Translating Cuba

The miter leans slightly with the rhythm of the ritual, leaving his back exposed to the stone face of José Martí. On the table of the Mass, the chalice rests and reflects from its golden surface a relief of Che Guevara mounted on the facade of the Ministry of the Interior. Benedict XVI officiates mass in the Plaza of the Revolution, and the whole scene could not be more contradictory, more unreal.

In the red heart of red Cuba, the Lord’s Prayer is heard, and a few yards from Raúl Castro’s office, a multitude responds with an “amen” instead of the traditional “fatherland or death.” In the street in front of the altar, ordered reticles contain those attending the Catholic liturgy. When the television cameras pan the scene it’s clear many of them don’t know how to pray or how to cross themselves.

There is also a VIP area filled with the members of a government that defines itself as Marxist and atheist. The Communist Party leaders aren’t wearing olive-green but rather suits and ties, but even so they clash with the white clothes of the many believers and the red of the cardinals. Wednesday, March 8 has barely dawned and the island seems exhausted by the two days St. Peter’s successor has already spent among us.

The visit began in the east of the country. After the jubilant throngs that greeted him in Mexico, the Pope found a surprisingly orderly people here, lined up along the road between the airport and the city of Santiago de Cuba. The crowd carried no posters nor were shouts of joy heard; it was simply a gentle stream of people with little flags waving in their hands. An image perfectly suited to the adjectives “educated, composed and organized” which the newspaper Granma had used a few days before to describe the people who would wait for Benedict XVI.

Also, with sufficient lead time, schools and workplaces received their marching orders. “We must show respect to His Holiness, believers as well as non-believers. No one can miss Mass,” they were warned at meetings called by union, party and student leaders for this purpose.

Knowing the euphemisms that rule Cuban official language, reading these marching orders was clear: no enthusiasm and no spontaneity; anything that departs from the program will be punished. In some companies, whose employees received a bonus in convertible currency, the message was even more direct: those who don’t attend will lose the hard currency cash stimulus. Which explains, in part, why so many atheists and materialists showed up at dawn in the plazas on the days when the Supreme Pontiff celebrated Catholic worship.

Cachita

The preparations for the papal visit had started months earlier, when it was announced that His Holiness would visit us for the celebration of the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the image of the Virgin of the Caridad del Cobre. Our patron, popularly known as Cachita, was found in the Bay of Nipe in the early 17th century. Two men and a teenager, all three named Juan, found her floating in the water.

So Cachita, rescued from the waves by those arms, became the Mary of a people who, centuries later, would launch themselves into the Straits of Florida on rafts, doors converted into boats, and trucks made watertight so they would float. The Mambisa Virgin, who was also with those who demanded Cuba’s independence from Spain at the point of machetes, now adorns the altars of our compatriots scattered across the globe.  She has her shrine in Miami, as she has her sanctuary in Santiago.

Cachita was the first rafter, only did she not escape, she arrived, not wanting to reach other horizons but to stay with us forever. And in honor of this “traveler of the faith” Joseph Ratzinger also came to Cuba. To pray in a temple full of offerings, known as El Cobre, for its proximity to copper deposits. In the entrance hall of the busy church — the Chapel of Miracle — is a varied collection: locks of hair dedicated by girls planning to marry a foreigner alternate with booties from babies written off by doctors but who managed to survive. Bracelets from the 26th of July Movement left there by rebels who once wore scapulars, but ended up banning them. In one corner a card recalls the dissidents imprisoned during the Black Spring of 2003. Only under Cachita’s cloak can such plurality coexist.

Fidel Castro’s mother herself offered this Virgin the silhouette of her son sculpted in gold so that he would survive the rigors of the Sierra Maestra. Ernest Hemingway’s Nobel Prize lies side-by-side with several military orders that belonged to the Fulgencio Batista’s soldiers and officials. All the elements of the national melting pot come together at the feet of Cachita, under the protection of the crown that adorns her head.

Benedict XVI also brought his own gift for our patron: The Golden Rose, one of the highest decorations awarded by the Catholic Church. And with each day the offerings grow, as five hundred people cross the threshold of that temple daily,; on the weekends the numbers double. Some from devotion, others out of curiosity. Who knows?

Joseph Ratzinger entered this sanctuary one warm March morning, surrounded by the faithful. On the steep road leading there he didn’t see any of the vendors who normally offer wood carvings of the Virgin of Charity. Nor were there the traveling sellers or flowers, candles and little pebbles speckled with copper.

Also missing were the Ladies in White, who every Sunday make a pilgrimage to the temple of our Patron Saint. They were there for several days before being warned by State Security to stay away. Several of them were subject to house arrest, while others fared worse, ending up in one of the area’s jail cells.

Like someone who cleans the house to receive an important guest, the Cuban government had decided to sweep all the inconvenient citizens under the carpet. To achieve that, they triggered the strongest campaign of repression of recent years.

From atheism to faith

In a population that has had to wear so many masks to circumvent the controls, it is difficult to distinguish between those who really believe in God and those who don’t. Among those who showed a vertical materialism thirty years ago, today are many devout and mystics. However, despite this emergence of religiosity, we remain a people of few practitioners, perhaps for lack of  perseverance, or perhaps because freedom from worship, once interrupted, delays its return in all its aspects.

Many who feigned being anti-religious when it was an ideological sin to have a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in your home, are now confessed Santeros, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Seventh Day Adventists. Cubans coming out run through an odd and surprising route, through agnosticism to faith, from doubt to belief. Crucifixes are no longer hidden under shirts, and altars to saints are in plain view in the living rooms of thousands of homes.

The custom of baptizing children has returned after several generations that never received this sacrament. Church weddings are back in fashion, and it’s common in hospitals to see the sacrament of last rites. Catechism classes are filled with children whose parents had to learn in school that “religion is the opium of the people.” National history seems to have closed a cycle of guns to begin another of rosaries.

And not only religion, the Church as an institution has gained ground in our society in recent years. Among other achievements is the possibility of opening a new seminary to train priests. Catholic masses are broadcast on national television on certain important dates and even the political discourse has cast aside its old anti-religious slogans. December 25 has been a holiday for fourteen years, an accomplishment of John Paul II, and now Benedict XVI has given us the first Good Friday off in several decades.

The papal visit of March 2012 was also focused on strengthening the spaces already recovered and extending pastoral action to other areas of society. One of the long deferred dreams of the Cuban archdiocese is to be able to teach Christian ethics in the Island’s schools. Cardinal Jaime Ortega y Alamino has been playing a decisive role in these present conquests and their possible future expansion. His personal history includes a stay, in the mid-sixties, in the so-called Military Units in Aid of Production (UMAP). Under these initials were hidden forced labor camps surrounded by barbed wire where homosexuals, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other politically incorrect “elements” were interned. Perhaps from having lived there the Archbishop of Havana knows what the Cuban government is capable of against those who oppose it.

Ortega y Alamino led the controversial negotiations between Church and State that culminated in the release of the prisoners of the Black Spring. Applauded by many and criticized by many others, those conversations were notable for the absence of various stakeholders who had been peacefully demanding the release of those dissidents and independent journalists.

The Ladies in White — wives, mothers, sisters and daughters of the prisoners — were excluded from the table where it was agreed to draw back those locks and, for many of the incarcerated, exchange the bars for departure into exile. The Church emerged strengthened by its role as mediator, but perhaps not even its ancient wisdom allowed it to measure the enormous responsibility it had assumed.

In a country where all the roads by which civil society can make demands or question the government have been cut off, any small path that opens in that direction is immediately crammed with requests. The effects of the Catholic Church assuming political leadership at that moment did not fail to be felt.

On March 13, in a Havana temple consecrated to the Virgin of Charity of Cobre, a group of thirteen people gathered, asking that a list of demands be delivered to the Pope. The list ranged from the authorization to form political parties to respect for economic freedoms. They refused to leave when the mass ended, and demanded a chance to speak with some representative from the Church hierarchy.

After three days without anyone offering them food, an unarmed commando moved in and removed the occupants by force. Undertaken with the consent of Cardinal Jaime Ortega, this eviction maneuver sparked a deep discontent among other activists, even those who had expressed their disagreement with the tactic of breaking into a church.

One unfortunate note published by the Havana Archdiocese in the Communist Party’s Granma newspaper implied that the official and ecclesiastical discourses could once again be almost identical in certain situations. The incident was broken up in a misguided way before the arrival of Benedict XVI, so its political cost will linger for a long time. Cachita’s golden mantle did not serve, on this occasion, to protect all her children.

Wojtyla vs. Ratzinger

Parallel with citizen disconnect, another shadow cast over the arrival of His Holiness was the luminous trail left by his predecessor. The Polish Pope, Karol Wojtyle, traveled to Cuba in January 1998 and so was the first Pope to arrive in our land. We experienced, then, moments of hope and doubt. We’d recently emerged from the hardest years of the so-called Special Period, with its economic crises and endless blackouts. The Berlin Wall had fallen nearly a decade earlier, partly due to the influence of this Traveler of the Gospel on events taking place in Poland and other Eastern European countries.

John Paul II came preceded by the thunder of a political bloc that had disarmed while Fidel Castro’s government put into practice small and controlled economic reforms to avoid a collapse. The man who had been educated in Jesuit schools and later renounced the faith waited at the foot of the stairs for the old anti-communist born in Wadowice.

Seldom has a welcoming ceremony had so many explicit and subliminal messages as those that would be read on that January 21, 1998 at José Martí Airport. Face to face were the Guerrilla and the Pastor, the atheist and the pontiff, he who imposed the writings of Marx in the schools, and he who spread the Holy Bible.

John Paul II had ventured a phrase that would not come to pass in the nearly fifteen years between one papal visit and another:

“Let Cuba open itself to the world and let the world open itself to Cuba.”

These were his words but insularity — more political than physical — continued to mark the national direction. His presence in several Cuban provinces was met by an enthusiasm that his successor couldn’t even begin to equal. One of the popular signs of the disgust that met Benedict XVI was the absence of jokes about him. In a festive people who laugh even in the midst of great material scarcity, the jokes and funny stories that greeted the coming of Karol Wojtyla could have filled a book.

But in March of 2012 Joseph Ratzinger found us more serious, more tired. Pepito, the eternal mischievous urchin of so many popular stories, didn’t deign to appear on this occasion. As one day faith abandoned so many Cubans, now it was sarcasm that had taken its leave. All we managed to come up with were a few word plays, as in Spanish the word “papa” means both pope and potato — that tuber so missing from our plates. An elementary and trite play on words between the resident of the Vatican and this savory bite that has disappeared from our forks: “Instead of habemus papam, what we want is potato,” Cuban housewives joked.

Fourteen years later it was clear we were no longer the same, but neither was the pope. The Commander-in-Chief did not wait for him at the airport, rather the red carpet was watched over by his little brother, Raul Castro. The heir to the triple tiara was received by the Cuban heir to the throne.

In his welcoming speech, the General President said that the country was absorbed in a process of transformation. As if the ancient memory of the Church could forget that similar phrases had been pronounced before the previous pope. If the hosts feared that Benedict XVI might emit criticisms about the management of the Communist Party on Cuban soil, real life calmed them. His public speeches were centered on pastoral themes and the boldest phrase that came out of his mouth was to assure us that “Cuba is looking to the future.” Beyond that, there was incense in abundance while social and political references were scarce.

There was no time on the papal agenda to meet with the outlawed voices of civil society. Well in advance, the Ladies in White had solicited at least one minute to tell His Holiness of this other Cuba that the official side never includes in its conversations. There is no one better than they to make such a demand.

Every Sunday for the last nine years dozens of these women have attended mass at Santa Rita, patron of impossible causes, to pray for their imprisoned family members. The peaceful women’s movement they represent has spread to seven provinces and, although many of the Ladies have accompanied their husbands into exile, there are now more than one hundred members on the Island.

Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega’s failure to include the Ladies in White in his negotiations with the Cuban authorities has been strongly criticized, as these women have — without question — the merit of having put their lives in danger in the streets, before a government that penalizes political opposition and free expression with long prison sentences. If the cardinal and the president had opened this space, there would have been faith that the pope would have met with them.

But Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi, already on Cuban soil, said that Benedict’s schedule was too tight for a meeting with the dissidence or other civic groups. But he could dedicate half an hour of his scarce time to the ex-president Fidel Castro, with whom he met at the Apostolic Nunciature in Havana.

A frail old man, accompanied by several of his children and his wife, spoke with the man who, in his day, was the prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith. This meeting irredeemably tilted the papal visit to the side of officialdom. In Mexico he had refused to cross words with the victims of clerical child abuse, and in Cuba he abstained from an exchange with the victims of governmental abuse.

The pope yes, the citizens no

Benedict had used up all the controversy his stay in Cuba would raise days before he landed at Antonio Maceo Airport. He addressed the Island’s model in very strong words while on his plane en route to Mexico. “Communism is no longer working in Cuba,” he decreed, in what seemed to be the preamble to a visit marked by tensions between Catholic doctrine and a government that declares itself — even today — Marxist-Leninist. But as the papal delegation approached our skies, the discourse was moderated.

Although the national press did not publish these criticisms from His Holiness, most people learned of them thanks to the illegal information networks and the persecuted satellite dishes that capture channels from Florida. Everyone knew, but few made their knowledge public. In schools and workplaces it was insistently repeated that attendance at the Pope’s Mass was an imperative, in the same tone used to announce the May Day parade.

Despite the controls deployed, in the middle of the plaza of Santiago de Cuba a man named Andres Carrion shouted, “Down with communism!” His words echoed in the morning air above the psalms and prayers, even reaching the ears of those closest to the pope. Immediately two plainclothes police evacuated the daring activist who had made a mockery of all the fences.

Once Carrion was beyond the area visible from altar, a man wearing the insignia of the Red Cross hit him in the face and brought a stretcher down on his head. Before the astonished eyes of the foreign press and the opportunistic lenses of several cameras, the scene explained very well how the circles of vigilance were set up around that gathered flock. With police camouflaged as the faithful, as nurses, as lighting technicians. If anyone expected to see a booted soldier with a gun on his belt repress the indignation, what happened would have confused and affected them even more.

The image of that individual, supposedly there to provide first aid, slapping a handcuffed man and beating him with what should have been emergency equipment, provoked the most notorious scandal of the papal journey. The report of what happened reached the ears of the International Red Cross, which demanded an investigation of the facts. Their Cuban spokesperson, several days later, issued a note of apology without specifying the identity of the aggressor.

The short video showing the beating has been seen by millions of Cubans, although the official press never referred to what happened. People must know that Andres Carrion will be charged with public disorder and it has also leaked out that the Vatican entourage intervened to avoid the the application of a very severe penalty.

Perhaps this intervention was motivated by what the Pope had said about Communism before coming to Cuba and what Andres Carrion had chosen to shout in the middle of the plaza. One of them was received with honors after asserting that a system wasn’t working, and the other was locked up and expected to be tried for his actions. Dramatic paradoxes of who and where.

The truth is that the Cuban government’s meticulously planned script for the three-day visit suffered an irreversible setback from one man’s scream, a sobering surprise.

State of emergency… undeclared

To prevent something like what, in fact, happened, innumerable measures — including the most excessive — were taken ahead of time. Throughout all of Cuba hundreds of people were victims of an intensive crackdown during the last week of March.

The Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation was able to account for more than four hundred activists taken to police stations or subject to house arrest. The scope and effectiveness of this raid, popularly dubbed the “Vow of Silence,” betrayed its meticulous preparation weeks and months in advance.

Amid the hardships we live with, a repressive deployment of these proportions must have exhausted the national coffers and compromised a share of the resources urgently needed for other sectors.

There are those who say the Pope’s stay among us served as a dress rehearsal for the enforcement mechanisms being made ready for “X-Day,” as the day Fidel Castro’s death is announced has come to be called. And for this, everything will be brought to bear. At least we now know how the first twenty-four hours will pass after the “Great Death”: dissidents behind bars, communications cut, eyes lurking around every corner.

Transportation was virtually paralyzed hours before the Alitalia plane landed and Internet access was cut in schools and workplaces a week in advance. The mobile phone company, Cubacel, became an accomplice, cutting the lines of any potentially “dangerous” users. Even the black market experienced anxious moments with the excessive number of police in the streets. The country was under an undeclared state of emergency.

By the time His Holiness spoke at the Plaza of the Revolution in Havana, filled with believers and non-believers, he had probably already heard of the ideological purge that had rounded up numerous sheep from his flock. Why didn’t he allude to them in his homily? What was the reason for his not pronouncing a few words during his farewell at the airport as a reminder of those who were prevented from approaching his entourage?

One of the detainees of those days tells how they took him to a cell east of the capital, with boarded-up windows. The timing of his arrest, on a public street several hours before the Pope landed in Havana, seemed like something from the script of a bad action movie. In the cell where they held him he found three other opponents who were arrested when they went to a police station to inquire about the whereabouts of a missing colleague.

Through a small hole that opened onto the street he spent the night shouting telephone numbers so that some passerby might call his family, because they denied him the right to make a single phone call. Through the gap he just managed to see the feet of kids playing baseball, the shoes of old people walking to the bodega, and skinny legs of the dogs.

All night he repeated the same digits over and over until he had no more voice to continue. He still doesn’t know who contacted his friends and family, but when he was released they were already aware of his arrest. Perhaps a stranger heard those numbers coming from a small hole flush with the sidewalk and miraculously decided to act as the messenger of such an urgent errand.

Several weeks after Benedict XVI arrived on our Island, the phones still weren’t working and civic activists remained in detention. Like that prisoner in the boarded-up cell, many Cubans are still waiting to unravel the method, the mechanism, through which they can let the Supreme Pontiff know what happened behind the scenes of his visit.

From this side of a closed shutter, within a guarded cell, or in a plaza occupied by State Security, there can always be a small hole through which to send a message. Do they hear it on the other side? Does the papal mantle reach, this time, to protect all of us?

May 2012

25 August 2012

I’m not going to analyze the ethical and journalistic implications of Julian Assange’s work. I confess that I sympathize in part with his ideology, at least the part that proclaims the need for transparency in diplomatic and government affairs. But in Cuba all the cables brought to light by Wikileaks have not been published; they’ve barely even made reference to those where the Cuban government comes out well. Hence, the need for an Internet connection to get an objective idea of the scope and objectives of the phenomenon headed by this Australian, now granted asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

I can, however, arrive at a couple of conclusion, at least with respect to the use being made of the “Assange Case” by the official Cuban press. As I don’t need the elusive fiber optic cable, nor an illegal satellite dish to watch the National News every day, this time I have all the elements I need to form an opinion.

The first thing that comes to mind is that a government that has made secrecy and silence a basic pillar of its power praises a hacker who represents the exact opposite. As if the overbearing mother who has locked her daughters in the house throws out a compliment to the libertine whose offspring are running all over the neighborhood.

The declassifier of memos is now applauded on our small screen by a system that has been careful not to leave any traces of its outrages on paper. The “Robin Hood of Information” himself — as some have called him — receives approval from the Sheriff who has locked us in the feudal castle of censorship. Something doesn’t fit, right? How is it possible that the promulgators of so many omissions now wave the flag of a man who promotes the exact opposite?

The sudden fascination of the Cuban media with the Wikileaks director can only be understood as a part of a shabby “anti-imperialism” where “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” is always true. They even apply that maxim in cases where the means are obviously divorced from the ends, as is true for the information policy of Raul Castro’s government and the massive “leaks” promoted by Julian Assange.

But the absurdity reaches incalculable heights when the “Roundtable” TV program, known for its anti-journalism and complacency with power, presents this young man of 41 as a hero of the web. This is, without a doubt, the most contradictory thing I’ve seen lately… never mind that I live in a land of great paradoxes.

If right now a young State Security official declassified the total financial cost to the country of the operations focused on opponents and the repudiation rallies against the Ladies in White, what would happen? If tomorrow a doctor, motivated by personal and professional honesty, published the real number of people infected with dengue fever in Cuba, what would they do to him?

Let’s imagine a soldier — in the style of Bradley Manning — who leaked military memoranda between the governments in Havana and in Caracas. Would there be any clemency for him? And were it to be the case that someone revealed the true dimensions of Fidel Castro’s personal fortune, would they let us hear about it?

If a simple personal blog of opinions brings down the entire repressive apparatus against a citizen, it makes chills run down my spine to imagine what would happen to someone who created a page of leaks and declassifications.

But, let’s look at that; authoritarian regimes don’t leave their footprints on paper. Their archives rarely contain anything that compromises them because orders are given verbally and without witnesses. They are specialists in sending someone to kill their adversaries merely by the raise of an eyebrow, fomenting guerrilla actions across a whole continent by whispering a few phrases, deploying nuclear missiles in their territory under the impunity of silence, and postponing for 15 years the publication of the death toll suffered in a war on African soil.

But what these systems that are enemies of information are most skilled in, is detecting potential Julian Assanges within their own countries. They sniff them out from when they are young, when they ask questions here and poke around there, when they don’t go along with the pap that passes for news on official TV and try to investigate further.

They watch them from the minute they start to question what’s wrong and stick their noses into some thorny issues. And then they act quickly against them. Either buying them with some ephemeral privileges, or making their lives impossible so they’ll go into exile, or demonizing them so no one will believe them.

There is no way to become a Julian Assange in Cuba and stay alive, believe me.

23 August 2012

I read this phrase that I chose as a title on Facebook, and in the background were photos of Fidel and Raul Castro, the brothers who have tyrannically ruled Cuba for more than fifty years.

It’s true, those Dictators rule because we Cubans on the island obey, because to confront them is to fear losing your life; we know that we are waiting for hordes of mercenaries with machine guns and tanks that will mercilessly drive over our bodies. What is also true and also sad is that those who publicized it were other Cubans whose only rebellion was to abandon the national territory. It’s as if they have forgotten their sufferings and their fears, as if they don’t remember their past.

It seems unjust to me that those who saved their lives by putting geographical distance between them and this island, now push us to make decisions that could end in our deaths or in long prison terms, as Cubans know well what awaits those who dare to challenge the Castro brothers. It is dishonest that after putting the sea between them, they now demand attitudes that they themselves were not willing to take.

On other occasions I have said that, for the most part those who have emigrated, whom I unconditionally support for having taken this decision, complied until the last possible moment and in a disciplined way with all the laws and requirements of the regime. Most did not renounce their membership in the Committees for the Defense of the Revolutions (CDR), nor the Cuban Workers Union (CTC), nor the Territorial Militia (MTT); intelligently they remained mute so as not to attract the attention of the authorities and so they were granted the “White Card” — the permission to leave the country — an action I don’t criticize, nor would it go well for anyone who did otherwise.

But for these same reasons it does not appear just or humane that they now ask for self-immolations from those who, like them, at least desire and need to survive the totalitarian system that rules the Cuban archipelago.

As it is also true that if all of us had remained here, the country would have exploded in a popular revolt like a pressure cooker, from the pressure of the terror, freeing ourselves from these dictators whom we have suffered for such a long time. Some would repeat the popular phrase: it’s easy to push without hitting.

To reach such conclusions is offensive, because to humiliate those on either shore is useful only to our enemies. Better they should suffer for their compatriots left inside here, and try to care for them, because in the end most of the dead and the prisoners are those of us who stayed from the conviction that we must find, together, the road that leads us to the democracy that Jose Marti dreamed of in the century before last, and that we still have to conquer.

I always say that those inside the island and the outside create the perfect scream. Without them — without you — we would be only half, our pain would find no echo, nor, therefore, any receptors. Our pain comes from the mouths of those who are in the lands of freedom, those who are not persecuted by censorship, and those who have no henchmen waiting at the doors of their homes to silence them with blows.

And so, both sides, the exile and those of us who inhabit this island of ghosts, we need strength, we are the perfect chemistry to oust the tyrants of this place that belongs to everyone equally.

August 24 2012

It’s six in the morning and they start coming early. They got up at the crack of dawn because of the rumor that the fish had arrived today and, as usual, there will not be enough for everyone; later it will be gone and for weeks or months there will be no other chance for the workers’ pockets.

The few workers in what was once a thriving fish industry, today in ruins, also come and avoid approaching the line: they might have acquaintances there who would try to ask them about the mysterious product or, still worse, ask them for help in ensuring their purchase. Such a thing could get them in trouble, because even they don’t know what “those who call the shots” will decide, whether the fish will make it to the market or not.

The morning wears on and people keep appearing. The sun has already hit the line and the group is scattered, with people taking refuge under some doorway or tree, without losing sight of everyone’s position.

Waiting in silence is boring so soon the spontaneity of Cubans when engaging in conversations with strangers emerges, “This is wrecked, I worked here in ’75 and we were up to our necks in fish, we had several boats and there were times we had to throw the fish to the animals because people only wanted the best and the kids and certain types wouldn’t touch it; you had to choose. Today if they offer you shit you have to buy shit, because later it disappears,” says a gentleman along in years, his skin burned by the sun.

Another, younger, who looks like a teacher or an inspector with a clipboard under his arm, intervenes, “How is there going to be fish if there aren’t any boats or fishermen, there are only four old ones left in this neighborhood, it was the killing of the fish. What’s worse, when someone catches a fish that’s worth anything, they immediately give it to the intermediaries who take it to the yumas [the Americans], who will pay for it in CUCs, hard currency. There’s nothing for Cubans.”

The conversation, beginning to get interesting, is cut off by the voice of a boy running from the beach with an announcement that “the boat is coming.” It’s difficult to know if, at his age, the boy fully understands the importance of the matter; but judging by his jumping up and down and the way he’s wringing his hands as he shouts the news, it seems he does.

People make the ultimate sacrifice and reassemble in a reasonably straight line. But almost an hour after that informal announcement, there’s no indication of anything in the visible part of the installation. Every now and then someone goes to look out and the comes back in, apparently to let people know what the situation is outside.

Finally a custodian approaches. He’s not looking good. And no wonder, they’ve assigned him the high risk mission of telling everyone who has lost half a day of their time that, “There isn’t going to be any fish sold today, the order is to refrigerate it and wait.”

People go mad, mainly the early birds. “How is it there’s no fish, it’s disrespectful to the people, this is why we’re in the mess we’re in, it’s an abuse.” Phrases that are familiar to everyone’s ears.

A woman who had been organizing the crowd comes forward and asks for the floor and tells him directly, “Look at my legs (they’re swollen and have varicose veins from ankle to toe), I’m a sick woman and I don’t have anyone, my daughter also suffers from serious health problems and I don’t have anything feed her. Do you think it’s fair that they don’t sell us the fish? Do you have children?”

Tears of indignation and sadness begin to run down the woman’s face, but a good part of those present have already left, cursing and protesting. Accustomed to these discouragements, their hateful slogan is, “Why argue, it’s all for nothing.”

Meanwhile, those who are still there have realized that, while the discussion was going on, several cars and motorcycles with sidecars, with bags strapped on the grill, have come and positioned themselves in an inconspicuous area.

By the license plates, and because in a small town everyone knows everything, there’s no doubt that these have been sent by the heads of the Communist Party, the government, the Ministry of the Interior, and other institutions, ready to take the first and only share — because no one else is going to touch a thing — their corresponding share.

They say this to the guy sent by the administration, but he just shrugs his shoulders, like someone who doesn’t have the power to do anything. The “boss” is in a meeting and can’t see anyone right now.

The sun ends up exhausting the forces, and the lady with the sick daughter is the last to leave. “I would like to be a bomb and blow up all of this,” is the last sentence of the man who was first in line.

After that experience it’s hard not to hate all the people associated with these disgraces at the territorial level: they form part of a larger system, created at the highest level of the country. And if many of those who were standing in line could work in the fishing industry, surely they would adopt the same attitudes of those who work in it today. It happens in every corner of the country. Cuban society today imposes the most ancestral sense of survival. So this is what happens when there is not enough for everyone.

The ultimate, if not the only, responsibility belongs to he who has disrupted the country’s productive infrastructure with his inventions and autocratic and unwise hallucinations. In second place, the responsibility for this growing state of misery belongs to all of us, for not acting decisively before (many still don’t, even now), when there was more to defend.

It’s too bad that the cause of all this, and his friends, cronies and sycophants, have never had to stand in line for fish.

Eliecer Avila, Puerto Padre

From Diario de Cuba

23 July 2012

A few days agoI was chatting with a group of friends, all of whom were concerned about the shortages in the state-run hard currency stores and the growth of thebolsa negra*—“the black bag,” also known as the “black market” or “underground market.” This exchange of opinions proved interesting.

First of all, the shortage is a result of the lack of financial resources to acquire goods and products on the international market, and a weak domestic production capacity, incapable of supplying the market, or making up for the lack of imports. Both phenomena are related, and result in shelves that are either bare, or filled with mostly unwanted products in an effort to give our retail stores an illusion of abundance.

Thebolsa negraarises and develops in response to a shortage of goods or products necessary for daily life, especially those sold in state stores at prices set high to maximize profits on a small inventory. Thebolsa negragrows or shrinks depending on how many or how few goods are for sale, and also in relationship to their prices.

The formula is simple. If supplies of a product are abundant, but the price is a bit high, it can be obtained through thebolsa negrafor much less. If the product is in short supply, and cannot be found in stores, its price in thebolsa negrawill be much greater, sometimes more than double, depending on the number of middlemen there are between buyer and seller.

In the first instance the state, which has a commercial monopoly, suffers while the consumer benefits. In the second the consumer suffers since there is no option but to pay the price or do without the necessary item.

Up till now thebolsa negrahas been dealt with principally through repressive measures. These have amounted to spectacular raids, involving state inspectors and agents of public order, of places where the activity is known to be concentrated. Beyond the hub-bub and the shouting, however, the impact has been quite limited. After a few days it all reappears as usual, only with more gusto.

As has been demonstrated historically, it seems the only way to reduce it (eliminating it is practically impossible) is with stable supplies which satisfy the year-round needs of the population without any gaps. Until that is achieved, we will continue wasting time and resources to train state inspectors (whose numbers must be in the thousands), paying them high salaries so that they do not become corrupt or subject to bribes. Everything will continue as is, or perhaps even get worse.

Thebolsa negrais just one of many negative developments to come out of the national crisis. As long as it is not dealt with seriously—something beyond agreements, resolutions and multiple guidelines of dubious effectiveness and without real results—the bolsa negra will continue to grow and grow. Although that is not desired by anyone who thinks responsibly, at the moment it serves as an escape hatch, both for those who operate it and for its customers, even though it is illegal, suppressed and subject to prosecution.

As a neighbor of mine says, “From the time we get up in the morning, we commit crimes. Isn’t a good quality cup of coffee (not the adulterated kind from the store)illegal? And also the glass of milk (the kind you have not had legal access to for more than seven years) that we drink every morning?”

Perhaps one day in the not too distant future we can go back to living legally, even with abolsa negra. In the meantime, as the saying goes, “Every man for himself!”

*Translator’s note: In Spanish the word bolsa means a bag of some sort, but can also mean a type of market, such as a stock market.

August 23 2012

On the afternoon of August 13*, at the corner of Obispo and Habana Street, the young Marcelino Abreu took the initiative to shout slogans and toss anti-government leaflets. In the brief minutes his demonstration lasted — until the police arrived — not a single passerby was outraged, not one stepped into Fidel Castro’s street** to stop a citizen from shouting “Down with the Tyranny!”

The concept of “due obedience” has been maintained as an argument by military personnel who have been involved in punishable acts. “Just following orders,” said the Operation Condor pilot when he was tried for having thrown opponents of some military dictatorship into the sea. The same argument was made by the interrogator who lent his hand to the torture session, or the head of the firing squad who limited himself to screaming “fire” and giving the humanitarian coup de grace. “Just following orders” repeats the soldier who shot into the demonstration, whose survivors ended up being his empowered accusers after the overthrow of the regime.

Another case is when the bosses claim they know nothing of the acts of their subordinates. There, where “everyone knows what to do” without having to be given precise orders. There, where those responsible of enforcing the law equally for all are not seen, precisely, to force anyone to harm another, at the very most they say, “safeguard the right of people to defend the street as a space for revolutionaries.”

Then there are the bosses who will say they were innocent, that those below them felt they had the prerogative to insult and beat people, to paint the facade of a house with tar and to enter the house to break everything and that they couldn’t do anything to stop them. Due obedience to the most elementary norms of civilized behavior on the part of the mob, of the horde, will be the argument tomorrow from the repressors of today.

Seeing is believing.

Translator’s notes:
* August 13 is Fidel Castro’s birthday
** “This street belongs to Fidel” is a common slogan shouted by the mobs gathered by State Security to harass dissidents and independent voices.

23 August 2010

Love you all and I’m back to illuminate for us the soul, trembling and alone.

August 23 2012

[*Translator’s note: Readers are strongly encouraged to read this post by Elaine Diaz, side-by-side with OLPL’s post.]

The Last Post

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

To my brothers and sisters of CUBAN VOICES…

Since September 2008 I have maintained this space as an exalted site of monologue, collective expression, and incitement to extremism. “Monday” overcame, in a few months, the anonymity and solitude that accompanies millions of blogs on the web, to become a delirious brothel about some of the most urgent issues on the agenda of Cuban citizens. What was once a site of experimentation to imagine a bachelor’s degree in Liberalism, became an inescapable corner for sabotage.

Today, after almost five years, I’m saying goodby to this space.

From this moment I will dedicated more time to action and indecency, two activities I’m imprisoned by and where I want to concentrate more in the coming years.

I am deeply grateful to all those who ever left their mark here; to those who with their comments impoverished the debate, to those who sent their impositions by mail, to those who were silent witnesses to every article, and those (male AND FEMALE…!) who I had the good fortune to meet in person.

This space will remain on the web, open for those who want to review, one more time, some moments of the past five years from the most personal, subjective and post-journalistic viewpoint of a not-so-young Cuban.

Withered Lawton, 21 August 2012

To read a translation of this post click here.

When a friend leaves… says a song performed by Alberto Cortez, it gets the tears flowing in anyone. Well, that sorrow of goodbye referred to in the song occurs not only when someone very close leaves. It also hurts when we have to say goodbye to people we don’t know physically, but with whom we’ve shared the vast space of the Internet. People we have read and followed on the web and with whom we’ve even had opposing positions on many topics. This is the case with Elaine Diaz, who just announced the end of her blog, The Digital Controversy. After five years of publishing on that “most personal, subjective” site, the journalist has decided to close it and devote herself to teaching and research. A loss to the plurality of the blogosphere in Cuba.

Although she never responded to our invitations to exchange opinions with the bloggers of Cuban Voices, this does not diminish my sympathy for her. Nor did the snub of not accepting a special mention in the Virtual Island competition take its toll on the respect many of us profess for her writing. I didn’t even stop reading her, and I defended her against multiple detractors, when on more than one occasion she launched the hackneyed barrage of official accusations against me. Much less did I let her her dismal performance on State Security’s television program “Cuba’s Reasons” cloud my enjoyment of her sincere, brave, youthful posts. Because in Elaine Diaz I saw something of the twenty-something Yoani Sanchez I was, with the illusion that the system could be reformed from within. To approach her prose was to journey into my own past.

Sadly, the blog The Digital Controversy has said goodbye to its readers. And although the author’s explanation refers to new professional paths, it’s hard to believe it’s only about that. Elaine Diaz has transgressed the limits of criticism permissible to anyone working in the official media or in an academic center in Cuba. I remember, for example, her denouncing the corruption in the high schools in the countryside (parts I, II, III, IV and V ), where she touched on the strategic issue of educational quality and the loss of values among teachers and students. Also on this list is a magnificent report from her keyboard about the social and environmental damage caused by generators in her village (parts I, II, III and IV), where questions about the sacrosanct “Energy Revolution” are posed directly to Fidel Castro. The final blow was perhaps her Twitter call, under the hashtag #nolesvotes, to stop voters from endorsing the members of the National Assembly who don’t represent the interests of the people.

The outcome was as expected. We can only hope that some day this young woman will again have a virtual space, without limits, without fear of approaching anyone to debate an idea; without having to make any concessions to censorship. I think that to read Elaine Diaz at this time is, for me, like a journey into the future.

23 August 2012

To The Digital Controversy, by BloggersCuba

Since March 2008 I have maintained this space as a place for calm dialogue, individual expression and exchange of experiences. “The Controversy” overcame, in a few months, the anonymity and solitude that accompanies millions of blogs on the web, to become a place for discussion of some of the most urgent issues on the agenda of Cuban citizens. What once was a site of experimentation to get a bachelor’s degree in journalism became inescapable corner for learning.

Today, after almost five years, I say goodbye to this space.

From this moment I will dedicate more time to research and teaching, two activities I’m passionate about and where I want to concentrate more in the coming years.

I am deeply grateful to all those who have ever left their mark here; to those who with their comments enriched the debate; to those who sent their impressions by mail; to those who were silent witnesses to every article; and those who I had the good fortune to meet in person.

This space will remain on the web, open to those who want to review, one more time, some moments of the past five years from the most personal, subjective and non-journalistic viewpoint of a young Cuban.

Campo Florido, August 21, 2012

*Translator’s note: As bloggers featured on this site are discussing Elaine’s decision to close her blog, La polemica digital , we have chosen to translate her last post for the better understanding of our readers.