A Dangerous Moment / Reinaldo Escobar

With no desire to be paranoid, I want to warn that the peaceful opposition and civil society in Cuba could be on the eve of a very dangerous moment. I remember the 2003 Black Spring shocked public opinion in the midst of the American military intervention in Iraq. continue reading

Today the Cuban government seems disposed to “loosen” the repression a little to put itself in sync with the European negotiators, but all this could come to a crashing halt if the conflict in Ukraine provokes a confrontation between the NATO member countries and Russia.

When Cuba’s loyalty to Russia becomes an unacceptable insult to Europe, we will remember the era of the European Common Position on Cuba as a honeymoon. Then there will be no one who promises or pretends that human rights are respected on the Island.

The legacy that the “historic generation” wants to leave to its successors will be a very difficult burden to carry, but an even harder one to drop. May the Lord have mercy upon us.

3 May 2014

Applying Rouge in Puerto Padre / Juan Juan Almeida

According to the newspaper “Ahora,” Holguin authorities gathered at the Puerto Padre neighborhood to assess the urban revival project called “Identity and Development,” which is supposed to beautify the town for next July 26. As usual, applying rouge. continue reading

Local officials seem to be very excited; the people, not so much. The latter already know how these things work, and they say that the beneficiary, in quotes, is the same as always—the central Avenida Libertad—while the nearby streets will continue, forever and ever, without lighting, dirty, and full of potholes. The people call it “the Cuba wardrobe project: the ugly for Cubans, the pretty for foreigners.”

Translated by Tomás A.

2 May 2014

Congratulations: Free Trade of Agricultural Products / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By: Jeovany Jiménez Vega

The decision of Cuban authorities to ease restrictions on the commercializing of agricultural production (to be implemented in practice as outlined, it would be that and not a greater increase in “flexibility”) must be received with relief in both corners of the ring, for both producers and consumers; the first for obvious reasons, the latter because they are stake-holders from the first round at their local farmers markets. continue reading

The decision is logical; that is how every gesture aimed in the right direction should be received. Too many facts condemn the current scheme, directly responsible for thousands of failed crops; guilty of the discouragement of rural people (i.e. farmers) who no longer support the failure of agricultural systems that rot the harvest, and which are largely to blame for the exorbitant prices that leave me the consumer at the end of the chain without feathers and clucking. Over-centralization has led to nothing for decades and the persecution of producers and brokers has lead to only frustration and shortages and high food prices.

Although I will reserve my enthusiasm for when changes become concrete–forgive me those who forget that agricultural producers still live with the legal threat of “illicit enrichment” or “hoarding” hanging over their necks–I do believe that this proposal, now in the experimental phase limited to Artemis, Mayabeque and the capital Havana, if extended to the rest of the country depending on successful outcomes, could lead to an immediate stimulus to the production and trade of agricultural products with benefit to all in the very short term.

On this point I disagree with published studies that predict longer term benefits. Unlike other serious problems in this country such as housing for example, agriculture only requires an appropriate political will to remove barriers and in a few years we will see the rewards, as an example look to the politics of Xiao Pin in China.

Clearly when it is time to regulate and limit prices, the State should take a more responsible attitude to the politics of pricing imposed upon my people. If they require agricultural producers to restrain prices, the State should also restrain their prices that have so far been brutal. It is the State that is responsible for the perpetual extortion suffered by Cubans every time we walk into a store.

Only when actual prices fall to more justified and realistic levels, will the governing powers of this country have the moral justification to demand the same from private producers. Now it remains to be seen what directions are given to the pack of inspectors, from which we have become accustomed to expect nothing good when zero hour arrives.

Although to err is human, to continue the same errors is the failing of fools. This society cannot permit itself the luxury of continuing to ignore the lessons that life has given. It is inconceivable that where nature has provided ideal conditions for agriculture to flourish by the fertility of the soil and a favorable climate, our hands are tied due to man’s own stubbornness.

In order to enjoy success we should free ourselves of burdens, all bureaucratic obstacles preventable and absurd. Congratulations, finally for all that encourages and promotes new ways. We have hope.

Translated by: Yoly from Oly

12 November 2013

 

Wages in Mariel: One Good Thing and a Lot of Bad Things / Dimas Castellanos

From cubacontemporanea.com

In accordance  with the new Foreign Investment Law*, workers will be engaged by an State-run employing organisation. When you factor in the fact that the only union permitted is the one representing the interests of the State, we are looking at a capitalist-style relationship in which the workers have no-one to defend them. Although we already knew about this, the information provided by the Director General of the regulating office of the Mariel Special Development Zone (ZEDM) is surprising just the same. Let’s see: continue reading

First of all, the ZEDM workers will receive 80% of the pay rate agreed between the employment agency and the investors. Next, payment will be in Cuban pesos (CUP), so that, in order to pay for nearly all their daily necessities they will have to convert them into convertible pesos (CUC). Thirdly, they won’t exchange what the workers are paid into CUC at the official conversion rate of 24 CUPs to 1 CUP, but at a special rate giving the workers only 10 CUPs for every 1 CUC.

The first of these is relatively good, because up to now Cuban workers contracted to entrepreneurs or countries never received 4/5 of the amount paid amount for their work. The second one is bad.

Let’s suppose that a foreign entrepreneur pays $1,000 a month for the services of an electrician; the employment agency converts the dollars into 1,000 CUC, of which the electrician gets 800. With this money, which he has earned, he could lead a decent life without having to “fight” or “invent” anything to survive.

The third part is the worst, because with the special rate of 1 CUC for 10 Cuban pesos, the 800 dollars is no longer 800 CUC, it gets converted into 333 CUC. And in the end the state grabs two-thirds of the $1,000 paid. In this way the worker is hurt by the foreigner but more than anything by the State.

On the other hand, the worker will retain the rights contained in Art 27 of the  Foreign Investment Law, which indicates that the investor has to comply with the employment and social security legislation applying in the Republic of Cuba.

But the fact is that the employment legislation, contained in the Employment Rules Law, passed 29 December 2013, in spite of the fact that it constitutes a step backwards from the Law of Labour Information Commissions of 1924 (enacted in order to channel the employer-employee conflicts related to loading sugar), nevertheless, having disappeared, it is impossible to know exactly what it says.

The disparity between the level of pay and the cost of living in Cuba is primarily due to the decades of totalitarian socialism, especially from 1989 on, when price inflation began to outstrip salary increases, leading up to the present crisis, one of whose manifestations–with the most negative impact–is inadequate pay.

That problem is so worrying for Cuban workers that it was referred to in an interview with Carmen Rosa–who is right now leading the preparation for the 20th Congress of the CTC (Workers Central Union of Cuba)–published in the newspaper Granma dated 27th April: in all the analyses carried out this year the recurrent theme of the assembly members’ proposals relates to salaries. That shows that the organisers’ objectives go in a different direction to the worries of the unemployed.

The 1940 Constitution affirms the following in Art. 61: The Law will set up a process for periodic review of salaries or minimum wages, by way of joint committees for each employment sector; in accordance with the living standards and particular circumstances appurtaining in each region and each industrial, agricultural or commercial activity.

Today, not only do the workers not participate in this process, but they also do not know how the calculation works out. By definition, the minimum wage is the basic amount you need to subsist. Using this definition, most of the salaries in Cuba, being insufficient to cover basic necessities, are in fact lower than what the minimum wage should be.

Because of that anomaly, people have to look for other employment outside of the wage relationship–almost always on the edge of what is legal–and Cubans are forced to keep shifting from one place to another, from one activity to another and one profession to another, without regard to vocation or training.

The official press has stressed that thousands of jobs are going to be created with much higher salaries than the current average of 20 CUC a month. Nevertheless, the way in which they are paid, which in any other part of the world would lead to union protests, in the case of Cuban workers, having no space or institutions to defend them, they can only express their discontent in private, at the same time as they go to the employment agencies to try to improve their position, because that mechanism, in spite of the abuse and mockery, permits them to receive a higher wage than the national average.

It has to be added that one of the main worries of foreign investors is whether they can count on efficient workers, and therefore it suits them to pay them a salary capable of motivating them and awakening their interest in the results of their activities.

Having said that, the current analysis shows us that the way in which workers will be paid now can act as an obstacle to the objective of attracting foreign investment. Therefore, they need to change the proportion from one good thing and many bad things to the opposite of one bad thing and many good things, because asking for everything to be good would be like asking for the moon.

*Translator’s notes: This refers to foreign investment into Cuba, not the reverse.

Translated by GH

Originally published in Diario de Cuba.

22 April 2014

Cuba Continues To Occupy An Embarrassing Position In The Free Press Rankings

Freedom House, like every year, has published the report on the freedom of the press situation in the 197 countries that it monitors.

In the report released the first of May, covering 2013, Cuba continues to occupy one of the worst positions on the list. continue reading

On the global list, it occupies position 190 out of 197, shared with Equatorial Guinea and Iran.  On the list of countries of the Americas, it occupies 35 out of 35.

Nothing to add. . . everything said.

The Editor

Translated by mlk.

2 May 2014

Dancing and Having a Good Time at the 8th Congress with the National Symphony of Birania*!

Another UNEAC* Congress has come and gone and our reality remains immovable. The existential problems do not mutate; the intellectuals continue speaking sotto voce, watching their backs to make sure they are not overheard and then betrayed by their own colleagues, neighbors, coworkers, and even family.

Another useless congress, and the officials are still the same: those who were once persecuted, expelled, marginalized, and abused, today (when politicians hide their prejudices) serve with the joy of the slave who once a week is allowed to bathe in the river and therefore believes he is free. continue reading

If in the past a three-day Congress was not sufficient to prevent social decline—so that currently the state is forced to consider the excessive growth of juvenile delinquency, lack of ethics in civic life, and poor general education—now with two days of planning, we can only hope that incivility increases, and that like a virus it accommodates itself into society and causes greater havoc.

We have become a people who do not express their feelings, their dreams, their true opinion of the government, who exert no criticism, but—as if it were a national sport—practice hypocrisy, envy, hatred, and opportunism.

Act of repudiation in front of the headquarters of the Ladies in White

Never before 1959, the times when the Communists taught us that we were poor and submissive, have we had a young generation so warped and antisocial.

While going through the motions of holding another Congress, social problems multiply, the level of bad taste rises, and mediocrity and opportunism reach new heights.

Art that is genuine and profound seeks other horizons. I don’t remember where I heard that “the Ninth time’s the charm.”

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison, April 2014

To sign the petition to have Amnesty International declare Cuban dissident Ángel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience, follow this link.

*Translator’s Notes:
Birania –  from Birán, the name of Castro’s father’s ranch, and his birthplace, used metaphorically to describe Cuba as his personal plantation.
UNEAC – The National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists

Translated by Tomás A.

21 April 2014

Enjoying May 1st in the Dominican Republic / Juan Juan Almeida

While thousands of Cubans are “voluntarily” required to participate in the pantomime of May 1st, Mariela Castro, the sexologist and director of the Cuban Sex Education center, presented today in the Dominican Republic the book she authored, What Happens To Us in Puberty? continue reading

The truth is that today May 1st is the day of acting cool.  Who does not know that in puberty what we get is what I need: hair.

Mariela says, although I don’t believer her at all, that that work has had a very good reception in our country.  I asked until I was tired, no one was familiar with the book in question.  I think that she goes on as usual, strolling and doing the work of the first lady.  And so that we don’t fall short, the Dominican Minister of Culture, deputy Minou Tavarez Mirabal, and the respective ambassadors from Cuba and Venezuela attended the book’s presentation.  A very crowded launch.

Translated by mlk.
1 May 2014

The Comandante Is Left Without Friends / Ivan Garcia

García-Márquez-y-Fidel-Castro-620x330When it comes to Gabriel García José de la Concordia Márquez (Aracataca, Colombia, 1927) myth and reality merge. The first time he heard the name Fidel Castro, Gabo believed, was in the Latin Quarter in Paris, in 1955. continue reading

It’s said that the Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén spoke to him of an inexperienced lawyer recently released from jail. He was called Fidel and had assaulted a barracks in Santiago de Cuba. What isn’t known is in what terms Guillén referred to Castro.

The author of Negro Bembón, convinced Communist and member of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP), probably described the seditious man from Birán as a petty bourgeois, a screw-up, or a baby gangster. At least that was the PSP profile that  fit the then unknown Castro.

One morning in April 1998, the fiftieth anniversary of the Bogotazo, the bearded one, mythomaniac, published what was perhaps his best journalistic chronicle, intending to demonstrate that a young reporter who stubbornly insisted on kicking an Underwood typewriter, after the death of Eliécer Gaitán in Bogota, was Gabriel García Márquez.

Castro, according to his chronicle, went to help him and solved the problem in the easiest way: slamming it against the wall. In the many late nights that Fidel Castro and García Márquez chatted with a thermos of coffee in Protocol Residence No. 6, in Laguito to the west of Havana, the Comandante always tried to sneak in his outlandish theories.

The Colombian, who only made revolution with a pen, out of courtesy, didn’t contradict the guerrilla. Of far off Bogota, he only remembered the literary circles, the editing of The Spectator newspaper, the whores and the three nights and four days of partying drinking like a fish with his friends, between vallenatos and boleros.

Gabo said that he first saw Castro at the airport in Camaguey, a province 500 kilometers east of Havana. Be that as it may, the reality is that the two men were friends.

In 1959, Gabriel made a living through journalism, and from Caracas made landfall on the island, looking for fresh news about the Revolution. García Márquez had not yet given birth to Macondo, nor Aureliano Buendia. Some minor stories and a novella, Hojarasca, were his entire literary opus.

With his friend Plineo Apuleyo he was a correspondent for Prensa Latina. Later, already a giant, after his Nobel in 1982, when extolling magical realism in Latin America and showing that Macondo wasn’t an invention, but a continent that was born in real time after Rio Bravo and extending to Patagonia, more than friends, Fidel and García Márquez were accomplices.

A couple of times Castro used his favors to send messages to Bill Clinton. To Gabo’s residence on the outskirts of the capital, Castro would arrive without warning. It’s said that the author of Chronicle of a Death Foretold gave his writings to the Comandante to edit.

In exchange, the Cuban strongman offered the choice bits that a first-rate journalist like Gabo knew how to use. Operation Carlota, about the Cuban troops in Angola, or Shipwreck on Dry Land, about the child rafter Elián González, were the fruits of these confidences.

Criticized by his adversaries for his friendship with an autocrat, against all the storms, Garcia Marquez maintained his affection for Fidel Castro. But he wasn’t too keen on the new caudillos and revolutions of the 21st century. He kept his distance from Chavez, Evo Morales and friends.

Gabo did not like clones. He preferred the original. And Castro, like it or not, was. His death hit the island. Although there might be the impression that people carried on. Trying to buy potatoes, milk powder or engage in polemics about the end of the baseball season. But no. His departure hurt.

Ordinary Cubans had the privilege of reading his books at affordable prices. The man from Aracataca always donated his copyright to Cuba.

When Love in the Time of Cholera was sold in Havana the lines to purchase it were a block and a half long. In not a few of the slums, three glasses of brown sugar, two packs of cigarettes and a can of condensed milk (all luxuries in a Cuban jail), rented in prison News of a Kidnapping or No One Writes to the Colonel.

Cubans saw him as theirs. He was a friend of Pablo Milanes and Silvio Rodriguez. He had a retrospective collection of Cuban music. In December 1986, in San Antonio de los Baños, he inaugurated the International School of Film and Television, a subsidiary of the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema, his legacy in Cuba.

Fidel Castro loses another friend. In one year, God has taken Nelson Mandela and Hugo Chavez. And now Gabo goes. A friend in every meaning of the word.

The only known argument was a denial that Castro demanded when García Márquez said that one afternoon under a blazing sun, Fidel arrived at his house and after devouring a huge sea bass, without stopping for breath, ate 18 scoops of ice cream.

Fidel Castro didn’t like it. And he asked that the page be amended. Gabo didn’t do it. Like he didn’t ask him to correct the historical mistake, wanting to introduce it in the scene of the Bogotazo riots.

The Comandante’s life was long ago. Partners and adversaries of the Cold War are already in the other world. And he ’s still here, in the capital of the Caribbean Macondo.

No one better than Gabo profiled a continent of loafers, the lit-up, revelers and drunkards. Around here, whoever doesn’t know how to dance, sings without crying on hearing a bolero or a ranchera, drinks a liter of spirits without getting drunk , tells stories of whores and respects only the wife of his friends, obviously, is not a native of Hispanic America.

A place where democracy is often a faded word that everyone manipulates at will. The State, a hunting trophy. And watching the clock or half hour appointments are things of gringos and Europeans.

García Márquez asked old Europe for patience. In a speech on receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature, he recounted that democracy and its institutions were established in Europe after 300 years of barbarism. Switzerland, he said, is what it is today after centuries of mercenary soldiers and crushing poverty.

The world lost one of its best Spanish-speaking writers. A reference for journalists and for his readers. Fidel Castro lost more. Perhaps his last friend.

Iván García

Photo: Havana, 3 March 2000. Fidel Castro and Gabriel García Márquez talk animatedly during the dinner for the Havana International Festival. Taken from the Dominican paper Hoy.

20 April 2014

God Help Venezuela! / Angel Santiesteban

The first feature of all dictatorships is to see those who think differently as the enemy. This is how Nicolas Maduro sees former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who ventured to say that Venezuela should assemble a political coalition to govern. Maduro immediately ridiculed Lula’s comment.

The Venezuelans are living in the last gasps of democracy; with every minute that goes by their freedom is being choked off and, as in the sixties in Cuba, they will be cheated with dreams of goldfish, which in the end, as in the archipelago—half a century after so many sacrifices—never came true and never will. continue reading

It hurts to see how history repeats itself, which is why the Cuban people still suffer today. Our spirit goes out in support to dear Venezuela, so that they can get rid of that straitjacket called “the revolution” with its “21st century socialism.” God save and free them, and do the same for us.

We don’t hide the fact that we pray earnestly for success in their fight for freedom, because to the extent that they succeed in restoring democracy, they will deprive the Castro dictatorship of the oxygen by which it still remains in power, and therefore we can expect our reality to be transformed sooner than the island’s tyrants have planned.

If God helps Venezuela to restore the rule of law, He will be indirectly promoting freedom in Cuba.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison, April 2014

Follow the link to sign the petition for Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.

Translated by Tomás A.

28 April 2014

Angel Santiesteban Among the 100 Information Heroes of Reporters without Borders

Angel Santiesteban’s struggle is not in vain.

The more the dictatorship tried to silence him by shutting him away in its miserable concentration camps, his strengths only continued to grow, so that now he is not alone in being recognized for his excellent literary work. The dictatorship established him in world history as one of the umpteen heroes who, like he, set themselves as a model, each minute, each second, in order to fulfill their sacred duty to defend liberty and the rights of all.

continue reading

When an organization of the caliber of Reporters Without Borders, which doesn’t back down one second in its work of protecting those people–famous or unknown, be they journalists by profession or not–who day by day contribute to illuminating the world and giving an account of reality in all its forms, includes Angel on the list of the “100 Heroes” who put their ideals “at the service of the common good” and set the example of courage, then the ruinous intents of all those who tried to convert him into a delinquent “home invader and woman beater” dissolve into nothing, from the dictator Raul Castro through his political police and his “justice,” up to those tiresome colleagues and former “friends,” members of UNEAC (Cuban Writers and Artists Union), and the rest of the fauna out there who swarm to put Angel’s reputation on trial.

What an immense honor to be part of that list of “100 Information Heroes”! How different it is from that list of “the five assassins“!

The writer already had reached international dimension with his award-winning work; now, thanks to the dictatorship, he has attained also the status of defender of liberty, democracy and human rights.

From my humble place as the editor of the blog, happy to return to Angel the voice that they try to stop by imprisoning him, enabling all his posts and denunciations to be published and spread around the entire world, I can do no less than thank immensely Reporters Without Borders for their invaluable support and solidarity that shows every day they support Angel; and Dictator Raul Castro, since without his intervention, none of this would have been possible.

Proudly,

The Editor

Reporters without Borders publishes the list of the “100 Information Heroes.”

Published Tuesday, April 29, 2014.

On the occasion of the World Day of Freedom of the Press 2014, Reporters Without Borders publishes for the first time a list of “100 information heroes.”

Gifted with exemplary courage, these “100 heroes” contribute by their struggle or their work to promoting the freedom, as stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of “investigating and receiving information and opinions, and disseminating them without limitation of borders, by any medium of expression.” The “100 heroes” put their ideal “at the service of the common good,” and thereby have set an example of courage.

“World Press Freedom Day–whose creation was promoted by Reporters Without Borders–should be the occasion to recognize the courage of these journalists and bloggers who, by their vocation, every day risk their security and on occasion their lives,” said Christophe Deloire, Secretary General of Reporters without Borders. “The ’Heroes of Information’ are a source of inspiration for all the women and men who aspire to freedom. Without their determination and that of all similar people, it simply would not be possible to expand the area of freedom,” he added.

The list of Reporters Without Borders–which naturally is not exhaustive–is a recognition and homage not only to the 100 persons cited, famous or unknown, but also to all the journalists–be they journalists by profession or not–who day by day contribute to illuminating the world and giving an account of reality in all its forms. This initiative has the object of demonstrating that the struggle to defend and promote freedom of information gives intense support to the victims of aggression, but also serves to erect figures who can serve as models.

The list of the “100 Information Heroes” includes women and men of all ages (from 25 to 75 years old) and all nationalities (65 countries). The youngest, Oudom Tat, is Cambodian; the oldest, Muhammed Ziauddin, Pakistani. Iran, Russia, China, Eritrea, Azerbaijan, Mexico and Vietnam are represented by at least three heroes for each one. On the list of the 100 appear such different personalities as Anabel Hernandez, author of a best-seller about the collusion of Mexican politicians with organized crime; Ismail Saymaz, a Turkish journalist who has faced some 20 lawsuits for his reporting; Hassan Ruvakuki, imprisoned for 15 months in Burundi for having reported on rebel movements, and Gerard Ryle, director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, who contributed to the development of global journalistic investigations.

Some journalists perform their work in democratic countries. This is the case with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Americans who reveal the massive surveillance of the American and British intelligence services. Others exercise their profession in more authoritarian regimes, like the Iranian journalist Jila Bani Yaghoob. Not all are journalists by profession. The Vietnamese citizen journalist Le Ngoc Thanh also is a Catholic priest. Many of them, like the Italian journalist who specializes in organized crime, Lirio Abbate, has made corruption and criminality in his country his battle horse. That’s the case of Peter John Jaban, a radio operator in Malaysia, who during a long period lived exiled in London; of Serhiy Lechtchenko, a Ukranian investigative journalist, and of the Bulgarian, Assen Yordanov, who often receive death threats. Among those portraits, Reporters without Borders also included activists like Maria Pia Matta, who from the World Association of Community Radio defended for close to ten years the freedom of expression for community radio in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Courage is the common denominator of all these personalities. In Uzbekistan, the authorities didn’t have any doubts about torturing Muhammad Bekjanov to obtain his confessions; the journalist is detained for 15 years. He isn’t receiving medical attention despite suffering from tuberculosis. Eritrea found itself in last place on the World Classification of Press Freedom 2014 of Reporters without Borders; it’s the seventh time it occupies this position. In this country, Dawit Isaac has been in the dungeons of the dictator Isaias Afeworki for 13 years. Mazen Darwish, founder of the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, who received the Prize for Press Freedom 2012 (“Journalist of the Year”) from Reporters without Borders, finds himself imprisoned for more than two years by the regime of Bachar el-Assad.

Translated by Regina Anavy
29 April 2014

Raul Castro, Think Again / Angel Santiesteban


The months keep passing, and Angel Santiesteban — the only “common prisoner” to whom the political police have offered “freedom” in exchange for his renouncing his political position, witnessed in a video — continues punished, victim of constant inspections and deprived of passes to which by law he has a right; nor do they permit him to go to the dentist or the barber. continue reading

Now, this “common prisoner” was chosen among the 100 Freedom of Information Heroes by Reporters Without Borders.  Those who took him to jail should be writhing in shame; also those who have been and are complicit with their silence.

Why does the Regime fear him so? Because if it considers him a common prisoner, nothing they undertook against him make sense, besides being illegal.

Angel remains incarcerated, and he considers it an honor; the Review of his trial remains ignored and his attorney disqualified. From whatever point you try to understand this unjust sentence, the one who loses is the dictator Castro, because being a “common prisoner” he treats him — for all purposes — as a political prisoner, by which we can imagine that he wants to aggravate his situation “converting him” now into an enemy of the Revolution and traitor to his country.

If they make this official, they will only admit that Angel is a political prisoner, and there will be in evidence — once again — the true nature of the Castro dictatorship. It is also true that the democratic governments that make deals with Cuba at the cost of the sacrifice, suffering and blood of Cubans, don’t care at all. These governments and the Castro dictatorship will pass, because everything passes.  But they will remain forever in history.

Raul Castro, think again; you can still correct this injustice–and all those that are committed against the more than one hundred political prisoners. Do not do it for Cuba or for your victims; you as well as your brother demonstrated amply that no one and nothing matters to you, that only power interests you; do it for your children and grandchildren, those who throughout life are condemned to carry your last name and your stigma. Because the moment will come in which everything will fall into place, although you and your brother perhaps will no longer be–regrettably–and will be saved from facing Justice.

It is not only incomprehensible that the dictatorship is the most tolerated of the world, but no one ever will be able to understand why a “Revolution” that never spared bullets and violence so fears the words and opinions of an intellectual, of peaceful opponents and of decent women who bear as a “weapon” a gladiolus.

The only certainty is that history will not absolve them.

The Editor

Follow the link to sign the petition for Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.

Translated by mlk.

1 May 2014

Raul Castro: Man Alone in the Crowd / Yoani Sanchez

Raul Castro during a public event

The shouts, the posters, the slogans in a million voice chorus, awaken dormant, extinct sensations. Seeing the sea of people passing in front of the platform, his heart skips a beat in his chest. The red face, dilated pupils, goosebumps and tension in the jaw. They are the first symptoms of the excitement crowds provoke in caudillos. A ritual they need to dip their hand into from time to time, to avoid the solitude of power.

Autocrats invent marches, huge processions, lavish parades–“the biggest in the world”–to rejoice in their own authority. They know that they, and only they, can force a million people out of their beds in the early hours, load them onto buses, write down the names of every attendee, and set them to marching through a great plaza. To make it clear who’s the boss, to send a message by way of a crowd chanting their name, worshiping them and giving thanks. A “mass” that would never dare to stand down, people whom they don’t rub shoulders with, whom they fear and who–deep inside–they despise.

Today, in the Plaza of the Revolution, an elderly man in sunglasses will preside over the May Day event. Days ahead of time every rooftop near the place has been checked out and guards have been posted at the highest points in the city, calculating how a shot could be fired at the platform. His own grandson will remain close to protect him and a fleet of cars will be waiting “in case something happens” and he has to escape. He doesn’t trust the very crowd that he himself has summoned.

The autocrat is afraid of his own people. Fear and suspicion. The feeling is mutual. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of heads he looks down upon are there… because they fear him, not because they love him.

30 April 2014

The May Parrot / Juan Juan Almeida

On April 28 the newspaper Granma published the plan for ensuring transportation to the International Workers’ Day parade in order to facilitate Cubans from various municipalities getting to the Plaza of the Revolution. All very spontaneous.

“A colorful parade, flavored with socialism, in which, formed into blocks, more than a million people participated, comprising everyone from Havanans to Palestinians. Hundreds of thousands of workers, employees, and students paraded with the colors of the Cuban flag, shouting slogans supporting the revolution, socialism, and the leadership of Fidel and Raul Castro.” OK, I’m not really a prophet, but those are the words, more or less, that are published every May 1st. A bunch of crap.

Translated by Tomás A.

29 April 2014

Reporters Without Borders 100 Information Heroes: Angel and Yoani

Screen Shot 2014-04-29 at 2.46.47 PMANGEL SANTIESTEBAN-PRATS
Cuba / The Americas
His blog is called “Los hijos que nadie quiso” (The children no one wanted). The writer and netizen Ángel Santiesteban-Prats has been held for more than a year for openly criticizing the “dictator” Raúl Castro, as he calls him. Convicted on trumped-up charges of “home violation” and “injuries” in a summary trial on 8 December 2012, he was sentenced to five years in prison. In April 2013, he was transferred to a prison in the Havana suburb of San Miguel del Padrón where he has been subjected to mistreatment and acts of torture. His novel “El verano en que Dios dormía” (The summer God slept) received the 2013 Franz Kafka Drawer Novel* Prize, awarded in Prague to unpublished Cuban novels.

YOANI SANCHEZ
Cuba / The Americas
A philologist by training, Yoani Sánchez is a celebrity in her own country and internationally. Time Magazine ranked her as one of the world’s 100 most influential people in 2008. Her Generación Y blog, launched in 2007 with the aim of “helping to build a plural Cuba,” covers the economic and social problems that ordinary Cubans constantly face. Like other bloggers, she has been subjected to varied insults (such as “contemptible parasites”), intermittent blocking and judicial harassment. In early 2014, she announced her intention to create an independent collective media platform in Cuba. “The worst could happen on the first day, but perhaps we will sow the first seeds of a free press in Cuba,” she said.

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*Translator’s note: Many have asked about the meaning of “Drawer Novel”; it refers to novels sitting in a drawer because censorship prevents their being published.

29 April 2014