Translating Cuba

With those incomprehensible absurdities of politics, the United Nations Decolonization Committee adopted the resolution presented by Cuba, with support from Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela, on behalf of the inalienable right of the people of Puerto Rico to self-determination and independence.

By any chance does this Committee know that on 6 November 2012 a plebiscite was held in Puerto Rico, where the majority of the population voted to join the United States as the 51st state, somewhat smaller numbers to maintain the current status of the Commonwealth, and only a tiny minority to be independent? Is it, perhaps, not the will of Puerto Ricans, for years now, to remain joined to the United States in a way or another, as demonstrated in the four plebiscites?

That Cuba and its populists friends propose every year, in an act of manifest interference in the internal affairs of another country, is nothing unusual, but that the United Nations accepts it is shameful. In addition, the information offered by the official Cuban press is manipulated, stating that the text now adopted stressed the majority pronouncement made last November 6 by the population of this country in rejecting the current condition of political subordination. In reality, the majority pronouncement was to cease being a Commonwealth and to become a State of the United States.

How long will they continue politicking in favor of a small group of separatists who, convinced of the rejection of its citizens of independence (the minimum percentages obtained in four plebiscites prove it), have chosen to live it, his backed by the will of most Puerto Ricans, who have not lost their language, nor their flag, nor their music or dances, their customs or their identity, but have enriched it with new contributions? How long the UN will be continue to lend itself to this dirty game?

25 June 2013

As a young girl, I wanted to study journalism, entirely for the romantic idea to follow in the tracks of my grandfather, a decent Cuban who from the jungle in The Free Cuban and then from The World and Bohemia made me feel proud of my name.

A proud lady with the last name of Nuiry, to whom my name meant nothing, decided not to accept me into the School of Journalism, and after a long detour, now as a citizen I am fulfilling that desire of youth.

Did the Congress of the Journalists Union surprise me? There will be a Congress, but will there be journalism? Yes, they confirm to me. Not all there will be journalists, but all will be official.

It follows that the independent press not known for its certified members, is still a press that establishes the necessary counterweight for contrasting points of view and on more than a few occasions for important topics that the colleagues of the guild pass over.

The press that “informs” us is an embarrassment. No journalist seems to realize the ridiculousness of news such as: The Syrian government inflicted a defeat on the terrorists and mercenaries to regain control over an important area of Aleppo. This short note serves as an essay on how the information Cubans receive is transformed. We never heard that the government lost control of the area, and we still learn that the Syrian opposition is heterogeneous and essentially native.

The Cuban press offers up a banquet of the evils of the world: the crisis in Europe, political corruption, what to say about the United States that even has its own journalist (Nicanor Leon Cotayo, no, not a character from Macondo), another specialized in discovering the links between the CIA and the Cuban mafia.

With so many foreign problems, and with such international solidarity with the cause of the Cuban Five, little time is left for national reporting. So they say almost nothing about the arrests and trials for corruption, the failure of the sugar harvest, the change of sign of the Cuban Workers Federation Congress, the housing debt of the victims of the last two?… five?… eight? cyclones. And these kinds of things, as the journalist Fritz Suarez Silva says. Oh, and they aren’t my lies.

24 June 2013

The Multilateral Program «Cuba 360»  was launched. We started two months ago distributing the promotional brochure on this initiative — and other writings as part of the “Seed” — in various social sectors and it has been enriched with a modest collection of books that some compatriots selflessly donated to the library.

Those involved are happy, but not satisfied, because there is much to be done and the ambition that went along with the development of this proposal is also present in its implementation, which so far is progressing according to our capabilities. However, we continue to see alternative ways to deploy this sociopolitical platform in its architecture and instructional efforts to the whole country.

The possible and close dream of the democratization of Cuba, lets us continuously leap over the pitfalls along the way and move forward in this magnificent and colossal challenge. Our steps, although still small, are sure and constant in the search for, creation and facilitation of a climate of trust and dialogues among Cubans that open the doors to reconciliation and lasting peace. The strength in this direction is the grain of sand in the ecumenical and solidarity rock of our nation.

25 June 2013

By 1998 Fernando had already spent a year and a half working for free in the civil war in Angola where, to get to a clinic in an isolated hamlet, he had to be accompanied by a landmine deactivation expert. Twenty-five years later he is packing his bags for Venezuela.

This time there is no war. The government of General Raul Castro has turned Cuban medicine into the country’s premier export industry. It is a profitable business. Doctors are to Cuba what petroleum is to Venezuela.

According to figures from the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), in 2011 the depleted state coffers took in around five billion dollars just in the exchange of Cuban doctors for Venezuelan oil.

In 2003 the government of the late Hugo Chavez reached an agreement in which PDSVA, the state oil company, would send 105,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba for which Havana would pay by sending doctors, sports trainers and military advisers to Venezuela.

When Fernando, a medical specialist, travelled in an Ilyushin Il-62 jet to lend his services in the Angolan jungle, Fidel Castro’s official rhetoric was quite different. Money did not matter. In speeches he reiterated that he was motivated only by altruism and ideological solidarity, known as “proletarian internationalism.”

The Cuban regime did not begin charging for medical services until after 1991, the year Soviet communism said goodbye. Cut off from the wealth of rubles, petroleum and raw materials coming from Moscow, Cuba entered a period of unending economic crisis.

The Soviet Union defrayed the cost of the island’s military expenditures. A phone call to the Kremlin was all that was needed to obtain financial credits. Subversion was not Fidel Castro’s only tool for exporting his brand of revolution. On any given day he might use funds from the national budget to build a school in Kingston, Jamaica or to provide a sugar mill to Nicaragua.

It did not matter; the money was not coming out of his pocket book. But with the precipitous fall of the Berlin Wall and the disappearance of the Soviet Union, subsidized Cuba had to adapt to changing times.

Exports fell 40%. Sugar production some 70%. There was only tourism, which generated somewhat more than two billion dollars annually. And family remittances, which with hard currency, packages from overseas and cash spent by Cuban Americans on trips to the island amounted to almost five billion dollars a year.

But what contributed the most green-backs to GDP was the export of services. Not all the statistics are readily available but Carlos, an economist, believes that “just in terms of the services provided to the ALBA countries (Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua) the figure approaches ten billion dollars annually.

It is estimated that currently some 40,000 doctors, specialists, nurses, technicians and others are working in sixty countries on five continents. Schools of medicine at Cuban universities graduate as many as 5,000 physicians annually. It is an assembly line, a highly profitable one.

Most of them are paid between two thousand and three thousand dollars a month, though some nations such as South Africa pay twice that. The regime retains 95% of their salaries.

Recently, Brazil announced it had agreed to hire about six million Cubans to work in the country’s depressed, rural areas. In a statement Brazil’s Federal Medical Council branded the agreement as “irresponsible and questioned the “technical and ethical quality” of the Cuban professionals.

After Brazil’s physicians exerted pressure, the government of Dilma Rousseff instead decided to hire Spanish and Portuguese doctors, whom it considered to be more qualified.

Cuba’s medical system does not enjoy good health but, so far, this situation is not reflected in the country’s favorable statistics. The average lifespan is 78 years. In 2012 the rate of infant mortality was 4.6 deaths for every thousand live births, the lowest in the Americas.

However, many hospitals are in ruins, their equipment in poor condition and their personnel mediocre. The mass exportation of doctors provokes unease among Cubans. Oneida, a housewife, says that specialists are rare. “At the clinic where I go, the dermatology department is open only one day a week due to a shortage of dermatologists. No hospital in Havana has a staff of dermatologists on duty. Those who treat you are foreign students and their quality leaves something to be desired. Most of the trained physicians are on ’missions’ (working overseas).”

According to the Brazilian Medical Council 94% of Cuban medical school graduates who took Brazil’s medical licensing exam in 2012 failed.

More than 5,000 Cuban doctors have deserted the international medical missions. Due to a lack of rigorous training for many of Cuba’s medical professionals, some doctors and specialists who decide to leave their homeland opt to work as medical assistants and nurses in the United States.

“Acquiring an American medical license is an arduous task. The exams are very rigorous. Once you live here, you realize there are a lot of gaps in our medical training. For me it’s not bad. While I am learning English, I work in a private clinic as a nurse. It pays well,” admits Eduardo, who has lived in Miami for two years.

Fernando, the doctor who 25 years ago was stationed in Angola, acknowledges that quality these days is not the best. “The reasons vary. From not having immediate access to specialized information, in spite of the national network Infomed, to low salaries and lack of technology. But I don’t think that the world is full doctors willing to work for two years in remote locations for subsistence wages.”

In 2012 sixty-eight Cuban doctors died in Venezuela. The Chavez government memorialized them, unveiling a plaque in their honor. “To heath care workers killed in Bolivarian lands while carrying out their duty,” reads the bronze inscription in a Caracas hospital, as though they fell in combat.  Most were killed in street violence, which last year alone claimed 12,000 lives in that country.

“Then why are you going,” I ask Fernando.

“It’s the only way to acquire hard currency — performing abortions, doing small-scale business transactions and saving what little money they pay you — so that, when you go back home, you can fix-up your house and provide a better living for yourself and your family,” he says.

Some doctors with whom I spoke said it was economic necessity and not altruism that was leading them to work in out-of-the-way and dangerous locations, even at the risk of losing their lives.

Iván García

19 June 2013

I’m not addicted to television, I’m not even an assiduous spectator of the small screen. Rather, I have a kind of monitor, to see the shows, almost all American of course, that I rent at a video stand. The only channel where I sometimes see interesting programs, “all canned” and “by chance made in USA,” is channel 33 which still, thank God, has not been ideologically contaminated.

Just a couple of days ago, in the morning, I was looking for a program that interests me but that I never see because of the schedule, at that time I’m just finishing breakfast, I lock myself in my workshop to listen to music and do some work until 11:00 in the morning, the time I go to the kitchen to “invent” our daily dish. By change I put on an old channel and fell in love with some beautiful cats who just then were being shown on the screen. The program grabbed me and I watched to the end, leaving me an immense desire to go tot Key West, or Cayo Hueso as we call it in Cuba.

I’m a cat person, I confess, I love all animals, except cockroaches and black moths (tataguas), but I have a special weakness for domestic cats. In fact I have two and feed a third. Usually I succumb before their sweet gaze.

The program in question was about the life of these animals in this little paradise, where there is a ratio of four cats per person and not all of them necessarily live in houses: some are shared with humans in hotels and restaurants. All are well fed and receive veterinary care. Some are operated to control reproduction. But what caught my attention, as I am a reader and admirer of Hemingway, is the care and devotion they give to the descendants of his beloved cats,in what was one of his most important residences.

I was captivated by those with six toes, with the effort and dedication to maintain their race and especially with how healthy they look. I think that if I ever visit this beautiful key, where in addition is nicely marked the area closest to our country, “the famous 90 miles,” it will cost me a great deal of effort to resist the temptation to get myself one of these beautiful animals.

Hopefully some day the culture in our country will also contemplate the care of animals and plants, and be known not just for its concerts and ballets. Of course, to get there they would first have to restore all the individual rights and free will of its citizens, lost during these more than fifty years.

23 June 2013

“Are you going to tell me that the State has more rights over my grandchildren than I do, I who have raised them since they were born?” was the response of Reina Ruiz Perez to the prosecutor, the day she tried to make her case for adoption before the Havana Provincial Court.

Later, frustrated by the neglect, she warned the representative of authority of her desire to undertake a public protest and ended up detained for the umpteenth time in her life.

The prosecutor had suggested that “after the death of the mother, custody goes to the father. If the father doesn’t want them, (the children) go to the State.”

In 2010, after the death of her daughter, this grandmother started to sue for legal custody of her grandchildren; the fathers of both minors have to objection at all in ceding custody to the maternal grandmother, and in practice don’t take care of them.”

“The children have been living with me since they were born, but there are no legal procedures I can undertake to bring it formalize it,” said Ruiz Perez.

The Cuban courts “have denied (the grandmother) access to justice,” Cubalex attorney Laritza Diversent points out, when consulted on the matter. “In Cuba adoption is processed through a record of voluntary jurisdiction; this means it’s a matter of particular interest. In these cases the procedural law authorized going forward without legal representation. In other words, the grandmothers are legally authorized to adopt their grandchildren.”

Ruiz Perez also tells us that since the ’90s, when she became active in the non-violent opposition to the Cuban dictatorship, she has faced great abuse, which has included being imprisoned without a trial in the women’s prison known as “Manto Negro” (Black Robe); along with innumerable detentions in Police Stations to try to block her protest activities. Many of these arrests occurred within sight of her three children, and at least once she was taken the Police Station with her youngest daughter in tow.

“I went to the Calabazar Station up to four times a week,” the grandmother reports. “Once they locked me up in the Station Chief’s office with my youngest daughter, until the official ’in charge of minors’ came looking for the Station Chief. When she opened the door and saw the girl sleeping in my lap, she was shocked because it wasn’t even 8:00 in the morning, which betrayed that we had spent the night locked up there.”

With a long history of harassment and political persecution, at age 53 Reina Ruiz Perez has obtained a visa to live as a refugee in the United States. The problem lies in the fact that the Cuban State, so far, has not allowed her to take assume legal representation for her grandchildren. In practice, she has been the only one who has taken on the care of the minors, who have lived in her house since they were born, where they get a pension — their mother having been a State worker — which amounts to 100 Cuban pesos per child (the equivalent of $4.00 USD a month).

This legal impediment means that the children haven’t been able to obtain the documentation to travel with her to the United States.

After hiring a lawyer Ruiz Perez was not able to complete the adoption; as it says in the case file, “The process contracted on 29 August 2012 was shelved indefinitely.” Later, following the recommendations offered by Cubalex — the legal information center — covered in the articles of the law that authorize it, she presented a brief to the Court to activate the adoption proceedings herself, but the Court refused to recognize the procedure.

The last time State Security visited Mrs. Ruiz Perez, the agents who presented themselves as “from Immigration” expressed “concern” for the situation of the children, and argued that it wasn’t the Cuban government that was “holding things up,” but “your American government that doesn’t want to give them the visa.”

But it’s not only the political police that has expressed that argument.

According to what is also stated in the case file, the president of the Boyeros Court “treated Ruiz Perez disrespectfully” and said that “it is the fault of the American that they aren’t allowed to leave, not the president of the Court’s, and that there no adoption is accepted.”

One wonders what is the objective of refusing the grandmother in question the ability to complete the adoption as established.

In maintaining this situation the Cuban State is violating the Convention of the Rights of the Child, which demands that the best interest of the children always be considered.

21 June 2013

Not very productive on the blog, I’ve dedicated time to a course on editing with Adobe CS6 including editing work, extremely interesting; I read The City and the Dogs (I much prefer the young Vargas Llosa to the famous one); I have put in order the drawers and closets; and have prepared work in one of my favorite pastimes, my violon d’Ingres no doubt, but the sewing and crafts I love. Without internet, I can only translate Telesur, which focuses too much on Venezuela, as if the most important events happen there; it must be the “he who pays,” and well, you already know who the majority shareholders are of that broadcaster.

I watched excerpts of the recent Federation of University Students (FEU) congress which depressed me. Even though I know that those kids are chosen for their discourse (note I don’t say for their ideology, because I doubt they all say what they think), the speeches I saw didn’t refer to the students or their rights, nor to the university environment; it was all about struggle, battles, enemies, campaigns for the release of the “Five Heroes,” all in similar language, with similar gestures, until I think they clone them, because they were dressed alike, they couldn’t have reflected better the anodyne or innocuous. I hope, not that they change their ideology if they are sincere, but that they try to shake off the image of mediocrity they convey.

I continue with the mundane world. I enjoyed Pestano’s homerun at the end of the game, the dream of any player, a homerun with the bases loaded. He should have dedicated it to Victor Mesa, who left him off the national team. I enjoyed the final of the under-twenty soccer, and enjoyed the Confederations Cup. Spain is in crisis but their soccer is first class.

What else?  I went to bed at dawn on Tuesday because of Dirty Sexy Money. It’s funny how the political discourse goes in one direction and the TV is full of pirated series that say the opposite. And they say it better. If we did a meta-analysis on the series, we could say it’s an acid critique of social decadence because of money and power, but it must be very profound because what we see is a fast-paced plot, well acted, well set, with the addition in my case of being in New York.

And I say, if the Muslims have to go to Mecca once in their lives, I have to go once to MOMA, pass through the door of the Met, eat a hot dog in Central Park, and take the corresponding tourist photos of the Flatiron and Chrysler buildings and Times Square. Meanwhile, I conjure up my NewYorkitis with canned enemies.

21 June 2013

You could not imagine the artifices and movements required to get a complaint, a post, a letter where you say what you want to your family or friends about what you feel or what happens in prison, out of prison, without its being seized.

All the documents that leave or enter the prison have to pass by the eyes of the Re-education officer.

Thursday mornings the correspondence is collected, and from then until Friday afternoon, it passes through several readings by the censors, who do or don’t approve it.

This also occurs in reverse, families send letters, and after being read with great care the inmate receives them.

It’s unnecessary to clarify that in my particular case the control measures are redoubled.

Last week my family heard nothing from me, because the officer took the correspondence without noticing, according to what the Re-educator told me.

In any event, I look for alternative ways to get my complaints on the Internet, bypassing the various levels of obstacles.

It’s worth nothing that the common prisoners lend their help in this communication bridge, motivated by the dream of a political change, as well as anger awakened by the guards with their excesses and blackmail.

It’s like a cat and mouse game to get the complaint to its destination, because to avoid them they resort to any unprincipled trick. There are prisoners who earn perks not to let me out of their sight, attentive to every detail.

They have ordered their collaborators to inform on the names of everyone who associates with me. In recent days they have removed five inmates, accusing them of collaborating with me. They are taken to different barracks or other prisons, sometimes located in distant provinces.

To talk on the phone I have to wait for my dat each week, and carefully plan the three minutes allowed, because the clock that calculates the time measures it whether or not you manage to communicate, without any margin.

But every victory, no matter how small, is a pleasure. Of course they hid me away in the this maximum security prison to limit my connection to the outside, another attempt by the Castro brothers’ Government to silence my voice.

One day we will publicly thank those people who have risked their tranquility in prison so that the world will know the horrors that are committed in the prisons of the Castro dictatorship.

Finally, my thanks to State Security’s military prisons which have held me here, allowing me to be a witness to the daily abuses that happen in Cuban prisons before the complicit eyes of those who direct the destinies of the Island; what happens within the Guantanamo Naval Base, as described in the official discourse of complaint, can’t hold a candle to what happens in Cuba’s own prisons.

They should see the level of impunity with which the Cuban government acts.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580. May 2013

Posted 18 June 2013

Again, the education sector is marred by scandal: the theft and sale of the questions for the eleventh grade exams. Apparently all or most of the municipalities of Havana are involved in this crime.

It is not the first time this has happened, and the media haven’t reported it. As usual, the news comes through the students and their parents, close to us, almost always neighbors, who have been affected by these events.

There have been meetings between the teachers and the parents of the students involved in the various schools, and the approach of the teaching profession, in my view, is not the most correct, and far from effective: “Don’t give your children so they can’t buy the exams.” This reminds me of the famous story of the cuckolded husband who comes home and sees his wife snuggling on the sofa with her lover and, enraged, decides to throw out the sofa.

Once more, they want to suppress the effects without deeply analyzing  the causes. This has been happening in our schools for many years. It’s not news to anyone, but the State continues to pretend that does not happen, and continues to offer very favorable statistical figures to United Nations whose officials disseminate the information without taking the effort to verify it.

It is more or less the same policy used by public employees in our country: “The State pretends to pay me and I pretend to work.”

As long as the Ministry of Education does not decide to end this fraud once and for all and demand accountability at all levels, this situation will repeat itself and the quality and prestige of education in Cuba will continue to decrease.

According to popular comments, too widespread not to be true, even the University hasn’t escapes this scandal. It is said that they have been forced to send the entrance exams under guard by the TrasVal (“transfer of values”) Company, which until recently was used, as its name implies, to guard considerable sums of money and other things of value.

If we “throw out the sofa”* and don’t denounce these irregularities and crimes, we would be contributing with our silence even more to the “downward spiral” into the abyss, to something as important and precious as education and its prestige. We remember that mistakes in this sector are paid for over the long-term, when there is virtually no solution.

*Translator’s note: A common Cuban expression that comes from the following joke: A man comes home to find his wife and her lover having sex on the sofa. Enraged, he throws the sofa out the window.

21 June 2013