At a Turtle’s Pace / Yoani Sanchez

Focus on a fixed point and you’ll see that we are, in fact, advancing. Graphic humor from Santana

Everything moves clumsily, heavily. Even the sun seems to take longer than normal up there. The clock knows nothing of precision and the minute hand is stuck. Making an appointment with the exactitude of three-fifteen or twenty-to-eleven is the pure pedantry of those in a hurry. Time is dense, like guava jam with too much sugar.

“If you hurry your problems double,” the clerk warns the customer anxious to get home early. The man sweats, drums his fingers, while she cuts her really long fingernails before even hitting a key on the cash register. The line behind him also looks at him with scorn, “Another one who thinks he’s in a big hurry,” says an annoyed lady.

We live in a country where diligence has come to be interpreted as rudeness and being on time as a petulant quirk. An Island in slow motion, where you have to ask permission from one arm to move the other. A long crocodile that yawns and yawns as it lolls in the Caribbean waters.

Someone who manages to complete two activities in one day might feel fortunate. It’s common not to be able to find ways to do even one. There’s a hitch at every step, a sign that says, “Today we’re closed for fumigation,” “We don’t serve the public on Friday,” or Raul’s phrase, “Without hurry but without pause.” Delay, postpone, suspend, cancel… the verbs most conjugated when you face any procedure or paperwork.

The turtle’s pace is everywhere. From the bureaucratic offices and the bus stops to the recreation and service centers. But the big winner of the award for having “the blood of a turnip” is the government itself: Three years after the fiber optic cable was connected between Cuba and Venezuela it is still impossible to contract for a home Internet connection.

Two decades of the dual monetary system and they still haven’t published a schedule for the elimination of this economic schizophrenia. Fifty-four years of single-party government and there is no sign of a day when we will have the right to free association. Half a century of government blunders and mistakes and they haven’t even begun to hint at an apology.

At this rate, one day they’ll re-baptize the Island “Never Never Land,” a place where clocks and calendars are banned.

18 February 2014

GUSANO (Worm) – A Video from Estado de SATS

If the video doesn’t appear try this link.

If you don’t see the subtitles — start the video and then, on the bottom right, there will be a little “CC” box. Click there and ENGLISH will appear and the subtitles will show up. If an ad appears on the screen, close it and the subtitles will move to the bottom of the screen.

Site manager’s note: This video was translated and subtitled by the most amazing group of young people in the world… their names are on the final credits… our thanks to them are IMMEASURABLE and UNPAYABLE… but some day… in a free Cuba… sitting on the wall of the Malecon… we’ll celebrate together what you helped to bring about.

Community Network Journalists Arrested and Beaten / Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

And so the violence starts
And so the violence starts

Juliet Michelena Díaz, José Antonio Sieres Ramallo and Billy Joe Landa Linares, were stopped on San José between Belascoaín and Manrique, talking with me, on the balcony, which they’ve dubbed “The Ferns,” an allusion to the Cuban telenovela, when Patrol Car No 767 appeared to arrest them. They wanted to take the two men and leave the woman. She opposed it.

In this patrol they took Yuleidis López González and Juan Carlos Diaz Fonseca
In this patrol they took Yuleidis López González and Juan Carlos Diaz Fonseca

At that moment, officials from State Security officers and two women in uniform with the rank of Major arrived. They jumped on Billy Joe and Juliet. At first they beat him by squeezing his testicles, and injected something in his left arm, near the shoulder.

When he was released, he had to be transferred to the Poze Bernardo polyclinic of San Miguel del Padrón, where he was supplied oxygen. He didn’t want to go to the hospital to avoid being subjected to the political police.

Juliet was dragged by the two officers and a third woman dressed in civilian clothes. They gave low a low blow and hit her in the mouth when she screamed. The public intervened, saying, “Don’t hit her, she’s a woman,” “Don’t be abusers.” Only one woman shouted “Viva Fidel,” and “Down with the worms,” but it didn’t have any resonance. Also arrested wereYuleidis López González and Juan Carlos Diaz Fonseca, who were driven out to Guanabacoa and abandoned there.

One of the cooperators with the political police
One of the cooperators with the political police

Barbara Fernandez Barrera and Misael Aguilar Hernández, arrested in San Antonio de los Baños, were taken to an unknown place, and had to walk 3 kilometers alone until a truck picked them up and took them to Quivicán in the province of Mayabeque.

In front of my balcony those cooperating with the police hid behind a column so we couldn’t take their picture, but we did.

Wherever the people are concentrated, the regime acts repressively. They can not allow the street to heat up from the “Balcony of the Ferns.”

Cubanet, 13 February 2104, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

Batteries Disappear from Power Substations / Moises Leonardo Rodriguez

Subestación-Alta-Tensión_www.escambray.cu_-300x200Artemisa, Cuba –  The theft of batteries at five electrical substations in Artemisa province, at the risk of the thieves’ lives, was acknowledged by the weekly paper El Artemiseño, the official Communist Party organ in the province.

The batteries stolen in 2013 were from circuit breakers, called NULEC, in substations at Mariel, San Antonio de los Baños, Caimito and Artemisa, according to the report of the journalist Yailín Alicia Chacón, in the 11-17 February edition of the paper.

These batteries are for electric bicycles, musical equipment, and as back-ups (Uninterruptible Power Supplies) for personal computers, which are all very expensive in the State market. For example, the cost of an electric bike battery is 2,875 Cuban pesos (about $120 USD), and they only last about two years.

The director general of the provincial Power Company, Martín de la Concepción Cordero, acknowledged that, “There is still no solution for such outrages and unscrupulous attitudes of people who enter our facilities to take these batteries.”

This new type of theft is added to the theft of the aluminum cross beams of the high tension towers, traffic signs, railroad ties and others that endanger the lives of the perpetrators of the crime and/or third parties after their execution.

Cubanet, 17 February 2014, Moises Leonardo Rodriguez

corrientemartiana2004@gmail.com

Prisoners Subjected to Forced Labor / Yaxiel Espino Acebal

cubanos-campoCIENFUEGOS, Cuba . – At least ten of the inmates of the “Soler” Open Prison located on the national highway on the stretch that passes Km 259 at the elevation of the Ranchuelo municipality, in villa Clara province, are forced to work for the prison authorities without their effort being rewarded with wages.

One of the affected told that reporter that the top man responsible for the policy if the Chief of the Camp names Luis Negrin Dobato, which has established a reign of terror, such that if the prisoner refuses the work, he loses all “benefits” which consist of conjugal visits, food brought by their families, or the passes to visit their homes.

Another of the punishments is putting the names of the resisters on a wall in the recreation area of the prison where most of the prisoners visit.

When a prisoner has committed a serious breach of discipline, such as attempted escape or assault on other inmate, extreme measures are adopted, such as denying them access to the hospitals in the city.

To these mandatory disciplinary punishments area added the terrible food, the absence of an optional menu and the changes in the weight of the rules.

According to our source, the Head of Re-eduction named Eduardo Adrián Rodríguez, demands from the inmates who work in the dining room provide a certain amount of food for him to feed to the pigs he raises at home.

Cubanet, 17 February 2014, Yaxiel Espino Acebal

Race and Identity / Yoani Sanchez

Backside of the Cuban Identify Card with a box for “Skin”

It’s just been born and in a few hours they will register the baby with its brand new name. A few days will pass before the parents get the birth certificate and then the so-called “minor card.” Without an identification card you can’t receive products from the ration market, enroll in school, get a job, travel on an inter-provincial bus, or put your belongings in a bag-check at a shop. Every day of your life you need this document, which at the top carries a unique combination of eleven digits. On the little piece of cardboard your temporal and geographic data is registered… and also certain physical details.

It looks just like a letter on the back of the identity card, but it is an initial that describes the color of our skin. This consonant classifies us as one race or another, divides us into one group or another. Amid repeated institutional calls to end discrimination, the Cuban Civil Registry still maintains a racial category for every citizen. Along with the date of our birth, and our address, it specifies if we are white, mixed or black. The assignment of a “B,” “M” or “N,” (Blanco-white, Mestizo-mixed, Negro-black), in a nation with so much race mixing, is often the result of a functionary’s subjective judgement.

Amid so many priorities, so many rights to demand and injustices to end, it might seem trivial to demand the withdrawal of a letter on our identify card. However, its small presence doesn’t diminish its gravity. Especially when the document itself already has a photo of its holder, where you can see his or her physical features.

No citizen should be evaluated by the color of their skin, nor placed in a category according to the amount of pigment they carry in their epidermis. Such bureaucratic backwardness speaks more to prison files than civil registries. It’s not a question of melanin, but of principles.

17 February 2014

Caracas, Damn! / Reinaldo Escobar

Overwhelmed by the flood of information about Venezuela, we Cubans are hanging on everything that’s happening. We tune in to shortwave radio stations, try to find something moderately objective on the Internet, listen to what someone who has a relative on a “mission” there says, and try to catch on the fly some detail that has escaped the news on Telesur. Venezuela concerns us as if it were all happening in Holguín, Cienfuegos or Pinar del Río.

Cuba’s fate is intimately tied to what is happening in Caracas not only because of the threat that its subsidy to Cuba will disappear, or that some Cuban, a doctor, or sports instructor, or soldier, could die in the midst of the confusion. We are mixed up in these events because, saving a few differences, we are filled with the feeling that we are looking in a mirror.

In this reflection of delusions we are finding everyone: the opposition, the ruling party, those who have nothing to lose and those afraid that the blackouts will start again, the persecution and the repression, civic and military… everyone.

The storm could pass in a few days or unexpectedly worsen. The echo of either situation will reach us and not by the fluttering of the butterfly’s wings, but because, like a poet said, “We are sewn to the same star,” one to the other.

17 February 2014

Tribute to Laura Pollan in Santa Clara on her 66th Birthday / Yesmy Elena Mena, CID

Homenaje a Laura Pollán en Santa ClaraSANTA CLARA, Cuba.- Members of the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party (CID) paid tribute to Laura Inés Pollan Toledo on  the 66th birthday, 13 February, at one of their sites in the city of Santa Clara.

Ada Olimpia Becerra Fuentes, who represents the CID, in the Brisas del Oeste neighborhood in that city, said that 16 opponents met and shared memories of the deceased Laura, with a framed photo and a bouquet of gladioli.

In commemoration of her they sang the National anthem, held a minute of silence in her memory, and read a document referring to the leader of the Ladies in White written by her husband, Héctor Maseda.

14 February 2014

Regulations Go, Regulations Come / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

The most recently approved regulations which now govern self-employment (private labor) prohibit the sale of manufactured goods. Henceforth, budding private businesses may sell only hand-made goods. Applying such obsolete rules in the twenty-first century is akin to feudalism and amounts to a return to a pre-industrial era.

Meanwhile, the government purchases shoddy goods at clearance sale prices from China, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico and other countries. It later offers them for sale in its hard currency stores at exorbitant prices which are several times higher than their original wholesale costs. This puts them well out of reach of most Cubans and creates a monopoly in the sale of manufactured goods.

Many years ago, at the beginning of the experiment, its chief inventor said, “This is the revolution of the poor, by the poor and for the poor.” It seems to have quickly lost direction, becoming instead a behemoth which threatens the poor, one which does not allow them to either develop their initiatives or get ahead.

Never before in Cuba’s history as a nation has a government manipulated and abused so many of its citizens. Cubans have endured family separation, persecution for political, religious, sexual and even musical preferences, as well as a decades-long prohibition against travelling abroad, buying or selling a home or car, or staying in resort hotels.

Cubans have had to endure poverty-level wages and pensions. Professionals have been contracted out to other countries as slave labor. Cubans have served as cannon fodder for foreign wars, have suffered the loss of moral values and have been subjected to inflated prices for both basic commodities and non-essential goods. They have had to put up with low-quality social services, denial of home internet access, press censorship, repression of freedom of thought, and so on.

José Martí warned us of this but we did not take heed. He cautioned that socialism poses two dangers: the first stems from misunderstood and incomplete readings of the works of foreign writers; the second from the arrogance and repressed rage of ambitious men, who rise up by standing on the shoulders of others, pretending to be ardent defenders of the helpless (Collected Works, volume 3, page l68, published in Cuba).

14 February 2014

Raul Castro in Search of Money or of Moneyed Men / Juan Juan Almeida

It was only some years ago, when the visible financial crisis infected sectors of the national economy, and Cuban industry verged on the almost invisible boundary that marks the action and the omission that hastens the death of a hopeless patient; General Raul Castro, with that impressive way of showing his pathetic talent, sold us the fraudulent idea that the Armed Forces had been converted into an example for “The Change.”

In papers, because delving into the demonstrated earnings, the island’s military enterprise system worked much more than the lawyer of singer Justin Bieber works these days; of course, being propelled by slave labor (to be more exact, recruits), there was no way of measuring the calculable cost of a product or its labor efficiency.

Absurd, yes, but through repetition, it managed to attract the attention of those who move opinion, and many began to believe in that rigged sequence of decisions that today make up what appears the destiny of Cuba and what some still call “Raul’s reforms.”

That group of measures, or non-structural opinions, which pay no attention to productivity or change the nature of the system at all and are basically aimed at legalizing or facilitating what until yesterday was tolerated, prohibited or complicated; and bring symptoms of anemia to the practically defunct capacity of monetary investments of that labor force that biting a biased and naive scheme, believed the story of “we are all an enterprising population,” and jumped from the state sector to the private, and today, earning more, counts on less.

Evidently, not all state workers took the streets convinced and believing in Tía Tata*; but at this point in the story, “modernizing the economic model” is simply a gross verbal diarrhea that served to disguise a perpetrated crime that should be judged, obviously respecting the due process that every accused must have, because only a defrauded person can be induced to believe that after 20 years working in an office, a person, by magic, without supporting aptitudes, will be transformed into a shoemaker, locksmith, farmer, barber, drummer, trash man or watch maker.

The strategy of General Raul Castro and his penitent entourage has only served to simulate changes and forge flexibility; to increase poverty; to abandon the retired people in an aging population; to invest less state money in services like health and education and above all to try to play down the stay in power of a single and inefficient governing pack of hounds.

It is not accidental, it is all well planned and coldly calculated.  It was at the end of the ’90’s when Raul, after his recurrent hormonal disorder, made fashionable the sentence, “Let’s exchange cannons for beans.”  By then, few could understand that he was not referring to the food, but to the need of, without renouncing the least power, his new strategy consisted of going in search of money or men with money who with their presence in Havana would help demonstrate that security that only solvency offers, or to count on solvent friends.

*Translator’s note: Tía Tata’s Stories was a radio program and later a TV program with puppets.

Translated by mlk.

13 February 2014

Discovering Freedom in a Prison / Angel Santiesteban

On the eve of my first year in prison

Officer Abat accompanied by a captain has visited the settlement with the intention of searching my writings and readings.


Can I borrow a section of the paper Papa? / Take it. / Thank you.
Phrase of the day: “The more I know man, the more I love my dog.” Diogenes
But, what kind of journalism is this? Where’s the dog’s opinion!

They started reading some news chosen by the editor of my blog to keep me updated with national and international events. While they did it, I watched the interest of knowing another reality prohibited for them. They were greatly surprised when they read El Nuevo Herald newspaper and saw the photo of Raul Castro in an article from the 7th of this month by the journalist Pedro Corzo: “The Castro Bourgeoisie.” With early tachycardia, the one who was reading it, hurried to the other officer to show him the offense but, brazenly, he read the extensive text with interest.

From my position, I reveled in watching them read the free press, different from the hardbound articles of the national press. In the end they left leaving all my papers in their place. I’m sure they left if not scared, at least more free. They learned that there are places where everything can be said, from one side and the other, where opinion is respected with worship.

Hopefully soon we will have a Cuba where there is this respect between so many who deny us and no one will be imprisoned for thinking differently.

Ángel Santiesteban Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, February 2014

Sign the petition so that Amnesty International will declare the Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.

12 February 2014

A Comfortable Home (something spoken of in the Constitution) / Regina Coyula

Image: jimdo.com

The journalist José Alejandro Rodríguez on his show on the Havana Channel yesterday referenced several complaints about the quality of newly built or repaired housing, which soon begin to show signs of deterioration. Last week on the show Cuba Says, on the TV news, there was an amazing report on the housing offered to people who remain in shelters, some of the for 40 (!!) years.

And what did I see? A rough and crude property, without plaster, exposed pipes. no slabs on the floor in the kitchen and bath. Some of the “beneficiaries” might even say they were happy, and it’s understandable for anyone who has to live with strangers: no privacy, no space, no sanitation, and no respect for others.

When it’s about supplies, Daddy-State didn’t exert too much effort to resolve the problem of housing, which has become critical, especially in the capital, where the number of people living in shelters, in the last year, reached  number similar to the population of Matanzas.

And not only has the State not resolved the problem of housing, but it weaned its babies transferring the problem to them. Those affected should now solicit loans, become hounds on the trail of construction materials, learn the trade, establish working relationships with people with similar interests, as it should always be, I think; only that those who today live badly should do it for themselves.

They were educated in the idea that good labor, political and social behavior would result in their being awarded housing through having earned credits at their workplace.

The dozen slums inherited from the government before 1959 were quickly eradicated. The same government that took them over is entirely responsible since then for the current number of 160 neighborhoods and settlements lacking facilities. Creating these favelas has nothing to do with the blockade or the imperialist threat; it’s one more demonstration of the inefficiency in administration and production from the same group that insists on convincing us that they can do it now.

14 February 2014

A Good Solution / Juan Juan Almeida

In his first decision of this year, published in the Gaceta Oficial Extraordinaria (Special Official Gazette) dated February 7th, the head of MININT (Ministerio del Interior de la República de Cuba – Cuban Ministry of the Interior) Army General Abelardo Colomé Ibarra, ordered the General Management of the General Revolutionary Police to exchange information, such as the co-ordination of criminal actions and investigations, with the General Management of the department of Bank Financial Operations Investigations, in order to combat money laundering, financing of terrorism and moving illicit capital out of the island.

The challenge is large and high-cost; but the solution is very easy. For starters, build a wall around the boundary of the present location of the Central Committee, leave the guards outside, and convert it into a high-security prison. And whatever else is needed.

Translated by GH

13 February 2014