We’re at the Summit! / Eliecer Avila

Outside the government press, how Cubans experience the CELAC Summit.

As often happens with more or less important events that take place in Cuba, all of the radio, TV and written press is focused for days on the preparations undertaken to guarantee the success of the 2nd CELAC Summit.

According to the images shown, it’s clear that there have been important investments in preparing locations, the purchase of equipment and all the paraphernalia demanded by the protocols for the occasion.

Meanwhile, on the streets, the corners of the neighborhoods, and inside their homes, just about every Cuban speaks of nothing but CELAC. Which is logical. No one sees in this merely political instrument any kind of practical benefit for daily life.

Similar news coverage filled the screens and the presses didn’t do much to convey to us the daily sessions of the of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Quito-2013. The event left the country with tens of thousands of dollars spent and zero real gain in any area of daily interest.

Now, the press, or the government, announces with special emphasis another meeting where integrationist and anti-imperialist — or more to the point, anti-American — speeches will be delivered, leaving another million dollar bill for Cuba and nothing concrete for Cubans.

If we calculate how many kilometers of highway could be built, or how many buildings could be repaired, or how many buses could be bought with what is spent on the interminable list of international events that the government sponsors every year, and we can imagine how much we might advance of the State’s priority wasn’t, exclusively, politics.

However, interventions, at least rhetorically, have their attractions. They will speak of “brother countries and peoples,” but in practice none of our “brothers” will stop asking us for visas, letters of invitation and exceptional guarantees that make it ever more difficult to complete the paperwork to be able to visit them.

We are very special brothers, however, Venezuelans and Cubans. The rulers just say we share 99% of our genetics, but at the level of the people — with the exception of those who join official missions and travel to the country for this work — we carry ourselves like the most distant strangers. Anyone would think that a decade earlier with the fervor around bilateral relations, today we would have something that seems like a treaty of free movement of citizens, by which a Cuban family could decide to spend a week traveling in any Venezuelan state or vice versa.

This could be extended to Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina or Brazil. In fact, among the South American countries there are mechanisms that favor mobility, employment, trade, regional tourism, communications, etc… But Cuba, or rather the people of Cuba, continue to be isolated and absent in these concrete and palpable realities; although from within our oyster, we are surrounded by a sea of “defensive” barriers, and we continue to pretend to be the most normal country in the world.

Outside of summits and rare brotherhoods, the issues that in reality concern us beat more strongly than ever; issues that the national press, concerned about official communications, not speaking or doing it in an imperceptible way: the grotesque mockery represented by the issue of car sales, the state crusade against the sel-employed, the ever more

The list is long, but the patience of a people who accept a government with a political agenda totally divorced from the their most pressing needs and aspirations seems even longer.

Diario de Cuba, 27 January 2014, Eliécer Ávila

CELAC, A Meeting with Absolute Power / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

This time Cuba is the president of a young organization with ideas of uniting Latin America and the Caribbean. In its second summit, held in Havana, the government leaders faced a question: Will Latin America and the Caribbean be a unified movement, similar to the Soviet Union?

One of the visible purposed those countries have is to distance themselves from capitalism and latch on to the example of a government that will go down in history as the most manipulative and lying government in the history of humanity, “that’s saying a lot, but it’s the reality.”

To avoid at all costs exporting any benefits that don’t belong to the government, declaring that it is a resource invested in the people, but it’s true purpose is to enrich itself with greater eternal power.

There will be a lot of dialog and agreements undertaken at the meeting, everything always rose-colored by the state mass media, no disagreements will come to light that could concern the followers and trumpeters of the Castro “promise.” So far the only thing he’s accomplished is keeping his beard as symbol of having accomplished nothing in Cuba.

27 January 2014

Queen-Brand Pots, Chinese Refrigerators and the Little Gas Cylinder / Gladys Linares

Hornilla-casera-de-carbón_foto-cortesía-de-la-autora-300x200HAVANA, Cuba, January, www.cubanet.org — With the change of domestic appliances in the so-called energy revolution devised by Fidel Castro, there began for us a series of problems that each day gets worse.

We were warned to exchange old Russian refrigerators and air conditioners, or American ones from the pre-“revolutionary” era, for Chinese equipment supposedly of lower energy consumption, payable through a bank credit that people are paying off still today.

During that period they also sold, in certain locations, fans, water heaters, electric stoves, rice and multipurpose cookers (the so-called Queen brand pots), at the same time that electric rates were increased.  The gas sale cycle for these families was extended to six months for each 20 pound drum (the so-called “little balls”) “just in case some day the electricity flow is interrupted,” which happens quite frequently.

Due to their poor quality, these pieces of equipment quickly broke, and the shortage of replacement parts has obliged Cuban families to adopt different alternatives in order to be able to cook.  Some do it with charcoal; others buy a gas cylinder on the black market. continue reading

Such is the case of Erlinda, who has prepared a little charcoal stove although she complains that sometimes it is difficult to get one; with much difficulty it can be bought on the black market.  She says that now she knows the cause of its scarcity: according to what she read in the Granma newspaper of January 14, charcoal is an export item.

Refill hose for cylinders  -- photo courtesy of the author
Refill hose for cylinders — photo courtesy of the author

For some, the quota of gas is not sufficient, but they don’t have the money to buy a cylinder on the black market, so they try to get a “shot” (the residue) from a neighbor or friend, almost always emptying one drum to another with the appropriate hose, a dangerous operation that has caused more than one explosive accident costing lives and homes.

A while back, one afternoon, Raudel, a gas courier, tried to help a neighbor in this procedure, and although he did the maneuver in the doorway, someone who was passing at that moment lit a cigarette and everyone ended up in the burn room of the Calixto Garcia hospital.

When Raul Castro, in his speech on December 13, 2012, announced that he was increasing the production of petroleum and gas, a rumor began to circulate that its sale would be freed from the rationing system.  But what no one expected is that in order to consume gas by the pound he would have to enter into a contract with the State to rent, for 500 pesos, an empty cylinder, and only with this could he then get it filled for a price of 130 pesos.

During the eighth legislature of Parliament, the deputies Attention to Services Commission voiced the difficulties presented by the electric domestic appliances and recognized that more than 80% were in disuse.

Near Barrio Obrero, gas transport -- photo courtesy of the author
Near Barrio Obrero, gas transport — photo courtesy of the author

As a “solution” to this problem, the State widened access to the bank credits in CUC, applying the prevailing exchange rate (25 Cuban pesos for 1 Cuban Convertible Peso, or CUC) so that those affected might buy their appliances again and undertake more debt, although they also have the “option” of buying the unrationed gas through contract with the State.

On learning the news, a friend exclaimed:  “I don’t know why they are surprised, if this bloodsucking Government takes a step, or makes a change, or applies a measure, it’s only to suck our blood!”

Cubanet, January 29, 2014, Gladys Linares.

Translated by mlk.

A Bad Adviser / Fernando Damaso

Photos by Rebeca

Recently I have visited some neighborhoods of the city, dodging puddles of putrid water and cave ins, in search of the real situation of private and state businesses.

the first, despite the abusive taxes and absurd regulations, they are developing successfully, some more than others which is logical, depending on the initiative and expertise of their proprietors, and every day new ones appear, filling with life the spaces vacant for too long in our city.

They reflect Cubans’ creativity and desire to triumph, presenting nice, modern, clean, well-lit places with quality offerings and good service, despite the fact that, for the most part, their prices are out of reach to the ordinary Cuban, which makes them elitists, because their customers are mainly — in addition to foreign residents and visitors — the citizens who enjoy a more comfortable economy, working in areas where freely convertible money circulates, or receiving remittances from abroad. continue reading

This situation, which has to do directly with the low wages, the existence of two currencies and the lack of wholesale markets, influences what can’t be enjoyed by most people, even if they are pleasant and welcoming oases.

The second, in crisis for years and even before the competition from the first, every day emptier and sadder, are a striking example of the failure of state commerce, despite its enjoying full support from the authorities. Disagreeable, dirty, poorly lit, with low quality offerings and bad service, they try to subsist in a city that has already rejected them.

It would be desirable for the authorities to finally understand that the stagnant state commerce can’t complete with the private, and decide to open to the gates that limit private expansion and, without so many limitations and prohibitions, allow them to solve the problems unaddressed during years of inefficiency.

I’m referring to shops, markets, snack bars, restaurants, candy stores, hair salons, barber shops, movie rooms, bars, laundries, repair shops, dry cleaners and others, which today languish in state hand, even if many of them offer their services in hard currency and, those who do so in Cuban pesos, even raising their prices, those which in private hands would show an entirely different face.

Anyway, sooner or later it will happen, and delay because of political stubbornness benefits neither the state nor the citizenry.

28 January 2014

Spain Preaches Democracy in her Underwear / Miriam Celaya

ppcubaespana091112-300x192HAVANA, Cuba, December 2013 www.cubanet.org.- Some insist on denigrating us based on the longevity of the Castro dictatorship and our supposed inability to free ourselves from the yoke.

It is noteworthy that our most stubborn critics tend to be Spanish, which demonstrates not only faulty historical memory, but also the persistence of the type of the controversial love-hate relationship between Cuba and Spain, born centuries ago between a small colony that was able to thrive and generate great wealth thanks to Cubans’ tenacity, talent and labor and a decadent metropolis that -though one day it managed to own an empire “on which the sun never set”- never stopped being one of the poorest and most backward countries in Europe, an encumbrance lingering to date.

ManuelFragaFidelCastroRansesCalderio-300x217Perhaps the loss of Cuba in 1898, which marked the end of the once-great empire in whose dogged defense Spain squandered more resources and young Spanish lives than in the rest of the independence wars in other parts of Latin America, left a mark in its national psyche as the failure of the last stronghold of the Iberian symbol on this side of the Atlantic and the blow to her pride, finally defeated by the intervention of a nation that always valued work and technological advances more than titles of nobility, crests and coats of Arms: the United States. continue reading

d40cba90d4bf77d7753d0f5b3a4f7682fbc15b1f-300x225Of course, the political incompetence of the Spanish crown back then is not attributable to her people, and the long years of Franco’s dictatorship is not a reflection on some type of handicap or limitation on the part of the Spanish people, with their share of repression, persecution of dissidents, executions, censorship, cult of the personality of a leader with alleged extraordinary capabilities and all the other ingredients typical of dictatorial regimes of any ideological color which ended only after the natural death of its leader.

The loss of the lives of tens of thousands of Spaniards due to massacres or executions, imprisonment and exodus were the dictatorship’s initial branding.

cuba_espana_felipeIn the decades following permanent emigration the number of individuals reached almost one million, whose family remittances, in addition to foreign capital and tourism, became the main factors for Spanish economic growth from the 1960’s, with the added benefit of taxes that enriched the dictatorial power. Any similarity with the current Cuban reality is not purely coincidental.

There are many more similarities than differences between the dictatorial processes of both nations and the suffering of their people than the differences having to do with individuals. For these reasons, the disregard of Cubans by certain Spaniards turns out to be so surprising, and their imaginary civic or moral superiority is even more inexplicable.

Complicity with the regime

Perhaps it would be more consistent that those detractors who currently aim to lecture Cubans on democracy, the ones who approach us with offensive condescension and even attempt to instruct us on what we should do to overthrow the Castros’ regime, be responsible for thrashing Spanish entrepreneurs who invest their capital in Cuba, thus supporting the continuation of the dictatorship and the exploitation of Cuban employees and mocking the efforts and sacrifices of generations of opponents and the democratic aspirations of the majority.

cuba_espana_aznarThat way, while taking advantage of the opportunities offered by democracy, they could be held accountable to many of its politicians, whose tolerance and even complicity with the regime of the Island has led them to smooth and elevate the path of the olive-green satraps in major international settings because no Spaniard who believes himself a free individual should keep silent or accept collusion with a dictatorship. Spaniards, least than anybody else, since they had to pay a high premium for the rights they enjoy today, and because they know that, under Franco, even the ideology of “the outraged” could not have been possible.

It’s possible that Cubans may still have a lot to learn about civil and democratic matters, let the intransigent Iberians who feel tempted to judge remember that it is not dignified for a proud nation to preach in her underwear.

by Miriam Celaya

Translated by Norma Whiting

Cubanet, 13 December 2013

 

Operation Cleansing / Yoani Sanchez

Infanta and Vapor Streets, eight at night. The scaffolding creaks under the weight of its occupants. The area is dark, but there are still two painters passing their brushes over the dirty balconies, the facades, the tall columns facing the avenue. Time is short, the 2nd Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) will start in just a few hours and everything should be ready for the guests. The streets where the presidential caravans will pass will be touched up, the asphalt addressed, the potholes and poverty hidden.  The real Havana is disguised under another stage-set city, as if the dirt — accumulated for decades — was covered by a colorful and ephemeral tapestry.

Then came the “human cleansing.” The first signs of one more stage set being erected comes via our cellphones. Calls are lost into nothingness, text messages don’t reach their destinations, nervous busy signals respond to attempts to communicate with an activist. Then comes the second phase, the physical. The corners of certain streets teem with supposed couples who don’t talk, men in checked shirts nervously touching their concealed earphones, neighbors set to guard the doors of those from whom, yesterday, they asked to borrow a little salt. The whole society is full of whispers, watchful and fear-filled eyes, a huge dose of fear. The city is tense, trembling, on alert: the CELAC Summit has started.

The last phase brings detentions, threats and home arrests. Meanwhile, on TV the official announcers smile, comment on the press conferences and carry their cameras to the stairs of dozens of airplanes. There are red carpets, polished floors, tree ferns in the Palace of the Revolution, toasts, family photos, traffic diversions, police every ten yards, bodyguards, accredited press, talk of openings, people threatened, dungeons filled, friends whose whereabouts are unknown. Not even the Ñico López refinery is allowed to let its dirty smoke leave the chimney. The retouched postcard is ready… but it lacks life.

Then, then everything happens. Every president and every foreign minister returns to their country. The humidity and grime push through the fine layer of paint on the facades. The neighbors who participated in the operation return to their boredom, and the officials of #OperaciónLimpieza — Operation Cleansing — are rewarded with all-inclusive hotels. The plants installed for the openings dry up for lack of water. Everything returns to normal or to the absolute lack of normality that characterizes Cuban life.

The fake moment has ended. Goodby to the Second CELAC Summit.

28 January 2014

Manuel Cuesta Morua Arrest Confirmed

Manuel Cuesta Morua (from internet)
Manuel Cuesta Morua (from internet)

Yesterday opposition leader Manuel Cuesta Morúa member of the Progressive Arc Party and organizer in Cuba of the 2nd Democratic Forum on International Relations and Human Rights (parallel to CELAC) was detained and held at the 7th Police Station in La Lisa the outskirts of the Cuban capital.

The news came through the opponent and Cubanet columnist Juan Antonio Madrazo Luna, who confirmed the facts earlier today .

This arrest is part of the crackdown of State Security (the secret police) in the environment of ​​the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which takes place in Havana starting today with the presence of delegations from 33 member countries.

The whereabouts of Cuesta Morua, an attorney with the independent Legal Information Center (Cubalex), are now unknown.

This morning a measure was also signed by the attorneys Yaremis Flores, Laritza Diversent and Barbara Estrabao Bichili, who demand attention to the disappearance of independent counsel Veizant Boloy in the area of the  CELAC Summit.

“He phoned at 7:05 in the morning when he left his house and headed to the  Cubalex office located at 169 Lindero on the corner of Angeles, in, El Calvario, Arroyo Naranjo. About 700 yards from his home, he was approached by at least three cars, 4 State Security agents on motorcycles, and a police patrol, number 572. He remained in communication with members of the office while under persecution from the agents . At 12 noon (Monday) he communicated that he was at the Czech Embassy for his turn to connect to the internet and had been escorted by two motorized patrol agents and patrol 572. Since then his whereabouts are unknown.”

Cubanet, 28 January 2014

The President of Argentina Lunches with Fidel / Juan Juan Almeida

President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner left the Hotel Nacional at 12:40 (local time) heading to the residence of Fidel Castro to share a lunch with him, according to what the president herself told the press.

Previously, having received in her room a girl of 9 who wrote her a letter in which she said she’d been born on the same day as Néstor Kirchner.

27 January 2014

[To be able to read MORE and LONGER posts… click here.]

The Attendees of the II CELAC Summit Should Know the Authorities’ Deception / Angel Santiesteban

Disgracefully the image of José Martí (January 28, 1853) has been used from one side to the other, for one thing or another, thanks to its universal meaning. And his great image.

Tomorrow will be another one of those days when the Castro brothers use the birth of the Apostle to dirty his ideas.

To assume that Marti would support the “revolution” is one more of the frauds to which we are accustomed. It’s no secret to anyone that they are taking up the old practice that “the university is for revolutionaries,” so those who don’t participate in the political convocations are stigmatized as being against the regime, disaffected from the regime, and therefore will suffer the consequences. Secondary-school and pre-university students will never reach a higher level, and those who now have finished their studies could lose their graduation certificate.

But the blackmail won’t end even after graduation, because they won’t get the degree until two years later, after they’ve completed their military service. Then they will need an endorsement of good behavior and political participation to be situated as qualified professionals in suitable positions.

Nor will the odyssey end there, because the threat and constant blackmail of being unemployed is permanent. Maintaining a correct affiliation with the Castro brothers is the only indispensable requirement for surviving on the Cuban archipelago.

The presidents who attend CELAC should know this. We are a repressed people, with a guillotine hanging over our necks, and with the least breath, whatever the capacity for respiration, the bloody blade will come down. Keeping sight of that cutting blade creates major fear for Cubans. Their perpetual torment.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement. January 2014

Translated by Regina Anavy

27 January 2014

Calle Obispo: Look But Don’t Touch / Jose Hugo Fernandez

Two old men play the guitar, and she passes the hat.

HAVANA, Cuba, January, www.cubanet.org — If the caviar leftists from abroad saw what their eyes can see in Cuba, and not only what they want to see, a walk through Old Havana would suffice for them to discover the impassable class wall that the regime has raised between them and our common people.  They do not even need to cover all the historic town.  It will be sufficient for them to walk two or three blocks along Obispo.

As well as the most prominent tourist corridor, this street is the most populous on the Island.  In no other place do foreign visitors and humble Cubans converge in such a large scale and physically close way.  It seems obvious that the regime, through its viceroyalty in Old Havana, is taking advantage of the history of Obispo as a very busy commercial artery, in order to use it as a propaganda showcase, set aside to disguise the shameful ghetto that common citizens suffer from their status as zoo animals who are barely observed at a distance by visitors.

But it happens that here too the habitual clumsiness of our bosses surfaces. Being the point of closest proximity between Habaneros and visitors, Obispo offers an unequaled occasion to test the abyss the separates them.

Along its twelve blocks, from the banks of the bay to Monserrate, besides being the Cuban street with the greatest number of police spies, it is a unique commercial boulevard. Nevertheless, almost all of its stores sell in foreign currencies. So that the role of the Habaneros is to serve as decorations, placing themselves picturesquely at the site, going to look or looking at those who look, but without being able to touch, because nothing is within reach of their pockets. Also, in some cases, they go with the hope of getting something from the tourists. continue reading

On Obispo there are 39 stores, but none sells in the national currency. There are a dozen restaurants, of which only one accepts the money that Habaneros are commonly paid on their jobs. There are dozens of bars, cafeterias, trinkets, kiosks, almost all dedicated to commerce in “hard currency.” There are barely any self-employed and some small state shops where one can buy (in Cuban pesos) light food of the worst quality.

Beggars and fighters for pesos

On the corner of Havana there is a type of market and dining room for poor people (the only one in Obispo), which is an authentic dump, dark, dirty, with an interior atmosphere of oppressive misery.  On its facade they have written a kind of ad that is a coarse joke, as much for its consumers as for the tourists:  “Bargains and services of excellence.  All in national currency.”

Only the beggars and fighters for pesos exceed the number of police and tourists on this historic street, which dates from the 16th century, the first in Havana to be paved and also the pioneer in street lighting.  In the current number 462, between Villegas and Aguacate, there lived the illustrious philosopher and priest Felix Varela, in a house where today a small library and a souvenir kiosk for tourists share space.  Also celebrities like Ernest Hemingway, who wrote part of his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls in the Ambos Mundos hotel (Obispo and Mercaderes), spent the night here.

The center of what was called “the little Habanero Wall Street,” Obispo conserves some of its former headquarters, like the current building of the Ministry of Finances and Prices, from 1907, considered the city’s first “skyscraper;” or that in which the first Spanish-American photographic studio was inaugurated (no. 257, between Cuban and Aguiar).  Other historic buildings of this street are currently museums:  the numismatic, the mural painting, natural sciences, the goldsmith, and even the museum of the CDR, which is all a monument to hate.

Especially popular since the 19th century for its commercial establishments, fashion houses, boutiques, confectioners, renowned pharmacies, restaurants, bars, hotels, cafes…  Obispo has not stopped being the place most frequented by Havana residents.  It’s just that today, by the work and grace of the viceroyalty of Old Havana, far from being what it was, it has become a street of infamy.

Photo journalism by Jose Hugo Fernandez


Yesterday perhaps he wanted to be like Che…

Cuna del Daiquirí, a la entrada de Obispo
Cuna del Daiquirí, a la entrada de Obispo

Cradle of the Daiquiri, at the entrance of Obispo

Muy politizada la venta de libros en la mayor librería a cielo abierto, Plaza de Armas, al final de la calle

Very politicized the sale of books in the biggest open air bookstore, Plaza de Armas, at the end of the street.

En Obispo también hay "estatuas humanas"

In Obispo also there are “human statues.”

La calle Obispo está llena de policías

Obispo Street is full of police.

Nunca llegó a rascar el cielo el primer rascacielos de Cuba

The first skyscraper of Cuba never got to scrape the sky.

Recogedor de latas vacías

Empty can collector

Único mercado en Obispo para habaneros de a pie

The only shop in Obispo for common Habaneros.

January 24, 2014 / Jose Hugo Fernandez

Note:  The books of this author can be acquired at the following addresses:  http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B003DYC1R0 and www.plazacontemporaneos.com

Translated by mlk.

“Unity in Diversity” / Reinaldo Escobar

The host country of the Second CELAC* Summit proclaims on its public billboards the principle of accepting diversity within unity. The invited guests should know that the main purpose of the Cuban government is that the other members of the Community should accept a peculiar feature of Cuba which makes it different from the rest: that within the Island political diversity is not accepted, and much less are those with political positions distinct from the ruling party able to meet in an Alternative Forum to debate in a parallel way the issues of concern to the Summit.

*Community of Latin American and Caribbean States

27 January 2014

Angel Santiesteban Asks the CELAC Summit not to convert their visit into support for Raul Castro’s regime

From Prison:

Cuban writer sends message to the attendees at the CELAC Summit.

Ángel Santiesteban, sentenced to five years in prison, asks the leaders invited to the meeting to not convert their visit into an act of support for Raúl Castro’s regime.

The writer Angel Santiesteban is sentenced to five years in prison (Cortesía).

Luis Leonel León / Special

The Cuban writer, Ángel Santiesteban, sentenced to five years in prison, asks the presidents and international political figures invited to the Second Summit of the Community of Latin Amerian and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Havana, that they not convert their visit into an act of support for Raúl Castro’s regime.

“The Castro brothers have been the most skilled manipulators in the hemisphere. Their political astuteness has kept them in power for more than half a century. To support relations with the dictatorship is a shameless act that the attendees will add to their curriculum vitae,” Santiesteban declared, in a message sent from the Lawton Prison Settlement in Havana.

Santiesteban, one of the most prominent contemporaneous writers of the island, affirmed that Cubans could never resolve their internal problems by way of civic protest, since any popular demonstration would be suppressed in hours, as happened on August 5, 1994. continue reading

“We don’t have the possibility nor the way to decide our future. All of us who have taken this step find ourselves in prison or obligated to abandon the country,” the intellectual pointed out.

The CELAC Summit will take place in Havana on January 28 and 29, with the attendance of some 20 heads of state and governments, including the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon, and the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza.

Santiesteban, 48 years old, was condemned under charges of “violation of domicile and injuries” against his ex-wife in a controversial judicial process. He entered prison on January 28, 2013, and since then has gone on hunger strikes to protest the conditions of his detention and “a fabricated trial.”

“My crime has been to write what I think about Cuba and its dictatorship, something that I’m not going to stop doing,” said Santiesteban in an interview granted from prison to Diario Las Americas.

A few days ago, several officials violently ransacked his cell, since they presumed he could be preparing to make a statement to the foreign press.

During the search, they confiscated the magazines and books they found, among them the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the by-laws of Amnesty International and a story that he hadn’t finished writing.

Although other Cuban intellectuals have been interested in his case, the government continues to keep him isolated “hoping that they forget about me.”

During the beating that a group of agents from State Security gave him before he was sent to prison, one of them warned him that he could have something happen to him like the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, who died in a controversial accident in July 2012.

“When you get out of prison, you could die as if it were an accident,” Santiesteban remembered an agent warned him while they were beating him in November 2012.

That year Santiesteban also wrote an open letter to Raúl Castro, in which he accused him of intensifying the repression against the opposition. Days after sending it, they charged and condemned him for the supposed crime of domestic violence, which under a normal proceeding would have been sanctioned only with a fine.

“Since I began my blog they always told me to give it up and occupy myself with literature. As I didn’t stop, they fabricated a case of domestic violence in which they alleged that I entered the house of my ex-wife, the mother of my son, to beat her. They used false witnesses, hoping to silence the true reason they were prosecuting me, which is my dissidence,” argued the writer.

Amnesty International 

Intellectuals, activists and human rights organizations have requested that Amnesty International recognize Santiesteban as a prisoner of conscience, but up to now the organization hasn’t responded.

However, he considers that “something strange has happened.”

“I don’t know what purpose those lists serve,” he declared. “Except to support a cause and offer cover to someone in the claws of a totalitarian power, to more or less assure his life.”

He remembered that two days before going to prison he received a call from Amnesty International assuring him that they recognize his cause, but that they couldn’t add his name to the list until he was in prison. Later he learned that someone in Cuba had bothered to puruse it, because the organization had placed his name on the list of political prisoners without consulting him.

“However, it doesn’t make me lose sleep. I can’t turn back from the road I took. Everything started when I expressed ideas that were adverse to totalitarianism. My crime has been to think differently.”

False proofs, manipulations and silences

To reveal the falsity of the judicial process they planned against him, Santiesteban used the collaboration of a friend who pretended to be a prosecutor and demanded that the false witness tell her the truth about what she maintained about the accused.

“The conversation with the supposed prosecutor was recorded,” he said. In it the witness confesses that she had been pressured and bribed to testify against me.”

He described that during his presentation in court, searching for arguments to condemn him for the supposed maltreatment of his ex-spouse, they ordered him to write a sentence extracted from the newspaper Granma (the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba).

“After analyzing my handwriting, a proficient calligrapher dressed as a soldier certified my guilt, saying he found a certain inclination and a suspicious size in my letters. It would be a joke if I weren’t in prison,” he commented.

Six months ago, the request for review of the case was delivered to the Minister of Justice, where they allege that the documents have been lost and that they don’t know who removed them. Recently the attorney who represents Santiestbean discovered that some of the documents had been extracted from the file.

“The regime is hoping that they will forget about me, in order to kill me later,” reported Santiesteban. “They’ve threatened me with that on multiple occasions,” he pointed out.

Published in Diario las Americas

Ángel Santiesteban, a victim of the repressive politics in Cuba

The Cuban writer is in the Lawton Prison Settlement, in Havana.

Ángel Santiesteban, Cuban writer. (otrolunes.com)

Iliana Lavastida/Special 

@IlianaLavastida

Destroying the image of their political adversaries is a tactic of regimes that want to control the masses. The same as the Nazi ideologues, who achieved the manipulation of the minds of million of followers, totalitarian governments like the Cuban one use the method to destroy the figures who oppose them.

Ángel Santiesteban, winner of various Casa de las Américas prizes and winner of such prestigious competitions as Juan Rulfo and Alejo Carpentier, is recognized as one of the strongest voices in contemporary Cuban literature. However, his decision to dissent and to dare to question the repressive methods of the regime and open up through his blog on the Internet, which he considers “a space for constructing free thought,” implicated him in a judicial trial, after which he ended up being condemned for a common crime.

After a rigged trial, the prosecutor came forward with an order of 15 years of privation of liberty against the intellectual, who was accused of rape, robbery and attempted murder against his ex-spouse, the mother of one of his two sons, and they also prohibited him from approaching her for two years.

In these moments, the writer is in the Lawton Prison Settlement, in the Cuban capital. From one of his cells, thanks to the collaboration of activists inside and outside Cuba who support the dissident, the photos of Santiesteban behind bars accompany as graphic testimony the interview he granted to Diario Las Americas.

The five years of prison he is serving, according to the figureheads of power, are intended to make him desist from his interest in writing about the truth, but the same declaration of principles published by Santiesteban while he awaits sentencing define exactly what he has chosen as his lifeline.

“Since I undertook my journey with the blog, I felt the energy of a liberty that I didn’t know. And once it’s tried on, now it can’t be missed. It’s as essential as oxygen itself.”

Published in Diario las Americas

Translated by Regina Anavy

24 January 2014

Detained Half an Hour on Marta Beatriz’s Stairway / Lilianne Ruiz

Community Communicators' Network on the ground floor of the building -- Courtesy of Marta Beatriz
Community Communicators’ Network on the ground floor of the building — Courtesy of Marta Beatriz

HAVANA, CUBA — This last Wednesday, I was walking quickly through Belascoain, disgusted by the odor of urine from the doorways. Every once in a while a peddler called his wares. On arriving at Zanja, crossing the street, the area was deserted. Three men in plainclothes blocked the door of building 409, where Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello lives.

I tried to ignore them and continued. The door was locked.

“Where are you going?”

“Who’s asking?”

The man, with an eastern accent, responded while putting in front of my eyes an identity card with initials in red: DSE.

“State Security Department, my dear,” he said with that lack of professionalism that one cannot imagine.

He did not clarify what it was all about. He again asked me the first question, and I told him that I was going to see Marta Beatriz Roque.

He took my identification and led me inside the building. He called one of his minions, a black man about two meters tall and more than 50 years of age, whom he called “brigade-ist.” And he told him, “Keep her here, she cannot go up to see Martha Beatriz.”

A thermos of coffee on one of the steps of the wide staircase betrayed the complicity of some neighbors with the political police.  Two uniformed policewomen appeared on the scene.  The “brigade-ist” charged one of them with watching me. continue reading

Escalera-de-Martha-Beatriz-Roque_dos-mujeres-policías_foto-tomada-de-internet-300x200I tried to find out what had happened to the boys of the Communicators Network, which was supposed to meet like every Wednesday in the home of Marta Beatriz, director of the group. The answer could be assumed, but getting a statement from the authorities is always the most difficult. I did not get one.

Beginning last November 19 there has been a police blockade around Roque Cabello and the group of community reporters who from their locations in 9 provinces report on events that affects the lives of common Cubans: collapses, evictions, disasters in medical care, and social security. All these testimonies absent from the massive official medial, monopolized by the State.

In all, the members of the Network come to 127. They have a common denominator: They are not afraid; at least this situation has not managed to paralyze them. They have managed to get people to tell their stories with their complete names and photographs! Sometimes even their personal address.

They have a bulletin entitled Hairnet which is published every fifteen days. Hairnet is printed and distributed clandestinely within Cuba.

Other digital sites like Cubanet, MartiNoticias, Diario de Cuba, Miscelaneas de Cuba and Primavera Digital publish their accounts. They have served other independent reporters by identifying items of interest.

Precisely, I had gone there in order to write about the boycott, the physical attacks, acts of repudiation, arbitrary detentions of them; perpetrated by the political policy with the collaboration of some neighbors of the building. The only thing that I could do was try to obtain more information.

I again asked the uniformed policewoman about the members of the Network.

“Are they detained?”

“I do not know. I cannot explain it to you.”

“Can I make a telephone call?”

“No.”

I asked her if she had no doubts that what she was doing was correct.

“You’re going to convince me that what Marta Beatriz is doing is fine?” she asked me.

It seemed to me that she doubted.

“What do you think that Marta Beatriz does?  It’s not going to be the bad thing they have told you,” I said at my own risk.

I got no answer. I went on to explain to her that citizen journalism is a right protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that if she was not familiar with the document, I told her that in the civilized world anyone can express his opinions, even against official policy and not be bothered for it. Much less by the police, charged with protecting the tranquility and freedom of citizens.

She ordered me to shut up. A commotion ensued that made the second woman police officer come down the stairs. Until this moment, she had been on the landing obviously in order to impede Marta Beatriz from leaving her home.  The two policewomen and I were arguing with raised voices when we saw Marta Beatriz taking photos on the stair landing. One of the women ran after her, jumping the stairs.  She shrieked, “Stupid, get in the house and don’t even stick your head out!”

They opened the door each time some neighbor entered or left. The terrifying thing was seeing how the tenants greeted the police or simply moved along.

That made me think that, indeed, we would not have to wait to become a majority in order to obtain constitutional recognition.

Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello directs the Cuban Community Communicators Network.
Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello directs the Cuban Community Communicators Network.

After about 30 minutes, they took me to a patrol car. On arriving at the traffic light of Calzada del Cerro and Rancho Boyeros, they handed me my identity card and I understood that I could go home, when the same policewoman who argued with me said with gritted teeth:

“Freed today.”

On arriving home I called Marta Beatriz.  She told me that that day they had detained 16 people at the door of her home; 15 journalists plus a server.  But those were freed in places as distant as the “La Monumental” highway or the municipality of Caimito in the former Havana province (today Mayabeque).  They left me, I do not know why, at the corner of my house.

January 24, 2014 | 

Translated by mlk.

The Curse of the Evil Eye / Regina Coyula

I don’t belong to the nomenklatura, I don’t receive remittances, I’m not self-employed, I don’t work in any foreign firm not in the tourist sector, I don’t operate in the black market, for me the New Year celebration is as modest as for the majority of my countrymen. But when one thinks things couldn’t get worse, the Devil shows up and breathes on you.

Do you remember in the previous post I had strictly domestic plans? Right. My mom at 97 tried to stand on leg that went to sleep; she fractured her femur, operation included, and I became a nurse. A brief stay between 20-24 December at the Fructuoso Rodriguez orthopedic hospital let me see the lights and shadows of the healthcare system first hand.

And for three weeks I moved to my mom’s house. She didn’t have to worry, it was divine, walking from the second day after the operation, and up and down the stairs of the house. All under the supervision of the little old people who are the candle that creates things and when they come and have to go back to the surgeon it’s for being intrepid.

I didn’t feel well on  24 December and was sick the whole week, but at with both my mother and all because my sister — also — had a blood pressure crisis and had osteoporosis so she couldn’t lift even a bucket of water and my niece was traveling.

Dragging my feet and dying of fever, I took care of my mother and crawled back to lie down in bed. On the 30th my son, extremely worried, insisted on taking me to the doctor and it turned out I had dengue fever.

Tremendous alarm, I didn’t want to infect my mother, but without mosquitoes there is no infection, and in my mother’s house there are no mosquitoes. When my niece got back from her trip I went home, on January 14. Can you imagine a house with two adult (and unconscious) males adrift for three weeks?

In a fit (having nothing to do with the state of the house) I grabbed the scissors. With hypothyroidism, menopause, and red dye, all mixed up, I made my hair a dull crown on a brilliant mind. Now, in addition to ugly hair, it’s badly cut. In the meantime, I broke a tooth and haven’t been able to go to get it fixed. More? Yes, more. The refrigerator, that essential, stopped chilling, and for 25 CUCs, in less than half an hour, the mechanic opened it and injected gas. I think I’m beat.

Plans for this year? Visit the endocrinologist and the dentist and measure the view for new windows. That’s what I want, I leave the rest to you.

24 January 2014