Translating Cuba

Photo by Rebecca

When a famous person dies, respect, consideration, and moderation should prevail at the funeral services, and should not be turned into something dramatic and sad, into a farce. Last week in Venezuela, and even today, they’ve exceeded all limits and have become something more like a folkloric spectacular than a mournful farewell, they have taken possession of the country and flooded the media. A central and disjointed and repetitive discourse, full of maudlin oaths, prayers, invocations to Christ, with pleas for forgiveness and even tears, was the official base of some later demonstrations, closer to collective hysteria and a sincere sorrow.

In the political manipulation of the illness of a leader and, in the last two months, the use of it emotionally to maintain popular support for the government at all costs, reached a catharsis last weekend, with the huge hype raising the figure of Hugo Chavez to Mount Olympus of the Gods, where they use all the adjectives available in Spanish, while his body remains unburied.

Our country was not foreign to him, and for three days, something quite unusual for a foreign personality no matter how close they were to the authorities, Cubans said farewell to him at the Plaza of the Revolution, with artillery salvos, beating of chests before the cameras, speakers and presenters dressed in black, and newspapers printed in black, all in mourning. Clearly it is not impossible to find a happy medium: either we fall short or go too far, and as usual, the latter happens.

Undoubtedly, loss is painful for anyone, and even more so when it is a public personality, whether or not we agree with their ideas but, as a neighbor of mine says: good is good, but not too but not too much of it. Luckily, for the tranquility of many, the election of the new Pope has taken over the headlines.

14 March 2013

Mexico does not allow for half measures, does not admit that we remain unscathed. It’s like spice on the tongue, tequila in the throat and the sun in our eyes. Five days in the land of the feathered serpent and it was hard for me to board the plane because intense desires spoke to me about staying to explore a captivating and complex reality. I’ve seen modern buildings a few yards from the ruins of the Great Temple; incredible traffic jams on the streets, while on the sidewalks people walk with the calm of those who are in no hurry to arrive. I have also seen the smiling La Calavera Catrina, alternating seamlessly with the the vibrantly colorful of the people in La Ciudadela shopping center. With her sarcastic laugh, feathered hat and exposed ribcage she challenges me. Someone gave me a taste of a dessert, it was intensely sweet, sprinkled with sugar; but then I bit into a tamale and the kick of chili on my tongue made me cry. Mexico doesn’t allow for lukewarm feelings, you love it or you love it.

So my Aztec journey began surrounded by contrasts. From Puebla to Mexico City, meeting friends and visiting several newspaper offices, radio stations and, above all, speaking with many many journalist colleagues. I wanted to know first hand the rewards and risks of practicing the reporter’s profession in this society and I have met a great number of concerned, but working, professionals. People who risk their lives, especially in the north, to report; people who think like I do about the need for a free press, responsible, and tied to reality. I have learned from them. I have also gotten lost in the network of tiny shops and kiosks in the city center, and have felt the pulse of life there. A life I had perceived from the air before we landed, when at dawn on Saturday I saw the great anthill that is Mexico City, the many cities it contains, burning with life, despite the early hour.

For a moment, I had the impression of living in a fragment of the novel Los detectives Salvajes by Roberto Bolaño. But I wasn’t seeking, like the protagonists in this book, a cult poetess, lost in oblivion. In reality I was trying to look at and find my own country through the eyes of the Mexicans. And I found it. An Island reinterpreted and multiple, but close; one that raises passions in everyone and leaves no one unscathed. A friend asked me before I left, “What does Mexico make you feel?” I didn’t think too long: “Spicy,” I replied, like a spice that provokes an electric shock, and brings tears of pleasure and torment. “And Cuba,” he insisted, “What does it make you feel?”… Cuba, Cuba is bittersweet…

La Mensura is nearly a kilometer high and 25 individual and dusty kilometers from Mayari, there in the eastern part of Holguin province, Cuba. One kilometer in height that becomes an infinite zigzag to climb, although most travelers find it easy.

It is a rough hill, very rough, and guarded: the slopes are like the back of someone who lost out in a duel with machetes, as has the embankment. The level of deforestation is remarkable; the pines that cover the mountain are young; the dense damp forest vegetation that often covers mountains in the east is missing. At the end of the winding road, right at the top, stands a military zone with a corresponding “Do Not Enter”, which seems to warn: you, be careful, don’t try to get too high.

Far away to the northeast, are other mountains, and the reddish deserts of the Nicaro mines. To the south, the road continues in the foothills, and leads to Mella and Palmarito de Cauto, Jose Daniel Ferrer’s village. Taking advantage of the excellent coverage, we call on the mobile phone but didn’t get a signal: it was later revealed that it had been blocked, once more, by the owners of Cubacel.

Below, between the hill and the road, a nice tourist site, with pool and alpine-like huts, surrounded by fresh green and songbirds. All for a price per day that exceeds the average monthly wage of any Cuban. At the entrance, another sign of prohibition of access in English only, but as crystal clear as the military zone, “Welcome to Villa Pinares de Mayari.”

7 March 2013

Candy, sweets, coconut bars covered in sugar, all that and more makes up the offerings of a small cafe near the bus stop. There are good days and bad days, when it sells a lot or very little. But the real issue is not the marketing of candy, but the purchase of raw material to make it. Lacking a wholesale market, for years the owner of the place has had to buy every ingredient at wholesale prices. Unable to make a profit this way, she also dives into the informal market to buy flour, syrups and even the paper she wraps the sweets in before giving them to customers.

Without these illegal measures, her business would have folded quickly. Thus, a few days ago, the troubled lady happily received the news that a wholesale market would open to serve self-employed workers.

A new resolution signed in February allows the creation of a State company that will offer products and services to the emerging private sector. By mid-year it will be possible to access food, computer equipment and real estate, with costs targeted to individual entrepreneurs.

If all goes according to what the law says, the opening of this wholesale market will reduce the illegal importing of goods as well as the illicit sales networks. For years the so-called “mules” have brought food and clothing to the Island, particularly from the United States and Ecuador.

The contraband has made it possible for many of the cafes, restaurants and private businesses to sustain themselves. Thus the Cuban government’s urgency to recover for itself the large mount of money that moves beyond its reach. But the measure comes a little late, the underground economy has gained so much strength it will be hard to sanitize it.

he early death of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, president of the Republic of Venezuela, brings with it instability for the country and those allied with him.

With the death of the leader the opportunity to take power is knocking on Capriles’ door. In a country in mourning, the political opponents are gathering their forces to attack the violations of the constitution without concern for the pain of the rank and file Chavista and family members.

The opportunity presents itself but not right now. continue reading

Diaz-Canel. Photo from http://www.observer-reporter.com

If for years Hugo Chavez was politically influenced by Cuba’s “historical” leadership (as those who participated in the Revolution call themselves), it seems that this influence is now reversed. That is, the attitudes of the Venezuelan president are taken into account by the authorities of the Cuban archipelago — who seem to take note of everything and imitate and adopt what suits them — to try to unlock the hinges welded shut by the rust of their political machine.

When Chavez came to Havana in December, and perhaps compelled by his speech to his people before leaving for here — leaving Nicolas Maduro (desperate for the job) to head the government — they coincidentally published a few days later in the newspaper Granma that the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez had been promoted to the Politburo. Rodriguez is a young man who in 2009 replaced his predecessor, and who has exceeded so far all the required proofs of “Fidel-ity and Raul-ity” with the completion of the missions they have entrusted to him, and the insipidness of his flattering speeches.

A few days after the resignation of Benedict XVI, other “leaves” sprouted fortuitously from Cuba’s photocopier government. The resignations of Abelardo Colome Ibarra, minister of the interior, and Jose R. Machado Ventura, first vice president since an illness in the presidential chair resulted in Raul Castro giving up the vice presidential one to move up. Both these traditional higher-ups — and they weren’t the only ones — humbly, but without saintliness, put their portfolios at the disposition of the National Assembly.

The evidence the number one Cuban had been leaving around for a few years about who his “chosen one” would be, to wit Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, bore fruit recently with the vote to make him Cuba’s first vice-president. With these impressions they have created a file with a renewed image of the totalitarian regime. Raul-ity and renewal seem to be the “R’s” that will begin to de-revolutionize everything that was change to drag the country down and freeze it in Caesarism.

With the perspective of Chavez’s deteriorating health and of money and investment from the United States, the real leaders in power are sending the message of change when the biological clock or the logistic and geopolitical conditions force it, not when it is demanded by society and the nation.

We need real reform in which the branches of government become independent, policy alternatives are recognized, other political parties are decriminalized, there are fundamental rights and freedoms, and genuine, transparent and democratic, elections that represent the different ideological colors of society.

I hope the historical leaders enjoy good health, so that Diaz-Canel — like his Venezuelan counterpart (as I said in a Tweet) — is not assigned the sad task of becoming a spokesperson for another leader, as if he didn’t have other things to do.

It seems that not only talent but a well-learned script, unconditional loyalty to the maximum leader of the only party (which also is the state), the ability to praise them and avoid the “honey of power” accusations from the elite, among other more minor attributes, are the merits of greater weight when appointing and promoting some to the country’s most important positions in despotic and dictatorial regimes.

Translator’s note: This post was published in Spanish before Chavez’s death.

5 March 2013

I froze my ears off  in Prague and from the window of the number 14 tram I could see Misha, the little bear holding a Kalashnikov. I immediately remembered this icon of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the entire sequence of animated cartoons he starred in later. Those were the days when Cuban children knew more about the Russian tundra than the countryside of our own nation, more about wolves than hutias, more about apples than oranges.

The era when the Kremlin was a constant presence in our lives, with its soldiers, its technicians sent from thousands of miles away and its subsidy so fat it allowed some extraordinarily wasteful spending on the part of Fidel Castro. All this passed through my mind in a second as I read the announcement that this particular display promised a trip to the past through the aesthetic promoted by the USSR.

At a set time, as with all events in the time I spent in the Czech Republic, I went to 10 Na Prikope Street to take a look at the museum. The first surprise was at the entrance, where the woman who was selling tickets had the courtesy to let me pass free, due to the fact—she explained—that I came from Cuba. Given the closeness of the objects in those rooms with my reality, I could enjoy the tour free of charge because in the end it was a journey through my own daily life. Why should I pay for the ordinary, for the usual, for exactly how it is?

While I observed the wonder and giggles of other visitors, I looked at the red flags, listened to the Internationale, and passed by the statues in glorious poses with a familiarity immune to amazement. It was like attending an exposition of gadgets from my kitchen or the underwear in my drawer. Nothing had the character of a museum piece for me, as I live a scenario were each one of these objects or ways of speaking and presenting an image are still present for me. A journey to the same, an excursion to the known and so often experienced. A museum of the past, for this traveler coming from the same remote time.

Closeness, however, is not always synonymous with comfort. So as I advanced through the rooms a feeling of strangulation came over me. The medals, the farmer with a raised fist, and the ugly cans of jam with colorless labels. Everything contributed to an itch that started on my face and spread under my coat to my whole body. Barely two weeks after leaving Cuba, I felt a marked allergy to everything. There were the military uniforms with the peaked caps that our officers mimicked for decades. The insignias for outstanding workers and soldiers killed in the war, so identical to those given out in our own country that I had to look twice to convince myself they didn’t say “Republic of Cuba” rather than USSR or RDA.

So, advancing between the posters in the worst style of Socialist realism I came to a reproduction of a KGB office. The rough phone, the metal files with each drawer labeled with a letter and the files within. Little pieces of cardboard stained by time with the names of the spied upon. The catalog of the “inconvenient” citizens, of the critics who were once the targets of the political police.

I was tempted to look for “Y” and delve into the files in search of a name. But at that moment the feeling of asphyxiation the Museum of Communism gave me reached an unbearable point and I ran out into the street to take a breath of Prague’s air, cold and free.

13 March 2013

Perhaps the concern I feel over the recent visit of Russian President Dimitri A. Medvedev to Cuba is due to my natural incompetence in economic matters, but in truth reading the first item on his agenda leaves little room for doubt. The Russian Prime Minister clearly establishes as the primary purpose of his visit, to establish a “Convention on the regularization of the debt of the Republic of Cuba to the Russian Federation for credits granted in the period of the former USSR.”

It couldn’t have been stated more clearly if it were etched in stone. Any malcontent could get the impression that Comrade Medvedev came to hand us the bill for everything having to do with Russian for the three decades of “cooperation” during the Soviet era. However much this issue is decorated or obscured with the other nine points which are of little importance, that time of Russian dreams has been left definitively in the past by this generation of Russian politicians and they’re giving us a clear and concise message: the seem disposed to collect everything they are owed, down to the last centavo.

I recently reflected on the post-war period and how much a society can progress through an opportune focusing of its efforts. A little more than a decade after the Second World War, Europe was completely changed. Cities flattened by Nazi bombs were rebuilt in the carefree abandon of the ‘60s, and the same thing happened in Japan, once it was stripped of it military ballast. The world watched how, despite the nuclear aftermath, the land of the rising sun rebuilt at a dizzying speed and became a world economic power. A similar evolution occurred in Germany, with all its cities bombed by the RAF, including Berlin having been attacked by the artillery of the Red Army.

However, after three decades of broad Soviet economic protection — equivalent to a Marshall Plan designed especially for us — left us unable to take flight. The fact is, we have given history an eloquent example of how to waste such an opportunity.

But, as it was in the past it continues to be today, and Moscow doesn’t believe in tears. Now Comrade Mededev arrives, at this time and with that message, which could not come at a more inopportune time, no matter how one depreciates the amount for the differences in the value of the old ruble and the agreement to pay in a decade.

Watching the press conference I saw something — arrogance? — in the gestures of the Russian, and something else — worry? — on the face of our President Raul. To tell the truth, I don’t know where we are going to get everything we would need to pay back for thirty years of resources wasted by the handful — I wonder if this would be possible — because at that time no one knew — not the KGB, nor the CIA, not even God — that there would be glasnost, or perestroika, and that someone would one day postulate, for good or ill, the apparent end of history.

9 March 2013

UNEAC 50th Anniversary Gala: Esteban Lazo, Abel Prieto, Raul Castro, Miguel Barnet and one other official. Photo EFE/Alejandro Ernesto

Prison Diary II. La Lima Prison.

Book Fair?

In the last days before going to prison, I managed to read several letters from friends who remembered that Book Fair in Havana where we got together and, in addition to sharing the culture, embraced the writers of this island and those who don’t visit us.

“The ’newest’ generation”* was a family that was ready for any call from its members to defend ourselves against bureaucrats, officials and the political police who constantly harassed us like mad dogs for the slightest thing, sometimes just for an expression between a group of intellectuals or for a story reading, or simply because a lot of intellectuals came to your house, and writers like Amir Valle, Jorge Luis Arzola or Daniel Morales can attest to this.

The killed that emotion of our meeting at the Book Fairs, and now it’s nothing more than a space to catch and convict intellectuals without the least scruples, and as if that weren’t enough, like in a gladiator arena, we began to fight among ourselves, but not even for our lives and ideals, as it was in my case, but simply to defend their chance to survive as best as possible. One refusal, and they would start down the path of ostracism, and not everyone was there for them.

And so the members of my generation preferred to emigrate and save their work and their families and find a dignified life where their children wouldn’t suffer what they had to bear because they knew the ordeal that would come down on them from above if they expressed adverse opinions.

In any event, the Book Fair ceased to be a cultural plaza, now it was taken over by the political and military, as happened in the majority of books presented, and for this type of work major editions are planned.

Hence, what I am sure of is that one day those intellectuals who sought shelter elsewhere will be back, and we will develop a generation, already mature, with our opinions, but above all, with the love of culture, art and literature that has always been the great banner of our generation of the children nobody wanted**.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Translator’s notes:

*A post about Angel and his role in “the newest generation” can be read here. Following is an excerpt: By Ernesto Santana Zaldívar. HAVANA, Cuba, June, http://www.cubanet.org – In the ’90s, the generation of the Novísimos (the Newest) brought to Cuban literature themes and narrative forms that marked a certain rupture with the previous generations. Angel Santiesteban, born in 1966, became one of the most emblematic creators of this time, not only for the prizes he won, but also for the acceptance he achieved with readers.

**”The Children Nobody Wanted” is the title of a Angel’s book of stories about Angola, and of his blog.

12 March 2013

The word “people” is widely used by politicians, mainly by those who are leftists or populists. Phrases such as the power of the people, the people decide, the people command, the people’s opinion, the people aroused, the people condemn, the people support and many others are seen and heard with great frequency. For these politicians the people are all homogenous, and include only those who share their political and ideological views, lumping everyone together without taking into account others who might think differently. The reality, however, is something else. Among the people there are views that are similar and views that are different. It is not a closed circuit but rather an unlimited open space. It would be more correct to speak of one or more segments of the people, of minorities and majorities, but certainly not of all the people.

Because of this, but mainly because of its demagogic usage, it is not a word of which I am fond. I much prefer the word citizen, which seems to me to be more  precise and which suggests a higher degree of individuality and awareness of rights and responsibilities. I see a citizen as someone far removed from the masses (a word which fortunately has been out of favor for a number of years), as someone capable making his or her presence in society felt.

One of our principle problems (though not the only one, by any means), is having to accept being confined by this generic concept of the people instead of having defended our status as citizens. The people, as well as the masses, have always been manipulated, serving as a platform and basis of support for flawed ideas, much to the nation’s detriment. This would not have happened if society had been made up of citizens – people who fulfilled their duties while demanding respect for their rights.

Reestablishing the role of the citizen is an arduous and complex task, but a necessary one if we truly want to overcome the moral and civic vacuum in which we find ourselves. It is essential for the real economic, politic and social change that the country demands.

11 March 2013