Translating Cuba

But there was more. The Cuban ambassador with his characteristic arrogance called a meeting in the Cuban embassy in Brasilia with members of the Labor Party (PT) and other leftist parties, to organize and finance the attack on the Cuban blogger on social networks and to prepare “acts of repudiation” during her visit, with slogans provided by the embassy itself. In this meeting–meddling in Brazil’s internal affairs–there was also an official who works directly for the president of the Republic, such was the depth of the conspiracy against the visit to the country of “one of the ten most influential intellectuals of Latin America,” according to Foreign Policy Magazine, which should fill the Castro regime with shame.

The trip and the initial reception of Yoani Sánchez in Recife

The filmmaker Dado Galvão, in coordination with me, had prepared a program of activities for Yoani in Brazil that had, as its first activity, a simple reception at the Recife airport, in the capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco, by a commission composed of the director himself, a representative of the group “Feria de Santana,” and me, a time when Yoani would be presented to the Brazilian press, and we would coordinate with the blogger the details of the trip, which included her immediate travel from Recife–the location of her initial reception in Brazil–to the city of Salvador, capital of the Brazilian state of Bahia, which includes the city of “Feria de Santana” where there would be a two-day program with the Cuban blogger.

I arrived in Recife on Sunday, February 17, from the city of Belem, capital of the Brazilian state of Para, to be present when Yoani arrived. Moments before leaving, I received a call from Galvão telling me that the largest Brazilian weekly magazine, VEJA, was about to publish, in its Saturday, February 16th edition, everything about a conspiracy of the Cuban ambassador in Brasilia which the magazine had obtained from one of the militants invited to the meeting, including the “dossier” against Yoani, and so blowing up the scandal to national proportions, which far from harming the Cuban blogger, amplified and highlighted her importance in Brazil, as was later proved. They were “hoist on their own petard.”

Before traveling to Recife I bought the magazine and on my trip I read the details of the “dossier,” which had the three photos of Yoani, mentioned above, as “proof” of her “taste for capitalism” (bananas, beer and the beach). The report was full of heavy accusations against the Brazilian authorities for authorizing a high official of the President of the Republic to attend, in the name of the government, to a meeting impossible to conceive of in a free country like Brazil. What I read astounded me, because in reality the preparations for the trip on my and Galvão’s parts had not included anything regarding the safety in Brazil of the peaceful and frail Cuban blogger.

On arriving at the airport in Recife, the first thing I did was to meet with the head of airport security, with the idea of pointing out the seriousness of what was published in VEJA against the Cuban blogger, who I had come to meet and had brought to this place in Brazil. The reason for this contact was to ask for authorization from the local authorities to contact Yoani before she left the international area of the airport and to communicate the facts narrated in the magazine, with two objectives: first to prepare her for a hostile reception paid for by the Cuban embassy, and second, to suggest she not offer opinions about the participation of the president in the embassy conspiracy, as long as we didn’t have more details with respect to it, thus avoiding a confrontation with the government from the very beginning.

I was professionally and excellently treated by airport security, but the international reception area is not under the control of this institution, which told me I would have to go to Federal Revenue (who collect the taxes on things coming in to the country), or to the Federal Police, in charge of operating the Brazilian customs. With this information I decided to go to the Federal Police where I communicated the problem presented by what was published in VEJA and the potential negative reception, for which we were not prepared. The official was very receptive to my request and promised to strengthen security at the time Yoani’s plane arrived (Monday morning, February 18, at 12:30 AM) but there was no chance of me being allowed into the international area under their control, for security reasons.

From the Federal Police I went to the desk of the airline that was bringing Yoani to Brazil, the Panamanian company COPA. A senior official of the company treated me with great courtesy, but had no authority to authorize me to enter the international area to speak with Yoani before she left the area. As she emerged, Yoani would certainly have many journalists as well as demonstrators paid for by the Cuban embassy. However, the COPA official offered me a solution: he would intercept Yoani in the jetway coming off the plane, before the border, and call my cell phone from his cell phone and put Yoani on to speak to me, which seemed a good solution in these complex circumstances and this was what I did.

As Yoani appeared at the exit door of the international area, there was already a battalion of some 30 photographers and Brazilian and international press along with a group of some 20 demonstrators paid by the Cuban embassy. As the blogger emerged we had coordinated that she would first be embraced by Galvão and then by me. Initially, Galvão’s hug took place without the protestors having identified the figure of Yoani, too frail for their minds to assimilate that she was the woman who created a “crisis” for the “Commander” in Havana. It was during my hug that the screaming began, as well as the deployment of the posters directed by the Cuban ambassador. The slogans were in Spanish and from the early days of the Revolution, such as “Cuba yes, Yankees no,” and “Down with the worms,” which greatly increased the sympathy for Yoani, who immediately identified the origin of the “protest.”

As we had planned ahead of time, we crossed the international departure area toward the VIP lounge offered by the airport authorities. The journalists asked Yoani some questions and the the camera flashes lit up the environment with uninterrupted clarity. Yoani walked down the corridor, followed by the journalists while the demonstrators tried to reach her with their posters, but Yoani was flanked by Galvão and one of the organizers of her activities in “Feria de Santana,” while I positioned myself at her back, to deter any attempt, which fortunately did not occur.

Once inside the VIP lounge, the demonstration was dispersed outside and Yoani was received within the lounge by the airport workers present, all hugging her and wanting pictures taken with her, apologizing for the insults against her “from a small group unsuited to democracy” they said, “who don’t represent the hospitality of the Brazilian people.” Yoani gave her first interviews there (at three in the morning) saying that “the demonstrations don’t leave a bad impression, because in a democracy you have to expect things like this.” That “the only thing I feel is that in Cuba there wouldn’t be things like this with visitors, because the Cuban repression would end the protests in two minutes.”

The warm reception of the simple Brazilians in the airport, airline officials, police, janitors, photographers and journalists, gave me the first clue about what would be repeated throughout the whole trip. A little group of “militants” paid by the Cuban embassy were the only Brazilians who greeted Yoani aggressively in Brazil. Yoani Sanchez, as she walked the streets and plazas of the country from that point forward, was always received with signs of affection, respect, curiosity and an admiration more like that accorded a “pop star” (as the Brazilian press calls her) than a blogger. Everyone admired her and was surprised that a person so fragile–and a woman–was the one who created a total crisis for the “Cuban Commander.”

(To be continued)

Photos and images taken from GOOGLE.COM.BR

From Cubalibredigital, 25 February 2013

But the government has ignored their demands and after the conclusion, on Sunday, of the XXII International Book Fair of Havana — with manifest calculation — they hastened his imprisonment. On Monday, Santiesteban received the citation from the hands of a neighbor, where the authorities had left it two days prior. The idiosyncrasies of the tropical Police remain unchanged.

Last night the writer said goodbye to his friends and supporters during a meeting at the Estado de Sats project, directed by Antonio Rodiles. The reading was entitled “Zone of Silence” and Santiesteban shared his best stories with the supported public gathered there.

The man who will go to jail is one of the most productive Cuban authors of the last two decades with the literary scene on the island. In 1995 he was awarded the Writers Union National Prize for his book of stories, “Dream of a Summer’s Day.” In 2001 he won the Alejo Carpentier Prize for Fiction for “The Children Nobody Wanted.” Five years later his work was crowned with the Casa de las Americas Prize “Blessed AreThose Who Mourn.”

As Julio Cortázar wrote to Carpentier in a letter of 1971, following the Padilla arrest, “every imprisonment of a writer is a sad and disturbing event.” To make it even more notoriously disastrous, Santiesteban will go to jail on the fifth anniversary of the Raul Castro’s government signing the United Nations Covenants on human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural Rights, in February 2008.

I talked by phone with Santiesteban on the eve of his coming captivity. I leave you with his words, his steadfastness and faith.

Strange questions

I learned on Monday that they had left the summons at a neighbor’s house, on the weekend, very odd especially since there were always people in my house. This Thursday at 9 AM I am supposed to the at the Havana Provincial Court, next to the Capitol. From there they will take me to the prison they decide. They’re so clumsy they didn’t even realize that this is the anniversary of the United Nations Covenants signing by Cuba in 2008.

I think the decision to imprison me is final. I know of a writer who was very close to my son — he was a teacher but I prefer not to say his name — and he asked him on several occasions if I hadn’t gotten the summons, and it seemed strange that he was so sure they were going to send it to me. Then I thought for a moment they wouldn’t summon me, but this writer asked insistently: “Did your dad already get the summons?” That is, they were sure they would summon me. I don’t know how far they can take the came, but it doesn’t seem to me now to be a threat or pressure.

The silence of Miguel Barnet

Miguel Barnet, who heads the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC), as of Sunday is also one of 31 members of the State Council. I have wondered if he could help from his position to re-evaluate my case and I would think he could, but he has had time and as of today hasn’t done anything.

He sent the judgment to the legal representative of the UNEAC and she explained clear that they had nothing on me. He knows it’s an injustice, I do not know how far he’s willing to take his bravery and the chance that he might act. There is a lot of pressure and he knows it. In any event, they dump the bucket of excrement over him, Abel Prieto and UNEAC. Me, no, I will go as a badge of honor, it truly is an honor to be imprisoned by the dictatorship. For them it’s an embarrassment that knowing there isn’t a single proof against me and having demonstrated at the trial that I’m innocent, they put me behind bars.

They have had to lie to convict me. They haven’t had the decency to admit that they were wrong. They don’t want anyone to defend me, I’m just asking for a fair trial. That’s enough for me. And where there are international observers. They can not keep playing that way with humans.

I’ll be on time in court Thursday. It will be a hot morning, because the opposition wants to make a full appearance there. It will be a fraternal farewell to somehow tell me I’m not alone.

I’m in good spirits, I have with me here today to Jose Daniel Ferrer, who is a professor in all this Cuban suffering. He has a very brave manner. We talked a lot and he has passed on to me all that courage. I’ll try to do it with as much dignity as possible.

I am calm. I will move to another phase of struggle; I will be directly in their hands, but I know I’m going to cause more problems than they imagine. Everyone asks the same question: why imprison a writer now, at a time when the government tries to present a picture of changes and openings to the world? My only hope is that at the last minute a Superman will appear and say, No, this must be stopped. But I don’t think about that, because I would waste the time I should devote to other important things.

It’s not just alarming to put in prison a writer who has won the highest literary prizes and awards given this government itself, but the process is crude, too crude, too badly done. This can not be legally sustained. If I did not have ways to prove I’m innocent, then they would have to shut my mouth. But they don’t have proof, not a single hair from my head.

Just one expert Lieutenant Colonel says he can tell by the size and tilt of the letters written on paper that I’m guilty. Another psychiatrist who says that because my son was born with a syndrome, I’m guilty of this syndrome. They even confused in the section for which they had to sentence me according to tax charges. Even choosing a section that was far from what I had done and that included fewer years in prison. That’s enough anywhere in the world for a mistrial, except in Cuba.

Farce of gross fabrication

In the video that we managed to take of the witness Alexis Quintana Kindelan, that’s now circulating in the internet, he himself confesses that my ex-wife told him what he needed to say, knowing it was false, and this witness comes to recognize that she has an intimate relationship with the policeman who was then used to accuse me. And that was the prosecution’s witness, not mine! That was the person they would use to say that I was entering the house! Then when that witness became advantageous to me, he was removed from the process. It was the only witness they had.

It was so crude, what they’ve done, it’s unexplainable. It’s alleged I entered my ex-wife’s house, beat her, raped her, robbed her, tried to kill her, a whole chain of events, things that were added over a month. So how, then, are they going to drop these major crimes and leave the paltry ones, if it’s all a chain of events? If the sequence is continuous, how could one crime be committed and not the others.

It’s disrespectful, because my son says I wasn’t in the house, and there are witnesses that I was somewhere else. The authorities said there was a contradiction between the child and my witnesses, but really there is no contradiction, just the opposite. This has reinforced this farce, which is legally untenable.

Terrified intellectuals

If what they want is that I suffer a bit, because I am disposed to suffer with great pride, because I will not be daunted. What I want to make clear to the world is that they have not demonstrated any guilt on my part. It’s hard to believe that a person who had never had a problem, one month after opening a blog — The Children Nobody Wanted — with critiques of the human rights situation, is turned into a bloody criminal, into the worst criminal in the country.

The Cuban intellectuals hide, because accepting that there’s a problem with me, means they have to take a position. If there was an injustice, they have to say so. But while they have this hint of a doubt and caution not to say anything, invoking that both sides have to be heard, there’s nothing to be expected from them. Among those intellectuals there are those who were trampled and humiliated in an era not so long ago for being homosexuals, or for creating a literature that didn’t satisfy the sweetened image of the Revolution that the regime wanted to show, and they were incapable of raising the voice to defend themselves and to defend their comrades of their generation from the injustice committed.

They were crushed and silently and patiently for the government to pardon them, to bring them back into public life. Am I going to have hopes that they are going to defend me? In any event, if they decide to support me, it’s because they are going to defend themselves as an institution and as a country, because the shame is not mine, it’s theirs.

From the darkest point

This is like waiting for the unthinkable. We are in a lawless State and from the beginning we knew that the arbitrariness could affect me, but I thought it might not go so far. All that remains is international pressure and they know they can not control an opponent’s life because he thinks differently. I am a Cuban intellectual who thinks for himself and needs to express this thinking, that usually Cuban intellectuals remain silent out of fear. I’ve managed to lose that fear.

I’m not going to silence what I think now either. From my new circumstances I’m going to continue fighting to express my opinion. From the darkest point where they can take me, I’m going to rebel and defend the freedom and democracy in my country.

Published by Café Fuerte

February 28 2013