Category Archives: Translator: Chabeli

Operation Truth – Video / Eliecer Avila and Yoani Sanchez

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Operation Truth Video & Transcript

Site manager: We decided not to subtitle the video itself, given its length and poor sound quality, so a transcript is provided below and can be downloaded here.  The video of Eliecer’s encounter with Ricardo Alarcon is available subtitled in English here.

Yoani Sánchez: It’s a pleasure to be with you and share an interview with Eliécer Ávila. Eliécer is an Information Scientist, but in recent years has been best known for his political and social action in Cuba. He is also the producer of the alternative television program “One More Cuban” and in the year 2008, for those who remember it, in the Universidad de Ciencias Informáticas (UCI) (Information Sciences University).  Eliécer had a question and answer session with Ricardo Alarcón, President of the National Assembly.

(Excerpt of video between Eliecer and Ricardo Alarcon)

Eliécer Ávila: OK, let me introduce myself, I am Eliécer Ávila, Faculty No. 2, leader of the “Technological and Political Surveillance” Project, which is one of the specialties of Operation Truth). What we are looking at here is the constant monitoring of the internet and our mission of reporting and fighting in this area.

Yoani Sánchez: What is and what has been Operation Truth?

Eliécer Ávila: Operation Truth is a project that stems from an “activity” of the UJC (Young Communist League). An “activity” (for non-Cubans here) is a meeting of the key militants and UJC teams of all the UCI brigades, which they hold periodically, about once or twice a year as I recall, in the Palace of Conventions.

The Minister of Culture, Abel Prieto, was invited to one of these activities and, among other things, he explained that currently they were pursuing another campaign of defamation and that kind of thing, and then a student … (after the announcement Prieto played the university card, to use the students to express the Revolution’s opinion on the theme they were discussing. … a student proposed creating a project organized in the UCI,  which was the university most technically able to do it, to send out to the world the truth about Cuba, the truth put forward by the government about Cuba. Also the context of the Five Heroes. The second important objective of the Operation Truth Project was to tell the world about the Cuban vision regarding the Five Heroes.

Roughly in what year was the Operation Truth started?

I think it was 2007-2008

It was exactly in that period, in early 2008, if I’m not mistaken, when the conversation occurred between Ricardo Alarcón and a group of students of the UCI, and you in particular, pretty much in the same time period.

I think the Project had been going some months because it was then fairly well developed and they had gained a lot of experience. There was already a signed document of the Project at that time. It had been in operation for some time. Continue reading →


The Constitution of La Yaya and the Future Cuban Constitution / Dimas Castellanos

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1352037605_conztituicion-300x168On the 29th of October of 1897 in the pasture of La Yaya, in Sibanicú, Camagüey, the drafting of what would become the last mambí Constitution came to an end. The resulting text represented a qualitative leap forward in Cuba’s constitutional history. This was due to the inclusion, for the first time, of a dogmatic part that included the most advanced individual political and civil rights at the time: habeas corpus, freedom and confidentiality of postal communications, freedom of religion, equality before taxation, freedom of education, right to petition, inviolability of the home,  universal suffrage, freedom of expression and the right of assembly and association.

This result was determined by multiple causes; particularly because the always-present interdependence between development and individual freedoms in every social project is reflected in the constitutional history of human rights. Continue reading →


Necessary Reminder / Jeovany Jimenez Vega #Cuba

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By Jeovany Jiménez Vega

I reread the letter from the surgeons from the Havana “Calixto García” Hospital to Raúl Castro, which was published on 20 September by Cubaencuentro anonymous and undated. At the time of posting my previous post on October 1, I didn’t know that on September 28 another digital site, Cubainformación, had published what it says is the real letter–this time backed by the name of 62 surgeons of the hospital and dated August 15, 2011–in an article that also accused “international media and the so-called Cuban dissidence…” of manipulating the document. The next day, September 29, Cubaencuentro reviewed the indictment and published the full text referred by Cubainformación.

I do not think the letter made public by one of these sites differs too much in its essence from that published by the other. Some words here and there but the poverty, abuse, neglect and hopelessness they describe are unquestionable facts.

So, today I focus not on the presumed authenticity of one or other, but on fact slips into the background here, that this controversial and incredibly important document only comes to light after being published by Cubaencuentro, yet was sent to the highest leadership of the country over a year ago and this is where I ask: did these doctors received any response from the authorities and government policies to their just concerns?

Or perhaps it passed to the Internet because they never received a response to their letter? Did the authorities react with maturity and naturalness or with their usual arrogance? Do events like this finally make the Cuban authorities become aware of the imminent need to accommodate us with more respect or do they eternally perpetuate this laziness?

I hope that by this time this controversy bears good fruit. Hopefully this intolerance that has corroded life is not first and foremost any more since those who from shame have the nobility to speak aloud when others are silent out of fear. Hopefully no other Cuban will suffer what I had to suffer for saying for similar words, which I offer here as a reminder of what must change, but in continuing is the shame of our country.

(*) Letter addressed to the then Minister of Public Health Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, on November 11, 2005, by Drs. Jeovany Jimenez Vega and Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa. (Excerpt)

…The worker subject to our Ministry has particular characteristics that must be kept in mind in order avoid falling into simplistic analysis… Whoever graduates and then betters himself, as an unavoidable human consequence, aspires to live decently from the fruit of his labor, but today our particular reality is quitepainful and different: we receive an evanescent salary that is exhausted at five or at the most 10 days, being then in the throes ofthe urgency of expenses of that kind of public charity, from the spontaneous gesture of the grateful patient who knows our imperious necessity. We speak of talented and dedicated professionals, of high human quality, working with threadbare gowns and his only pair of broken shoes, with many of his more elemental needs not covered, who has coexisted with this lamentable situation for more than a decade, burdened by shortages that would fill these pages and that we leave to the imagination.

While it’s true that some of our patients, who barely made it to the 6th Grade, earn no less than $300 Cuban pesos a month, selling candy or peanuts, others can earn that amount daily; it would be absurd to compare with the sector made up of the self-employed.

We then want to bring attention to the state sectors that interact around us, which would be valid to take as point of comparison. For example: A SEPSA custodianearns about $200 Cuban pesos a month, includingCUCs, food, and personal hygiene products. An ETECSA clerk, in similar terms, earns $ 1000 Cuban pesos a month.The MINFAR and MININT pay higher salaries than ours and for years, have been systematically implementing a policy of incentives.In all the above cases,the employee receives a uniform and a pair of shoes on a regular basis.

The list of better-paid jobs in the state sector would be a long one.So, I cannot find the answers to the following questions: If the official argument is the lack and unavailability of resources and funds, then what justifies the fact that the person who guards the door at the hospital earns three times more than a professor of Internal Medicine, who have been training doctors for decades, and even the director of the hospital, when National System of Public Health is an entity entirely subordinated to the State that centralizes such resources and funds.

Isn’t it totally absurd that a month of school pays off several times more and results more ’useful’to an individualthan 12 years of higher education? Does it make any sense that this society, which aspires to full equality, pays more back to a custodian thana neurosurgeon who is now saving lives?

What justifies the reality that an MGI specialist or a dentist or the last super-specialist of the Institute are unable to satisfy their basic needs, and when that’s not the case, they fulfill them at the expense of undertaking some other kind of work, but never from their salary as professionals?

Our workers are asked for an altruistic and selfless spirit and great human sensibility, capable of taking high doses of sacrifices, qualities that they certainly have. Unfortunately, in the chain of CUC stores, where the State sets the prices and sells products very expensively, and where many of the basic consumer goods end up being sold, the hard currency (CUC) we are charged with cannot be called sacrifice, altruism, or dignity (that would be truly touching), but simply CUC… Then, our professionals, left with no other choices, go into the street to face that other ’daily struggle’ to avoid prostituting themselves in their profession, selling under-the-counter “certificates of illness,” medicines, or receive some sort of perk.

It is such an overwhelming situation, which forces the individual to seek an alternative source of income, in many exotic and dissimilar ways that would leave one in awe: raising pigs, taking in ironing, selling pizza, ham or eggs, working as masons, carpenters, shoemakers, or simply renting the car that was awarded for participating in an international mission, for a fixed monthly price, so that they can afford to buy gasoline. And all of these activities share something in common: they are discouraging and time-consuming when placed in the balance with professional growth.They take people away from what should be their only worry: studying, which they should pay back byproviding exquisite attention to their patients, from a scientific point of view.

If today we are flying the flag of internationalism with medical missions in dozens of countries, it also thanks to the spirit of self-sacrifice of those of us who stayed in Cuba. Our workers have had to take onthe work of those who left in missions, and so a single doctor is responsible for the work previously performed by 3 or 4; there are even more dramatic cases, and on top of this, doctors try to deliver the same level of care to their patients while receiving in return the same pay, knowing that your internationalist colleague, certainly well deserved, earns several hundred dollars a month and after her/his return they will receive amonthly stipend, not negligible at all underthe present circumstances…

Under this situation, our staff had bigger expectations regarding monthly salary increases in June 2005, which resulted in true disappointment. A $48.00 Cuban pesos raise to the monthly salary of a doctor, under these circumstances, was less than symbolic.In the hallways of our hospitals and polyclinics, you could hear harsh words being said, charged with grief and resentment; insulting and offensive phrases, that we will not repeat here in the name of decency, were muttered all over the place.

Our Ministry has the moral obligation to offer a respectful response to its workers, given the extreme sensitivity of this issue. These are the same workers who, at the peak and during the saddest moments of the Special Period, remained working for $3.00 USD or less a month, holding high the honor of our work, and they deserve to know that their opinions are taken into account…

Everything that has been said here is completely true; it has been said in a measured and respectful way for a very simple reason: If justice is the supreme ideal of the Revolution, the current compensation received by our workerseven after decades of effort and dedication is neither fair nor proportionate, while other state sectors are paid several times more, the situation is not compatible with Marxist principles… ’one should get paid according to his work.’

… The problem itself is much more controversial and profound, and it will never besolved with palliative measures or timid salary increases. We can only humbly alert; those who have ears to hear, listen. Reality is much harsher than any words, and that one, even when it burns our hands, does not fit in any discourse.

There are thousands of workers… who are waiting for a response. We hope that it will be moderate and fair, well-thought and intelligent, and it will show no signs of clumsiness. The harshness of these times has not made us lose the tenderness inour hearts.We have faith in that decisions, consistent with the spirit of this Revolution for the humble, will be made, by the humble and for the humble.

- End of the Document -

P.S. Eleven months from the date when this letter was delivered at the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Health, both of us, its authors, were suspended from the practice of medicine for more than 5 years.

Translated by Chabeli

October 16 2012

 


Incense and Myrrh / Regina Coyula #Cuba

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAYesterday, while enjoying my coffee in the morning, the children bustling outside reminded me that it was Three Kings’ Day.” It has been a while, for my husband and me, since the suffocation of making this day happen for our son came to an end. Memorable for me, because I believed in the Kings for a long time, but also felt for my husband who, from having been so poor, knew they did not exist. In Rafael’s case, his 2nd Grade teacher decided to cut off this illusion for the entire classroom.

Yesterday, the children got new toys, but without being thankful to Melchior, Caspar or Balthasar. Powerful daddies gave their children Xbox, battery-operated cars, bikes, and the list goes down to the common rubber balls and the pseudo-Barbies from the ’Everything for $1.00’ stores.

Except for street-vendors of plastic toys such as small cars or furniture for dolls and for the slow circulation of certain toys that eventually are sold in Cuban pesos instead of CUC, buying toys in CUC is a problem, especially since what were charmingly called “the basic,” “the non-basic,” and “the additional rationed toys,” disappeared, and even toys themselves for a time.Yet, in the past few days you could see children in toy stores choosing their presents and taking them home, especially on the eve of the 6th.

But, what about the ’Kings?’ Those were forced into exile along with Virgin Mary and Mickey Mouse when we began building Communism.

Mickey Mouse made a comeback in the cartoons pirated from Disney Channel. Virgin Mary came back, invoked by atheists in recent times. Even the birth of the son of the Virgin got his holiday, a concession by Pope John Paul II. However, the star of Bethlehem turned out to be a scientific supernova.

The Three Kings have become a sort of urban legend.There is talk about a cavalcade by the Kings a few years ago; you hear that this year they appeared in some parts of the city.I do not think this ban comes from Santa Claus, this chubby man omnipresent since Christmas has no longer been categorized as an ideological deviation.The Kings do their magic clandestinely, since the effort to dissipate them began with the invention of a Children’s Day, many months away from January 6th.

While disguised, the old traditions loom shyly, without the charm of the grass and water for the camels.

Translated by Chabeli

January 7 2013


What Mariela Castro Hides About the Night Clubs of Havana / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada #Cuba

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Havana, Cuba – These are some of the realities that Mrs. Mariela Castro hides, leaving the LGBT community in absolute deprivation of all rights.

A number of night clubs that hosted parties for the LGBT community have been closed in the past few days. To cite some examples:

- Due to a general restoration, ’El Café Cantante,’ took over the space of ’Divino’ leaving it without its usual site.

- The public club ’José A. Echeverría’ has a number of regulations, which, in the first place, forced the ’Ibiza Project’ to change its name, and eventually it was moved to ’El Colmado’ in the municipality of Centro Habana, a site in precarious conditions for the activities of the LGBT community.

Also, ’La Mamba,’ which operates at this same location (El Colmado) on Fridays is looking for a new space to continue organizing these kinds of parties.

- Las Vegas Cabaret is in the process of analyzing its role since it had always been a place for the elite in the capital, and it has been transformed like the palace of impersonations in the city, with real international impact.

In regards to ’meeting sites’:

- The very well known tendedera, located across from the Capitol, in Old Havana, has been under restoration along with the emblematic headquarters of former Government, with a great concentration of policemen and celebrities.

- Central Park, on the side of the movie theater ’Pairet,’ young people walking by are required to show their IDs, simply because they are in a tourist area and may be considered potential hookers or hustlers in to the eyes of the policemen.

- Fraternity Park, surrounded by bus stops, now has the highest level of outdoor lighting in the capital.

- Cafeteria Infanta.cu, also known as the Bin Bon, is actually the only place from which the authorities have not been able to eliminate the presence of the LGBT community. However, they are vulnerable to abuses from the authorities on a daily basis.

In other words, we are going back to the era of prohibition. The problem lies in that many of the night clubs had stopped throwing “de Cheo” (boring) parties and had specialized in LGBT community parties only. The ’Karachy’ is closed, as well as ’Asia’ in La Víbora.

There are still a number of open locations.

We recommend you subscribe to text messages and get your information from handouts.

Parties are currently shifting locations and are not taking place in their usual spaces.

Like we said before, the main night clubs in this situation are:

Ibiza, La Mamba, Divino, and El Olimpo.

November 9 2012


Cubans Throughout the World / Rebeca Monzo #Cuba

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Upon arriving in this corner of France and reuniting with my family, whom I had not seen for seven years, I had the great pleasure of receiving a visit from the son of a very dear friend, whom I had first seen when he was born. Later on, as you might imagine, the subject of the far-off homeland came up, as well as the problems and frustrations that come with abandoning, almost against your will, the place where you were born. This is his case.

This Cuban is not resigned to remaining in forced exile. Life has played him some dirty tricks, so he is undocumented here. They cannot repatriate him, as he would like, because Cuban authorities repeatedly refuse him entry. The last time he was in Cuba, he remained in prison for four months for refusing to leave the country.

This man, who is still young, has two names and a head, so he never stops thinking about the misery to which his homeland is subjected. He has dedicated his free time — which unfortunately is all that he can do since he does not have papers and can work only sporadically — to investigating Cuban issues in-depth.

I was truly impressed when he showed me photos, articles and a wealth of details, to which we Cubans on the island do not have access, regarding the strange accident in which Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed.

For this reason I am uploading the video that my friend provided for your consideration.

Site manager’s note: This video is not subtitled but here is a summary of the contents: The person speaking, a friend of Rebeca’s, is Israel Alejandro Cabezas González. He has put together the evidence he shows in the video, with regards to the death of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in a car crash. He believes that the photo of the car — driven by the Spaniard Carromero — was “fixed,” that is altered, and as a point of comparison he offers a photo that appeared in the Spanish press. He says that the official report of the crash was prepared to match the “fixed” photos.

Using Google maps he shows where the crash occurred, and the little collection of houses located 2 km before the crash. He believes that the “operation” was planned there and that the “supposed ambulances” were already waiting there.

The farmer speaking in he video says he was biking from the nearby town to the rice fields where he works, the entrance to which is directly across from the crash site. While he was biking a car passed him and he saw the dust cloud, based on which Alejandro estimates he’s about 1 km (half a mile) from the crash. By the time of the crash he was just meters away and arrived there in 2 to 3 minutes. He said people were already there taking each of the 4 men out of the car.

The person speaking in English is Jan Modig, the Swede who was in the car. He says, “The second memory I have is that I found myself in some sort of ambulance,” which means it wasn’t an ambulance… it was ‘sort of an ambulance’. Alejandro also says the foreigners were saying “why did you do this to us?” and he believes it was a huge premeditated operation to kill them.

He says they took “the Swede” and Carromero (the Spaniard who was driving) away separately and they didn’t know what happened to Oswaldo Paya. Paya was sitting where he received the direct impact from the crash, but that he served as a sort of ‘airbag’ for Harold Cepero who ultimately also died. Alejandro says that since they were being hit from behind everyone was wearing their seatbelts [the official version is that they were not] and that Harold was alive after the crash; he had a very small fracture of the femur.

When they arrived at the hospital — Alejandro goes on  to say — State Security kicked the regular doctors out of the hospital and brought in “G2″ military doctors, and that he hopes Cepero’s body was not cremated because he did not die of natural causes.

Alejandro’s personal version of what happened was that somebody who was G2 (State Security) infiltrated Carromero and Modig’s visit and told G2 where they were going. G2 followed them from Havana and also there were more G2 agents waiting for them in the collection of houses, where everything was prepared, including the ambulances and doctors.

Translated and video summary by Unstated and BW and Chabeli

January 4 2013


Reconstructing History / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere

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In the act of remembrance for the victims of the Independent Party of Color held in Central Park, at the statue of our apostle José Martí, Miguel Barnet, intellectual and ethnologist was in charge of the words of apology. With a solid document, Barnet laid out the intricacies of the tragedy and the anti-black sentiment of an era that ended with the massacre of 1912.

It was a very well deserved act for those thousands of people who did not see their dreams come true and who died only for demanding the recognition of their rights.

Especially now, after a recent publication of a book that seeks to discredit the Independents of Color, this is a good opportunity to plant our feet firmly on the ground and analyze the book’s material  from the point of view of its true intentions.

I am referring to the book La Conspiración de los Iguales [Conspiracy of Equals], by the historian Rolando Rodríguez, who was not original, not even in choosing the title. With a text that does not do justice to the issue at all, he tries to reconstruct history in a very positive way, but in the end he reveals his personal intentions as a manipulator of history and as an agent of the regime because this book is very well designed to serve their interests.

Rolando Rodríguez has been, so far, the only historian who has had the nerve, and at the same to the courage, to place himself on the side of repression and in favor of a constitution that excludes people. However, the most disturbing aspects are the fact that this book has been written by an agent of the Cuban government and that the regime has invested thousands of pesos to make this text available to the public.

The book, rather than a historical analysis, is a warning, not only for those who in Cuba restlessly fight against discrimination regardless of the government, that is to say the Citizens for Racial Integration, the Rosa Parks Feminine Movement, or the Juan Gualberto Gómez Movement for Racial Integration, it applies to any unofficial political party or independent civic project; other than those of the ruling elite it serves no other interests, such as those of the Aponte Commission of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC).

The book creates a dividing line for those who may have the courage to propose any amendment, any public demand: anyone who does not respond to the interests of the regime will face the consequences.

And Rolando Rodríguez will be there supporting intransigence, as loyal servant and historiographer watchdog.

Translated by Chabeli

Published by Primavera Digital – August, 1st, 2012


The Privileged Ones / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere

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The privileges granted by the regime to the Cuban military elite, behind the back of the people’s will and stepping over any consensus from the citizens, have as solemn goal to buy the loyalty of this elite.

Bought loyalty is not acting in a reasonable and conscious way, which would be the right thing to do. Give the level of misery and hardships that the country is facing, the military elite should be willing to give up their privileges and live under the same hardships that the majority of the people, who they claim to defend, suffer from. But, unfortunately that is not how it is. The armed forces, far from protecting the interests of the citizens, are the loyal dogs of a ranch called Cuba.

The thirty-five new colonels, personally promoted by President Raúl Castro, are living proof of what this article emphasizes.

They swore to be loyal to him and the Party. They do not care about the people or the country’s path toward democracy. They are loyal to him and the Party, shamelessly, like a dog with a bone.

Cuba deserves a better fate and leaders fully committed to the honor that is gained from freedom and political plurality.

The manipulation of patriotic morality and of the motherland itself when only a few receive privileges from those who have even taken from the country the sense of its own history.

A disproportionately large army is ready to repress, imprison, and kill for a blind loyalty that often turns against themselves.

These privileges granted by the regime have created a new class that sucks away everything from the people who are exploited even in matters of the dues they pay to the union which repeatedly end up in the hands of the military. The same thing happens to the money from wages and remittances. In hard currency stores, owned by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), the constant changing of prices on the products, the abuse of the customers, and the threatening authoritarianism are part of the bitter daily routine.

The so-called “reliable” are Communist Party militants, who wear a uniform that protects them from all suspicions, as well their children and relatives, after having been involved, more than once, in corruption scandals. Without generating any profit, they suck it all in, being real good-for-nothings and parasites embedded in the heart of the motherland.

These privileges are precisely why a large part of the population rejects the police as much as the military.

We must question openly this new classist, racist, and insatiable elite of those who are the first and loudest to shout patriotic slogans, to the point that with their gaping mouths it seems like they are going to eat the Revolution, with their little flags and everything.

Experiences from events that took place in similar societies after the collapse of Communism tell us that those who hold power are the ones who later become the owners of corporations and public goods, forming a solid pressure group that will continue working towards increasing their personal wealth at the expense of people’s sacrifice.

With no force based on reason, but with reason based on force and money in their pockets, the dreams of the motherland and the fate of every citizen are in their hands.

Who are those who give them these privileges, never granted before by any other government? Do they have the moral authority to criticize anyone?

Published by Primavera Digital, July 14, 2012.

Translated by Chabeli


A Racist Intellectual Legacy / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere

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Racism was supposedly abolished by the revolution of the Constitution and from public places, but there were no policies to educate the citizens to be conscious about their actions.

The revolution did not care about intellectual abolition of racism and did not educate the people about this phenomenon.

Blacks are seen as inferior beings with an ugly skin pigmentation and a lower IQ, and therefore, they must be treated according to these differences, so that at least one day they will become closer to the civilization imposed by the white race, which claims itself to be the superior race. Everything that does not fall within the whites’ rules is considered as culturally and humanly disposable.

All this has been the result of a racist intellectual legacy.

The phenomenon of the right to own property adds to the worsening of the racial issues in Cuba. The Cuban regime suppressed private property, which it considered to be one of the vices of capitalism. In the Castro regime’s society, private property exists by custom and acceptance, but not — until recently — by law and rights, which are still subject to the will and rules of an arbitrary regime.

This has to do with social and ethnic relations because the regime is the sole owner and guarantor of rights, and it can grant or expropriate goods and property, with tricky laws whenever it pleases.

Black and mestizos in Cuba are the property of the regimen, which from redemption and free labor has turned them into a cheap labor force. A large supply of slaves, all from a single owner.

Within Cuban socialism, skin color weighs heavily over social relations, and the man loses all of his freedom rights, becoming property of an ideology that manipulates him and can put him on sale or make him disappear whenever his Master, the State, says so.
Skin color and class struggles become meaningless. The man does not exist as such, no matter how much they want to pretend the opposite.

The invisibility of blacks is their punishment for being a bad example and a stigma for society.

Today’s racism is the fruit of a prolonged belief in eugenics and of a white-focused and anti-black legacy.

Only open regimens may be able to provide spaces for everyone, to create spaces for debate about social issues without the presence of the State, whose only obligation is to respond to the will of its people. And this is only accomplished in representative democracies whose ideological and political formula is so far not surpassed by any other in guaranteeing individual rights.

Published by Primavera Digital, July 7, 2012

Translate by Chabeli


Racist Practices and Behaviors Make a Comeback / Mackandal – Manuel Aguirre Lavarrere

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Social and racial equality in Cuba was grossly embezzled and supplanted by the greed of political power. To understand the achievements and chimeras of this equality that is nothing but virtual, it is essential to submerge ourselves in the discourse of Fidel Castro during the “Second Declaration of Havana”, in 1962, where he talked, among other things, about ending unemployment, gambling, vices, and corruption, which are all present in Cuba, today. Castro also alluded that racism was settled in Cuba. After more than fifty years, this has been proven one of the most distressing lies for the Cuban regime.

While the existing laws contained in the Labor Code, which were consequently included in the Constitution of February 24, 1976 and later amended in 1992, take the right to work, social security, welfare, and others, to the constitutional level, establishing in Article 3 that “all citizens able to work regardless of race, color, sex, religion, public opinion or national or social origin, have the opportunity to get a job with which they can contribute towards the goals of society and the fulfillment of their needs”, the day-to-day practices in Cuban society show that opportunities are limited for Afro-Cubans.

The “Second Declaration of Havana” synthesizes the history of the struggle against racial discrimination during much of the Republic, the efforts made by the former Socialist Party (PSP) and the way in which it understood the issue of discrimination and its solution to this problem in Cuba. There are some fundamental points such as the integration of public spaces and the nationalization of education into one single system, administered by the State, where racial equality is established. However, this is a complicated phenomenon: words will be useless without first taking into account the training of workers, which conflicted with the organizational structures of the unions. All these measures, plausible at the time, unfortunately vanished because they were not enforced in a country willing to whiten its society and to refuse opportunities to blacks.

This political irresponsibility brought consequences: within education, the workplace and public spaces, the political illusions of the Revolution, which was most concentrated in exporting its ideology, assumed that racism had been struck a deathblow.  But it lost sight of this issue in relation to private spaces, interpersonal relations, and public opinion.  Consequently these areas were kept outside the vision of an inclusive logic, turning the characters implied into puppets of the desires of others, whether it is the State, Ministry of Labor or any other entity.  As a result of this political recklessness, the stigmas that perpetuate racist practices and behaviors in schools, the workplace, and public spaces are very alive and continue to dominate our entire society.

Published by Primavera Digital, July 19, 2012, Year No. 5
www.primaveradigital.org / Space for all / Made in Cuba

Translated by Chabeli

31 July 12012


Resignation Over Censorship / Miguel Coyula

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Miguel Coyula

Miguel Coyula (a jury member for the exhibition) on the resignation of Fernando Pérez from the presidency of ICAIC* Young Filmmakers Exhibition:

RESIGNATION

I understand and respect Fernando’s decision. Beyond whether it was artistically accomplished or not, the short-film Despertar [Awaken] deserved to be shared with the public.

Enough already.

I hope that Exhibition continues to move forward, but it won’t be the same after having been stomped on. I believe in resigning. I have been antisocial since I was a child; it’s a question of my personality. But I have not resigned from making films, from creating. It is the only thing over which I can have absolute control in life. Political systems, religions, structures of power, movements, leaders, they all end up disappointing us because those at the top always make decisions that leave us disappointed and helpless, especially when our interests are distant from those of the majority.

Sacrifice? No. Not for anything other than creation.

I also believe in individuals, in friends, but never in the masses because they have always been manipulated throughout the history of humanity. In my case, there is nothing new to be said. I am not going to wrap it up with a lot of verbiage to soften the message: of course that I am fed up with the censorship in my country. This is the result of a political structure that is rotten to the core, which IS NOT GOING TO IMPROVE, NOR WILL IT BE REPLACED BY A BETTER ONE because the mutilation suffered will last for several generations, and nor does there exist in the rest of the world, another humanist alternative implemented with an effectiveness that seduces me.

I know I am apocalyptic.

That is why I make films and not politics. I have no vocation for the second, and if I had, I would surely be a dictator. I prefer to be an apathetic in the physical world, instead of screwing over people’s lives. Experimenting only within a screen of images and motion. Living closer to the hermit, creating an inner world of imperfect universes with freedom of a totalitarian subjectivity. An improbable mix of cynicism and romanticism but, at least for me, it has been the only way to sleep peacefully.

Raudel Collazo — the subject of the film — and Ricardo Figueredo — the filmmaker. Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

*Cuban Film Institute

Source: Tension Lia

Support Miguel’s new film here.

Translated by Chabeli


Tomás, the Man who Brought Broadway to Taguayabón / Mario Barroso

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Source: http://buenavistavcuba.blogspot.com/

This past July 2 was second anniversary of the death of Tomás Leopold Alfonso Manso. He was born on September 30, 1941, and unexpectedly passed away from a heart attack on July 2, 2010, leaving an irreplaceable emptiness in Taguayabón, the town in which he lived since 1978 and to which he devoted his art, with the same dedication as if Taguayabón was New York City.

In the last months of his life, we shared the same daily routine of having coffee in the morning at the home of a mutual friend, a ritual as important to Cubans as three o’ clock tea is for an Englishman. Tomás adopted me as his spiritual guide and told me the stories about his deepest traumas and desires. In the 51st edition of the folklore magazine Signos from 2005, dedicated to the traditional occupations in Cuba, I published my contribution “Habit Makes the Monk, and Hard Work Traditions Make Taguayabón,” and under its title it said “Tomás Manso Alfonso, our float maker” (pages 65-66). This human being was receiving then one of the very few tributes that honored him during his life, and that he very much appreciated.

The fact that he was a literacy teacher, especially in the Escambray, during the harsh days of the 1960s when Cubans shed the blood of other Cubans, made him a witness of the crimes committed by the Cuban regime, crimes he never forgot.

The firing squads scenes which he was forced to attend turned into a horrific drama that accompanied Tomás throughout his life. He still could hear the cries of “Long live God our King!” from those who were going to die, teenagers among them, if not children.

Tomás could not find any other way to avoid those memories, but secluding himself in art, and Taguayabón had the blessing of being the place for Tomás’s work. Thanks to him, the hardships of a town like this, in  remote Cuba, became less because Tomás gave his people a reason to laugh and dream. Probably, most of Taguayabón’s people will never see Broadway, not even Tomás did, but that was not an excuse to not bring it to the Taguayabonians.

The State censors, who were always shadowing Tomás’ projects and who knew very well what he had witnessed, in spite of knowing that this was contrary to the wishes of his family and of El Gavilán, the party neighborhood to which he belonged, made a clumsy attempt to stop me from speaking at the cemetery of San Antonio, on the morning of July 3rd, before his burial.

They failed. And as a tribute to Tomás, on behalf of all of Taguayabón, two years after his deeply felt absence, the blog Cubano Confesante will make available a video that his entire neighborhood El Gavilán dedicated to him, which was publicly exhibited in the 2010 carnival parties that were organized to honor Tomás’ memory. The entire recordings of two mournful farewells before his burial will be also available, that of a retired State Security agent who served as the head of this organ for many years in Caibarién, and my own, which he failed to stop from happening.

Translator’s note: Two video links accompanied this post but they have been removed from YouTube because they are too long.

July 5 2012