Photos of Our Wedding / Lilianne Ruiz

Manuel Cuesta Morua and I have married. I have never been happier. He is an exceptional man and I have the good fortune that we will love each other for the rest of our lives. I want to share these photos with everyone who has accompanied me at this time and and will continue to do so until we can meet in a Havana afternoon, but in Freedom. Our love to all. Lili and Manuel.

9 December 2014

Parades and rights / Yoani Sanchez

Arrests in Havana on Human Rights Day (14ymedio)
Arrests in Havana on Human Rights Day (14ymedio)

Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 10 December 2014 — The carnival was planned for days, months. The background music would slogans and false joy. The venue, the same Havana corner where the Ladies in White were called to remember the International Day of Human Rights. Meanwhile, the “corps de ballet” would consist of workers and students – taken from their workplaces and teachers – to occupy the site chosen by the activists. There would be no lack of food kiosks and some provincial towns added huge trucks dispensing beer because, in our case, instead of bread and circuses, the formula is alcohol and repression.

Then it was time for the parade. Around the Coppelia ice cream stand, in Havana, an unusual crowd of people dressed in civilian clothes caught the attention of some naïve bystanders who didn’t know if it was a line to buy an extinct product, or passionate movie buffs waiting for the Yara cinema to open. Moving their heads from side to said, like someone waiting for prey, they were wearing the clothes we all recognize as the attire of State Security when they want to go undercover, and displayed that physical state of over corpulence compared to the average Cuban. They weren’t dancing, like at carnivals, they just moved towards the women who came dressed in white and tried to shield with their bodies the act of forcing them into a police car. A macabre “corps de ballet” thus represented their choreography of reprimand.

And then the trumpet sounded, excuse me… the car horn. A small lady had managed to get to the left atrium of the heart of El Vedado. Dozens of faces turned and they spoke into the little cables hanging from their earphones. An agent, who for years infiltrated the ranks of independent journalists, unmasked without pain or glory, directed the orchestra. The loudspeakers blared previously recorded phrases, so there were no surprises nor spontaneity. The woman disappeared in seconds. The kids drank their soft drinks and Havana experienced one of the coldest days of the year. The spectacle continued for hours.

How many times as a child was I part of a carnival of repression without knowing it? What naive parties did I participate in that, in reality, were a cover for the horrors? Have those dances and street festivals also been a police operation? After this, it will be hard for me to ever enjoy a parade again.

Twenty activists arrested in central Havana / 14ymedio

Ladies in White put in police cars. (14ymedio)
Ladies in White put in police cars. (14ymedio)

TranslatingCuba.com note: Updates to this article made after what is translated below report more arrests, with more details from around the country. 

14ymedio, Havana, 10 December 2014 — The central corner of 23 and L dawned on Wednesday amid expectation and the utmost vigilance. For days, the call of the Ladies in White to be in that part of the city to commemorate Human Rights Day led the Government to activate all its mechanisms to prevent it.

Last night national television announced a children’s activity at the Coppelia ice cream parlor—located on that corner—a common practice used by the authorities to neutralize congregations of dissident. So far it has been reported that twenty opponents have been detained trying to reach the site, among them are reportedly at least five Ladies in White.

A 14ymedio reporter, present at the site of these incidents, was able to confirm the arrests of several Ladies in White who began to arrive, separately, to the well-known corner. At the beginning there were only people dressed in plainclothes, the so-called “enraged people,” awaiting the activists.

However, as the time of the call to gather approached, several people in uniform arrived along with police cars. One of the women of the Ladies in White–a group that defends human rights–who was able to get to the corner was forced into a police car.

The security agent Carlos Serpa Maceira*, present at the site, threatened Luz Escobar, one of the reporters of this newspaper, who took pictures of the arrests. After a brief detention, this journalist has been released.

Gathering in Havana on Human Rights Day. (14ymedio)
Gathering in Havana on Human Rights Day. (14ymedio)

The foreign press was also present on the site and several activists have reported strong vigilance around their homes. The Patriotic Union of Cuba, in the east of the country, also reported a large police operation and Special Troops personnel in the villages of Mella and Palmarito de Cauto. In this latter place the Communist Party organized a “people’s party” dispensing beer to occupy the meeting points of dissidents in the area.

*Translator’s note: Serpa Maceira previously infiltrated the Ladies in White and acted as their spokesperson, before a “dramatic” unveiling on national television in which he was offered up as “proof” that the dissidents lie; this “proof” was based on the logic that, when he was masquerading as a dissident he lied and the foreign press believed him, ergo, the dissidents lie.

Lady in White Sonia Garro and two other activists released / 14ymedio

Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Alejandro Muñoz (Archive photo)
Sonia Garro and her husband Ramón Alejandro Muñoz (Archive photo)

14ymedio, Havana, 9 December 2014 — On the afternoon of Tuesday, 9 December, Sonia Garro, Ramón Alejandro Muñoz and Eugenio Hernández were released from prison and are now in their respective homes. In a clear political gesture, Raul Castro’s government has given way before national and international pressure demanding the immediate release of the Lady in White, her husband and others charged in the same case.

In a telephone conversation with 14ymedio, Sonia Garro referred to health problems she has on leaving prison, and sent her thanks “to everyone who has supported me.” The Lady in White commented that she still doesn’t know the conditions of her new situation and that in the coming days she must report to the Sixth Police Station, in the Marianao municipality to learn more details.

The news was received a few hours before the worldwide commemoration of Human Rights Day, a date that Cuban activists remember with pilgrimages, meetings and street demonstrations. Every year the government unleashes a repressive wave around this time, which concludes with hundreds of detentions throughout the country, cuts in mobile phone service to block communications between dissidents, and a high number of house arrests.

For her part, Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, said that Garro and the other two activists received a change of custody conditions and as of today will not have to await trial in prison. This does not mean that the charges against them have been dropped or that their trials have been cancelled, she said. Soler also said that the movement she leads will continue to defend all those people who are political prisoners or prisoners of conscience. “We will maintain our morning demonstration on the corner of L and 23rd at eleven in the morning,” she concluded.

The detention of these three people had occurred during a demonstration by a group of Government supporters outside the home of Sonia Garro Alfonso and Ramón Alejandro Muñoz González in March of 2012. The Government sympathizers, supported by State Security agents, tried to block the couple from participating in events to mark the anniversary of the crackdown on dissent (the Black Spring) that began on March 18, 2003 and resulted in the imprisonment of 75 peaceful activists.

The prosecutors accused Garro, Muñoz and Hernández of public disorder and attempted murder. Sonia Garro Alfonso also faces the additional charge of assault for alleged use of violence or intimidation against an agent of the State. Her trial had been postponed without explanation on three occasions, in November 2013, June 2014, and the latest delay in October 2014.

Amnesty International has long called for the trial to be held in accordance with international standards. This would include “ensuring the right of the accused to call witnesses and to challenge the evidence against them.”

Farmers no longer want to remain silent / 14ymedio, Orlando Palma

A poster invites farmers to achieve maximum efficiency and quality. (14ymedio)
A poster invites farmers to achieve maximum efficiency and quality. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, ORLANDO PALMA , Havana, 8 December 2014 — Far away from the television studios where they fabricate the triumphalist news, and from the air-conditioned offices where they try to plan the economy, the farmers are holding the evaluation meetings in their cooperatives, in anticipation of the 11th National Congress of Small Farmers (ANAP) to be held in May. A strong of restrictions and complaints unfolds in each one of these.

Expressed in the language of the official media, the ANAP members are currently analyzing the projections for their sector with a view to pushing economic efficiency and “reversing the outcomes of the production priorities to feed the people.” The president of ANAP, Rafael Santiesteban Pozo, has declared that the meetings will emphasize the introduction of science and technology in the cultivation of food, but the testimonies of several farmers point to other priorities.

So far only 48% of the planned meetings have been held and yet to meet are those that must be held at the municipal level, first, and then at the provincial level. But a common denominator is already taking shape in the issues raised. Among the most repeated is the concern generated by the delays in the delivery of resources to meet the agreed-upon commitments. The limited access to irrigation infrastructure and seeds, and the limitation on acquiring tractors are the main complaints.

The tobacco growers, for their part, complain about not receiving fertilizers in time, or that the framework to support the fabric covering the tobacco doesn’t have the required quality; the producers of roots and vegetables express their dissatisfaction with the lack of realism in the contract terms and in general the ANAP members don’t seem willing to shoulder the blame for the shortages or the fact that the market stands offer goods at unaffordable prices.

On the other side of the table, where the leaders sit, they insist on strengthening the management boards and work to overcome the cadres, plus the usual calls to order, discipline and demands. In this way, the functionaries’ formula for solving the serious problems in Cuban agriculture is presented in inverse order to that proposed by the men who work the land.

If these latter are essential for improving the State payments for the agricultural products, increasing the supply of inputs and lowering prices, in addition to expanding the autonomy of the farmers when it’s time to decide what they want to grow and the final destination of their crops. State leaders, for their part, are proposing to increase production at any price and they insist that only this will improve the conditions in the countryside.

We have here a deep conflict on the priorities, whether to first increase production, or to improve working conditions. What we do know is that a few months after the congress of the most important farmers’ organization in the whole country, the demands of the men in the furrows approaches the needs of a medieval country than they do of a twenty-first century economy.

“I’m a demon who writes what she feels” / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Wendy Guerra at a conference at the Casa de America, Madrid
Wendy Guerra at a conference at the Casa de America, Madrid

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 8 December 2014 — Wendy Guerra is a rare bird in a country where everyone is seeking conclusive adjectives and extreme descriptions. Actress, writer, blogger and a Havanan down to her core, she always stands out. We remember her on the TV screen; in the pages of a book her writing will always touch us.

Today we talked about her literary work and the thematic and vital obsession that Cuba has been for her.

Question: The book Posar desnuda en La Habana (Posing Nude in Havana) surprises the reader with its perfect symbiosis of Anaïs Nin’s voice and your own voice. What is your creative process to achieve that effect?

Answer: First, I thank you for starting this exchange with a question of a literary nature.

Everything is in the language. Each fragrance that is in this book is powerfully driven by her voice and it is the use of her own turns of phrase, the discursive character of the author that distills and strengthens it. I spent twelve long years researching the Cuban fibers of Anaïs Nin. I earned several scholarships in France and the United States to find clues about the Cuban footprint of the author. It was the UCLA Department of Special Collections that gave me the opportunity read her unexpurgated diaries to research Anaïs’s island origins.

Accents lost and recovered, endemic pains, her marriage at La Finca La Generala, her relationship with the Cuban “sugarocracy,” her deep uprooting and the uncontrollable way of riding with her father, the Cuban pianist Joaquín Nin Castellanos. Her relationship with her brother, the composer and singer Joaquín Nin Cumell. Her mother, the Cuban opera singer Rosa Culmell, the hard exile that took her from luxury to poverty, from pain to euphoria… all this was the perfect climate to approach the writing of Posing Nude in Havana. What came to the fore was a deep respect for completing her words with mine.

Keep in mind that her Cuban Diary has very few pages and my delirium was always to write an apocryphal novel; literary conjecture about what might have happened.

Father-Cuba-Diary, for both of us, were, are and will be subjects as intimate as they are universal.

Q. What new literary project are you working on now?

A. I’m writing a novel about fear. The feeling of persecution many of us Cubans have, the panic that they are recording our conversations, of being watched, searched, harassed. This psychosis travels with us. La espía del Arte (The Art Spy) (the working title) will have approximately 100 pages. A brief piece full of neurosis and a sense of humor, the human-Cuban spectacle uncovered, what’s left of us after the long observation, the obligatory exhibition.

Some of my friends in exile think I am the spy of Cuban art who returns to Cuba with their secrets, which I pass on as reports or accusations. In Cuba, on the other hand, they think I’m hiding something, that I have some plan; they are suspicious of these long visits among the exile and think I’m the head of something, the spearhead of something. Who am I? A demon who writes what she feels, confident in her impressions, who manages to translate them, and therein lies the danger. I write or say what people think is not fashionable.

Another ongoing project is research into Ana Mendieta. Ana has been my literary and personal inspiration, now I’m beginning to find my way into her mystery. It will be long, I will spend all my savings in finding it, but… perhaps it isn’t literature, to open every one of the tightly sealed doors to find yourself?

Q. Many of us remember you for your performances in several TV series and programs. Should we resign ourselves to not seeing that side of you any more?

R. Vicente Revuelta was the person who made visible all my skills. Without him I’d never have seen my ability to act which, even so, I consider limited. Everything I did on television came from a path that he had already traced like a tattoo on my intellect. This cycle was very important because, for me, to write is to incarnate and thanks to this effort I respect the character and sense of interpretation… but no, no I didn’t feel happy as an actress, it is in literature where studying and growing makes me better, frees and defines me.

Vincent knew that Andrea Sarti (Gallileo Galilei) could repeat the lines and expand them. I was that actress that was arguing within each one of the speeches and with the director’s determinations. I was the actress who managed to write and dictate her own character.

Not all Cubans have found it possible to be a person, most of us have changed into characters to win this long race of resistance.

Q. From the publishing point of view you’ve experienced the extremes. From accolades like the Editorial Bruguera prize and the 2009 Carbet des Lycéens prize, to the scant attention your work has received from Cuban publishers. What do you think you’ve missed experiencing?

A. I want to publish in Cuba everything that’s been translated or published outside of it. I want to bring the best literature of my generation and my country, Cubans are excellent readers and deserve the power to update and feed their hunger for reading. I want to keep flowing with all my publishers and I want Cuba to accompany me in this process. I want what happens with Leonardo Padura to happen to me. Whenever his book comes out in France or Spain, Cuban readers have the opportunity to read it in their own land. The prizes are the vehicle to make yourself known in the world, to be published in your homeland is the way to confront the nature of what you do and are.

Q. You suffered an incident of censorship in the Santa Cruz Festival of Literature of Bolivia. Was it a surprise or were you able to foresee something?

A. It seemed like a distant situation but all this is so recognizable for us that we can even hum it like a Russian song that talks about snow in the middle of a Cuban beach. I imagine that this time those who blocked my presentation have reasons to agree and accept censorship, or to remain silent and bow their heads. The strange thing is to think that something a woman like me says in public can disrupt or affect a system like this… is it that fragile?

Q. The title of one of your novels is very revealing of the Cuban situation. Everyone Leaves, says the cover, and many of us wonder why Wendy Guerra is not leaving this country?

A. When I saw the filmed version of this novel, directed by Colombian director Sergio Cabrera, I knew this was not my own story. It’s a fictional story that left my hands and belongs entirely to those people who, like me, suffered the State as an executioner-intrusion installed in the center of the most sacred relationship: the family. The novel talks of the desertions of the soul, not only does it touch on the heartbreaking geographical exodus, we are talking about the flight of family and close friends in the name of a slogan or political responsibility.

I don’t want to go to restore a foreign space that I don’t feel a part of. In my particular case, I want to feel that each one of my ideas, tantrums and battles goes to nurture the emotional and human restoration of girls like me, who have come to maturity without the ability to explain to ourselves why they abandoned us in exchange for a castrating and false collective happiness. This place where being human ceases to matter, to become ciphers.

If I haven’t left it’s because I think that the wounds, before being healed, have to be named, starting from the scene of the pain. Some day, when everyone returns, I will go to a town on the other side of the world to learn how to write diaries from afar.

Editing your contacts / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzales

A young woman checks her mobile phone. (CC)
A young woman checks her mobile phone. (CC)

14ymedio, VÍCTOR ARIEL GONZÁLEZ, Havana, 8 December 2014 – She turned 24 and spent that day with her few friends who still live in Cuba. She is known as a faithful exponent of a generation marked by uprooting and escape. She decided to not complete her social service so that she could devote her time to making handicrafts and, thanks to her perfect English and various contacts, she also offers guided excursions to tourists. “My degree in languages does not pay for itself,” Camila admits.

Seated in her backyard, she shares that this was where colleagues from her faculty, as well as classmates from prep school, used to come for gatherings. Camila’s yard was “the party place,” as recognized on an amusing handmade “diploma” that she keeps in a frame on her wall. There are still some festivities held there, except that now these have been occurring less frequently because “everyone has been taking their own path…you know.”

I do know. And the gesture Camila makes with her hand, like an airplane taking off, confirms this. To prove her point, she adds, “Have you ever counted how many contacts you’ve had to remove from your contacts on your phone?” and then goes on to recount how, on her birthday, more people called her from foreign countries than from Cuba.

Camila tries to make light of this fact, perhaps without meaning to do so, with a subversive smile. However, she cannot mask the subtle aroma of yearning released by her words. Today she has friends in Europe, Asia and even Australia – but the US is her “second Island” because more than half of her absent friends are now residing there. She has had to update their phone numbers on her contacts.

Even so, the new area codes in Camila’s contacts are in contrast to the old photos that appear on her mobile phone screen. She doesn’t want to forget that they were taken here, when her friends were still living in Cuba and there weren’t so many calls as visits and well-attended gatherings – be they “to study for a test or to have a drink, or both.” Camila’s vision of the present for young people like us can be summed up thus: “Our generation is mortgaged. It is going to take many years for us to pay this spiritual debt – if indeed we still can.”

Her phrase, which I stole, is so impactful, that any other word is just unnecessary. “And who do you think,” I later ask Camila, “might join the list of those who call you from outside Cuba on your next birthday?” She raises her eyebrows and laughs, saying, “The way I see things, and if everything goes according to plan, perhaps I will be the one to call from outside Cuba on my next birthday, so that those whom I’ve left behind can give me their good wishes. The most likely thing is that you will have to change my number on your contacts.”

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

What I Said at FIU / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Translator’s Note: On Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo participated in a panel discussion at Florida International University, in Miami. The program announcement is here.

Since the time of the Iron Curtain and Soviet socialism, the word, “solidarity,” has been one of value in anti-totalitarian use. Within the dictatorial models that communists have historically imposed every time they have taken power, it is impossible to socialize if not through the power of the State/God. Every social bond is regulated as deemed convenient by a regime that, on principle, politicizes all, but in practice depoliticizes society.

There is no political life after the communist parties appropriate power, be it through bullets or ballots. This should be sufficient cause to ponder whether the communist parties — just like the fascists or racists or fundamentalists — deserve the right to play the democratic game. The parties that aspire to be not part, but all, have not demonstrated that they are capable of responding to or respecting the rule of law.

In the face of such false en masse socialization produced by stagnant socialist systems, for the individual to be in solidarity is, then, a way of living in the truth, of involving oneself in the complex social fabric, of reacting against systemic injustices, of not abandoning those displaced by the utopia.

In the face of a monolithic state that hijacks everything to the ideological spectrum, solidarity embodies the rediscovery of the individual, of his inner freedom and of his rights to manifest it, and also the revaluation of his dignity as a person, of his inviolable human condition. Solidarity thus became a secret word, subversive and redeeming.

In Cuba, the prestige of this word — as all language that has been strip-mined by the State — is synonymous with dangerousness. Solidarity, a word derived from “sun,” [“sol” in Spanish] was forced into the counterrevolutionary catacombs. As with the term, “human rights,” solidarity suffered the stigma of clandestinity. I suspect that the word barely arouses sympathies in the average Cuban, who associates it with conspiracies incubated abroad and thus justifies his own humiliation at having to survive with his head bowed.

Peoples learn from their tyrants. In that sense, the Cuban people are cynically wise. At this point in history it is almost unjust to ask them for more. We have sanctioned Castroism with our best spontaneous weapons, even while these same weapons make us a bit more complicit: silence, apathy, repression through inertia, pretending to walk the walk out of an instinct of self-preservation. Against a regime like that of the Castros, to peacefully preach solidarity is also to remember that all gospels end in a via crucis, in the deadly hands of State Security, an entity specifically dedicated to dissolving any trace of solidarity.

Thus the preciousness of the least gesture of our many foreign friends. They observe us, and they work and take risks for Cuba, without the straightjacket of the Revolution’s compensatory myths: the social programs, the high professional level of our countrymen, and the stability gained by sterility of life in our olive-green bubble, which now is mutating from the color of military uniforms to the color of dollars.

Thus the incalculable worth of the courageous acts of Cubans surrounded by Castroism everywhere. Blackmailing Castroism and academic Castroism, or both. Castroism of the bourse and of the beast, or both. Idiotic Castroism and ideological Castroism, or both. Castroism as anti-establishment therapy or sentimental, conciliatory Castroism.

Not to fall into paralyzing pessimism, but there is scarce room for hope in this tragedy, and therefore hope shines brilliantly to the point of virtue. It is this State-sponsored thuggery that makes it so that not one leader of the pro-democracy movements in Cuba has not foretold his or her death, carried out with exceptional viciousness, as in the cases of Laura Pollán and Oswaldo Payá.

The diasporization of our nation starts with our laziness toward fighting injustice somewhere else, as long as it doesn’t concern us personally. In fact, after it does concern us, many times we Cubans prefer to bury our pain and our injury, preventing some friendly hand from “politicizing” their trauma, presuming that doing so would make things worse for us.

This is how we end up being, as a people, Fidelism’s most reliable source of governability, its raw material that will not betray it. Although, as I’ve already said, day by day we also vote in a plebiscite with our feet, which is one of the most constant behaviors that should be weighed in favor of the Revolution: we leave the Island, be it only to turn back; we leave, be it only to construct a new, post-national servitude, in which we know that politics continues being not part of our life, but rather a terrible “all” whose long, barbaric arm could reach our family in whatever corner they might be.

Not one of my columns or photographs since my ostracism in Havana would have had the same impact if not for the solidarity, almost always, of the survivors of socialism. This never implied the most minimal interference with my content. I have not evolved as an accuser: it is possible that I am not even a democrat so much as an author interested in the ultimate. Thus before even knowing it, I was already free to the point of intolerability.

I am not interested in correction, be it mental or corporal, and I am bored by any creation that from its genesis already defines its destiny (and its meaning). I am obsessed by the limits of provocation. My fury at, and autos-da-fé about, Cuba do not remain in the little fossil farm of Fidelism. Rather, they go seeking in the black holes of our democracy that never knew its value apart from the currency of violence, starting with the land destroyed in the wars of independence. These wars consecrated the gallons of spilled blood as a universal value, placed martyrdom over reconciliation, suicide over surrender, hate for our very selves mutated into hate for our Cuban difference: a civic poverty that plays out as tribalism and that, well into the 21st century, still seduces and traps us.

There are many dramatic anecdotes of solidarity with the imaginary free Cuba, such that our desolation is inconsolable as a people living under an apartheid that the world does not recognize. As an emblem, I would like to mention an example exclusive to Cubans which we are careful to cite, for fear (at times average and other times downright miserable) of remaining in anyone’s territory, in or out of Cuba, as if we weren’t already pariahs in perpetuity, in or out of Cuba.

I’m referring to legislated solidarity, to the very rare documents that have sought to wrest liberty from legality. In Cuba, of course, no citizen initiative ever pointed in such a radical fashion to a refounding of the republic as did the Varela Project. This enterprise received from Oswaldo Payá its genius of inspiration and perseverance, but it was also our great public march against the usurpers of the law, a milestone for future generations to know that all measures short of bloodshed were attempted, that there was no humanly possible way of telling the Castros that they are not welcome in our homeland, and that it is they and not some foreign power who have hijacked our sovereignty as a nation.

Other documents of legislated solidarity — that also do not seem to be in fashion amongst a dissident movement that no longer pretends to be an opposition and even less to stop being an opposition and aspire to power through ballots instead of bullets — can be found in North American legislation. Stone me as the Castroites have always stoned me before and after Castro, but in the best of circumstances, it is an act of ignorance not to cite that the so-called Helms-Burton Act is actually named the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act.

Beyond the technicalities of geopolitics, this document establishes the keys to repealing the North American economic blockade. The few sections that discuss normalization of Cuba-US relations — without being complicit with Castroism — are much more respectful of Cubans than the avalanche of editorials from The New York Times, or the campaigns by NGOs that from Miami to Washington DC want to capitalize on the pretend-changes in Cuba, on the auto-transition of power to power and not of law to law, of a tired Castroism to a dynastic, post-Castroism with the literal blood-heirs of the Castros at the helm.

Section 205 of the Act lists in legal language the minimal characteristics needed to jump-start our delayed democracy: Legalize political activity. Liberate political prisoners. Commit to holding free elections. Establish independence among the branches of the State. Legalize workers’ unions. Allow free individual expression and a free press. Respect private property. Protect the rights of citizens on the Island and in Exile.

In that risky context wherein a State capitalism is constructed in Cuba which is no less totalitarian than communism (which is another form of centralized capitalism), perhaps it would be pertinent for Cubans — with a voice empowered by their labor for liberty — to demand of democracies not just one but many laws for liberty — so that the Hierarchs of Havana — who would never sit at a table of reconciliation because they do not recognize their enemies as anything more than potential exterminations to be carried out — will at least feel some effective, legal pressure against their opaque tactics. Thus an unequivocal sign would be given that they do not bear any kind of legitimacy — because 56 years of governing in their belligerent, ill-advised and manipulative manner, are more than enough.

Translated By: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

5 December 2014

Santiesteban Protests Against Conditions Of His Confinement / 14ymedio, Lilianne Ruiz

Angle Santiesteban (14ymedio)
Angle Santiesteban (14ymedio)

14ymedio, LILIANNE RUIZ, 7 December 2014 — Writer and journalist Angel Santiesteban continues to be detained, since August, in a border guard military unit located on Primera Street in Miramar. His jailers have announced to him this week that he may be transferred to a location yet to be identified.

The hut where Santiesteban has been incarcerated these months overlooks the street, just opposite the security checkpoint. It measures four by four meters. The prisoner cannot walk, stretch his legs, get sun or interact with other detainees. They only let him out once a week to use the phone and every twenty-one days to receive a two-hour family visit.

Santiesteban is thinner and paler. He relates that last weekend he began a hunger strike to demand better conditions like having the right to get sun, walk and run on the ground as is his custom, to have free access to the telephone like the other prisoners, and to receive visits every 15 days. “After an upset stomach, I refused to take oral rehydration salts and I stopped ingesting food in protest of my conditions of confinement,” he reports.

The writer explains that then two State Security officers told him that they would transmit his claim to the command and give him an answer within a week. They told him that “he has done much damage to the Revolution and that if he had accepted the offer they had made him last August his situation would be different.”

Santiesteban explains that in that month, when he was transferred to the border guard unit, officials from State Security proposed freedom to him in exchange for his leaving the country, which he roundly refused.

Wednesday he dropped the hunger strike pending an answer to his demands. Next April he should be released on parole if the authorities comply with the law which calls for release after the completion of half the sentence. Santiesteban also awaits the response from the Ministry of Justice which accepted the appeal of his case indicating that it admits that irregularities were committed in the trial held against him.

Translated by MLK

Intense Operations And Arrests Begin Ahead of Caricom-Cuba Summit / 14ymedio

14YMEDIO, Havana, 7 December 2014 — The women’s group Women for Democracy has been subject this Sunday to a broad repressive operation in Santiago de Cuba. While they were heading to the church of San Juan Bosco, 28 women from that movement were arrested or prevented from participating in Sunday mass, according to a report by their leader Belkis Cantillo.

The activist, in a telephone conversation with 14ymedio, explained that the political police were waiting for them at “las Alturas de El Cristo,” and the women were forced into several cars to be freed later at locations distant from their homes and the church where they were going.

“Some were left in sugar cane plantations or in the middle of the highway,” Cantillos also told this daily. “They were subjected to quite a bit of verbal and physical violence,” says the woman who, since last September, has led one of the most important dissident women organizations in the country.

Throughout the national territory other activists have complained about an increase in police operations and surveillance around their headquarters or homes. The reason could be the Monday morning start of the 5th CARICOM-Cuba Summit which will be held in the capitals’ Palace of the Revolution.

It is a common practice of State Security to resort to house arrests and detentions during events that involve foreign guests.

Translated by MLK

Tricking Customs, Another National Sport / 14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez

In the suitcase of a traveler coming from Miami (14ymedio)
In the suitcase of a traveler coming from Miami (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Victor Ariel Gonzalez, Havana, 6 December 2014 — Establishing the rules of a sport takes time. Let’s take for example baseball, one of the most complicated games that exists; one could ask where the rules for its practice come from, and why some are so convoluted. But when it comes to regulatory whim, let’s go to an activity that increasingly approaches the category of extreme sport, and that is the entry of products into Cuba trying to pass through the controls of the Republic’s General Customs (AGR).

Much curiosity is awakened by the heap of prohibitions, conditions and loopholes that regulate the arrival of luggage and packages to the Island. There are so many questions that the official press devotes a lot of space to explaining how the still-confusing system functions. But more than confusing, annoying, because it affects the way in which Cubans cope with their shortages, while also feeding a bulky staff of officials.

This Thursday the official daily Juventud Rebelde devoted a whole page to detailing, for the umpteenth time, how the mechanism works. With the title of The Other Package – a clear allusion to the demonized “weekly package*” – the text delves into the issues that it considers most important for public awareness in regards to international parcels.

For that it cites, for example, Law Decree 22, where it is provided that the total value of shipments may not exceed 200 CUP (Cuban pesos — roughly $8 US); and Resolution 208 from 2014 whose provisions establish that the import value of one kilo of miscellaneous items equals 20 pesos, so up to 10 kilograms of miscellaneous items can be imported via shipping, with the first 30 CUP (1.5 kilos) being duty free.

Until that point let’s say everything is clear. The complications come when the shipment is made of up “miscellaneous items” and “durable” goods like appliances or tires. In such case, “the sum of both values must not exceed the import limit legally established (…) because all that exceeds that figure will be confiscated after the person chooses the articles that he wants to prioritize.”

This is only the first complication of a thick tangle, because there are also sender-receiver considerations. A Cuban resident on the Island who finds himself on a trip, for example, will not be able to send to himself a package on return to his country. The condition would be that the delivery be classified as “household goods,” and not everyone in the world has this right. Who does? The bulky manual of the AGR offers an imaginative response.

Also, the number of entries into the country determines the quantity of products that can be brought in luggage, and this will affect also the ability to receive packages. In sum, a newspaper page is not enough to explain all that one needs to know when not knowing it could mean that they won’t let your soap or coffee pass through.

In a country where the government lives to complain about external harassment, the citizens live under the harassment of the authorities. Any effort to supply the informal market or even the family economy in an independent way can be considered illegal, without it mattering that said activity serves to remedy the shortages somewhat.

In the capital there are three delivery points for packages. The others are in Holguin, Camaguey, Santiago de Cuba and Varadero. Since there is no courier service, those who live distant from these warehouses are obliged to make inter-provincial trips. More complications, more work, more bother.

The directives of the AGR recognize that the existing installations are insufficient, and they resort to the now usual promise that “we will continue to expand service.”

If there is an excess of luggage or the package is too big – very easy to achieve given the strict margin established – then comes the expropriation, a point that has been avoided by official investigations.

When 14ymedio contacted the AGR asking about the matter, it reported the confiscated articles wind up at the Ministry of Interior Commerce (MINCIN), “so that they can be distributed to the Ministry of Health and Education and others.”

Nevertheless it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find in a hospital or school a flat screen television, a bottle of L’Oral cream or other products that are commonly confiscated on arrival into the country.

For its part, at the MINCIN, specifically the “office of attention to the people,” the operator does not know where to direct the question. “This is the first time that someone has called asking what happens to what Customs confiscates.”

One suspects that corruption within the AGR is rampant. After all, the popular wisdom says that in Cuba everyone has a need, so everyone has a price.

It is evident that travelers insist on tricking customs controls, and it is highly likely that they will keep trying. The contraband, another non-institutionalized sport, challenges the imagination, even that of those charged with writing the customs laws.

*Translator’s note: The so-called “weekly package” is a collection of videos and other materials, ranging from news articles to computer games, that circulates hand-to-hand in the ‘grey market’ as an alternative to the very limited official TV and radio programming and other Party-owned media.

Translated by MLK

Joint Statement By The Cuban Opposition Meeting in Mexico / 14ymedio

14ymedio, Mexico, 5 December 2014 — The meeting Roads for a Democratic Cuba, held in Mexico, closed Thursday with a joint statement signed by the attendees and focused on the consensus points necessary for beginning a democratic transition on the Island.

We reproduce here the entire text of that statement:

We, representatives of diverse organizations and activists of Cuban civil society from the Island and the Diaspora, meeting in Mexico City under the auspices of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and the Christian Democratic Organization of America, have had the opportunity to concur on matters of common interest which we reflect below:

  1. The urgent need for Cuba to move to democracy
  2. The shared calling that this transition occur peacefully
  3. The respect for diversity of non-violent methods of fighting

Understanding that it is up to Cubans to carry out actions that lead to solving the problems of Cuba, taking into account the role of those who live on the Island and the indispensable support that the Diaspora can and should offer.

How beneficial it would be for the entities of civil society, political actors, governments and international organizations from all over the world to offer greater solidarity in defense of human rights in Cuba.

It is identified as one of the main challenges to work in search of projects for unity of action and strategies for change. Similarly, it is agreed to salute the existence of different projects with these features aimed at achieving a Cuban democracy.

Recognizing the absence from this event of activists whom the Government did not permit to leave the country and others who for various reasons were not present.

Signed December 4, 2014.

  • Eliecer Avila: We Are More
  • Yaxys Cires Dib: Christian Democratic Party of Cuba
  • Manuel Cuesta Morua: Progressive Arc
  • Reinaldo Escobar: Journalist
  • Guillermo Farinas Hernandez: Patriotic Union of Cuba and Anti-totalitarian United Front
  • Jorge Luis Garcia Perez Antunez: Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Resistance Front
  • Rene Gomez Manzano: Agramontista Current, UNPACU
  • Eroises Gonzalez Suarez: Liberal Cuban Solidarity Party
  • Andres Hernandez Amor: Christian Democratic Party of Cuba
  • Rene Hernandez Bequet: Christian Democratic Party of Cuba
  • Rafael Leon Rodriguez: Cuban Democratic Project
  • Omar Lopez Montenegro: Latin American Center for Non-violence
  • German Miret: Human rights activist
  • Armando Pena Guzman: Christian Liberation Movement
  • Marfeli Perez-Estable: Academic
  • Julio Pichs: National Cuban American Foundation, Cuban Consensus
  • Vladimiro Roca Antunez: Social Democratic Party of Cuba
  • Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina: Eastern Democratic Alliance
  • Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado: Cuban Democratic Project
  • John Suarez: Cuban Democratic Leadership

Translated by MLK

In Cuba There are Fewer Rural Schools Than in 1958 / Dora Leonor Mesa

The urban centers have been submitted to systematic closure since 1973, although the worse period has been under the Government of Raul Castro.

In 2012, in the Las Tunas town of Majibacoa, the People’s Power delegate Sirley Avila Leon put a face on a grave national problem: the constant reduction of schools on the part of the regime in Havana, due to, among other causes, the demographic situation, and the country’s economic reality.

Ávila León suffered all kinds of pressures when she complained about the closure of the only school in her area. Then, there were few general facts about the dismantling of one of the Castro regime’s propaganda pillars.

Today, the figures speak for themselves, even those that the National Office of Statistics conservatively publishes. According to the study group Foresight Cuba, that investigates and contextualizes the official data, the number of schools increased at the beginning of the 1960s, but decreased rapidly starting in 1973-1974.

From that moment on, there has been a systematic closure of schools, with a great acceleration since the year 2007.  During the course of 2013-2014, there were 9,482 schools functioning, the study indicated, based upon government data.

Primary Schools — as much urban as rural — increased from 7,567 in the period 1958-1959, up to 15,547 in 1974-1975.  “From this moment on, they started to decrease to 6,842 in the period 2013-2014. The government of Raul Castro has accelerated the closure of schools; in the period 2008-2009 there were 8,999 primary schools. “

 The languishing country

The biggest decrease was in the number of rural schools, “Now there are fewer rural schools (4,729) than in 1958, when there were 4,889″  facilities in these areas, added Foresight Cuba.

“It is something that I have seen here where I love, in the municipality of Song-La Maya (Santiago de Cuba)”, assured the ex-university professor Hergues Frandin. “For example, in La Meca, Alto Songo, they closed the school and now the children have to travel up to 8 kilometers on foot, back and forth.”

Dora Leonor Mesa, president of the independent Cuban Association for the Development of Children’s Education, indicated that many rural schools are located in remote areas, with only one or two students.

“There is an important population decrease, that influences the quantity of students of school age.  In these rural areas, different levels study mixed together in the same classroom”, explained Mesa.

Foresight Cuba also remembered that in the 1990-1991 school year, there were 2,70 functioning secondary schools in the country, but since then, the number has decreased to 1,941 in the school year 2008-2009.  After that, somewhere around 500 schools were closed, and in the school year 2013-2014, there were only 1,434 middle schools.

 Amending Fidel Castro

The statistical series reveals that the number of higher education schools increased from 3 to 68 throughout these years.

The 3,150 universities created in the school year 2005-2006, in the context of the propaganda program known as “The Battle of Ideas”, they were also mostly closed during the 2008-2009 academic year. Today, only 122 remain.

“The enrollment in the municipal sites was reunified in central universities, due to the deficit of teachers and material conditions” said Frandin.  In this case, the ex-professor indicated that “It’s a good thing that they have been removed, because it didn’t make sense to have universities in the municipalities”.

In summary, and taking into account that some facilities have been closed because of being in very bad condition, Dora Leonor Mesa pointed out that “Cuba really never had good schools”.

“A good classroom should count on technology and capable professors, as well as friendly conditions for the child. That does not exist in Cuba”, she concludes.

Michel Suarez | Madrid | 15 Oct 2014

Published in http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/1413398150_10830.html

Translated by: BW

14 November 2014

How Cubans Make Ends Meet: What New York Times Editorials Miss* / Ivan Garcia

vendedor-callejero-en-sagua-la-grande-F-620x330If someone told you would receive a monthly salary of 350 pesos, the equivalent of $15, for a job as a nighttime security guard at a dilapidated school in a country where credit does not exist and that you would need hard currency — currency in which the state does not pay you  — to buy beef, fish and powdered milk, or that a home appliance would cost you six month’s salary, you would probably think he was a compulsive liar, a charlatan or was just trying to find out how people in financial distress make ends meet.

Well, there is such a country. It is called Cuba, a country which for better or worse has been idealized. Some people worship Fidel Castro just for thumbing his nose at the United States.

They tout the government’s favorable statistics (which are fewer and fewer) and like trained parrots repeatedly point to achievements such as universal health coverage and education.

Certainly no one in Cuba asks whether you are a dissident or a revolutionary when it comes to receiving medical care, but differences do exist. While government ministers and generals have access to hospitals comparable to private clinics in advanced countries, most people must rise early and get in line to see a specialist at a hospital badly in need of repair and where equipment and drugs are in short supply.

Education is a controversial subject. Every Cuban knows how to read, write and do basic math. But education comes with a large ideological component. In addition to rules of etiquette such as how to say “buenos días,” high school students quickly learn how to disarm an AK 47 rifle.

Pursuing a university education means learning how to hide what you think. It is virtually impossible for a known dissident to study journalism or international relations, fields in which ideology and loyalty to the regime are essential.

But after pointing to achievements in health, education, sports and culture as well as to the tenacity of having stood up to “Yankee imperialism” ninety miles from Cuban shores, Castro’s sycophants are left without solid arguments.

Are political rights not important? Why can we not go on strike to demand better pay? Or to force the government to implement its single currency policy? Or to lower the prices of gasoline, home appliances and cars?

These questions are thorns in the sides of the regime’s defenders. But back to our original topic, let’s try to describe to a clueless foreigner how Cubans make ends meet.

Reinier is a custodian at a high school in the Havana neighborhood of La Vibora. He works every other night as a security guard there and is paid 352 Cuban pesos a month. [Roughly equivalent to $14-$15 US]

In reality his job is just a cover. “It’s because of the section chief (of the neighborhood police) who’s over me that I got this job. I had already received two citations for petty crimes. If these add up, they can sentence you to two years in prison. I became a custodian to keep a low profile,” says Reinier.

He talks about sleeping on the job. “I have to make sure they don’t steal the televisions, light bulbs or some old computers. If there weren’t security guards here, the place would be robbed. I also have to make sure that couples, both heterosexual and homosexual, don’t break in and make love in the school courtyard. After a few incidents like this at two in the morning, I started sleeping on a table all night,” he confesses.

“How do you make it to the end of the month on your salary?” I ask.

“Salaries in Cuba are a joke,” he says. “I get by because I work as a bookie for the ’bolita’ (illegal lottery). I make the rounds twice daily. I make between 250 and 400 Cuban pesos a day.”

You might think Renier is an exception but, if you ask most Cubans, 90% would say they make extra money in shady deals and under-the-table transactions.

Yolanda, an engineer, sells coffee and fruit juice at her workplace and is thinking of expanding her business. “I am going to start offering lunches and candies. My salary is 512 Cuban pesos a month ($21). I make triple that selling juice and coffee.”

Reinier and Yolanda do not pay taxes on their earnings. To live comfortably, others dip their hands into the state safe or steal anything of value within arm’s reach.

Sixto is a business economist whose main job is to provide cover for his bosses’ embezzlement. “The books have to add up in case there is an audit. Accounting tricks and financial manipulation are routinely used to hide theft. They pay me between 5 and 10 convertible pesos a day (about $5 to $10) for my labors. I also get a basket of food whenever I need it,” he says.

Rogelio, a city bus driver, says the only way he can make ends meet “is to take 200 to 300 Cuban pesos a day from the fare box. Some take more, others less, but all the drivers do it,”  he notes.

This is how Cuba works. With unwritten rules. With theft, fraud and embezzlement from state enterprises. Just below a layer of sanctimoniousness lies the reality. People eat, relax and shop thanks to hard currency remittances sent by relatives from overseas. Or they help themselves to state resources.

That anonymous mass of Cubans — with their schemes for surviving in a country where the average wage is $20, a plasma screen TV costs $800 and a Peugeot 508 goes for $300,000 — is waiting for a New York Times editorial that acknowledges them. Now that Cuba is fashionable.

Iván García

Photo: In Sagua la Grande, a section of Villa Clara about 185 miles east of Havana, a local resident ekes out a living selling produce on the street from a converted tricycle. NBC News.

*Translator’s note: In October and November of 2014 the New York Times published a series of editorials critical of American policies and actions towards Cuba and praising Cuba’s efforts to combat Ebola in West Africa.

3 December 2014

Two hours with the New York Times’ Ernesto Londoño / 14ymedio

Ernesto Londoño
Ernesto Londoño

Our team had a conversation with the New York Times journalist who has authored the editorials about Cuba.

14ymedio, 1 December 2014 — Ernesto Londoño, who authored six editorials on Cuba published recently by the New York Times engaged in a friendly conversation on Saturday with a part of the 14ymedio team, in the hotel where he is staying in Havana.

Our intention was to interview him, but he told us the rules of his media prohibit his giving interviews without previous consultation. He also declined our proposal to take photos. Instead, he was eager to listen to our opinions in an atmosphere of mutual respect. There were two hours of conversation dedicated to refining, enriching and debating the controversial ideas that the newspaper has addresses in his editorials.

The following is a brief synthesis of what was said there, arranged by topics and ascribed to the author of each opinion.

Journalism

Yoani Sánchez: Cubans are going to need a great deal of information to avoid falling into the hands of another authoritarianism. In 14ymedio we are including a plurality of voices, for example on the issue of the embargo. We leave it to the reader to form his own opinion from a variety of information.

Reinaldo Escobar: The official Cuban press, which is all the press, there are no public media, they are private property of the Communist Party. Now, has there been a change? Yes, there has been a change. Since a few years ago the newspaper Granma has had a weekly section with letters by readers where you find criticism of bureaucrats, things that don’t work or prices at the markets. But look, the emphasis is on the self-employed markets.

So far I have not read a profound criticism of the prices at the convertible peso markets that the Government has, which are abusive. Nor can you talk about the legitimacy of our rulers or the impracticality of the system. Here are two big taboos, and in the third place, the topic of political repression. If they report on a repudiation rally, they show it as something spontaneous on the part of the people, without telling how the political police were behind it, organizing it all.

Miriam Celaya: There are changes indeed. The problem is that there are real and nominal changes, and these changes are generally nominal. Now everyone in Cuba can legally stay in a hotel, which before was forbidden. They never explained why it was forbidden before. But Cubans cannot really afford the luxury of a hotel stay, with wages being what they are; nor can they buy a car, a house, or travel. The problem with the reforms is that they are unrealistic for the vast majority of Cubans. They are a government investment in order to buy time.

There are two of those reforms that are particularly harmful and discriminatory for Cubans. One is the foreign investment law, which is explicitly for foreign investors and it does not allow Cubans to invest; and the other is a new Labor Code which does not acknowledge autonomy, the right to strike, and which spells out explicitly that Cuban workers cannot freely enter into contracts with potential companies investing in Cuba, which constitutes a restraint and a brake.

Víctor Ariel González: Yes, things are changing, but we ask ourselves if really those changes offer a brighter horizon and why people keep leaving, even more are going than before.

More Apathetic Youth?

Miriam Celaya: It is a backlash against ideological saturation, a submissiveness which conditioned almost every act of your life to obedience, to political subordination, whether picking a university career, a job or an appliance, anything. Everything was a slogan, everything a roadblock. This has subsided somewhat, but previously, it was impossible to take a step without hearing “Motherland or death, we will triumph” and go, go… The investigations they undertook to see if you belonged to the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution… the youth of today have not experienced that bombardment of “the enemy that harasses us.” I did not bring up my kids in that, on the contrary, I tried to detoxify them. So this generation, the children of the parents of disenchantment, grew up devoid of that and are at a more pragmatic level, even at a marketing one, whose greatest dream is to leave the country.

Economy

Eliécer Ávila: The law governing the leasing (in usufruct) of lands for farmers to work them was the basis of a plan for increasing food production and lowering prices — so that the average salary for a day’s work might be more than just three plantains.

I come from the banana plantations of El Yarey de Vázquez, in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas. The nation’s food supply is the most critical element in our collective anger. In January of last year, a pound of onions cost 8 Cuban pesos (CUPs). Later, between March and April, the price rose to 15. In May it increased to 25 CUPs and now, the onion has disappeared from low-income neighborhoods. It can only be found in certain districts such as Miramar, at five convertible pesos (CUCs) for 10 onions — more expensive than in Paris — while the monthly Cuban salary still averages under 20 CUCs per month).

I know very few farmers who even own a bicycle. However, any young person who joins up with the Ministry of State Security is in no time riding around on a Suzuki motorcycle.

Embargo

Yoani Sánchez: When talking about the end of the embargo, there is talk of a step that the White House must take, and for me I don’t care for the idea that what happens in my country depends on what happens in the White House. It hurts my Cuban pride, to say that the plans for my future, for my childrens’ future, and for the publication of 14ymedio depend on what Obama does. I am concentrating on what is going to happen in the Plaza of the Revolution and what civil society here is going to do. So for me I don’t want to bet on the end of the embargo as the solution. I want to see when we will have freedom of expression, freedom of association and when they will remove the straitjacket from economic freedom in this country.

Miriam Celaya: The reasons for the establishment of the embargo are still in effect, which were the nationalizing of American companies in Cuba without proper compensation. That this policy, in the limelight for such a long time, has subsequently become a tug of war is another thing. But those of us with gray hair can remember that in the 70’s and 80’s we were under the Soviet protectorate. Because we talk a lot about sovereignty, but Cuba has never been sovereign. Back then, Soviet subsidies were huge and we hardly talked about the embargo. It was rarely mentioned, maybe on an anniversary. Fidel Castro used to publicly mock the embargo in all forums.

Reinaldo Escobar: They promised me that we were going to have a bright future in spite of the blockade and that was due among other things to the fact that the nation had recovered their riches, confiscating them from the Americans. So what was going to bring that future was what delayed it.

Miriam Celaya: The issue remains a wildcard for the Cuban government, which, if it has such tantrums about it, it’s because it desperately needs for it to be lifted, especially with regards to the issue of foreign investments. I am anti-embargo in principle, but I can see that ending it unilaterally and unconditionally carries with it greater risks than the benefits it will supposedly provide.

Victor Ariel Gonzalez: The official justification says that as we are a blockaded country so we have the Gag Law. Because we are under siege and “in the besieged square, dissidence is treason.” There are those who believe that if the embargo is lifted that justification would end. But you have to say that this system has been very effective in finishing off the mechanisms for publicly analyzing the embargo, it has killed off independent institutions.

Then, how will people be able to channel discontent and non-conformity with the continued repression the day after the lifting of the embargo?

Reinaldo Escobar: They will have another argument for keeping repression when the embargo is lifted. Write it down, because “this will be the test” as they say around here: “Now that the Americans have the chance to enter Cuba with greater freedom, now that they can buy businesses and the embargo is over, now we do have to take care of the Revolution.” That will be the argument.

Repression

Yoani Sánchez: In this country people are very afraid. Including not knowing they’re afraid, because they have lived with it for so long they don’t know that this is called “fear.” Fear of betrayal, of being informed on, of not being able to leave the country, of being denied a promotion to a better job, not being able to board a plane, that a child won’t be allowed to go to the university, because “the university is for Revolutionaries.” The fears are so many and so vast that Cubans today have fear in their DNA.

Eliécer Ávila: We also need to understand how Cubans make their living. Ninety percent of Cubans do not work where their calling or vocation would take them, but rather where they can survive and make do. In this country, to be a Ph.D. in the social sciences is truly to be the idiot of the family. This is the same guy who can’t throw a quinceañera party for his daughter, who can’t take his family out to dinner at a restaurant. The successful person in this society is the manager of a State-owned cafeteria. This is because he controls the supplies of chicken, oil, rice, etc. and sells the surplus on the black market — which is really how he makes his living. The fundamental tactic to create social immobility in this country is [for the State] to make as many people as possible feel guilty about something.

Self-employment

Eliécer Ávila: People think that because there is now self-employment in this country, that there is a way to be more independent of the State — which is true up to a point. But the question is, how does a self-employed business person survive? I had to leave my ice cream business. After having received my degree in information technology, I was sent to the interior as a sort of punishment for having an incident with Ricardo Alarcón, who at that time was the President of the National Assembly. It was a turning point for me as I tried to become one of the first self-employed people in my town. I had a 1967 German ice cream maker. The process requires 11 products — including coagulant, which someone had to steal from the ice cream factory. Or rather, I should say, “recover,” because in this country we do not call that kind of thing “stealing.” The milk had to be taken from the daycare center, or from the hospital, so that it could be sold to me. The point is, there simply is no other way.

All of these private businesses that are springing up and flourishing are sustained by illegality.

Yoani Sánchez: … Or in the capital that comes clandestinely from abroad, especially from the exile. There are restaurants in Havana that could be in New York or Berlin, but those have received foreign money or are engaging in “money laundering” from the corruption and from the highest leadership itself.

Eliécer Ávila: Many of these businesses are created so that government officials can place their children, grandchildren and friends in them, people who are no longer interested in the creation of the “New Man” nor in achieving a communist society. Rather, they want to launder their money and insert themselves in society like any other person.

I do not know a single communist worker in Cuba who has been able to launch a business. Those committed Revolutionaries, who gave their all, are today the people who don’t have onions in their kitchens.

Yoani Sánchez: Self-employment has been presented as one of the major indicators of the “reforms” or the Raul regime changes. But on the issue of self-employment many things are not considered: they have no access to a wholesale market, they can’t import raw material nor directly export their products. Thus, the annoyance all Cubans have with the customs restrictions that went into effect in September. The Government justifies is saying that “every country has this kind of legislation,” but in those countries there are laws for commercial imports.

Miriam Celaya: They made a special regulation for foreign investors, so they can import, but not for Cubans.

Yoani Sanchez: Another issue that greatly affects the economy is the lack of Internet connection. We’re not just talking about freedom of expression and information or being able to read 14ymedio within Cuba, but that our economy is set back more and more by people not having access to the Internet.

Luzbely Escobar: It’s not only that: Self-employment is authorized only for selling or producing, but the professionals cannot join that sector with their abilities. You cannot be a self-employed lawyer, architect or journalist.

Miriam Celaya: A large administrative body was created to control the self-employed and it is full of corrupt individuals, who are always hovering over these workers to exploit them and relieve them of their gains. Some tell me that there are fixed fees for inspector bribes. Here, even corruption is institutionalized and rated.

Eliécer Ávila: In this country, for everyone who wants to lift his head towards progress, there are ten who want to behead him. There is much talk of “eliminating the middleman.” However, the great middleman is the State itself, which, for example, buys a pound of black beans from the farmer for 1.80 CUPs, then turns around and sells that pound for 12 CUPs at a minimum.

The New York Times Editorials

Eliécer Ávila: It would be a great favor to Cuba if, with the same influence that these editorials are intended to have on the global debate about one topic [the embargo], they also tried to shed light on other topics that are taboo here, but that go right to the heart of what we need as a nation.

Miriam Celaya: I have an idea. Rather than making gestures about the release of Alan Gross, rather than making gestures about making the embargo more flexible, I think that the strongest and clearest gesture that the Cuban government could make would be to liberate public opinion, liberate the circulation of ideas. Citizens should manifest themselves; this is something that is not happening here.

Reinaldo Escobar: Without freedom there is no citizen participation.

Miriam Celaya: What is going on with these editorials? They are still giving prominence to a distorted, biased view, composed of half-truths and lies about what the Cuban reality is. They are still giving prominence to what a government says, and Cuba is not a government. Cuba’s government today is a small group of old men, and when I say “old” it’s because of their way of thinking, of individuals who have remained anchored in discourse rooted in a cold war and belligerence. The Cuban people are not represented in that government.

Yoani Sánchez: I read editorials when they came out but last night went back to read them more calmly. The first editorial is perhaps the most fortunate, because it achieves a balance between one side and the other, but there are some that I think are really pitiful. Such as the one about the “brain drain” because these medical professionals are living a drama in this country that is not recognized in these texts.

First, I am against the concept of the theft of, or brain drain, because it accepts that your brain belongs to someone, to the nation, to the educational structure, or to whoever taught you. I think everyone should decide what to do with his or her own brain.

That editorial gives no space to the economic tragedy experienced by these professionals in Cuba. I know surgeons who may be among the best in their specialty in Latin America and they can’t cross their legs because people would be able to see the holes in their shoes, or they have to operate without breakfast because they can’t afford breakfast.

Miriam Celaya: There is something in that editorial that cuts and offends me, and it’s that slight of condescension, for instance, in this quote: “Havana could pay its workers more generously abroad if the medical brigades continue to represent an important source of income”… But, gentlemen! To do so is to accept the slavery of those doctors. It is to legitimize the implied right of a government to use its medical personnel as slaves for hire. How can that be?

Yoani Sánchez: With regards to these medical missions, I must say that the human character, no one can question it, when it comes to saving lives. But there has to be a political side and that is that these people are used as a kind of medical diplomacy, to gain followers, and because of this many countries vote at the United Nations on behalf of the Government of Cuba, which has practically hijacked many countries because they have Cuban doctors in their territories. It becomes an element of political patronage.

Another aspect is the economic, which is pushing doctors to leave because they can see the appeal of having a better salary, they can import appliances, pots for their home, a computer. Also, every month their bank account gets a deposit of convertible pesos, which they only get to keep if they return to Cuba and don’t desert from the mission. From a labor and ethical point of view it is very questionable.

Another issue is the negative impact it has on the Cuban healthcare system.

Luzbely Escobar: You go to a clinic and it is closed, or of the three doctors on duty, only one is there because the other two are in Venezuela, and then there is total chaos.

Miriam Celaya: In these editorials, I have read “Cuba” instead of “the Cuban government,” and I have read that the members of “the dissidence” were considered “charlatans.” These definitions, in addition to being disrespectful, put everyone in the same bag. Here, as everywhere else, society is complex, and, while it’s true that there are charlatans among the opposition – and among the government too — there are a lot of honest people who are working very faithfully for a better Cuba, with the greatest sacrifice and risk.

When they demonize it, then it seems that they are speaking the government’s language, as if they had written this in a room of the Party Central Committee and not in a newsroom of a country in the free world. Such epithets, coming from prestigious media, end up creating opinion. That’s a big responsibility.

Dissidence

Yoani Sánchez: In this country the nation has been confused with the government, the homeland with a party, and the country with a man. Then this man, this party and this government have taken the right to decide on behalf of everyone, whether it’s about growing a tomato or a cachucha pepper, or what ideological line the whole nation is going to follow.

As a consequence, those of us who have ideas different from those of that party, that government, and that man in power, are declared to be “stateless” or “anti-Cuban” and charged with wanting to align ourselves with a foreign power. It is as if now, that the Democratic party is governing the United States, all Republicans were declared to be anti-American. This is, like all the countries in the world, plural. If you walk down the street you are going to meet every kind of person: anarchist, liberal, social democrat, Christian democrat and even annexationist. Why can’t this so plural discourse be expressed in a legal way? And why do people like us have to be excluded from speaking and offering opinions?

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison, MLK, MJ Porter and Norma Whiting