Note: Wendy and Ignacio are only able to upload their posts periodically and this article refers to the recently ended hunger strike.
A week has passed since Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello’s press conference in Havana, in which she denounced several facts that expose a number of activities on the part of the organs of the Department of State Security intended to undermine Human Rights activists on the island.
Roque Cabello, with a full history as a Human Rights activist and one of the most notable civil society leaders in Cuba, announced at this conference the beginning of a hunger strike which will only come to an end with the reestablishment of Socialist Legality in Cuba, the release of the political prisoner Jorge Cazquez Chaviano whose sentence expired last week and who remains in prison, and the clarification by the State of the looting and robbing at the houses of peaceful opponents, and the destruction of their homes and the loss of their personal belongings.
The strike announced was initiated in the center of the country by former political prisoner Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (Antunez) who also remains steadfast even if this protest will lead to the ultimate consequences.
A week since its beginning this hunger strike is already known as the strike with the most protestors in the island. The number of strikers is growing on the streets and within the prisons.
Although many have expressed their disagreement with the prolonged use of the hunger strike as a way of fighting, the number of people in solidarity increases at every moment and it has recently been learned that the Centrist Democrat International soon take to the Geneva Human Rights Commission the case of the 28 Cubans on hunger strike.
Message to Cubans Within and Outside Cuba and to International Public Opinion from Jorge Luis Garcia Perez “Antunez” on the 15th of September
Read in the voice of Nonaida Paseiro Perez, the women’s right movement formed from the Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights.
After feeling my health worsen due to my hunger strike that lasted several days, and reacting to what appeared about the start and the demand of my protest in various media, I wanted to clarify the following.
First: I started the hunger strike on Friday September 7 at 6 pm, and not on Monday the 10th as did other opponents after giving a press conference.
Second: My demand is the release of political prisoner Jorge Vazquez Chaviano, or to give him a solution satisfying and acceptable to him. I am also protesting for the deplorable situation of the human rights in Cuba that occurs because of the systematic political accusation against me which is implied in the practice of house arrest.
For reasons of principle and not trusting in the existing health care system, controlled by another political policy, do not accept medical attention. From the previous statement it follows that only in an unconscious state if on their own initiative relatives or countrymen would take me to a health center due to their human feelings and sentiments.
Translated by Steven Guas, Michael Martinez, Austin Sprinkle, Richard Hidalgo, Matthew Marini
The other afternoon at home, talking with a friend, she was telling me, dying with laughter, that when she went to Central Park, a well-dressed man holding a little boy by the hand came almost alongside her. With us, she told me, a policeman was walking along, and when the little boy saw him, he said, “Policeman, are you my friend?“
The father reacted angrily and loudly told the little boy, “I’ve already told you a thousand times that the police are not your friends.”
My friend said she heard him clearly, so the policeman must have as well, but he continued walking without taking any notice. Then the young father approached her and said, “Excuse me ma’am, but it’s at the nursery school and on the TV that they teach these things, and I’m tired of explaining it to him. Imagine, I manage a bakery, and every now and then I end up scapegoat for the nonsense of my employees, because a baker doesn’t earn 200 Cuban pesos* a month.
“I tell them, they have to accomplish the work, produce the amount of bread required by the plan, and that’s what concerns us. The other day, one of my employees left with a bag with about five pounds of flour, to resolve [that is, to sell on the black market], and a police officer saw him and took him to the station, despite my going out to defend him.
“So I went there to try to get him out. They ignored me but after insisting for a little while, the desk agent took me aside and whispered in my ear. ’If you give me five cuquitos* (CUCs), you can take him now.’ So that’s how I got him out.
My friend told him, “Don’t worry, I know what it’s like, my friend has a car from the ’50s and took out a license as a taxi. I wish you could see how the police stop him for anything, and they always hit him up for some money or a snack. Now my husband knows and always goes out prepared. He said the other day he saw how one of them take a swig of rum that another taxi driver offered him, and this is the police on duty on a motorcycle!”
*Translator’s note: 200 Cuban pesos is about $8.00 U.S. Five CUCs — Cuban convertible pesos — is a little more than $5.00.
The 2012 Population and Housing Census has already cataloged many, but is not ended. Like a homophobic and discriminatory action.
Once again we see the bad actions of the Cuban authorities, who on this occasion forgot to erase the traces they left which today are used against them. This time we’re not talking about a simple printing error. All of Cuba is talking about those who made a total of 17 words from the second paragraph on page 47 of the Enumerator’s Instruction Manual disappear, and today quotes those who are absent exposing the institutionalized homophobia of our nation:
“…in this case same sex couples are allowed, if they are cohabitants in the same household”…
These are the words that were crossed off in the instruction book that was printed and which are now replaced with the following works in ink of a different color and not printed:
“… couples must be of different sexes…”
When things like this happen I just wonder: What rights are those Mariela proclaims? When the government of her father is not capable of recognizing the current number of the Cuban LGBT community. Perhaps the uncertain efforts of the regime in Havana are not enough, to push the Cuban parliament to modify a law that benefits this community? Perhaps the community that today will not be counted in the census properly doesn’t count for the full exercise of their freedoms and in order to orchestrate propaganda campaigns? The fact is that asking this and other questions and coming to the conclusion that many, for their own convenience, in exchange for crumbs prefer silence.
Today I want to join with the different voices that have fallen silent in their dissatisfaction, today I want to congratulate my colleagues in the press, not only independent but also those in the official ranks who were not afraid even for an instant to step out in the face of this homophobic act.
Apparently we all thought it possible that this year things would change, sadly it didn’t happen. But these things aren’t all bad, on the contrary, they are things that make us live every day a new awakening confident that soon we will all be counted.
When this happens it will be because we all count and we have rights and not as now, what’s the use of being counted and what are we going to do with it? If we have no rights in Cuba!
It is because of this I also want to add this phrase being heard in our streets by those who show their discontent: “In my House without Rights, We don’t Count!”
Translator’s note: Mariela Castro, daughter of Raul, leads CENESEX, an organization she founded.
Translator’s note: Payá sounds like “pa’llá” which is a very Cuban contraction of “para allá,” and is part of the phrase “pa’llá y pa’cá (para acá)” which translates as “coming and going.” A Miami based radio personality who opposed Payá used the phrase “Ni pa’llá ni pa’cá” (neither coming nor going) to refer to him and the Varela Project, which Payá founded, led and gathered signatures for.
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From the digital independent magazine Voces (Voices) No. 16, which is an issue in tribute to Oswaldo Payá
Leafing through the pages of official Cuban publications in recent days, I see articles on the economy in which there are references to plans for the production of potatoes, malanga, yams, yucca, bananas, vegetables, produce and condiments. This is all great news since these efforts will help feed the population. There is very little or no discussion, however, of meat, fish, shellfish or dairy. It seems these are much more difficult to produce, or that their successful production is much less palpable judging by their prolonged absences from store shelves and their inflated prices, which make them unaffordable for most citizens.
Many are aware, at least theoretically, of the four basic food groups, but for the average Cuban these have been historically reduced to two – those that fill the stomach and those that nourish. Perhaps erroneously, the first group includes all simple and complex carbohydrates such as vegetables, grains, cereals and fruits. In the second group are all the meats and the dairy products. In light of the current situation, many would say, “Human beings cannot live on carbs alone.” And they would be right!
Besides, these products are only appropriate for immediate domestic consumption. There is not much of an international market for them since most cannot be stored and are highly perishable. And with the possible exception of the potato, no matter how many tons might be produced, they would never be considered products suitable for export.
It would be interesting to know in detail what has happened to our traditional exports such as sugar, coffee, cocoa, tobacco, shellfish and fruit, some of which have disappeared entirely while supplies of others have been so reduced that we almost no longer speak of them. The collapse of the sugar industry is the most familiar blunder, but there is now talk of something similar happening with nickel, of halting its production and dismantling the old Nicaro Nickel Company because of the mineral’s low price on the world market and the prevalence of corruption within the company. An editorial was published overseas in which the writer noted that “Cuba is like a body that loses a limb every day until, in the end, it is totally dismembered.” This analogy is not far removed from reality and it describes the situation accurately.
The proposed “guidelines,” with all their identifying numbers, are nothing more than that — guidelines. By themselves they will feed no one, nor solve any problem, nor reinforce (much less create) the foundations for a new economy. That is possible only with the participation and efforts of all Cubans — state as well as private enterprises — united to resolve our economic crisis. Clinging to a single path, especially one that has been so clearly shown to be a disaster and the principal cause of the current critical situation, would be to repeat past mistakes. It would mean the irresponsible sacrifice of millions of Cubans, forcing them to live in misery and giving the youngest and most capable an incentive to emigrate. It is never too late to reconsider, though with each passing day there is less time to do so.
Cuban television news just broadcast with undisguised joy the statements of the U.S. president about the failure of immigration reforms in that country. With images of Obama on the screen, although taking care, as usual, not to directly broadcast the president’s words, the Island’s media tried to discredit the “enemy” by highlighting another fiasco. It turns out, however, that the authorities here continue to keep the most hermetic silence about the essential immigration reforms in Cuba which — according to what Ricardo Alarcon, the president of the National Assembly, said many months ago — “are being studied.” This is, without a doubt, a most complex study, to judge by its length.
Meanwhile, Cubans on both shores continue to be forced to apply for demeaning exit and entry permits in our own country, pay monthly fees to our consulates in the countries we visit (if we want to have the right to re-enter the Island, always remembering that we are allowed to be gone only 11 months and 29 days), and pay ridiculously high amounts for the most stigmatized passport on the planet. Because in the end, have you noticed how much scorn the border authorities look upon us island slaves when we travel? Note: I’ve only traveled outside of Cuba twice, in 1999 and 2002, and on both occasions I noticed that glance.
In principle, every Cuban who aspires to travel goes to the offices of Immigration and Foreigners, a weird name for an institution that deals mainly with Cubans who, in significant numbers, want to emigrate. Shouldn’t it be called the Department of Emigration and Cubanness? There the extortion we all know begins: You must come up with 55 CUC for the fabrication of a passport which expires in six years and must be renewed every two, raising the full cost to 95 CUC without any benefit to the aspiring traveler. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll only have to spend 150 CUC more to get an exit permit — the infamous white card — and finally you’ll have to pay a 25 CUC tax at the airport when you leave. The paperwork, in its totality, costs a fortune* for ordinary Cubans. In most cases such expenses, and the passage, is paid by family and friends living abroad, who — for their part — have to pay unconscionable amounts when they decide to visit the Island.
In short, you as a Cuban pay for the fabrication of the world’s most expensive passport, a document that will serve almost exclusively for the Cuban government to capture some juicy hard currency without having to invest in anything more than cardboard, ink and the paper it’s made from. With this passport you will not only extend your condition as a slave beyond the boundaries of the hacienda, but will also contribute — like it or not — to nourishing the coffers of the very system that humiliates you. Of course, I’m not suggesting renouncing travel, but I do suggest that perhaps while the authorities are studying the “migratory reforms” perhaps they could go ahead and apply some just modifications. It occurs to me that, since they are the only beneficiaries of the use of the passport by travelers, at least they should include some of the “freebies” of the system. It would be curious to establish the first “subsidized passport” in history in Cuba. This would not change anything in our condition nor turn us in to citizens with freedom of movement, but at least it would to some extent diminish the immense crust of cynicism of the Cuban authorities, something they’re in great need of.
*Translator’s note: The total cost is more than a year’s salary for the average Cuban.
“Good morning,” said the woman with the thick voice and deep tone. My sister responded in kind and the woman began offering medications for sale. The clock indicated it was seven minutes past eight in the morning. The twins had just left for school. Yesterday a neighbor commented on the shortage of books and notebooks in the schools and the difficulty obtaining uniforms.
I stopped writing and went to the room where the woman was still offering medications. I said hello and began observing her with curiosity. She was corpulent. The mixed-race skin of her face suggested someone in her sixties, but her appearance gave the impression of virtuous health. It was now eight minutes after eight. At schools around the country the morning assembly had begun with the Young Pioneers shouting, “Pioneers for communism. We will be like Che.”
I observed the little nylon bag the woman held in her hands from which she pulled out strips of pills and another small bag with injections while my sister kindly told her about possible buyers in the neighborhood.
The day before I had asked two mothers about the issue of school uniforms. One told me they were being sold for a coupon or a voucher that you could get from the schools. For preschool they would let you buy two uniforms for between fifteen and twenty pesos in national currency.* After that you were not eligible to another until the second grade.
The other woman said that in preschool they did not give you the coupon because things were so disorganized and you had to buy it on the black market where it never costs less than one-hundred pesos.
“But how?” I asked. “They provide a uniform for each child.”
“That’s how it is supposed to be,” she said, “but sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. As long as they follow all the rules, regulations, laws and intents in the black market, you have to pay.”
It was now eight minutes past eight. The woman was still offering her medications. I finally decided to ask her a question. “Ma’am, why are you doing this?”
The woman was taken aback, almost frightened. “Look, they gave me this… I only… It’s for…” She was almost stuttering. She did not know what to say or do. With obvious nervousness she moved to start gathering up the medications, intending to go. I had caused her to feel uncertain. There was fear in her eyes. The adrenaline was escaping through her dark skin. She was thinking that I could be a government agent, a policeman or a bandit. I tried to quietly calm her down.
“Listen, don’t be afraid. You are under no obligation to answer me. I don’t mean you any harm. I am only interested in knowing why, in knowing what it is like for people near the bottom. I am a defender of human rights, concerned with social justice.”
“Everyone who works should receive a decent salary so that they don’t turn to corruption,” I added. “Elderly people like yourself should not have to denigrate themselves in order to be able to enjoy a much-deserved rest in the last phase of their lives. I think society should reward them for their work by providing enough for them to have some comfort in the few years they have left. But this society is structured so that this does not happen. There is no accumulation of capital, nor of property, that might provide an elderly person with some well-being and security in life and meet their basic needs.”
The woman’s face changed shape, her fear turned to curiosity, her adrenaline must have gone down to normal levels, but she still seemed evasive, elusive. My sister finally put her at ease.
“This is my brother. I assure you that you can speak openly. There’s no problem,” she said smiling.
The woman turned around and faced me, holding the little bag with the medications. “I get these from pharmacies,” she said. “They are medicines that can cost up to six CUC,* but I sell them for a lot less. I was looking for something to make ends meet. So were the people who gave them to me. This is how we all live. With our salaries we cannot buy enough to eat.”
“That is what I was looking for,” I said. “The sincere truth.”
As the woman started to open up, I saw an opening for my second question. “Are you sure of the origins of these medications? Couldn’t they be counterfeit or tampered with?”
“No way,” she said. “They come from the pharmacies and are sealed. They are from people I trust and I don’t sell them to just anyone, only to people I trust.”
Four more minutes had passed. It was now thirteen after eight. The teachers must be starting class now, or scolding the first student who talked to his neighbor or who blew a raspberry.
I told her that I have seen with my own eyes the tampering with and packaging of a multitude of products in small, clandestine factories. On occasion I have even been defrauded myself. It happens with foodstuffs as well as with consumer products and basic necessities like soap, toothpaste, detergent, perfumes, deodorant, soft drinks and alcoholic beverages – including brand name rum – tobacco products and cigars.
The containers, labels and products are taken at different times and in a variety of ways. Sometimes it is through outright burglary. In other instances it is through the actions of a company’s corrupt financial officers, who cover up their embezzlement by cleverly cooking the books, thereby avoiding being discovered by auditors who have not already been bought off through bribery, extortion, lavish meals or gifts. Many of these products end up in state-run hard currency stores through arrangements with the stores’ personnel. I can write about this because I have been concerned enough about this phenomenon to find ways of observing it. In many cases I have become involved with it in order to discover how the process works.
In the 1990s bottles, labels and the rum itself were taken from a factory in Santo Domingo. The rum, which was later secretly bottled, appeared to be genuine, having been sealed at the factory. Personnel at every level were involved in the operation. It was rumored that a security agent from the area was able to buy his 1958 Chevrolet with funds obtained from rum trafficking, though I never had direct contact with the man to confirm this.
Many of those who drank this rum in Varadero were fooled. The differences might have been minimal and virtually imperceptible, but they were there. I could describe the manufacture and bottling of some brand-name beers – Hatuey, Manacas, Polar – as well as soft drinks, pasta products such as vermicelli and elbow macaroni, ham, cigars, coffee… A large number of these products have made their way into the web of state-run stores, thereby covering up their clandestine and illegal production. Almost all appear to be genuine, but their level of quality and purity are minimal.
So many values have been lost. Conscience and dignity are in short supply. Corruption has become so widespread that it does not surprise me that medicines are being tampered with and plaster is being unscrupulously added to aspirin.
“I don’t want to cause you harm. I only want to be sure of the origins. I am not going to judge you, though I don’t approve of corruption. If you are detained by the police, they will apply the force of law or demand a bribe. They won’t care about the motives for your actions. I need to know the why’s,” I told her. This made her feel more secure.
Then I asked my sister a question: “How are things here?” She said that in Lisa things have not been going well for the Ladies in White. The vendors say that, because of them, agents from the Ministry of the Interior, the Technical Department of Investigation and state security are all over the place. They can no longer sell their contraband products on the street through the black market, so they have told the Ladies to get lost, so they say.
She said a few other things that I did not hear. I was thinking about how to explain to her truth as I know it. How to make these people understand that becoming corrupt and denigrating themselves by acting wretched and perverse instead of demanding their rights only leads to misery and perdition?
The woman stood in front of me with her bag of medicines. Another minute had passed. It was now 8:14. The teacher would be at the front of the class now, asking for the attention of the boys and girls who tomorrow will be adult and elderly, like the drug tamperers and clandestine traffickers. Or like the pharmacy workers, or the mothers discussing the need for school uniforms and the black market, or like this victim of drug trafficking.
I looked at her directly, but her illiteracy in ethics and social responsibility did not allow her to value the importance of this issue, and she did not hold my gaze.
“Ma’am,” I said, “It’s not as they would have you believe. I know the Ladies in White very well and what is really going on. Everything is not being sent to them from the United States. They simply receive some help from foreigners who have visited them and perhaps from some organizations made up of honest and honorable Cubans who were expelled from the country after having been denied their rights as citizens and treated as pariahs by a barbarian and aberrant form of discrimination by the regime. But this help has always been insignificant and much less than what the State has received and is receiving, or what the families of the five spies — the so-called Cuban Five– get for their political trips and extravagant personal expenses compared to the rest of the population.”
Negligible given the resources dedicated to the power to rebuke. The Ladies in White are people who have had the courage and decency to speak out for the rights of the people, for hers, and for all these old people to be able to enjoy their retirement relaxing, or traveling with their needs met and not having to smuggle drugs or other products to eat and so those pharmacy workers receive a fair wage that meets their needs and do not see the need for such denigration.
But it happens that government agents make them believe and use the opportunity to create intrigue and disinformation and take advantage of it all to deploy the police against the smuggling and blame it all on the Ladies in White, so the corrupt people do not realize and against those who are demanding everyone’s rights there is a vicious circle of denigration, and many of the acts of repudiation are perpetrated by this corrupt and evil people.
She knows, that people who are part of the opposition can not buy from the black market because they are constantly monitored so they can be accused of some criminal offense and taken to prison, this, besides fearing for their lives, poisoned food or another product that could do damage to them, and this not because I think it but because the Power has shown that it doesn’t want there to be any claimants of rights, freedoms and justice.
The woman now looks at me a little surprised and almost cries, Really! People do not know and they say other things, this is very bad and worse every day, you have to do many bad things just to be able to eat.
Finally, I say to her, she can be sure that what I’ve said is true because I know this firsthand, if someone needs clarifications she can send them to me, and not to worry, I won’t do her any harm. She turns around and without letting go of the little sack with medicines and leaves for another house in the neighborhood.
It’s eight fifteen, two more minutes in the existence of this miserable country with its satanic government.
Perhaps when the teacher turned back to the blackboard after her first demand for respect the teenager blew another raspberry, a child learned to add, a mother bought a uniform on the black market, my twins looked around mischievously, thinking of their uncle who is not in the hands of the dictatorship, some trafficker in medicines graduated from one of the medical technical schools, or medical schools, and will gain the rights he deserves, but he won’t get it with his work and in the next few minutes I will keep asking others, why?
Trying to shoo away the fear of the power that they have taped to people as if it were another gene, to accomplish logical answers and transparency.
Note: I am not against the release of the Five Spies, as spies, as long as they serve their sentences, a benevolent pardon would inflame the perverse politics of the Castro dictatorship but would demonstrate once again the shamelessness and prevarication in the case of the imprisonment of the North American Alan Gross and the public warning they are trying to send via the Spaniard Carromero.
*Translator’s note: There are two currencies in Cuba. Salaries are paid in the “national currency,” the peso, with the average salary equaling about $20 US per month. The convertible peso, or CUC, is pegged at about one-to-one to the dollar. Many basic essentials can only be purchased legally with CUC’s at government-run hard currency stores.
Few TV shows have been the object of as many jokes and parodies as the Roundtable. Emerging from the heat of the so-called Battle of Ideas, this program shows the highest level of political proselytizing to be found in our national media. Its fundamental principal is to overwhelm the television audience with official opinion, without allowing access for contrary or critical views. To denigrate the nonconformists, with no right to respond, is among the most repeated tactics at the microphones of this incredibly boring broadcast. Everything is based on the premise that we live in “paradise” while the rest of the world is falling apart all around us.
As of September 10, the Roundtable has reduced its “on air” time by half an hour. It has also modernized its set and even seems to have added a brand new iPad for the exclusive use of the moderator. The camera angles are bolder and some of its chubby participants have been put on diets. They hope, with these tweaks, to add something of modernity to what was covered with the thick dust of the anachronistic. However, the main precepts governing the program remain intact. The most obvious is the absence of plurality and the resulting monotony that results when everyone thinks alike. And, a great contradiction, this kind of rubbish pays its journalists the highest salaries known in the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT).
My words on this program, however, may be too influenced by the work I also do in the information field. I will illustrate the opinion many Cubans have with a recent anecdote. A little while ago, a friend was outside a police station demanding the release of an activist who had been arbitrarily detained. Her cellphone rang and it was her father calling. He was afraid because his neighbor had told him that his daughter was mixed up with “dissidents.” In the heat of the situation, my friend only managed to answer, “Papi, I already told you, don’t watch the Roundtable any more!” This simple phrase accentuates the gulf between our national reality and the script of this televised soapbox. She was telling her father that he continued to believe in a Cuba that doesn’t exist, a country where no arrests happen outside the law, there are no police threats, no repudiation rallies. An apocryphal nation that only exists from Monday through Friday, for one hour… on our small screen.
The narrow streets of old Havana are a blazing market. Past two in the afternoon, the sun doesn’t let up on the sellers of cheap goods, prostitutes in their element and old musicians looking for a few convertible pesos entertaining some chubby Norwegians at lunch.
It is a passageway of scoundrels and survivors. On Obispo Steet a line of hurried pedestrians make their way towards the cathedral. They come and go. Some of them look at the displays, pick up the merchandise to examine it and, after seeing the astronomical prices,put it back on the shelf.
A heavy-set mulatto man pants while pedalling his bicycle taxi among trash cans, people walking purposefully through the streets and badly parked trucks. He complains to himself about the heat, about having to haul two passengers who weigh more that 200 kilos and—though he does say it outright—about the rules that forbid him from operating in many of the streets in the old section of the city.
Upon arrival at the former San Carlos Seminary he looks like he’s going to have a heart attack. When he learns that in this building a handful of intellectuals of various ideological tendencies will discuss the future and democracy in Cuba, he turns serious. “I’m a neighbor of the place. I’ve never read in the newspaper that they were talking about democracy in San Carlos,” he says. These are the contradictions of the island.
The national press has not dedicated a single line to these meetings, which take place in the former seminary, now the Félix Varela Cultural Center. The gatherings are sponsored by the Catholic church, without participation from government officials, but also without harassment by the special services or verbal assaults from the system’s loyalpiqueteros, who either insult you or angrily call for a massacre with machetes.
It’s one Cuba superimposed on another. The stick and the dialog. Many wonder if in the end these debates have any practical utility. Or are mere trial balloons, where the government makes a note of the liberal thinking of some of the intellectuals in its close orbit.
In any event, the management by the Archbishopric and the magazine Lay is laudable, in the preparation and discussion of papers on the Cuba that is upon on. At the meeting on Monday, September 10, participants were given a publication that collects some essays and analysis about the future of Cuba “By a consensus for democracy.”
It was a spicy mixture. Liberals, neo-communists and exiles likeJorge Domínguez explained their points of view. For anyone betting on democracy in Cuba, these exchanges of opinion are like a fiesta.
The tone of the debate was respectful and without defamatory remarks. The terms “mercenary” and “imperial lackeys” were set aside. There were notable absences, though. The entrepreneur Carlos Saladrigas – a man with a somewhat extravagant political trajectory, which has veered from the conservative right to the center and then perhaps towards the left – did not attend for reasons unknown.
Those who have been historically opposed, such asVladimiro Roca, Elizardo Sánchez and Martha Beatriz Roque, do not often attend these meetings, which are open to all. The new breed of dissidents, among them Antonio Rodiles or Eliécer Ávila, remained silent this time.
Among the more than 170 people congregated in the room, there were only three independent journalists and two alternative bloggers. The opposition should take better advantage of the opportunities for civilized debate.
The first presentation was by a panel was made up of the former diplomat Carlos Alzugaray, Mayra Espina and HiramHermández, who discussed some of the issued raised in Espacio Laical.
After the awards presentation for the Casa Cuba competition, in whichArmando Chaguaceda, Félix Sautié and Pedro Campos received honorable mentions, came the good part.
There was a dialog between the attendees and five academics of varying political beliefs and representatives from the church.Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Dimitri Prieto, Roberto Veiga, Julio César Guanche and Mario Castillo responded to questions from the auditorium.
The climate of tolerance in the old cloister left a good impression in spite of the fact that a few meters away an obese and speechless bicycle taxi driver was confusing freedom with three plates of food.
It would be very presumptuous to think that these meetings would lead to the establishment of an inclusive, open and democratic Cuba. But at least it is an attempt.
This coming October the Cuban government plans to hold the election “of silverware” to choose the municipal and provincial “spoons” that don’t “stab or cut,” because power is concentrated at the top and implicates their closest cadres at the national level.
There are some comical ironies, because the delegates to the Assemblies of People’s Power — the Cuban parliament — are chosen by direct and secret ballot, while the reelection to those in the highest positions, occurs in front of the candidates and by acclamation. Anyone who doesn’t raise their hand , and so abstains, will never again be “elected by the people” for any other office.
In the neighborhood where I live they are already immersed in the routine mechanics of the election. On my block they called all the neighbors to participate in the electoral process, except me. Not that I mind. Everyone has known my political views for years and so they received the order to marginalize me. But, am I not one more Cuban citizen? What do they mean when they talk about participative democracy, when they discriminate against someone — I’m sure I’m not the only one — by the way they think and act?
Of course the totalitarian leaders and their automatic subordinate apparatus, ignore that I have the right to be taken into account — in accordance with Cuban laws — and equally, to not participate. They disagree that to BOTAR — to offer or express — our opinions, is the most democratic, authentic and best way to VOTAR — to vote.
Cuba is preparing for the 2012 census between September 15 and 24. They are officially explaining the date to be collected, what the interviewee should say, without any guarantee of the validity and veracity of the document filled in.
Saturday, September 15, the census will begin, carried out mainly by high school students, who will each collect census data from 50 to 80 households, throughout the whole country.
Javier Lopez, 17, says that people see the census as a game because “I ask a citizen, ’do you have a computer?’ And she answers can’t you see it right in front of my eyes, but I have to put what you say, I don’t see this as having any use, I think I’m wasting my time!”
Lopez says he has canvassed 8 houses and hasn’t done more because people aren’t aware and aren’t home and other say they don’t have time right now and he goes back later no one is home.
Alberto Peña, 56, says they’d already been to his house and he was surprised that this census was being conducted by students and not social workers, and he asked the student if there was someone advising him and was told it was a university.
“I myself saw these young people without responsibility, apparently this 2012 census doesn’t have much validity, God knows if everything they put on the paper is what the citizen said, you can see that in 2 days these students go to 2 or 3 houses and they make up the rest.”
You have to wonder if, having done this, is this going to be valid for the government to have any idea of the cultural level of the population, the number of people living together in a house, the state of the house, etc.
From the news about the People’s Power delegate from the village of Limones giving statements to Radio Marti, I list several in no specific order.
This women was greatly ignored for having made statements to the “Miami mafia’s” radio station.
The delegate knows that many Cubans tune in to Radio Marti and that her complaint was known by her countrymen.
People have lost their fear of Radio Marti.
The Director of the Center for Immunoassays, born and living in the capital, is one of the two deputies who represent the municipality of Majibacoa in the National Assembly of People’s Power (ANPP). This scientist should leave his laboratory and travel to Limones to listen to the demands of the people he represents.
The Council of State also fails to respond and the demands of the voters are disregarded by this highest authority.
The president of the ANPP is more versed in the failures of the administrative systems of other countries than he is in those of his own.
This delegate, has exhausted her options and run out of patience.
COROLLARY
The People’s Power has no power and does not belong to the People.
