To avoid its being used for electoral ends in the face of the July 7 elections, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Transvestite Transexual and Intersexual (LGBTTTI) Pride March has been postponed by its organizers.
The Gay Pride Committee, which has put on this event for at least ten years, informed via social networks that the march usually held in May, would be rescheduled.
In addition, the Pride Committee reported that there was an intention among a group of entrepreneurs active in businesses whose clients belong to the gay environment in Puebla, to hold their own march, which is planned for May.
In regards to this the member activists of the Pride Committee said that the mobilization has marked commercial intentions and is not an event calling on civility, acceptance, visibility and respect.
The document mentions that ten years since its creation, the Pride Committee continues working with events such as the Anti-Homophobia Week and the LGBTTTI Cultural Week, to inform and generate the agenda of the vulnerable groups it represents.
The building is shaped like a dislocated Star of David. Gray, with a zinc-clad facade and little openings that provoke a strong sense of claustrophobia. The museumis not only the objects on its walls and in its display cases, the museum is all of it, each space one can move through and even the voids — with no human presence — that can be glimpsed through certain gaps. There are family photos, books with their gold-embossed covers, medical instruments, and images of young people in their bathing suits. It is life, the life of German Jews before the Holocaust. One might expect to see only the testimonies of the horrors, but most dramatic is finding yourself facing the testimony of everyday life. Laughter captured — years before the tragedy — is as painful to look at as are the emaciated corpses and piled up cadavers. The proof of those moments of happiness make the tears and pain that follow more terrifying.
After a time between the narrow corridors of the place and amid its bewildering architecture, I go outside and breathe. I see spring greenery in Berlin and think: we can’t allow this past to ever return.
A tiny window, the only source of light in a German Stasi cell.
And not very far from there, stands the Stasi Museum. I enter their cells, the interrogation rooms. I come from the perspective of a Cuban who was detained in the same place, where a window looking outward becomes an unattainable dream. One cell was lined with rubber, the scratch marks of the prisoners can still be seen on its walls. But more sinister seeming to me are the offices where they ripped — or fabricated — a confession from the detainees. I know them, I’ve seen them. They are a copy of their counterpart in Cuba, copied to a T by the diligent students from the Island’s Ministry of the Interior who were taught by GDR State Security. Impersonal, with a chair the prisoner can’t move because it is anchored to the floor and some supposed curtain behind which the microphone or video camera are hidden. And the constant metallic noises from the rattling of the locks and bars, to remind the prisoners where they are, how much they are at the mercy of their jailer.
After this I again need air, to get out from within those walls. I turn away from that place with the conviction that what, for them, is a museum of the past, is what we are still living in the present. A “now” that we cannot allow to prolong itself into tomorrow.
The phrase is attributed to the old Bolero; I’ve only heard part of the chorus and it says that everything will be the same when one of the members of a loving couple returns to the marital nest. It’s also used in colloquial speech in Cuba to emphasize that something remains, monotonous or not, immovable.
In recent days the old melody has been running through my mind on seeing Nicolas Maduro arrive in Cuba on his first visit as president, and the agreements they he signed with the Antillean government.
He came just for that? Like on a vinyl record with its “technological scratchiness,” the tonality more or less new — and noisy — for Venezuelans, seems to me coughed up by an outdated jukebox from the 1950s. I don’t know about Venezuela, but here the longevity script of the totalitarian regime constitutes a verbal rather than an ideological splash, and everyone knows it’s the same rhetoric from forever to guarantee the continuity of the leaders and the group in power.
Imagine the fabrication of mental medals and diplomas that they are sowing in the conscience of Venezuelans to be able to continue manipulating with a populism of false recognitions. The biggest and best medal that can be given to a person or to a people is that of true respect and consideration, with a sober management and conduct, responsible and democratic that represent the genuine interests of a country and they are truly at the service of the nation.
The democratic “bad company” and the immobility of the Castro totalitarianism makes many look with suspicion on all those who come to the presidency of their respective countries and call themselves friends of the old Cuban model. They can’t not create new paradigms with decrepit mental structures and policies.
The world turns and Cuba looks like a stationary satellite almost as old as the almendrones – the old American cars — that roam our streets. And speaking of a satellite, a few days ago we heard the news of the launching of the Ecuadorian satellite Pegasus.
My ancestors from Spain exterminated the aboriginal population of our soil and we see how over the space of fifty-four years, a family also descended from Spaniards — from Galicia, the land of my grandfather — makes us travel on the back of technological development, while other governments of our continent initiate the take of with their “first compatriots” toward a more humanistic track and take flight to modernity. At least they try, the Cuban government doesn’t even try.
Cuban TV fed us some “red and juicy” information on the 8 pm news Wednesday, April 24. It was about some water buffaloes that “escaped” from a state farm and were grazing on the side of the road or wherever they liked, with the related danger that these animals posed for the vehicles on the road.
The author of the article interviewed the director of the site, who defended himself against the criticism he’d received earlier for the same situation, but claimed to have fixed the fence and that the cattle broke it again to escape.
My kids, who are 30 and 26 and only eat pork — beef is so expensive that generally is eaten by government elite and international tourists — laugh about it and I can only join in the amusement. Their mischievous looks leave the caustic question in the air: “How well was the fence fixed?”
In my house, as most likely as in many others, we thought that perhaps to expose a cattle trampling is the only way they can find some directors to eat the meat, and above all, so that they can take a piece to their family.
These water buffaloes were imported from Vietnam and have caused problems for the Cuban livestock industry being wild herds away from state control. In that country they live in swampy areas, and because of their ability to move through the water they use them to plow in pairs — like oxen in our fields — in the rice fields. Who would ever think bring them to Cuba and drop them into our non-flooded lands to form a herd and run freely?
I imagine the joy of the rural collective when because of an accident they can taste the meat that is prohibited to them even at a party at the center, even more so when they know that some higher up sends the meat to privileged elite events. As an old friend of mine used to joke, “the wind of the Special Period” used to satirize that “the wind of the special period” took Cuba: some are ’more equal than others.’ But equal to whom?
I suspect that a smart move to improve reputation of the Venezuelan electoral system has been to narrow the margin between the candidates. It gives them prestige before the world and gives their opponents hope to maintain the rivalry, and accept defeat until the next fight at the polls, but neither will they gain more votes than their socialist opponents. I imagine that’s why Hugo Chavez supported from there the costly investment in voting machines and voting technology in general.
The Latin American leader needed — perhaps from the idea of Cuba’s historic monarchs — to legitimize his leadership of the country and he needed other countries to back his democratic image. It’s likely that from there arose the intention to certify through suffrage the “adjustable” preference of the majority of Venezuela for socialism.
It appears that the results are not decided by the count, but rather by the “numbers called” — like in a lottery — that are most attractive to those involved “behind the scenes” of a person chosen by them — like the electoral organ — and infallible for their purposes.
Then the support of the region’s and other nations, that was previously guaranteed by the “gestures of solidarity” in the form of paper currency or oil that the so-called Bolivarian leader used to make, and the guarantee of honoring the oil commitments contracted by the deceased president.
A difference and experience from the Cuban government, which specialized in winning for years with 99 percent of the vote, and this act typical of a sick ego under the influence of North Korea seriously detracts before the democrats of the globe, seems like the totalitarian mastery accumulated here — coupled with the democratic scare that cost Daniel Ortego to lose the Nicaraguan presidency for 17 years — which they put at the service of the South American country as they always do with any leader who speaks out against the United States to tighten his grip on highest office in his country.
I understand why the candidates friendly to the Cuban government deride the mockery their opponents make of their errors and gross manipulations . I remember the story of the appearance of Chavez in the form of a little bird as told by Maduro and the jokes that comment earned him around the world. But they didn’t flinch, because they are sure that they will win.
I suggest that nobody get excited or dizzy with siren song or truly democratic elections in Venezuela or other political models in mummified states, because according to my theory, they’re going to have socialism for a while.
And my poor blog had almost no spring. Angel Santiesteban, the cry of the last post I was able publish back in March, he is still in prison, and injustice is still have a party. To think that some people look and me and accuse me in Cuba of privileged access to the Internet. And the whole month of April passed with its rains but in my blog not a single drop.
But don’t cry. Here I am again. At least, for those who nevertheless pass through here to see if I reappear, here I am, still alive today, and trying to get out a word while I still have breath. At least you know as long as I’m write I’m not sitting around with my arms crossed. And to witness it and for the glory of God there are my religious communities and the two forums held at the Patmos Institute, and for a witness to the latter I refer to latest that we sent to Diario de Cuba who gives us a voice when we entirely lack one. A hug to everyone, and as my friend Antonio Rodiles says: ever onward!
To celebrate World Book Day — and the Castilian language — on 23 April, the online edition of the daily El Pais has presented to readers in Latin America with Voces para un Cervantes (Voices for a Cervantes) to download on computers and ebook tablets. The collection “brings together interviews that this newspaper has undertaken with the 37 Spanish-speaking writers who have obtained the highest award in Spanish letters since 1976,” when the Spanish poet Jorge Guillén first received the award.
In each of the interviews we hear the voice of the winners, transformed into contemporary classics of literary creation, although “Some are hurried interviews, made the same day of the Cervantes award where the winners express their joy and surprise. Others, more thoroughly, occurred before or after the award ceremony on April 23.”
All of the award-winning writers are in Voices for a Cervantes, from representatives of the legendary Spanish Generation of 27 — Jorge Guillen, Damaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego and Rafael Alberti — to José Manuel Caballero Bonald, who received it days earlier, through the memorable Jorge Luis Borges and other travelers in Latin letters such as Alejo Carpentier, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Sábato, Augusto Roa Bastos, Carlos Fuentes, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Dulce María Loynaz, Juan Gelman, Mario Vargas Llosa, José E. Pacheco, Gonzalo Rojas, Álvaro Mutis, Sergio Pitol, Nicanor Parra, Jorge and Jorge Edwards.
In the El Pais interviews these masterful voices of the New World alternate with the grand Hispanic artists such as María Zambrano, Luís Rosales, José Hierro, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Antonio Gamoneda, Francisco Umbral, Miguel Delibes, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Ana María Matute, Camilo José Cela, José García Nieto, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Francisco Ayala, José Jiménez Lozano, Juan Marsé y el citado José Manuel Caballero Bonald.
As clarifies in El Pais, the prize for Literature in the Spanish Language of Miguel de Cervantes was convened by the Ministry of Information and Tourism on September 15, 1975. Since then it has been awarded in the last quarter of each year to one of the six writers nominated by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language of Spain and Latin America, who receive it the following year on April 23 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, which coincides with the book fair in commemoration of the death of the author of Don Quixote de La Mancha.
Luis Enrique Lozada Igarza who was released from prison after a mass hunger strike
We, the undersigned members of the plural group ALDECU (Cuban Democratic Alliance), issue this document in order to express our deep satisfaction with the success achieved by the scores of hunger strikers belonging to the valiant Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), headed by José Daniel Ferrer García, a member of our group. On Tuesday night ended their peaceful protest after reaching the goal of achieving the release of Luis Enrique Lozada Igarza (the initiator of the hunger strike), who was unjustly imprisoned.
While we send our warmest congratulations to our dear UNPACU brothers for that undoubted victory, we express our satisfaction for the fact that the Castro authorities knew to rectify the arbitrariness that they themselves committed.
Venuto al Mondo (Twice Born), a film by Sergio Castellitto, with magnificent performances of Penelope Cruz and Emile Hirsch, based on the novel by Margaret Mazzantini where fratricidal war broke out in Sarajevo, serves as a backdrop for a personal drama, whose central theme is frustrated motherhood.
A young Italian woman visiting some friends in the former Yugoslavia met an American photographer, and a strong passion arose between the two. They meet again in Italy, when he goes in search of her prompted by her father, uniting both formally as a couple. The desire to have a child becomes an obsession, until after several attempts, doctors detect infertility in the woman. Then they decide to adopt a child.
Again frustration overtakes the couple, faced with the refusal of the Italian authorities to allow them to adopt, due to the criminal records of young photographer, so they decide to return to Sarajevo, to use artificial insemination, which is also interrupted by an armed attack on the hospital as they were about to do it, and they decide to stay in the country despite the war, in search of a surrogate.
The interesting thing about the film, along with its dialogue and actions, is that it demonstrates how the ideological manipulation of a “charismatic leader” sick with power, is able to bring the worst of human beings to the surface and to bring about a war between families and neighbors, for just ideological, ethnic or religious differences.
All this made me think of those early years of the Revolution, when they were creating the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution in the neighborhoods, their main objectives being surveillance, harassment and confrontation between neighbors and families, and then later, when these neighborhoods were changing their appearance, because their original neighbors went into exile and were replaced by other newcomers, who had nothing to do with the new environment, there were repercussions in some very unfortunate cases, where envy and lust surfaced.
Then, in the eighties, when the Mariel crisis rekindled those feelings and strengthened them, driven by the recklessness of those who incited them. This had dire consequences where abuse, beatings, and humiliations of all kinds were perpetrated by a manipulated masses, whom they had the audacity to call “an enraged people.” This did not develop into a major misfortune because fortunately our western idiosyncrasy has nothing to do with countries that served as the location for the film in question. But it was and is a stain to be set forever in our recent history.
Eighty activists of the Independent and Democratic Cuba party (CID) in Palma Soriano denounce the government for its incompetence, its abuses, corruption and deceit.
This government is leading the population to despair. It mistreats and exploits citizens. It harasses and punishes the opposition without reason or justification. There are political prisoners because of the fear and whim of the dictatorship, there are Cubans on hunger strikes risking their lives because they can’t find nor do they have other recourse to enforce their rights.
The law of the jungle reigns here, the strongest of feed off the weakest. Is no longer about demanding from on confronting the government but about defending itself against a network of extortion and abuse that survives under the protection of the authorities. What interests them least if the enforcement of the laws and the welfare of citizens.
Construction materials were sent to this area to solve the problems of reconstruction after the ravages of Hurricane Sandy, and they were turned into a business opportunity for those who were responsible for administering them.
The food prices are beyond the reach of most people and medical services are going from bad to worse. The changes there are here work to the advantage of a small group, at the expense of most Cubans.
Nivardo Amelo Ramírez, Coordinator of the CID for the eastern provinces said: “The solution begins with a peaceful transition based on a new constitution and new leaders and that can only be achieved with freedom and free elections.”
1-Yoelis Hodelin Rodríguez
2-Majela Lince Rodríguez
3-Suriley Grant Hechavarría
4- Sandor Grant Hechavarría
5-Alexander la Rosa Martínez
6-Urbano Vázquez Reyes
7-Yanelis Elegica Despaine.
8 Alfredo Anival Brabo Betsancour
9-Disney Alvares Días
10-Ernesto Ortis Betancourt
11-Yoanni Alonso Piña
12-Vivian Peña Hernández
13-Yordanis González Duanis
14-Agustin Alonso Peña
15-Yasmani Alonso Peña
16- Yanay Romero Parada
17-Leonardo Días Fajardo
18-Darian Martin Ruz Rodríguez
19-Yunior Sánchez Áreas
20-Luis Miguel Cabrera Zamora
21- Luis Darío Cabrera Zamora
22-Islaidis Martínez Rosalba
23-Yanet Sigas Rodríguez
24-Yordanis Gutiérrez Meriño
25-Osmar Núñez Collazo
26- Ronal Yunier Rodríguez Zayas
27- Yasmani Salina Salina
28-Nivardo Amelo Ramírez
29-Raul Grant Fernández
30-Manuel Chacón Leyva
31-Alex. A. Peláez Abrahán
32-Luis Manuel Medina Guerra
33-Osmanis Santos Guerra
34-Rafaela Parra Tamayo
35-Angel Lino Isaac Luna
36-Ramon Suarez Valdez
37-Jorge Luis Rodríguez Milanés
38-Jose Oriol Fuentes Arias
39-Lazaro Alonso Parada
40-Juan Antonio Costafreda Rosales
41-Marvelis Vegas Rodriguez
42- Yersey Sigas Rodríguez
43-Rainier Fundora Gómez
44-Rosa Rodríguez Leme
45-Jorge Luis Salazar Barrera
46-Edgar Elégica Zulueta
47-Sucetty López Díaz
48-Greisy Sigas Naranjo
49-Luis Enrique Labiste Medina
50-Daniel Nietos García
51-Julio Cesar Castellanos Parra
52- Alberto Yirat Orozco
53-Yurisbel Leyva Estrada
54- William Cepeda Cordero
55-Sixto Manuel Cobas de La Rosa
56- Roberto Arafet Abrahán
57-Martha Hilda Vásquez García
58-Aldo René Ponce Giménez
59-Maria Julia Arias Batista
60-Dionel Reyes López
61-Elieser Porto Borrero
62- Haida Petronila Estiben Torres
63-Mariela Rodríguez Bonges
64-Fabrisio Bustamante Trujillo
65-Miguel Marcanet Tardy
66-Felix Antonio Vásquez Revilla
67- Leonardo Bolaños Lesme
68- Roberto de la Rosa Estrada.
69-Benigno Vaillant Fajardo
70- Dagmian Salas Acosta
71-Aracelis Bustamante Carrión
72-Ramón Blanco Garcia
73-Yadira Sorio Lago
74-Rudelis German Niebla Chávez
75-Rafael M Arias Ferrer
76-Mayumi Santana Labrada
77-Amauris Núñez Quintana
78-Rafael Angel fuentes Avalas
79-Yampier Roben Vie
80-Osmay Avalo Almaquer
On Sunday, April 7 members of the CID and a group of former political prisoners gathered in Palma Soriano to support the Ladies in White. Among those present were Rafaela Parra Tamayo and Mayumi Santana Labrada, both activists with the CID and the Ladies in White.
The opponents expressed their protest:
City of Palma Soriano April 13, 2013
Thus, we want to state that the members of the executive of the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party (CID) and the executive of the “Brother of the Faith” Political Prisoners Club, engaged in a fraternal meeting to repudiate the political police abuses of the Ladies in White, on this day and for the record we have signed the following:
The “Save the Children Foundation” has has decided to pretend to be original by declaring that Cuba is “the best place in Latin America to be a mother.” Here are my variations:
– The “Save the Children Foundation” declares Cuba the ‘best place in Latin America to be a mother’ but doesn’t explain why the majority of Cuban women prefer abortion.
– The “Save the Children Foundation” declares Cuba the ‘best place in Latin America to be a mother’ but doesn’t explain why the majority of Cuban women don’t dare give birth.
– The “Save the Children Foundation” declares Cuba the ‘best place in Latin America to be a mother’ but doesn’t explain why the population is declining year after year.
– The “Save the Children Foundation” declares Cuba the ‘best place in Latin America to be a mother’… only surpassed by certain basements in Cleveland.
Although the United Nations stopped being a credible institution many years ago, at times it still issues announcements which can leave us astonished. This is what happened when a letter from the United Nations Director General for Food and Agriculture (FAO) was published yesterday in the state-run press. In it the Director General congratulates the former president of Cuba and all the Cuban people for having fulfilled the goal of reducing the number of malnourished people by half before the year 2015.
First of all, diplomatic protocol dictates that such a letter be addressed to the current president and not the former president — no matter what personal sympathies this important official might like to express — given that this is, supposedly, an official UN communiqué. Secondly and most importantly, where is the FAO getting its figures for such reports? Are they perhaps supplied by each government to the representative in that particular country?
It is hard to understand how someone can responsibly claim that a country with an inefficient agricultural sector — one incapable of producing the most basic staples for its population, or at retail prices affordable to most of its citizens — has reduced the number of malnourished people by half. Does this half perhaps refer to all the various types of civil servants and those who belong to the huge government bureaucracy? Is it average citizens who make up the other half?
We Cubans know all too well how serious malnutrition is. We must struggle day to day to find food; it is a juggling act just to survive. Has the FAO’s representative in Cuba ever looked into what the situation really is? Judging by appearances, it would seem that he moves in the highest circles of power — sometimes mistaking himself for one of its officials — if we take into account his public statements, which often appear in the state-run press. Perhaps they stem from absent-mindedness on the part of the Director General, who resides in Rome.
We trust that statistics from the other participating countries have been gathered in a more serious way and are, therefore, more reliable. At least this would not lead to the macabre irony of telling someone who is malnourished that this is not the case because the FAO has officially declared it to be so. One final question: Of all the countries in the world, is it only the sixteen mentioned in the letter (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela and Vietnam) which have reduced malnutrition by half?
The rumble of a train comes through the window. In Berlin there is always the sound of a train somewhere. I look out and see a very different reality from what my father saw in 1984 when he first came to this city. A train engineer, he had won — based on volunteer hours and a great deal of work — a trip to the future. Yes, because in that era the GDR was the horizon many Cubans aspired to visit someday. So, this man of locomotives and greasy hands was also given a bonus to buy some clothes before he left for Europe. He chose a jacket and pants combo, along with an immense suitcase in which my sister and I played at hiding ourselves. He arrived in East Germany in the middle of winter and stayed only two weeks on a guided tour, whose main purpose was to demonstrate to the lucky travelers the advantages of that model. And my father came back convinced.
At the airport on his return he arrived smiling from ear to ear and with a bag in hand. Inside was a pair of shoes for each of his daughters, which turned out to be the greatest achievement of the trip. That and the memories. For decades he has been telling us about his stay in the GDR. Adding details each time, until it has become almost a family legend that we listen to when we gather for any commemoration. In the light of today the wonder of that engineer is captured in the fact that in Berlin he was able to sit in a café and ask for something to drink without having to stand in a long line, that he had bought some small gifts for his kids without showing a ration book, and that he had taken a shower in hot water at the hotel where he stayed. I was surprised at every little thing.
Now I am the one in Berlin. Thinking that my father would not recognize this city, that he would not be able to reconcile it with that other one that he visited in a year as Orwellian as its date indicated. Of the wall that divided it in two all that is left is a museum piece painted by various artists; the hotel where he stayed was probably demolished, and the name of the woman who translated for him, and watched him — so that he wouldn’t escape to the West — is not in the phone book. The suitcase also no longer exists, the shoes lasted us just a single school year and the reddish tinted photos that he took in Alexanderplatz have been handled so much you can’t see them. However, I’m sure that when I return my father will try to explain Berlin to me, to tell me how he entered a bakery and was able to eat a turnover without presenting a ration card. I will laugh and tell him he’s right, there are dreams that after so much time are not worth ruining.
