Personal Epitaph to Fidel Castro / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega

“Here rests a man who died millions of times” should be the epitaph engraved on the marble that finally covers him. By then, some will feel despondent, as if the earth were caving in on them; while others, no doubt, will receive the news with terrestrial joy. But absolutely everyone will be in agreement about something: that on that day the most loved and most hated man of the last two centuries in Cuba will have ceased to exist.

But Fidel Castro will not have died that day, because before then, little by little, he will have suffered millions of prior deaths. For some, for example, he has been dead since that first morning when he “couldn’t find” the way from Moncada while another group of reliable men were being sacrificed in the assault; and for others, he died when he legalized the death penalty at the beginning of 1959, every time echoes of gunfire from La Cabaña were heard; or perhaps a few months after that, when amid all the mystery the sea swallowed Camilo’s hat–and he was pronounced dead after just three days of dubious “searching.”

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But later, thousands of Cubans buried Fidel Castro when, after having denied it many times, he suddenly announced out of nowhere that he was communist–even after having accused “traitor,” Huberto Matos, in a brief trial, of being the very same thing–and declaring without apology the socialist character of a Revolution that didn’t belong to him, but rather to the people listening to him with surprise.

Some days later, he would die again for other thousands of Cubans when they learned about the day Che Guevara died, abandoned by Manila [his code word for Havana], in the desolation of the Bolivian highlands.

Certainly for hundreds of thousands of Cubans, Fidel Castro died once and for all that fateful day in March of ’68, when the “Revolutionary Offensive” usurped every family-owned business without the slightest compensation—an act of vulgar and unpunished looting that betrayed those who, just 15 years earlier, he had called “the people” in his self-defense during the Moncada trial.

Also for millions of people in the Third World, he must have died in ’79, when as president of the Non-Aligned Movement, he preferred to be a chameleon and said nothing while Afghanistan, a member state of that world organization, endured an insidious attack by insurgent troops of the Soviet army, the unconditional ally of the incorrigible bearded one. Or perhaps, for those same millions, he already had died slightly more than a decade earlier, when he applauded the emergence of those same Soviet tanks in Czechoslovakia there to extinguish fervor for the Prague Spring.

But not all of his deaths were so grandiloquent and transcendental, because Fidel Castro also suffered many routine deaths during those dark decades: he died every time a Cuban was humiliated at the door of an off-limits hotel or of one of those elitist stores open only to tourists; each time family members were separated or a life was lost at sea because there was no legal way to emigrate from their prison; each time sincerity was punished and, under his personal aegis, hypocrisy and duplicity were praised; every time a defenseless Cuban was beaten while trying to exercise rights that had been taken away, each time a repudiation rally was carried out; he died every time a father was imprisoned or one of his sons was robbed of his future; the great dictator also died with each truncated dream and with each empty plate.

Nonetheless, it’s certain that when the death of Fidel Castro is finally announced–the death of his physical waste, I mean–the news will make headlines everywhere. Then every editorial board or columnist should take some time for reflection, because beyond all the love or hate generated by the eternal bearded one, it is imperative that we learn once and for all the lesson, so that no other people, ever, under no circumstance or latitude whatsoever, once again deposits the same power in the hands of a single man, regardless of how beautiful, just or sublime the cause he proposes appears to be.

But when Fidel Castro suffers his definitive death, it will inevitably be the day when Cuba wakes up with the sun of truth and, with its light, opens Pandora’s box: only then will we be able to know the exact magnitude of his megalomania, re-examine his true face, the mask hidden beneath so many decades of false rhetoric and unmeasured devotion to a personality with sick ways resulting in a pathology of character that extended across an entire society for more than half a century.

He whose dream was to pass for a genius will have left in his barren path nothing less than a country in the most absurd financial ruin and, what’s worse, buried in an abyss of moral ruins. And, if the gospel promises, “by their fruit you will recognize them,” then for that day, on which he will definitively die, my people will finally calibrate in all its magnitude the reach of his betrayal and his proverbial demagoguery.

Precisely now, when all around him there is a ridiculous pact to be silent about facts of indisputable transcendence, while many are making jokes about the idea of his death or his tacitly accepted decrepitude, I raise my prayer to heaven: may God offer him many more years of life, enough so that any day in our near future he shall be granted, in the midst of his well deserved mental fog, intermittent lapses of absolute lucidity.

I would ask God for those days, or minutes, of total lucidity for the tyrant, but it’s important that there be enough of them so that he who caused us so much harm has crystal clear awareness of how my country and my people raised themselves up from the ruins as soon as they could break free; as it will be in the future, the homeland was truly better once emancipated from his despotism.

I would ask God for those few days of lucidity, before returning to ash what was ash, so He may again submerge him in darkness to dodder without glory, ruminating on his permanent defeat. Then, yes, Fidel Castro will depart for the eternal misery that he deserves, as a tenuous and embarrassing memory…and not exactly absolved by History.

Translated by: Kathy Fox

15 January 2015

 

Some Questions / Fernando Damaso

(29 July 2013) Although the Cuban government, since the beginning of the scandal of the North Korean ship carrying obsolete weapons for repair from Cuba, has been extremely careful, making no public statements, trying to lower its profile and keep it simple, which would adversely affect its relations in the region and internationally, the appearance yesterday, the 28th, in the official press of a letter from the historical leader, dated 27 July 2013 at 6:30 in the morning, where he refers to the matter indirectly (“Recently they tried to slander our Revolution, trying to present the Chief of State and the Cuban Government, deceiving the United Nations and other heads of state accusing it of underhanded conduct”) raises some questions. continue reading

If the Head of State and Government refrains from addressing the issue, possibly waiting for the opinion of the United Nations, why doesn’t the historic leader do same? Also, why establish a priori, before the results of the UN investigation, which constitutes a slander? The method of accusing first in the role of a victim, which gave results in the past, is no longer effective.

If the letter was signed on the 26th at six hours and five minutes in the morning, why in its first paragraph does it refer to the 26 as if it were a date to come (and it had already been July 26 for six hours and five minutes)? And it also speaks of delegations who plan to travel to Cuba, which they had already done and were in Santiago, as the event (commemorating the 60th anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks) would begin within 55 minutes.

These inconsistencies are sobering and keep on the table the main question: who has the responsibility for the screw-up?

29 July 2013

The MTA Story / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

*STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS PLEASE.*

*Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo*
1 April 2013

Recurring dreams, dreams in the electrical night of the third rail when the moon is a cutout on New York’s clouds of smoke. Cloud-tunnels of Elizabeth Bishop. Cloud-graffiti of Rene Magritte.

I have dreamed them, daily.

I drop a couple of hours before dawn and dream recurring dreams of a Havana perforated by a maze of subways. Shelters. War of the whole people. Zero option, reconcentration. City hole, nobody is going to survive the system: this the socialist slogan of the assassins. Psycho killers.

National nightmares made of a Gruyère insomnia.

To dream is that. Short circuits. Crossed cables, like those floating supports of the bridges of this miraculous chip called Manhattan. continue reading

I spent 40 years in Manhattan. But once, decades ago, on another long island where death wasn’t even a month old, men in green-surgical uniforms began to dig the metro catacombs of my city.

It was an order that came down directly from the Kremlin (for decades Cuba was the 16th republic annexed to the USSR). Only thus might Havana finally have the dream of a subway. And station number zero would be, of course, in the basement of the Plaza of the Revolution.

From that heart of marble and memory the furrows of propaganda would leave the heart, as well as the earthworms dying from the blast of neons and train whistles (the worms are deaf and blind but have a disproportionate political sensibility).

I was a teenager (if you have been a teenager once, you will be one forever). I had all my teeth intact. I also had intact all my desperation. The idea of a life underground attracted and panicked me.

Hence, perhaps, the circular dreams, sitting near the emergency doors and the guide map. *You are here…*

I dream of changing lines at each stop. Lines with letters and colors. It’s like a child’s game (they are very macabre). The trains fly over the rails, weightless despite their human cargo. There are loudspeakers and an exhaustive signalling, that exhausts. It must be very late already. But to wake up now would be to ask the driver snoozing with God.

The doors open and close in half a second, like hysterical eyelids, like puffs of air from a freedom sewer, like the guillotine of a photographic camera. Within and outside the same light. A cold light of high latitudes with voltage to spare, while I stand up (while still seated) and leave and enter the chain of cars that dissolved in the speed in front of me.

The voice of my father (1919-2000) doesn’t stop lecturing: *Stand clear of the closing doors, please*… and I remember then with pleasure and pain his short Republican English, from some sacred texts with pages of glitter printed in CinemaScope: Life, National Geographic, Reader’s Digest.

As a child I came to think that it was logical to speak and write in Spanish, but that people read exclusively in English. Like my dead father. Like me.

The English that returns to me now in New York is the legacy my father gave to this megalopolis from a corner of Lawton, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Havana, a city on the outskirts of history.

Subsurface citizens ask me for money now in this language and, of course, they look so read playing their guitars and pianos and even batteries, that I give them a dollar and they call me “Sir.” I am more destitute than they are and so I can give myself the luxury of giving them all the cash I carry in the pockets of my US Army overcoat (a family donation from Miami).

I have come from Cuba to New York to dream this infinite succession of images that inevitably make me miss my station. The late night spits me out on the icy pavement. I stumble like a sleepwalker. I hurt down to my gloves. I climb a rocky point of Manhattan. I have no shadow, the light is very weak despite being atrocious; this is to be alone and absolutely not need your pity. In any event I feel sorry for you, because you haven’t heard how the magnanimous rumor of the Hudson doesn’t let me sleep (this sentence drained Marti of all his syllables).

My father even scolds me from the MTA loudspeakers. Stand free of the doors that are about to close, he tells me in archaic English (all language is archaic). My father doesn’t prevent me from having an accident, if by mistake the doors open between the stations. My father tells me that I could be trapped between the cars, immobile, and that I can’t go (he knows that in Cuba accidents are on purpose).

Hence my urge to wake up, in part because of the discipline of the loudspeakers.

1 April 2013

Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) at 25

… We must announce to Cubans that their lives, their dignity and their freedom belong to them and that no one, not Caesar, can take these things from them if they don’t give in because of fear or other reasons.

Oswaldo Paya Sardinas

[Post from 8 September 2013] Inspired by these ideas, our Christian Liberation Movement was founded 25 years ago. Born to defend the rights of all Cubans and to promote the full liberation of the person leading to the development of society. continue reading

We want to serve, we are convinced that in Cuba the changes that the people want will only occur if the majority of Cubans, freeing themselves from the culture of fear, take a liberating step to reclaim their lives. The law should guarantee the right to do away with the simulation generated by an oppressive system, like the totalitarian regime that prevails in our country. We are part of the same people, those who live inside and outside the archipelago;we are not trying to speak for a people, we are working for citizens to have a voice.

Liberation demands its right and the right of Cubans to know the truth; an independent investigation is required to make public the circumstances under which died our leaders Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero died, after an attack on 22 July 2012.

The dialogue that we are proposing is inclusive, where we are all represented, and in an atmosphere of trust that only respect for the law and the practice of fundamental rights can guarantee. We condemn the “Fraud Change” and the false dialogue that excludes and discriminates against those who do not submit, tools that the regime seeks to impose to preserve absolute power and control of the resources belonging to all Cubans. We demand transparency for Cuba and call on Cubans one and all to claim and build this path of changes.

Liberation with the opposition diverse and united in the Camino del Pueblo (the Way of the People), promotes a plebiscite for the sovereign people to decide the changes. Only when citizens can choose their government in free and multiparty elections, can we talk about Cuba having inexorably begun real democratic changes. So today we demand, within the history of thousands of Cubans who propose legal initiatives through a referendum, a referendum to restore the sovereignty of the people

All Cubans, all brothers, and now freedom.

Coordinating Council, Christian Liberation Movement

From MCL

September 8, 2013

Steak: Prohibited for Ordinary Cubans / Polina Martinez Shvietsova

cubanet square logoHAVANA, Cuba, 10 September 2103, Polina Martinez Shvietsova, www.cubanet.org –If you sell tenderloin or minute steak from your doorway, Caution! You could put yourself behind bars. Before 1959 it wasn’t like this. The country possessed a livestock of around six million head of cattle, the same number as the Cuban population, there was one cow per person. Cuba was a great producer of sugar cane, which, among other benefits, represented the feed base for our livestock in the Republic. continue reading

The products derived from this bovine multitude were for the daily consumption of the people.  Beef was not lacking in the butcher’s shops, plazas and stores on sale for different prices.  If a rich man ate fillet steak, the poor skirt steak — from there came la Ropa Vieja — beef was attainable for any pocketbook. A portion of this meat was destined for export and industries of processing and preserving. Also the skin of cattle was used in the making of shoes such as the well-known brands “Ingelmo” and “Amadeo.”

In the early sixties, the nationalizing interventions took place in Cuba.  The hardest hit businesses were the American owned, including the livestock businesses in the east of the country.  Then the humble man of the countryside was integrated into the defense “of the country.”  Thus abandoning the agricultural work and development of livestock herds.

Some peasants continued cultivating and trying to survive, despite the nationalizations of small farmers, because the “benevolent revolutionary state” had given, and then taken away, some twenty caballerías (a Cuban land measure) were expropriated from the great landowners and their proprietors by inheritance.

The peasants of the Escambray — in the east — were forcibly removed from their lands and exiled to new urban communities in the distant province of Pinar del Rio in the far west. They formed the Centers for Agricultural and Livestock Teaching and Polytechnic Institutes. They organized large dairies, such as that of Jimaguayu, in the province of Camaguey, and “El Valle de Picadura” in Matanzas.  But everything was slowly abandoned to inertia and official disinterest, until it was left in ruins.

In centers for bovine development, feed for the livestock came, by and large, from Soviet subsidies. Our darling cows were fed with grains like peas, sorghum, corn and some agricultural by products from sugar cane. Nevertheless, after the abundance and excessive squandering suddenly appeared diversion and robbery of resources.

Nearly twenty years after the end of Soviet subsidies, the lack of beef for the populace remains as dramatic as in the old times of “economic bonanza.”  Only a few Cubans are able to perform balancing acts and taste it even once a year.  Even in the large markets which sell in CUC, the lack of beef and its derivatives is notable.  For the greater part of half a century, steak has been a prohibited dream for the humble person in Cuba.

From Cubanet

10 September 2013

Why Does Cuba Choke Charter Agencies And Deliveries to The Island? / Juan Juan Almeida

(April 2104) In Cuba, smoke doesn’t always mean fire. Often it is a stragegy to confuse.

This time the smoke comes to us from the Republic’s Customs Office, when last week, on its official website, it published an “updated” list of the entities authorized to make shipments to Cuba. continue reading

The Customs memo alludes to two groups of businesses.  The first consists of five agencies that carry out messenger and parcel service within Cuba; they are Cubanacan Express, CubaPack International, Transcargo, Aerovaradero, and the International Exchange and Messenger Business (EMCI), previously CUBAPOST which for legal reasons had to change its name.  For some reason that I do not know, they omit the Palco Freight Agency which operates under the command of the State Council, belongs to the Conventions Palace and offers identical services.

The second group cites the only 16 agencies authorized to send packages from abroad to Cuba, another deliberate oversight, the figure is not so exact, because all of them can offer the service and in fact they do so, to other agencies without this constituting any kind of alteration to the contractual act.

In order to understand why the government confuses us, and this is as clear as mud, we must cross the border that delineates the taboo topic and even the complicities.

It is normal, and I almost understand it, that a good group of fellow countrymen fly with some regularity to the island carrying foreign packages.  Some do it because of necessity, and to relieve travel expenses; other develop that activity in order to earn a living; easy modus vivendi.

There is no doubt, any traveler with bundles–including the so-called “mules”–brings more money to the island’s government than to their own travel agencies.  The pay dirt is in the cargo, in the packages that are sent and not in the passenger; so, why does Cuba impose obstacles to the point of choking the charter agencies which have already reduced flights and limited destinations?

Moreover, the Cuban authorities impose impediments and deny authorization to fly directly to Cuba to the agencies that have permits from the United States treasury and commerce department to send messages and packages to Cuba.

Here is the question, if according to them, the United States is the one who imposes the embargo, why always raise an objection to an opening as small as it may be? What is Cuba trying to do?

Simple, brutal and twisted. Those who rule in Cuba know that it is not weapons but bullets that kill. They are not interested in the charter flights and they are trying to break them or make fewer fly to the biggest of the Antilles Islands because the strategy is to create much more bother and discontent in the usual victims, the separated families, in order to better manipulate and use us as gladiators against the embargo law. They are bearing down, and doing their best, so that between Havana and Miami there only exist regular flights by airlines like American Airlines, Jet Blue or even Cubana Aviation itself.

Politics, always politics. If it were not for this reason, why does not the Customs Office, and the “always humanitarian” revolutionary government, today issue a tariff payment exemption for the non-commercial cargo that travels from abroad to our families in Cuba? That would be a credible beginning.

Translated by mlk

28 April 2014

Feb 2007 Article About the Intellectual Debate

CULTURE-CUBA: Exorcising the Ghosts of the Past

HAVANA, 23 February 2007 (IPS) – The expansion of a debate among a group of intellectuals in Cuba that began as an e-mail discussion at the beginning of the year would seem to demonstrate the need to bury once and for all the cultural restrictions of the past and open up spaces for dialogue, debate and diversity.

“The fear has been shaken off,” Cuban writer Arturo Arango, one of the participants in the e-mail exchange, told IPS. “It is clear that that past will not return. Neither we writers and artists nor the country’s institutions will allow it to.”

The e-mail conversation, which has broadened beyond its initial focus, has also transcended borders, incorporating voices from the Cuban diaspora as well as people from other countries. continue reading

Regarding the possibility that the most negative aspects of Cuban cultural policy have been completely left behind, Arango said the old policy is still fighting to survive in some limited circles.

In his view, the e-mail debate has attempted to “bring the policy to light, so that more libertarian, emancipating and anti-dogmatic principles expand, perhaps definitively.”

“What we are also trying to say is that the Cuban Revolution would perish if the old (restrictive) methods return, if it shuns the complexities contributed by art and literature, if it ignores the voices of its thinkers, its artists. That, more than safeguarding our own work, is what this debate is about,” said Arango.

The so-called “e-mail crisis” broke out after the appearance on several TV programs of Luis Pavón Tamayo, Armando Quesada and Jorge Serguera, all of whom were closely involved in designing and enforcing the rigid cultural parameters that negatively affected so many writers and artists in Cuba in the 1970s.

Among the characteristics of that period, which set strong limits on culture and was referred to by essayist Ambrosio Fornet as “the grey quinquennium” (“five grey years”), although it lasted nearly a decade, writer Leonardo Padura lists “the censorship of things that today would look ridiculous” and “the isolation of artists and students for their religious beliefs or sexual preferences.”

He also mentions the suspicion that met any action or opinion not based on the most staunch orthodoxy, exacerbated dogmatism, the ease with which people were accused of having “ideological problems” the marginalization of Cuban artists and the insistence on “Sovietizing” art and indoctrinating writers and artists.

Failure to respect the established “parameters” led during those years to the closure of artistic endeavors, like the Guiñol theatre, and to the marginalization of writers, playwrights and artists. In 1976, the creation of the Ministry of Culture marked the end of the old policy and the start of a new era.

Cuba’s “collective memory” is in need of “a revision of the burdens, abuses and excesses of that time, as the only possible way to preserve in the future the spaces for debate, criticism, the expression of opinions, communication and creation that have been achieved today,” wrote Padura in Culture and Society, a publication of the Havana office of Inter Press Service (IPS).

According to the author of the 1996 detective novel Máscaras (Havana Red in its English translation), which features an older gay man who suffered the restrictive “parameters” of the past, the consensus on certain principles reached by those involved in the e-mail debate “is a demonstration that space has been gained for reflection, critical views and even indignation.”

Besides lashing out against what looked like a vindication of the three former officials involved in enforcing the cultural parameters – Tamayo, Quesada and Serguera – many of those taking part in the e-mail exchange underscored the need to lift the veil of silence on that sad episode in history, and to study its causes and effects and to recognize the mistakes made in order to prevent a repeat.

Others, like writer Amir Valle, who is presently living outside of Cuba, or filmmaker Enrique Colina, said symptoms of the past could still be seen in the present: locally made films that have never been aired on television, because of their critical views of aspects of life in Cuba; drafts of books that go unpublished; and little room for people to express opinions that deviate from the government line.

“For me, this was never the ‘grey quinquennium’; for me it was always ‘the period of the silent scandal.’ Generations that have come later have been molded in this silence,” playwright José Milián wrote in an e-mail.

From 1970 to 1974, Milián stopped writing, and none of his plays were produced on stage until 1979.

Filmmaker Belkis Vega reflected on the need for analysis and how it has been avoided with the arguments that “the time is not right” or “to avoid giving ammunition to the enemy” – a reference to the United States and its hostile Cuba policy.

Although many believe that “to be a revolutionary is to transform, to doubt, to have a critical eye,” many issues are postponed “until that ‘right’ time and moment, which never arrives,” in order to maintain unity and avoid giving “ammunition to the enemy,” without comprehending that “statism, which freezes all debate, is a very efficient weapon,” said the filmmaker.

The same idea was underlined by Fornet on Jan. 21 in the Casa de las Américas during the first of a series of conferences coordinated by the Criterios Cultural Center with the aim of discussing, from different angles, the cultural policy “of the difficult years.”

“Pacts of silence tend to be extremely risky, because they create a climate of immobility, a pretence of unanimity that keeps us from gauging the true magnitude of the dangers,” said Fornet, a witness to the harsh period in question and one of the first to express, in the last decade, critical reflections on what he dubbed the “grey quinquennium.”

Besides Fornet’s central conference, the meeting in the Casa de las Américas featured a speech by Cuban Culture Minister Abel Prieto and another by essayist Desiderio Navarro, who has become sort of a coordinator of the e-mail debate from his desk in the Criterios cultural centre.

“In cyberspace, anyone who has access to e-mail can participate. By contrast, in a conference room that seats 450 people, invitations are necessary. But undoubtedly there is more coherence in a conference room, where everyone listens to each other,” said Arango on what he interpreted as a leap by the debate from the private to the public spheres.

The central issues touched on by the debate showed up again in the public sphere on Feb. 3 in the presentation of an essay by Navarro on the web site of the Cuban Book Institute. The essay, “The Causes of Things,” is a compilation of writings on critical thinking and the banalization of the media.

The present revision of the past, which some see as unstoppable, also continued in the corridors and presentations at the Feb. 8-18 International Book Fair in Havana.

“I would allow myself to say that this fair is dedicated to all Cuban creators, without excluding anyone, and to overcoming any restriction that our culture may have shown, endured, and suffered over the years,” poet César López, a National Literature Prize-winner, said at the inauguration of the fair.

Among Cuba’s outstanding writers, López mentioned Guillermo Cabrera Infante (1929-2005), Reynaldo Arenas (1943-1990), Jesús Díaz (1941-2002) and Heberto Padilla (1932-2000), all of whom died in exile defending positions that were radically opposed to the government of Fidel Castro.

“They have let the genie out of the bottle. And it will not go back in,” writer Reynaldo González, 2002 National Literature Prize-winner and one of the participants in the e-mail debate, told IPS.

“Errors are part of the past only if they are rectified. All of this reflects the lack of transparency maintained for 30 years regarding crimes against culture committed by dogmatic, intolerant people and overlooked by some authorities, and the ‘impunity’ that has surrounded them,” he added.

González said “opposition to these methods and to the Stalinist ideology that has generated them” has gained strength not only in intellectual circles but also “at decision-making levels.” Only “after clearly identifying the causes and combating the effects…can “healing begin,” he said.

The Notary at 23rd and J, Havana / Rebeca Monzo

1408719803_image009After spending several days trying to remedy errors committed by various officials in the course of officially registering my apartment, as required by the new housing law, I then had to wander between countless locations and offices, not only because of the fragmentation of the main office (a huge, underutilized old house) but to others as well due to misinformation provided to public who access them.

Finalizing the process requires a visit to the notary office in order to legalize all the documents. I went to the best, most famous, most central location: the office at 23rd Street and J Avenue in Vedado, an office through which nearly all Cubans have passed. It is here that marriages, divorces, wills and testaments, powers-of-attorney — in short, all manner of legal proceedings — are handled. continue reading

It has been located here for more than five decades in a beautiful building from the 1950s, which even today serves as a study reference for students pursuing a career in architecture.

The photos below are the most recent images of what was once a beautiful office and residential complex.

There are comfortable seats where you are forced to wait for hours. Fortunately, I was helped by two wonderful professionals and a very pleasant and efficient receptionist.

22 August 2014

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Cubans, damn it! / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Total, infinite pity and shame! The teacher Odali has written Maceo (Antonio Maceo, hero of the Cuban War of Independence) with an “s” on my primary school blackboard, and I started crying. I couldn’t help it. That’s what happened. She wrote “Maseo” with her chalk and I started to cry in the middle of the classroom.

Those times were terrible and loving. The world was blue: Havana was white. My parents were living and that was a permanent certainty. Nobody got ill unless they deserved it. People laughed. Their eyes were shining, perhaps caused by tears. The Revolution still had not become fact. continue reading

I am talking about a house on the outskirts of a city on the outskirts of a country on the outskirts of a history with no outside, a history which is purely internal. Private, intimidating, and insular. There was nothing out in the open.

The week had days which were totally unconnected. Mondays, for example, were miles away from Fridays. April and October never occurred in the same year. Do you know what I’m saying? I am talking about happiness.

The looks on the faces of the dogs I had on my dirt backyard. The odour of resin which oozed out of mangas*, which I always knew were a fruit which had nothing to do with mangos. The smell given off by the tar when the sun beat on the roofs of the houses in Lawton. Neighbourhood buzz. In the US there are one-off sounds, whispers or screams, but no buzz. The counties don’t sound like that. It has something to do with the sea, with the possibility of flooding and flight. Havana sounds like seashells And seashells make that sound because they are echoing the blood circulating round in our heads.

We weren’t bothered about anything. We were immortal. So sensitive. We had marvellous music which was strictly North American. The United States, in the forbidden distance, was the homeland which was waiting for us. It is still waiting for us, far away over there, in an unimaginable memory. Because it would mean less if it were so close. In effect, now, with our US eagle passports in our hands, we are outcasts in all the world. While we seem more free, we are more condemned to float in a slave’s nothingness. We have lost our impossibility.

The sidewalks in Havana were highways. The roots of the almond trees pushed them up. The concrete they used in the fifties had a different density, they laid it with a sense of style and every section had its own personality. I knew that those sidewalks would outlive life on earth.

And then the flamboyants. And the pine trees. They were the first ones to experience the cruelty. They were dying. They cut the pines for two or three decades. The flamboyants fell sick. When the ones in the Parque de la Asunción died, I decided that if I was ever able to leave Cuba, I would never return.

I still walk in Manhattan and I am walking over a map which reflects Havana. Not like Miami, because Miami has no map, it is a whole. In Manhattan every corner has its opposite number in Havana and it’s very easy to work out where you are. Two island cities in two countries which don’t belong to them.

It’s four thirty in the morning in Rhode Island, a mobile island. There’s a new moon which doesn’t let me sleep. I’m sure I am going to spend many days without sleeping from here on out. And then I will fall over, like a pine or flamboyant, exhausted. Laid out.

“Maseo” seems much more human written with an “s” on the blackboard. But no word can make me want to cry. It’s just that I don’t see them as words. I have forgotten the instinctive reflex of reading. It’s all information here, and so you have to read it. Information is innate and it doesn’t speak to you, but to your capital.

We Cubans don’t have contemporaries. We are the only group of people who don’t have any common inclination at all. That’s our salvation. To be an ungroupable group.

I still love them. I still don’t know how to love anyone born in other perfect impersonal groups. This affection is our prison sentence. To keep loving in the Cuban way.

I love you. Do you love me?

*OLPL-provided note for the translation: Manga is a fruit similar to mango, smaller and with a lot of loose thread in its pulp. 

Translated by GH

31 October 2014

Raul Castro’s Few Options / Juan Juan Almeida

Presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro shortened the 90 longest miles of all history, and it begins to melt the ice in the Cuba Libre [lit. “Free Cuba”] also the name of a drink served over ice]. It is a historical conversation that tries to put an end to years of confrontation and zoom in or zoom out, depending on the approach, to the day in which we Cubans can finally decide our destiny. continue reading

The news was welcomed with satisfaction by several personalities. The wind of cordiality blew so strong in South America that in less than 24 hours, the guerrilla group FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army) announced a unilateral ceasefire for an indefinite period starting on December 20.

On one side of the political scale, this is the wish that we Cubans all have of enjoying a country free from tyrants. A dream which, to some extent, we have not been able to achieve due to our disunity, the lack of strategies, and an excess of posturing. On the other hand: It is that to improve the bilateral climate between the two warring nations, an isolated Russia with financial problems, and a changed relationship with Africa and Latin America — especially with certain extremist groups and the ALBA countries (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) — with the United States.

It is no secret that the global energy map has changed, that the current price of oil has dynamited the political capacity of Venezuela, and with the Port of Mariel Megaproject wavering from lack of investors, Raul remained without options; he has none, other than to get aboard the train and open up to investment, trade, and American tourism.

In logical reaction, the pendulum leaned towards rapprochement. Whether we like it or not, I understand that the circumstances and the life lived by each one of us define the way in which we approach certain things; but realpolitik, which deals with practical interests and concrete actions, unfortunately does not pass through human rights, nor a multi-party system, nor civil liberties.

The images have been very eloquent; the physical condition of the three Cuban spies is far from that of Allan Gross, including dental care, which clearly in the Cuban penitentiary system does not exist.

What’s next?

The increase in tourism and trade between the United States and Cuba will create new sources of revenue which, undoubtedly, will benefit rank and file Cubans, especially those who do not have relatives abroad. A new outbreak of bricklayers, gardeners, restaurant owners, bartenders, tenants, taxi drivers, etc.

But in the current circumstances, with the import permits in the hands of State-owned enterprises, no Cuban can market products for his private business; no entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector can import farm implements or quality seeds to increase their production, or animals for breeding stock; no cuentapropista [self-employed entrepreneur] in the field of construction or mining, can import any machinery. And that’s not going to change; at least for now.

Other freedoms will be opened up, yes; but I see little chance of General Raúl Castro permitting any political opening. He gave the speech dressed as a General from his old office, located on the 4th floor of the MINFAR [Ministry of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces]. Impressive symbolism.

The government will fight to maintain control, increase repression, and the methods and resources of its repressive forces.

No, it is not the end of the Castros, but the beginning of a stage in which all Cubans have to learn how to fly using our own wings.

Translated by: Hombre de Paz

23 December 2014

Note to readers

Translating Cuba has been “under repair” the last few days. Now that it IS repaired we have discovered a few older posts hiding under the floorboards… and we are dragging them into the light today. Hence the “old” posts that will show up from prior months.

Our apologies most of all to the HARD-WORKING VOLUNTEER TRANSLATORS, whose work never got posted!

Cubans Euphoric Over the New Regulations / 14ymedio

Counterclockwise from the top, Miriam Celaya, Manuel Cuesta Morua and Dagoberto Valdés share with us their reactions to the new US regulations.
Counterclockwise from the top, Miriam Celaya, Manuel Cuesta Morua and Dagoberto Valdés share with us their reactions to the new US regulations.

14ymedio, Havana, 15 January 2015 — The new regulations on travel, insurance, the import of goods, remittances and telecommunications that the United States will put into effect with respect to Cuba as of Friday, have already provoked the first reactions on the Island. Although the evening news barely mentioned it at the end of the show, the information passed mouth-to-mouth on the street.

Lilianne Ruiz, independent journalist, received the welcome news and noted, “This flow of people who are going to come, along with the increase in the remittances, means the country’s return to normalcy.” In the opinions of this reporter, “The Cuban government is going to weaken, the only thing left is the repression and the restrictions. This will make people more accurately identify the origin of our difficulties.”

Among the most attractive points of the new regulations is the authorization to establish “telecommunications installations within Cuba, as well as installations that connect third countries with Cuba.” Internet connectivity and cheaper mobile phones are demands that have gained strength in the last year, especially among the youngest.

Yantiel Garcia was outside the Telepoint Communications Company of Cuba (ETECSA) in Pinar del Rio. The teenager said that she hoped that her brother in Jacksonville, Florida, could now help her with a technological gadget to connect to the web. “If the American mobile phone cards can be used here, my brother will pay for a data package for me to navigate without restrictions.”

The “ball is now in the Cuban government’s court,” said an ETESCA official who preferred to remain anonymous. As he explains, “The number of visitors from the United States will grow and the country will have to offer them a solution to connecting while they’re here.” To which he added, “It’s a question of business, not of ideology.”

The families who receive remittances will also benefit from the increased dollar amount that can be sent each quarter. The prior figure was limited to 500 dollars every three months, while now they can send up to 2,000 dollars to relatives residing on the Island.

At the Metropolitan Bank branch on Galiano in Havana this morning, several old people hoped to complete bank transactions. Cristina Marrero was one of them and she explained that she has one son in New York and another in Atlanta. For this lady the most appreciated measure is the one related to the sending of parcels in large quantities. “My sons have furniture and appliances that they want to send me and this is an opportunity,” she said.

For his part, Julio Aleago, political analyst, said that “Since 1959 the Communist government has always tended to isolate the country from the rest of the world and these measures will increasingly integrate Cuban into Western free market values, democracy, participation, free exchange of people and goods between countries.” With regards to the American embargo, still in effect, he said, “In the same way the American government imposed sanctions on Venezuelan and Russian officials, that should serve as a paradigm, instead of establishing a general embargo over the whole country, punish those personalities of the military government who have something to do with violations of human rights.”

As of Friday, airlines will not need a specific license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) to fly to Cuba, and this has received a good reception on the Island. This afternoon at Jose Marti International Airport’s Terminals Two and Three, the news spread like wildfire.

Dayane Rios, who was waiting for her grandmother who had been visiting Washington for three months, commented, with the illusions of youth, “This time she had to travel through Mexico because there are no direct flights, but I hope that for the next trip she can do it more directly and cheaply.”

However, although there are no new regulations about a possible maritime connection, many Cubans also dream of the idea. “Pick a place on the Malecon, when the ferry comes all of Havana will be seated on the wall,” one bike-taxi driver joked to another, crossing near Maceo Park.

Manuel Cuesta Morua finds, “The direction this normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States is taking very positive. If we think about the phrase let Cuba open itself to the world and the world open itself to Cuba*, than what is happening is that the United States is opening itself to Cuba, it is like opening the world.” The opponent pointed out that “The impact on the social empowerment of the citizenry, on issues of information and on the possibilities to manage their own lives, is very positive, it’s going to help to ease the precarious situation of Cubans.”

Dagoberto Valdes says, “I am in favor of everything that benefits the ordinary Cuban citizen, the facilitation of travel, communication between civil society here and there, between one people and the other, I am in favor of everything that improves the quality of life.” The director of the independent magazine Convivencia (Coexistence) also added that, “To those who say this is oxygen to the Cuban regime, I say that I am not a believer, I don’t think the Cuban model works and oxygen only works in live models, it doesn’t work in dead ones… what is the value of giving oxygen to this system if the structure of the cell doesn’t work.”

Miriam Celaya said, “It seems positive to me that Americans can travel to Cuba, that it will widen contacts between the two countries, but I don’t know how this is going to empower Cubans as long as all these government controls exist here, as long as free enterprise continues to be demonized and there are so many prohibitions.” In the activist’s opinion, “These measures empower Americans, but in the short term they do not give Cubans back their rights.

*Translator’s note: A phrase uttered by Pope John Paul II during his 1998 visit to Cuba.

The Communist Party in the New Cuba / Cubanet, Rafael Alcides

“There is only one option: Fatherland, Revolution, and Socialism”
“There is only one option: Fatherland, Revolution, and Socialism”

cubanet square logoCubanet, Rafael Alcides, Havana, 13 January 2015 — Following the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States, Havana has become a cauldron of ideas about how we could have elections by secret and direct ballot – an exciting thing to contemplate. Many here see it happening right around the corner, maybe within a few years, three at the most. Others completely deny it. They speak – not in favor, but they do speak – of the Chinese method as the successor to Raul Castro socialism.

Would the Communist Party participate in such elections? This is one of the topics for debate. Some would prefer not to even hear of this. Others – myself included – believe that it would be impossible to exclude the Party: because we are democrats, because otherwise the elections would be invalid, and because, still, the Communist Party holds the reins of power.

However, upon the new government’s establishment, there would be a movement to seize and recover all of the Party’s properties. All. That means, guest houses continue reading

, workplaces, office furniture and equipment, yachts, recreational facilities, means of transportation, bank accounts, etc. The idea would be to start over, on a level playing field, with the other political parties in existence then. And if by means of the Constituent Assembly this recovery could take place prior to the elections, even better – more democratic.

The consensus appears to be unanimous to prevent the current leaders from occupying public positions in the new government. Well, now, would these personages, civilian or military, have the right to run for office? There is no agreement about this, but based on what I have been able to detect from conversations on the street, the public for the most part does not see a reason to oppose this.

There is even talk of a Senator Mariela Castro and a Mayor Eusebio Leal. I do not doubt that they would win. With the appropriate official support, of course, Ms. Mariela Castro Espín has done commendable work—work that in no way diminishes the historical responsibility of her relatives in creating the tragic UMAPs—and this work has gained her a place in the social struggles of her country.

For his part, Eusebio Leal – “St. Eusebio,” as some call him — has shown how much can be done, even without plenipotentiary powers, for a city. Understandably, one hears talk of forgetting the air-kisses which the Maximum Leader, during his speeches, would covertly or overtly blow to Leal. That was, they say, the price the saint had to pay – but thanks to him, they also say – Old Havana exists today. Therefore, generally speaking, the future “dream” electorate of Havana exists because of Eusebio. And because of Mariela.

Well, now, what of the non-recycled candidates, i.e. the new blood, the candidates of the democracy? There lies the great unknown of the moment, the question without an answer among those who already see themselves before the ballot boxes, flags flapping away in the city covered in leaflets and palm leaves. Because they have had no place in the public life of the country, the dissident leaders are not known by the public. The government has never mentioned them – not during their almost-daily detentions, nor upon their releases. Prematurely aged as they enter and leave the jails, and well-known abroad; but in their own country the dissidents are no more, at most, than names heard in passing.

But, fine – it is said – the candidates will appear, the important thing is that elections are around the corner. In the organizing process of the parties, the fighters of old and the new ones, the ones yet to appear, will be known. Upon uttering these words the future elector is seen to sigh and assume an expression of, “Finally! At last! We will have a President and Congress that emanate from the will of the people.”

It is a joy not without its worries. Will free education and hospital care disappear with a democratic government? Here starts the guessing once again. Will the house one lives in have to be returned to its former owner? What about the plot of land granted by the government? As the Russians did, will the current rulers retain the enterprises created by the socialist State?

All of this is fodder for discussions on the street corners, but the joy is so great at even talking about democracy that the conversation veers again towards elections and the media that will facilitate them: radio, TV, the printing of leaflets, etc.

Nevertheless, those who had already been planning to leave the country are still packing their suitcases. And, those who claim to know very well that what is really coming is the Chinese method, sorrowfully spit through their fangs. Raúl and his generals are uninterested in hearing talk about these things, they say. Elections?? And they point to the recent events concerning the artist, Tania Bruguera.

Ultimately, whether these killjoys are right or not, Hope has come knocking, and it is impossible not to let her in.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

One name on the list / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez


The above video is of Yojarne Arce’s protest that eventually led to his arrest.

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, 14 January 2105 — Living in Caimanera is like living on an island within the island. On either side of the highway at the entrance can be read “This is the first anti-imperialist trench in Cuba.” The land is arid and three points of police control block any unauthorized person from accessing the town.

In the village adjoining the Guantanamo Naval Base, a young man has woken up in his own bed today after months in prison. Yojarne Arce dreams of being lawyer, although in the last year he has experienced the law from its most arbitrary side, the political prison.

This 35-year-old Guantanameran has been released as a part of the agreements between the Cuban government and the United States. His name is on the list of activists that Raul Castro ordered out of the prisons, in a political game as long-awaited as it is disappointing.

In the cold language of the court record, it says that Yojarne was condemned for the crime of assault, but those who knew his activism said that State Securirty spent time “hunting him down.” It was a matter of time before they trapped him.

In the middle of last year a video raced across social networks and mobile phones. In it the images of a man is seen standing on a telecommunications tower where he displays a sign with the phrase “Cuba violates human rights.” For long minutes he waves the cloth and shouts slogans.

At the foot of the metal structure people are gathered, half curious, half supportive. That day the police could not arrest him, because his neighbors surrounded him and accompanied hi, home. “You’re not going to take him,” shouted some of them at the law enforcement officers.

But the police have the time, all the time, to wait until an inconvenient individual is alone and helpless. That day came. They arrested this young man from Generation Y right in the street, between blows and screams, a few yards from the border than separates Cuban territory and the American naval base.

And what list are you on?

Yojarne spent days of interrogations and threats. Afterwards they took him to the Guantanamo Provincial Prison, a school-style construction in the country where the greatest lesson to be learned is survival. “I went to ‘The Gulf,’ which is what the prisoners call this encampment where I was, because it’s the last, the end of everything.” He spent most of the time among murderers, repeat offenders and rapists.

“From the beginning I behaved like a political prisoner because I helped to organize several protests and defend the rights of other prisoners,” Yojarne said, while his grandfather prepared a taste of coffee to be drunk in one sip, thinking about those days in prison with hardly any breakfast.

Yojarne Arce at home. (14ymedio)
Yojarne Arce at home. (14ymedio)

The life of this Patriotic Union of Cuba activist has gone from one list to another. To visit him in Caimanera it’s necessary to sign in on a form that every family has at the police station. “Relatives note the name of whoever wants to spend some days with them and then the person is investigated to see if they can enter the town.” For someone who was studying fifth year law when he was arrested, these restrictions remain intolerable.

He was in the prison yard with the common prisoners when they called him. “Yojarne, get your things, you’re going,” one of the guards told him. At first he thought it was a joke. Between those walls he had been on hunger strike and was in the punishment cell at least three times. The Guantanamo Provincial Prison was his home for six months, a cruel home where he won some small battles and left on parole.

“I started a protest which several inmates joined to demand that they display the prison rules,” he says in a lawyerly tone. He takes his time between one word and another, as if reliving those days and then continues, “I did it so the prisoners could know their rights and know what they had access to.”

The first visit after his release was to his captive village. “Caimanera remains the same, nothing has changed, the people are fed up.” Thus he explains his first impressions. His grandmother waited for him at home, running back and forth with joy. The neighbors also came to hug a man who was once a sports trainer and an improvised physiotherapist in the neighborhood.

“I lost the school year, because the university took advantage of my being in prison to kick me out,” he explained, sadly. He lacked just a few months to obtain the title of lawyer that he had planned to hang on the wall facing the door. “I am going to try again,” he says loudly, although it seems to be a promise he is making to himself.

The phone rings and it’s an activist from Santiago de Cuba who called to report that they wouldn’t let him enter Caimanera because he isn’t “on the list.” Yojarne is trapped in a Cold War bastion that the official discourse itself seems to be rejecting. He has exchanged Guantanamo provincial prison for the wide prison that is Caimanera.