Estado de Sats in Troubled Waters / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

A Security of State operation carried out in cooperation with the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), blocked participants from attending Estado de Sats this Friday, August 10, 2012; but those in charge of the Cinema at All Costs didn’t cancel the projection of the documentary “Knockout” planned for this day. Around 30 people participated.

The Estado de Sats projects was sabotaged by Cuban State Security in the afternoon. Starting at 6:45 pm the participants began to arrive, but not all of them could reach Antonio Rodiles’ house, several were arrested, others on seeing the wave of police decided to return home.

Antonio Rodiles and Ailer Gonzales worried about the low attendance, the comments of those fortunate to arrive on time — 7:10 pm — suspected they were letting people pass who were: bloggers, writers, independent journalists, lawyers, etc. They went out to verify their suspicions and were right.

Antonio Rodiles commented that he had heard about a possible act of repudiation planned for in front of his house, through a friend, and had to go to the 5th police station, at 7th A and 62nd in Miramar where he delivered a document to the 2nd Station Chief, badge number 0037, warning of possible consequences of such acts and provocations.

The projection of the documentary took place, it was made by Dr. Darsi Ferrer, and was about 11 champion boxers, a sport that has brought much glory to the country (Cuba), all of them athletes with one great dream, to participate in the professional boxing league, but time passed and they retired from the active sport and their dream vanished.

Currently these champion athletes fight to live well, against unemployment, the little attention paid to them by the government and many of them lose themselves in alcohol to forget.

Agustín López (Blogger) says, “This documentary reminds me of the Roman circus, where the athletes (gladiators) fought to entertain the people and the leaders. The profits were divided between the personalities in power.”

The activities ended at 10:00 pm and there were still some police circling the area; of those fortunate in having seen the documentary none were arrested.

August 13 2012

Authority to Disagree, or Disagreement with Authority / Reinaldo Escobar

On Friday, August 10, the journalist Anneris Ivette Leyva published an article in the newspaper Granma where she urges citizens to voice their critical opinions about the wrongdoings. She goes on to say that the consequences of mistakes not criticized in time “weigh heavily on everyone’s shoulders.”

At the height of the tenth paragraph, and indirectly quoting the General-President, she clarifies that “compañero Raul has stressed the need to exchange views, to bring out the best ideas of a dialog between diverse interlocutors with a common purpose.”

So as to maintain the old rules of the game: If someone doesn’t have the same purpose as that which guides the Communist Party, they will not be recognized as a valid interlocutor, nor will they have the right to dialog, nor will they be able to point out or discuss civilly the worst of the mistakes committed: the introduction of an economic, social and political system discarded by history.

To use a model example, one may criticize the quality of the bread, but there is no desire to hear a proposal to allow a private bakery to be run as a small family business.

What our Granma colleague doesn’t quite understand is that as long as there is not a sufficient degree of freedom of expression that allows proposals, without fear of reprisals, the opening of a small or medium sized private business will continue to be a source of fear, as will denouncing the corrupt practices of a State bakery. The boundaries of dissent cannot be limited to the path that leads to the same end. We need to discuss different possible paths and in particular the various destinations where we want to go.

Dear Anneris: 25 years ago now I published, in the newspaper Juventude Rebelde (Rebel Youth) a piece similar to yours. It was titled, “The Optimism of the Discontented.” For writing articles of this nature I was stripped of the right to practice my profession in the Cuban media. I wish you the luck I had and may you some day throw off the heavy weight of censorship. Here are three paragraphs from that article. Tell me if you would not subscribe to them.

I think that Revolutionary optimism translates into the assurance that everything can still be improved, and paradoxically this is what I want to say, more or less, that nothing we have done is yet perfect; that the work undertaken is always susceptible to being submitted to the most severe analysis with the objective of enriching it.

This is why someone who, in an assembly, expresses his critical opinions about the progress of his workplace or school should be considered an authentic optimist, because he has confidence that his opinions are going to help correct the errors and because he has faith that what he says will be heard, that his participation will be decisive.

However, he who is thinking the same thing, and who doesn’t dare to make his disagreement public and knows to say only that to him it seems that everything is going very well, it is because he believes — pessimistically — that in fact it is not possible to improve the situation, or that it’s not worth it to try, or perhaps it can be too costly to oppose the wrongdoing.

13 August 2012

Strong Rains Flood Central Havana / Katia Sonia

 

Inundacion Ciudad HabanaOn Saturday, August 11, a strong rain caused floods in the capital’s Central Havana neighborhood. It rained non-stop for three hours and as a results of the garbage in the streets and the blocking of the sewers, the neighborhood of La Victoria remained under water for several hours.

The residents ran around getting their furniture and appliances to safe places to protect them from the water. Those who didn’t have time to safely store their belongings had no alternative but to watch their things destroyed.

The contents of the dumpsters on the corners which are always overflowing were swimming in the water and the trash was floating in the streets. After taking several pictures and when the water started to go down I went out to talk to several people and the discontent was widespread.

More photos at: http://flickr.com/cubacid

Published by: http://www.cubacid.org Cuba Independiente y Democratica CUBA CID

August 13 2012

Have We Become Accustomed To Dirt? / Yoani Sánchez

rainabana
Photo: Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

A teenager writes — with his index finger — the words “Wash me” in the dust on the window of the bus. A mother asks her son what the school bathroom is like and he confirms that “it stinks so much you can’t go in there.” A dentist eats a french fry in front of her patient and with unwashed hands proceeds to extract a tooth. A passerby lets his pizza — just out of the oven — drip cheese over the sidewalk, where it accumulates in a pool of fat. A waitress cleans the tables at Coppelia Ice Cream with a smelly rag, and puts out glasses sticky with successive layers of badly scrubbed milk. A spellbound tourist drinks a mojito in which several ice cubes made from tap water are floating. A sewer overflows a few yards from the kitchen of a recreation center for kids and teens. A cockroach quickly darts along the clinic wall while the doctor listens to a patient’s chest.

All this and more I could enumerate, but I prefer to summarize what I’ve seen with my own eyes. The hygiene of this city shows an alarming decline and creates a scenario for the spread of disease. The cholera outbreak in the east of the country is a sad warning of what could also happen in the capital. The lack of health education from the earliest years of life lead us to accept filth as the natural environment in which we move. The material shortages also raise the epidemiological risk. Many mothers reuse disposable diapers several times, stuffing them with cotton or gauze. The plastic bottles collected in the trash serve as containers for homemade yogurt or for milk sold on the black market. The inadequate water supply in many neighborhoods reduces hand washing and even the number of baths per week. The high prices and shortages of cleaning products further complicate the situation. It is very difficult now to find stores selling mops to clean the floor and detergent is also scarce. Keeping clean is expensive and complicated.

Last week the media announced a new health code for food handling, an undoubtedly welcome measure. But the serious hygiene problems plaguing Havana will not be resolved based on decrees and resolution. Educating about cleanliness, extolling the need for cleaning from an early age, will be a critical step to achieve real results. Schools must be a model of neatness, not a place where students have to hold their noses to use the toilet. The teachers must transmit standards of cleanliness, just as they teach speech and mathematical formulas. It should also be cheaper to maintain a supply of products to wash our bodies, our clothes and our homes. This is essential and imperative in our current situation. We need urgent measures that don’t simply remain on paper but that touch the conscience, shake this acceptance of the dirt surrounding us, and return to us a clean and cared for city.

13 August 2012

Cuban "Cuadros" / Iván García

“A square is always a square.”* Cartoon by Garricha from Los Miquis de Miami.
We are not talking about the “cuadros” or canvases done by Cuban painters. This has nothing to do with art. This is about someone who is a combination office manager and sleazy ideologue. Someone who often veers between being a bored bureaucrat and a white collar criminal. In the peculiar jargon of the party such a person has come to be known as a “cuadro”* — a guy who is half Creole rogue, half state functionary. Out of convenience they parrot the official party line like clowns.

Given the chance, they become informants for the police or the special services. Many ordinary Cubans view them as true degenerates; others simply consider them to be opportunists.

One thing is clear. If anyone has been able to take full advantage of the system designed by the Castro brothers, it is the administrative “cuadros.” Take the case of two such “compañeros” who work for the bulging governmental bureaucracy.

Let’s call them Roberto and Fermín. They do not know each other, but they behave like twin souls. They both carry black suitcases, each containing a stack of papers with official letterheads. By the time they head for home, these are packed with goods and cash obtained over the course of a normal work day.

Within the “cuadro” caste system there is a low, medium and high class. The closer one is to the pinnacle of power, the greater the cash and benefits one receives. Robert and Fermín belong to the middle class, the one that does not call too much attention to itself.

Robert is the manager of a nightclub. When summer comes, he begins his “dance for the millions.” He is a member of the Communist party and leader of a squad that, in the event of disturbances, heads to the barricades to beat up dissidents. Like most Cuban men he has spent time in the military, and is ready to do his part in a hypothetical war against the American marines.

One day a week he meets with his party cell. In his suitcase Roberto carries three bottles of premium rum. After a tedious meeting, he and his pals drink the rum. A little while later he suggests they kick back a little. From his mobile phone he calls a quartet of statuesque, bisexual girls, and in a house near the beach they engage in a boisterous orgy.

Roberto refers to such squandering of financial resources as “the cost of doing business.” It is a way of keeping high-level political bosses on his side. From time to time he “soaks” them with money, letting them in for free to his discotheque, where their tabs are on the house.

A clever “cuadro” weaves a web of influential friendships. Among Roberto’s friends are members of the military and state security. The Havana resident knows, however, that, in the event he one day he finds himself behind bars, they will be of little use to him.

But while he still can, Roberto takes full advantage of these friendships to intimidate his bosses and take care of small matters. Having a guy with three-stars is like having a guard dog at your side. It’s a guarantee.

That’s why it matters little that one of his military buddies swings by the nightclub with some regularity to fill his Chinese-made vehicle with two cases of beer, several bottles of whiskey, chorizo sausages from Spain and half a leg of ham.

Roberto recovers these costs by night. It is key for an administrator in the tourism and restaurant industry to have someone who specializes in covering up graft. One’s accountant must be a magician. That’s what makes embezzlement work.

Coming off as a member of the khaki green power structure is essential to maintaining an expensive lifestyle. Roberto owns two cars and each of his sons drives a motorcycle. He has more than one lover and a reasonable amount of cash hidden away in different locations. He never passes up the chance to make some money. If the Ladies in White need to be roughed up, you can count on him.

But his main adversaries now are not these female “mercenaries.” It is President Raúl Castro and his circle, especially the Comptroller General of the Republic, Gladys Bejerano. Her audits are making things difficult for him. Every day he is able to steal less and less.

“Cuadros” like Roberto ask themselves how far the General, who doesn’t seem to be playing games, is determined to go. Roberto feels screwed by a form of persecution being carried out against the middle and lower classes, the ones who support the “system” — a word synonymous with government, revolution and socialism.

Meanwhile, as long as they don’t get caught, they have immunity and can carry around suitcases full of cash. The crime mobs within the restaurant and tourism industry are still mapping out their strategies. They are still stealing. They have always done it, and they see no reason why they should stop now.

Fermín is another one of the system’s “cuadros.” He works in a department at the Union of Young Communists. He graduated from a party-run school where he memorized numerous treatises by Karl Marx and stretches of speeches by Fidel Castro.

This young “cuadro” was so indoctrinated that, when he spoke, he sounded like a Castro clone giving a harangue. He has forgotten neither the Marxist textbooks nor the speeches. He now employs them discreetly. As the need arises.

One morning, while imploring factory workers to increase production, Fermín raises his voice and allows himself to be swept away by revolutionary fervor and heated rhetoric. After the requisite applause he heads off to a poor neighborhood, changing his oratorical style and adapting it to the marginalized audience.

That afternoon Fermín meets with a friend from childhood, who moves through the underworld like a fish through water. This is the person who pays him in convertible pesos for invitations to discotheques and nightclubs that Fermín has stolen.

It is a “legal” way to obtain hard currency. With this money and the diversion of shipments of chicken and cheese intended for his organization’s “recreational activities,” Fermín has opened a private cafe using his friend as a front man.

The profits are high. He gets most of his supplies for free or at very low price. Fermín has already renovated his house, and is making plans to set up a cozy love nest at a girlfriend’s place.

Unlike Roberto, Fermín is not worried about Raúl Castro’s offensive against corruption and out-of-control bureaucracy. Time is on his side. He is 29 years old and there is a promising political future ahead.

His goal is to climb the winding staircase of the status quo. When God calls the Castros and the other elderly leaders home, he wants to be well-positioned. Power likes nothing better than money.

*Translator’s note: The cartoon makes use of a pun. The cartoonist and author are referencing three separate meanings for the Spanish wordcuadro, which can mean either a square, a painting, or in Cuba the type of person discussed in this blog post.

August 12 2012

XII Session Summer Schools for Industrious Teachers / Dora Leonor Mesa

To Educate: Requires the belief that change is possible.

More than 250 teachers and educators involved at all levels of teaching from the provinces of Mayabecque and Havana exchanged and updated their educational experiences by participating in the 12th Summer School for Teachers. On this occasion it was held from 30 July to 3 August at the Queen Mary Institute headquarters in the capital.

The organizing team, made up mostly of members of the National Catholic Education Commission, promotes these activities in other provinces. Matanzas and Cienfuegos had their own school this year.

The annual event organizes workshops and lectures by local and foreign teachers, who are called facilitators for the role they play as instructors and counselors in each workshop.

The daily work sessions are intense, from 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM. They also last several days, which correspond to the vacation period for teachers. However, the effort and enthusiasm among participants is supported by a high academic rigor and relevance of the topics covered.

In order to improve the work with toddlers, since June the Cuban Association for the Development of Childhood Education (ACDEI) registered five educators from private nurseries to attend the event.

Four people attended, including ACDEI coordinator. Day by day they were surprised by the interest awakened the association’s proposal. Surrounded by teaching professionals they learned:

  1. The knowledge gained during a year is relevant when compared to other nurseries in the city.
  2. The constant inquiries from attendees about the project show surprise and interest in implementing the objectives of the Cuban program “Educate Your Child” in private nurseries.
  3. Children in the day care centers with pedagogical training this year will begin school assessed with various tests used by educators with the assistance of a psychologist. The results show that these little ones, thanks to work undertaken together with their parents, are ready to begin their school life.
  4. From now on ACDEI members and educators face new challenges. One of the most important is lifelong learning about teaching methods appropriate to the learner’s developmental history, family situation and home.

In short, we will continue fueling the dreams and self-esteem of the young children and their families with love, knowledge and the inseparable daily work.

August 7 2012

Cuban Prisons: History Repeats Itself / Iván García

Photo: Taken from the web Cuba Democracia y Vida.

One cold evening with a persistent drizzle, the poet and journalist Raul Rivero in his apartment in the Havana neighborhood of La Victoria, told me that the worst thing in prison was when it came time to sleep.

Every night, while sleeping in his damp prison cell in Canaleta, Ciego de Avila, he was a free man. In those late nights he would fantasize jumping the wall and quietly drawing back the Chinese bolts.

Then he drank coffee with friends, and suddenly relaxed and happy moments shared with his mother, wife and daughters returned

All the charm was broken when the bell went off and the passage of military boots hitting the floor or announcing a search deep into the cell. For Rivero sleep was the hardest.

To the 75 prisoners from the Black Spring of 2003, those years in prison seemed like centuries. They were not criminals. Or terrorists. They had not broken any law that would endanger national security.

In summary trials they fabricated a string of nonsense useful to the government of Fidel Castro. Their weapons were the pen and the word. The incriminating evidence presented to the prosecution were books, typewriters and laptops.

Oscar Elias Biscet, slept many years in a dreadful punishment cell. Upon release, the independent journalist Jorge Olivera looked to be twenty years older and carried a string of illnesses. Orlando Zapata died in prison as a result of a prolonged hunger strike. Ariel Sigler crossed the threshold of his cell turned into a human wreck.

When a straight and honest man knows who has committed no crime and the truth is on his side, it is very difficult to break him. And usually he is not bent by questioning in the style of the KGB, with threats, humiliation and corporal punishment.

In the prisons where they served their sentences, the dissidents never failed to report the brutalities that occurred within the prisons. I remember Pablo Pacheco, from his galley in Canaleta and with the help of friends, started a blog where he told stories had seemed taken from a book of horror.

The history of political imprisonment in Cuba is terribly painful. Someday, an important day, we will hold a minute of silence for the political prisoners who died in prison on the island.

If jail is rigorous for the opponents, what about the abuses common criminals receive. Yoilán, 26, has suffered from the severity of the Cuban penal system since age 14.

Yoilán does not consider himself to be innocent. He was a thief. He was stealing money or items of value to tourists. Being a teenager he was in a juvenile rehabilitation center.

“The prison guards, for any discipline, handcuffed you to the fence and kicked and beat you with batons. Sometimes using high-voltage electrical appliances. No matter that we were barely children,” recalls Yoilán.

In adult prisons, beatings and abuse are almost a norm. One would like to know the number of common prisoners killed as a result of beatings by the prison guards.

Prisons are not hotels. But corporal punishment and verbal abuse by those who care for the punished should be prohibited. It is enough that these men and women who committed crimes serve their punishment behind the bars of a cell.

If we speak of activists like Sonia Garro, Ramón A. Muñoz or Niurka Luque, imprisoned since mid-March, then the injustice is twofold. Their only ’crime’ was to claim a handful of rights in peaceful street protests.

Fortunately, in most nations of the planet you cannot go to prison for being a political opponent. China, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Burma and some African country or other as well as Cuba. It’s a shame.

August 12 2012

Oswaldo Pay: Example and Legacy / IntraMuros, Dagoberto Valdes

From blogs.fco.gov.uk
By Dagoberto Valdés

On the afternoon of Sunday, 22 July 2012, we were surprised by unexpected and terrible news: Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, founder and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), had tragically died near the city of Bayama, seeking the roots of our Cubanness to say goodbye to the land he loved so much and for which he fought so peacefully.

Today Oswaldo’s life appears more transparent and coherent than ever. Death is, for everyone, a summary, a transition, and a lesson.

His history is not yet written. But his accomplishments are. And it is not good to wait too long to put everything in its property place when there is, starting now, an example and legacy to gather, apprehend, and continue. I try, although still moved by the immediacy, to outline what this loss and this gain has meant to Cuba, its present and its future.

Loss, because each person is unique and irreplaceable. Gain, because nothing is lost and everything is gained and the depths of the earth when a good seed falls in the furrow of life, to bring forth more fruits.

I met Payá when he was young, almost a teenager, in one of the halls of the Cerro Parish, where Father Petit was then his pastor and mentor, in a meeting of the few young people who professed the Catholic faith in the hard years of the ’70s. Those were the days when we were discriminated against just for going to Church and declaring in our school records whether or not we were believers.

Oswaldo’s entire life, like that of so many Cuban men and women faithful to Christ and to Cuba, is a daily offering of civil martyrdom of all those who are treated as second class citizens, as “unreliables” for living in what became to be called “a fantastic reflection of reality” for having religious beliefs.

At that time, neither he nor I yet had our own and various projects for Cuba and its freedom and prosperity. But we trained in the bosom of a poor Church, persecuted, committed and faithful to the gospel of its Founder. We received, through the Church, that we must recognize and thank forever, an ethical, civic, religious, and very Cuban education, that followed the saga of Varela, Luz, Mendive, Marti and many others. That is the origin, the cause and the root of our lives and the soul of our Christian commitment. That is its deep motivation, its essence, inspiration, style, methods, criteria of judgment, determination of values, ways of thinking, examples of life.

Each who has lived in his way, as it should be, diverse in the Christian social commitment, but united in the bowels of the Gospel, the Church and Cuba. From this fraternal and daily fellowship where a life is over too quickly was forged, I give testimony to what I think is the legacy of Oswaldo to Cuba and his Church.

His person and his path

For all of Cuba, Payá leaves the trajectory of a coherent life. Of a whole man, of one piece, true to what was, what is and what will be: a human being who does not want to us to deify him, who doesn’t need it, who already has and believes in one true God. He was a human being, on earth, with his faults and virtues. But most important is that in his existence there was no contradiction between who he was, what he though, what he said and what he did. Cuba needs men and women with this morality, the “sun of the moral world.”

For all of Cuba, Payá is also a citizen who freely chose to stay in his country, despite the constant threats and dangers. A citizen who did not remain in internal exile or the alienation of an ivory tower, or who “took refuge” in an opiate-religion, but who learned from his Master Jesus that true religion is the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection.

The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was an expression of this active and systematic engagement. The Varela Project is another example of his faith in action, being the most important civic exercise in the last half century, that managed to transcend the boundaries of the MCL, to be and exist with “All Together”. Cuba needs citizens to stay here, who are one nation with those who work hard to find peaceful solutions.

For the Church, Oswaldo is a paradigm of vocation and mission of lay Christians. He did not abandon the Church in spite of the sorrows and misunderstandings. he did not use it for political purposes but demanded the same thing it taught: consistency and faithfulness to the Gospel of Christ.

The Church needs lay people involved in the world of politics, civil society, culture, economy … and the laity need not be excluded, nor seen as rare, both Tyrians and Trojans, because of their commitments, be they political or civic. They need to be considered and followed, without taking its own political choices, both in life and in death, as do our parish communities, priests, religious and bishops. Just as with other, laypeople who are caregivers, teach the catechism, work in Caritas, pray the Rosary, or animate a mission house. This is what we see and thank Paya’s funeral.

For the Church, Payá is also an example of Christian prophecy. He was the voice many who did not have a voice, but he did not disqualify or exclude his brethren who thought differently. To disagree and debate, is not to exclude. To exclude is to segregate the family of those who are considered “dissidents” or “dangerous” or “troublesome”, or not accepted by the powers of this world. Oswaldo suffered this and much more. But his prophecy did not rest, nor was it exhausted. He denounced the ills suffered by the people and the Church that formed a part of him. He announced the Christian liberation and he created, proposed projects, thinking, laws, new roads, in an absolutely peaceful and proactive way.

Cuba and its Church need this kind of prophet who not only denounces but also proposes solutions and puts them into practice, patiently and bravely.

The immediate fruits of the death of Payá

Here, in the Cerro Parish, with the body still present, we can observe various immediate fruits of the sacrifice of Oswaldo Payá. I will mention a few:

The physical family of the deceased gave testimony of spiritual strength, serenity and faithfulness to the work of Oswaldo. Mired in unspeakable pain they did not lose the integrity or peace of knowing that their husband and father has given his life to a worthy cause and died in the fulfillment of Christian and civic duty.

The Church, Payá’s religious family, offered during his burial an example of communion without exclusion, solidarity in pain and coherence with what it preaches. It has been truly organic and sacramental from the Good Shepherd, from the Pope’s condolences to the last parishioner of the parish who offered water or consolation, through various religious congregations, the pastor, other priests and monks, evangelical pastors, bishops and their bishop the Cardinal, whose homily must be studied and lived. All united by faith in Christ and love for Cuba. Despite the normal and even desirable differences, in the healthy pluralism of the People of God. As the fruit of a Church united in diversity, embodied, prophetic and reconciliatory dialogue, beginning with itself.

Civil society, the citizen family that shares the same history, nation and destination, has also, on the occasion of the death of Payá, shown a clear and unequivocal gesture of unity in diversity, respect for differences without disqualification, excluding hatred, confrontation and other human miseries that we all have and must overcome, to put above all ideological and political differences, which in themselves are not bad … to put above all Cuba, our homeland, the common home, its freedom and prosperity. What I saw there, that mature civic spirit and weaver of coexistence, is the Cuba that we dream of are building together.

The diplomatic corps, represented there as well as the press,accredited or independent, also show respect and the normality with which observers, international and our own, consider Cuban society as a pluralistic body in a process of maturation and serious and peaceful commitment with the changes and democracy.

These gestures have also been made possible by the good will and civic and political maturity of civil society. Other immediate fruits might be mentioned as an example and comforting encouragement to family members of his movement and friends. In the future to come in the medium and long term, surely we will see more that one seed is capable of producing, a symbol, a paradigm, a flag of peace brought by love. No one can calculate.

I want to end by saying that at Oswaldo Payá’s funeral I noted that pluralism and respect for the unity in diversity have come gradually, first to the life of civil society and, in some ways, to the life of the Church, the people of God. May God grant that will also reach the State that it will move them, so that Cuba will be a home where “we all fit.”

I pray to God, for the intercession of Oswaldo Payá, of Harold Cepero, of Laura Pollán, of Wilman Villar, Wilfredo Soto, Orlando Zapata, Pedro Luis Boitel, and many others, who were faithful to their faith and their ideals in this life, that comes to an end, fully, for all in Cuba, with respect for pluralism, unity in diversity, ethical, civic and religious coherence, that we have received as the raised and hopeful fruit of the living cross, the cross accepted by these our brothers.

They were able. We follow his example and legacy.

So be it. Amen.

August 9 2012

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Dream and Reality / Cuban Law Association, Argelio M. Guerra

 

By Lic. Argelio M. Guerra

The year was 1945 and with its progressed, the end of a bloody global War, to the satisfaction of the international community. The effects of the global conflagration left the eyes of humanity perplexed and revealed the urgent need for a mechanism to control and guarantee peaceful coexistence and international security. Thus, gathered in the city of San Francisco in June 1945, representatives of the allied powers and other states agreed to the charter of a new international organization: The United Nations Charter.

One of the first tasks tackled by the new organization was precisely the wording of a declaration that would explicitly reference the human rights expressed in the Charter, so that only three years after the adoption of the Charter of United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was born, adopted by the General Assembly on December 10, 1948.

In its thirty articles, the Declaration addresses the basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people, everywhere, without discrimination. The Universal Declaration was proclaimed the “dream” of a common standard of realization for all peoples and all nations, but the fact is that the discrepancies of States in the process of drafting the Declaration and the reluctance of them to be legally committed, provoked a turning point that led to the Universal Declaration being born and adopted in the form of a mere resolution of the General Assembly of the United Nations devoid of a legally binding character on its member States, postponed for a future development of a human rights treaty, legally binding on those States that came to ratify it.

Nevertheless, this reality is not an impairment to the authority and force of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as general guidance on the content of the rights and fundamental freedoms that are frequently referenced in national constitutions, judicial decisions and also in international instruments, in addition to which, over time, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has become one of the basic parameters under which the international community can deny legitimacy to certain states, frequent violators of these rights.

August 12 2012

The Preliminary Provisions: A Bad Beginning / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallín Almeida


By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

In the Cuban Penal Code, in Title 1, Preliminary Disposisions, Article 1.1, we read:

This Code has as its objectives:

– to protect society, persons, the social, economic and political order and the State system;

– to safeguard the property recognized in the Constitutions and its laws;

– to promote the full observance of the rights and duties and citizens;

– to contribute to forming in all citizens the consciousness of respect for the socialist legality, of the performance of the duties and the proper observance of the norms of socialist coexistence.

Let’s try to analyze, albeit briefly, the objectives that the current penal code establishes, starting with the first: to protect society, persons, the social, economic and political order and the State system.

This first objective begins, to protect society, persons … in that order. That is, the first is the society, only then the people. Allow us, however, a brief tour of History.

The individual, the person, is first that which arises from the civitas which is nothing more than a creation of man. All who have dealt with the appearance of man on earth agree that homo sapiens predates the creation of society.

Moreover, this formulation reminds me of that controversial and much-quoted French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, who through his formulation of what he called the general will, many saw the intention of disregarding anyone who thinks differently or disagrees, or belongs to a minority, or deviates from majority behavior …  which can be achieved in many ways.

In other words, since it is easy to argue that the rights of all come first over those of a few, the reduction of those few, with controversial arguments or not (or with force) can be easily justified, especially if what comes next is … (to protect) the social, economic and political order and the state system.

This formulations should not surprise us at all because Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov had already left us with “the law is nothing more than the concentrated expression of politics” and the expression of the penal code under consideration shows us exactly that.

It is interesting to contrast this article with the same title and section of another code, for example, that of our Latin American sister republic of Colombia. It reads:

Title I, Article I: Human Dignity. “Criminal law will base the respect for human dignity.”

And if what this is about is the importance of our having the rights and individual freedoms endorsed by the UN Covenants on Human Rights, then the Preliminary Provisions of the Penal code are — in terms of rights and freedoms and in my opinion — a bad start.

August 9 2012

Castroniria / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Soleida Ríos just published through Union Publishers a collection of the dreams of certain Cuban characters, from a winner of the National Literature Prize to a champion boxer (the latter much more creative than the former, by the way). A poetic little book, of course, with too many cultural references to actually impact reports on the truth about what’s real.

But the idea is still enticing. Does every Cuban dream at random or us there a certain spontaneous consensus when dreams come, of being alone with our mind, or perhaps with our death? Will or won’t there be an imaginary and hyperreal data base, this concept or canon of “dreaming in Cuban”: that is, of dreaming in private the Revolution? (There is a title from Nivaria Tejera that tries, unfortunately with very limited efficacy.)

It must be hard to dream. For at least a couple of decades no one around me tells me the sudden visions of their latest night, be they erotic of horrific. They say they forget everything when they wake up. That at this point in history it’s not worth the effort to retain an image. In fact, they’re not even sure if they dream. Or even if they rest to sleep, or sleep to rest.

Our post-Revolutionary 21st Century is in some way that desperate vigil, that precarious but perpetual present, this being without being of which no one in their right mind could expect anything now. Madness as the ultimate fountain of significance from which it is very dangerous to drink.

Nevertheless, we dream. Or we can pretend we dream, because we assume we are not capable of this territory at the margin of daily totalitarianism. The despotic power this country has suffered for 50 or 500 years, given its pretensions of western modernity, today it cannot impose its desert demagoguery in a simply dream of its citizens. Hence the interest in compiling dreams Hence the dissimilar subversive dreamt plebiscite. We are free to dream that we dream, including faking it.

Don’t the generals have dreams of five-star pansies, with a tank’s gun up their own asses? Don’t democratic activists dream that shining from their guayaberas are the obsolete insignias of a neo-commander-in-chief? The exile savoring in its own sauce his original migratory guilt? Doesn’t he who asks refuge dream like a cheat who calculated it all ahead of time, just to access this refuge-ability status? Isn’t the Virgin a spread-legged horizontal nympho?  Doesn’t the Catholic read a subconscious devil at night. Aren’t adults children before the sun comes out? Aren’t the old rejuvenated and repent of their biographies of shit, fear, petty mediocrity? Crying in our dreams, do we miss some Cuban? Doesn’t the hired assassin dream of the last expression of his victims before the wrenching the steering wheel or the criminal sedative injection?

Ah, to dream is a pleasure, a suffering.

If only every Cuban would dare to put some dream in writing, perhaps we would recover the awakening of our so harmful notion of a nation. Perhaps we would have the right to a collective niche called Cuba (the bed that Cuba still extends to us), with the density of some contemporary thing, with the soul of a free pillow, without diurnal dictators nor the most faithful phantoms of a socialized Freud.

Not only would we have time and memory to put into words some ephemeral or incessant dream, something that happens to us inside and that we don’t control, an intimate or intimidating impressions, the sum of these millions of mental energies would be surprising.

Could our homeland for which we kick and scream be reborn from such a catalog without knowing how or why? Hopefully. The worst would be if, like in an all-encompassing novel of Guillermo Rosales, from this gelatin of nightmares emerges again statistically the fatuous triumph of a tyrant: alive or dead, awake or falling asleep, “Don’t you see now that nothing is resolved with this?”

Cuba not so gallows-like, but as ubiquitous.

From Penultimos Dias

10 August 2012

 

The Bed or the Street? / Yoani Sánchez

Drops of sweat, dancing, hips in motion, suggestive eyes. It’s night at a Havana party and the erotic tension feels like a tangible presence, corporeal. Eyes connect, gestures form a pact to meet in the dark, the lips agree without words, the battle of the kisses will come later.

On this island sexuality seems to ooze from the pores and the corners, it even seeps from the asphalt. Tight clothes, suggestive smiles, lascivious phrases, exude a sensuality that strikes those who visit Cuba for the first time. It gives the impression that at any moment, in the street, we could bump into some scene from the bedroom.

People constantly make jokes alluding to sex and dozens of words refer, in the vernacular, to the genitals. A recent arrival to our reality could believe that we have left behind every taboo about carnal pleasure, and that we have overcome every timidity.

However, behind the visible explosion of joy and pleasure is hidden a prudish mentality when it comes to addressing sexual intercourse. The self-confidence the dances and the expressions bring, contrasts with the blushes or the silence when trying to explain sexuality to children or to speak seriously about the issue.

This sexual confidence also butts up against the stilted public discourse. The Cuban government has always had problems managing the overly lewd character of those it governs. The role model of a sober man they’ve implanted in the country would have worked better with a tremendously formal man, someone more stiff-limbed.

But this characteristic has also been greatly exploited by State Security, which investigates the intrigues emerging from the bedrooms and converts them into material for extortion. How many times have we heard, “It seems they must have saved a couple of compromising photos because he’s so tight-lipped.”

Public figures, diplomats, foreign correspondents, dissidents, generals and officials; spied on and documented in the exercise of loving and being loved. An entire archive narrating poses, meetings, pillow histories, to be used at just the right moment when someone should be diverted from their path. The practice is so widespread that many Cubans sense, in the middle of an orgasm, that an eye is spying on them from a doorway, a camera hidden in the ceiling light, or a microphone inserted into the lover’s body itself.

This mixture of paranoia and ecstasy has been well told in the novel The Colonel’s Wife by Carlos Alberto Montaner. The story is framed in the eighties, when Cuban troops supported the MPLA in Angola’s war. Colonel Arturo Gomez receives a yellow envelope that contains proof of the infidelity of this wife, during a trip to Italy. From that moment both their lives are reduced to a political expedient in the hands of officials with the pretensions of detectives, representing a supposed revolutionary morality that sees, in her act, treason to the homeland.

Intimacy loses its private status, pleasure is transformed into guilt, and every moan of satisfaction must be purged. In a totalitarian system it is not possible for an individual to treasure the secret of adultery. It must be brought to light publicly, the adulterer chastised, made to know that Big Brother’s eye is watching this frivolous conduct and will not forgive it.

If, on top of that, the unfaithful one is a woman married to a military man or senior official, the chastisement must be a lesson to all. The bed becomes a trap that ends in more control, the sheets the web of a political witch hunt, and the carnal love the indiscretion the ideological executioners are waiting for.

This is a book that analyzes sex and power. Reading it will reveal the illusion of the call to revolutionary morality, the falsity of the pose of militant asceticism. Those who accuse, Nuria, the wife, of adultery, evaluate her carnally, feast their eyes on her curves, in hopes of exchanging her nude body for a certain mercy.

But beyond all this meddling of the State in the personal, The Colonel’s Wife is a novel of a sweet eroticism that escapes the pedestrian reality of the years of Soviet subsidies. The erotic scenes, many of which come to us through the letters her Italian lover writers to Nuria, mix with modern immodesty and an eternal majesty. Perhaps because some of them have as a backdrop the city of Rome, dotted with history and archeological sites.

Nuria experiences outside of Cuba that freedom of the senses and desires that she knows are strictly monitored in her country. The professor, Valerio Martinelli, helps her to rediscover the woman under the poses, the masks, the opportunism and the silences. Her liberation as a citizen begins, in this case, with sex, it comes from her vagina.

But no one who lives under totalitarianism can escape its control. Even abroad, Nuria is followed by State Security. Her pleasurable carnal act of emancipation is turned into a police file used to pressure her. The bed as a tempting trap into which she falls over and over, like a prize that later brings a serious correction.

The ardor of the protagonist, her need to express herself in copulation, bears a strong relation to sex as an escape, so practiced in Cuba. The absence of spaces that respect free expression and association leads us to express ourselves in moans and spasms. Instead of throwing a paving stone, we unburden ourselves in fellatio; instead of demanding our civil rights, we put our tongue in another’s mouth… a gesture that doesn’t allow us to speak while we do it.

A caress for a protest, fleeing to an orgasm so as not to face the anti-riot troops… we show ourselves to be passionate, because we cannot show ourselves to be free. The bed as an escape valve, towards which they push us, but also where they monitor and trap us.

11 August 2012

Speaking of Costs / Fernando Dámaso

Faced with the inability to publish news of real and palpable economic successes, which have been notable for their absence over the years, the official press waves the two threadbare banners of Cuban socialism—education and health.

The first has been in prolonged crisis. With its “emerging” teachers trained through accelerated and intensive courses, its decaying facilities and its politicized study programs, Cuban education amounts to a real headache for both students and their parents, who must augment this training by hiring private tutors if they want their children to gain the knowledge necessary to pass their exams.

The second, which is the primary subject of this post, is also in crisis. For several days on page 2 of the newspaper Granma there has been a chart with the evocative title, “Your Health Service is Free, But How Much Does It Cost?” It details the costs of certain services and their corresponding level of care.

Even if we assume that these costs have been correctly calculated, the claim that these services are free is false. For fifty years they have been paid for with the money that Cubans have not received, and still do not receive, due to poverty-level wages. (The average monthly salary is no more than twenty dollars.)

Although every citizen is paid a salary that corresponds to the work he or she performs, not everyone is sick, gets sick regularly, or makes use of these services. In reality these services are used by only one percent of the population. As if that were not enough, the majority of the facilities where they are offered are badly deteriorated, lack water, are unhygienic – including those that were recently but badly repaired – and have limited resources and medications.

If there is anything to be thankful for, it is the treatment provided by the doctors, nurses and other auxiliary personnel. While they too are paid poverty-level wages, they make efforts to provide quality care to their patients, even when they know that the medications that they prescribe are in short supply, or are impossible to acquire through badly stocked pharmacies.

If we are talking about costs, why discuss only certain services? The official press does not decide to publish anything on a whim; there is always some motive behind everything that is published. This often repeated method has become well known.

Perhaps it might be convenient to publish a chart that reflected other costs. It could be called, “How Much Has and Does the Government Cost the Cuban People?”

August 10 2012

A Summer Night’s Nightmare / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

This has been a rainy year in Cuba, and as if to do justice to the energy of this season, in Artemisa last Saturday afternoon it rained buckets including a concert of terrible thunder. An hour after having cleared up, around 5 PM, the guest who didn’t make it was seen approaching: the blackout. The strange part of it was that the presumed break waited an hour after the last ray of sunshine to make its appearance on the scene. The hours passed, with midnight the terrible certainty arrived: this would be a long day, we slept without electric current in the midst of this horrid summer. It wasn’t the first time, nor the end of the world nor much less, but in this country of timid advances and serious setbacks, I couldn’t help shuddering at the thought that these nightly blackouts would return to be a part of the daily landscape.

But if we speak fairly, we have to recognize that we haven’t had power outages for years, at least in my and neighboring towns, they stopped being habitual only to convert themselves into real news, then the strategy of getting better autonomy in the territories by installing generators gave, seemingly, the hoped-for results. Today, the blackout occurs only in the case of breakage, and is generally short. But when it comes, it does it with the aggravating factor of finding most Cuban homes enslaved to electrical service, then together with the sensibility of selling us electrical appliances — it must have something to do with an idiosyncratic problem — the insensitivity of shutting down our liquid gas service, by which more than one Artemisan saw themselves dark in the afternoon-night of this Saturday.

Inevitably, my mood soured by the intense heat made my thoughts fly back in time and I remembered — how could I forget? — those summer nights of 1993 and 1994, those tortured nights of neighbors sleeping in doorways, and at the heat of the roofs, at the mercy of the mosquitoes, to flee from the suffocating heat. In those days the “alumbrones*”, because the daily blackouts lasted between 16 and 20 hours, even whole days, they were, together with the scarcity of food and the virtual absence of transport, the most palpable evidence that we had hit bottom.

Although the morning came, it wasn’t until almost Sunday mid-afternoon, after 17 hours that seemed too long for fixing a break, that the service was re-established and I breathed a sigh of relief. Over the kitchen, like witnesses to an involuntary vigil, stood the burned-up remains of the candles and the memory of this nightmare of a summer’s night.

*Translator’s note: “Alumbron” is a Cuban word coined to mean when the electricity is ON. The existence of the word is testimony to the fact that at certain times in recent Cuban history the electricity being ON has been the unexpected state of affairs, while blackouts were the common and expected state of affairs.

Translated by: JT

August 10 2012