Category Archives: Translator: Unstated

My Relationship with Antonio Castro

Posted on by

On 19 October 202 AD, the Roman general Scipio Africanus defeated Hannibal in the Battle of Zama, near Carthage. It has nothing to do with it, but on the same date, but much later, born in Cuba was Dr. Antonio Castro Soto del Valle, the brand new golf champion, the fourth of five sons born to the union of the former dictator and Fidel Castro with Castro Soto del Valle (a woman whom I respect for her exceptional performance of her role as mother).

Let me clarify, I say that it is exceptional because one warm winter night, at the end of 2004, when the power of MININT and the frenzy of Raul was falling on me, Antonio approached me wife, took a two dollar bill from his wallet and looking into her eyes said, “They say it brings good luck; take it, you’re going to need it. Raul tried to do away with me; but my mother is alive, JJ’s isn’t.”

My relationship with Antonio was always affable, distant, and sincere, nothing more. His marriages, wives and children is not an issue here.

As a child — according to the bodyguards — Tony was shy, obsessive, curious and capricious; but his history teacher during the time he studied at La Lenin High School described him as a fickle student, not too neat, who didn’t wear his last name easily and suffered repeated identity crises and depression.Perhaps this frustration became a counterweight of advance and then deployment.

It’s worth pointing out that with the halo of mystery and security, a constant in his life during his student years, his teachers were active members of the general directorate of MININT personal security cross-dressing as teachers, who marked extensive gaps in the cognitive and instructive processes of the young Castro Soto del Valle.

When, under his father’s orders, they broke the shell of secretiveness, Antonia, eager to socialize, was rediscovered and emerged to the ordinary world with three attractive adjectives: famous, right and powerful; in other words, a potent magnet of attraction. What many are asking is why, not being the oldest, nor the youngest, nor the last, nor the preferred, it is he who is “without equal.”

Of course, the stereotype of beauty is influential: Antonio is blond, handsome, rich in stature and exaggerated in ego. It’s the manly image of any lead actor. And he’s famous as a good doctor.

Educated like a king, and fascinated by monarchies, he is a sophisticated mortal who has charm, elegance and good taste. Friendly when he wants to be and overwhelming when contradicted.

But the key to his success lies in the art of seduction. He knows well that his last name, more than an icon, is a commercial trademark and he handles masterfully and in detail his personal marketing.

His immodesty and glamor are undoubtedly his strongest attraction; he enjoys being different but repulses those who flatter him, he has temporary sensitivity for ordinary Cubans (whom, logically, he will inherit as subjects), those whose only property is their ID cards.

Tony is a cool guy, who born in half disaffection assume that, even though born in power, all human beings are like our environment and as such we should be understood.

23 May 2013


Stride for Stride / Fernando Damaso

Posted on by

Since its installation in power, the Cuban government has always moved stride for stride with the corresponding thick ideological cover. Each year was given a name, which was supposed to serve as an incentive for work during its twelve months. Thus, 1959 was the Year of the Liberation, but it really meant, by the measures taken, rather than the liberation, the violation of all existing rights and freedoms. Then came many others which, above all, were more than just names without concrete results, until they lost interest in the practice and it become routine, and then they started to put the focus on slogans for extensive periods of time.

One of the most interesting was the so-called Battle of Ideas, where everything that is done or undone formed a part of it, from fixing a pothole, repairing a bodega, replacing a bulb in the street, tilling the land, holding a rally, reaping the harvest, etc.

It was so important that he even had his ministry and minister, who seemed drawn from the pages of George Orwell’s novel 1984. I came to constitute a little parallel private government within the existing, complicating everything even more that is already was.

When he stepped down from the presidency for health reasons, the ministry, the minister and the Battle didn’t last very long, although the formula was not abandoned and reappeared in the Guidelines of the Party and the Revolution.

Since then, everything that is planned, done or undone forms a part of them, now with the addition of its corresponding little number: everyone works in compliance with some guideline, be it number 10, number 83, number 104, or any other up to 313 and, necessarily, it has to be put on the record.

I dream of the time when in my country things are done because they must be done, and the government implements them because it’s their obligation and reason for being, without any ideological cover, let alone strides that usually have always fallen on deaf ears.

22 May 2013


Prison Diary XX. With his mouth sewn shut and smeared with excrement, a young man demands his rights

Posted on by

I found myself, like most of the time, writing on my bed when I heard the call, “Political, Political”; and they came to me in haste. Outside, they told me, there was a man who sewed his mouth shut with wire, come.

Really, to think about the scene makes me bitter. “I’m not a maxillofacial doctor, why, then, my presence?” I said, trying to avoid it. It was he who was calling, they told me, “He wants to talk with you.” Then, I couldn’t stay away. As I approached I heard his desperate voice, calling me, between lips barely open.

To describe the horror in a way that someone who hasn’t seen it can imagine it, is not possible: he stopped in front of the patio door that leads to my hut, his body smeared with fecal waste, holding a pail of dung with the aim of evading the guards who didn’t dare to force him back to his cell. The worst were his lips sewn with wire. The first question I asked myself was what level of desperation, helplessness and sadness could have forced him to commit such a folly, because by his aspect he doesn’t seem to be mentally ill.

With difficulty I could understand that he was desperate because the guards did not want to hear his being right. They just threatened and beat him every time he demanded his rights, and this had led him to take that step. Several times he assured me he wasn’t crazy: he tells me that if the Rapporteurs of the Commission of Human Rights come to see me, don’t be afraid to tell the truth.

I nodded my head in agreement, I’m always overwhelmed by the anxiety of my powerlessness to help. I wouldn’t have minded touching and cleaning those lips that were beginning to show signs of infection, a reason for their taking him to the nurse in those conditions.

I swore that within my humble means, I would inform international public opinion, and if the Rapporteurs came to Cuba, I would talk to them about him.

Before he left I tried to convince him that he had accomplished his purpose; the prison and its leadership felt the guilt of not having listened, the other inmates as well, so I asked if it made sense to continue in such conditions, to the point of putting his life in danger. He said, “Yes, Political, don’t think that I came to you without knowing who you are, in the cell told me how they force-fed you, if you weren’t there or in the hospital.”

I could only ask God to protect him.

Finally he responded to the constant order of the guards to continue to his cell.

“Don’t forget me, Political,” he said, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from tearing up. In those few minutes we had shared between us a solidarity and brotherhood which rose above the difficult situation in which we live.

“I embrace you,” he said. “I you, as well,” I responded and he walked proudly to the dirty and dark recesses of the punishment cells.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580. May 2013

22 May 2013


Universal / Yoani Sanchez

Posted on by

sif2013Someone sitting at the table behind spoke in French, while in chairs at the side two Brazilians exchanged ideas. Two steps further on some activists from Belarus were talking with some Spaniards who had also come to the Stockholm Internet Forum. An event that began on May 21 in the Swedish capital bringing together people interested in digital tools, social networks and cyberspace. A real Tower of Babel where we communicate in the lengua franca of technology. The global and virtual village is now contained in an old factory on the edge of the sea. And in the midst of this back and forth of analysis and anecdotes, are six Cubans, also willing to contribute their labor as cyber activists.

This is without a doubt the most enjoyable stage of my long journey and not because other places haven’t been filled with beautiful impressions and lots of hugs, but because here I have met up with several colleagues from the Island. Some of the people who, in our country have grabbed hold of new technologies to narrate and to try to change our reality, today are gathered here. The young attorney Laritza Diversent, the director of Estado de SATS, Antonio Rodiles, the keen blogger Miriam Celaya, the information engineer Eliecer Avila, and joining us for one day as well, the independent reporter Roberto Guerra. Here in Stockholm it has felt rather like Cuba, though certainly not because of the weather.

The Internet Forum has allowed us to feel like citizens of the world, to share experiences with those who live in different situations but, in essence, surprisingly similar ones. It’s enough to chat with another attendee for a little while, or to listen to a talk, to realize that in every word spoken here is the eternal human quest for knowledge, information… freedom. Expressed on this occasion through circuits, screens and kilobytes. This meeting has left us with the sensation that we are universal and that technologies have made us into people capable of transcending our geography and our time.

like_webb23 May 2013


A Secret Recording in Venezuela and Thieves’ Convenent Between Followers of Chavez and Castro / CID

Posted on by
Mario Silva and Fidel Castro

Mario Silva and Fidel Castro

This past May 20 the National Assembly deputy Ismael Garcia of Venezuela in Caracas made public a recording of a telephone conversation between a famous member of the Chavez Nomenklatura, Mario Silva, and Cuban Lieutenant Colonel Aramis Palacio from Castro’s State “Insecurity.”

In the recording Mario Silva details for the Cuban Colonel the maneuvers by which Diosdado Cabello, the President of the National Assembly of Venezuela and one of the strongmen of Chavezism, has fraudulently been enriched to the detriment of the Venezuelan state.

Also exposed in the conversation are the intense conflicts that exist in the Chavista leadership in sectors involving the armed forces of Venezuela. Mario Silva exposes all these things in detail for the purpose of informing the Castro regime higher ups in Havana, who we know have decisive power in Venezuela.

Mario Silva and Hugo Chavez

Mario Silva and Hugo Chavez

In Venezuela the scandal has been terrible. The corruption and Castro regime interference everyone imagined or suspected was confirmed by a personality who had the full confidence of the late Hugo Chavez.

For nine years Mario Silva has been the host of The Razor, Chavez’s favorite TV show, who “used to call him to give him some news,” or to help up to Silva in his work as destroyer of the credibility of outsiders. To each attack or complaint of the opposition, Chavez responded with a “Mario, continue investigating.”

That space, which began by criticizing private media coverage, became the arena where they lynched without mercy: victims included Miguel Henrique Otero, editor-president of the newspaper El Nacional, whom Silva called “bastard”; the former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles whom he called a “murderer” for the deaths that occurred after the announcement of close election results of April 14.

Mario Silva and Hugo Chavez

Mario Silva and Hugo Chavez

The deputy of the Venezuela National Assembly, Ismael García, made the recording public and requested an official investigation. So far this investigation has been rejected by all levels of government. A reaction that confirms they have much fear once the recording is authenticated forcing them to air the claims of Mario Silva.

The fact that after nine years Silva has just announced he will stop producing his famous TV show is sufficient proof of the veracity of his conversation with the Cuban henchman. This is the first chapter of the story. It was announced that new secrets will be made public.

Chavezism and Castroism have suffered another serious failure that will have grave consequences and further weaken the covenant of thieves that has allowed the looting of Venezuelan wealth, among other things, to maintain the bankrupt dictatorship in Cuba.

23 May 2013


Graffiti: El Sexto / Cuban Blogger Magazine

Posted on by

Screen Shot 2013-05-22 at 10.47.24 PMThe development of graffiti as rebellious art expression in Cuba has been rough and rather late when compared with the rest of the world. However, in the last two years has seen an explosion of popularity thanks to the work of El Sexto — the Sixth — the pen name of the Danilo Maldonado Machado, a unique Cuban graffiti artist who has taken on, as is known, his art as a form of dissident expression.

El Sexto paints his graffiti on the streets of Havana, on walls, ruins, buses, traffic signs, etc., demanding freedom and recently remembering Laura Pollan, the late leader of the Ladies in White.

His public art is often diluted by the authorities, usually with pink paint. In one of his images El Sexto says that art is more powerful than the weapons of his oppressors. In December 2011, after his arrest, the political police tried to discredit him by saying that in reality he wasn’t a counterrevolutionary, nor an artist — he was nothing, just a simple drug addict.

El Sexto is a kind of Robin Hood, an anonymous face in Cuba that survives assuming a social commitment and, therefore, El Sexto is everywhere coming from everywhere, responding to the alienating media campaign which for over a decade has produce slogans for the release of five spies convicted in the United States.

Maldonado defines himself through an interview granted to on-line page, The Stark Life. Although the Cuban Internet is Paleolithic, the world follow us and we follow the world, he concludes.

The Editorial Board, Cuban Blogger Magazine


El Sexto / Reinaldo Escobar

Posted on by
Screen Shot 2013-05-22 at 10.03.01 PM

On the billboard: “Free our [Five] Heroes. Speech: “The citizen who calls himself ‘The Sixth’ has been detained for mistreating the public art. And now.” Artist: Garrincha

New graffiti is present on Havana’s walls. In large cursive letters thier author writes the word “Sexto” — Sixth — at times finishing off the the writing with a star, other times adding to the text the image of a face. It reminds me of the pioneer of Cuban graffiti, Chori, who left barely a wall in Havana without his signature made with white chalk back in the ‘60s, and, they tell me, from before that.

Is it a proper name, or perhaps the name of a hip hop group that in my profound musical ignorance I can’t call to mind? A retiree whom I greet now and then in the line for newspapers, asked me if this poster could be some kind of advertising for the Sixth Communist Party Congress, in the style of a campaign invented by Robertico Robaina in the years when he was first secretary of the Young Communist Union (UJC). Do you remember? 31 and Ever Onward and that Ever whatever, commander, ever whatever. But it doesn’t seem that Julio Martinez, the most insipid youth leader in the history of Cuba, is the one that has had the initiative.

Who knows? Maybe it is the sixth child of a marriage, or someone demobilized from military service who celebrates his release remembering the number he had in his unit or a sex maniac with poor spelling, and I can’t even rule out the hypothesis of my retired friend that it is a militant communist who, in this way, is reminding his party leaders that they have already celebrated the end of the congress.

Part of the Dossier of El Sexto, which will appear here piece by piece.


Graffiti and Scathing Flyers / Eugenio Leal

Posted on by
El Sexto Awakes

El Sexto Awakes

Graffiti, a term that comes from the Italian “graffio” meaning “scratch,” has existed since the dawn of humanity. We see it in the cave paintings of Lascaux, in France. Our ancestors marked the walls with bones and stones and left us their testimony. Also, in ancient Greece and the ruins of Pompey texts have appeared that revealed election slogans, drawings and the various obscenities of their inhabitants.

In Havana, in the early nineties, with the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the economic crisis that the government called “the Special Period,” we found at various points in the city a symbol of the Abakuá fraternity. It consisted of a circle within which are two rods superimposed on a cross with arrows at both ends, which means “the roads are closed.”

At different times, other symbols and texts have gained ground in the urban environment and, systematically, government agencies have been alerted to erase, detect, apprehend, prosecute and imprison the graffiti artists. But as the system’s structural crisis became endemic, we became used to — both the repressors and repressed — the appearance, more or less ephemeral, of suggestive messages encoded in different parts of the city.

A few years ago, in Plaza along 23rd Street, an enigmatic text appeared. It was red, consisting of a vertical line with an arrow at the upper end that made an inverted letter V, and another, normal, much smaller, on the lower end. To emphasize, the reverse S was upside down. Virtually overnight the graffiti appeared on facades, walls, traffic signals, park benches, and whatever flat surface was available.

There was no need to be an expert in esotericism, the sign told us we had the change the situation of our society. Not only by the reverses word. The weight of the large V on the little one, on the lower part, indicated the instability of the system.

Recently, I met a young active graffiti artist who signs his work with “El Sexto” — the Sixth — and is designated National Graffiti Artist Vanguard. From a long time back I have seen his mark all over the city, that authenticates his self-identification. Now, in the most unexpected places, his texts and the characteristic signature line appear.

Distinguishing himself from others, who have also dabbled in the art of graffiti, he also prints flyers. And so he shatters the ancient iconography of the system of government. Among them are: “Give Back My 5 Euros,” which satirizes the alienating campaign for the 5 spies of the Wasp Network imprisoned in the United States; “With Reason Held High” in opposition to the slogan of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDRs); and “The Sixth Truth” where his image and the word Truth appear which discredits and shows the phobia occasioned by the truth. In his way, The Sixth transmits an important message: We are beginning to exercise our rights.

Please! Keep El Sexto in your sight. We will not allow the totalitarian regime to devour this young man, as they did to others when there were no modern information and communication technologies.

Part of the Dossier of El Sexto, which will appear here piece by piece.

October 2011


Cuba: Young Blood for Change / El Sexto – Danilo Maldonado

Posted on by
Danilo Maldonado - El Sexto. Photo: Claudio Fuentes

Danilo Maldonado – El Sexto. Photo: Claudio Fuentes

HAVANA. – Raul Castro speaks in the Communist Party conclave. “Comrades, we can see a better Cuba coming on the horizon.” A guajiro (peasant) is listening to him on TV, and as he doesn’t understand the meaning of the word “horizon” he looks it up in the dictionary: visual boundary of the earth’s surface that never arrives. “Ah, chico,” the guajiro boasts, “Now I understand what the president wanted to say!”

Cuban jokes are starkly ironic about themselves. But thanks to these little social x-rays, life goes better. Even now, with the Castro brothers’ Revolution proposing a battery of economic changes to try to save Cuba from bankruptcy. LNR [La Nacion magazine] traveled to the new Cuban labyrinth alongside ten personalities who form a part of this brand new society trying to rise from the economic ashes. They are the faces of change.

Daniel Lozano for La Nacion

Part of the Dossier of El Sexto, which will appear here piece by piece.

22 May 2013


Cuba is a Running Tap / Luis Felipe Rojas

Posted on by

A running tap, a manhole with the cover in the middle of the street, a medical clinic bordered by sewage, make up a picture of the Cuba that does not come out in the official press nor on the agenda of the tour operators who work on Cuba in the area of international tourism.

In Cerro or Centro Habana, on many occasions, the waters running down the avenue are often confused with the sewer water that escapes through the pipes ruined by time.

22 May 2013


The Numbers that Cuba Shelves / Juan Juan Almeida

Posted on by

According to the newspaper Granma, Cuba is among the 16 countries that have already reached the goal set by the World Food Summit in 1996, halving the number of undernourished people in every country of the world before 2015.

It is sad that Mr. José Graziano da Silva, director general of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO, for its acronym in English), asserts that the credit has been possible thanks to the priority given by the Cuban government to guaranteeing its people’s right to food and the policies implemented to achieve this objective.

Nonsense, but explainable. It’s hard to see beyond the growth with its perfection that aims to show a government that distorts all its data and knows that for the vast majority of international organizations, the world is reduced to numbers. We are numbers and calculations; very dangerous arithmetic that some Cuban officials handle with excellence. My country is a place of impunity reigned over by an impeccable combination of politics and prostitution.

I don’t want to go overboard citing old familiar tactics used by the Cuban government to lobby and win votes in the different international level forums. It makes no difference if it’s the CDR, FMC, UNICEF, FAO, HRC, EU, UNDP, OEI, CARICOM … Every acronym is handled the same, national or international. When there are funds, nothing will be impossible because in island politics you just have to wait and what is won is lost and what is lost is won.

In the mid ’90s, a young neonatologist who worked in the Ramón González Coro OB-GYN Hospital in Havana Vedado, formerly the Sacred Heart clinic, was among the many selected to be part of a commission that would study what then was a TOP SECRET investigation.

Hiding a smile, and trying not to show her immense gratitude for such reliability, the talented doctor went to work. And counting on the full support of the Council of State itself, she thought that telling the truth would be the seed of what with great passion she called “My Revolution.”

The hurried exploration found that the Cuban infant born underweight, which later resulted in a considerable and irreversible decrease in size of the Cuban child, which even scientifically established standards considered “alarming.”

For this study, which lasted some time, this multidisciplinary team compiled a spreadsheet which took into account variables such as maternal age, health status assessment to detect pregnancy, treatment with nutritional supplements, weight gain in pregnancy , history of curettage, etc.. All these data were extracted from the records of pregnant women in doctors’ offices, and in the various departments of statistics for each local polyclinic.

The final report revealed that the factors associated with the preterm birth of many Cuban infants weighing under 2,500 grams, are inadequate nutrition of the future mother (this represented the highest percentage of cases studied), anemia during pregnancy and an inadequate time between births.

Since then, and as appropriate, the results were altered and the real results were shelved under lock and key. And my friend, who left medicine and has dedicated herself to painting, says that facial hair is not the only thing that connects Cuban officials with the Taliban.

21 May 2013


To Silent the Different / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

Posted on by

http://www.hsn.com/

My appreciated usual accomplices and visitors:

On May 15th my husband’s laptop just died. It blinked when I was working on it and the monitor turned itself off forever. It was the family computer, a practical tool that, like housing and multiple personal articles in Cuba have to shared with sons, their girlfriends and friends. It was six years old and we’d had it repaired on several occasions, but this time it decided to rest from the overwork and heat we submitted it to for years.

Just when we are engaged in the promotion of the “360 Cuba” Project, we published here, the sudden loss of this instrument central to the methodological and sustainable deployment of the program and the rhythm of publication of opinions in the blog.

The lack of support in resources — I’m one of the bloggers who doesn’t have a PC — makes me think that perhaps there has been a sustained move by the Cuban political police to obstruct our development — my husband is an opposition leader and also has a blog — stopping our development or better still, killing us through the media.

Of course that will reduce my writing output, but would not give up my right to continue broadcasting my opinions, because I consider it a duty of every citizen with their time, history and homeland, charting the reality that surrounds him with words and complaints, especially when it involves, as in the case of Cuba, a dictatorship.

This inconvenience has paralyzed us for now, but circumstances sometimes impose challenges on us which, while closing a door open windows and lead us to creativity. I looked for possible alternatives because I refuse to passively accept the situation which gives another victory to the Cuban dictatorship, and although small, a defeat to those of us who push for and defend democracy.

21 May 2013