Translating Cuba

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.”

20 February 2013

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.

February 21 2013

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.

February 18 2013

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.

February 22 2013

Written by Juan Gonzalez Febles

Cuba news, Lawton, Havana:

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.

For Cuba news: j.gonzalez.febles @ gmail.com

February 15 2013

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

As with everything in the island of the Castros, there are two standards for alcoholic beverages. If you travel outside world with an official passport, or receive dollars or euros, life on the green cayman is much more pleasant.

With hard currency you can eat in an established restaurant such as El Aljibe on 7th and 24th Streets in Miramar, or Los Nardos across from the National Capitol. Or acquire stuff with registered trademarks from China.

You can have a decent, furnished house. Or a refrigerator stocked with beef and shrimp. And at night treat yourself to a Heineken imported from Holland, or the domestic brands Bucanero and Cristal. You can also get rums with the Havana Club label, or the wonderfully aged Caney and Santiago, produced in the former Bacardi factory in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

Drinking rum or beer is almost a national sport. Any event, family party or special occasion will serve as a pretext to open a bottle. Rum allows people to relieve their daily stresses and romantic woes. To admit their doubts about the future of the country. To speak openly about the health of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. To discuss baseball statistics or NBA matches. continue reading

Why the demand?

The Cuba government’s ratification of the UN covenants imply recognition of the legal and constitutional rights of citizens such as:

-Free entry and exit from the country, freedom of movement within it.
-Full recognition of property rights.
-Dignified wages.
-Freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
-Judicial independence (fair judicial processes and with representation of counsel from the beginning).
-Parents’ right to freely choose their children’s education.
-Possibility for all Cubans, wherever they live, to invest in their country.
-Freedom to receive and disseminate information by any means (freedom of opinion, expression and the press).
-Free access to the INTERNET.
-Multiparty system and free elections.
-The implementation, in short, of a Rule of Law, which was the aspiration of the heroes of the Cuban nation.

It is January 28, Monday, I get a call from Yoani earlier than usual, it was 7:55 am when she told me we should go by Rodiles’ house; she always thanks me as if my work were a favor and not an obligation, I was ready and found myself behind the wheel, at 8:07 I was already at the side of the container only existing in our imagination, a few minutes later el Indio and La Gacela got out, we went to pick up Regina Coyula and then Claudio in el Vedado, taking 23rd Avenue to 12th, which goes to the tunnel before coming out on 10th to First Street, then continuing on 60th to Rodiles’ house. A close look around suggests to me that the dictatorship’s henchmen aren’t around, or are hiding like rats in the sewers. The writer Angel Santiesteban opens the door to us and we exchange hugs and enter the house. I was immediately surprised by seeing the casket before me, I didn’t expect it. continue reading