Cubans Throughout the World / Rebeca Monzo #Cuba

Upon arriving in this corner of France and reuniting with my family, whom I had not seen for seven years, I had the great pleasure of receiving a visit from the son of a very dear friend, whom I had first seen when he was born. Later on, as you might imagine, the subject of the far-off homeland came up, as well as the problems and frustrations that come with abandoning, almost against your will, the place where you were born. This is his case.

This Cuban is not resigned to remaining in forced exile. Life has played him some dirty tricks, so he is undocumented here. They cannot repatriate him, as he would like, because Cuban authorities repeatedly refuse him entry. The last time he was in Cuba, he remained in prison for four months for refusing to leave the country.

This man, who is still young, has two names and a head, so he never stops thinking about the misery to which his homeland is subjected. He has dedicated his free time — which unfortunately is all that he can do since he does not have papers and can work only sporadically — to investigating Cuban issues in-depth.

I was truly impressed when he showed me photos, articles and a wealth of details, to which we Cubans on the island do not have access, regarding the strange accident in which Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed.

For this reason I am uploading the video that my friend provided for your consideration.

Site manager’s note: This video is not subtitled but here is a summary of the contents: The person speaking, a friend of Rebeca’s, is Israel Alejandro Cabezas González. He has put together the evidence he shows in the video, with regards to the death of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in a car crash. He believes that the photo of the car — driven by the Spaniard Carromero — was “fixed,” that is altered, and as a point of comparison he offers a photo that appeared in the Spanish press. He says that the official report of the crash was prepared to match the “fixed” photos.

Using Google maps he shows where the crash occurred, and the little collection of houses located 2 km before the crash. He believes that the “operation” was planned there and that the “supposed ambulances” were already waiting there.

The farmer speaking in he video says he was biking from the nearby town to the rice fields where he works, the entrance to which is directly across from the crash site. While he was biking a car passed him and he saw the dust cloud, based on which Alejandro estimates he’s about 1 km (half a mile) from the crash. By the time of the crash he was just meters away and arrived there in 2 to 3 minutes. He said people were already there taking each of the 4 men out of the car.

The person speaking in English is Jan Modig, the Swede who was in the car. He says, “The second memory I have is that I found myself in some sort of ambulance,” which means it wasn’t an ambulance… it was ‘sort of an ambulance’. Alejandro also says the foreigners were saying “why did you do this to us?” and he believes it was a huge premeditated operation to kill them.

He says they took “the Swede” and Carromero (the Spaniard who was driving) away separately and they didn’t know what happened to Oswaldo Paya. Paya was sitting where he received the direct impact from the crash, but that he served as a sort of ‘airbag’ for Harold Cepero who ultimately also died. Alejandro says that since they were being hit from behind everyone was wearing their seatbelts [the official version is that they were not] and that Harold was alive after the crash; he had a very small fracture of the femur.

When they arrived at the hospital — Alejandro goes on  to say — State Security kicked the regular doctors out of the hospital and brought in “G2” military doctors, and that he hopes Cepero’s body was not cremated because he did not die of natural causes.

Alejandro’s personal version of what happened was that somebody who was G2 (State Security) infiltrated Carromero and Modig’s visit and told G2 where they were going. G2 followed them from Havana and also there were more G2 agents waiting for them in the collection of houses, where everything was prepared, including the ambulances and doctors.

Translated and video summary by Unstated and BW and Chabeli

January 4 2013

The Year That’s Gone and the One That’s Coming / Fernando Damaso #Cuba

Photo: Peter Deel

The officially designated “Year 54 of the Revolution” has come to an end. No one can deny that in 2012 some changes were made to the comatose Cuban “model,” but it is true that the majority amounted to the legalization of absurd, long-standing prohibitions, or in other cases to simple measures that were only skin-deep and without much depth. These changes have had no affect on the economic structure, which is concentrated mainly in the service sector rather than in industrial and agricultural production where, at least rhetorically, there is a continued preference for the “great socialist enterprise,” albeit with some tweaks and adjustments. Although too slow, things are, nevertheless, starting to move.

Basic logic and the need to preserve the “model” mean that there will have to be further changes made in 2013. Until now, though, they have been focused solely on the economy since the subject of political and social change remains taboo. Although they have so far been minimal, economic changes have led to the realization other changes will, nevertheless, have to be carried out, even though there is no will to do so. Otherwise, we arrive at dead-end. Although it has been tried, economic issues cannot be separated from political and social issues. They mutually impact each other.

Whatever happens, regardless of what the authorities do, will more than anything be the result of citizen pressure and attitudes.

January 4 2013

The Numbers for 2012 / Regina Coyula #Cuba

The statistics keepers for WordPress.com prepared a report about the year 2012 in this blog [the Spanish version].

Here is an extract:

Some 55,000 tourists visit Liechtenstein every year. This blog has been visited about 330,000 times in 2012. If it were Liechtenstein, it would need around 6 years for everyone who looked at it. Your blog had more visitors that a small country in Europe!

Click to see the complete report.

January 4 2013

Cuban Star Celebrates Her 75 Years of Artistic Life / Ignacio Estrada #Cuba

DSC00874By Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Independent Journalist

La Habana, Cuba. Last Friday, December 28, the Karl Mark Theater was the scene for a recognition of the Cuban actress Rosita Fornes in a grand celebration of her 75 years of artistic life.

The Cuban star was joined on the stage by well-known figures. Among those who stood out were Rosa María Medel, Guillermo Rubalcaba, Lourdes Torres, Farah María, Pablo Santa María, Waldo Mendosa, Leo Montesino, Reinaldo Montesino, Barbara Zamora, Idania Valdez, Jean Marc Rodríguez,  the comic Carlos Ruiz de la Tejera, Ismael de la Caridad and the Ballet de la Televisión Cubana, the Habana Tango Company, among others.

As expected by the capital’s public, Rosa Fornes closed the year with a flourish and with all the wealth of exponents Cuban culture for all times gathered at the scene. The spectacle was called “Rosita Fornes and her Life.”

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The show was hosted by “Chiquitica,” Rosita Fornes’s daughter, under the general direction of Jose Antonio Jimenez.

January 4 2013

Interminable Poetry / Lilianne Ruiz #Cuba #FreeSantiesteban

Luis Eligio d'Omni reading his poetry at Yoani's and Reinaldo's house
Luis Eligio d’Omni reading his poetry at Yoani’s and Reinaldo’s house

Last Friday a group of  us friends met at the “Y Scares Vultures,” as Agustín calls Reinaldo Escobar and Yoani Sánchez’s house, for the penultimate round of the Endless Poetry festival. The poetry reading started this time with Luis Eligio d’Omni reading a poem of his to Celia Cruz in slam style, as attractive as The Letter of the Year which opened the festival with the slogan “Love your rhythm, rhyme your actions. Poetry is you.”

Agustin Valentin Lopez reading his poetry at Yoani and Reinaldo's house
Agustin Valentin Lopez reading his poetry at Yoani and Reinaldo’s house

Agustín waited 20 years, isolated and rebellious, to read Mi Tengo to be published in the next issue of the magazine Curacao 24. Reinaldo Escobar, usually Magister Ludi, chose a very beautiful one titled Motivos del Lobo (Reasons of the Wolf), that I am going to ask him to repeat here. And El Sexto believing in Things Unseen, as tender and unforgettable as his graffiti.

Reinaldo Escobar flanked by Yoani Sanchez and Luis Elegio d'Omni
Reinaldo Escobar flanked by Yoani Sanchez and Luis Elegio d’Omni

It was the time of fellowship, because we are all joined a similar fate in many ways. As I remember Munch’s The Dance of Life, so I felt that night, because I can reproduce every hour in my memory from the influence left on me by the conversation with the swell of sympathy.

Liliane Ruiz + Angel Santiestaban at Yoani and Reinaldo's house
Liliane Ruiz + Angel Santiestaban at Yoani and Reinaldo’s house

The tide threw me up on Ángel Santiesteban’s beach. All we Cubans have to defend ourselves with against the system power of the dictatorship of the State is our solidarity. Angel faces a fate* that threatens to swallow him alive. Everything that the prosecution charges him with to remove him him from public life, which is the true final objective of end file prepared by State Security, has been manufactured against him by the system itself. I ask again the solidarity of many people and I hope to write about the case a later post.

*Translator’s note: Recent posts about the prison sentence Angel faces are here, here, here and here.

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Liliane Ruiz

January 4 2013

Naval Hospital Without Laundry Services / Ignacio Estrada Cepero #Cuba

Source: ecuredcu
Luis Diaz Soto Hospital. Source: ecuredcu

By Ignacio Estrada Cepero, Independent Journalist

Havana, Cuba. Recently the Cuban media alluded the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Luis Díaz Soto Hospital in the capital, known as the “Cuba Naval Hospital.” The news  reflected only on the good role of the medical services offered and a record of the countless kidney transplants done each year.

These comments are clearly true, but if we are to congratulate what this group of doctors and  workers accomplish we should describe the conditions under which they work to improve human life.

The Naval Hospital perhaps in the early years of its foundation experienced moments which today are very difficult to revive by those whom they keep alive. Shortcomings, deficiencies, tardiness, irresponsibility, poor communication between workers and even insubordination of the civilians working there even though this is a military hospital.

In this note I do not not want to judge any worker in this hospital in the Camilo Cienfuegos neighborhood (Neighborhood of the Russians or Pastorita) in the Havana municipality of Habana del Este. I want instead to do this, to speak about a topic directed to those responsible for managing it and to the competent authorities. It’s been just over a year since the laundry area for this hospital has been out of service because of breakdowns that have not been fixed. This deficiency has not been addressed by any official means. The breakdown brings delays in delivering clothes to patients and the delivery of clean supplies to the therapy areas and operating rooms just to name one example.

The problem is at the feet of everyone who is responsible but according to some workers the key to the solution is for everyone to rally without dropping the ball.

It’s true that the Havana Naval Hospital just made it through one more year, but this anniversary has not solved a problem that can be repeated in different Cuban hospitals.

January 4 2013

“Being held” or illegally arrested? / Veizant Boloy #Cuba

1355868031_veizantBy Veizant Boloy

Last 24th September, Angel Moya, ex-prisoner of conscience of the Spring of 2003, and a group of activists, were arrested for three hours by police agents and the State Security, for having handed out copies of the petition Por otra Cuba (For a different Cuba).

According to Moya, the agents involved in the arrest told him he was not being arrested, but “temporarily held.”

“They didn’t take us to jail as they usually do,” commented Moya. But, can a Cuban citizen be “held”?

According to Spanish law, the ability to hold can only be exercised in relation to goods. It is defined as a means to assist someone to extend his possession of something by way of security. The counter-intelligence people, the political police in the island, in order to avoid any legal or civic constraints, use the status “held” to justify arbitrary arrest.

The term “hold” doesn’t exist in the criminal law process. The agents of the State Security and the police are not authorized to hold anybody, as this term does not exist in the criminal legislation.

The International Treaty of Civil and Political Rights, in Art. 9, First Part, establishes, and I quote: “Every individual has the right to liberty and personal security. No-one may be subject to detention or arbitrary arrest. No-one may be deprived of their liberty, except for reasons defined in law and by way of the relevant established procedure.”

Moya was not “held”, he was arbitrarily arrested, in breach of the precept of Art. 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the Cuban state in 1948: “No-one may be arbitrarily arrested, nor imprisoned, nor exiled.”

Translated by GH

December 18 2012

The Year of the Venezuelan Tiger / Ivan Garcia #Cuba

We already know that Cuba is a country of paradoxes. Around here it’s not rare to see a nuclear physicist selling cotton candy in an amusement park. A plastic surgeon working 4 hours as a taxi driver. Or a university student alternating her studies with work as a prostitute.

If there is something Fidel Castro’s Revolution has brought, along with socializing poverty, it is certain extravagances. So this is how you can understand that on an island crazy for baseball, and without any notable results in international soccer, there is a huge amount of information displayed about the match between Barcelona and Real Madrid, while the official media barely touches the career of the Venezuelan Miguel Cabrera, the first Latin American to earn the offensive triple crown.

Only the Havana radio station COCO, on its sports show, was there a summary of the feat. In the baseball corridors, in this case at Central Park, and on the corners where baseball fanatics clandestinely get information about the Big Leagues, through cable connections to illegal antennas or a pirated internet connection, the event was trumpeted in Gothic letters.

Let’s talk for a minute about Cabrera. José Miguel Torres Cabrera was born in Maracay, Venezuela, on April 18, 1983. Because of his formidable offensive power he’s known in the Venezuelan sports media as “The boy from the movies,” or “The Pope.” He played shortstop, third baseman and outfielder with the Aragua Tigers in Venezuela’s winter league.

At 20 he made his debut in the big leagues. And he did it in style. On June 20, 2003, in his first at-bat, he homered off pitcher Al Levine to win the game in the 9th inning.

In the entire history of Major League baseball the only ones who accomplished this were Billy Parker in 1971 and Josh Bard in 2003. That same year, thanks to his hot bat, he was instrumental in his team, the Florida Marlins, winning the World Series crown.

Facing the favored Yankees, Cabrera homered to his compatriot Carlos Zambrano, Kerry Wood, Roger Clemens and Mark Prior, driving in 12 runs and setting a mark for postseason novices.

At the end of the Autumn classic in 2003 he rejoined the Aragua Tigers and broke the ball. After 27 years of drought, his triumph in the 9th was essential to their championship in the Venezuelan Professional League.

In the title game facing the Caribe de Oriente, he connected two homers against the stellar Carlos Silva. In the round robin of the 2003-2004 season Miguel Cabrera was frenetic at bat.

He hit nine homers and brought in 32 runs in only 16 games to set a new mark in morocho baseball. And that was not all.

Cabrera and his Aragua Tigers won three trophies in later years. His major league numbers are impressive. Before that season he batted 317, 1597 hits, 346 doubles, 277 homers and 984 RBIs.

Since 2008 he’s played first base for the Detroit Tigers. Their savage offense places him among the big hitters in the majors. And perhaps only the Dominican Albert Pujols, in an arena of power to power, surpasses him as the best Latin American player of the decade in the majors.

Cabrera has been tremendous in 2012. He joined the limited list of 14 players who have achieved the triple crown in the best baseball in the world.

And he is the first Latin American to do it. Since 1967 no one had achieved it. The boy from Maracay was the leading hitter with 330, 137 hits, 44 homers and 137 RBIs, in addition to leading the on-base percentage and slugging.

I do not understand how some U.S. specialists consider Mike Trout to have better attributes than Cabrera for the MVP of the season. True, Trout has been a fabulous rookie with the Angels.

But his numbers are below those of Miguel Cabrera. Hopefully “the Pope” will continue hitting it out of the park in the play offs. This is the year of the Tiger.

Iván García

November 2 2012

The Consumer and His Rights / Veizant Boloy #Cuba

20-derecho consumidor

by Lic. Veizant Boloy

In shops in the capital where they sell things for foreign currency, they offered various food products and things for the home at reduced price, which pleased the people living there. Jams, packets of biscuits, boxes of caramel powder, packets of fried tomatoes, custard, alarm clocks, and other things costing no more than one CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso).

Both customers and retailers took advantage of the discounts and bought as much as they could afford. “This is a bargain,” said one of the retailers.

The vast numbers of customers didn’t spot the flaw. Some, who took the precaution of turning the product over to note the expiry date, read the information: best before the month of August 2012. Others didn’t notice this until they got home.

The shop assistants told them to try the products, but they wouldn’t accept any returns. The nonsense was that, in the case of the clocks, they didn’t have any batteries so you couldn’t try them. In various parts of Havana there are shops which are skilled in selling faulty products, but this wasn’t the case here. These products had passed their sell-by date and others were just useless.

Selling date-expired food to people constitutes a commercial and public health offence. The offence is the greater when most of the consumers of the jams are children.

The consumer’s rights are set out in the regulations issued by the public authorities intended to protect purchasers or users in the market of goods and services, which bestow and regulate certain rights and duties.

In spite of the fact that the consumer’s rights are not an independent branch of the law, fundamental aspects of the relationship between producers and consumers are to be found in Commercial Law, Civil Law; others in Administrative Law and also Procedural Law.

In Cuba, there are legal regulations which protect the purchaser’s rights, but they are not heeded. The inspectors look the other way. The people are on the whole unaware of their rights, and, in a time of scarcity, accept these infringements of their rights as consumers.

The best advice to Cuban consumers is to check before you buy. And insist on it.

Translated by GH

January 3 2013

The First Stage of Cuban Childhood Education / Dora Leonor Mesa #Cuba

In 1961, with the creation of Children’s Circles (Daycare Centers/State Nurseries), the Cuban Pre-school Educational System is created. Until that time,there existed in the country approximately 300 initial education centers, essentially for children 5-6-years-old. In 1980, per Resolution 577, regulations for Daycare Centers are created, and in 1981, per Resolution 430, a new scholastic curriculum is established.

Per Law 76, decreed in 1984,Mixed Circles (boarding/nonboarding) and homes for parentless children are created.

Preschool children (5-6 years of age) were educated in Primary Education until 1992. Then, as it was deemed to be the last development period within the early childhood phase, its direction was determined by the preschool educational system.

Preschool education is not obligatory in Cuba (OEI, 1999), though it is the minor’s first education phase. It constitutes the first subsystem of the entire National Educational System. It is endorsed by legal documentation and in the Republic’s constitution.

The Ministry of Education (Ministerio de Educación/MINED), under the Direction of Preschool Education (Dirección de Educación Preescolar), outlines political education and methodologically directs the educational activities of the entire subsystem. It consists of the maximum technical and methodological authority. There are departments subordinated to provinces, municipalities, and regions. All are obliged to adhere to the educational politics and directions originating at a centralized level. They control and adjust educational activities in their territory according to the politics of the Cuban Communist Party (MINED, 2010).

This primary teaching has as its objective achieving the maximum integral and harmonious development of the child, from six months of age until five years of age; while consequently facilitating his/her learning at the commencement of primary schooling. In the practice of governmental education, this initial general education phase is essentially organized in two ways: institutional (child groups and preschool classrooms in primary schools), and not institutionally with the Teach your Child Program (Programa Educa a Tu Hijo). The same takes into account three fundamental variables:

– Children’s group for children 0-5 years of age.

– The informal ways (not institutional), from birth until 4 years of age, perfected with the program Educate Your Child (Educa a Tu Hijo) effected through the service of professional promoters, volunteer activists and the child’s family.

– Preschool grade at the school for children 5 years of age.

Generally, children gain acceptance into the children’s group such as in school per their age group, so far as they reach the corresponding year of age by the 31st of December. Education in Cuba is state-run; the majority of school settings are subsidized by the State. The children’s group charges a reasonable fee to the parents for the assistance services; educational and health services are offered for free. Only working mothers or those in a predetermined social situation have access to the service.

There is a group of children ages 0 to 5-years-old who are assisted in private nurseries generally when the mother works outside the home. In these locations the children are mostly looked after by women who carry out these activities by way of the state. A small part of this establishments belong to the Catholic Church and other institutions, where the preschoolers are availed better benefits and many more resources than those at children centers or regular nurseries.

At present those who wish to open a private nursery are required to apply for a health license, pay taxes, if not retired, and submit to periodic visits by inspectors. In the capital the minimal fee per child per month reaches 10 CUC ($9.00 USD), not including food, clothing and articles of personal hygiene for the child. In Havana, based on figures obtained by ACDEI, the majority of this nurseries offer assistance services. Governmental documents reflect children participating in the program Educate your Child (Educa a tu Hijo) since the age of 3. Available additional information regarding the development process throughout the country is not sufficient.

Translated by: Anonymous

October 11 2012

Chinese “Ox” of Life / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

Graphic downloaded from queaprendemoshoy.com

Some ideologues and Leftists worldwide, coined the label that Americans are constantly trying to impose on the world their American way of life. A country so rich, a nation so diverse, hardworking and productive, created from themselves, a particular conception of the consumer society, the market economy and democratic system, their own. They established as well, as part of their lifestyle and idiosyncrasies, cultural patterns that shape their identities, which like large social groups in many countries around the world and in recent years have become more universalized with globalization.

Historians narrate that the Leftist animosity was such that the comic superhero, the U.S. icon Superman — devised by the imagination of the writer Jerry Siegel and the pencil of artist Joe Shuster — was widely attacked by the leaders of the Soviet Union’s ideological colonies, who said that the character, with his creative license tendencies, was an analogy for military power in that country. Cuba, of course, could not keep up, and it was not until the ’70s that we saw the Superman movie starring Christopher Reeve. The same thing happened to Popeye, who was saddled with a similar label and had to wait for an intolerant power to authorize his showing on TV.

Two or three years ago transmission of CCTV — Chinese television — was imposed on Cubans, after review by the censors. There we had to digest folk culture clunkers very different from ours, but it is well-known that the authorities flatter those governments that help them economically. I say this because I have remember the old relationship of my government with the Soviet Union and I find that it repeats itself with Venezuela.

I return to the theme of Chinese CCTV, because a few days ago my husband and I saw part of a musical in which Chinese artists sang and we were surprised the visible influence of Western culture which showed in their interpretations. We are left with the idea that, if not for the language, we could have closed our eyes and not known that performance originated somewhere other than in the United States. The space featured a distinguished cultural treat for the taste captured and commercialized by pop, with jazz ingredients and an appetizing concoction of folk rock ’n roll, as a marketable and attractive imitation. Influenced by the American way, it seems the mythical Asian dragon is transmuting into a “Chinese ox” and the cultural patrons who say that the Americans are trying to spread themselves around the world, is not that they are imposing them, it’s that they are contagious.

Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado

December 30 2012

The Chavez case: The Mystery of Who is to Blame / Reinaldo Escobar #Cuba

HugoChavezAP from blog.mysanantonio.com
HugoChavezAP from blog.mysanantonio.com

Although it still remains to close the book on the clinical case of the patient Hugo Chavez, we can already affirm that the issue of the Venezuelan president’s health has had its final outcome, it seems clear that the Bolivarian commander will not have another opportunity to be president.

After a silence where we have heard only vague comments about the complexity of the postoperative process and repetitions of what the whole world already knows, the time is coming to make public complete information, including a chronology. Information that is urgent to inform the world, and especially the Venezuelan people, about the causes that prevent the elected president from assuming office in a timely manner.

The main question is who should provide this information; who should take responsibility for what happened.

From June 30, 2011, when Chavez announced that he had detected a cancer, no medical institution has officially spoken about the patient. To reconstruct the history of the appearance, evolution and end stage of the disease, so far we have only a mix of rumors, reported by the Venezuelan government through their spokesmen, and the declarations issued in the first person by Chavez himself.

The accuracy of this information, already on the opposition’s agenda, goes far beyond the interests that oncologists might have based on their scientific curiosity about this type of cancer appearing and disappearing in such a surprising way. The real mystery to unveil before public opinion is perhaps found in these variables:

1. In October of 2012 Chavez was totally cured; thus he accepted his victory as a candidate in the presidential elections. Meanwhile, now he suffers from another, new cancer, that no one expected or suspected.

2. Chavez was not completely healthy, nor in any condition to accept the responsibility of assuming the presidency.

2.1 He knew it and hid it from his constituents.

2.2 He didn’t know it.

2.2.1 He didn’t know it because his medical team was not aware of the danger stalking him.

2.2.1 He didn’t know it because his medical team lied to him or hid the information.

Returning to the question of who should explain the above variables, obviously it would touch on the medical team located in Cuba or the Cuban government itself, which through its institutions chose the personnel in charge of this case.

If this is another cancer and not the one detected in mid-2011, they will have to provide scientific evidence comprehensible at least to specialists beyond political whims and Jewish curses.

If the disappearance of the disease was never definitive enough for Chavez to dare to accept his nomination as a presidential candidate, the medical team will then be obliged to confess that it did not have the scientific resources or the necessary expertise to know that, or, on the contrary, that it did know but refused to inform the patient, or that it knew, informed the patient, and he then decided to hide it.

Already, Señor Hugo Chavez has no political future, he barely has a biological future. If he already knew all this in October of last year, his decision to hide it from the electorate can only be understood to result from a voracious  lust for power, or, being generous, as an act of elevated altruism: knowing his fatal destiny, he would assure in this way the presence of his party in the presidential chair, eventually handing off the baton to the vice president Nicolas Maduro. Perhaps it was a valiant effort to appear to vigorous — with the help of steroids — which  precipitated the final breakdown of his health.

Now everything seems to indicate that such a sacrifice was in vain and in addition counterproductive, because the unveiling of such a deception could come at a devastating political cost to his party facing new elections, as provided for in these cases by the Venezuelan Constitution.

Venezuelan public opinion has a moral duty and right to demand a truthful and convincing explanation. We Cubans must also demand one because the international credibility of our institutions has been put into play here.

Reinaldo Escobar

Translated from Diario de Cuba

3 January 2013

The Grub of Poetry / Luis Felipe Rojas #Cuba

Photo: Malcom 2013

A long time ago, when we were happy and believed that we could fix the world by debating about baseball, poetry and politics (much time has passed since then), we found the Sancti Spiritus-Santiago de Cuba based poet, Reinaldo Garcia Blanco, who reminded us of the time when Christmas was rationed, with his poem “Very long eulogy” which conjured images of those ‘Bulgarian onions and some Rene Barbier Rosada wine’. Years later, they gave me this same wine as a welcome present to this poetic site known as Miami. The wine, the books, and friendship are a tribute to Reinaldo, Marta Maria Montejo, Rafael Vilches, Carlos Esquivel and many others who believe in the strength of words when some believe in the strength of physical blows and stonings at night. 2013 could be the year of uniting poetry and life, of finally getting fed up with so much silence and so much screaming. I leave you with a fragment of the poem which moved us that one time:

“From Left to Right”

‘With the stare of an angel, there is a woman with a mustache. It’s Frida Khalo, and her hand lies over the shoulder of Trotsky (who brings an apple towards his face), and then there is a Doric column (now it’s in sepia but during the photo it was red). Then there is a man with a firefly on his hand and a tobacco on his mouth (he makes circles of light so we can see in this darkness) and it seems as if he’s giving his back to a girl called Greta Garbo (she is playing with a kite and the hand which comes out of nowhere to snatch the toy from her belongs to Salvador Dali). Towards the back, there is a sign which reads “Proletariats of the world, Unite”. Towards the far right one man adds with a paintbrush: “Last warning”. My memory fails me, but I would bet it was Pablo Picasso. Others follow him, and it seems that they are Russian, Chechnyans, or Quakers…God knows. On the table, there are Bulgarian onions and some “Rene Barbiera Rosado” wines. The girl and the old man are Maria Kodama and Jorge Luis Borges. The one getting down from the cross is Jesus. The one with the Second World War nurse outfit is Isadora Duncan and the one with the faint stair holding a Beatles CD in his hand is Mao Zedong.’

Luis Felipe Rojas

Translated by Raul G.

1 January 2013

The Seat of Rosa Parks / Luis Felipe Rojas #Cuba

Photo: Raul Garcia

The city of Miami surprised me. Many of its buses pay tribute to someone who is a symbol of defending civil rights in this country. On my daily comings and goings through its neighborhoods, I found that detail. Right behind the bus driver’s seat, there is a small plaque with the details. Miami does it, and so have other cities in the United States, as one day will be done in Cuba with some similar actions.

The fact that Rosa Parks decided, on that afternoon of 1955, not to give up her seat to a white person, ignited the spark among her fellow citizens, leading to known events like the public transport strike in Montgomery. It was a gesture, a pro-active action, an act of non-cooperation, doing. Just like a few women decided to take to the streets of Cuba in 2003, dressed in white and with a flower in hand, or how a group of men have said: “I do not cooperate with the dictatorship”. It is these citizen gestures which turn on the motor of grand human actions.

Berta Soler. Photo by: Luis Felipe Rojas

After so much blood has been shed on the island, years of unjust imprisonment, arbitrary detentions, beatings and harassment against political activists and their families, will the definitive spark be ignited? Everything seems to indicate that it will, although sometimes we may lose hope or think that the dictatorship which has governed us for 54 years is eternal. When Laura Pollan screamed in front of the guards: “We are not afraid of you”, when Marta Diaz Rondon and Caridad Caballero shouted at the top of their lungs: “My house is not a prison”, or when Iris Perez Aguilera protested in a small town of Cuba’s interior in front of a radio station because it was only reporting part of the truth, they too were also paying tribute to Rosa Parks. They are also like her. And although they did not have the immediate protection and coverage which the humble lady from Alabama had, there is still the hope that one day they will be acknowledged for their gestures of reasonable rebellion. Against brute force, reason stands firm, Rosa said it: “Freedom is not free”.

Luis Felipe Rojas

Translated by Raul G.

3 January 2013