For Sale or Trade. From martinoticias.com

Placing zeros to the right seems to be the preferred sport of those who put a price on the homes they sell in Cuba today. A captive market at the end of the day, the buyer could find a lot of surprises in the wide range of classified ads. From owners who ask astronomical sums for their houses, sums that have nothing to do with the reality of demand, to real bargains that make you feel sorry for the naiveté of the negotiator. Many are pressured to sell, some by those with the smarts to realize that this is the time to buy a house on the Island. It is a bet on the future, if it goes wrong they lose almost everything, but if it goes well they position themselves — in advance — for tomorrow. The slow hurry up and the fast run at the speed of light. These are times to make haste, the end of an era could be close… say the smartest.

It’s surprising to see, with barely any notion of real estate, how Cubans launch themselves into the marketing of square meters. They talk about their space, usually with an over abundance of adjectives that make you laugh or scare you. So when you read “one bedroom apartment in central Havana with mezzanine bedroom,” you should understand “room in a Central Havana apartment with wooden platform.” If they talk about a garden, it’s best to imagine a bed with soil and plants at the entrance; and even five-bedroom residences, after a visit, are reduced to two bedrooms partitioned with cardboard. The same mistrust with which people view the photos on the social networks where young people look for partners, should be applied to housing ads here. However, you can also find real pearls in the midst of the exaggeration.

Right now there are at least three parameters that determine the final cost of a home: location, physical state of construction, and pedigree. The neighborhood has a great influence on the final value of the property. In Havana, the most prized areas are Vedado, Miramar, Central Havana, Víbora and Cerro, for their central character. The least wanted are Alamar, Reparto Eléctrico, San Miguel del Padrón and La Lisa. The poor state of public transport significantly influences people’s preference for houses that are near major commercial centers with abundant spaces for entertainment. If there is a farmers market in the vicinity, the asking price goes up; if it is near the Malecon it also goes up. People shy away from the periphery, although among the “new rich,” those who have accumulated a little more capital whether by legal or illegal means, the trend of looking for homes in the outskirts has begun. It is still too early, however, to speak about a trend to locate in greener and less polluted areas. For now, the main premise can be summarized as the more central the better.

The physical state is one of the other elements that defines what a home will cost. If the ceiling is beam and slab, the numbers fall; meanwhile constructions from the 1940s and ‘50s enjoy a very good reputation and appeal. The lowest values are for the so-called “microbrigade works” with their ugly concrete buildings and their little Eastern European style apartments. If the roofing is light — tiles, zinc, wood, ceiling paper — the seller will get less. The state of the bathroom and kitchen are another point that directly influences the marketability of the property. The quality of the floors, if the windows are barred and the door is new — of glass and metal — these are points in its favor. If there are no neighbors overhead, then the seller can rest easy. Also very valuable are houses with two entrances, designed for a large family seeking to split up and live independently. Everything counts, anything goes.

So far it resembles a real estate market like any other anywhere in the world. However, there is a situation that defines, in a very particular way, the value of homes for sale. This is their pedigree. This refers to whether the house has belonged to the family for forever, or if it was confiscated in one of the waves of expropriations in Cuba. If the previous owner left during the Rafter Crisis of 1994 and the State handed the property over to someone new, the price is lower. The same thing happens if it was taken during the Mariel Boatlift in 1980, a time when property was awarded to others after the emigration of those who had lived there up until that time. But where the prices hit rock bottom is with those homes confiscated between 1959 and 1963, when great numbers left for exile. Few want to take on the problem of acquiring a site that later may go into litigation. Although there are some who are taking advantage of this situation to buy real mansions in the most central neighborhoods at bargain prices.

In order to check the location, the state of construction, as well as the legal past of the house, potential buyers are aided by their own experience, a good architect and even a lawyer to dig through the details of the property. Each element adds or removes a cipher, one zero or one hundred to the total price people are willing to pay. In a captive market anything is possible; it’s as if knowledge of real estate has only been sleeping, lethargic, and now returns with amazing force.

18 May 2013

THE WAILING OF THE HUDSON RIVER

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Why does it wail, do you know?

The Hudson River wails at dawn. It makes like a low curve underneath the bridge or against its columns and then its metal waters arrive up to the terrace where I take cover from the cold that comes from the most ancient New York (city of a thousand films in my provincial imagination). And where a little bit of a Havana fled, that tried and tried, but still won’t die in my soul.

It would be cruel if at these heights of the dis-history my city wouldn’t let me forget her. I am a man. I lived in her for 40 years. It’s time to rest now. I’m exhausted. My eyes are so sad from so much seeing and seeing, without you looking at me. Even the colors have changed, like the afternoon that puts itself out from pure tedium. It’s time to rest. Havana, listen to me, please. Stay the fuck back.

If the Hudson River didn’t wail of doomsday at dawn, I would have to pull my head out of a 19th Century brick building. There are such beautiful and free people in this city. They look for you with a certain light of hope. Spring doesn’t manage to distort the jewel grey of Washington Heights and its desperate terracotta facades. This neighborhood all at once reminds me of the Lawton of my childhood. I know I don’t know what I’m saying, but it’s true. I had 40 years built up living secretly in a corner of the planet like this. A slice of insanity. A vision, a mirage. Miracle. Come along now, you.

The little glass-coffin windows filter voices coming from the floor below or the next state of this super-country. At last, after having counted so many stars and adding one more for Cuba (I grew up around these kinds of jokes), I don’t know how many shine in the blue rectangle. The US flag, let’s say it before it gets any later, is one of the most precious in the world. By some miracle, I prefer the Cuban, I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because of its sensation of geometric imbalance or incompleteness.

I’ve seen beggars covered with circus tarps in New York and in Washington (I’m going to come to stay and live in Washington when I feel that my heart won’t die: it’s not a city, it’s a stage, and I love spaces that overflow their own extensions). Very few beggars, but I’ve seen them just the same. Many times more swarm in the streets of downtown Havana, and they smell worse. It’s just as cold and the night is long. I sympathize. I think I don’t have money enough to even buy one of those tarps. I’m a mannequin recently departed from the hands of a State that no one stops talking about here. I am in New York somehow only for that: to disown myself of all possessions and stay like the dream of a simple voice. The voice of those who indeed have a voice and are now about to lose it forever in a mock country. My country, a deal between the high powers of crime and the economy and the purple boasting of those who believe in incubating God in the archbishopric. And my voice, you know well that it’s your voice because so it has always been, brother, from Cuba. Your voice from Cuba where you shall want what you might be and shall now never return to listen to it, my love.

Hudson River, howled by Steppenwolf. There is a fury of end of the earth in me tonight that requires me to chew the glass from the windows, rip curtains, and business up out there, and sink myself in the trachea of a subway that reminds me of the dim light of Route 23. In the cafes the neighborhood girls are all left-handed and read A Streetcar Named Desire for hours. I click the arrhythmia of an anti-academic counterrevolution, as intolerable on the island as it is in exile. Inmanipulable, for that matter, intoolerable. Let me go home. And I go.

And my home turns into being my body, housing a frightened mind. It’s obvious that the government is hunting us crassly, tuning their aim as if we were ducks fleeing in the spring. And we are. A night in 1900-something, three days ago, I saw ducks in the frozen water of the monolith in Washington. I also saw a mistake in the Lincoln Memorial. I saw smoke in the sewers. Special pins from the State Department. And a loneliness of staff meetings that held me with pain to my bones until someone said something to me and laughed afterwards, restoring the order of things in the universe. The universe as a billiard ball, rolling as a vile buffalo.

Sometimes it howls. Wail. World Wide wail that makes the Hudson indistinguishable from an ambulance (those ambulances of the soundtracks with saxophone and sex that I used to see when I lived there, on the other side of the bay and the sky with microscopic flakes from the end of winter).

All writing is a farewell to mourning. New York is preparing itself for our slaughter. We are going to annihilate the Cubans. The desert must rule, life is a leftover. I’m announcing it with a gushing pleasure that will not explode on you. In more than one sense, until the last Cuban does not die violently, Fidel Castro will not know how to die.

(This last prayer is the most intimate crystallization of the beauty exposed before the dismay of those who don’t know how to hear. Then hear me, my characters: Ipatria, Olivia, Sally, finally …)

I’m going to stop. I’ve spent many days without being able to add an image to my madness. I’m trying to invent words. Other names for another novel. Rosemary, Samantha, Kate. Always girls without end … of boys I wouldn’t be able to write even a dialog. The boy is me and I’m dissolving more with each period.

Amen, my dears. Let me go.

Translated by: JT

13 March 2013

UMAP: Citizens’ force used for the good of society. Brilliant initiative of military cadres.

A common school, half in ruins, half with children in uniform, with its Cuban flag and signs on the walls. The boys talk among themselves, then look with curiosity at the stranger, who takes photos of enormous homeless sites behind the surviving classrooms. Everything seems normal in that country schoolhouse. But there is a shadow. The stranger quickly quits with the photos. The last: some cement squares next to the door, “like a booth in a military unit,” he thought. He crosses the potholes of the road and approaches the wooden houses. They welcome him, give him water, talk about the sunshine and the plums. The stranger, who has already been introduced, happily drinks the coffee they also offer him, smiles, and thanks the lady and shuts up. It’s that there is a shadow.

Then, he asks the man of the house, an old man with a mustache, “Is it true that the elementary school, a long time ago, was a UMAP*?” He points at the half-boarding Batalla de Guisa school, whose kids have no idea what was suffered there forty-some years ago. The farmer stops smiling. He hesitates, stutters, speaks softly, looks at the floor. “Yes, yes… but no. I’m not looking for problems.” Someone says, “They took the people there to some banana groves to work.”

Other visits to the farmers around then, other evasions, “Yes, yes, some of that happened.  One guy set himself on fire and the screams could be heard for miles. But I do not know anything else. “

One lady says, “There was a lot of damage. There were dungeons, there at the end.”

So I ask, in other houses, people who lived there, in the hamlet of Manolin, ten kilometers from the southern town of Cuatro Caminos, Camagüey, in the sixties, that time of so much luminous Revolution, and so many prison cells and firing squads — more than any time in the history of Cuba.

Those who respond say yes and open their eyes as if amazed at what they’ve just be reminded of. They know more or less that the collapsed schoolhouse was a UMAP camp, run by officers of the Revolutionary Armed Forces, and serious things happened to those interned there.

“What things?” and then they hesitated, “Better ask so-and-so, who lived closer.” And the faces of mystery, the silence, the evasions in the faces of the interviewed farmers tell me more than everything they can say to me: there are the silent screams of an abysmal shadow that hangs over the people in Cuba, not only those of these fields of Najasa, but so many in this country who live filled with fear of saying in public what they want and what they know.

And I write it of course: the biggest problem with the forced internal silence about the UMAP issue is not that there is discrimination based on sexual behavior today in Cuba and it remains in the minds of thousands of Cuban men and women and in the structures of leadership, nor that the one who manages this issue officially here is a member of the governing family — which stinks of nepotism — nor than they try to hide the past, among other reasons to avoid a settling of accounts, inopportune repentance and reparations for the victims. The worst is the infinite fear that still infects millions of people in this country, a logical fear induced from above which, while it exists, prevents Cubans from speaking freely of their desires, concerns and complaints, of their past, and even more seriously, of their present.

That grave mystery that the people around the little school that was UMAP remember fearfully, is proof. Where there are people afraid to speak there is no peace.

*Translator’s note: UMAP, “Military Units to Aid Production,” was a series of concentration camps where the regime imprisoned its “enemies” including homosexuals, religious believers, writers, artists, intellectuals and others.

18 May 2013

Mariela Castro, CENESEX director and Rene Gonzales, one of the “Cuban Five”

During this month the island is celebrating the sixth edition of the Cuban Day Against Homophobia. The LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community on the island, in their eternal struggle against rejection and exclusion, joins in an apparent cultural celebration organized by the government.

The smiling faces of several LGBT people, marking the day, suggests a satisfied community.

However, the government has not taken any firm steps with regard to respect for sexual rights. The island does not recognize same-sex couples let alone allow their adoption of children. No accusations of gender discrimination may be brought in the Cuban courts.

Under slogans like “Socialism yes, homophobia, no,” Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro and director of the National Sexual Education Center (and also a Deputy to the National Assembly), leads the activities of the day. Unofficial sources reported that some detractors of the Deputy were prevented from attending some events.

On the night of Saturday May 11, the Cuban Gala Against Homophobia was being held with the presence of Cuban agent Rene Gonzalez, who was officially recognized, as was reported in Granma, the Communist Party mouthpiece newspaper. Also, the Gala was chaired by the First Vice President of the Councils of State and Ministers, Miguel Diaz-Canel, and the President of the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists, Miguel Barnet.

“More than a cultural gala it appeared to be a political act,” said one gay college student attending the event. “There was a great presence of uniformed and plainclothes police. The performances of the transvestites (men who dress as women’s clothing as an art form) took place in front of photos of “The Five,” the student said in reference to the five spies sentenced in the United States.

According to this observer, the speakers of the evening repeated, “Long live diversity and freedom for the Cuban Five!” He questioned, “I do not understand what one thing has to do with the other, why do they flood our few spaces flooded political slogans?”

Lissy, an LGBT member, confessed her discomfort in one part of the gala in which a transvestite speaker, paraphrasing the famous gay expression (“Out of the way, Mirtha Medina*, Annia Linares* has arrived”), replaced it with “Out of the way, Obama, Mariela has arrived.”

“The worst thing is that many at the joke, I don’t know, but the most culture they had was the closing song by Los Van Van,” he said.

A gay intellectual who requested anonymity criticized that spaces for debate are only granted to discuss the issue of homosexuality in the context of the day. “There hasn’t been a lot of outreach about the activities and in many of the events there is little gay presence.”

According to this year’s report to the UN Universal Periodic Review, by the Cuban government, on the island they are “promoting respect for freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity.” Brazil recommended to the Cuban delegation that they expand the opportunities for dialogue and interaction on these issues. However, beyond dialogue, the Cuban LGBT community needs laws to protect their sexual rights.

May 17 is World Day Against Homophobia. In over 50 countries homosexuals are persecuted and in at least 8 they are sentenced to death. In other countries there is cause for celebration because of the advances with respect to their rights. We hope that this event will be held in Cuba without ideological manipulation and a common message: non-discrimination.

*Translator’s note: Both are Cuban singers.

Text taken from Cubanet and posted in Wendy and Ignacio’s blog

17 May 2013

In this future government I don’t doubt that there will be the same people who now support the dictatorship.

Unfortunately they are corks*, intellectuals without honor, allying themselves for their personal benefit to communism and fascism.

We see them there, and they, as usual, extend a greeting to me that if I escape they will label me spiteful and say that I cannot adjust to the new national force for a better country.

Those of us who were born to suffer, those of us who do not accept gifts from wherever they come, those of us who think first of Martí, we never enter into these political alliances.

For me, a president is nothing more than a good administrator, and if we get one, then we will see our economy and our culture flourish. What more can we ask for? With that I will be deeply happy. I want a participatory democracy, a country without a secret police that persecutes the opposition and a culture that is not censored for expressing ideas contrary to the State.

In short, I want a free country and that’s why I wake up every morning in this prison completely sure that José Martí’s dream is coming. I am happy in the place that I am. I am at the side of the suffered with Bishop Espada, Father Jos” Agustín Caballero and Félix Varela; I am where I am because I am continuing along the path laid for us by Martí, Céspedes, Agramonte, Maceo. And accompanying me on this path are hundreds of Cubans like Antonio Rodiles, Jose Daniel Ferrer, Guillermo Fariñas, Berta Soler, Hector Maseda, Angel Moya, Cuesta Morúa, Antunez, Manzano and Palacio, among many, who risk their lives and those of their families to achieve our longed for freedom, not to mention the community of bloggers and independent journalists.

I am going to be this: a citizen in the service of good causes, and I’ll be with the rest of the noble and honest intellectuals creating our works which is the best omen.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580. May 2013

*Translator’s note: “Corks” in the sense that they keep bobbing to the surface.

17 May 2013

During this day different activities are undertaken to promote respect for sexual diversity worldwide. Its objective is to articulate actions and reflection to combat physical, moral or symbolic violence linked to sexual orientation or gender identity. Homophobia takes different forms depending on the geographical and social space, so that responses to it must also be different.

On May 17, 1990 the General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses.

17 May 2013

Posted on 13 April 2013 by Writers in Prison

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias

[The following is in English in the original]

The Writers in Prison Committee (WiPC) of PEN International welcomes the 9 April 2013 release of the independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, who had been detained without charge since September 2012. However, PEN notes that two other writers remain imprisoned in the country – state journalist José Antonio Torres and author and blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats – and continues to call on the authorities to provide assurances that their sentences are not related to their reporting, and to make public details of their trials.

Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, journalist for the independent news agency Hablemos Press, was released from prison on 9 April 2013, after being detained without charge for almost seven months. Arrested on 16 September 2012 after covering a cholera outbreak which the Cuban authorities had reportedly been trying to downplay, he faced a sentence of up to three years in prison for ‘disrespect’ towards the head of state under Article 144 of the Cuban Criminal Code. The charges were never officially confirmed, his lawyer was not allowed access to his case file and he was never put on trial.

Martínez’ release eventually came amid growing pressure from Cuban civil society and international organisations and the day after he began his third hunger strike. He had called off his previous hunger strike on 28 March after the authorities indicated that he would be moved from Combinado del Este prison to Valle Grande prison and subsequently released. However, although Martínez was transferred he was not freed. As a result, he resumed his hunger strike on 8 April. A number of his colleagues and fellow dissidents joined the hunger strike, including Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, director of Hablemos Press, which had launched a campaign on social media to push for Martínez’ release.

According to colleagues at Hablemos Press, Martínez has lost two teeth and has cuts on his lips and tongue. Previous reports indicate that he suffered ill treatment in prison, including assault, a ban on using the telephone, being placed in solitary confinement and denied medical attention.

Two other writers remain in Cuban prisons: José Antonio Torres, former correspondent for the government newspaper Granma, and Ángel Santiesteban Prats, award-winning writer and author of the blog ‘The Children Who Nobody Loved’ (‘Los Hijos que Nadie Quiso’). Little is known about the trial of either writer.

Torres, who has been detained since February 2011, is serving a 14-year prison sentence for alleged espionage. His arrest followed the publication of articles in 2010 detailing the mismanagement of an aqueduct project and the installation of fibre-optic cable between Venezuela and Cuba, in which Vice President Ramiro Valdés was named as responsible for supervising both projects. Torres was convicted in mid-June 2012 following a closed trial. Cuba’s state-run media has made only a few brief references to Torres’ case and little is known about the espionage charge, although there are rumours that he may have offered or given confidential information to the US diplomatic mission in Havana.

Santiesteban was imprisoned on 28 February 2013 after being sentenced to five years in prison for alleged assault and trespassing in a case involving his ex-wife. The writer maintains that the charges are fabricated and politically motivated, retribution for his blog which is critical of the Cuban situation and government. He also claims that he was informed of what the outcome of the trial would be on 8 November 2012, one month before the sentencing took place. Details of the case against Santiesteban have not been made public in state media, but according to the appeal lodged by his lawyer there were a number of serious irregularities in the trial and sentencing.

PEN holds no position on Santiesteban’s guilt or innocence. However, it is concerned that his trial appears to have fallen short of international human rights standards.

A post on Santiesteban’s blog dated 9 April 2013 said that the writer had taken from La Lima prison to an unknown destination, and suggested that the reason for his removal was that the ‘Human Rights Commission’ (possibly the Comisión Cubana de Derechos Humanos) had been due to visit the prison that day. Santiesteban had previously reported in a statement published on his blog on 5 April that he had been told that he would be taken to the Salvador Allende military hospital for a check-up in relation to suspected skin cancer. He said that he would refuse to go as it was a military hospital.

For further details on Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, José Antonio Torres and Ángel Santiesteban Prats, see previous alert.

Please send appeals:

Welcoming the release of Hablemos Press journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias on 9 April 2013;

Noting, however, that two other writers remain in prison in Cuba, former Granma correspondent José Antonio Torres and writer and blogger Ángel Santiesteban Prats, and that their trials apparently failed to meet international human rights standards for fair trials, outlined in Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights;

Calling on the Cuban authorities to provide assurances that Torres’ and Santiesteban’s sentences are not related to their reporting, and to make public details of their trials;

Urging the Cuban authorities to remove unlawful restrictions on freedom of expression, association and assembly in Cuba.

Appeals to:

Head of State and Government
Raúl Castro Ruz
Presidente de la República de Cuba
La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +41 22 758 9431 (Cuba office in Geneva);
+1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)
Email: cuba@un.int (c/o Cuban Mission to UN)
Salutation: Your Excellency
Attorney General

Dr. Darío Delgado Cura
Fiscal General de la República
Fiscalía General de la República
Amistad 552, e/Monte y Estrella, Centro Habana, La Habana, Cuba
Salutation: Dear Attorney General
Interior Minister

General Abelardo Coloma Ibarra
Ministro del Interior y Prisiones
Ministerio del Interior, Plaza de la Revolución, La Habana, Cuba
Fax: +1 212 779 1697 (via Cuban Mission to UN)
Email: correominint@mn.mn.co.cu
Salutation: Your Excellency

Please send also appeals to diplomatic representatives of Cuba in your country.

***Please send appeals immediately. Check with the WiPC if sending appeals after 11 June 2013***

Published by PEN Zentrum Deuschtland

19 April 2013

We must cultivate our lands in the way our rivals cultivate theirs

At the end of a row of makeshift kiosks a colorful poster highlights Communist Party propaganda based on the economic reforms and new forms of production, its assertion inviting me to reflect, not like the usual reflections of Cuba’s ex-president Fidel Castro based in the imperial ideology, I don’t want to turn the reflection into a pollution, seeking the pragmatism that declared the history of the Revolution.

Rivals. This is a word that denoted opposition, conflict, attack, enemy and so it always was. They educate us creating a rival. The most powerful of the rivals in general terms is capitalism represented by the United States. Then there were the individual rivals, fabricated within the people. Christians, peasants, intellectuals, professionals, a friend, brother, cousin, neighbor, anyone who had the means and their own ideas and before obeying the the patrons of the politics implanted by the Revolution they obey the patrons of justice.

Most of these rivals were dispossessed of all their property and expelled to the United States, where they learned to make the land productive. Our rivals created a dignified and prosperous Cuban outside of the socialized Cuba of misery and corruption. Amazing and ironic. Now we must cultivate our lands like our rivals cultivate theirs, referring of course to the inventions of the great leader of the misery, his dynasty and his Communist Party, not the real rivals who were born with the Revolution, nourished on the Revolution, cultured within the Revolution, and crowned in the direction of the Revolution and today they are updating the Machiavellian model of socialism.

What are they? The cult of personality and power, the political fanaticism, inefficiency, negligence, incapacity, fraud, the double standard that is worse than the amorality, the hypocrisy, the like, the ideology based on a loathsome sense of hatred, the incapacity of the mediocre ruling over the talented. Those rivals were not imported from capitalism, nor the consequence of the blockade, most were created by power and the rest were imported from Russia based on Stalinism and some of Leninism.

The content is the imperceptible little sign outside the circle of the government demagoguery and the fraudulent politics of the party and those who placed it and it clarifies many doubts with regards to the official effectiveness of the system over 53 years.

Today I find on a poster the reality that we must cultivate our land like our rivals cultivate theirs, perhaps tomorrow I will come across another urging that we educate our children like our rivals educate theirs, and then another urging commerce like our rivals’, and another urging we reap freedom and rights like our rivals have and even find many everywhere expressing that our rivals teach us how to do things how they do because they’re right. But the most likely is that the reformist propaganda at the end of the kiosks, after this reflection is taken down they punish whoever posted it. Notwithstanding the resignation and lack of communication, like me, people can also reflect and discover that our rivals are enjoying the honey of power*.

*Translator’s note: When Felipe Pérez Roque, former foreign minister, and Carlos Lage, former vice president, were ousted, Fidel Castro commented that they had been seduced by “the honey of power.”

17 May 2013

Rasúa Grethell Farinas Covers of Desires, 2008-2013 installation, photography, video (2:13 min.)

The patch has become a common practice in Cuba, a way of dealing with objects that should be be but cannot be replaced. It is an aesthetic of the unstable, an improvisation, a solution of the moment. Rasúa’s project focuses on decorative adornment that city residents use in their homes because they could not repair or solve the structural problems in buildings. Rasúa shows people’s attempts to create a good impression: covering the gaps, hiding the errors, hiding dirt with color, with whatever is at hand. The result is a special visual quality, a precarious image is itself a metaphor.

From Cuban Art News

16 May 2013

Illegal Satellite Dish. From http://www.penultimosdias.com

For World Telecommunication and Information Society Day

They look the same as everyone else: small, restless, ready to play and joke, like any child. But something distinguishes them beyond the neighborhood where they live or the family they belong to. They are part of a generation that is escaping the indoctrination of the official media because they have taken refuge in illegal television programming. They are “the children of the satellite dish,” the direct consumers of the programming on these satellite dishes, as widespread as they are persecuted. When the teacher asks them, in the classroom, what they saw on the news the day before, they are the ones who look at the ceiling and invent some response. But when they interact among themselves, they all know the name of the trendy host in Florida or who won the latest Nuestra Belleza Latina contest.

There are no clear studies of how many people on the Island access these banned channels. It is difficult to calculate because it is a topic little spoken of in public, for fear of confiscations and fines; but also because it’s enough for one family to have one of these satellite dishes to pass the signal via cable to a dozen, a score, or fifty neighboring homes. The most daring have installed the cable under the streets, pretending they were making an authorized repair because of some broken pipe. The principle owner of the persecuted artifact is the one who decides the programming that all subscribers then see on their respective screens. The monthly price is around ten dollars, although some can have the service for free, especially the neighborhood informers, to buy their silence.

However, beyond these technical details of how such an illegality is committed, the most interesting thing is the sociological phenomenon it is generating. Many Cubans of the younger generations — particularly in the capital — barely watch national television. They have escaped the ideological dose of this portal and have replaced it with a more frivolous but less politicized assortment. Among this TV audience are many children, for whom the effect of the slogans and official campaigns is detrimental. They are the children of the satellite dish, breastfed with the illicit and used to the other side of information or misinformation. They have grown up with the remote control in their hands and, with a simple click, they access the prohibited every day.

PS: “It makes no sense to prohibit” the circulation of news, because it is “an almost impossible chimera,” because people “know it.” “Today the news is everywhere, the good, the bad, the manipulated and the true, the half-truths, circulating on the networks, reaching the people, people know it, and the worse thing is silence,” the official told a conference of educators — according to a television report from a few days ago about the words of Miguel Diaz-Canel, first vice president of Cuba.

Another post on this topic: Satellite vs. TELEsur

17 May 2013

It turned out that they announce that they are “gradually” bringing the streetlights back into action in the areas affected by Hurricane Sandy which devastated the province of Santiago de Cuba, leaving things in a terrible state — as if it was a great event. More than that, what insulted me even more was that they were saying that they were commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks, as opposed to the hundreds of unfortunate victims, who still haven’t recovered the losses occasioned by the hurricane, fundamentally due to the accumulated misery of decades, which made it impossible for them to carry out proper maintenance to their houses.

It’s an embarrassment that after so many months they are saying that they are “gradually” restoring street lighting to the streets and avenues, knowing that crime and danger are directly supported by darkness. What’s more, they appear to be avoiding the dietary deficiencies confronting the people of Santiago de Cuba, whose poor income doesn’t permit them to feed themselves properly, and to recover from the damage caused by the atmospheric phenomenon. All of that, without even mentioning that much of the donations sent from different countries were not distributed without charge, as might be expected by the people sending them, but were sold at high prices.

I was even more insulted when recently the representative of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in our country had the nerve and lack of seriousness to publicly announce that we were one of the best fed people not only in America but in the world. It seems that this man forgot that here, when kids get to three years of age they lose their compotes, and at seven their milk, quite apart from the major sacrifices their parents have to make from when they are born, simply because of the lack of material resources.

Now, furthermore, a psychologist, whom I thought up to today was a reasonable person, has volunteered to sign in the Granma daily an article in which he completely justifies our country’s misery, calling it “The Cuban Model of Wellbeing”. What’s more he puts forward as a great example to be followed the fact that in Cuba everybody knows exactly who their neighbors are and what they are doing, when in reality it is no more than meddling in someone else’s life, and not “socializing,” which is what ll of us, one way or another, have had to suffer.

Translated by GH

16 May 2013

Human Rights Council, UN, 30 April 2013. (CUBADEBATE)

On May 1 the government of Cuba was the subject for the second time of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), a tool of the Human Rights Council (HRC) of the United Nations responsible for reviewing the obligations and commitments made by the members States in this area.

When this function was exercised by the former Commission on Human Rights, under the UN Economic and Social Council, the dispute between the governments of Cuba and the United States led to a growing politicization of the issue until if became a total bottleneck. Each year the same script is repeated: lobbying before and during the sessions, offensive debates, exchange of accusations, voting on a resolution and finally the Cuban government’s announcement of the defeat of imperialism. From that time until the next session nothing changed in Cuba, because when dealing with “false” and “gross” accusations of the enemy, there was nothing to change.

For Cubans what happened in Geneva had no effect on their lives, because conflicts between states tend to the underhanded and therefore to demobilize conflicts within states, and much more so when the external contradiction is brought to the fore. This situation was used by the Cuban authorities to support ideological nationalism and to “prove” to the world that in Cuba there were no human rights violations, it was all lies told by enemies.

For example, in 2002, in the month of January, Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs accused the U.S. government of working with the foreign ministries of Latin American countries to present a resolution on “alleged” human rights violations. Thus the controversy moved from discussion of violations in Cuba to the conduct of the United States. Three months later, in response to the Mexican vote in Geneva against Cuba, the newspaper Juventud Rebelde launched a ruthless attack on Mexican president Vicente Fox, published in Mexico by La Jornada, in which it said that the President is “unable to defend the interests of Mexicans and is an embarrassment to Latin America.”

Since human rights precede and transcend politics, to put things in their place politicizes of the issue and on that basis promotes a peaceful and constructive debate, aimed at improving the real state of human rights in the Greater Antilles. This was enough to answer questions as simple as the following:

Can Cubans leave and enter the country without government permission? Can they associate independently of the state? Can they choose the type of education they want for their children? Can they participate as subjects in their nation’s economy? Can they disagree publicly with the government or the Communist Party without risk? Can they freely connect to the internet? Can they follow the ball in the major leagues on TV as is done with football? The answer was a single and simple: No. An answer sufficient to shed light on human rights within the country and turn the focus of attention on the allegations against Argentina, Mexico, the U.S. or any other state for “meddling” in the internal affairs and/or the lack of moral standing to condemn the Cuban government. Questions and responses that delimit the problem to discussing and drawing attention to the political will and the responsibility of the Cuban government to its people.

The Question Now

The UPR, unlike the former Human Rights Commission, is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations, composed of 47 member countries, which is led by a troika of rapporteurs and in the presence of the observer states, regularly reviews the status of human rights in UN member countries. The country examined presents a report to the group which starts a dialogue from which recommendations emerge. According to this procedure, Cuba received 88 recommendations in the first review in 2009. And on the basis of that opinion the Greater Antilles has just been submitted again for evaluation.

The Cuban Foreign Minister of the day, in the report, repeated the rhetoric against blockade imposed by the U.S., against the policy to impose “regime change” and enumerated the significant changes in the economy and society in the last two years. He asserted that “Cuba has continued to strengthen the democratic character of its institutions and freedoms of opinion, expression, information and news are recognized for all citizens,” without clarifying that these freedoms are constitutionally limited to defending the postulates of the ruling party, which explains that in Cuba the associations that can legally exist are created and subordinated to this end.

During the evaluation the majority of countries participating in the UPR praised the Island for its “progress” in relation to the Millennium Development Goals, especially in regard to education and access to health services and changes in immigration policy and the right of Cubans to work for themselves in a set of limited activities. But at the same time they urged the Government, among other things, to end the short term detentions, harassment and other repressive measures against activists and independent journalists, to reduce government control of the internet, to allow representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to visit prisons without limitation, to ratify the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which Cuba signed since 2008.

As a result of the evaluation, the HRC made 204 recommendations and suggestions more than in 2009, that is a total of 292. The comments correspond to the deplorable state of human rights in Cuba and correspond to the allegations made by the Cuban opposition inside and outside the country before and after the creation of the HRC, demonstrating conclusively that the absence of civil liberties and fundamental rights in Cuba have little to do with the dispute with or the “baloney” of the enemy. There is no denying that there have been some changes in human rights, but in a western country with a rich history in freedoms, the current state is deplorable and unsustainable, as these small measures implemented don’t even reach the level of respect for human rights that existed in Cuba since the second half of the nineteenth century.

An important step would be to start by ratifying the covenants Cuba signed five years ago, which, if made binding, could be a real sign of change.

However, we must recognize that the response of the island’s ambassador to the UN, arguing that of these recommendations “a large group” will be accepted and implemented “according to our possibilities and changing circumstances,” is at least some distance from those inflammatory speeches any time a remark is made about the Island.

Translated from Diario de Cuba

14 May 2013

“Corrupt lawyer and judge. Raúl Castro, help me. Unjust eviction.”

Unfortunately, in Cuba anybody with a Communist Party ID, a title that gives them a substantial amount of power, and personality disorders that will predispose them to abuse their authority, can conspire against any defenseless citizens and strip them of their property. If there are economic or monetary interests involved, these become incentives that speed up such acts.

I found out about the case of Yamile Bargías Hurtado (YBH) in November, and it moved me to write “If it is not rotten, why does it smell bad?.” In it I tactfully tackle a thorny subject of which I do not know all the sides of, as I have not participated in all the hearings nor heard all the plaintiff’s allegations, her defense attorney’s, the affected family’s or any other attorney’s statements. However, as the process to evict Yamile from the apartment that she owns, and into which she moved ten years ago as a result of a house swap with the previous owner, has become traumatic and has extended for five years, it allows us to find out about contradictions, convenient omissions and timely obstructions that stain its adequate transparency and good execution.

Recapitulation

Baltazar Toledo Rodriguez was the manager of the building located at 3rd Street, #355, between Paseo and 2nd and was married to Teresa Luisa Rivero Domínguez. It was assigned to them or they assigned it to themselves, but that is irrelevant, a mini-room in a space adjacent to the building’s garage for this reason. Other apartments have garages, one each beneath them, but it seems that no one cared then for them. With the passage of time, the couple created better housing conditions; the apartment got bigger, as expected, with the expansion of the garage and it ended up being a “modest and miniscule apartment” and I place quotation marks in order to emphasize that I speak of a limited space, not a  property that with the years the necessary institutions recognized as legal and made the couple title holders. Upon the death of Toledo Rodriguez in 1998, grandfather of the plaintiff Eleazar Yosvany Rivero Toledo, his wife who was co-owner, updated her status before the Municipal Directory of Housing and the property was awarded to her as only owner. In 2003 Yamile swapped apartments with the widower and remodeled and expanded her new home with enormous efforts and costs in order to create a bedroom for their daughter. She did it all, tells me the plaintiff, applying for the required construction permits and adding the new space to the property title at the corresponding organization: Municipal Directory of Housing in Plaza. While all the construction activity progressed, the litigant who claims the property as “former heir”, was an eyewitness to the renovations, as he regularly visited the home on top of Yamile’s apartment, considered by those affected as the bank of credit of the process, whose aged protagonists have three children abroad and huge desires to obtain the space for their parents. It was not until 2008 that YBH found out that her house was in dispute since 2002 and her house swap was cancelled in 2009.

“Raúl, I ask for justice”

It is true that at the time  of the home exchange, and according to his identification card, the plaintiff resided, with his grandfather’s widower.  Some witnesses allege that he tricked her into allowing him to stay and register as a co-inhabitant of the dwelling using as an excuse the fact that he had separated from his wife, and had no place to live. If he did not have where to live why he did not sleep under the same roof as his grandmother? Why did he not go to live with her at the Bahia neighborhood? She was the new property owner after Baltazar Toledo’s death and his heiress by right.

In August, YBH tells me, she painted the banner shown in the image on the right, and carried it to the State Council to ask Cuban President Raul Castro to intercede in the injustice against her! She was arrested in the vicinity of the Plaza of the revolution, they removed the rough banner and took her to a police station in which she was kept for several hours.

From November on

In November of 2012, due to the silence of the “deft” national authorities which she had approached, and their immovability, YBH made her cause public and started writing letters to international personalities and institutions. At the same time she approached me and other members of the civil society in Cuba. However the despair and insecurity she has experienced during  these 5 years of unjust and undeserved conflict, have not diminish her sympathy for the system led by the younger of the Castro brothers although she hasn’t received an answer to her letters from their offices.

On December 6,2012 a hearing was scheduled to hear all parties, and to “make it a transparent process.” After the supreme court had already handed down its ruling and the threat of eviction hung over the stability of two families?? I write transparent in bold letters because the close relationship between the plaintiff’s lawyer, the ruling judge and the family that lives upstairs, taints with suspicion any unprejudiced attitude that one would like to have about the case. At the hearing she was told that eviction was to be carried out. Then, why the hearing? To calm things down?

Yamilé withdrew from that circus that ironically sought to legitimize the crooked attitudes of some lawyers. Neither then nor now, was she the object of any reprisal or much less a fine for being in contempt of court for leaving the court without being authorized, and without finishing that judicial theater. Some experts consulted on the case, were scandalized over so much arbitrariness, mishandling, coercion, opportune omissions and convenient obstructions which have stained the safekeeping of the rights of the living and the dead.

The following days brought them closer to despair and helplessness to what in Cuba they call, using a legal euphemism, “forced extraction” to minimize the impact that such methods could have on society. The terminology is made up to avoid the comparison with evictions in other countries — used by Cuban authorities in political campaigns — and to differentiate them from those of which the new regime has historically accused the previous one in their overly exploited propaganda. The one when farmers were evicted from their hovels with all their belongings and families.  Beyond any legal and professional definitions, this legal figure is the sum of all manipulations.

Parenthesis

Convinced that the lawsuit would go nowhere, Teresa Rivero Dominguez’s heirs, allowed things to follow their course thinking that it was just a matter of time until the laws were applied correctly.  However, seeing that the courts appeared biased against them and Yamile, and that they had ruled against her, they decided to take action to avoid any further injustice.

In April of 2012, the heirs from the Bahia neighborhood hired a legal professional to begin a process called “The Inheritance Flow” to determine who has rights over the house left behind by the late Rivero Dominguez. It is possible that Eleazar Yosvany may have rights over the property, and be entitled to monetary compensation, but not to the property itself.  The lawyer they hired, violated their contract by transferring the case to another lawyer who presented her case on December 20th, 2012.  For the defendants, this was just another link in the chain of obstacles that prove fraud in the proceedings.  Why does it look like someone has ordered to stop the parallel processed initiated by the heirs? Naturally, if it is demonstrated that Eleazar Yosvany has no rights over the dwelling, the case no longer makes sense, and everything goes back to normal.

 The Day of the Ultimatum

After five years of trying to rob two families of their homes, and after the Supreme Court ruling against YBH, the authorities announced that they would carry out the eviction of Yamile, her daughter and the family from the Bahia neighborhood on February 5th.  The authorities showed up in front of Bargia Hurtado’s house that now shown a message painted on the wall accusing of corruption all the lawyers involved, and asked the — in this case — deaf president of Cuba.

A local apparatchik sent two workers to pain the wall to cover the graffiti that had no anti-government message at all (and even if it did, it is her right to paint it) but in support of justice for the two families. Who sent them?  Why sabotage the work and time invested in creating it, not to mention the cost of the paint that YBH’s family had bought with their own resources?

In the same fashion, the lawyers accused of corruption and present during the “forced extraction,” went upstairs to the home of the ones thought to be moving (green) papers to make a move of which Eleazar Yosvany is only the facilitating pawn. If there were any doubts about their link, that day their relationship with the upstairs neighbors (the lady of the house came out in defense of the lawyers) was made evident. The incredibly passive attitudes of the attorneys were even more suspicious since they did not react at all to the accusations of corruption from those involved. Why?

The interested parties who live upstairs are elderly, but have money and time to think about expanding their dwelling. They already did by taking over the roof, and now they want YBH’s, and in time who knows what else they will want. In their favor they have a letter that states that the old man fought in Sierra Maestra for the revolution. Although no one knows if it is real or not, it empowers them to do harm to others, scare them and trample their rights.

For a while now, YBH and her daughter who studies at university, wonder if the Cuban Lady Justice uses her scale to weigh wads of cash and if she covers her eyes to avoid looking at the problem that affects them.  The two of them sleep, but never really rest, keeping an eye open and an ear alert to try to prevent the authorities breaking into their place at night, as if it were “an organized crime action,” to evict them under cover of night, and without an audience. It is not a baseless fear since they have been told that in similar situations a committee arrives with a locksmith, break into the house even if the owner is not in, put the furniture on a truck, and commit the abuse with impunity.

The malpractice of some of the jurists involved in this case has been denounced in multiple collateral lawsuits and complaints, and there have been calls for others authorities to investigate and intervene to no avail.  The sword of eviction continues to hang over the security and the emotional and physical stability of two Cuban families, and over the prestige and respectability of the laws and civil legal proceedings in Cuba.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

1 March 2013

It surprised me, in that ministry there are several companies with more administrative staff than workers; but happy or alarmed was my “to be or not to be.”

The official press lies a little, although regularly, and as an established norm avoids part of reality. So I thought that this note would be published with the only objective of cleaning the stench of corruption that the wave of investigations and arrests that led the former head of this industry, Alejandro Francisco Roca Iglesia, to prison, along with his vice minister, Celio Hernandez and so many other officials. Especially knowing that, although the new minister of the branch is Dr. Maria del Carmen Concepcion Gonzalez, the one who has the upper hand in such a necessary institution in the foolish and never well-thought of engineering specialist in the applied chemistry of human nutrition, Deborah Castro Espín.

Anyway, the irony is liberating and as the old sailor’s saying goes, “When the dolphins leap the storm is coming.” I continued to keep my intellectual apathy busy and communicated with Havana using the overly expensive invention patented in 1876 by the British speech therapist Alexander Graham Bell.

“The Union of the Flesh” — and I quote almost verbatim someone who asked not to be revealed — “is the company that within this large conglomerate sold more last year. Supported, of course, by the Food Corporation SA (a mysterious Cuban capital private entity).

“Meat consumption grew, and both entities were responsible for producing and marketing meat products, plus all their derivatives.”

So far everything was going well, the scandalous is the rest. For a long time is hasn’t been profitable to produce a kilo of meat in Cuba, taking into account feed prices, the costs of caring for the animal, veterinary care and fuel. With all this an expensive product reaches Cuban processors. But the Cuban government didn’t calculate, or foresee the tangible increase, it has had since last year, in private restaurants (the paladares) and for that reason the MINAL was forced to innovative solutions to meet the pressing demand.

“We had no response,” my interlocutor told me stealthily, “and the ‘higher ups’ ordered ground beef to be mixed with small amounts of horse meat and texturized soy, to maintain an acceptable level of nutrition and not affect the typical cherry-red color of the fresh meat.

How dreadful, the Cuban officials lost respect and restraint; they gained irresponsibility, shamelessness and perversion. The fraud here is not in the mixing of the meat, if it’s not misleading or not properly informed.

It should be clarified that from the middle of 2012 to date, ground beef, selling at the price of steak priced in CUC, and that tourists and nationals enjoy, is fit for human consumption, but it is not ground beef. Indeed, in Cuba it’s never what it seems.

13 May 2013