Reporting is Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (Antunez) general coordinator of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front from the city of Placetas, Villa Clara province.
Right now several regime opponents are being violently arrested in the city of Placetas as they are trying to go out into the streets to honor the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots murdered on the orders of Fidel and Raul Castro.
Similarly, minutes ago it was reported that other members of the opposition in the city of Camaguey were violently arrested inside the Fernandez Santos Housing project.
Also, several opponents threaten to take to the streets in the town of Violeta, in Ciego de Avila province if their leader Julio Colombie Batista is not released.
Also there is an operation mounted outside his home, with music, rum and loudspeakers, placed there by order of State Security, to prevent opposition activities.
Interior Island. Angel Santiesteban Prats. Condemned. (the one with the slanted handwriting) 2013
Moments ago my latest book Isla Interior was published in the journal Otro Lunes in a digital edition available for free download. This is a compilation of posts that make up this blog and that have so greatly irritated the dictatorship.
My appreciation to all who participated in this edition: Michael H. Miranda, Sindo Pacheco, Enrique Del Risco, Luis Felipe Rojas, Elisa Tabakman and Amir Valle.
This work has been made possible thanks to Editorial El barco ebrio [Druken Boat Publishers] which collaborated, from Spain, ceding the rights of the book Bloguear a cieges [Blogging blind], published earlier with a brief sample of articles from the blog. I appreciate its wide dissemination and invite you to leave your comments on this post.
At the gates of heaven there is supposed to be the one who separates and in the agony decides who stays, but everyone retraces at the end their own path to the common pain, everyone weaves their own purgatory. “Peggy Picket sees the face of God,” by Roland Schimmelpfenning was the heartrending offering last week by La Compañía del Cuartel at the Brecht Cultural Center in Vedado. The play leads us to a sensitive and controversial theme: how much frustration or personal fulfillment results for a Cuban doctor from working on a collaborative project abroad, versus submerging himself in the everyday here in Cuba.
A dilemma contained in the compelling performance of the young cast, that managed to address a complex and painful reality, which hit close to home for this viewer because of his own status as a Cuban doctor, and friend to some of those who returned from their own Peggy Picket adventures, and so many others who never returned.
All I wanted to saw was there, everything detailed: peering into the unknown, to another dimension of human tragedy; knowing oneself a vehicle of an alien message, moving the pieces at whim of foreign exchange; the grinding poverty that compels one to leave because no one lives on bread alone, because dreams also count and because love isn’t enough; that tearing sacrifice of a couple or a family destroyed in the making; finding yourself besmirched by someone, they told you, who would be like your brother, finding that “…we are not always welcome here, no”… in short, that Peggy Picket… Shows us the dark and human side of the Cuban medical missions, their unconfessed edge, to those who return with a veil of silence drawn in a look.
It proposes an approach to one of the most controversial nerve centers of the reality in my profession: the way going on one of these work missions can affect the life of a professional Cuban who, at least up to the time this work was written, was not allowed to leave the country except under the conditions demanded by the authorities, and never by choice; that once there had to — and still has to — face living in extreme conditions, exposed to risks in unimaginable countries, that come from nature or the hostilities and ingratitude of men, all knowing that they will receive a tiny percent of the money that will be exchanged between the countries, and meanwhile remaining far from their family and all they left behind.
But today, while I applaud La Compañía del Cuartel, I abstain from making a moral judgment; nothing is further from my mind than to launch attacks capable of hurting feelings. It would be very difficult for me to sincerely say what I think without some colleague thinking I’m referring to them. At my age I have learned to be slow to comment on realities I haven’t experienced; at this point I try, above all, not to judge. For thus reason, I decided to let you draw your own conclusions. And Carol and Martin already know their reasons for leaving; Liz and Frank already know why they chose to stay. Better that everyone be left alone with his own conscience.
Jeovany Jimenez Vega
The Ladies in White spokeswoman will meet with political and social sectors “to explain the current Cuban reality.”
DDC.- Berta Soler, the leader of the Ladies in White, will travel to Spain this coming March 11, on her first trip abroad, according to sources from the exile.
Soler, who recently received her passport, has been invited by the Ladies in White Association (ADB) with headquarters in Madrid.
Once in Spain, she anticipated meeting with representatives from political and social sectors “to explain the current Cuban reality,” the ADB said.
Soler has led the Ladies in White since 2011, after the death of Laura Pollán.
Full Text of the Statement of the Cuban Liberal Union
Cuban Liberal Union
Madrid, February 21, 2013
Cuba, for all Cubans in response to the controversy sparked by Yoani Sánchez’s recent statements on the waste of government resources in the media campaign on the Wasp Case [the case of the 5 Cuban spies in the U.S], given the moral stature and importance of this remarkable compatriot, the Cuban Liberal Union will reiterates its support and states:
First, we respect the right of all Cubans and to think freely.
Second, the irony of her recent statements, taken out of context by the press, and far from supporting any government position, did not escape us.
Third, it is healthy, beneficial and even necessary for the Cuban people to air all opinions in a climate of respect.
Fourth, it is worth remembering that she, as a journalist, imparts her views on a blog, and everyone has the right to disagree with any of them, without this meaning that we reject the person or that we doubt her good intentions.
Fifth, we celebrate and emphasize what unites us, and what is clear is that we are solidly in agreement based on the indispensable requirement for the immediate restoration of popular sovereignty, with all fundamental freedoms for the Cuban people and the end to the regime totalitarian oppresses them.
President
Dr. Antonio Guedes
Translated from the Laura Pollan Ladies in White website.
Translated from: Joan Antoni Guerrero Vall’s blog PdVista
Yesterday the blogger Yoani Sanchez referred, again, to the question of the five Cuban spies tried in the United States. She did so at a press conference after this blog reported her declarations in Brasilia and generated an avalanche of comments through social networks and various media.
Sanchez, questioned by journalists, clarified her declaration: “Let me clarify, [the 5] were tried, fairly tried, and they were undoubtedly spies.” The blogger insisted that what had happened had been a “great misunderstanding” and said that “sometimes I use sarcasm and the irony leads to that kind of misunderstanding.”
“First,” she said, “I did not say ‘5 heroes’ because for me they are spies who have been tried, who have had repeated legal opportunities to prove their guilt or innocence and in all those courts, made up of diverse and plural people, they have been confirmed as guilty.”
Later the blogger said that “everyone knows” that it is “common practice” for the Cuban government to “monitor and spy across American soil, and therefore at no time did I ask for their release.” And again she stressed her surprise for the misunderstanding. “I know this was misunderstood, I don’t know why, but fine, I also believe that the case of the 5 is being blown out-of-proportion to avoid people looking at the real Cuban problem, which is the lack of freedom, the excess of repression, because we live under a totalitarian government that does not allow free elections, does not allow its citizens to associate and express themselves freely.” For Yoani, “any other topic about the five spies or five members of the Interior Ministry (as they’re called ironically) becomes simply a false creation of public opinion.”
She added, finally, that issues such as the 5 “are issues that we Cubans must learn to discuss without hatred because one of the important exercises that will bring us democracy is to learn that anyone can have a different opinion.” So, she said, “the virulence of the reactions always surprises me, I’m surprised because these are issues we’re going to have to discuss over coffee and we have to approach them from positions of offering each other respect and tolerance.”
I want to talk about breathtaking scenery, as Cuba has a ton, of people in solidarity with the traveler, of which there are also thousands on the island, but it fell through. In those moments the journey beat me, short and dry, it’s about a scary place. I went once, only as far as the entrance, and because I stranger I never knew asked my help.
On the road that goes from Camaguey to Sierra de Cubitas and the north of the province — the Lesca highway — past the International Airport and the Albaize neighborhood, on the second entrance to the left is the 26th. This is the common name for the maximum security prison of Camaguey, one of the most fierce with the human beings of so many that populates the island that transformed barracks into schools. From an airplane you only see the suspicious uniformity of the enclosed buildings.
There are inmates who, for having committed crimes related to politics, were judged unfairly. So, they are political prisoners. And there are also common criminals, who probably deserve to be in jail. But everyone, the misjudged politicals and the common prisoners guilt or not, share a condition: all are condemned not just to lose their freedom, but the human condition, which is ultimately what is lost there.
Why serve them rotten food? Why are they cheated of medical care? Why can some barely talk to their families. Why do some people sleep with their legs bent because there’s no space for a bed. Why are there so many suicides there? Why was one prisoner’s television lacking sound and another had sound but the screen faced the wall? Why aren’t the guards brought to trial for the crimes against the prisoners? Why so many questions without answers, in the Camaguey prison, as there are in so many others in Cuba?
In the United States there are five Cubans imprisoned. Prisoners for violating U.S. law, although it is true that, as I don’t sympathize with who spy on those of their own country, whichever side they are, but I haven’t followed the case much. I know that a little bird landed of one of those who senses the loneliness of the prisoners, and that the photo, real or not, was famous.
And a young prisoner in The 26 also has his history with a sparrow who chose him to befriend. A sparrow who managed to get into his cell, live with him, eat his food and sleep in his uncomfortable bed. A sparrow that besides feathers, feet, beaks and the freedom to fly, had the inexplicable urge to accompany this man in his suffering, just as other human beings were responsible for increasing or ignoring it, or avoiding any sign of support. A simple sparrow.
February 23 marks the third anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. The one who died for fighting, with his body as weapon and battleground, against those who mistreat Cuban prisoners. What a problem for this country, that the only thing the enters the prisons to east these subtle cruelties upon prisoners, are sparrows.
Surely you no longer remember my Toothache from last year. It seemed that it was over with the anecdote, but like a soap opera, to keep the viewer they pulled a rabbits out of a hat, I’ve got… a piece of filling with its corresponding fragment of a molar. Yes, in the same tooth declared healthy, which bit the stone, which came in the bread, that I bought for ten pesos, that… I clean my beak to go to the wedding of my Uncle Perico.
Nice moment, that of eating lunch, and feel a wasp sting me in the gum, run to the bathroom and “island” dental floss (a plastic bag) I try to clean out what I thought was a piece of bone in chicken and rice.
That was three months ago. Good thing I didn’t rush to write about it. I went to the dentist for emergencies, they put a band-aid on it and gave me an appointment four days later. They filled it, I took advantage and had a check up and everything was fine, they scheduled me for a cleaning, and with that I was discharged.
Two days after the cleaning I lost the new filling. Back to the dentist for an appointment, an appointment I had to reschedule, because at the first opportunity, when I got to the clinic they weren’t providing services because they were cleaning the cistern. At the second try, the dentist drilled it out, filled it directly, which left me with a weak tooth but she told me was less likely the filling would fall out again.
The broken tooth and all the rest, just for the price of a loaf of bread. Good grief! The huge amount of money it costs to be poor.
Last night I went to see Esther en alguna parte (Esther somewhere), Chijona Gerardo’s new film with a script based on a play of the same title by Lichi Diego I have not read. At the risk of screwing up, I imagine a Borges aura around the Lichi’s story, but the movie, with a splendid cast, is a succession scenes where Reynaldo Miravalles and Enrique Molina are marvelous, despite the awful sound dubbing and the darkness of the copy, technical defects added to the artistic defects that I truly regret, because the “old cinema” is a rara avis and I think Chijona missed a great opportunity.
It was not the first time I went to see the move. The day before the premiere, I tried to go to the six o’clock show but the theater administration decided not to open the door for me and another lady and someone else who had gone before. Last night we were more than twenty people.
A vague sensation of being at the end of an era that I had already glimpsed when I sent to see La película de Ana (Ana’s movie) materialized last night in the Acapulco. For having always lived so nearby, this theater has been my theater. From children’s matinees on Sundays, I’ve attended its successive transformations: when candy was sold from a rounded display case just next to the stairs leading to the offices; when the fifties amoeba-shaped glass on top of the facade was replaced by another on the side by the parking lot; when the phone booths disappeared from the upper floor; when the children’s potties that were my delight as a little girl and they I complained to my mother about not having at home disappeared; when the annex bar-cafeteria (which I was never old enough to enter) disappeared and reappeared much later as a video room, or when in the same place they opened a video rental (I think it still exists).
I waited for the credits to finish rolling, and when the lights came on I could see the deterioration of the carpet and the lower level, and I could see a couple of bats, restless under the sudden light. No, it wasn’t dirty, I mean, dirty with trash left by messy visitors, because the dust has made my movie theater its home. The bathrooms I haven’t entered in years, those clean well-lit bathrooms that were as clean as any public bathroom in the city.
Defeated by the film and the vision I’ve just described to you, I returned home with my husband commenting that not long ago I’d seen the Acapulco on the list of the ten most important (?), singular (?) of the world, I can’t remember why it was listed, but except during the Film Festival or some premiere, the Acapulco languishes, waiting for times better or worse, but definitely different.
The recently unmasked infiltrated State Security (DSE) agent, Raul Capote, is not a member of the Writers Club of Cuba.
This was confirmed by former prisoner of conscience, a member of the Group of 75 and a writer and independent journalist Jorge Olivera Castillo who chairs the Club.
The question arose when among the signers of a statement of solidarity with fellow writer Ángel Santiesteban, issued by the Writers’ Club of Cuba, the name “Raul Capote” was slipped in. Olivera said that the name was slipped in as a signatory of the declaration, a product of those who in times past were effectively part of the Club. “We have files, secretaries, or bureaucratic structures that are normal in the abnormal conditions we develop our work,” he concluded.
The Writers Club of Cuba develops its work in the same circumstances as the entire fabric of society, civil opposition and dissidents, present on the island and subjected to the same pressures. Notwithstanding this, their work feels like an active and successful effort in promoting a literary art made with passion, dedication and commitment, but still fails to empower all of its aspiring promoters.
After giving a lot of thought to Cuban mountains I realized that I have a tremendous obsession with the Escambray, in the center of the island. It fascinates me far more than the famous Sierra Maestra, the mountain range that helped end a dictatorship and start a new one. I really don’t care that Pico San Juan is slightly smaller than Pico Turquino. None of that makes a difference. I’ll stay with the Escambray, which is where I’ve felt more freedom. Every time I think about how hard is to obtain permission to visit the Sierra Maestra or the warning of how militarized the Nipe-Sagua-Baracoa mountains are I feel like those mountain ranges are prisoners, but the Escambray, even though it lost its war still feels free.
Every time I visit Guamuaya — the ignored but official name of the Escambray — I feel between its mountains a certain frustration for all the freedom we finally lost there, for the dead on both sides, for the guerrillas and the workers in the Cuban Literacy Campaign, for those who collaborated with the “Revolution’s” army and the government’s informers, for the farmers kept captive against their will — not in the Mambisa war, but in the 1960’s- and for the militia who fought for the cause of the little bread and no freedom. I don’t think they’re equivalent in goals or ideas, nor do I now try to understand them or forgive them for their mistakes, I wouldn’t dare. I’m just in pain. continue reading
Certain too cruel sites hurt me with the truth. Years ago I visited with indignation the Trinitarian Museum of the Struggle against those rebels that the enemy called bandits because the fought for their freedom with the same intensity with which they’d fought those of the Sierra, a museum full of manipulated history and hate. I should take a walk in La Campana, the old camp, and now a museum where they show so many Cuban prisoners, how many in the end? Will they ever publish the figure here some day?
And I owe many pages to commander Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, who was a military man before becoming an affable man of peace, and I met him, already an old man in his little apartment in San Agustin in La Lisa, full of ideas and hidden gaps of our history, entrenched in his iron will of change with respect and dialog.
Although the ease with which the men of this island have gone to war astounds me, and I look with a certain suspicion at so much of our ancient violence converted into respectable myths; what a bad example for our children in school if we want to teach them to resolve problems peacefully; what a bitter pill for us who want to change the country without beatings and we have no Cuban history we can grab hold of — what happened in the Escambrey confuses me.
Of course it was a war, and as always happens, all sides had stains. Surely there were victims, for not being anti-communist enough, or for not being communist enough. That’s the trouble with wars, it doesn’t matter what idea you’re defending, blood is always spilled. But at least the evidence is left of so many people who understood the word freedom, and who launched an almost suicidal battle to get it. In the Escambrey, looking at the hills and the stream valleys, relieved a little of my shame at loving a country accustomed to keeping its head down, saying yes when it thinks no.
Maybe in other posts I talk about the infinite cascade of Guanayara — the highest in the region and most beautiful in Cuba — a temple made by nature itself: El Nicho — just staying near there I would fight for these mountains — of how they discriminated against me for being a Cuban photographer before the Jibacoa reservoir, and the 5 CUC the State and La Gallega wanted to charge me just to put up my tent. Maybe another day. Today I don’t want to talk about the nearness of nature. Today I want to talk about the nearness of freedom.
Note: In January 2012, the manager of this website arranged for Prof. Michael Cheers and his photo-journalism students to visit Yoani while on a study tour to Havana. This is the resulting video, by Melissa Rios. More photos and reports from the trip can be seen here.
[Note: This version was posted on Luis Felipe Roja’s blog. A longer version is available here.]
By Amir Valle
I’m sorry… I can’t cry victory only because (finally!) Yoani Sánchez, Eliécer Ávila, Rosa María Payá and others who, of course, will do it in the next months, now can travel without the humiliating exit permit. I read that many people are happy and sing victory and sentences abound like, “We won this battle,” and “We kicked the Castros’ ass.” “Now with freedom to enter and leave the island, the opposition can launch a strong campaign from the Exterior.” …even when all these and other “changes” are pure face makeup, more than ever, for the convenience of the regime in Havana. continue reading
I repeat, although it sounds alarmist: I don’t think that now is the time to claim victory. A dictatorship, even less so the Cuban one, never offers its arm to be twisted. A regime that rearranges itself in order to guarantee its future (that’s the only thing that has happened today on the island) does not take false steps.
I’ve learned that well. And I know that taking these steps that the world catalogues as “changes,” although they have been forced by some circumstances, already the masterminds of power in Havana must have established their national strategies, elaborated their connections with other similar powers in the rest of the world, and positioned their soldiers in the new game that they have already planned as well as possible and future plays.
One of the most recurrent mistakes that we Cubans have made during these five decades is to gloat over supposed victories against the Castro totalitarianism, which, as history has already shown, this dictatorship has not delayed in molding, demonstrating how silly we were to believe ourselves victors.
And it’s under this impact that, since they announced a couple of years ago that they were modifying the migration law, I have been poking around in certain historical sources that show the strategies used by Leftist dictatorships against the political opposition; I have been digging into, with my questions, the experience of established political analysts of the Socialist block; I have been irked with some investigative encomiendas (system of tributary labor in colonial Spain) and journalist colleagues of several countries where the “Cuban issue” still appears in the news from time to time.
“Do we Cubans want a true democratic change on the island; are we prepared to face something like that”? I wondered when I read the annotations that I made in all this time of investigation.
And the dictatorship plays cards that I already knew but which it held only to throw down so thoroughly as, I’m sure, it did on January 14, 2013, when the new migration law went into effect.
