By Their Own Right / Fernando Damaso

School courtyard

In its campaign to restore lost ethical, civil and moral values, the government is emphasizing the important role to be played by educators and the family. While it is good that responsibility for this is being returned to the latter, it is something that should never have been taken away in the first place. In its desire to monopolize everything, including conscience, the state took upon itself the ridiculous task of creating a “New Man,” a being that would respond to its ideology and policies. It was task in which, like so many others, it has failed.

When discussing teachers, it is difficult to know where to start. First of all, what teachers are we talking about? Most of our educators were trained in the same system, one which could hardly preserve values since it relied on those who, with rare exceptions, did not themselves possess them.

These are people who practice double standards, who participate in forced promotions, who sell test results and grades, who use the classroom to teach official dogma.

This contributes to the formation of human beings who are easily manipulated, people without appropriate standards, who feel obligated to think and behave in accordance with the majority in order to avoid getting themselves or their parents into trouble.

This is made worse by the politicization of the classroom and by schools which allow students to be used in despicable acts, known as “repudiation rallies,” against citizens who do not agree with government policy, evidence of which is all too common.

Education is not one of the sectors that enjoy financial advantages, which causes many teachers to leave to find work in tourism, joint ventures and self-employment, all of which offer better working conditions and lifestyles.

Additionally, few students choose careers in teaching. When they do, it is often because they have no other options. The fact that a policeman receives a much higher monthly salary than an educator speaks volumes about the absurdities that exist in our society.

While it is true that it is essential to restore these lost values, in a situation with widespread poverty and difficulty — one without a clear pathway out — it becomes a very difficult and time consuming task.

The family and the school should once again occupy the positions they had always held in their own right. But, in order to fulfill their responsibilities, they must overcome the disastrous state in which we now find ourselves.

4 March 2014

What Is Happening in Venezuela Worries Cuba / Ivan Garcia

"If the media stops talking, let the streets talk"

“If the media stops talking, let the streets talk”

In one way or another, Cuba is taking note of the street protests occurring these days in Venezuela. The most nervous are the olive-green autocrats.

According to a low-level party official, since the death of Hugo Chávez on 5 March 2013, the regime has had various contingency plans filed away in case the situation in Venezuela did not turn out to be favourable to the interests of the island.

The official states, “If Maduro falls, we have a plan B. In the different groups, at least at the level where I work, it was taken for granted that Maduro would be a short-lived president. Although the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) controls most of the strings of power, there are divergent opinions among Chávez’s own followers about Venezuela’s relationship with Cuba. This type of socialism, with a democratic streak, is not to be trusted. Maduro can lose power both due to a plebiscite repeal or in six years. In our group meetings, it has been said that Maduro’s mandate only serves to gain time”.

The onslaught of opposition marches, barricades, and protests is shaking up different regions of Venezuela, but this force is also reaching the branches of power in Havana.

The Castro brothers still have much at stake in Venezuela. But just in case, Raúl Castro has opened a new window with Brazil in constructing the new port of Mariel and a Special Development Zone with a different jurisdiction.

And they almost begged the United States, enemy number one, to sit down to negotiate. Meanwhile, the Castro regime diplomacy crosses over to Florida, trying to seduce wealthy businessmen of Cuban origin. But the sensible businessmen continue to think about it.

When they look at the recent past, they only see shady management and a mysterious associate who changes the rules of the game at the first opportunity. Therefore, the Caribbean autocracy is going to fight mercilessly and to the teeth in order to keep its strategic position in Venezuela.

The key, as everyone knows, is petroleum. 100 thousand barrels a day acquired at sale prices keep Cubans from suffering 12-hour daily blackouts. When the skydiver from Barinas moved into Miraflores in 1998, Fidel Castro understood that after 9 years travelling through the desert, with finances in the red and exotic sicknesses devastating the country, the hour of his resurrection had arrived.

Cuba entered in a ”light” Special Period. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the island had experienced a deep-rooted economic crisis, but the faithful Bolivarian shared his chest of treasure. And this was an important part of the anti-imperialist project that so deluded the Commander.

The death of Chávez was the beginning of the end of the honeymoon. Maduro is faithful and he is allowed to lead. But he has no charisma. And after 14 years of economic insanity aimed at winning support among the most disadvantaged, all of the doubts, violence, and inflation have now exploded in the face of the PSUV.

Instead of letting go of the uncomfortable and parasitic burden that is Cuba, governing for all and looking after Lula and Dilma more than the Castros, Maduro, clumsy and stubborn, moved his tokens badly.

He professed to follow the Joropo and Pachanga of comrade Chávez. He designed a simple strategy: he shouldered his friend’s coffin and tries to govern Venezuela in his name.

And he is failing. In Cuba, either because of egoism or short-term mentality, the people on their feet, tired after 55 years of disaster, are crossing their fingers that the Venezuelan crisis does not shut off the petroleum faucet opened by the PDVSA (Petroleum of Venezuela, S.A.).

In a park in the Víbora district in Havana, a 70-year-old retiree expresses his opinion about the situation in Venezuela. “If that guy screws up, the effects on us will be tremendous. The power outages will continue, paralyzing the industries again and we will return to a situation equal to or worse than the beginning of the Special Period in 1990.”

Others are more optimistic. “It’s true, it will be hard. Since the Revolution, we have gotten used to living at the cost of someone else’s sweat. Before it was the USSR, now it’s Venezuela. If the worst happens there, we will have to accelerate the reforms here. Although this is already capitalism, but with low salaries”, states a lady identifying herself as a housewife.

A university student adds to the conversation. “Seeing the marches or strikes on the TV is something I envy. That freedom to protest before governmental institutions, such as in Ukraine or Venezuela… we need it here in Cuba.” And he added that “in FEU (University Student Federation) meetings, the situation in Venezuela is a primary theme, but I have heard rumors that there is more alarm in some Party groups.”

In this hot February, in spite of the news arriving from Caracas, the people on the street continue with their lives. Waiting in long lines to buy potatoes, which were lost in the battle. Going to the markets in search of food, vegetables, and fruit. Or sitting on the corner in the neighborhood to talk about films, fashion, football, or baseball.

And this is because for many on the Island, Venezuela is not in their agenda.

Iván García

Photograph: “If the media stops talking, let the streets talk”, says this banner painted by students marching on 13 February in the Venezuelan city of Valencia, some 172 km (107 mi) west of Caracas. Photo by Luis Turinese, taken from Global Voices Online.

Translated by: M. Ouellette

24 February 2014

For You, On March 9 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Washington, DC reminds me of the William Soler Children’s Hospital which, in my early childhood, was on the outskirts of Havana, until I got older and the city annexed it.

The buildings here, in places, have the same curved mystery of clinical solitude. They are made of glass instead of windows. One can look inside each room at the patients of the great little American capital. From the street, I would say that in every home here there is an oxygen tank over-illuminated to the point of sterility, like in the William Soler Hospital in Havana

The buses remind of the English Leylands from the seventies in Cuba. The Metro reminds me of the trains that back in the eighties were called “specials.” The girls in Washington are insanely beautiful. A certain Casablanca power irradiates every corner, especially now that winter is already dying and there are still enough green leaves and doors where we can find casual shelter for our hearts.

The world of the United States continues to be like an O’Henry story.

Forgive me. The truth is that it’s four in the morning and I assume it will be another sleepless night. We Cubans have provoked a massacre in Venezuela and the worst part in this sister nation is yet to come. Moreover, I am not in Cuba and so there are weeks when Havana always makes me cry at this hour.

The sky is red in DC, like that of my city illuminated by the threat of rain and the exhaust from the Nico Lopez refinery in Regla. A blazing chimney hijacked from Shell or Esso or Texaco more than half a century back: from owners who have already died at supposedly more proletariat hands, but today they, also, are dead. The refinery, like me, we have been left very alone, listing in a corner of the bay, two ghosts of insomniac smoke, inertial.

I don’t want to stay in this country. Here I’ll never watch a movie in context. Here I will never be able to stand on a corner and understand my position without turning on the GPS. Here Castro’s political police could murder me, like so many Cubans before and Venezuelans today, but at least they can’t harass or arrest me, if I’m  entirely missing the body is me. I’m tired of not being Orlando Luis. It’s even hard to write well, don’t you notice?

It’s twice as hard to be me here. The prize is that, when with you I write in Cuban, I’m back in my free Cuba mind, the same in which I was exiled these last five years, when I opened my blog in 2008 and the former Minister of Culture Abel Prieto immediately announced that I could never again publish on the Island.

Many planes fly in Washington, D.C. This is something new in Havana. Since I’ve been in the United States my asthma is cured, but every night I need air a little more. I’ve lived precisely in the air, borrowed, as in hospital rooms where there are no oxygen tanks nor memories. I know my lungs are going to close up entirely, the words, the nightmares of being back among my loved ones on the Island, the patience of never going back to see my house, of not saying goodbye because I left for just three weeks, then for three months, and then for three years. And now I understand it will be for three lives.

I know I’m surrounded by the damned circumstances of Cubans everywhere. “Damned” in the sense of “mischievous,” which was the word where we were kids and the first of our parents hadn’t died. Nor the first of us.

But I will be strong and light like a ray of sun. I will never leave you alone, it is a promise of a lost country. If I didn’t leave you alone being a prisoner there in Cuba, much less will I abandon you being free here and now. Just wait a little until this vertigo passes, this dizziness. Forgive me again, suddenly I really want to vomit.

The night is deep. The Spanish readings have something of a talisman. Every book now turns out to be a sacred object, like in childhood. A bible of truth. I believe I am more free. Expect anything from me. I love you.

9 March 2014

How to Survive a Collapse? / Frank Correa

Rescuers extract the body of Isabel Maria Fernandez, age 50, victim of a collapse that occurred in Vibora, Havana, in September of 2013. Photo: www.cubadebate.cu

There is nothing written, except to be touched by luck.  “Suicides” that inhabit collapsed buildings talk about the time bomb.

HAVANA, Cuba.  An anonymous survivor of a collapse (he did not want his identity leaked), in a shelter with his family in a place in Playa township, told me the story of when part of the building where he used to live went down.

He occupied an apartment on the second floor of a four-story building.  It was night.  By luck, his wife was in the polyclinic with their son who had asthma, and another child was in the Latin-American Stadium, watching the game between the Industrials and Santiago with two neighbors, who were also saved.

He says that he was alone, seated in an armchair in the living room, watching the news, when suddenly the television and half the living room disappeared from his view with a roar, and he saw the two upper floors falling.

He will never forget the bulging eyes of his neighbor Leovigilda, washing the dishes in the kitchen, when she passed downward and asked him with signs what was happening. Then he saw the last floor pass by, crumbled, and some woman’s legs on a bed, and a cat that was jumping through the rubble. Later the roof passed in a jumble.

When he recovered from the shock, in the middle of a cloud of dust, he peeked out and observed a mountain of rubble. His armchair had remained at the edge of the abyss and he didn’t move from there until the rescue brigade arrived.

“We inhabitants of those buildings are suicides,” he says.  “They need to build many Alamar neighborhoods*, and get everyone out of those time bombs, which with each minute it brings death closer.”

Where do the “creatures” that make the night live?

The housing infrastructure of Old Havana, Central Havana, Cerro and 10th of October townships can be classified as “deplorable” because of the age of their buildings, lack of maintenance and violation of building standards on the part of their inhabitants who, for lack of dwellings, subdivide the spaces without order or control in order to accommodate new tenants.

In a building on Animas and Virtudes streets, which at the beginning was designed for 10 families, 45 are living there today. And in one on Marcaderes and Aramburen the stairway collapsed completely. The order by the Housing Authority to abandon the building was given, but the residents placed temporary steps and go up and down constantly putting their lives at risk.

On Cuba and Amargura streets there is a site that resembles a beehive.  No one can calculate exactly how many people it shelters. By day a certain number is counted, above all children who leave for school and old people running errands, but at nightfall a legion of characters comes out to make a living: transvestites, homosexuals, pimps, prostitutes, and criminals.

Given the extremely poor physical condition and lack of sense of belonging of their tenants, these old buildings ruined by time and governmental incompetence are a breeding ground for collapses which jeopardize the lives of the inhabitants.

*Translator’s note: Alamar is a “model community” built in east Havana in the early years of the Revolution. A video is here.

Cubanet, 6 March 2014 |

Translated by mlk

Venezuela, life or the abyss: we can’t abandon her now / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Screen Shot 2014-03-09 at 1.49.53 PMLeftist dictators never quit. So says a killer subject called World History.

The leftist dictatorships of Latin America will not be an exception. They are establishing eternal systems like the Castro dynasty, to the humiliation of the Cuban people. Or imposing their feast of crimes before and after being thrown out of power, like Salvador Allende’s radical regime in Chile. In both cases, the price of any change is criminally expensive.

Today, Venezuela is in the streets debating between these two endpoints. Having already crossed both.

The infamous interference of the Castro regime incubated mass manipulation there, sowing the poison of irreconcilable classes, the inherent evil of Marxism. Sowing victimhood as a justification for impunity; political crime disguised as a plane crash, or hunger strike or criminal assault, within and beyond national borders; the lifelong self-coup of the State; the idea of a foreign archenemy; coercion and blackmail as a technique of governance; legislation beyond all legality; and even falling into that morbid medievalism of a leader consecrated by the bones of the Liberator.

It’s sad. It’s embarrassing, with so many Latin Americans devoted to harmony and progress, that at the end of the Castro regime it reaches out from the Antilles to fall, with more force than ever, across our American lands. An invasion that is now at the cost of a populist carnival of some social programs obligatorily free in their theatrical sensationalism. And still, as is now shamefully obvious to the world, it is still an avalanche that doesn’t abandon its barbaric custom of voting with bullets and more bullets, preferably into the heads of the voters.

In the case of Diosdado Cabello, and the presidential figure of Nicolas Maduro behind whom this citizen shields himself, their lightening assault troops — the “collectives” of criminals trained and armed by the State at the expense of the public coffers — recalling the worst style of the Blackshirts or the SS of the European genocide, who decades ago dreamed of a world under a single command in perpetuity.

Thus, perhaps, the obscene obsession of the Bolivarian rulers, including the region’s communist parties — with an emphasis on the Chilean complicity — in hurling the epithet fascist to the right and left: we already know that the thief always shouts “catch him, he’s a thief” to distract attention from his own misdeeds.

Neither students nor exiles, deputies or ministers, opponents or informants, top-stars or generals, are safe from these thugs with no nationality. Technically, with too many nationalities, because the motorcycle herds — on their Suzukis and Geelys in Cuba, for example — are the operational tactics of the island’s political police, as a modus operandi in the totalitarian left’s new crusade-of-no-return: eternity or death, comrades.

In effect, the Castro regime has committed even its lack of soul to the socialist submission of Venezuela, at least until Fidel and Raul die. And afterwards their Putin-inspired heir, Raul Castro Espin.

For this, to the ruinous repression against innocents, they now join an international plot against Venezuela, loving it to death. Authoritarian Asia has offered financial rescue to this dictatorship-in-ruins, formerly an exceptional economy. From civilized Europe they sell arms for the genocide, along with advice on human rights as compensation. From the United States, complicity privately promises no intervention in the hemisphere’s democracies. Wipe the cadaver clean.

The 49.12% of the Venezuelan people certified by the vote count of the Chavistas themselves in the 2013 elections is outraged but helpless before an abusive army of state intervention. The lack of solidarity of the thousand and one dignitaries of the free West is outrageous, people who should have already closed ranks with the Venezuelan students to avoid a Latin American Tiananmen, a vile vortex so useful to the Castro regime as it enthrones itself.

The new generations of our America are being massacred for demanding at least this 49.12% of the country that belongs to them by right. The price of not responding will be the loss of 100% of everyone’s country for ever, within and beyond the nation’s borders. From the debacle direct to an irreversible Made-in-Havana despotism, with metastases not only in Moscow, but in Iran and China and North Korea.

For God’s sake. A mistake in Venezuela is a mistake in the Americas, is a mistake in the future of the world.

Today, in Venezuela, political control is maintained with violence / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Venezuelan-Protest-Feb-15
Protests in Caracas, Venezuela on February 15, 2014. Photo: andresAzp via Flickr.

“The Party is immortal” was one of the first communist slogans. It was a declaration of the Party’s right to annihilate its “class enemies” and to keep hold of power by means of a “dictatorship of the proletariat” that would eradicate the “enemies of the people.”

For decades, communists were murdered in every country they turned up in. As a result, once they were in power for the first time in history, from the upper echelons of Stalinism to the satellite nations of the USSR, they began their revenge for all the crimes committed against them. And continue today.

I am not anti-communist. As a Cuban, I have spent 40 years living in a communist nation. Many of my friends and relatives are communists. I probably could have been a communist myself during my teenage years, perhaps through the apathy of belonging to the only legal political youth organization in Cuba, even though by then nobody believed in ideologies. We were professional impersonators, pretending to be somebody else to survive.

The fact is, not a single communist government has ever respected anyone who pretends to be “someone else.” Both within and beyond international borders, they have never demonstrated a single shred of diversity. Or compassion. This is logical, since in totalitarian materialism there is no other god but the State, incarnated in one Great Leader.

Now death is again laying waste to those who are youngest and most free. It’s happening in Venezuela, where the army is killing peaceful protesters in the streets. And the response from the world’s Communist parties was unexpected: They have applauded, and all the more-so in Latin America, the region where death is in charge.

In Chile, the Deputy and General Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party, Lautaro Carmona, has even boasted of his own complicity: Nicolás Maduro’s Venezuelan executioners have been sent a message of solidarity. The Venezuelan president is ruling under a law whereby he can be re-elected time and again.

With this obituary note, Augusto Pinochet’s Chilean crimes of the twentieth century are being avenged with impunity today. Today the chant “Long live death!” echoes the anti-communist slogan of genocidal Europe.

These are criminal coincidences, complicit comrade Lautaro.

FROM SAMPSONIA WAY MAGAZINE, published in English.

3 March 2014

Manual of Rights and Duties / Laritza Diversent

Screen Shot 2014-03-08 at 11.03.01 PMMost Cuban citizens do not know the legal system in force on the Island, and the procedures they must follow to exercise a certain legal action, be it a civil, penal, administrative, family matter, etc., principally those that relate to their civil and political rights. Frequently they are victims of the arbitrary and selective application of the law.

With respect to Cubalex — the Center for Legal Information — tries to expand the pro bono representation and legal analysis available in Cuba, as well as the capacity for self-defense by dissidents, human rights activists and citizens who have no apparent political motivations, living inside or outside the national territory.

Cubalex offers its clients detailed information about the Cuban legal system, the legal the legal rules that apply to their case and the procedures to be followed in response to government, regional or international institutions.

The Manual of Rights and Duties / on-line, offers information about the ways in which Cubans can defend their rights as citizens facing an arrest, official summons, and search of their homes.

8 March 2014

Venezuela Yes, Castro No / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Venezuela, Life or Abyss: Let’s Not Abandon Them Now

Left-wing dictators never step down. Thus says a killer subject called Universal History.

Left-wing Latin-American dictatorships have no reason to be the exception. They institute eternal systems like the Castro dynasty to the humiliation of the Cuban people. Or they impose their feast of outrages before and after being deposed from power, such as in Chile with the radical regime of Salvador Allende. In both cases, the price of any change is criminally high.

Today, Venezuela is struggling in the streets between these two limits. They have already gone beyond both.

Translated by: M. Ouellette

8 March 2014

Snipped / Regina Coyula

Like anyplace else, a successful business has many ingredients. Here many have failed because they engaged in activities they knew nothing about. But others prosper, become very visible, and then fall under the evil gaze of those who would give up an eye if they could see a neighbor get screwed over.

A quiet street of Nuevo Vedado had frequently become jammed with people, all wanting to buy at La Fontanella, a bakery that began modestly but then put up an eye-catching lighted sign. What began as a business in part of a house became exclusively a factory and sales outlet, with rotating shifts, open to the public from nine in the morning until nine at night.

Such prosperity drew attention and/or aggravation, and Monday dawned this week to find the business closed. The commentaries are various: stolen flour; workers walking off; problems with the ownership of the old family home, now converted into a bakery. The truth is that La Fontanella had become a troublesome twig on that bonsai which Minister Murillo, and the updating of the economic model, had designed to be kept well pruned.

Translated by Tomás A.

7 March 2014

A Cheeky Robbery / Juan Juan Almeida

Hundreds of paintings were stolen from the National Fine Arts Museum in Havana. According to the police, this would make it the most important embezzlement of Cuban pictorial heritage in the last decades.

The works were in the warehouse of the former building of the Department of Technical Investigations, which now belongs to the entity after being remodeled. Police custodians were in charge of the security of the premises, and the robbery was detected when some of these paintings began to appear in Miami, offered to art dealers.

It’s said that there’s an investigation by specialists in works of heritage and police specialists looking into the “How,” “When” and “What”; but if they were stolen from a MININT building, under police custody, and taken out of the country, the “Who” is solved: some acolyte of Alibaba with the support of the 40 thieves of the Central Committee; and the “when” and “how” stops being important.

Translated by Regina Anavy

28 February 2014

Confusion in the Americas on the Venezuelan Crisis / Manuel Cuesta Morua

HAVANA, Cuba. – The open crisis in Venezuela confuses all of Latin America and the Caribbean. It has an important economic component. Many of the small countries of the Caribbean basin, turned client-states, foresee the loss of the cheap oil prices Venezuela has been providing. This may be a small consideration for most, except for Cuba.

A shift should be easy to navigate for those barely viable and sparsely populated nations; no one knows why they changed a safer and more stable economic relation with the US, for a cheaper but clearly less reliable one with Venezuela. Surely, we know that strategic thinking is what the region lacks. To change oil and freedom, for oil and conditioning is a very strange move to secure independence.

However, the most important point of the Venezuelan crisis at the hemispheric level, is the one that connects the strategic possibility of a model of integration  that is trying to develop, in Latin America and the Caribbean, the awareness and commitment of its elite with the values of its institutions, the growing struggle of citizens for self-recognition and the political intelligence of the leaders in the region.

Amid the silence of ALBA, Evo Morales withdraws to a nationalist but not at all anti-capitalist economic model despite his extravagant and poorly articulated rhetoric. His advisers seem to have more influence on him than those of Rafael Correa, who does not know how to respond to the crisis of his own model and the consequences of his erratic policies; one day he wants to be reelected, another day he swears he does not want to be reelected only to appear later, in a seeming act of despair which says little about his seriousness, threatening to seek reelection where we all thought was about a Citizens’ Revolution.

Meanwhile, Cristina Fernández de Kichner cavorts even better, defending democracy from the left and right; stating her support is not for Maduro but for the democratic process itself, while at the same time saying that the protests, which are precisely part of that democratic process, are a “soft coup.”

Juan Manuel Santos, trapped between the left and right, tries to save his difficult relations with Venezuela; while talking with the FARC and Havana, he is also forced to point out the value of democratic institutions and the need for dialogue in the other side of Tachira, even if it means being humiliated by Maduro. Mujica barely knows what to say, invokes UNASUR, which has little to contribute. Meanwhile, Piñera, on his way out, takes care to remind us that this happens because in Latin America almost everyone is dedicated to blaming the foreigners of the north, not the south, instead of looking for problems in their own entrails.

At the beginning of the Venezuelan crisis, Michelle Bachelet had the strategic intelligence to recognize a constitutional crisis in the country and recommend a plebiscite. She has been the only one in this sea of confusion to show vision. Unlike Rouseff who forgets her past as a student victim of the Carioca repression, and in this dramatic moment, allows herself  to be lead exclusively by the economic interests of Brazil.

Nothing unusual in the pragmatic tradition of Brazil and a Lula with global ambitions, whom we all envisioned at the International Labour Organization battling for workers worldwide. He steps from being a union leader to President of Brazil and finally ends up a representative of Odebrecht, a transnational if there ever was one.  And, in Havana, he allows himself the luxury of pointing out that Maduro is a man of good intentions. Thank God.

There is total disorientation. Even rhetorical. Maduro blames the Yankees, expels its diplomats while asking to talk to Obama and naming a new ambassador in Washington, almost all at the same time and within the closed cycle of events. He had earlier threatened to use the full force of the army against civilians, precisely what all fascists do, while accusing them of being Nazi-facists and inviting them to a peace dialogue for which he has no resources in his political and verbal memory.

The OAS seems to be slipping by Insulza, this man has lost every opportunity to show some kind of leadership and allows himself the luxury of coming to Havana to be rebuffed by his hosts in the face of the OAS. This is however, the only organization that has established consolidated mechanisms with reference, tradition and experience, but which has to be invoked in Mexico by Obama, the enemy, to the silence of Peña Nieto, the new Mexican friend of Castro, the coldness of Canada and the indifference of the rest.

And the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC)? A newly released political ghost that no one in their right mind will talk about for a long time, if it even has a future. Without mechanisms, institutions, political representation and experience, CELAC, of course missed the opportunity to proactively respond to events in Venezuela through the vigorous defense of the democratic basis on which its integrative effort was founded, a defense that the presidents who participated in this political rock should have made. Not wanting to speak, from CELAC, about democracy in Cuba, has left Latin America and the Caribbean unable to talk about democracy in Venezuela, invoking the help of the ghost.

If it had done this, the youth of this new integration effort would have compensated with a clear and visible commitment in the right direction, and now Maduro’s rhetoric would have more legitimacy to obtain clear and consistent backups, alienating Washington, whom he has foolishly wanted to approach, from the shores of Venezuela. CELAC in Havana did not do the best it could and anyway, its leaders had to jump over the old principles of respect for sovereignty and non-interference in the affairs of other states they solemnly swore to respect: one way or another,  they have gotten into the internal affairs of Venezuela, now that many things are at stake. Starting with Havana, who has turned that country into a juicy backyard of oil, resources and XXI century essays. Until it dries up, if patriots there are unable to succeed.

No one really knows how to react in front of a crisis that once more puts in evidence the lack of leadership in Latin America: a leadership that, by the way, can only be reached by combining the values, interests and strategic vision of where the region wants to go. No wonder some elites, with some clarity, look to the Pacific where, as in the China syndrome, the United States appears once more. A region and a country that were not in the integrationist plans of Marti or Bolivar.

Cubanet, March 5, 2014,  

Translated by: Eleruss

The Dictatorship’s Annoying Writer / Lilianne Ruiz

Writer Angel Santiesteban in prison -- photo Luz Escobar courtesy of Lilianne Ruiz
Writer Angel Santiesteban in prison — photo Luz Escobar courtesy of Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba.  This past February 28, Reporters without Borders issued a statement attaching the second Open Letter from Angel Santiesteban to General-President of Cuba, Raul Castro, on exactly the day that the writer finished a year in jail.  Santiesteban published the first letter, addressed to the same leader, on his blog a few days before being taken to jail for a crime of which he declares he is innocent.

The place where he is currently held is a military settlement in Lawton, Havana, with the appearance of a housing construction company.  It houses 19 prisoners. His companions have committed crimes of theft, drug trafficking and murder. They are required to stay in a regimen of forced labor. We went there to visit him, a group of friends and this reporter, who could obtain his statements.

Previously he was in La Lima, a prison establishment located in Guanabacoa, and afterwards in the prison known as the “1580,” situated in San Miguel del Padron.

The writer’s people skills guarantee respectful relationships with the inmates. While they are going to work at the ironworks or carpenter’s shop, he stays writing all day. But this he has gotten by force of protest.

Compared with the other jails where he has been, the place is less severe:

“The only explanation that I give you for the fact that they have brought me here is that I publish complaints.  Within the jails there are beatings constantly on the part of the authorities.  In the ’1580’ I made 70 complaints in four and half months,” explains the writer who receives us in the penal enclosure.

This is the second time he has been a prisoner. The first was when he was 17 years of age. He spent nine months awaiting trial in the La Cabana jail.  He had gone to the coast to say goodbye to a part of his family that was leaving Cuba clandestinely. They were caught, and all were taken to jail. From the memories of those nine months, which for him were interminable, came the book that won him the Casa de las Americas Prize in 2006: Blessed Are Those Who Mourn. continue reading

He has lost a lot of weight. He accepts no food except that supplied by his family. He came to have a diet as strict as milk with cookies at mid-day and a soup of dehydrated substances, made with boiling water, at the end of the afternoon.

Twice, in the “1580” prison during a hunger strike, he was shackled at his feet and hands. Then the jailers took him by the throat opening his mouth to make him swallow some foul liquid.

He is about to finish a novel:

“It will be an homage to Cirilo Villaverde, for his Cecilia Valdes,” he comments.  But he has another in the editing stage of the detective genre in order to entertain, which breaks with his usual style:

“I wanted to have fun,” he explains.

He has also written a book of stories about prison.

“I wanted to tell how riots occur. I condensed the stories that prisoners have told me.”

He was able to get the manuscripts out of jail, and now the texts are saved on a computer. In the “1580” he began writing at eight in the morning and only stopped when the guards turned off the light at ten at night.

“I wrote as if I were going to die. In spite of everything, this is going to be a time that I am going to miss for the rest of my life.”

The case against Santiesteban started weaving itself one afternoon in July 2009 when he was in the company of three people who can attest to his presence. On the other side of the city, his ex-wife, Kenia Diley Rodriguez, presented herself at the police station at the same time in order to accuse him of having forced entry into her home and attacked her. After three days, Rodriguez added the accusation of the crime of “theft; after almost two months following the supposed assault, added “rape” and “attempted murder.”

None of these accusations had the least physical evidence, as the accused himself has demonstrated.

The background is a soap opera, except that it ended in tragedy for the main character:

Santiesteban had abandoned his relationship with Diley Rodriguez. By then, he already had a romantic relationship with a well-known Cuban actress.

Meanwhile, there was someone else interested in damaging him: State Security.

Lilianne Ruiz and Angel Santiesteban, 2012
Lilianne Ruiz and Angel Santiesteban, 2012

Little time passed between the publication of Santiesteban’s blog and the day and time of his trial.

Without guarantees in this country for respect for the presumption of innocence (the law is not dealt out equally, and courts are not independent), the ill will of the woman against her ex-spouse, an intellectual dissident, got him put in jail.

Recently, the Motion for Review of the judgment was received, which his lawyer presented to the Ministry of Justice last year. Now the Court needs to send the trial record to the Review Department. In the motion, it is expressed that the sanction against Angel Santiesteban is an enormous injustice because “he has been the victim of a vulgar hoax originated in the express lies of his ex-wife.” At the end of the document, the nullification of the judgment is requested; acquittal for the charged crimes.

The writer’s family managed to find out that the document was filed for a long time in the Ministry of Justice. They told them informally that the case was famous there and that all the authorities had met.

“It’s one thing for the Ministry of Justice to accept the review and another for them to be able to be honest,” says the writer.

The video in which the most important prosecution witness appears confessing to having lied in favor of Kenia Diley Rodriguez, because of the financial benefits she offered, was not received by the Court as proof of exoneration. But it served to erode the body of charges that was initially brought.

In spite of all logic, he was sentenced for “breaking into the residence” and “injuries.”

The person of good will who managed to turn on the camera at the right moment saved Santiesteban from the prosecutor’s request for 54 years in jail.

“The guy did not know that they were recording him. When he found out he went to the police unit with my son’s mother to accuse me of ’assault.’”

The video was analyzed by the Central Crime Laboratory which assessed it as perfect. The court simply dismissed the material “as not contributing elements of interest to the process.”

The question that his lawyer asks in the document is the following: If the authorities came to the conclusion that the greater part of the accusations of Kenia Diley Rodriguez against Santiesteban were false, what degree of credibility can be acknowledged in those that still stand?

Cubanet, March 8, 2014,

Translated by mlk.

Devaluation / Yoani Sanchez

Strictly Prohibited: Drinking alcohol, Animals, Ball games, Skimpy clothing

It’s difficult for a cell to maintain its health inside a sick organism. In an inefficient society the bubble of functionality bursts. In the same way, certain ethical values — selected and filtered — cannot be strengthened in the midst of a debacle of moral integrity. Rescuing codes of social conduct implies also accepting those that clash with the prevailing ideology.

We are now being called upon by the official media to recover lost values. According to the version put forth by the commentators on TV, responsibility for the deterioration falls mainly on the family, a portion on the schools… but not at all on the government. They talk about bad manners, rudeness, lack of solidarity and the extent of bad habits such as stealing, lying and laziness. In a country where for half a century the educational system, the entire press, and all the mechanisms of cultural production and distribution have been monopolized by a single party, one can only ask: what is the source of such impoverishment?

I remember that when I was a little girl no one dared to address another person as “señor” — mister — because it was a bourgeois throwback. As the use of “compañero” — comrade — is associated with an ideological position, many of us began to adopt new forms: “cousin,” “young man,” “hey you,” “Pop”… along with a long list of phrases derived from vulgar speech. Now they complain on TV that when we address others we are insulting, but… who started this deterioration?

The Cuban system opted for social engineering, and toyed with individual and collective alchemy. The most perfect example of this failed laboratory was the so-called “New Man.” This Homus Cubanis would supposedly come of age in sacrifice, obedience and loyalty. His uniformity was incompatible with the particular ethics of each home. So to achieve him, millions of Cuban children were removed — as much as they could be — from the family environment.

We went to daycare centers just 45 days after we were born; the Pioneer Camps took us in right after we learned our first letters; we went to schools in the countryside as soon as we left childhood, and spent our adolescence in high schools in the middle of nowhere. The State believed it could take over the formative role of our parents, thought it could exchange the values we brought from home for the new communist moral code. But the resulting creature deviated greatly from the one they had planned. We didn’t even manage to convert ourselves into the “New Man.”

They also launched themselves against religion, ignoring that dissimilar creeds transmit a share of the ethic and moral values that molded human civilization and our own national customs. They made us denigrate those who were different, we insulted the presidents of other countries with obscenities, mocked historic figures from the past, stuck our tongues out or blew raspberries when passing a foreign embassy.

They instilled in us the “Revolutionary promiscuity” that they themselves had already practiced in the Sierra Maestra, and incited us to laugh at those who spoke well, were deeply cultured, or showed any kind of refinement. This was carried out with such intensity that many of us faked speaking vulgarly, left off syllables when we talked, or shut up about our reading, so no one would notice that we were “weirdos” or potentially “counterrevolutionaries.”

One man — from the podium — screamed at us for fifty years. His diatribes, his hatred, his inability to listen calmly to an opposing argument, were the “exemplary” postures we learned in school. He instilled in us the gibberish, the constant tension, and the authoritarian index finger when we address others. He — who thought he knew everything but in reality knew very little — conveyed to us the pride of never asking forgiveness and of lying, that deception of rogues and scam artists that he was so good at.

Now, when the ethical picture of the nation looks like a mirror shattered against the floor, they call on the family to fix it. They ask us to shape values at home and to pass on order and discipline to our children. But how can we do it? If we ourselves were shaped to disrespect every code? How can we do it? If there’s no process for the powers-to-be to criticize themselves, for those who played at social engineering with our lives to recognize what they did?

Ethical codes are not so easily reassembled. A morality devalued by public discourse can’t be put back together overnight. And now, how are we going to fix  this disaster?

7 March 2014