In the city new, privately owned restaurants and cafes are constantly opening up. They charge in convertible pesos (CUC) or—more often in the case of the latter—in their equivalentin pesos (CUP)*. Naturally, because salaries are low, most citizens cannot visit them regularly since buying something there would cost more than an entire day’s wages, and sometimes much more.
Concurrently, some cafes—pale imitations of our old inns—have opened which, for prices lower than the aforementioned (though still high for the average citizen), offer lunches called completas consisting of a meat, chicken or fish dish of some sort, rice with beans orcongrí, a vegetable and a seasonal salad. Some also offer a selection of pizzas and roast beef sandwiches or hamburgers, as well as a few lesser items. continue reading
Although for most citizensthey do not solve the problem of food, which is no longer provided at their workplaces, for some they do offer a reliable spot where they can have a well-prepared meal. And if there is one thing at which they excel, it is their wonderful home-style dishes.
It is true that service is basic—a fork or spoon, in some cases a knife, served at a bar or stand-up counter, or seated in a wall opening, inside a car or sitting on the hood. Beverages include bottled water or canned soft drinks now that unpackaged beverages are banned out of health concerns over the threat of cholera. A full meal costs about 40 CUP or so, less than 2 CUC, without drinks.
Nevertheless, the attention from staff can be wonderful. Often a certain relationship develops with the servers, and even with the cook, who comes to know each customer’s completa preferences, and keeps them in mind at serving time. A small family business, in which a regular customer comes to be a part of it, could develop, improve and even turn into the old Cuban inn of long ago if it is not held back by ridiculous rules and regulations.
Translator’s note: Cuba has two currencies—the convertible peso (CUC), which is pegged at roughly 1.10 to the US dollar, and the peso (CUP), in which workers’ salaries are paid. The salary for the average Cuban worker is equivalent to about $20 per month.
Havana, February 5, 2013 – At a press conference hosted by the artist Rosita Fornes and her agent Jose Antonio Jimenez, they unveiled in detail the upcoming celebration that will be held at capital’s America Theater. continue reading
Jose Antonio Jimenez told reporters that the show has the name Musical 176, with a unique feature that will take place on Sunday, February 24 at 5:00 pm at American Varieties. In his appearance before the national media he was accompanied by Rosita Fornes and Master Guillermo Rubalcaba who also is celebrating his birthday. Rubalcaba has accompanied the Rosita on the piano on more than one occasion both on national and international stages. Also joining the cast are the voices of Farah María, Vania Borges and Idania Valdez.
Rosita Fornes and other guest artists will be accompanied on this occasion by the Charanga Tipica of Concerto de Rubalcaba. The fact that the Cuban star Rosita Fornes was then accompanied by this orchestra is described by her representative, the artistic producer known as Jose Antonio Jimenez, one of many examples of what this woman was capable of during her 74 years of artistic life, delighting her audiences to explore a unique way from the lyrical to the popular.
The show will be marked as statements of its artistic producer by the stamp of unsurpassed Cubanness, with the participation of the Cuban comedian Orlando Marrufo and prestigious dance troupe of the America Theater.
On the gala night the recognized voices of Rosa María Medel and Julio Acanda will have the unique opportunity to establish a dialog with Rosita Fornes and the maestro Rubalcaba. A conversation that will allow the audience to be informed about the most recent events for such important exponents of Cuban culture.
Rosita Fornes who will be celebrating her 90th birthday on 11 February, explained to those present after the conclusion of the interview with Jiménez that for her as an actress, there is no greater reward than the love of her people that knows no borders, and whose universal language is art.
The situation of Cubans under the oppression of the Castro dictatorship does nothing but get worse day by day.
The complicity of the world’s governments, whatever their political orientations may be, is unexplainable and unjustifable.
In Cuba, Human Rights do NOT exist, liberty and justice do not exist. The oldest dynastic dictatorship in the world created the THs – “Twisted Humans” – in order to subdue and oppress the people while it assassinated Human Rights. And it seems that the dictatorship will be be given a prize in Chile for precisely that.
How much longer should we wait for the world to wake up and slow the feet of the monster that will assume the presidency of CELAC, the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, created in 2011? continue reading
The acceptance of this presidency signifies worldwide recognition for the dictatorship and a stance taken by its leader before the nations of the continent and of the world.
While Raúl has done nothing but intensify repressive policies implemented by his brother—whose whereabouts today are unknown—and has just plunged the country into horrible misery, an unprecedented diplomatic “achievement” establishes him as leader of the region; meanwhile, more than 6,000 arbitrary arrests have marked a new record in 2012, along with the growth of the jailed population with an ever-increasing number not only of political prisoners but also ordinary prisoners. The surge of repression and the harassment of all sectors of the population have multiplied a hundredfold.
It’s easy to imagine the future of our continent where there are already various leaders who follow in the footsteps of the Castros, and have decided that it will be precisely one of them who leads the request that unites them today in Santiago de Chile.
Democracy is diluted even more in Latin America.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats Cuban writer
Human Rights: More than 6,000 arrests and new political imprisonments in 2012
The release of prisoners from 2010–2011 was not the end point: in Cuba there are already another 80 political prisoners with senences. Interview with the spokesperson of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), Elizardo Sánchez.
Rolando Cartaya / martinoticias.com
Elizardo Sánchez, spokesperson for the Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation
Since its creation in 1987, the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, CCDHRN, has laid the foundation, despite its official illegality, of a solid international standing as the most diligent, systematic and objective internal source for the day-to-day of human rights on the island. Its work has been awarded with the Order of Human Rights of the French Republic, the international Human Rights Watch award, and the Freedom of Speech award from the Interamerican Press Society, among other distinctions.
In order to outline the trajectory of human rights in Cuba in the past year, martinoticias hosted a phone interview with the founder and spokesperson of the CCDHRN, the ex-university professor and ex-political prisoner Elizardo Sánchez Santacruz.
TRIPLING IN ARRESTS
MN: Practically every day that has passed since 2012 we have found out, thanks in large part to your organization, that some peaceful opponent was detained on the island.
ES: Our Commission tries to offer statistical information that we consider a useful indicator, although it does not reflect the entire reality in matters of political repression and of repression against all of society.
Thus far in 2012, the politically motivated arrests number more than 6,000 across the country, and even though we still don’t have the count from December, this figure is already greater than the 4,000 of 2011, and it triples the count of 2,000 in 2010. There is no signal that this increasing trend in the number of arrests will reverse itself anytime soon.
Besides repression against active opponents, we are worried about repression against different sectors of society, people who try to work outside the exploitative confines of the State, or to live independently from its political or administrative leaders, and who are objects of repression or exclusion for that reason. In the case of the youth, to be young in Cuba is already a grounds for suspicion for the police. This social repression manifests itself in practically every one of the municipalities of the Republic.
MASSIVE ARRESTS FOR GREETING THE POPE
MN: These arrests took a massive turn before Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Cuba.
ES: The papal visit stirred up the hopes of the people and led to many Cubans’ decision to express their desire to make major spaces of freedom and well-being available. The regime responded by doubling its oppressive efforts. The month of March, in the days leading up to the Pope’s visit, resulted in the highest single-month number of arrests out of the entire year, with 1,158 arrests confirmed.
The monthly average during the year is around 550 arrests per month. This spans the entire country, in the middle of a general climate of discontent, which includes articulated explosions of that same discontent. The focal points of major repression have been the provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Guantánamo, Villa Clara, Matanzas, Havana City, and Pinar del Río.
But we receive reports of political repression from almost every municipality of the country, because the political police are more present today than they have ever been in the history of Cuba, even in the nation’s smallest towns. That didn’t even happen in the age of colonial dominion or during the dictatorial/authoritarian regimes of the first half of the 20th century.
THE NUMBER OF POLITICAL PRISONERS RALLIES
Generally this concerns short-term arrests, so there has without a doubt been a change of tactic in the repressive design, such that now it doesn’t consist, as it once did, of ordering long prison sentences and detaining thousands of political prisoners. In fact, in 2010 and 2011, 138 political prisoners with long sentences were liberated.
Nevertheless, even though we will present the partial report in January, I can speculate that in the last six six or eight months, the number of prisoners currently convicted for political reasons has also risen to some 80. With the negotiated releases of 2010–2011, the figure had dropped to 40, and now they’re double that number.
Elizardo Sánchez, on the arrests and recovery of political prisoners in 2012
At the same time, the number of common prisoners has also begun to rise. The government suddenly pardoned around 10,000 of them at the beginning of this year, in order to be able to give a presentable number, according to some, of 57,300 common prisoners. We reject that figure: according to our estimations, common prisoners actually number between 65,000 and 70,000.
CIVIL, POLITICAL, ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND CULTURAL RIGHTS
MN: The Cuban government signed in 2008, but has not yet ratified, the Covenants of Civil and Political Rights and of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of the United Nations, which obligated signing governments to work to guarantee those rights to their citizens. What has the Cuban government done to secure those rights in 2012?
ES: In the sphere of civil and political rights, the government has introduced certain changes that, like the so-called migratory reform, are of little significance: they always leave an essence of exclusion and discrimination, precisely for political reasons, and they only seek a favorable presentation of its image to the media. But here no fundamental change has occurred, neither in the political nor the legal order. What’s more, I judge that the situation of those rights has worsened, as has that of economic, social and cultural rights, which is palpable in the high level of discontent and despair among the population.
I would predict that they will improve, but for example, in the aspect of social rights — one of the foundations of the regime’s propaganda — it’s clear that the poorest Cubans face more difficulties every day, and that they are ever more poor, those citizens who could be described as needy.
The government has other priorities, it needs to support a huge apparatus of repression and propaganda and a large bureaucracy that produces nothing, so that cuts are made at the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable people, as is happening with the recipients of social security.
Freedom of Expression and to Receive and Impart Information
MN: It is said that the right to express yourself and to seek, receive and impart information, enshrined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration, it is the guarantee of all other rights, because it allows us to know their violations. Was there progress or setbacks in Cuba these rights in 2012?
ES: The situation of freedom of expression and information in Cuba is visibly the worst in Latin America, much worse than in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, where there are governments that are allies of the Castro brothers, but that maintain minimum spaces for people to demonstrate, which are — albeit narrowly — open societies, even to international scrutiny. But that of Cuba has no name, it’s a rare month when we receive no reports of threats, harassment and repression of journalists, reporters, bloggers, people who express themselves in writing.
Calixto Martinez’s case, a reported for Hablemos Press, currently incarcerated and awaiting trial, has been the most noticeable this year, but all those working independently in this sector are subject to arrests, threats, various forms of harassment. And not just them: any citizen who openly expresses an opinion different from the official discourse, immediately unleashes repression on themselves.
Equally persistent — it is the only case in the hemisphere — is the refusal to allow the population to access the Internet. So we can not speak of a national public opinion, because it can not be defined because such an opinion is not well informed. In Cuba there is no news, just a propaganda apparatus, while independent efforts for demonstrating and reporting, such as bloggers, are seen by the government as a criminal act to be systematically repressed.
This also covers the field of art and culture, which continues to be ruled by the principle established by Fidel Castro, modeled on Mussolini — that all creation, to be acceptable, must be framed within the Revolution. It is a rule that remains in force, and a virtually insurmountable obstacle for artists and writers.
“UNDUE” PROCESS
MN: Despite the change of tactics in favor of short-term detention, it is obvious that when state security fails to prevent peaceful opposition activities by warnings, summonses, threats or brief detentions, it seeks to sentence them in court.
ES: The goal is to get them out of circulation. In that sense this year the repression has been remarkable against the Patriotic Union of Cuba, UNPACU, who leads in the province of Santiago de Cuba Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia. It is an organization that is rooted in the very east of the country, and obviously the government has proposed to neutralize it. Right now there are no fewer than a dozen members of UNPACU in prison. Some have already been sentenced to prison terms of between one and four years.
Another case of blatant violation of due process is the writer and dissident blogger Angel Santiesteban. There is a negative political influence in everything that has been done against him to implicate him in crimes, including the recent sentencing to five years in prison. The hand of the political police is into the matter very clearly.
EMERGING CIVIL SOCIETY
MN: Raul Castro has called for an open discussion of ideas in order to find solutions to the country’s problems. But it seems that his call does not include all Cubans.
ES: Santiesteban, for example, belongs to a group of young alternative intellectuals, artists, lawyers, bloggers and journalists are clearly and creatively expressing their desire greater freedom around projects such as Estado de Sats, the Demand for Another Cuba, the site Voces Cubanas, etc. Last November twenty of them were beaten and arrested, and Antonio Gonzalez Rodiles, director Estado de Sats, remained hospitalized 19 days. The government has shown no mercy to them, because they are like the pearl in the crown of civil society.
But it has not stopped the harassment against veteran opponents, such as the psychologist Guillermo Fariñas, who was recently beaten on a corner of Vedado, in an obvious sting operation.
THE SITUATION IN THE PRISONS
MN: You and I agree that in the 1980s the colonial prison of La Cabaña, a rat-filled place and beatings of prisoners, appalling by any measure. But compared to what is told of current prison conditions, that could have been a golden age.
ES: The prison system conditions have only changed for the worse, because many of the prison facilities have deteriorated over the years. Food for prisoners comes primarily from excess and waste, the expired food stores of the Armed Forces or agricultural waste. In the 1980s they showed a concern for maintaining certain minimum living conditions in prison. That ended years ago. Now they imprison people and, once behind bars, leave them to fend for themselves, expecting their families waiting to ensure their survival.
But that’s not the worst, it’s their treatment. The rule in the Cuban prison system is cruel, inhuman and degrading. Right now, as we speak, they’re probably beating a number of prisoners, because that happens every day, every hour in Cuban prisons, and in Cuba there are between 150 and 200 prisons and camps for prisoners, compared with 14 in the country when the current leaders came to power.
MN: Is there physical torture in Cuban prisons?
ES: It seems that the most stark tortures have been abandoned or limited because of complaints and protests worldwide. Those applied to prisoners such as the famous “Shakira” or “swing”, tying hands and feet behind the back,looks like it was a fad a few years ago, but for now they settle for something equally unacceptable: the solitary confinement of the defendant in subhuman conditions (no light, no clothes, no mat, with a water bottle). They realize they do not need physical torture, because that torment is more than enough.
Havana, February 5, 2013. The renowned dancer Marta Bercy in a press conference in the Habaneciendo salon at the House of Music in Central Havana, told the national press and guests everything about what is happening in the twentieth edition of Workuba. continue reading
The American Theatre will host once again from February 9 to 17, the 20th international workshop of modern dance and Afro-Latin dances. Bercy, on describing the event that will be held for the fourth time in the Cuban capital, predicts they will be intense days.
The first Workuba held in Havana, as expressed by the general director of the event in a note, took place from February 20-27, 2010, its fourteenth year.
Participating in this edition will be dancers from countries like Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia, Mexico, Cubans and Argentinos. Workuba will treat its special guests to a performance of the Musical Theater Group “The Grasshopper” starting Argentine kids, on February 16 at 5:00 pm. The performance of these kids will be a time when the audience can see a show that combines theater with music.
Next. on Sunday 17 at 5:00 pm the event will have its closing ceremonies. At this ceremony the show “A Tenement in Havana” will premier, a work that recreates the story of a group of Argentines who decided to stay in the capital in the ’90s, seduced by the infectious Cuban music scene. They decide to move to a tenement to reduce the costs of their stay in the capital city. In this tenement a number of notable events take place between mates, drinks and dancing jerengue, joined by Cubans.
A Tenement in Havana will be performend, according to Marta Bercy, by dancers and participants in the Workuba Ballet of the America Theatre, “The Grasshopper” and guest musicians.
Staff participating will be the Cuban teachers Héctor Figueredo, Julia Fernandez, Yoerlis Brunet, Laura Estrems and Marta Bercy as director. In the list of choreographers who will participate are domestic and foreign.
This event starts February 9 with Cuban dancers, foreigners and people interested to be part of this important event, having enrolled during the hours established for participants. Payment for interested Cubans will cost of 15.00 CUC or its equivalent in local currency which is 360.00 pesos, a price Marta Bercy, the director general of the event, considers affordable for nationals. Considering the quality of each one of its activities.
Already scheduled to arrive in Havana are the first foreign participants.
The last time I was in the farmers’ market, a couple of days ago,I saw various things on offer which I don’t recall seeing since I was a kid. It was in the mid-80’s that this market – at least in Artemisa, where I live – had its “golden age”. But the economic strategists disrupted the prosperity of the most entrepreneurial and consistent producers and they stopped right then and there, so that the ability to largely meet public demand which was the case a few years previously, was, at the beginning of the following decade, past history. continue reading
During the years following that brief period, the farming sector saw itself, most of the time, prevented from expanding its production as a result of laws which already effectively limited its productivity and threatened the results of its hard work. Up to the present day laws remain in force which give the Prosecutor’s Office the power to confiscate, without much ado, the estimated gains of a producer who is doing too well – and it is obvious what effect this has had on the enthusiasm of those who find themselves at the wrong end of this process.
Several attempts to sort this out were tried by the state — the “Food Plan” of the ’90’s included — among which the wobbly Credit and Services Cooperatives stood out — including their “stronger” variant — which never managed to guarantee a constant, stable supply for the people, as normally they were unprofitable and unviable, falling most of the time into net losses.
Along with the mismanagement of these organisations throughout the country, there also existed another enormous obstacle to produce arriving on the Cuban table: the proven inefficiency and irresponsibility of the state supply company.
The Cuban state monopolised the process of supply in a single company, and in its war against intermediaries eliminated the entire chain for transporting the harvest, leaving this activity almost exclusively in the hands of an entity which, citing lack of fuel, tires, transmissions, or whatever consumables, year after year, has left thousands and thousands of tons of food to rot in the fields.
Inevitably this had profound consequences: the markets continued to be without supplies and with prices going through the roof, production was depressed and plates waited anxiously for food which never arrived.
Now it is not about again taking on the intermediary that transports commodities from the field — because that is just one more activity, that all the producers cannot take on because their activities are so time-consuming.
In order to combat speculation they should create mechanisms that regulate, dynamically and realistically, price policies. But before that the Cuban state has a serious account pending with its people: first of all it should lead by example and adjust its irrational and hostile pricing policy perpetuated in the retail trade and not empty our pockets on collection days.
I have here an excellent first step to take in order to try to normalize everything! Only as the prices imposed by the State stop being scandalous will the peasant have an incentive to lower prices, as scandalous as those, at his stand at the market.
But apparently Raul Castro’s policy, slightly more pragmatic, has already yielded some fruit with regard to the food supply, although it has not happened with all due haste. As I am not an authorized voice, it would be worth listening to the producers’ criteria on this matter, but, judging at first glance, the circumstances today seem different, although the situation is not the same across the country and not all townships have the “privilege” of Artemisa — I have confirmed the great affluence of the regulars from the municipalities surrounding my town’s market.
To the extent that we move away from the capital, the more we look to the east, the more obvious is the deterioration in the quality of life and the greater the decline in agricultural products.
I think everything here is above all a matter of focus, the way to meet our demands could be much shorter than supposed as the example of China demonstrates: from the time Deng Xiaoping determined that the ability to hunt mice was more important than the color of the cat,very few years elapsed before there were tangible results in food production.
The same thing happened in Vietnam — looking at production schemes similar to ours — they substantially increased production when they opened the doors to the small family business.
Ah! But something happens in such cases which is fundamentally different from what happens in ours: Vietnamese producers can go abroad when they need to buy their own supplies and a Chinese businessman may, no one should be shocked by that, amass a personal fortune if he does it by legal means.
And that is what it’s about: it would be much better for the Cuban state, rather than trying to supply all our products, something that has not achieved, so it has had to authorize them to be imported directly as needed, when it has the means to do so, it would be much better to accept that “… to get rich is a duty, whenever it is done by lawful means …” Those are the words of José Julián Martí, not mine, and consistent with his thinking we should reshape our thinking so that we will no longer see all the fruit we cultivated for years with our own hands evaporate overnight.
I want to thank the person who interceded with the mayor from the city where my parents were born, Lerida, Spain, asking for me. Elisa, you have deeply touched me.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Cuban writer.
————————————————– ——————
Date: January 29, 2013 18:30
Subject: Urgent plea for a native from Lerida
To alcalde@paeria.es
[From: Elisa Tabakman]
Dear Mayor of Lleida*, Don Angel Ros Domingo
I am writing to you to beg for a prodigal son of Catalan and specifically Lleida. This is the extremely well-recognized Cuban writer, noble son of Lleida, Angel Santiesteban Prats, who has been with awarded the most important Cuban and international literary awards, but the Castro regime has punished him for not supporting them and having dared to express his ideas on a blog called The Children Nobody Wanted. continue reading
Ángel Santiesteban was born in Havana in 1966. A Filmmaking graduate, he lives in Havana, Cuba. In 1989 he won a mention in Radio France International’s Juan Rulfo Contest, and his story was published in Le Monde Diplomatique, the magazine Letras Cubanas and Mexico’s El Cuento.
In 1995, he won the national prize of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC); but because of his human (or inhuman) vision of the reality of the war in Angola, where Cubans participated for 15 years, was held back from publication. The book, Dream of a Summer Day, was published in 1998.
In 1999 he won the César Galeano prize sponsored by the Onelio Jorge Cardoso Literary Center. And in 2001, he won the Alejo Carpentier Award organized by the Cuban Book Institute with the book of stories The Children Nobody Wanted. In 2006, he won the Casa de las Americas prize for the book of stories, Blessed are Those Who Mourn. He has been published in Mexico, Spain, Puerto Rico, Switzerland, China, England, Dominican Republic, France, USA, Colombia, Portugal, Martinique, Italy and Canada, among other countries.
My plea is not political, it’s a humanitarian appeal begging whoever handles the destinies of the people of Lleida to intercede for one child who is in dire straits just a week away from five years imprisonment after a trial that was a farce with bought witnesses and fabricated charges, for the sole purpose of silencing a voice that annoys a despotic government and already has 90 political prisoners and last year surpassed its own record by carrying out more than 6,000 arbitrary arrests, many of them violently.
The only “crime” Angel committed was to think and express himself. On the internet you can follow his entire shameful case.
France is no stranger to this great injustice and in its media are numerous demonstrations against Angel and concern for him.
I don’t want to overwhelm and bore you with more links, which you can find for yourself.
I think that his being a young Catalan, his parents being from Lleida, which is a source of pride for the universal letters represented in their Catalan surnames, deserves this his “parents,” his large Lleida family, who care about him and are doing everything they can to avoid his going into a Cuban jail in six days.
It is not about right or left, it is a ruthless persecution against a defenseless intellectual whose only “weapon” is his pen — certainly an excellent one indeed — facing a terrifying oppressive state apparatus.
From Argentina, hoping the Catalan nation, which I so appreciate and admire having lived in it fourteen years, will not abandon Angel.
Yours affectionate confident you will do whatever you can,
Elisa Tabakman
*Translator’s note: The city is called Lerida but is officially known as Lleida
Of how a common citizen is transformed into common criminal in minutes.
On the morning of October 23, 2012, William Estevez Acosta, 51-years-old, married and with no criminal record or police, was summoned to the Criminal Cotorro Municipal Court for a hearing in which he would be declared insolvent and, immediately afterwards, he would be tried for the offense of Breach of the Obligations arising from the violations; that is, not paying a fine for lack of money. continue reading
The origin: His home was searched and an uninstalled and shabby satellite dish was found for which he was fined 30,000 pesos, which, after a month, the time to make it defective, is doubled, and must pay for this item 60,000 pesos.
Unable to verify that obligation as soon narrated occurred.
In the court, William confirmed that he didn’t have the economic capacity, as an ordinary citizen, to pay the fine and that for four years he’d had no job, because he suffers various illnesses that prevent him from working in the kind of occupations his intellectual capacity allow him to perform.
The defendant provided a summary of his medical history which includes diabetes mellitus type II, chronic migraine, circulatory problems and others, with their respective treatments.
The result after deliberation by the court, was that he did have money, because they had taken an antenna, they did not believe in his illnesses, and they dismissed the summary of his medical history, something he was experiencing at this time.
The sanction was: six months in prison, and he was arrested on the spot. Not being accompanied by anyone, a member of the public was provided to alert his family and, unable to leave, William should have filed the appeal in his own right.
Supposedly, everyone sentenced is responsible for a crime. William was sentence and the crime proved. Having woken up that day as a citizen, he became a common criminal after the story told here.
Article 170.1 which was applied, in section 2, enjoins courts to replace custodial sentences by correctional work with internment, but Opinion 305 Agreement 43 of 11 July 1989 the Governing Council of the Supreme Court says that does not preclude the option of other measures such as limiting freedom.
William was unfortunate, he said that if the fine had been appropriate he would have paid it, but he committed the crime of not having money.
The Cuban government is back on track again. This time it has given the sentence of 5 years imprisonment to the writer Ángel Santiesteban Prats. They have used the same method of waiting for the weekend for a repressive action, considering that most of the foreign media in Cuba takes a couple of days off.
There is not much I have to say about Angel, only that half of Cuba has read his heartbreaking stories and that’s a lot. His stories are full of the fate of those who do not believe in luck. Ángel Santiesteban was a member of the promoted group los Novísimos* (The Newest), pushed into the limelight by the unparalleled Salvador Redonet. continue reading
His book on the Angola War was not seen in bookstores for years after having won a prize and sleeping the sleep of the of the sleeping manuscript. It is an uncomfortable book when we consider that its value lies in the anti-heroes who speak freely. Now when they want to lock him up on false charges, already thrown out by a court, this cheerful boy has returned to the ring, touring the island giving public lectures and offering his opinion in literary competitions.
The crime that passes as a shout on everyone’s lips is that this guy became “uncomfortable.” that the Cuban Institute of the Book doesn’t consider it a priority to address the claims of those who speak without restrictions and the Ministry of Culture is one more department in the Central Committee Communist Party of Cuba.
The clock has begun to challenge us, this week we will take a strong campaign for his complete freedom, remember it well, writers and artists from Cuba, Angel is one more figure in the witch hunt that stretches to 54 years of abuse. Let’s do something.
*Translator’s note: Los Novisímos are the “second generation” of “new” writers and artists.
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Mahatma Gandhi
After having taken a personal inventory of 2012, I’ve seen that the GECAL workers were more offensive than usual, and although we tried by all means, it was impossible to avoid confrontations. In mid-December, the situation worsened to the point where the threats escalated after the arrest and release of the independent lawyer Yaremis Flores.
At first I came to think there were prejudices and paranoia were it not that one of the most aggressive neighbors we had, said threateningly:
“The U.S. blockade doesn’t put ’this’ (the country) bad, but the internal counterrevolution!,” he shouted at the top of his voice while he stared at me, and I tried to calm my husband down.
We don’t allow ourselves to be provoked and so everything was left the same. That same day, around 11:00 in the morning, some GECAL workers, friends of the neighbor who shouted at us, began to walk around and put boards in the old backyard of the house, which adjoins the bathroom window and the kitchen. I talked to them beside the toilet and asked them to please not put anything there because that area is under litigation, the bathroom window is really low, they have plenty of room elsewhere, etc.
The request was what they needed for the crowd to grow and to begin uttering threats of hitting me. They even said that if I dared to call the police, the punishment would be worse. Good thing I decided to be quiet and move back just in time. That way, I couldn’t even see their faces, but we heard the shouting and the insults.
Although we carried on with the childcare activities, at dusk I made a complaint at the Aguilera police station. What goes around comes around… a few weeks later I refused when they tried to convince me to drop the charges.
So, a sad 2012 Christmas came to my family. As a complement, I had an interview with the municipal director of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security in Diez de Octubre, where I had the opportunity to explain the reason for the prestige achieved by the daycare centers served by ACDEI. This academic year 2012-2013, the first group of preschoolers started school successfully.
The official asked me repeatedly how the idea came up to establish private nursery education. She said that officials of theDiez de Octubre Municipality of Education claim that I must go through the pre-school learning methodology. No surprise if it’s true what they say. Lying is a very popular business tool in this island. Our project is based on an NGO, the Cuban Association for the Development of Primary Education (ACDEI), which is about to be approved. At the headquarters of the Ministry of Justice (MINJUS) they angrily asked me the same thing:
“How did you get that idea?”
More surprises cause us to worry:
1. The children learn in appropriate conditions.
2. The owners and their employees gradually become educators.
3. We don’t charge for our services to the daycare centers.
4. That there be advocacy and outreach to the citizens of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
In Cuba, being a Cuban citizen and defending our rights irritates the State. Any state entity thinks they are better than the ordinary citizen.
Gecal’s attitude is no exception, it is the rule. Months ago the police had explained to that constructive government group, in particular its director, that until the sentence is carried out in that area they can not perform any activities, or use it as their own. A bad memory? Yes, particularly when the applicant is a civil society activist who speaks to the public about the reports of the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
Regarding the continuing threats, it’s not long until we get used to it. The verb “to threaten” is used a lot in Cuban society.
The sentence has been ratified. The writer Ángel Santiesteban will serve 5 years in prison. He knows that his innocence is more than proven. He also knows he will be locked up for another reason. To avoid having to admit that he is a political prisoner, they falsified crime and the victim.
Ángel Santiesteban’s real fault is that he was never silent. If some criminal act was committed, he was speaking his mind whenever he could. But he had the misfortune to live in a country where the truth has to be absolute, even if it’s a lie.
I’ve spent all these days thinking about Angelito. Although I can follow him on social networks, I don’t have the slightest contact with him. I do not know what to say, I can not think of anything other than give him a big hug. And that is absurd, impossible.
My silence has been accompanied by memories of the places and things we share. Everything passes over and over again, like a movie, and through much of the Cuban geography: a shower at the hotel Pasacaballos, a dead end in Cumanayagua, the courtyard of the house of Rosita in Miramar, a plane that could not land in Nueva Gerona …
I’m an atheist. I can’t pray, nor is there the slightest sense of a curse. All my rituals are processed through what I want and what the future is about to offer me. I limit myself to the first, which is what I have really under control.
I wish, from the depths of me, that the executioners of Ángel Santiesteban don’t manage to make him serve his sentence. That freedom comes first and we release them all. Because, after all, all of Cuba is a prison. The only difference is that some have more room to walk than others. I would just like to would hug my little brother. As for the rest, it’s up to chance. I know that even he wants…
On Monday the ExpresArte in Freedom project announced the results of its first contest for literature and art, “Cuba 2020,” in which the contestants participated with essays and images (illustrations, caricatures, graphic designs, etc.) about the way they imagine life on the Island in 2020.
Adults and young people living in Cuba were invited to participate with their points of view about any aspect of Cuban life 2020. The winners were selected on the basis of creativity, originality and quality of their work by a jury made up of international experts.
Adult Category (Literature)
First Place: “Kabbalahs for an imagined Cuba.”
Second Place: “Delirium”
Juvenile Category (Literature)
First Place: “Memoirs of a dissident (fragments).”
Second Place: “Cuba 2020″ and “Cuba-Freedom.”
Adult Category (Art)
First Place: “Cuba in the skin” and “Heaven desired.”
Second Place: “AOT … After our time”
Juvenile Category (Art)
Firs Place: “The chains are broken.”
Second Place: “Intensive care” and “A Free and Prosperous Cuba.”
The winners will be awarded with the publication of their work. Furthermore, in the adult division, the first place in each category will receive 500 CUC in cash and the second place 300 CUC. In the youth division, the first place in each category will receive a laptop computer and the second place, an iPod Touch with five digital books or five movies. The authors and artists will be informed by the organizers via email.
With brothers and sisters like these, we don’t need a common enemy. Photo from the Internet
The recent ascent of the Cuban President-General to the head of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the silent tolerance or evident indulgence of thirty democratic nations, even before the arrogance that permeated his speeches, highlights the political cross-dressing of “our America”.
Some specific details on the speeches of Castro II, like lessons he offered his… counterparts(?) with regard to drug trafficking and consumption, based on the Cuban experience, on the strategic utility of the death penalty and the egregious disrespect he demonstrated against the will of the majority of the Puerto Rican people – who recently endorsed their sovereign decision to remain a commonwealth – when he expressed his regret at the absence of that island nation at the conclave, and his wish that one day it would serve on the CELAC, are just an example of how we need to advance the region’s democratic culture.
The General’s blunders were welcomed by undaunted representatives of Latin-American democracies attending the meeting, who even applauded the rudeness of the old former guerrilla, wearing a civilian costume for the occasion. So we attended, among smiles, compliments, and handshakes, the alliance of democratically elected governments in the region – whose countries have multiparty systems, freedom of movement, of expression and of the press, freedom of association and other civil advantages that embellish democracies – with the ancient Antillean satrapy, thus legitimizing his dictatorship. The new Latin-American principle was explicitly made: gloss over what they have termed “our ideological and political differences in order to consolidate “the unity of our sister countries” and maintain “the respect to self-determination” of each peoples.
Obviously, the thirty-plus Latin American governments meeting in Santiago de Chile decided that the totalitarianism imposed on Cuba is not only an “ideology”, but has long remained in power thanks to the self-determination of the Cuban people (though we have to admit that they may have a point in the latter). Perhaps Chavez’s oil, the subtle detail that the new capital of Venezuela is located in Havana or that the investments of certain Latin-American enterprises in Cuba might have had something to do with such regional empathy.
Another thing that was not clear to me was what commitments the Cuban government might have entered into with the CELAC chairmanship, what advantages Cubans could expect from those commitments and what the projections are for the medium and long terms as far as the progress of the Latin American and Caribbean countries. At least from what they aired in Cuba, the speeches were geared more towards historical references that would justify our supposed common identity, towards the need to overcome poverty, and the command to create a common front in the presence of powerful economies of the developed nations of the First World. Too many clichés in the speeches. As is customary, there were also many “what’s” but few “how’s”.
In this vein, while in Cuba’s interior the dictatorship does not give one iota about civil liberties, it flaunts the presidency of the umbrella organization of democratic nations in the region. The General’s aggressive speech, presenting the violence of the Cuban experience as the legitimate letter of the government, seems to enjoy the complicity of those attending the regional event while the loneliness and helplessness of the Cuban people escalates. The dictatorship’s summit has ended, and, as for me, if those governments exemplify our siblings, then I’d rather be an only child.
As of a few days ago, January 20, Telesur started to broadcast in Cuba and I already feel saturated with the propaganda from the Latin American left; a TV broadcaster with more money, transparency and information than Cuban TV, is distinguished for being a media catapult for the friendly presidents of Cuba and Venezuela, blood brothers of the same ideology.
When it’s not Nicolas Madura pouting about Chavez, it’s Evo Morales with his spasmodic slang, or Rafael Correa with his hoarse electioneering outbursts and diatribes, among other proposals, calling for disobedience if he is not elected, and the corrosive bitterness of the motto “Forgetting forbidden.”
The political and ideological osteoarthritis continues holding hostage, with ridiculous excuses, freedom of information through internet. Nor have the bragged about Raul reforms — synonyms for correction or amendments constantly adjusted — taken as a given that Cuban citizens will have better news options, other than the propaganda they direct and control or in which they have juicy investments, like Telesur, where they can get their “hands dirty” to mold and readjust it at their convenience.
Still, we cannot ignore corrective points which, since 2006, have been falling on the deaf ears of official socialism. But they assume full access to the new information and communication technologies (NTIC), something the Cuban dictatorship has shown a lack of political will, so far, to allow.
Why so many prohibitions in Cuba? Why we have historically impeded access to NTICs? What do they fear?
I think it’s behavior based on the nature of the Cuban totalitarian model to prevent us from sailing in the “poisoned waters” the sovereign globalized cyberspace of communications, culture, and commerce created by “the imperialist enemy.” Many in my country treasure silently–”between the pillow and dreams”–their thirst for information freedom, but they know this is a sensitive topic for the authorities, who have spent decades violating this and other rights.
Therefore, those whom we interact with daily, let us see their skepticism about a solution to this problem. It is sad to see so many of my fellow citizens hide their frustration as a defense mechanism which they adopt to survive in this savage socialism that has left us no other option than conformity or emigration to have a little bit of well-being and happiness.
They repeat the propaganda and negative government cliches on the internet, because they think no matter what it is unattainable. As the fox who knew he couldn’t reach the grapes said, “They’re all green!”
In the city new, privately owned restaurants and cafes are constantly opening up. They charge in convertible pesos (CUC) or—more often in the case of the latter—in their equivalentin pesos (CUP)*. Naturally, because salaries are low, most citizens cannot visit them regularly since buying something there would cost more than an entire day’s wages, and sometimes much more.
Although for most citizensthey do not solve the problem of food, which is no longer provided at their workplaces, for some they do offer a reliable spot where they can have a well-prepared meal. And if there is one thing at which they excel, it is their wonderful home-style dishes.
