dry wine.

Pieces of guava already cut-up.

Directions:

In a mixing bowl, put the flour together with the salt, sugar, and baking powder. Combine all the dry ingredients and add 3 tablespoons of margarine, cutting them with a pastry tool or two knives until you’ve made small lumps.

Then, make a hole in the middle and add 3 whole eggs, mixing them with the dry ingredients with a fork. Little by little, add a little dry wine and mix squeezing with the fingers until it is completely mixed together. Cover and let it rest a while.

Take small portions of the mass and rolling them out with a rolling pin until they are thin, fill them with little pieces of guava. Seal the empanada wetting the boarders and with a fork mark around the outsides, pinching them softly, so that they don’t explode when they are fried.

Put them in well-heated oil, moderating the heat once in a while so that it doesn’t get too hot.

Makes around 12 empanadillas. Serve with a soft drink or tea.

Translated by: BW

June 24 2011

The Little Rabbit / Rebeca Monzo

For my granddaughter Isabel.

In the neighborhood of Vedado, there was a prestigious store where they prepared food for delivery to homes (gourmet service). After some years of abandonment, in the year 1966, in the same place, a beautiful English-style red cake restaurant was opened, called The Little Rabbit (El Conejito), where they sold all kinds of dishes exquisitely ready-made from the meat of this little animal. Soon the cozy and handsome local place was celebrated for the quality of its offerings and its friendly environment.

Getting a reservation for it became an arduous task. The only way to get one was to call by telephone looking for an available opening. Sometimes, you could spend all day and not succeed in getting connected, because there were hundreds of calls taking place almost in unison. There were some who were lucky and got ahold of them right away, but they were in the minority. Others spent up to two days trying, and when finally they got a time, they called on precisely the same day that they couldn’t go, or that they didn’t want to eat rabbit. Although those cases were the most rare, because it was so scarce that food any day was good and if, by chance, you were sick, it didn’t matter, you wouldn’t eat but bring a bag, and throw the rations in a little sack, to bring home like a trophy and share with the rest of the family, since the reservation that you had secured was for a table for two.

I tell you this, because your great-grandmother lived in another neighborhood, in a very beautiful house with a lovely garden, where the principal decoration was a pretty white rabbit with red crystal eyes. It was so well made that the little animal seemed real. Everyone that passed by in front of the house, stopped a few seconds looking at it as if they were waiting, for any moment, for the rabbit to jump. But it seemed to be a happy thing, enjoying its inertia in the green grass.

One day, your great-grandmother heard a discussion at the wrought iron grille door at the entrance to the house, and when she went out to see what had happened, she saw a man and a woman arguing vehemently. As soon as they noticed her presence, without wanting it, they involved her in the discussion, the man asking her the following question: “Lady, do you believe that woman should behave like that with me, when I only wanted to make a joke?” “I don’t understand,” Mama Nene answered. Then the angry woman intervened, “Look, this man here, my husband, told me: put on your elegant black dress; I am going to take you to the Little Rabbit. And look where he brought me?”

Don’t put it like that, my mom said. He only wanted to play a joke. “Listen lady, what joke are you speaking about, he made me hurry to wash and iron the only elegant dress that fit me. You don’t do that to anyone, much less to me that has to whip up a dish every day to put on the table!”

My mom, embarrassed by what just happened and feeling a little to blame for being the owner of the controversial little rabbit, told them to sit on the porch and brought them each a little cup of steaming hot coffee. Now more calm, the couple were sent off apologizing and thankful for the attentiveness given out by the owner of the house.

Years later, someone tried to steal the rabbit and broke it trying to dig it up, fleeing without accomplishing his objective, and leaving it damaged in the garden. My mother moved it to a corner of the patio, and since then it has been forgotten waiting to be repaired. The same has happened to the famous restaurant that has turned into a low-class one. Both rabbits can say, they shared almost the same luck.

Translated by: BW

June 21 2011

Happy Father’s Day / Rebeca Monzo

My grandfather Jose with my uncle and some friends.

Every day, the signs of aging and social deterioration are more obvious. The discussions in a raised voice on a busy street, the shouts from balcony to balcony, the pushes on the city buses, and the fights in the lines mark our daily lives, being those of a more advanced age, the more vulnerable target of these actions.

It’s puzzling to see how on our television, daily, idyllic images are presented about the care of senior citizens. Nevertheless, go out to the street and observe: you will surely see in some of the parks and vacant lots of the city at early hours of the morning, small groups of elderly and others not so old, doing exercises in the open air, guided by a teacher. But it is no less certain, that you will also observe many elderly people (perhaps some of those mentioned before), seated on the benches on the sidewalk or at the exits of the stores and agricultural markets, offering, with a certain timidness and embarrassment, cigarette packets (of inferior quality), plastic bags (of short supply in the stores), handmade candy, and the well-known paper cones of peanuts. They don’t have to shout loudly to announce what they are selling, everyone that passes at their side knows that they are selling things to survive.

The majority of these people have passed, exceedingly, the age of retirement, without being able to save some money for their retirement, during their long working life. Others continue to carry out their hard work, because the pensions they receive hardly will suffice for one daily meal.

In the hospitals, shops, bus stops, and other places, they have to line up like any citizen. They don’t enjoy any special discount in any of the public services nor any other social advantage. Many live alone, because their children and grandchildren have emigrated. Where is that well-publicized attention to the elderly?

Happy Father’s Day to everyone!

Translated by: BW

Spanish post
June 18 2011

Dos Ríos / Rebeca Monzo

“The conceited villager believes the entire world is his village.” In another paragraph taken from Our America he wrote, “The presumptuous man believes that the earth was made to serve as his pedestal, because he happens to have a facile pen or colorful speech.”

Writer, philosopher, poet, politician, organizer of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, Freemason. Recognized and venerated as an Apostle of Independence, by the majority of Cubans.

Also organizer of the necessary war (1895), he fell in Dos Ríos, shot down by the Spanish army under the command of Colonel Jiménez Sandoval. His companion succeeded in fleeing and informing Máximo Gómez of the fall in combat of Martí.

His death in Dos Ríos, left everyone with some mysteries that were lost until our time. Had Martí been more useful alive than dead? The mystery of the lost pages of his Dairy of the Haitian Cape of Dos Ríos has never been disclosed.

It was almost an act of suicide to have faced the Spanish troops alone, without any previous military experience. A thing of fate, or perhaps he felt obligated to do it. This will never be known with certainty.

Translated by: BW

May 18 2011

Human Traction / Rebeca Monzo

Photo courtesy of Peter

Last Friday, I had to leave to run some errands, all in Havana Vieja (old Havana) and fortunately in the same area.

We left at 1:00 in the afternoon, with enough time, because the primary appointment was at 2:00. Our old Lada refused to continue running when we were halfway up the street. We had to move it onto the sidewalk on Carlos III and push it down the side street where they told us we could find a mechanic. There I left Fernando taking care of the problem. I return to the avenue to look for an old communal taxi, that for 10 Cuban pesos would take me as close as possible to my destination. All those that passed by were going to the Capital building. Once there, I saw a bicycle taxi and I hired it. It was the first time I had done it.

I told the driver of the vehicle that I didn’t want to him to be offended, but that until today, propelled by a great need, I had refused to use this means because I found it inhumane. I added that before 1959, on my planet I never used human traction. I had seen that it was very common in some countries of the Middle East, India, Thailand, and others, but not here.

Talking with him, about how many hours per day he did this work and what his food was like, he told me that he had had to reduce his working hours and set aside one or two days a week to take a break, because he was beginning to suffer from back and kidney pains. That he had decided that he felt so bad that money couldn’t change his health, but on the other hand he had a family to support.

Upon arriving at my destination, the street he took was blocked by some enormous tow-truck and it was blocking us from going around it. I decided to get down and walk the rest of the way so that he didn’t have to make some big detour and take me to the agreed upon place. The young person thanked me for it, I felt relieved when I got out of the bici-taxi.

Translated by: BW

June 6 2011

Information Surprises / Regina Coyula

The unrestricted access to news information, brought me some surprises. The first of them is that the digital Granma* is a light version of the printed one, and when I entered the site for Granma Internacional, it was as if they were talking about another country.

The second surprise was that the Palestinians also kill Israelis–I had only read in the press of my country about the massacres the Jews carry out against the Arabs–in the same way that I had discovered that the governments of Libya and Syria murder and repress their citizens.

I also was surprised with the assessment that the 15-M protests in Spain could have ended with a bombing of NATO, because the truth is that all that was more calm and organized within its spontaneous nature, although my family was very worried about me being in an unstable country and in a violent situation, according to what the national media was reporting.

But what surprised me most was knowing the life in one of the most happy countries in the world after China and North Korea!, a statistic elaborated by… North Korea, in which the United States is in last place. If I had not seen it in El País, I would have thought that it was about a joke from Granma.

Translated by: BW

*Granma is the daily official newspaper of the Cuban government

June 16 2011

Anduriña’s Syndrome / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

In the ’60s the Spanish duo of Juan and Junior popularized a song named “Anduriña”, that still can be heard today on some radio programs in Cuba and on pirated CDs, and also you can hear other versions now and again on television and in those nostalgic cabarets of the so-called “Prodigious Decade.” The theme is about a young girl called Anduriña, who escaped from her town, and in part of the lyrics of the song they make note that “she flew” and asked her to “turn quickly to port.”

The Revolution of 1959 brought us the flight of Cubans to everywhere; that is no longer news for hardly anyone, nor is the conjugal agreement that matches and prioritizes a great quantity of our young females with the goal of emigrating. So, many countries increase their populations with our compatriots, those who as Anduriñan emigrants escaped from their land to have a better life in freedom. It has been a long process for the Cuban people, and at highly elevated economic, political and social price. But the Cuban demographic scattered throughout the world can be a boomerang that helps to rebuild our country and reconcile our nation.

I hope that in the future nobody is forced to emigrate because they lost their rights and freedoms in their own country. Also, I hope and desire that some day our Anduriños can look towards their own country’s border with all the legal guarantees and “turn quickly to port” to help us rebuild the disaster that the pirates of the dictatorship have added to Cuba for more than a half century.

“My dead father you are in a photo (in many)”
and in many Springs
–in the living dead of the wide narrow place
and in the lives dying for inequality;
in the dream of liberty that never happens
and in the continuous denial of the visa of freedom.
In a long wish list of a country
and a lethargic prison country that hopes…”

Fragment of my poem ‘Dead Father’.

Translated by: BW

June 1 2011

Anduriña’s Syndrome

In the ’60s the Spanish duo of Juan and Junior popularized a song named “Anduriña”, that still can be heard today on some radio programs in Cuba and on pirated CDs, and also you can hear other versions now and again on television and in those nostalgic cabarets of the so-called “Prodigious Decade.” The theme is about a young girl called Anduriña, who escaped from her town, and in part of the lyrics of the song they make note that “she flew” and asked her to “turn quickly to port.”

The Revolution of 1959 brought us the flight of Cubans to everywhere; that is no longer news for hardly anyone, nor is the conjugal agreement that matches and prioritizes a great quantity of our young females with the goal of emigrating. So, many countries increase their populations with our compatriots, those who as Anduriñan emigrants escaped from their land to have a better life in freedom. It has been a long process for the Cuban people, and at highly elevated economic, political and social price. But the Cuban demographic scattered throughout the world can be a boomerang that helps to rebuild our country and reconcile our nation.

I hope that in the future nobody is forced to emigrate because they lost their rights and freedoms in their own country. Also, I hope and desire that some day our Anduriños can look towards their own country’s border with all the legal guarantees and “turn quickly to port” to help us rebuild the disaster that the pirates of the dictatorship have added to Cuba for more than a half century.

“My dead father you are in a photo (in many)”
and in many Springs
–in the living dead of the wide narrow place
and in the lives dying for inequality;
in the dream of liberty that never happens
and in the continuous denial of the visa of freedom.
In a long wish list of a country
and a lethargic prison country that hopes…”

Fragment of my poem ‘Dead Father’.

Translated by: BW

June 1 2011

Welcome! / Regina Coyula

It was a little more than a week ago that I was in our little life of every day, it had been like riding a time machine and stepping down in the wrong place. Many times I have spoken about my little basement. Well, I found it with unmistakable odor of Cuban public bathrooms, because I can testify that the public bathrooms in Spain smell of disinfectant or air freshener; but so that I don’t change the subject, I found my house flooded with sewage (in Spanish literally “black waters”), that beautiful euphemism for such an ugly thing. Havana Water, the company that deals with those problems was our first option. A very kind employee took down our information and informed us that the inspector would arrive within the next 72 hours. It was many hours later when the inside of the house was like a sewer, but at moment, I could hear a woman with two little kids hurling threats about the health of her children, because her situation lasted a week and hadn’t been resolved.

About 48 hours later the inspector appeared, very understanding and knowledgeable about the secrets of the plumbing of sewage. His opinion was that as the flow was coming from the under the sidewalk, Havana Waters was not responsible for my case. Now for that moment, courtesy of a friend, we hired an experienced plumber that came with 3 more and opened a tight hole in the part under the driveway parallel to my dining room, a hole where only a head of young person working inside it could be seen. The things were dirtied with the blocking and unblocking, they opened the broken tubing with a modern tubing that they had brought (purchased in some hardware store?), they connected the empty tank, refilled the new hole, that then could flood the house with clean water to disinfect it. This service didn’t appear in the Yellow Pages, and nevertheless, is essential, 60 Cuban Convertible Pesos plus lunch; nothing compared to the work those men did and the peace of mind of having the house clean.

Translated by: BW

June 13 2011

Cuban State Remains Silent About Unconstitutional Measures / Laritza Diversent

The government extended authorizations to contract workers, a decision which violates the Constitution and which no tribunal can question.

Laritza Diversent

The Council of Ministers agreed to extend the authorization to hire workers in the 178 authorized activities of self employment. The measure was announced by the Granma Newspaper, the official voice of the Communist Party of Cuba, this past 17th of May during a meeting of the Cuban government in which they intended to update the “Economic Plan of 2011″.

The accord signed by the Council of Ministers violates and disrespects precepts of the State Constitution which acknowledges that Cubans have the right to use and enjoy their own personal goods. It also guarantees property over means and instruments of personal or family work. However, it prohibits contracting salary work.

In fact, other laws from the judicial system are violated as well. Contracting a work force is considered a crime by the penal code, which is punishable by up to 3 years of prison and or a 25,000 peso fine in national currency.

A silenced vital point for sustaining of the” rule of law”. Especially in Cuba, where no court of law can rule on the law’s constitutionality and guide or influence the actions of the legislature and the government.

On the island , the People’s Supreme Court is in charge of the judicial branch, but it is the parliament that decides the constitutionality of the laws enacted by themselves, the laws decreed, decrees, and the rest of the general rules and regulations, and that also revokes the judicial rules that contradict the national supreme law.

The ease with which the measures are adopted, still when it is unconstitutional, and the silence of the government respectively, creates mistrust, because the effectiveness and supremacy of the Cuban Constitution and the exercise of the fundamental rights recognized in it are affected.

A constitutional reform would offer guarantees to citizens who decide to exercise this right, to formally prevent new restrictions about the same things by political free will.

One fears that in the future, the government will rush off to prohibit the hiring of the workforce or they will be interested in putting the brakes on the boom of the sector, as happened in the last few years of the 90s, when they began to freeze the granting of licenses to the self-employed.

According to official statistics, since 1993, when the activity was authorized, until a little before the expansion and liberalization of the self-employed workforce in October 2010, the sector was made up of approximately 87,889 persons, 0.78% of the population. In 6 months, the figure tripled. Currently, 309,728 are self-employed, close to 2.76% of the islanders.

In the middle of the economic restructuring, the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party approved self-employment; it became the only economic activity that can be exercised individually by Cubans within the island.

Also, it constitutes an employment alternative. Since October, self-employment added up to almost 222,000 Cubans, of whom 68% didn’t have labor ties to the only legally recognized employer until October 2010, when self-employed work was expanded and liberalized.

Although the decision represents a benefit for the sector, its legitimacy brings an implicit constitutional and legal reform. The parliament, the organ that supposedly expresses and represents the will of the people, has the responsibility to defend the effectiveness and supremacy of the Cuban Constitution and to guarantee the interests and rights of the cuban people.

Translated by: BW

June 6 2011

The Fortress, the Books, and the City

Havana from La Cabaña fort

From Feb 11-22, Havana is the center of the 19th International Book Fair.  Then, the Book Fair will tour the major Cuban cities for a month.

The Book Fair will take place at the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña.  This is  a building in the form of a polygon, composed of numerous bulwarks, moats, barracks, and warehouses.  Its construction was started in 1763, and finished 11 years later in 1774.  Of the military buildings Spain constructed in America, it is the largest.  As well as lodging for the best units of the Spanish Army in Cuba, it served to protect Havana from pirate attacks.

By order of Fidel Castro on January 3, 1959, Ernesto Che Guevara occupied La Cabaña and established his command headquarters there.  From that date, it was transformed into a military unit for the guerilla fighters.  And also into a giant prison.  In its humid cells, the same ones where they happily sell literary titles,  hundreds of political and common criminals used to be crowded together.

Serial executions took place in the yards where now the fascinated children run and play hide-and-seek behind the solidly built canons of the 18th century.  Stories are told that in the first days of the revolution, Che personally supervised the executions of the Batista party members accused of crimes.  In those same pits, the opponents of Castro were executed.  In 1991, after various years of remodeling, the old fortress was converted to the Military Morro-Cabaña Historical Park.

The 19th edition of the Book Fair is devoted to Russia.  In various pavilions, a heap of books by authors like Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol, and Pushkin are sold.  I didn’t see books from Solzhenitsyn, Pasternack, or Nabokov.  If there is one whose books should have been sold, it is Yevgeny Yevtushenko, symbol of the post-Stalinist thawing, because the controversial poet is one of the more than 200 Russian intellectuals, writers, and artists, among them the Bolshoi Ballet, that traveled to the Island like special guests, purposely for the Fair.

Eighteen Years ago, Russia said goodbye to the communist ideology, but in Cuba, such a trustyworthy ally of Moscow that in 1976 a paragraph was included in the Constitution highlighting the “indestructible relations between both nations,” certain Russian literature, music, and movies are still considered dissident.

Having been dedicated to Russia, this Fair has brought loads of nostalgia to supporters of the Castro brothers.  Opened by the president, who has never hidden his veneration for the Soviet feat during World War II.  According to professor Jaime Suchlicki, from the University of Miami, “the Soviet army seemed to have always fascinated Raul, who exhibits photos and statues of soviet generals in his office in Havana.”

Together with the Russian Chancelor Sergei Lavrov, the general Raul Castro presided over the inauguration on Thursday, the 11th.  In subsequent days, people turned out en masse to the different areas of The Cabaña.

Havana – Book Fair 2010

With an impressive and unique view of Havana, and a multitude of books and kiosks with an ample gastronomic offering in the two currencies that circulate on the Island (the Cuban Peso and the Convertible Cuban Peso), thousands of people crowded the pavilions in search of literary novelties.

In pesos, the national currency, they sold a few tattered books.  More of the same.  At the entrance, they gave out the title Niños del Milagro (Children of the Miracle) published April 2004, about the eye operations of Venezuelan children, written by the Cuban journalists Katiuska Blanco, Alina Perera, and Alberto Ñúñez. By means of a human wall and with a little luck, you could acquire novels from universal pens or police procedurals from the Spaniard Juan Madrid.

There were ample offerings in strong currency.  Above all, for children.  Ricardo Rojas, 43 years old, seated with his back to the sea and with his daughter, under a bright sun and an irritating wind commented: “I spent 54 Cuban Convertible Pesos (some 50 dollars) in books for my daughter.  When I got back home, I will have to put up with the argument from my wife, for the money wasted only on books.  But they are didactic works that will serve in her education.”

At least Rojas can give himself this luxury.  The majority think about it twice when it comes time to open the wallet. The books are expensive, even the ones sold in pesos, as well as those sold in convertible currency. Nora Diaz, spent five hours with her 3 kids spinning like tops by all of the pavillions.  In her purse she had 120 pesos (4 dollars) and 6 convertible pesos (5 dollars) to spend between books and something to eat.

At the end she bought a pair of infant stories from a Russian author, a cookbook, and 4 apples that she and her kids ate seated on the heights of the Fortress of the Cabaña, looking at the still intense blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and scant anchored boats, waiting to enter the Havana port.  Nora does not believe that it was a lost day.  “It is an oasis of tranquility to see from the city from here.  We will go back with few books, but hopeful,” she said captivated by the splendid scenery.

In spite of its shady past, the vision offered from the grounds of La Cabaña offers is fabulous.  If only to look at Havana from the other side of the bay it is worthwhile to challenge the lines, the empty wallets, the daily disgust, and the deficient public transport.  Book Fair or no Book Fair.

Iván García

Photos: CalQBN, Flickr and Iván García

Translated by BW

Cheap Sex

They don’t have the charm of the “jineteras”(prostitutes seeking foreign tourists) who work for hard currency.*  They don’t wear brand-name clothes, or high-heeled shoes.  They don’t use Chanel perfumes, or wear gold jewelry.  They are the poorer type, who at most smother themselves with large quantities of Cuban-made Suchel talcum powder, and smell of cheap eau-de-cologne.  They wear short tight skirts.  And they tend to plaster on the make-up.

These are the local currency whores.  Many of them get off the train at daybreak and before the sun has fully risen they are already busy at work.  Like Yanelis, 28 years old, an Indian mulatta, born in an eastern province 800 km from the capital.

Her life is a small hell. She never knew her parents and doesn’t have fond memories of her childhood. Her maternal grandparents did what they could. But Yanelis only managed to get as far as finishing seventh grade. And yet her round and shapely backside, her firm breasts and her skin, the colour of coffee with cream, would get men aroused. Especially some of her male relatives.

One night, a cousin invited her to the fair and he plied her with an excessive quantity of a bog standard and insipid brew which is sold loose as draught beer. When she had passed out from drinking so much alcohol, he repeatedly raped her.

She was only twelve years old. Her first customers were her own family members. For 5 pesos (a quarter dollar) she let them fondle her breasts or masturbate and then ejaculate on her face.

“The most perverted of my relatives was also the one with the most money, because he worked in a hotel exclusively for tourists. He forced me to sleep with animals and on more than one occasion I got sick. I’ve tried everything. I’m bisexual and for as long as I can remember, I’ve never known what it’s like to feel in love with someone. That only happens in movies.”

Prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet, Yanelis gulps down a can of Bucanero beer and goes on with her story.

“I came to Havana because business is good here. It’s my third trip. I’ve been caught by the police a couple of times and they sent me back to the province where I’m from. I even spent a year and a half in jail. But I always come back. Things are very tense in my home town. I don’t have, nor do I want, any other way of making money. Perhaps this is the most difficult way, but it’s the easiest for me. I don’t have many options unless it’s coffee picking in the mountains or wiping tables in a café,” says this girl, prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet.

In the capital, Yanelis and some other prostitutes rent an extremely shabby room. They have to fetch their water in containers and live by candlelight because they don’t have electricity. Each one pays 5 convertible pesos for the room. On a good day, she makes the equivalent of 50 or 60 convertible pesos (about 1200 or 1500 regular pesos). If you do the math, to make this amount Yanelis is having to sleep with ten or twelve men. For a quick half hour ‘screw’ they make 100 regular pesos or 5 convertible.

She started working as a prostitute in the area around Fraternity Park, in the heart of Havana. Her stroll was Monte and Cienfuegos streets, the first marketplace to emerge on the island for cheap sex bought with regular pesos, back around 1996. Things didn’t go too badly for her. But every now and again there was a police raid.

When she got out of jail, she thought she needed to be more discreet. She’s a fixture now in a spot on the fringes of the National Freeway. Guys in cars and on motorbikes pass by, drunk and looking for a woman to satisfy their sexual appetite.

That is where you’ll find girls like Yanelis, ready to offer you their a la carte menu: 50 pesos for a blow job, 40 for a hand job, and 100 for the full works, in other words, for penetrative sex. Paying a bit more gets you anal sex. And if you’ve got 20 convertible pesos or 500 of the regular kind, you can head off with two sad and pale girls who’ll offer you a moonlight lesbian show in the middle of a banana field with some dirty bits of cardboard for a bed.

There are at least a dozen such places in the city. In Havana slang they are known as chupa-chupa [suck-suck].

The young women who prostitute themselves for local currency don’t come close to the beauty and silhouettes of the splendid hookers that have dazzled the Iberian and Italian men who have taken them under their wing and married them. No. These are poor lost souls who stoically endure being penetrated by more than ten men in a single day in order to make a few pesos.

Yanelis doesn’t want to think about the future, which is a bad word for her. She lives fast and for the present. Night has fallen. She looks up at the cloudy sky and comments despondently:

“Uh oh. It’s going to rain. Bad for business.”

She prefers picking up men when she’s drunk or after smoking a couple of joints. Sometimes she takes a few parkisonil tablets to get high. When she gets back to her wretched room she sometimes feels guilty.

This is when she remembers that she’d like to have children, a good husband, and to start a family. She soon abandons the idea. That stuff is only in movies. Or romantic novels by Corín Tellado. Then she comes back down to earth. To the reality which is her lot in life. And she has neither the energy nor the desire to change it.

Iván García

Translated by BW and RSP and ANB

* Translator’s note: There are two kinds of pesos in circulation in Cuba, one which can be exchanged for dollars and Euros, the Convertible Peso, and one which can’t, the regular kind. One convertible peso (officially worth $1.08) is equivalent to 24 regular pesos (referred to as moneda nacional (national money) by Cubans, and translated in this text as local currency).