Translating Cuba

The Constitution of La Yaya and the Future Cuban Constitution / Dimas Castellanos

On the 29^th of October of 1897 in the pasture of La Yaya, in Sibanicú, Camagüey, the drafting of what would become the last mambí Constitution came to an end. The resulting text represented a qualitative leap forward in Cuba’s constitutional history. This was due to the inclusion, for the first time, of a dogmatic part that included the most advanced individual political and civil rights at the time: habeas corpus, freedom and confidentiality of postal communications, freedom of religion, equality before taxation, freedom of education, right to petition, inviolability of the home, universal suffrage, freedom of expression and the right of assembly and association.

This result was determined by multiple causes; particularly because the always-present interdependence between development and individual freedoms in every social project is reflected in the constitutional history of human rights. continue reading

For example: the Magna Carta imposed by the English nobility on John Lackland in 1215, the Habeas Corpus Act of 1674, the English Bill of Rights of 1689, the United States’ Declaration of Independence of 1776, and France’s Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789. These, among other documents, spread at a global level, along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, put into force in 1976.

Cuba’s constitutional history began in the colonial period with the Project for an Autonomous Government in Cuba, drafted in 1811 by Father José Agustín Caballero. In 1812, Joaquín Infante, an attorney from Bayamo, drafted the Constitutional Project for the Island of Cuba, and in 1821, priest Félix Varela drafted the Project of Instruction for the Politically and Economically Autonomous Government of the Overseas Provinces. Later, during the wars of independence, in a context of contradictions between military and civil law, Cuba’s constitutional history was enriched by the mambí legislation.

On the 10^th of April of 1869, the Guáimaro Constitution, in which an emphasis on civil law was imposed, was signed. This Basic Law based on a tripartite division of powers, gave the legislative power to a House of Representatives that had the authority to appoint and depose the President of the Republic in Arms and the Commander-in-Chief. The executive power was in the hands of the President, and the judiciary was independent.

Despite the facts that it was created during the war of independence and that the House of Representatives was granted authority over the Republic’s sovereignty, the Constitution’s emphasis on civil law? allowed for the rights and freedoms of all Cubans to be protected? in Article 28 as follows: “The House cannot attack the right to freedom of religion, freedom of the press, peaceful assembly, education and petition, or any inalienable right of the people.” According to Dr. Oscar Loyola, in Guáimaro, the possibility of a military dictatorship, always latent in a historical process of this nature, was programmatically eliminated.

From the 13^th to the 18^th of September of 1895, at the rebirth of the war of independence in Cuba, a new Constitution was drafted in Jimaguayú, which reflected the experience gained from The Ten Years War. As M. Sc Antonio Álvarez expressed, three groups of interests intersected in this document: predominance of military power, José Martí’s principles and an exacerbated anti-militarism, between those who had a pact of interests reflected in that the highest authority of the State was concentrated in a Council of Government with powers to dictate all matters relating to the civil and political life of the revolution; in other words, this body had executive and legislative powers. Article 24 limited the validity of this Constitution to a period of two years.

In compliance with this article, a new Constituent Assembly met in La Yaya from the 13^th to the 29^th of October. The resulting Constitution readopted the civilian character from Guáimaro. It consolidated the organization of power in civil institutions, and closed the cycle of the type of constitutionalism that had resulted from the wars of independence (Guáimaro, Baraguá, Jimaguayú, and La Yaya), which, obstructed by the American occupation and the imposition of the Platt Amendment, gave way to the Republican Period. The best evidence of the scope and importance of La Yaya is that the civil and political rights enshrined in this document were readopted and enriched in the constitutions of 1901 and 1940.

The advocates of the supremacy of militarism wondered: Why did the Basic Law include a dogmatic part whose immediate purpose was to serve as judicial instrument during wartime? The answer to this question had been already answered in several writings by José Martí, for whom the Republic had become the definition of the democratic soul of the nation.

Martí established a logical genetic relationship between war, independence, and the Republic, where the first was a bridge to reach the last one. This is why he clearly defined the purposes of the war, so that after that conquest of immediate independence, these then would become the seeds of tomorrow’s long-lasting independence. He believed that, in times of victory, only the seeds that were planted in times of war thrive.

In his speech, “With All and for the Good of All,” delivered in November of 1891, Martí said: “Let’s close the doors to a Republic that is not founded on means worthy of the decorum of men, for the good and the prosperity of all Cubans!” In April of 1893, he expressed: “That is the greatness of the Revolutionary Party: that to found a Republic, it has started from a Republic. That is its strength: “that in the work of all, are the rights of all.” In the Montecristi Manifest, he wrote: “Our motherland must be built, from its roots, upon feasible ways that are self-born, so that a government that lacks truth and justice cannot lead it to the path of favoritism or tyranny.”

The post-1959 events are what best proves the importance of the civil law emphasis of the Constitution of La Yaya. After 17 years of government under The Basic Law of the Republic of Cuba, the Constitution of 1976, which abolished the Constitution of 1940 and made political and civil rights were subject to the legitimization of the Communist Party as the maximum leading force of the State and society, was approved; something alien and contrary to the day when a new Constituent Assembly, elected by the people, assumes the task of drafting a Magna Carta that includes our constitutional heritage and shapes it into the reality of today’s Cuba and of the winds blowing across the universe.

Originally published in El Diario de Cuba

Translated by: Chabeli

1 November 2012

Centers of Love Become Victims of Apathy / Rebeca Monzo

Colorful Butterflies kindergarten

“Today day care centers celebrate their fifty-second anniversary. These institutions continue fulfilling and improving their mission so that work in education might be more profound and efficient…”

So begins an article published in Juventud Rebelde on April 10 of this year. It goes on to provide a brief history of how the first such institutions began in our country in the early 1960s. It reminded me of how I first got involved in this work through the direct request from a friend.

For a year I did “volunteer work” by myself in a big space in which they provided me with abundant and varied material, making fabric dolls as well as various articles for the home. These would later be auctioned in a raffle which took place on property owned by the Ministry of Foreign Commerce. The goal was to raise funds for a day care center on the ninth floor of a building on 23rd Street where a lot of women worked.

Finally, a year later they were able to bring the project to fruition as a result of many important donations from companies who had entered into negotiations with the ministry as well as my own modest contribution. I also remember actively participating in the decoration of center’s facility.

What I noticed was how this article ignored some of the real reasons for the deterioration and subsequent closure of many of these centers, whose construction had been such a noble goal.

A couple of years ago I was having a conversation with the director of Colorful Butterflies, a kindergarten next door to my house which my two sons attended. I asked her about the visible neglect of the center, and she told me it was due to low enrollment. After reading the article in Juventud Rebelde, it occurred to me that this was perhaps one of many causes, the main one being the lack of resources provided to the these institutions in addition to neglect and lack of maintenance.

“At the moment there are 45,000 applications pending and 46 institutions in the country have been closed — 40 in the capital alone — all for construction problems.”

This is how it was stated in one of the paragraphs from the article in question. We should, therefore, hold the government responsible for the current state of these buildings, which were built in great haste and in excess by people who had no experience in this kind of work to fulfill the usual quotas, not to mention the failure to provide stable funding for their subsequent maintenance.

Additionally, the ever more apparent lack of personnel qualified to work with children has led parents to take their children to private homes which, until a very short time ago, functioned in a kind of clandestine limbo. There is an ever increasing number of self-employed workers who take up this work now that they have a license to do it.

In the face of the importance and magnitude of the problem, since families don’t have sufficient resources to leave their children in private day care, due to poor salaries and not possessing another type of stable source of income, the government has implemented a new type of plan: “Educate your child”, that is being developed in some communities, offering guidance to the family to stimulate and adequately look after the little one, with the objective of achieving integral development and preparation for the start of the child’s school life. We hope that this plan, like many other before it, will not languish on the road. Ladies and Gentlemen, love must be attended to!

Translated by: Unknown, BW

22 April 2013

Miami, My Love / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Miami. From DiariodeCuba.com (Source: metrojacksonville.com)

And, finally, Miami.

After decades of Made in Havana propaganda, I could travel that explosion of expressways called Miami (the entire city is an airport), where every little house is a clone of a Cuba lost forever (with their flags and little virgins), where every generation has at least one family representative, where the food remains as intact as a five-day-old, or five-decades-back memory, where dancing and laughing and even making love hurts us deep in the soul, where God speaks our exile slang perfectly. Because everyone in Miami is us, we live there or here: the city was built like a dream from which sooner rather than later the nation would wake up, a dream to conceal the nightmare of never returning home (Miami, mercy).

I entered and left Miami through the magic mirror of its radio and TV stations. It’s a miracle against modernity this hypermedia Miami, so homogenous and yet so plural. As banal as it is true-to-life. It could be a first impression, but after the despotism of Havana, where there are no longer any live programs (even the speeches of the Maximum Leader are broadcast with a few seconds delay, for protection), Miami simply amazed me. From sadness, but it amazed me.

With the mordant and lovable Jaime Bayly, with the precision to the point of causticity of Juan Manuel Cao, with the impassioned chorus of María Laria and her glitzy staff, with the eternal solidarity of Radio República and, of course, with the heart in the microphones of Radio Martí, the only broadcaster of the Cuban exile that transmits almost from the interior of the country (its studies are not in Havana but they have much of Havana and the other cities and towns of our country), with all and for the ratings of all I said the first thing that came to mind, without agendas dictated by any imaginary mafia of the Ministry of the Interior, without mutual fear nor mediocre censorship, without adding not even a line to what I have always said from my Cuban cellphone in my native Havana neighborhood.

We Cuban social activists agree that “to think and live in freedom is to learn thinking and living freely,” a phrase of Rosa María Payá’s at the University of Miami that electrified even the tears of this second capital of all Cubans (perhaps the first capitalism of all Cubans), where she and I coincided, each in transit to our own democratizing destination for our repressive country.

I resisted indulging my appetite in Miami, I have witnesses to my austerity. The food didn’t go down my throat: some kind of anguished happiness made me ignore my old acquaintances, living their successful lives in a Cuba that in Cuba we couldn’t even imagine (or we didn’t dare to imagine, and so delayed our respective exiles).

I saw the sea of Miami, but I didn’t look out on it nor want to smell it. I didn’t want to imagine the Island on the other side of the horizon, 45 minutes to where the Cuban political police wait for us to put us in quarantine without charges.

I felt the heat. They offered me a job, I didn’t answer. I slept on a sofa. I slept in a suite. I slept almost in a closet, at the edge of the probing looks of our civil society where I was a first-timer and happy. I remained sleepless in an airport of flights cancelled en masse by American Airlines, with the intuition that Miami had cast a spell on me to not let me leave.

Finally, I came, I saw, and I went, because Manhattan is less desperately Manhattavana, and because to vacate the subways is the secret formula of my subterranean Cuban-ness that flees Cubans because we all have within a mini-ministry of the interior. Everyone, starting with the pro-democrats.

I moved in the free cars of Facebook activists whom I didn’t know in person, but who from the beginning of the chats we already liked each other, beyond political or geographic positions. I spoke in the mythical Calle 8 Art and Research Center as if I was very sure about what I was saying, while my spirit was then a tissue of pure emotion. I flew to and from Miami thanks to the generous pockets of Cuban entrepreneurs who want Cuba more than me, people of diverse economic strata who treasure the archives and the illusions that dictatorial laziness derailed, destroying not only our rights as citizens but, with the same idea, a nation.

And this will be the most sinister, but also the most sincere legacy of Castroism or the Revolution: the day after is already humanly impossible. Our present precariousness is perennial. The elite in power have taken the necessary steps for a staged transition (and this includes my presence here: Miami, forgive me), where the peaceful dissidence inside and outside of Cuba will have no more space than the scaffold and, in fact, we are disappearing drop by drop and without witnesses of interest to the world, because the world is only interested in the millions and millions who now promote this neo-utopia that exploits capitalism without freedom. Businessmen of all countries, unite.

I spoke with personalities from Cuba’s republican history and about our most intimate and tense relationship with the government in Washington. I saw fewer homeless than in New York where, in turn, I saw fewer than in Central Havana, although this does not alleviate the humiliation of seeing myself flying to American universities while a human being sleeps on the sidewalks of this permissive country.

I want to return to Miami. I would not want to return ever again. I’m still about to leave. But very soon I will return. Miami, look at me: do you want to be my love, at least while Cuba doesn’t fall?

From DiariodeCuba.com.

24 April 2013

Killing Without Showing Their Faces / Rosa Rodriguez

Photo from http://www.elcomercio.com/

Again terrorism achieved its murderous aims when many innocents were killed at the finish line of the Marathon held in Boston, Massachusetts for more than half a century. Naturally, the bombing also erupted in the media, which sent us images of the two Chechen youths who were the authors of this act of terror that cost three lives and injured more than 170 people.

I sincerely sympathize with the pain of the families of the victims of this vile episode committed from a distance without showing their faces; and I also sympathize with the families and friends of all who perished in the same or similar circumstances.

So far, the Cuban press only referred to the event from the news perspective, with nothing of the usual sociological and super-politicized analysis — with a visible justifying subtext — of the reasons that in some regions, countries or social groups inclines people to violence as a means to express disagreement with certain policies, political or power centers, which is the same as using the lives of people to send messages to the “criminal complaints inbox.”

The official media in my country always mentions social injustice, poverty, the domination of foreign powers, cultural issues and religious fundamentalism, and uses and abuses the term “double standard” to demonstrate their disagreement with the treatment given to some known terrorists. Doesn’t that make them the same?

When their allies throw Molotov cocktails it’s a revolutionary activity, if other people do it they’re terrorists. Their allies, the FARC, don’t kidnap, they “retain”; but if the an antagonistic group executes an analogous action it’s kidnapping. The saddest thing is that these manipulations are not confined to the field of semantics, but are commonly conceptualized.

When it comes to something like the case of Bin Laden and action of the CIA, the media are supersaturated with criticism of the U.S. government and its imperial and interventionist methods of domination.

When they talk about governments partial to Cuba, like Russian and its two wars launched against Chechnya to prevent its independence, the immorality of the double-speak or the scandalous silence. Perhaps they are waiting for the trial of the young survivor “terrorized by the cruelties and injustices” involved in the massacre, to highlight the exaggerated punishment the judicial system of the United States imposes on the defendant.

I know that peace is fickle and threatened, at least by verbal violence, cultural differences, socioeconomic, geopolitical, strategic or hidden and diverse interests. From primitive times there were people trying to control others and governments or groups who, in the legitimate exercise of their defense, applied the laws as established — unlike dictatorships — in favor of maintaining peace and political and social stability. These values and rights of communities or societies remain today and we must respect, without interference, what is established in the legislation of each State when it comes time for justice.

The reasons that may predispose a person to choose the option of terrorism are dissimilar and complex to analyze in the personal space of a blog, which has its communication codes for amenable and digestible reading; but I blame these acts contrary to human rights, proclaiming premeditated aggression against innocent civilians even outside, the objective pursued, in order to strike terror to a part of society through fear and achieve a political purpose or otherwise.

I repudiate these violent actions aimed at creating alarm and social instability, inciting ethnic hatred, religious or political, and that use of any weapon of war, explosives, chemical or biological weapons, to endanger the life or physical integrity and psychological health of people.

23 April 2013

Angel Santiesteban: Open Letter to the UN Commission on Human Rights*

I write to you from the depths of despair produced by being a prisoner of conscience in one of the horrendous prisons of the Castro brothers. In their hands is the opportunity to impose agony upon an extensive penal population that survives the cruelest famine and physical and psychological torture.

To hide the truth, I was taken on April 9 just before international journalists arrived at La Lima prison. They took me out by the back door and I was taken to another prison, 1580, where they have committed all sorts of outrages and humiliations worthy of Nazi concentration camps.

The lack of food and proper sanitation are the other elements that add up to make this a real prison camp. They violate the most basic rights of human beings and their families. Prisoners live crammed together amid continuing violence.

In recent months there have been two large fires of unexplained causes. Multiple suicides are also a daily part of life in prison.

Upon my arrival, after several days of hunger strike and being put in solitary with no light, no water, no clothes or toiletries, I was attacked by several guards, holding me by my limbs while another squeezed my nostrils shut until I opened my mouth to breathe, and then they put stinking soup in my mouth that choked me; and so, over and over, until I was on the floor completely covered in the food helpless to avoid it.

I want to report to Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Quintana, head of the Havana Province.

I also want to clarify that my situation is not the worst. I would like them to listen to the abused themselves so that they can explain the hell in which they live. I fear not being credible enough to expose the horror and the wickedness that we suffer daily.

The dictatorship must understand once and for all that it is impossible to maintain disastrous power based on the people’s pain.

We beg this to take the testimony firsthand, under full oath, and ask God to put his pitying hands on this country forgotten by the international community, and that they manage to collect the testimonies of prisoners without their being threatened ahead of time, as usual.

We ask that Cuba sign the UN covenants and accept the statements of Human Rights, if not, to take appropriate measures to expel the concert of free nations which aims to live undiscovered barbarism imposed on us.

We are a devastated country which — despite these fifty-four years of slavery — we still dream of becoming a prosperous nation.

Please accept my thanks in advance.

Ángel Santiesteban Prats

Prisión 1580. San Miguel del Padrón, Havana. Cuba.

* The HRC in Geneva, Switzerland, was created by 47 member states on March 15, 2006 in the Assembly of the United Nations, to promote universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons, without distinction of any kind, and in a fair and equitable manner. Along with the Security Council, these are two of the principal organs of the highest level and prestige within the UN system.

23 April 2013

Capriles’s Defeat Shows His Victory / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

The difference in vote totals was only about 300,000 people.

The votes of the Venezuelan people have brought to light an almost equal balance in the presidential decision.

With 50.66% for Nicolas Maduro and 49.07% for Capriles, the now elected president Maduro, looking at the final decision, said in response to the vote totals, “If I lose by one vote, or win by won vote, it has to be respected.”

Maduro knows that the fight is over, as demonstrated by the votes. Capriles, for his part, reaffirms that he followers and he’s capable of changing the destiny of Venezuela.

These are the days of a government where the actions will be taken by Maduro, the current president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Where his capacity as leader will be used for the interests of the Castro regime.

A Cuban intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela that will intensify as the days go on until taking over, it becomes almost a colony of the Castros, but with this difference that this country has resources than can feel the wings of the ambition of the Cuban regime.

Today more than ever Capriles must be keep his eyes wide open as any slip by Maduro can open the doors of the presidency to Capriles.

22 April 2013

Violence Increases in Cienfuegos Town / Ignacio Estrada

Havana, Cuba — The increase in youth violence and police lawlessness are issues constantly criticized by the inhabitants of the municipality of Cruces in the province of Cienfuegos.

According to residents of this southern municipality, youth violence constantly fills the streets and has already caused deaths, without specifying numbers. According to some, most altercations occur late at night and early in the morning. The main stage for these events is the centrally located Martí Park and the Paseo del Prado.

The use of sharp and cutting weapons known as “Armas Blancas” — a term for knives — is the most frequent in these tumultuous quarrels in which local police don’t get involved and when they do they arrive after the altercation. This has happened on a number of occasions at the Cosmopolitan discotheque which belongs to the Cuban chain Palmares.

The inhabitants of this town are afraid to go out into the streets and publicly blame the police for the lawlessness, along with the sale of alcoholic beverages and lack of security around the recreational facilities to prevent those who go there from bringing weapons on their bodies.

By Ignacio Estrada

14 March 2013

Only Sausages, No Oil / Ignacio Estrada

Havana, Cuba — The Cuban population living with HIV recently received nutirtional help from United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS/HIV.

The benefit is being delivered to the sick through the commercial network after several months of unjustified absence. According to a source who works as a representative of the agency in Havana, the previous assistance has been affected by the increase in new cases of carriers of the illness.

The source also said that the new aid that has already been distributed would only be renewed for twenty-four more months. For years the UN program has maintained this food aid to the island and at times this benefit has been affected due to poor management on the part of the Cuban authorities. They cleverly insert themselves into the plan for aid to new cases, causing a shortfall of aid ahead of schedule.

It is clear that this aid is distributed for free and in principle it covers the food needs of the sick population with products such as juices, cereals, canned meat and vegetable fat. The products have dwindled as the epidemiological situation of the island has grown, until the point where the aid only includes canned meat and vegetable oil.

The recently delivered aid only provides a total of 22 small cans of sausages which must last for a yea; the vegetable oil has not been delivered. One of the beneficiaries asked how it was possible to live with two cans of sausage per month, noting that each of these cans contained no more than six sausages.

People living with HIV/AIDS in Cuba who receive the UN food aid, receive a “basic food basket” that is described as inadequate. It is a diet that places this affected population at a disadvantage in terms of quality, quantity and weight, according to where they reside.

By Ignacio Estrada

22 April 2013

Call for Posters Exhibition: For Another Cuba / Estado de Sats, For Another Cuba

The Estado de SATS project and the Campaign For Another Cuba invite all Cuban designers and visual artists to participate in the exhibition: Posters For Another Cuba, which will open in the city of Miami on May 4, 2013.

The artistic proposals will bring visions from different aspects (economic, political, cultural, humorous, social and spiritual) to shape the design of a new Cuba.

The works must be inserted into a template to later be printed as 17” x 22” posters. The template that provides a framework for art can be downloaded from the following link http://www.estadodesats.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/poster-template.pdf

Artwork must have a resolution of 300 dpi and be in CMYK mode.

It can be full color.

There must be a margin of at least 1” on all sides.

The works will be donated to (become the property of) the Campaign For Another Cuba and will be a part of the Campaign’s promotion and advertising.

The slogan of the campaign is “Cuba changes if you want it to.”

The logo and the name of the campaign should not be covered by art.

The artwork should be sent to the following email unidosporotracuba@gmail.com before April 30, 2013.

The exhibition will be inaugurated on May 4, 2013, in the city of Miami and later be opened in Havana at the Estado de SATS project headquarters.

For more information about project status go to: www.estadodesats.com

For more information about the Campaign For Another Cuba go to: www.porotracuba.org

23 April 2013

Solidarity with the UNPACU Activists and with all the Hunger Strikers in Cuba /Miriam Celaya

Image taken from Gabito Groups

While Telesur and the official Cuban media distract us these days with Venezuela’s political brawls and other conflicts elsewhere in the world, I received a Twitter message on my mobile about the hunger strike just started by 46 Cubans from National Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), a coalition of opponents that groups members in several provinces of the island, especially the eastern region.

Yesterday, they informed me that activists of the Pedro Luis Boytel National Movement, of the Rosa Parks movement, and of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo FN have joined the province of Camagüey sit-in. Indeed, from this very blog I have expressed, more than once, that I do not approve of hunger strikes as a method of struggle, but today I cannot but express my solidarity with these fellow travelers and respect and support their sacrifice.

The initial demand for the release of Luis E. Igarza Lozada, imprisoned and on strike as of 13 days ago, has even spread to some parts of the province of Matanzas. Posters, leaflets, graffiti and pot-banging protests have been supporting the strikers in various cities and towns of eastern Cuba, amid repression manifested in arrests, beatings, threats and suspension of cellular service to prevent the world from knowing about what happens in Cuba.

The best weapon the activists of the opposition can now count on in their just demand is our support and solidarity. Let’s use the means at our disposal so that they are not alone. Let’s not allow the cymbals of the Palace of the Revolution, praising their Venezuelan ward, silence the peaceful struggle of our brothers in arms. Let’s boost their voices by spreading the truth about what is happening, and by demanding the release of all political prisoners. We can all be activists against Castro’s repression; do not forget that silence, fear, and indifference are the main allies of the oppressors.

Let’s make a difference.

Translated by Norma Whiting

22 April 2013

The Nature of Socialism / Rafael Leon Rodriguez

The “handpicked” successor of the late comandante Hugo Chavez was elected and is not the new president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro. Starting off, his first statements addresses the aim of radicalizing the revolutionary process. On the one hand he showed his fist and on the other he spoke of peace. All that was missing were the doves.

Later we will surely hear about the imperialist enemy, the assassination attempts, the bourgeois press, the economic sabotage, the counterrevolution, etc. etc. etc.

Any resemblance to the tactics of the Cuban Revolution to install “the dictatorship of the proletariat” is not a coincidence. But these are other times. A great share of the Venezuelan people know where they’re trying to take them and made their rejection clear in the recent elections. One can assume that half the population, or perhaps more, voted for liberal democracy. It is going to be very difficult for Maduro and his team to overcome the popular Venezuelan antipathy for totalitarianism.

In Cuba, at the beginning of the process, events were handled very discreetly, until control of the military, politics and the media was total. Then, then the convenient enemy was used even directed. The rest is history.

The point is that between the seven years of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista from Banes, and the 54 years of that of his neighbors from Biran, we have now had 61 years of oppression, poverty and despair.

Attempts to revive the economy through the so-called Guidelines, don’t appear to be having the promised results, in the face of the generalized corruption and the apathy of the majority of the people.

In many cases, it’s a return to the stages of the early years of the Revolution; but now without the material resources available at the time of the triumph, which were the result of a productive and prosperous capitalist system of production.

It’s like returning to the starting point, where on arrive we realize we have lost time. So it is with the new travel/immigration law. People have gone abroad and returned who, under the previous regulations, would have been forbidden to travel. And what happened? Nothing. The country is the same.

Years of restrictions, violating people’s rights on a whim, a caprice, or because it is the nature of the system called “real socialism.” And the inertia of that nature is so strong, that they still deny the rights of some citizens to travel.

Among these are many living abroad whom they group into different political categories. It’s so obvious that those people who have a judicial debt to the authorities are not going to travel here to face them, that it is absurd to maintain the requirement for a permit to enter the country for Cubans living abroad.

But it is also absurd to deny Internet access to citizens on the Island. As is discriminating against them for thinking differently. Or for the color of their skin. Or for their sexual differences.

There is the key: As long as they don’t respect differences, all of them, we will not begin to advance in a promising direction toward the future.

23 April 2013

Havana and the Cult of Burglar Bars / Ivan Garcia

Photo from La reja de mi ventana

Havana is not Caracas. You can still walk the streets at night. There are gangs of youths who, dagger in hand, will relieve you of a Detroit Tigers jersey, some Puma sneakers or an iPhone.

Assaults on the street, however, are not common. In the capital there have been bank hold-ups, guys who have robbed trucks carrying hard-currency or who have highjacked a plane at gun point, but these are the exceptions.

Compared to Mexico, Venezuela or El Salvador, homicides are almost non-existent. There are hardly any violent crimes to report, though once in awhile a woman might go mad and kill her children, a wife might take a candle to her husband, or a rapist might unleash panic in the city.

The press publishes not a single line of gory news. In spite of such an apparently peaceful life and low rate of violent crime, Havana’s citizens are increasingly fortifying their homes.

The number of petty thefts is increasing. Some thieves spend months planning home burglaries with the goal of stealing a valuable painting or large sums of money.

The biggest increase in thefts has been by gangs of ruffians. They often take the closest thing at hand – a car’s steering wheel, an auto’s stereo system, a wet T-shirt hanging in a patio or on a terrace.

The increase in domestic robberies is the reason a huge number of Havana’s citizens have decided to install burglar bars on their doors and windows. When 62-year-old Anselmo was a boy, he played hide-and-seek in his neighborhood, running freely through its labyrinth of internal passageways. His children cannot do the same today. The neighbors have closed off and put railings around not only their own properties, but the adjoining alleyways as well.

“Every day we find out about a robbery in a nearby neighborhood. People deal with it by protecting their families and their belongings. But even houses with tall, spiked fences are broken into. Thieves simply figure that, if a residence has burglar bars, there must be money or valuables inside,” says Luisa, a resident of Vibora Park.

This has unleashed a cult of burglar bars. If you walk through Havana, you will see that homeowners have installed bars on 90% of the houses, porches, doors and windows, creating a symphony of ironwork.

It is a bunker mentality from which the government itself has not escaped. In the 1980s Fidel Castro, in one of his many eccentric obsessions, planted the idea in the Cuban consciousness that an invasion from the United States was imminent.

The deepest recesses of Cuba are filled with underground tunnels and bomb shelters. Thousands were constructed. Today almost all of them have been converted into discotheques or luxury retail stores. At night young couples without cash use them as love hotels.

The Yanks never came, but the regime kept up its war games, waiting for the anticipated invasion, though without the fervor of twenty years before.

Nevertheless, from time to time there are still military maneuvers in which overweight militiamen with corrugated metal rifles run to seek refuge in antiquated bomb shelters.

Fidel Castro still retains a state-of-siege mentality. He lives in an area of forty-five houses known as Zone Zero, where fortifications, security measures and camouflage are part of the landscape.

The military’s businessmen and government ministers also live surrounded by iron bars and fencing covered with vegetation to prevent onlookers from being able to see inside their homes.

They also rely on police protection and surveillance cameras. Others in Havana are not so fortunate. People pay for the protection they can afford. Those with the fewest resources try to keep an eye on their plasma screen TVs and 1950s Chevrolets. They pay ironworkers to fashion barricades of bulky metal rods to surround their houses or to craft a kind of garage-jail.

Families with greater resources opt for grillework that harmonizes with the architecture of the house. Although violence in Havana is nothing like that in Caracas or Medellin, people still jealously guard their properties.

Iván García

21 April 2013

Citizen Ambassador / Miguel Iturria Savon

The newspapers and TV news in Spain barely report on news from Cuba, where not everything happens between the orders and the execution of the orders, nor does the reality coincide with the political propaganda designed by the Powers-That-Be, as is clearly demonstrated in these days of the travels through America and Europe of the Island blogger Yoani Sanchez, who sat on the El Pais jury that awarded the Ortega y Gasset prize and responded to questions from the readers of that newspaper, for whom she is the representative on the Caribbean island.

Yoani, that chronicler of reality unaligned with the classic political definitions, has responded with wit, honesty and ingenuity to questions that they are just formulating in Spain, a nation plunged into economic crisis, unemployment and budget cuts in health and other social services, generating protests, uncertainties and challenges from citizens that echo in the media.

I am not going to summarize the questions and answers of the famous creator of Generation Y and the Bloggers Academy of Cuba; those interested can read it in the online edition of El Pais from Friday April 19; but I do want to note Yoani behaves as a genuine citizen ambassador, beyond her divergent views she offers a look from those millions of voiceless Cubans who reject the endless discourse of Communist rule and who do not see their country in the inexplicable limbo of a utopia conceived in the former Soviet Union and spread to Europe by the leftist parties complicit in the grotesque Cuban dictatorship.

For the situation in Spain is understood the tone of certain questions, in which also gravitate the effects of Castro’s propaganda and the pursuit of social chimera elsewhere. Maybe that’s why Yoani says that “in Cuba we live under state capitalism, a family clan deeply neoliberal”; she warns that “how to be free is learned by being free” and that for her “life is not elsewhere, but in another Cuba” where “to exercise independent journalism does cost one’s freedom or a media lynching.”

23 April 2013

A Silhouette of Light in the Midst of Shadows / Regis Iglesias

Regis Iglesias and Oswaldo Paya, prior to the 2003 Black Spring

At 9 am I called tía Beba’s house. I was waiting to hear Efrén answer the phone as usual and update me on the early news of that March 19th day, as we did every day. The day before I had called in the morning and asked him to ask Oswaldo if my presence was necessary in the neighborhood of el Cerro. I wanted to dedicate the afternoon to getting together with the Citizen Committee of the 10 de Octubre district, and check on the march for the signature collection campaign in support for the Varela Project demand. After checking in with Oswaldo, he gave me the green light.

I spent March 18th along with fellow activists until late in the afternoon. Later on, as usual, I visited my friends in the neighborhood and ended the night well after midnight with my dearest friends Luis Torres and Alejandro Rivero. Back home my worried mother waited for me, as news went around of the arrest of a group of activists and independent journalists who were gathered in James Cason’s home, the Principal Officer to the U.S Interest Section in Havana.

So that she wouldn’t worry, I didn’t give it much importance. I told her that as usual, they would let them go after a couple of hours, and that in any case, some of Cason’s guests were notorious informants for the regime’s political police. What was happening had nothing to do with us.

I hadn’t had the chance to look at the official reports because I had been busy at work as manager of the Citizen Committees. Besides, the circles I was frequenting weren’t too fond of listening to the “round tables” or the regime’s news. Therefore, that March 18th I had been unaware of the storm that battered against the peaceful Cuban opposition. In any case, the disinformation of the official television did not give bigger clues as to what was really happening.

I went to sleep and my mother felt more tranquil.

The next day, on March 19th, it wasn’t Efrén who answered the phone. I was surprised as I heard Ernesto Martini, “Freddy”, pick up the phone and say: “Come here immediately, last night they detained Efrén, several managers for the Varela Project al over the country, and other members of the opposition”. I couldn’t yet understand what was happening when I hung up the phone and left immediately on my bike on my way to el Cerro.

Oswaldo was already with Tony Díaz in the streets, visiting the families of those who had been detained; the list grew longer every hour. They also went to visit members of the diplomatic body in Havana that was responsible for denouncing what was happening, without a doubt a repressive wave whose outcome was still unknown.

I started answering phone calls from members of the press who were interested in knowing what was occurring. At the same time, new information was constantly reaching us about arrests throughout the country. The numbers reached dozens by that second day of the repressive surge.

That night Oswaldo came back along with Tony; they were exhausted. Tony went back home to Marianao to clean up and eat something. To distract the kids a bit, we had promised to take them to the Cerro stadium to watch a baseball game starring the Industriales team. However, as we were eating dinner before going out with Oswaldito and Rei, Rosa María picked up a call that seemed urgent. “Hold on, I’ll put Regis on the phone,” said Rosa Maria to the speaker while she gave me a worried look. It was Yeni, Tony’s older daughter. Crying, she was telling me that they were arresting her father. I cheered her up and tried not to worry her even more.

We didn’t go to the baseball game. Oswaldo and I went to tía Beba’s house, a block away from his, and took over Freddy’s post as we answered calls from family members and journalists. Already the political police’s siege had reached our neighborhood. We could see dozens of people on foot and in automobiles going around our block and passing in front of Beba’s house. Then came a Spanish correspondent to interview Oswaldo, and he was with us for a long while waiting for our own arrests. Years later this journalist proved to be an agitator who for some reason only he can clarify, has been determined to openly attack peaceful Cuban dissidents and to defend the hangmen and hit men of the regime.

Freddy had already left and only Oswaldo and I remained to face the imminent assault on his aunt’s house, where our office functioned. Late in the night, when everything seemed more calm, we agreed that I would stay the night at Beba’s house, since thousands of new signatures in support of the Valera Project were still there.

The next morning, on March 20th, Freddy arrived. Oswaldo and I went to Ricardo Montes’s house, another leader of our Movement. The persecution we faced was fierce; we had wanted to move around in Ricardo’s old motorcycle, but seeing how aggressive our persecutors were, we decided not to take the risk and to continue onto Tony’s house on a bus.

The State Security cars were ostentatiously visible. One of them, which we had been following with our eyes since we took the bus on 51st Ave, moved ahead, and when we reached the next stop an agent came down from the car and got on the public vehicle in which we were traveling. He came as close as three feet from us inside the bus.

When we stepped down, he got off with us, and continued to walk a couple of yards behind us until he disappeared into a car. At that moment, we were being followed by a white van, an ambulance, two Ladas and even a Mercedes Benz. Only the helicopter was missing, perhaps for lack of fuel, in an effort to corner two simple and peaceful mortals like us.

We arrived at Díaz’ house, and found his whole family there, worried: his wife Gisela, his daughter Yeni, his mother-in-law and his brother. They told us about the violent unfolding of the intimidation efforts against his wife and his younger daughters the night of Tony’s arrest.

We immediately moved to the Dutch embassy. The ambassador guaranteed that her country would denounce the oppressive wave, and would ask the Cuban regime to explain itself. The same occurred in the Spanish embassy, where Oswaldo was able to speak to President Aznar and with Pat Cox, then president of the European Parliament.

We moved on and passed by a Church where many friends were assembled. We were able to see images on CNN in which they interviewed independent journalist Omar Rodríguez Saludes. From the balcony of his apartment, the cameras focused on the deployment of agents waiting for orders to detain him. We read an interview that I had given Miami’s New Herald the day before, denouncing the cowardly provocations from the regime. At the same time, we crafted an emergency plan for such a dramatic moment.

We were exhausted but could not stop; our pursuers could stop if they wanted. As we stopped briefly to drink something, Oswaldo tells me: “We’ll gather every member of the movement in front of Villa Marista until they release every single detainee.”

I replied, “Don’t you realize this is purposely directed against us? The great majority of those arrested are managers of the Valera Project. They have detained our leaders in the entire country, and only you and I remain. No; whoever remains must organize our people again and continue. Those of us who fall must wait for better times, now there’s nothing we can do. We have a minimal base but it’s not enough to challenge the government on this terrain. If we act with a hot head we’ll destroy everything we have accomplished. It already feels strange that I haven’t been arrested yet.”

He looked at me; I noticed his anguish. Oswaldo was suffering for every single one of our detained brothers, and for their families. He wanted to be there himself, behind the walled-in doors of Villa Marista, the general headquarters of the Cuban political police. I felt his suffering; I was able to see that man’s greatness through the pain in his eyes, while at the same time they shined with the same determination as always to continue, despite everything, fighting for the rights of all Cubans.

We went on until reaching the parish church Cristo Rey. We stepped inside the temple. A priest who was our friend came to us worried with what was happening according to the news; he offered to take me home in his car. I thanked him but declined his kind gesture; I had to continue along with Oswaldo. We knelt down for a couple of minutes and prayed for our detained brothers, for their families, for the leaders and activists of the MCL and the Cuban opposition, for the thousands of citizen signatories of the Valera Project and for all Cubans. The sinister cloud that has reigned over our dear homeland for so many decades is today even more dangerous and menacing.

We went back to Beba’s house, with the hope that everything had stopped and that we would hear back from the first freed dissidents in a few hours. Freddy presented the hard reality, more people had been arrested, and there was no sign that what was happening was something, as in other times, temporary.

We then put ourselves to the task of contacting those who were still in liberty, communicating to them that the work for the rights of Cubans would continue under any circumstance.

Around 8 pm I told Oswaldo I would go to my parents’ house for a few hours and that I would come back as soon as I was done cleaning up and eating something. He insisted that I should stay. “Don’t go, these people are being very aggressive and they could arrest you too. Ofe (his wife, Ofelia) can make you something to eat and you can shower here.”

“No”, I said, “if they’re going to arrest me they should do it already. I have the feeling they haven’t done it because we have been together all day, but we can’t avoid it forever. Besides, I don’t want them to arrest me while I’m with you. I know you and you’re going to try to stop it, putting yourself at risk. I won’t allow it! You save the Movement, save the Valera Project, and take care of my daughters….Go home with the kids and Freddy and I will go to Lawton for a while and come back.”

He looked at me like a father who could no longer avoid the decisions of a grown son. If he could, he would have tied me down to a chair so I wouldn’t leave. If he could he would have hugged me and wouldn’t have let me go alone to meet our persecutors. All of this he said without speaking, only with his eyes.

“I’ll see you later Bapu”, I said to him, and turned around to speak to Freddy about some trivial topic, waiting for Oswaldo to walk away. I felt him as he left, and it was then that I turned around to look at him as he walked into the darkness of the night towards his house, where Ofelita and the kids waited, worried, for him to come back.

He walked with a firm pace and in his characteristic style. His fists were closed, as with the fury of not being able to stop the unstoppable, as if everything depended on him to bring liberty to Cubans, as if he wanted for himself everything that would befall on us. As if he knew that the road did not end there, and that it would fall on him and on the youngest of his disciples to confront together, alone and years later, the cross of martyrdom.

That was the last time we saw each other, and I’ll never be able to forget his silhouette of light disappearing among the shadows.

Minutes later from my mobile phone I would send him a call, but I wasn’t speaking. As soon as I was able to perceive the maneuver of our detention, I was able to make the call and to throw the phone under the taxicab in which we traveled, amid the struggle with my captors, to stop them from getting it and to give Oswaldo’s family time to find out we had been arrested.

Ofelita, I found out later, was the person who answered the phone and desperately gave it to Oswaldo, as he heard how we were kidnapped right in public. I know that he, our dear Bapu, while admonishing the hit-men who finally picked up the phone with a bit of effort under the car, let run through his tense cheek, a limpid crystal of good-bye.

See you soon, Oswaldo, I know we’ll find each other again, Bapu.

Original post in Spanish is here.

Translator’s note: Regis Iglesia was sentenced along with the other political prisoners of the 2003 Black Spring, in his case to 18 years. He was released in 2010 in a deal brokered by the Catholic Church and sent into exile in Spain.

Translated by: Claudia D.

23 March 2013