That big red brick chimney always caught my eye. As a girl it seemed immense to me. I imagined goblins living there. It aroused great fascination, especially since it was on a route we had to take — leading to the “scary” iron bridge over the Almendares River, which occasionally would open up like a giant wolf’s jaws to allow yachts to pass through — when we went to visit Aunt Cuca in Miramar. It was always one of my favorite walking paths.
With the passage of time and the sudden takeover the country by incarnate deities, these fantasies and dreams of childhood were abruptly ripped out by their roots in order to make way for a “new reality.” The dream-like tower remained, but it no longer sent out smoke signals. Little by little it came to seem more lifeless. My make-believe creatures disappeared along with the gray puffs that no longer billowed from its long neck. The bridge stopped opening; there were no more yachts. Little by little rust covered the iron structure. We were no longer able to visit my aunt either; she had gone to live far away.
Many years have passed since I felt motivated to overcome my fear of crossing the aged bridge. My old red-bricked friend is still there, mute and inert, towering over its continually decaying surroundings.
After learning a few days ago that it had been converted to a restaurant bar, I was motivated to go see it again. I brought along my Nikon to try to get some photos, hoping also to get the back story from some of the neighbors. Luckily, I found one cleaning the street. When he saw the camera in my hand, he approached me, thinking I was a tourist. After I identified myself, he told me the history of the place. He was born and raised there, so he knew all the details.
“What happened was that, after the factory was abandoned at the beginning of the 1960s, a man moved into the base of the chimney. He later got married but after a few years the marriage ended. Since neither of them had any other options, they divided the space, with her living in one part and him in the other. They were ’sharing’ the space like this until a young man came along with a little wine and offered them two apartments in exchange for the big chimney.”
After interviewing some of his friends who knew about this unusual investment, I found out that, given the new opportunities for acquiring licenses to open businesses, three young friends, who were familiar with the place and its history, decided to pool the resources. They “talked to the former couple” and offered them what they so desperately needed.
The first thing they did was restore the chimney, returning it to its former glory and preserving the original painted sign with the name of “old” cooking oil factory, El Cocinero. At the entrance there is now a well-tended garden where antique objects from the factory itself are exhibited like sculptures. A large bell at the gate greets you. A circular staircase rising two floors inside leads you to the roof and a pleasant bohemian bar where a wide variety of tapas and drinks will guarantee you an enchanting and “offbeat” evening. Everything in the hard currency of CUCs, of course. The restaurant has not yet opened.
Calixto Ramon Martinez Arias, after his release. Image taken from Cubanet
This past Tuesday, the Cuban authorities finally acknowledged Calixto R. Martinez Arias’s right to go free, after he had served more than six months in prison, initially for the crime of “insulting the leadership figures of the Revolution.” He had no trial.
Martinez Arias twice engaged in what is known in the post-1959 history of Cuban political prisoners as “taking a stand” (literally, “planting oneself”): he declared a hunger strike. In the first, he went 33 days without eating, the second, 22. Until, after the second strike, it was reported by state security that his case had been reviewed and they had “understood” his demand for freedom.
“I started the first hunger strike to protest my stay in the Combinado del Este prison,” Martinez Arias said. “I also refused to wear prison garb. When an inmate declares a hunger strike, the guards use many methods to make them quit. The first thing they say is that you are committing a disciplinary infraction, which hurts your eiligibility for rights such as conditional parole, and for family and conjugal visits. And ultimately they take you to the infirmary where the doctor will take your vital signs and issue you a “suitable cell” notice, which means just that: you are fit to be taken to the punishment cells.”
“The punishment cell measures about 6 by 8 feet. It has no light. It has a “Turkish” toilet, and a water basin you can access twice a day, when the guards allow. There were days when they refused me water because a captain who claimed to be the second-in-command of Building 3, where I was detained, said that I could not drink water and took it away from me.
“By day you have to lie on the floor or stand. To that end, they remove the mattress. They left me my clothes, but took away anything with which I might cover myself. I spent very cold days, especially during the first strike. The cells are very wet and very cold, deliberately prepared to be that way. There were times when I had to sleep sitting on the floor, up against the wall, because the guards would come very late to give me the mattress. Lying on the floor you can contract a lung disease from the cold and moisture. The floor is very dirty because the cells are not cleaned. There are many insects: enormous rats, droves of cockroaches. It is a sacrifice that you have to make, convinced that it is all designed to psychologically torture you.
“During the second hunger strike, of 16 days, they took me to what they call ’the increased’ area, which is more severe. Then they took me out of there after one day to an even harsher cell. There the conditions were more brutal. They kept a surveillance camera on me at all times; they never turned off the light.”
In the second hunger strike, Martinez Arias started bleeding profusely from his gums and his teeth began to fall out. He lost 45 pounds. But he says: “I became a lot stronger.”
The “Official Organ of the Communist Party of Cuba,” the newspaper Granma, on Wednesday April 10, published an account of the “good conditions” in which prisoners live in Cuban jails. Regarding this, Martinez Arias said:
“This is an absurdity. I can assure you that they began preparing this article in December. In the month of December they informed us that journalists from the national and foreign press accredited in Cuba were going to visit the Combinado del Este prison. Major Rodolfo, who is in charge of the building where I was, a building for ’pendings,’ explained to us that the visitors would not be given access to our building because of the appalling conditions. Prisoners there live in a state of overcrowding, because every day many ’pending’ prisoners enter.
“It also has many leaks, and the bathrooms are in an extremely unsanitary condition. The building should be declared uninhabitable. Rodolfo explained that he was not going to take visitors there, because of these conditions, and that this was not a bad decision because, and I can almost quote him verbatim, ’when a visitor comes to your house, you want to show him the best, not the worst parts.’ For that reason, he said, they were going to repair a wing of building No.1. The foreign media should not be allowed to have access to the punishment cells. In fact, in none of the pictures they showed are these cells seen.”
In Cuba, the exercise of the right that everyone has to seek, receive, and distribute information, by any means of expression, without limitation by borders—as stated in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—may be considered a crime. But on occasion, to put an independent journalist in prison, as in the case of Martinez Arias, the authorities bring charges of common crimes against him, to deflect the political nature of the arrest.
On September 16, 2012, Martinez Arias had been inquiring of some terminal-workers near Jose Marti International Airport about a batch of medical aid provided by international humanitarian organizations to address the outbreak of cholera and dengue and that, because of official mismanagement, had spoiled.
On leaving the airport, as he and others took shelter from the rain, perched on the benches of a bus stop to avoid the puddles, a patrol car arrived and gave them all tickets; but Martinez Arias was transferred to the police unit of Santiago de las Vegas on the charge of being “illegally” in Havana, having an address of the province of Camagüey. Martinez Arias claimed in his defense that “the brothers Fidel and Raul Castro are natives of the province of Oriente.”
“Immediately” said the self-described activist “the police handcuffed me, took me to a dark hallway, and beat me hard.”
The police who detained and beat him then accused him of “insulting the figures of the leaders of the revolution.” He was automatically moved to the Valle Grande prison, and from there, as punishment for continually denouncing through his colleagues the human rights abuses of the prison population, he was taken to the maximum-security Combinado del Este prison.
During the first hunger strike, State Security informed Martinez Arias that the prosecutor’s petition stated that he had been “insulting” and “resistant”, for having offended a policeman.
“If I had reacted during the beating they gave me by dodging a blow, or by landing a defensive blow to the policeman who was giving me the beating, I would have been accused of ’attacking,’” Calixto said. Police in Cuba can feel “offended” and “attacked” if you don’t react with absolute passivity to their arbitrariness and brutality, and then they fabricate the charges of “insult” and “attack”, respectively, resulting in the person’s imprisonment.
Martinez Arias believes that the visibility conferred by having been declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, together with the solidarity of human-rights activists, independent journalists in Cuba, and many foreign media with the participation of Cubans living abroad, managed to send a message to the government of Raul Castro that a person imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression is not alone, and you cannot keep them in prison subjected to cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment without paying a high political cost that limits your room to maneuver with impunity.
Tomorrow, at dawn, Rosa Maria Paya returns to Cuba, just as she promised at the Havana airport two months ago. Her word, contrary to what is common in Cuba, is honest.
Rosa Maria will return without bodyguards and without a media scandal, vulnerable and smiling, caressing her tireless cross, back to her already classic humble home on Penon street, near Manila Park, where her father Oswaldo Paya Sardinas (1952-2012) will never return, nor her good friend Harold Cepero Escalante (1980-2012). Both were leaders of the Christian Liberation Movement, both died on a tragic Sunday of last July, passed onto the hands of strangers and in a place in Cuba that is still uncertain, given that the official version has become unsustainable after all the evidence and testimonies exposed to the world by Rosa Maria Paya, without even having to raise her voice. Before the grotesque screaming of all forms of State Totalitarianism, the voice of a Cuban, an orphan of friendship and love.
Rosa Maria Paya will return to the land where the mortal remains of the martyred leaders of the Christian Liberation Movement rot. She will return alive and with a wish to resuscitate the sacred desires of living in truth in a socialist society, so panic-stricken and full of hypocrisy. Rosa returns and will sprout in Cuba without any accomplice disease of our octogenarian regime. She will return without any pretensions of violating travel laws or declaring herself on hunger strike. She returns inflamed with life and freedom. She returns, with an L (for ‘Liberty’), just like she left on a Friday this past February.
Cuban State Security did not care, at all, about her 24 years of age, grown into them with resistance in the face of horror. The Paya-Acevedo family is a family that still receives anonymous threats of “before the Revolution ends, we are going to kill you”. And, in effect, there is lots of that in the rheumatic rhetoric of the Revolution: anonymity, fear of having a face beyond Fidel and Raul (our Nuremburg trial will be in a minimal format).
Tomorrow morning Rosa Maria Paya will step out of media’s hands, out of the hands of f Human Rights organizations and parliaments, NGOs and democratic governments that have joined in solidarity. Because in Cuba, only bodies count, and the new face of the Christian Liberation Movement, without vocations of sacrifice, will return to a perverted nation which possibly may not let her travel again. It’s possible that we may never see her paused gesticulation, without the improbable arrogance of our caudillos. We may never again hear the vehement tenderness of her valor. In this sense, we should bid a soulful farewell to Rosa Maria Paya.
The main thing here lies, of course, not in her virtuoso image, but in the legacy of a work that is still powerful and possible in the citizen initiatives of the Varela Project, the Heredia Project, and the Path of the People, and many other concrete propositions which reduce the impunity of the Cuban government, as it forces it to comply with its own legality to transform itself according to popular will. An effort of dozens of thousands of citizens which continues to be ignored by our inoperative National Parliament, governmental organ which apparently prefers to opt for its own suicide instead of facing a future transition.
It is precisely this intimidating silence, that insulting impunity on the margin of morality, it is the malicious muteness of lies and death, that’s the welcome with which the authorities of Havana will now spy on Rosa Maria Paya. The Cuban State continues to be deaf, up to the point of insolence. Their operational logic is in no means institutional. Instead, it is like a secret sect.
Consequently, any abuse of power is expected against her and her family, both in and out of the island, now or in the survival of a decade in which they tortured her own father in her childhood eyes. Nothing is insignificant in that criminal boiler where the most ‘problematic’ activists of the Cuban opposition have been, are, and will be converted from bodies to corpse.
Rosa Maria Paya calls for an international inquiry into the death of father Oswaldo Paya at the Geneva Summit For Human Rights and Democracy. Photo: Human Rights UN via Youtube.
Rosa María Payá is visiting the United States from April 3 to 16. She lives in Havana and is the daughter of Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, the Cuban dissident who won the Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2002 and founded the Christian Liberation Movement. He died alongside young Harold Cepero on July 22, 2012, in what the Cuban government classified as a “traffic accident,” convicting Spanish politician Ángel Carromero –who was driving at the time of the tragedy– of “involuntary manslaughter.” Carromero has now been deported to his own country, where he recently told The Washington Post that what happened may have been a State-sponsored assassination.
Rosa María is hoping to win the support of the US media and authorities for an international campaign demanding an independent investigation of both deaths. She will visit New York, Washington and Miami. To honor the memory of her father and Cepero, on Saturday, April 6, exiled Cuban artist Geandy Pavón projected the image of both martyrs onto the sinister façade of Cuba’s diplomatic mission to the UN, at the corner of Lexington and East 38th Street, in front of the only military sentry box that I’ve seen in New York, and in the presence of Rosa María herself and twenty or so other companions in exile.
Geandy Pavón’s project is called Nemesis and has already paid homage to Cuban social activists who have died in suspicious circumstances, such as prisoner and hunger-striker Orlando Zapata Tamayo (in 2010) and the leader of the Ladies in White, Laura Pollán (in 2011).
During this peaceful political protest to honor his father, Rosa María announced that, “just as this light illuminates the walls of the consulate, I hope the light of truth illuminate the hearts of Cubans, and we can pave the way of reconciliation together, towards the peace, happiness, and democracy that we seek.”
Yoani Sanchez and Rolando Pulido, March 2013, New York City
Rolando Pulido is currently helping us clean up the look of Translating Cuba (stand by!) as well as the foreign language versions of Yoani’s Generation Y, translated the all-volunteer army.
Here are some other recent examples of his volunteer efforts on behalf of his native land:
Angel’s family wants to inform the international community where we stand as of tonight April 12, 2013.
Last week, the regime tried to hide Angel in the Salvador Allende military hospital with the excuse of a dermatological treatment he is receiving, to avoid his having access to talk to the Commission of National and International Journalists accredited to visit La Lima Prison on Tuesday last, April 9. Given the outright refusal of Angel to be taken to the hospital, he was informed that he would be given a pass for a few hours to go to his house. He was even advised in a phone call that they would call indicating what time they should pick him up on Monday.
That call never took place. And after many inquiries it was reported to his friends that he had been taken by force and handcuffed to an unknown destination. It also emerged that Angel tried to resist the transfer — illegal of course — and they would have undertaken in any event on Sunday night. continue reading
The family waited for the phone call that any prisoner is entitled to but that call never came. Attorney Amelia Rodriguez Cala — after visiting La Lima — was informed that Angel had been transferred to the Prison 15-80, The Pitirre, in San Miguel del Padrón, a severe regime facility. She had made all the relevant official arrangements to visit her client and it was agreed she would visit this morning, Thursday, April 11, at 11 am.
The attorney Rodriguez Cala appeared at Prison 15-80 at the set time but was denied the visit. Some officers told that Angel is housed in solitary confinement and is on hunger strike. It is the first time that the lawyer was refused the right to visit a defendant.
None of this has been confirmed because to the unlawful transfer of Angel we must add a new violation of his rights: not allowing his lawyer to visit.
At this time and without knowing anything for sure about Angel, his family, his lawyer and all his friends are extremely concerned. We fear for his safety. We all know that when a prisoner is beaten savagely they will not show him publicly until they can erase the traces of the crime. We fear that this is the case. And to our uncertainty is added the fact of not having the certain knowledge that he is confined in Prison 15-80 and that it could be just one more lie of the regime.
From here, from his blog, this space of freedom that has led to the situation he now finds himself in, wrongly convicted after a rigged trial based on the false allegations made against Angel by the mother of his son — Kenya Rodriguez — his family and friends demand from Raul Castro Ruz that he to enforce all legal guarantees established by law and that Angel be granted the visit of rigor required by law that his lawyer can determine where he is and what is the state of his health.
From here on out we hold the government of Raul Castro Ruz absolutely responsible for what might happen to Angel and we demand his immediate appearance in perfect physical health.
International public opinion through the media and human rights organizations is aware of what they are doing to Ángel Santiesteban-Prats. The mantle of impunity is increasingly slim. And we will not stop until it breaks completely and there is justice for all Cubans.
We also demand that the commission of journalists who are visiting Cuban prisons fulfill their sacred duty to tell the truth and do not lend themselves to being crass puppets in the Castro theater. The life and safety of thousands of prisoners across the island depend on their compliance with the moral imperative and the ethical duty of the journalist. Therefore, we also hold them responsible for what may happen to Angel and all Cuban prisoners, whether political or common.
At dawn on April 12, we are waiting to find Ángel Santiesteban-Prats in perfect health.
Signed: The editor of the blog: The Children Nobody Wanted
From Monday the 8th at 7pm. Without water, nor clothes, nor toiletries, without light, on a concrete bed.
God Inc.
Imitating my patriotic readings
they suppressed my horizon.
I took hold of your name,
of memory the last station.
Every letter engraved
on the silent walls of my cell,
swiftly came the hummingbirds
to applaud the end of my concert.
The spit lost its reach,
roaches played on my face,
my mother gave me a one way ticket
although she knew that love wasn’t surrendering.
The train departed with one aboard,
smudging the image on the window,
for an instance two dried up cats
were following the shadow of a dream.
Prison. 1580 San Miguel del Padrón
In solitary confinement and starvation.
epitaph
Here lies Angel Santiesteban Prats, controversial, patriot, slandered and friend.
He lived and died as he imagined the best novels.
The plane had touched down in Panama and through the windows I saw the harsh sun shining on the pavement. I walked the halls of the airport looking for a bathroom and a place to wait until my next flight. Some young people waiting in the main hall beckoned me and begin shouting my name. They were Venezuelans. They were there, like me, in transit to another destination. So we started to talk in the midst of the crowds, the suitcases, the comings and goings, while the loudspeakers announced arrivals and departures. They told me they read my blog and understood very well what we are living through on the Island. At one point I asked to take a photo with them. They responded with long faces and begged me, “Please, don’t put it up on Facebook or Twitter, because it’ll make problems for us in our country.” I was shocked. Suddenly the Venezuelans reminded me tremendously of Cubans: fearful, speaking in whispers, hiding anything that could compromise them in front of Power.
That encounter made me reflect on the issue of ideological control, surveillance and the excessive interference of the state in every detail of daily life. However, despite the similarities I found between those young people and my compatriots, I felt that there were still spaces open to them that have been long closed to us. Among those open spaces, are elections. The fact that today, Sunday, Venezuelans can go to the polls and decide with their votes — along with all the official tricks — the immediate future of their nation, is something that was taken from Cubans a long time ago. The Communist Party in our county cleverly cut all the paths that would allow us to choose among several political options. Knowing that he could not compete in a fair fight, Fidel Castro preferred to run on the track alone and chose as his only relief in the relay someone who, what’s more, carries his own name. Comparing our situations, Venezuelans are left with the hope of maybe… Cubans, the frustrations of never.
So, knowing the cage from the inside, I venture to recommend to Venezuelans that they themselves not end up being the ones who close the only exit door they can count on. I hope that those young people I met in the Panama airport are right now exercising their right to vote. I wish for them, that after this day they will never again fear reprisals for a photo taken with someone, for speaking out about an idea, for signing their names to a criticism. I wish for them, in short, that they will achieve what we failed to do.
These days, perhaps influenced by what is happening in Venezuela (which seems to be contagious), gullibility is having a deep impact on our government’s journalists as evidenced by various articles, whatever the subject matter. It is a fundamental aspect of political reporting — both foreign and domestic — as well as of articles on culture, science, sports, business and history. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Reports on the upcoming elections in Venezuela have been about only what the ruling party candidate says or does, completely ignoring his opponent unless it is to attack or criticize him. When it comes to telling only one side of a story, these “correspondents” get the gold medal.
On the domestic front everything is great. When important leaders make appearances and ask students what they know about current world events, the answers center on the “sacred” Cuban elections, the tense situation on the Korean peninsula and unfailingly the “blockade” of Cuba. Are students not interested in the country’s problems?
They never fail to mention “the latest injustice in the case of the Five,” which involves the actor Danny Glover not being allowed to visit one of them for the tenth time because he arrived unexpectedly. The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five, created to address this issue, states that “any person included on a prisoner’s list has a right to visit him.” Do Cuban prisons work this way? “The Humanism of the Revolution is Fully Alive in the Cuban Penal System,” reads one headline.
“Without flowers the world would be a sad place,” says a farmer who harvests them. He explains to a journalist their importance in funeral services, adding, “Imagine someone dying and there being no flowers for the final goodbye.” Do flowers not serve other less sad purposes? Another headline reads, ”The Santiago Crematorium Now in Operation;” the article states, “A service there will cost 340 pesos.”* Have journalists forgotten that the minimum monthly salary is no more than 240 pesos?
Another article on healthy aging states, “The expert stresses the need for a healthy, varied and balanced diet containing fruits and vegetables (ideally six servings a day).”* Is the journalist aware that pensions are meager and fruits and vegetables are expensive?
I think this is more than enough to demonstrate my point. Is this to be “our American” epidemic?**
*Translator’s note: From the journal Juventud Rebelde.
**The term “our American” have been used to refer to multi-national initiatives proposed by Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution movement.
If tango is an expression of deep sorrow, the TV newscasts in Spain are not the sublimation of a lost dream, but the chronology of disasters, political corruption, social tensions and chronicles that suggest a mood that portends anarchy. The Hispanic television broadcasters dance with words, images and testimonies of the protagonists of evictions but more than reports and reviews of the daily tragedies and problems of national and European life, they pulse with an ideological counterpoint that draws the color of the news and highlights the political and institutional crisis that is exhausting the country.
In Spain, the partisan positioning and mutual accusations between adherents of the Popular Party and the socialists is remarkable in the Parliament sessions where they air the debts contracted to the European Union, which postpone the solution of the economic crisis that began in 2006 and justify government decisions about budget cuts in sensitive sectors such as health, education, employment.
Both the newspapers and the TV news in Spain offer a sense of tsunamis on the horizon, increasing with reports of possible economic and political earthquakes that will shake neighboring Portugal, Italy, Greece and Cyprus, all engaged in diplomatic tussles with the German government and with “the euro trap” that leaves no options to countries in crisis.
But the TV news not only predicts tsunamis in the peninsula and in the countries of the Mediterranean basin. Venezuela is experiencing a bizarre electoral telenovela starring Nicolas Maduro, successor to Hugo Chavez, and Henriquez Capriles, leader of the opposition, while the Communist ruler of North Korea threatens to launch dozens of nuclear missiles against South Korea and the United States, rather than deal with the problems of his starving country.
Since reality is not always interesting, the TV news I to see barely talks about the potential tsunamis in the bellicose Middle East, the African nations submerged in misery and a Caribbean island that seems like a rhapsody of unconnected voices. I refer to Cuba, from where they ask me what is said in Europe about that part of America, whose militaristic litany seems like the overflowing imagination of reporters.
In Spain and Europe they barely speak of Cuba, immersed in their own dissolving dynamics. Perhaps the “old world” is overcome with exhaustion at some many utopian proclamations. Whoever wants to know, I suggest they delve into the pages of Cubanet and the digital weekly Primavera, or read the bloggers lined up on the platform Voces Cubanas. I notice that, despite being surrounded by water, there is no tsunami in sight.
For some time North Korea seems to be “resetting its war of the ’big bark’” and increasing its verbal “shockwaves” and tensions in general. The discourse heats up the diplomatic tone and increases general tension. They assert that it is the opponents who are the provocateurs, because they are engaging in joint military exercises with the United States, but everything seems to indicate that the it is due to the hunger of its people, the inability of the government to solve that, and the reaffirmation of a dynastic president, who arrived at his post through blood ties and needs to morally consolidate his power before his army.
The Japanese military occupation ended in 1945, Korea was divided in two by the 38th parallel: the north, occupied by the then Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the South by the United States Army. In 1950, Kim Il Sung’s grandfather, supported by China and Russia, invaded the south of the peninsula, which cost him the war with the United Nations. In 1953 he signed an armistice that ended the shooting war, but both countries are still officially at war, as they have not signed a peace treaty.
This is always the threat, but is more danger every time there is an undemocratic caudillo leading a country supported by opportunistic people who do not want anything to change to maintain their standing. They are the manufacturers of perks, the irresponsible dispatchers of misery, who see the specter of conflict everywhere to keep their interests intact.
Because of bad decisions in the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea — essentially dictatorships tend to emphasize “democratic” in the name of the country — the human species is approaching the precipice of war. We already faced this Cuba in 1962 and the earthquake caused serious geopolitical tensions worldwide. Today, with the possession of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea, the threat becomes a conclusive ultimatum.
The use of force is an animal instinct that human behavior assumes despite its complete lack of reasonableness. I hope that on this occasion, as on others, once again sanity and the spirit of survival will prevail, and that in the near future no country will again become victim of irresponsible leaders, who in order to “send messages” to their own subalterns, international allies and enemies, and to stay in power, threaten world peace.
Havana, Cuba -For more than three consecutive months, the Cuban populace that lives with HIV/AIDS has noticed an absence of the nutritive products graciously granted by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS of the United Nations.
The nutritive products have not been coming to any of the established distribution points in the country since the latter part of last year. Leaders of the commercial entities respond before the questions posed by the affected that they do not know the why behind the absence of supplies and even less why there is such a delay in the distribution of the products.
In Cuba, more than 18,000 Cubans live with this malady and the majority receive important help which alleviates the lack of fats and meat available to the population. This isn’t the first time that help has disappeared without an explanation or cause, but the important thing to remember is what the benefit of it means for each HIV+ Cuban.
Many in the world are unaware of the nutritive inequities that exist on the island with regard to this malady. The foodstuffs that are received dwindle in quantity and weight depending on the region where they live and in accordance with the pre-established diet designed by the health system that was previously fulfilled by the “canasta básica” or “basic basket” granted by the régime.
We are mentioning this because we have received differing declarations from information sources throughout the island. The HIV/AIDS population in Havana is the most benefitted in terms of nutrition while the other infected populace in the provinces only receive half of what is distributed in the capital.
The subject has been discussed in different instances but never has there been a response or a solution that benefits every Cuban that struggles with this disease.
One could ask how many people are invested in this cause? Who would be to blame in this occasion? Or is it that even International Organizations headquartered in Havana cannot ensure and protect the interests they represent? The questions are many and I fear that they will continue unanswered.
As I write this note, I think only of that population, that while government officials enjoy meals in abundance similar to those representatives of international organizations headquartered in Havana, many in that population don’t even have something to swallow their medicines with, while others replace milk with water only to cite an example.
The situation might vary in different regions, yet if we discussed nutrition in the six penitentiary establishments that confine more than 500 recluses of both sexes with this disease, the discussion would never end.
Let this article serve as a voice for each person who lives with HIV/AIDS and allow it to resonate and reach the ear of someone who is really interested in these conditions. The scarcity and lack of food access to the population affected by this disease cannot be shunned or set aside.
That big red brick chimney always caught my eye. As a girl it seemed immense to me. I imagined goblins living there. It aroused great fascination, especially since it was on a route we had to take — leading to the “scary” iron bridge over the Almendares River, which occasionally would open up like a giant wolf’s jaws to allow yachts to pass through — when we went to visit Aunt Cuca in Miramar. It was always one of my favorite walking paths.
