Prison Diary LXIX: Camilo, Henchman of a Regime That is a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council / Angel Santiesteban

Camilo, the dictator’s henchman

November 8 marked a year since our peaceful demonstration in front of the Acosta Police Station (Unit 1), demanding the release of Antonio Rodiles, Yaremis Flores and Laritza Diversent.

After the corresponding beating and arrest, while they led us to our respective cells, distributing us around the city (divide and conquer?), the henchman Camilo, a State Security official, assured me that I would be sentenced to five years in prison.

Eugenio Leal, who was with me in the patrol car, heard him from inside the car, and everything that happened a month earlier at the Provincial Court determined this same sentence, of course, everything would have been understandable if we restrict ourselves to saying that the trial was in Courtroom 1 at State Security at their special site at Carmen and Juan Delgado.

I assured the official Camilo that from my part I wasn’t scared, but when the moment came to pay for his abuses and atrocities, I hopes he would behave with dignity, as I did. Then he smiled with characteristic cynicism. “When I’m touched, you will already have been touched,” he said, brimming with sarcasm.

While the wait for my imprisonment wore on, I had the opportunity to leave the country and avoid the agony, but my need is to continue, and I preferred to be imprisoned here rather than free in Miami.

Shortly I will have served nine months in prison, I corroborate my decision, and I will continue to try to be helpful in prisons where I have been locked up. Never before had I felt that I could help safeguard the integrity of persons, in this case the prisoners who are in the barracks with me, I have maintained the level of denouncing the injustices the guards have been committing.

What the official Camilo did not know is that with his response he accepted that the dictatorship will pay for its excesses, except that, like the human beasts that they are, they are unable to act with decency, that’s impossible for them given the job they have to perform. Meanwhile, they are going to live as best they can, they receive gifts and awards from the regime to maintain the level of immorality, which also they enjoy committing, but we all know that justice will come, then we will look at those criminal eyes covered in tears, justifying the orders that they fulfilled, and next to them they will see those who pushed them to commit their fascist acts.

For now they continue to laugh but, ultimately and unfailingly, justice will be done.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. November 2013

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy
25 November 2013

Angel Santiesteban’s Right To A Pass Violated By Regime Which Is A Member Of The Human Rights Council / Angel Santiesteban

As expected, Raul Castro, the second emperor dictator of the tropical Communist Nazi dynasty, recently recognized by the UN Human Rights Council with a seat in the “distinguished” set of toilets that make up the guardians and safeguards of each other, has debuted such a “deserved” honor by violating the rights of prisoners of Lawton prison settlement where Angel Santiesteban-Prats is unjustly caged.

Yesterday, Friday November 22nd, all prisoners were awaiting their coveted pass which they receive every 27 days, and Angel every 60 days, as he is subject to a different regime for not going to work like the rest of his teammates. On the day and time appointed, simply and without giving any explanation, they were informed that there was no pass.

It is not the first time since Angel has been in this settlement that they have violated the rules concerning the treatment of passes. Having nullified this one, the next will be in 2014, and they will have been 120 days without a pass, again violating their rights.

Violating the individual rights of ordinary citizens has been rife in the Cuba of the “Revolution” for 54 years, and rape in prisons and the concentration camps is not only common, but also is an everyday enjoyment for thousands of servants and lackeys who work sadistically fulfilling orders from above.

Sonia Garro, Ramón Muñoz, El Crítico (The Critic), Armando Sosa Fortuny, Marcelino Abreu Bonora, Roilan Alvarez Rensoler are just some of the human beings who, along with Angel, make up the painful and shameful list of over a hundred political prisoners who are locked in Castro’s concentration camps, many of them in serious danger of death on hunger strike, and all unjustly imprisoned, with unfair trials or no trials, all with false charges, tortured, abused, humiliated, simply for the “crime”  of expressing themselves and desiring a free and democratic Cuba.

The UN Human Rights Council miserably endorsed the existence of the dynastic dictatorship that has, for more than half a century, been oppressing the Cuban people, and in giving it a “toilet” honor among the “illustrious” it endorsed the systematic violation of human rights on the Island, setting a dangerous precedent for the community of nations.

Angel did not leave on a pass yesterday in Havana. I wonder if today they will already be preparing for Dec. 10 in Geneva, a tribute to the Five Spies* and if they will denounce the “serious” abuse of the American government which they will repeat at the weekly rant?

Dictator Castro, even having his delegate in the UN Human Rights Council and to show his “power” in such sad maneuvers such as “Bastion”, if it is necessary to cage a writer for what he writes, and to strip a few brave women who carry gladioli as a weapon, there should be no doubt that his place in history has already been secured: a coward and a despicable loser and murderer.

The Editor

*Translator’s note: A reference to the five State Security agents — lauded as “The Five Heroes” in Cuba — imprisoned in the United States (one of whom, having served his sentence, is now back in Cuba) for spying and related crimes.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy
23 November 2013

Prison Diary LXV: Cuba in the Human Rights Council: How to Demand What has Not Yet Been Met / Angel Santiesteban

Shooting themselves in the foot

Photo credited to UN Watch. UN Watch and Human Rights Foundation brought famous dissidents to testify at the UN headquarters on 4 November about on the state of human rights in their countries. From left to right: Chinese dissident Yang Jianli, Cuban dissident Rosa Maria Paya, Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmed, executive director of UN Watch, Hillel Neuer, Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng, HRF president Thor Halvorssen, Russian dissident Masha Gessen.

That Cuba, China and Russia have been elected to the Human Rights Council of the UN might seem like a joke if it were not such a serious issue for the world and especially for this international body.

For those of us who directly suffer violations of our rights it would be logical if it awakened outrage in us, but giving a vote of confidence and analyzing the possible strategy, above all with Cuba which has not signed the treaties, is like a forced invitation to join the inescapable democratization of the 21st century.

Perhaps one can use that saying, “God take care of my friends, as for my enemies I will take charge of them and keep them close,” because now Cuba will be more in the public eye, and their actions more visible, as in “violations of individual rights,” in which the regime is competing for one of the top spots in the world.

We are struck by the way Cuba’s national media have spread the news: they have done so in a brief and tragic mode, and not with the boasting that usually accompanies their Pyrrhic victories.

Is it likely that they fear how Cubans will feel about rights and demand their own rights? So, the less they know the better? We assume that at this point that the mandatory question that Raul Castro will be asking himself is how does he get away with not complying. How could he ask for respect and collaboration if he has been a champion for such violations through the decades? What example could he give and demand of those countries who do not practise these things?

To comply with the UN would be to stop being a dictatorship, and the Castro brothers are still not convinced that they can do without totalitarian power, which they like and have exercised for over half a century.

Hopefully the choice was a wise, diplomatic, cunning one by the UN, and will enjoin Cuba to sign the Covenants, postponed for more than five years, since that position morally obliges them to respect them from now, given that they will be the guardians of their respect. At least I’ll believe it after I see it.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. November 2013.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

14 November 2013

Justice and Prayers for Angel Yunier Remon Arzuga #FreeElCritico / Angel Santiesteban

Ángel Yunier Remon Arzuaga ’El Critico.’ Jailed since March 2013 for being a non-conformist rapper and an opponent of the Cuban dictatorship. In July he contracted cholera in prison.

Jailed since March 2013 for being a non-conformist rapper and an opponent of the Cuban dictatorship. In July he contracted cholera in prison.

The chain of suffering continues for Cuban opponents. Now adding to the injustice committed, among many of the dictatorship, against the artist and human rights advocate Ángel Remon Yunier Arzuaga, who was hospitalized in intensive care and reported to be in critical condition having gone on hunger strike.

He has been imprisoned since 26 March of this year, after the fascist hordes who obey the totalitarian regime of the Castro brothers, undertook in an act of repudiation in front of his house. In addition to being a victim of government provocation, as a great irony of the dictatorship and that we can never get used to, he was accused of “attacking,” and so the prosecution requested eight years of imprisonment.

Since his arrival in prison, he has suffered the hostility of his repressors, those who dealt out to him multiple beatings, and he was infected with cholera.

It’s no secret that Ángel Yunier Remón Arzuaga’s crime, like that of all of us opponents who are in prison, is to confront the system, which for a long time, if it ever was, stopped being communist or left leaning politically, and only responds to the desire for power of Fidel and Raul Castro in their State without rights.

Yunier Angel belongs to the duo “The Children Nobody Wanted” — to my honor* — and if that wasn’t enough, with the suggestive name of “The Critic,” together with Yudier Blanco Pacheco. The lyrics of their songs are hymns among youth, making an impression with immediacy and profundity on Cuban youth who then learn and repeat the verses. Through their voices they feel that they also reclaim that which belongs to them by right: freedom.

His real and unforgivable offense, in the eyes of the political police, is to think differently, and expose this through his art. State Security sought to stop his rise in the Cuban culture.

Taking from experience the awesome rise of Los Aldeanos (The Villagers) and the phenomenon it immediately caused among the youth. Guided by a sense of support towards this young artist, I am obliged to announce that if the worst is to happen to this activist for the rights and freedom, from the place where I am detained, I will start an indefinite hunger strike.

May God be with Remon Yunier Angel Arzuaga, may He protect him in the name of his baby of nine months, his wife, and all the Cubans with shame and good feelings that accompany him in prayer.

The dictatorship is responsible for his life. The die is cast.

Ángel Santiestebn-Prats

Lawton Prison settlement. November 2013.

*Translator’s note: “The Children Nobody Wanted” is the title of a book by Angel and also the title of his blog.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

6 November 2013

One Year Outside Cuba, Within The Country / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: “Self-Portrait of exile. Nostalgia machine.”

It is exactly one year ago to the day that I left Cuba to enter the other Cuba. They gave me a kick, manu militari, and so I came to fall on this side of the lost country.

Miami gave me the opportunity to speak in the tongue of my grandparents, to return to the preferred palate of my grandparents.  I have achieved the dreams of my grandmother Maria: I drank Jupiña, I tried Materva and I ate again the guava pastries that my godfather Mayaguez used to make.  In that sense the nostalgia machine is still oiled, as always.

Here I have been bored since the police don’t ask me for my identity card nor do they ask for how many days I’ll stay in Little Havana.  My children Malcom and Brenda don’t have to put their hands to their foreheads in each school activity and say that they want to be like Che, that Argentinian fan of multiple and foreign deaths, foreign lands, foreign women, foreign families, to live a borrowed life, to jump from melancholic guerrillas to adolescent T-shirts.  My children are free because they are learning how to be.

It’s been a year since I came to a country that is a lot more generous than it is described to be, from the hand of Lori Diaz and the International Rescue Committee (IRC, “Ay-Ar-Cee, how can we help you?”).  I came to a Miami even more generous, where civil society is so organized that there was no need for a campaign for a foreign lady to give me the first $40 in her checkbook for the month and she treated us in a café.  From the hand of Ivon, Berta, Idolidia and Mario we all went through the first and hard hurricanes of red tape and we came out sane and happy, thanks to God and to them.

Miami gave me back my bicycle and a pain in my calves the first months; the bus and the fright of the next stop.  Here again I published a book and read poetry without demand for political ideology affiliation, at least that’s what Idable and Armando have shown me.  Miami gave me a microphone and a website so I can talk to Cuba at every second as if I was a ubiquitous man, Borgian, and I have been able to interview people from Baracoa, Puerto Padre or Jaimanitas without being afraid of the police attacking my house.

For the past year I’m happy playing dominoes and war. Twelve months I’ve been lounging on Saturdays in the grass with my wife Exilda, (at Tropical Park) looking at the sky to give thanks and ask for another wish: like two children, or two fools, but happy as never before.

P.S: There are other names and beautiful sunsets to mention, but no thanks.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

25 October 2013

Finally, A Crime or Not? / Cuban Law Association, Osvaldo Rodriguez Diaz

In Cuba prostitution is not a crime, this statement is repeated over and over by the media and by people who are considered to have due authority to do so.

In the special part of the Penal code on crimes, this figure does not appear.

Thus, many ask, “How is it that there are so many who are detained for this type of activity?”.

Our society, like others, suffers from it and also considers prostitution as a reprehensible vice, affecting morality and decency.

This “antisocial behavior,” as it is named in the criminal law, can be punished with rehabilitation measures of up to four years of detention in certain establishments.

These security measures, which are called “pre-criminal” and whose purpose is expressed in the law and complementary provisions and which prevent the subject from committing a crime, are imposed on prostitutes. So, is prostitution a crime or not?

If the objective of these security measures is to to avoid crime, then what crime can be committed when a young girl dedicates herself to the oldest profession?

We must look at the causes and conditions that have generated the excessive increase of this activity, and try to eliminate them at their source.

Despite the rigor of pre-criminal security measures, with almost the same regulations as other punishments, although classified as protected, many repeat their act.

In this area, a sad reality is presented in everything that revolves around prostitution, persons accused of and punished for renting a room to a prostitute, not for the exercise itself but as a temporary dwelling, or the hired driver that transfers them to where they will practice the oldest profession.

The subject presented is complex, others who are licensed in the matter should offer their opinion in respect to this matter.

Rodríguez Díaz

By Osvaldo Rodríguez Díaz

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

25 October 2013

Prison Diary LXII: Award-Winning and Censored Books / Angel Santiesteban

With the recent presentation in Europe of my novel “The Summer When God Was Sleeping”, which won the Internation Franz Kaka Prize for Novels from the Drawer, convened in the Czech Republic, and the resumé of awards which accompany me, you could think that I am a very lucky writer when it comes to awards, but this is very far from reality.

I want to share and I’m sure that I once wrote this in another post, that if you could publish in Cuba, it was thanks to the competitions, which function as a form of blackmail, once won, it shows their moral and ethical responsibility, which I assure you that they do not have, but they like to pretend to the public, especially internationally, that they themselves do have moral and ethical responsibility, because my books were and are rejected out of hand as soon as they are presented to publishing houses.

To me, they made it harder than anyone to get published. The editors and newsroom chiefs of these publishers, who maintain dialogues at book fairs as friends, confessed to me the impossibility of publishing them, precisely because of the topics addressed; if they did so they would be relieved of their jobs. Therefore, at different times, I was rejected from several news features, which were intended to show the different ways to approach the narrative by writers of my generation.

My art was always accompanied by the themes of social deprivation and lack of political freedoms, so I was constantly an unprintable writer. I learned that winning the awards was the only possibility for me to address my failure to publish. Therefore in 1992, after I had been awarded the Casa de las Américas Prize, it was withdrawn thanks to the interference of State Security before the jury which retracted its vote, convinced that my human and slightly epic vision of the war of Cubans in Africa would create great political damage and it did not seem eloquent nor productive to present an image of those suffering soldiers that I outlined in my stories.

After changing the title of the book, in an attempt to mislead the State security agents, who were like dogs sniffing the trail of my creations, I sent it to a contest of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), and it was honored in 1995; but that wasn’t enough to get it published and for three years it would remain on the desk of the then President of UNEAC, Abel Prieto. After a dark negotiation, it was published in 1998, after I agreed to remove five stories from the final copy. They published a poor and ugly edition on purpose, which more closely resembled a box of detergent than a book and this was done with the purpose of weakening the book’s distribution.

In 2001, after internal pressure from the organizers of the Cuban Book Institute, whose president was the Taliban Iroel Sánchez, it was decided in the office of Iroel Sánchez himself, with a vote of 2 to 1, with the previous winner of the award, the writer Jorge Luis Arzola, communicating via telephone and by giving his vote to my collection of short stories, my book “The Children Nobody Wanted” saw the light of day.

Immediately, the War Combatants Association of Cuba (veterans), sent a letter to the Ministry of Culture and the Book Institute itself, for the critical vision of my literature, cataloged the poor management before the Revolution and condemned the actions of those leaders of the culture that allowed it. Iroel Sanchez himself, who was taunted for having participated in the Angolan war, confessed to me that his fellow soldiers criticized him for having allowed, despite it being against their will, the book’s publication.

Later, in 2006, also under pressure, when the doctor Laidi Fernández was part of the jury, and at the end she gave her vote, when she realized that there was no point in voting against, it would be 3-2, and that her father, the poet Roberto Fernández Retamar, president of Casa de las Americas, made the comment to Roberto Zurbano, then Director of the Editorial, “my book would remove the foundations of the institution,” the jury awarded me the prize, and the book, despite being published and presented in a small percent of the copies which they delayed for two years, in another attempt to postpone the promotion of the book.

Anyway, I regret nothing, something made me guess that it was the right thing, so much censorship against me was the announcement of a literature which was non-conformist and contained an unfriendly vision of officials. These are the fortunes of my “prize-winning” books, and so much anguish has accompanied them, to the same extent that they caused distress to the political and cultural leaders.

For many years, more than ten books have slept in my drawer. Sometimes they look through the crack and sigh, waiting for better times, that the darkness would dissipate and the light and the wind would come in and stir the box like signs of progress, as it did recently with a ray of light with the Franz Kafka Prize.

One already escaped, and those that remain in the drawer await the literary raft which will take them across the raging sea of censorship imposed by the dictatorship, to reach the land of the reader and be published in their own right, and not to be silent but to be waving little flags and smiling at leaders and self-censors. At that price I prefer the “unpublished.”

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. October 2013.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

28 October 2013

Center for Support of the Transition Created in Havana / Rinaldo Emilio Cosano Alen

Durante-la-presentación-del-CAT-de-izq.-a-derecha-Frank-Ernesto-Carranza-Héctor-Maseda-y-Roberto-Díaz-Vázquez_EFE
Photo taken during the presention by CAT. From left to right: Frank Ernesto Carranza, Héctor Maseda and Roberto Díaz Vázquez.

HAVANA, Cuba, October, http://www.cubanet.org — On October 5 a press conference took place in Havana announcing the formation of the Center for Support of the Transition (CAT). During a break we talked to its coordinator, attorney Roberto Díaz Vázquez.

Cubanet: What is CAT trying to achieve?

Díaz: Citizens should not only recognize they have rights but should also put them into practice. They should value those rights so they can advance economically, socially and politically. They should be in charge of the changes we so need.

Cubanet: What is its relationship with the government, assuming there is one?

Díaz: CAT has no ambition to have a dialog with the government because we are a parallel organization to the State. CAT would like the population to recognize that it has the opportunity to decide upon and put into practice the economic, social and political order that the institutional changes taking place in Cuba entail. This is especially true in the case of the private micro-businesses that could develop into medium-sized businesses in the not to too distant future and into large-scale businesses in five to ten years. This would have undeniable consequences for the decentralization of power brought on by the international and domestic financial crisis and the lack of visible support from Latin America and Europe.

The temporary solution on which the regime has settled is to develop micro-businesses, which today account for more than 40,000 so-called self-employed workers, those we prefer to call micro-entrepreneurs. Small-scale businesses could grow into large-scale business and become the economic engine of the country.

Cubanet: Does CAT have a support program for micro-businesses?

Díaz: There are various programs to help micro-businesses. One is the Guillermo Cabrera Infante Center, which sponsors courses, workshops and post-graduate conferences on economics, accounting, business management and feasibility studies. There is also the José Agustín Caballero Institute for the Education of Free Thought, which I head. It is involved in short, medium and long-term projections on the creation of micro-businesses. There is also the Independent National Workers’ Confederation of Cuba (CONIC), which brings together a sizable number of workers interested in encouraging an independent labor union movement, which is at last responding to the growing tide of change in our lives.

Cubanet: What are  the functions of the institute over which you preside?

Díaz: It is having a profound impact on society. We work in close cooperation with CAT to make sure that the social gains which have been achieved are maintained through analysis, research, courses on economics and financial planning. We have a multi-disciplinary team made up of seven instructors from different branches of higher education and with different areas of expertise who can impart useful knowledge.

 Cubanet: What support might the government give to micro-businesses? 

Díaz: Where possible, it should be allowing investment in small-scale businesses. We can see what might be allowed if we look at production cooperatives and non-state services.

Cubanet: Officials at the Cuban Interest Section in the United States made statements in Florida several months ago that Cuba might allow investment by Cubans living overseas, including the United States. What is your opinion about this?

Díaz: It is interesting but it is not enough to overcome the restrictions of the American embargo. And the Cuban government, at least for now, will not provide this opportunity because it can’t. It knows what would happen if it were to allow foreign investment on a small scale. Politically it would mean losing control of the gold mine that state control of micro-businesses represents. Metaphorically speaking, Cuba would have a million investors in a very short period of time. It is a figure worth considering. According to the official trade union, the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba (CTC), in the event we reach a point where there are between half a million and a million independent workers, the State would have to sit down and fully analyze the situation with regard to medium-sized businesses. It would have to begin the process of political decentralization starting with economic management.

Cubanet: Are the regime’s current reforms having any influence on the official ideology?

Díaz: For years socialist philosophy has been characterized by a clear awareness of material assets. It remains bound up with the greatest corruption scandals ever uncovered in Cuba. These include the scandals involving Habanaguarex S.A., a company assigned to the Office of the Historian of Havana, and Cimex, S.A., which is under the control of the military. None of the higher-ups want to miss out on a piece of the pie. The juicy businesses are those funded with mixed capital or capital from overseas. This is what CAT is fighting for. Economic development in the United States and the advanced countries of Europe was essentially an outgrowth of small and medium-sized industry. We must adapt this experience to circumstances in today’s Cuba because our people want to find their own way forward.

 Cubanet: Many thanks.

Reinaldo Emilio Cosano Alén, cosanoalen@yahoo.com

From Cubanet, Octuber 11, 2013

We Shall See / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallin Almeida

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

Some Cuban citizens came to the Cuban Legal Association (AJC) seeking information and advice regarding a current issue: non-agricultural co-operatives.

It relates to forming a cooperative with a group of compatriots who–until now–have been state workers and would become members in this new modality.

But clearly they do not have the slightest idea what it is and they have not been properly informed about it.

It was nice that this morning we had a hearing in the Supreme Court related to legal recognition of the AJC as an independent NGO. The funny thing is that our counterpart there suggested, among its arguments, that all Cuban workers have at their disposal the information possible and necessary with regards to legal issues that affect that or that they would like to know about. And that was another reason that the AJC doesn’t need to exist.

Obviously there is a serious contradiction between our counterpart and the presence of these people asking us for appropriate advice.

Those living in the city, among other things, need to know

What elements are required for the existence of this form of economics, without which we can be in the presence of something, but not of a true cooperative as it is understood in the world.

What is free contracting and how does it relates to the issue of cooperatives.

What are the inalienable rights of workers in the preparation of documents that create the cooperative and its statutes.

What comparative examples do we have as background to have a broader and more accurate range of information on the matter.

What is the concept of cooperative ownership and the use, enjoyment and disposition that cooperatives have regarding it.

And some more that I will not put here so as to keep this brief.

I want to believe that what happened five years ago will not happen now, when the omnipresent and all-knowing came to tell us that WE COULD NOT EXPLAIN to our compatriots the rights which the Criminal Code of Procedure Act confers unto them.

Are these times any different from any previous ones?

We shall see.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

16 October 2013

The Poet Rafael Alcides Dedicates his Presentation to the Unjustly Jailed Writer Angel Santiesteban

The Quixotic Soul of Rafael Alcides
For Luis Rafael

An emotional Havana evening, the kind which seals memory with a light of fire, I met the poet Rafael Alcides Pérez (Barrancas, 1933). Choosing to remain anonymous, as is his custom, he was in the audience which was attending the launch of my poem-book Colómbico, being held in the bright room of Havana’s Hotel Inglaterra.

I learned he was there almost immediately after I had finished my duties, after signing a few autographs for friends and strangers, when the poet and critic Virgilio López Lemus, who had made the eulogy for my book, came with Alcides and introduced me to him. “It’s a must have for Cuban poetry,” said López Lemus and Alcides smiled indulgently. Silent, hardly daring to comment. His eyes, however, scrutinized every gesture, like his poetry.

Born in the eastern town of Barrancas, Alcides moved to Havana to study for his baccalaureate and thence to Havana, where he graduated as an industrial chemist. A nomad since he was young, he traveled to Mexico, USA, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, writing poems here and there like someone taking photos.

A member of the “fifties generation” — writers born between 1925 and 1945 — affiliated with Cuban revolutionary project headed by Fidel Castro and which sought to banish exploitation and inequality from the island, Rafael Alcides put his literature at the “service” of a nationalist  and justice-seeking ideology, writing crystal clear, intimate and clearly understandable verses for the people who shaped his poetry, colloquial, at times choral, other times intimate and questioning, which bears witness to the present and defends the future.

During those years of dreams and hope, he worked as a producer, director and writer for radio and unveiled the new conversational, lyrical canon of articles and reviews for the magazines Unión, Casa de las Americas and La Gaceta de Cuba, and on his radio programme, In the place of poetry. So he was recognised as an author of value, who published the poetry books: Mountain Hymns, 1962, The Wooden Leg, 1967. 

History, however, was in charge of clipping the wings of dreams and the 1970s came with their censures and excesses. After a publishing silence, the lyrical work of Alcides reemerged in the eighties, with poems that speak of a change of themes and approaches, where the poet becomes questioning, doubtful, raising his voice of dissent and seeking answers in epic genre of everyday life.

He dares to deal with issues and questions which speak of this “Quixotic soul” for which he is recognized, and that leads him to confront “windmills” knowing that they can throw mud at him, under the indifferent gaze of Sanchificados. The artist decides to retreat and write from the margin. His commitment to justice, sentencing him to be an exile within his own country, which however takes the point of view that a poet is a creature “charged with bearing witness to the present day and announcing it tomorrow”.

His writings express the irony of someone who knows that his work doesn’t deny but rather affirms. Grateful like a dog, 1983, And they die, and they return, and they die, 1988, Night in memory, 1989 Nobody, 1993, all carry his rebellious speech, his faith in humanity and his desire for communication, which is also evident in the anthology published in Spain by Renaissance and entitled GMT (Seville, 2009), a compilation of articles written between 1963 and 2008. And with each poem Rafael gallops upon Clavileño, dreaming of a utopian island which his sincere verse and Quixotic attitude have conquered.

– See more HERE

The writer Ángel Santiesteban Prats will receive a new tribute, this time from the poet Rafael Alcides. State of SATS* will open Cafésatso, a space for literature, conversation and pure coffee.

Rafael Alcides will dedicate his presentation to Ángel Santiesteban, wrongly imprisoned by the Castro dictatorship.

Friday, 12 July 2013. 6:00 pm

1st Avenue between 46 and 60 #4606

Miramar, Havana, Playa

Free

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

9 July 2013

Prison Diary LX: Mr. Miguel Ginarte: the Guiding Light of Cuban TV / Angel Santiesteban

Miguel Ginarte (photo courtesy of the blog by Yusnaby)

My mother always warned me that the Cuban government proceeds through their actions: “When they no longer need you, the squash you like a cockroach”.

In the cultural media, it is well known that there are very few shows on Cuban TV that do not use Miguel Ginarte to produce their programmes; in fact, very few are those who in the end who are not grateful for his disinterested help, his constant effort, because he takes the care with each show as if it were the final project that he would ever collaborate on. A man who people rarely hear say no, and when he has had to say no it is because it really was beyond his reach to help.

But that ranch not only provides work for the The Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), but also for the Ministry of Culture, who closed events at that location, like a peasant with a pig being roasted under the stars. I was able to participate in some of these closures before opening my blog, of course, and there we could also see the make up of the diet of then Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, now adviser to President Raul Castro: Fish and wine.

At that time, Ginarte wasn’t selling or diverting resources, as he is now being accused of. The television directors, when they wanted their guests to be treated decently, approached Papa Ginarte: who never turned his back, and after giving the respective indications, persevered to make sure that the requests were met.

As the actor Alberto Pujol said in his letter, there was no luxury to be found there; on the contrary, everything was very modest, to the point that it looked like somewhere one would film a mambises* cabin in the foothills of a mountain. Ostentation never interested Ginarte, only the quality of his work, because as every good Cuban peasant knows “A bull is tied by his horns, and a man by his words”.

As always on the island, behind this web of lies against Ginarte, there must be an official in love with the place, to at a whim do away with the work accomplished by the sweat of another; perhaps someone who resents Ginarte because at some time he should have said no, as only he knows how to do with bureaucrats. But it should come as no surprise to anyone: everyone’s time will come, regardless if they are excellent professionals, altruists, creators, honest, revolutionary people; they need only to be inadequate for the plans of those in power to be literally swept under the carpet.

I remember him with his jovial smile of a macho peasant who enjoyed very few days before entering prison. I would like to be able to say to him “the master should be ashamed, Papa Ginarte”, and remember him on his horse, back in the seventies, going to see Luyanó with his daughter Dinae and, patiently, lifting us up one by one to give us each our turn on his beautiful auburn steed.

At any rate, despite the pain that the injustice committed against Ginarte has caused us, there is something that makes it worth it, and that is his friends and admirers who have joined him by tooth and nail. I am sure that, as always, those who are ashamed will sign the petition, as they have done for decades. Others will want to do it but their lack of courage, or their commitments or perks, won’t let them; they think that it is not their problem, for now. But when someone does it from their heart, then that is already more than sufficient.

 Ángel Santestiban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. Ocotber 2013

*Translator’s notes: Mambises is a term used to refer to independent guerillas who, during the 19th Century in Cuba and the Philippines, fought in the wars of independence. 

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

A Cyber Cafe in Cuba? No chance.

Illustration: photomontage The Singularity of the Island.

Under the heading “Protect Internet Cafes in Cuba. Julian Assange Bungles It,” the website  http://www.lasingularidad.com offers good advice for Cuban citizens and digital non-conformists wanting to get around censorship restrictions.

Every time that I receive questions from activists in Cuba about the internet browser rooms, I never tire of repeating the phrase “Begone, Satan”, “Good riddance”, “Take them winter wind”, or any other interjection I can think of at that moment to make it clear that they should run as though from the devil himself. Like moths to a flame, they are designed to attract the unwary, who are bedazzled by its radiance.

The Cuban regime took its time designing these “booby traps” and — in what it considers a masterful sleight-of-hand — is attempting to make itself look good in the eyes of the modern world, which increasingly considers internet access to be a basic human right.

In fact, it has already reaped some rewards this week by successfully recruiting a “figure” of no less international stature than Julian Assange to proselytize politically on behalf of the Cuban regime. This is a completely surreal and incomprehensible development since, supposedly, the hacker’s code of ethics mandates fighting for free access to information.

His support for one of the world’s most repressive communist dictatorships — one known for restricting access to the free flow of ideas on the internet — is a senseless action that will very probably cause Assange to lose face in the eyes of the hackers who support him. Will Assange turn out to be one of those typical useful, misinformed fools or an opportunist looking for free vacations in the Caribbean? Whatever the answer, the betrayal of the ideals of hackers like Anonymous will not go unnoticed.

Why is Nauta a trap?

1 – Price censorship.

The cost of one hour of access to the internet in these rooms is 4.50 CUC, some $5 US if we convert it. Considering that the average salary in CUCs is approximately $20 per month, we can calculate that one hour of internet use costs Cubans close to 25% of their monthly salary. In a country where the salary is barely enough for one or two weeks’ worth of food, very few can afford to visit these rooms. By way of comparison, if in the United States or Europe one hour of internet cost more than $1,300, social network sites like Facebook would be very bleak places…

2 – Total lack of security, privacy and basic functionality.

To be able to buy a Nauta card, users have to display their identity cards. Their names, addresses and surnames, together with the identification code of the cards sold, are registered in a database. In this same database all their activity is stored: the sites they visit, passwords they enter, screen captures and general captures of all that they type (keyloggers).

The computers available are in fact thin clients* running a modified and highly restricted version of Windows Xp, an operating system so antiquated that it will soon be discontinued by Microsoft, which will no longer issue updates for it.

Short Restrictions:

It is not permitted to right click with the mouse. This reduces functionality for those who are used to cutting and pasting text using menus and eliminates all the information that right clicking in Windows provides. Hint: You can use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+C to copy, ctrl+X to cut and ctrl+V to paste.

It is not permitted to run any programme from USB memory sticks.

It is not permitted to run any programme from command lines (CMD.exe).

Task Manager is disabled, the Ctrl + Alt + Del and don’t even dream of administrator access in order to install some program that you may need.

Overcoming Nauta

The number one rule is : If you can avoid it, DO NOT USE IT. In Cuba, there are many other alternatives: Access from work centers, much less restrictive network dial-up access, illegal accounts shared by foreigners, friends who can send your emails as a favor, and of course access to offline internet content like the Web Packets Weekly Mulitmedia Packets that reign across the island.

If you have no other option you can protect yourself using these simple tips:

1.  Use disposable email accounts, ask your contacts to do the same if possible. The value of your messages lies not only in their contents but also in those to whom they are directed and from whom and from where you receive them (Metadata).  Never use your name or personal information to create an email account or to search websites on the Internet.  If you use false data and a fake name it will be much more difficult for government analysts or their spy programs to determine if your mail or user profile is worth the effort of analyzing.  These spy programs are used by almost all governments, including the United States and, of course, Cuba.

2.  Mask “complicated” words in your messages by using spaces, repeated letters and punctuation signs at random.  This will prevent automated software or analysts that search for key words from being able to flag your messages or profile as being of interest for analysis.  For example, instead of writing “the dissidents screamed liberty at the demonstration” write “the di. Si-dde :ntes shouted lib. ee.r t y in the demi. str *ati-on”  A text search for the words “dissident” and “demonstration” will not detect your messages.  Government agencies in other countries like the C-I. A and the N-S. A will not appreciate this advice, either.:)

3.  Mask your messages by excess information.  For example, began your email with several paragraphs of weighty poems and by prior agreement let your recipient know in which paragraph will be the true message.  The poor analyst that has to read your email will simply go to the next when he sees your long poem. The idea is to make his work difficult all the time.  Remember to mask words as explained above.

4.  Be aware that everything that you type and capture on-screen is being recorded on your user profile.  If you are forced to use a personal password, mask it with random fillers that you will then remove with the mouse and the Delete key. For example, if your password is “freecuba123,” write “iwantfreecub123456.”  Then select “iwant” and “456″ with your mouse and hit delete.  This is not 100% safe with advanced keyloggers but it will make it hard for the analyst who is watching your information to discover which is the true password.  There exists no completely secure protection in the world of information nor in the real one.  It is like protecting your home:  the more difficult you make it for the thief, the less likely your house will be the one in the neighborhood that gets hit.

5.  Use PHP proxies for accessing web pages whose navigation is censored and that you do not want to be kept in your navigation history.  Write on Google:  ”php proxy list” to access web pages that keep lists of proxies that constantly change in order to prevent them from being blocked.  These proxies will permit you to navigate as if your were in another country and will hide the website addresses that you visit.  Nevertheless, remember that your screen is being recorded and if you do something that calls attention they might check your user profile.

6.  Https is your friend.  Always prefer web pages in which the URL or address begins with https.  This means that all traffic between your navigator and the web page server is automatically encrypted in a secure way, hence the letter “s.” However, remember that what you type is being recorded so you cannot stop using the tricks listed above or better still, if you can avoid it, do not enter your search information on any page from Nauta.

If you have other ideas and suggestions for the protection of privacy and security of users in browser rooms in Cuba, write them in the comments below.

Archived in Cuba

*Translator’s note: Computers or computer programmes which depend heavily on other computers (their servers) to fulfill their computational roles.

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy, mlk

30 September 2013

All Noble Causes Are Personal / Angel Santiesteban

The old man Alfredo

The police fail to understand how he appears at every protest against the government.

Like a magician with his best trick, they threaten and laugh at him as they consider him to be a joke. They have still not imprisoned him because they fear that he will die in a dungeon, well, this does not bother him.

To him, all worthwhile causes are personal. The latest strategy of the officials is to torment him. They have done a lot but when it comes to Alfredo, it doesn’t work on him.

The put him in a patrol car that then takes him as far away as possible from the place where protest is being held. Old Alfredo remains unperturbed and lets them carry out their outrageous act. He simply reminds them on the journey that they are just henchmen and thugs and he tells them what they are worth.

They leave him abandoned in some place far from any link with civilization. And yet, he does not complain.

He rents a taxi which has been assigned for tourism. Once in the taxi, he directs the driver to Routes 41 and 124, right on the corner of the Military Hospital. Sometimes the driver checks the rearview mirror. The driver tries to get conversation going because, due to his experience as a driver, something smells fishy. But Alfredo only returns a gentle smile.

They arrive at the hospital half an hour later. Alfredo leans over to tell the driver of the exact address where he should stop, right at Section 21, the headquarters of Counterintelligence, who were responsible for abandoning him in that inhospitable place. Upon getting out of the taxi, officials run over to eject him. The taxi driver who has understood, lowers his head worriedly. Alfredo, however, presents himself to them.

“They will pay you for the fare”, he says as he walks away, shouting “thugs” at them.

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

I am down on my knees pleading with you with cries of hope for Sonia Garro and Ramon Munoz / Angel Santiesteban

One year before being cast into the darkness, Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Muñoz were already suffering the characteristic calamities of Cuban prisons.

Starting from twelve months earlier, their daughter crying for her parents, and her waking up — in the early hours, on hearing a random whisper and thinking it was her parents returning — became common, only to tear up on the embrace of her aunt and so back to sleep. Three hundred and sixty-five days of  the constant questions, from the reasoning of her adolescence, without them being able to explain, to give her a sensible answer as to why she didn’t have them by her side.

The faces of Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Muñoz, filled spaces in Facebook, and social pressure seemed to be endless, because we knew that the courage they showed made us better people, they taught us to give that little bit that sometimes, out of fear or the simple and natural reflex of safeguarding lives, made us selfish and we therefore did not deliver all the necessary courage; but after their lessons of courage, on March 18 last year, something changed us. A definition disrupted our personalities, and then we were no longer the same, a lightbulb turned on within us and it was the shadow of those two great fighters who, with their example, gave the best lesson of Cubans worthy of their time and their country, giving up their lives, and giving them to a cause in which every child of this island, should be immersed, and they joined their spirits and values to our souls.

Sonia and Ramón who have a child to raise, educate, pamper, kiss, now have to settle for memories of when she was small and they took her to school with her little hand getting lost in theirs. Like almost all other people, they want to share a wedding, a house and dreams.They were not prepared to risk their lives, the emotional stability of the family, to not have other urgent missions or diverse utopias to which they could dedicate themselves. Only they thought firstly of their duty to their country, even though to many people this seems ridiculous, archaic even resembling stories from books which describe a bygone era.

Some months ago, the Paris-based Cuban writer Zoe Valdés, with her wise, sometimes hurtful but always intelligent style was calling for attention, with good reason, for the people who sacrificed for us, to try to give us a country that we do not have to flee, politically or economically, and therefore they are now suffering for their daring, lost between Coca-Cola and the complete triviality of our times, they were beginning to fall into oblivion and she mentioned those whose names were almost forgotten by time. It came to me as a wake up call to our consciences.

Some days after, I was moved by a letter from the Cuban writer Félix Luis Viera, living in Mexico, about the total indifference of Cubans to events on our island (and how well Don Jorge Manach knows how to explain this in his essay of the Joking Cuban), and the lack of solidarity and character with those who have done more and therefore suffer humiliations at the hands of the totalitarian regime.

Sonia and Ramón will soon mark one and a half years of unjust incarceration.

I ask the best Cubans, who have been born on this tumultuous archipelago, not to silence their voices so that the world may see the government abuse, without the smallest of the judicial guarantees which they have suffered and are suffering.

I urge every citizen to not cease in their cry for the freedom of this couple, among the many prisoners of conscience, suffering the punishment of being denied their independence, and the asking themselves the classic question: how long will I be imprisoned? What can be my contribution to reach a decent and uplifting future in my country?

Without you, those who are scattered around the world in more secluded spots, the insiders keep us silenced. God put you there to be an echo, the action of the pain those who can’t do it from within the country. That is your responsibility, your way of acting, and we ask for your cooperation, from one sentence to the action of a finger on your computer.

I urge my artist friends (what Cuban isn’t an artist?!), creators, human rights activists, bloggers, journalists, to join this humble but intense call for a just and noble cause. How can one sleep knowing what is happening there? I have no doubt that as long as we remain silent then we are complicit with the dictatorship. As for those who hide behind the word “apolitical”, know that silence is also a way of practising politics.

Modestly, I want to dedicate the novel which I am currently working on about the 19th Century, starting at the end of the year 1807, to Sonia and Ramón and in as much as I can capture, in tribute, the pain which blacks suffered, like them, under a slave regime similar to our own today.

And if those words were not sufficient for Cuban internet users, I’m kneeling before anyone who has possession of reason and feeling to plead with them for their cry of hope for Sonia Garro and Ramón Muñoz.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. September 2013.

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

10 September 2013

Angel Santiesteban Attends the Berlin International Literature Festival / Angel Santiesteban

Ángel remains imprisoned in Cuba, make no mistake about it. He continues to hope that his case will be reviewed. However his jailers could not prevent his presence crossing the Atlantic in order to walk freely through the streets, squares, parks and cultural institutions of Berlin.

This Friday the 13th, a date which many consider to be a bad omen, Berlin played host to a true act of literary justice. To the intention of the dictatorship to silence the voice of Cuban writer Ángel Santiesteban, the dictatorship received a devastating response: from Thursday afternoon and all day Friday, in different cultural centers of the city where activities were carried out as part of the International Festival of Literature, hundreds of copies of the document, “Short history of injustice”, were distributed, where it explains Ángel’s case to the invited writers, the international media and to the thousands and thousands of Germans and foreigners who attended what is considered the most important Literary Festival in recent years.

Thus at 7.30 pm, the main room of the Cervantes Institute was packed with the general public, most of whom were German although the presence of numerous Latin Americans was also noted, all interested in knowing the version of the events which would be offered by the Cuban writers José Manuel Prieto, Jorge Luis Arzola and Amir Valle, moderated by the prestigious German editor Michi Strausfeld.

The short introductory words of the Spaniard Francesc Puértolas, Head of Cultural Activities at the Cervantes Institute, made clear reference to the position of this institution to be a plural space where freedom of opinion is respected, regardless of the ideology that that opinion represented.

His words were a very brief response to another disrespectful Cuban government maneuver, through the “useful idiots” who are used outside Cuba to try to stop the campaigns denouncing the rottenness of the dictatorship. In this case, the German foundation “Netzwerk Cuba“, which brings together various associations which support the Cuban dictators, wrote an open letter in which it accused the Cervantes Institute of hosting a promotion of culture which was biased in favor of those who were serving the United States in their attacks on Cuba. In one of the paragraphs in the document, where a few historical truths are mixed with a lot of lies, they resorted to the hackneyed accusation that figures like Yoani Sánchez and Amir Valle were following agendas which had been formulated by the U.S. government in their plans against the island.

After the editor Michi Strausfeld explained to those present the personal and professional reasons why she had decided to get involved in the defense of Angel, she gave the floor to the writer Amir Valle to explain, in detail, the infamous trial for which Angel is now jailed. Valle began by apologizing to the Cervantes Institute on behalf of himself and his colleagues, because he considered the unfair letter of “Netzwerk Cuba” as offensive and disrespectful; a letter which was blatantly lying by stating that the Institute offered a partial image in favor of the enemies of the “Cuban Revolution” because earlier this year it served as a venue to meet in Berlin with the blogger Yoani Sánchez and now they hosted activity to talk about violations against freedom of expression in Cuba.

Valle said that this accusation was contradicted by the simple fact that the Cervantes Institute, on numerous occasions, had hosted Cuban writers and intellectuals who had spoken in favour of the regime, among whom he mentioned the president of  UNEAC (Cuban Writers and Artist Union), Miguel Barnet and the recent Cuban National Literature Prize winner, Leonardo Padura. In the heated discussions in the audience at the end of the activity, those present would learn that among others, Cuban writer Nancy Morejon, filmmaker Fernando Perez and artist Arturo Montoto, who have all been praised by the regime, just to mention some of the prominent guests, had been at the Cervantes Institute in recent times.

Afterwards, Valle commented that he was there as a colleague, brother and legal and literary representative of Ángel and, step by step, he described the infernal trap in which the political police hounded the writer after which he decided to go public with his criticism of the system prevailing in Cuba through his blog “The Children Nobody Wanted,” and he reminded those present that the document circulated at the Festival could interest them in discovering all the evidence of the wicked deed.

Michi Strausfeld later read fragments of a letter sent from Cuba by Ángel and gave the floor to the writer Jorge Luis Arzola, who recounted his personal experience with the Cuban political police and he referenced cases similar to Ánge’s, although much less traumatic, such as what happened to the narrator and poet Francis Sánchez when he also decided to open his own blog, receiving so much pressure and threats against him personally and his family that he decided to give up.

Once again, Michi Strasfeld read another letter which allowed the public to know what a day in the life of Ángel as a prisoner of the regime was like. The images described by Ángel, with the same naturalness and visual power which is present in his stories, touched all that were present as they informed Strausfeld, Prieto, Arzola and Valle of such at the end of the activity.

José Manuel Prieto later offered his personal vision of his experience as a writer who can travel to the island (something which neither Arzola nor Valle can do, because the regime has already prohibited their entry) and he concentrated his exhibition on the slow changes which were occurring in the aforementioned rigid and monolithic social and governmental structure, among which, the permissibility which the government was demonstrating towards the emergence of alternative spaces for citizen reflection was unthinkable in years gone by and it also ruled in favour of Ángel’s case being reviewed with true justice.

To close the evenings events, Valle presented a beautiful edition of the book “The Summer When God Was Sleeping”, with which Ángel Santiesteban recently won the Franz Kafka Novel Competition. Valle, to clarify for those who see any project to support those who oppose the regime as CIA-funded, stressed that this was purely a literary award, organized by an information platform (inCUBAtor) that is supported by the Czech NGO ’Libri Prohibiti’, a civic organization that, among other merits of cultural work, has the largest Samizdat library in Europe.

The interest aroused in the audience only further manifested itself just as the activity came to an end: many people approached the writers to ask more about the specific case of Angel and about the situation of freedom of expression in Cuba. “One of the participants approached me with a group of documents we distributed, about twenty of them, and asked me to sign them and told me: ’I will pass these out to several of my colleagues that go to Cuba on vacation and always come telling me about how beautiful the beaches are. I want them to know that there is a much tougher life away from the beach, the sun and Cuban rum’”, Valle recounted to a journalist. Another German, a well-known bookseller, approached the writers and told them “When we were listening to you speak, we commented amongst ourselves that we felt that Mr Santiesteban was up there sitting next to those were at the activity.”

Thus it was like this that Ángel Santiesteban was there, to infuriate his jailers, smiling, with that tranquility of someone who knows that they walk the right path: one of dignity and the defence of his thoughts. Later, while shadows fell over Berlin and the city started its fabulous cultural and social nightlife, he decided take a walk through the streets and walked talking, laughing, remembering the days when they were young and happy and naive, hugging his friends, then and always: Amir Valle and Jorge Luis Arzola. Michi Strausfeld was also laughing at seeing them together, another time, after almost ten years since their last meeting in Cuba.

The Editor

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

14 September 2013