I am dismayed by your government’s introduction of a letter of invitation as a condition of entry to your country. The clarification leaves me more confused: “The paper should state that the Ecuadorian or the foreigner with an immigrant visa who invites a Cuban citizen has sufficient funds and pledges to cover all costs, including medical care, during the stay of the guest.”
I say to you, Correa, that in Cuba we are very humble and do not like to boast of economic wealth, but many people in my country do not need any other citizen of the world to cover their expenses.
As a Cuban, whose salary is not enough to visit Ecuador without a visa or Europe with a visa, I am deeply offended by this drastic change just a few days from the Cuban immigration reform.
If we were Brazil, tomorrow we would include a regulation that asked not only for letter of invitation, but a reserved round trip ticket, bank statements and a hotel reservation from the citizens of your country.
Instead, I hope that my country will continue training, for free, your students in our universities, healing your sick and assisting your nation in social development programs.
One of a country’s most precious things is its traditions They constitute the people’s soul and shape identity and belonging.
And culture and traditions are shaped by the nuances and vicissitudes of popular history over a long period of evolution and development of nationality and personality.
We Cubans have many and they are and very beautiful. For their authenticity, they have remained despite efforts to make them disappear following the dictates of an absurd and dogmatic social engineering.
One of these was the Christmas festivities and, among them, the gifts placed under the tree to be opened on the morning of the birth of baby Jesus, and the pleasant and emotive sound of a Christmas carol.
That was an experience so beautiful as to never be forgotten.
Then there were no more Christmases or New Years, or Three Kings or gifts under the tree or under the bed.
Then came adulthood, after maturity, and it has not crossed my mind that the possibility of a return with a huge cargo of human warmth, familiarity and Cubanness.
However, unexpectedly, they have returned, no less than in these last Christmases, to receive a gift that fills my heart with joy and hope, and it comes from an unexpected place: INTERNET tells us that the Cuban Law Association (AJC) ends 2012 with more than 110,000 visits to its blog.
The fact that a blog of legal issues, often highly technical and difficult to understand, created with much effort as we try to write in an understandable way for those not versed in the law, has reached that impressive figure can only fill us with joy and a sense of accomplishment in a fair fight.
Within Cuba are more than 1,200 entries to the AJC blog. In a country like ours, without INTERNET and where the overwhelming majority of the population does not have a computer, that number is not negligible.
Of course this involves us more, but now, we want to thank from the bottom of our hearts all who come to read to us and give us their comments, which are almost entirely respectful and encouraging.
Thank you all for this delightful, stimulating — and very emotional for us — NEW YEAR’S GIFT.
For those of us who comb our grey hair, or those who now haven’t any hair to comb, the French utopia dealing with attempted social change, in the context of that society, was an unreachable goal, notwithstanding the fact that it served as a program. And on a daily basis we see that as regards our own society, and in particular its future, it has transformed into a mirage; it is as if our goals, dreams and hopes, were on the horizon, that line which we can never reach.
How far away we are from being able to say with enthusiasm and credibility that in our society the law is respected, complied with and obeyed by all the bodies which make up our society.
We would like to prepare all the information possible, in order that people may have a sense of all the rules, orders and legal regulations which have been published in the Republic of Cuba’s Official Gazette, produced by the Ministry of Justice in more than 50 years.
Almost every day the Organisations of the Central Administration of State (OACE) publish regulations, and, not at the same frequency, laws, decrees, and legal decrees are put out in relation to the National Assembly of Popular Power (ANPP), the Council of State (CE) and the Council of Ministries.
To preach the law with due respect and devotion, it should not be necessary to undertake actions against those who flagrantly break or violate it, or with impunity fail to observe it. For example, it is sad to see them demolish a building because its construction was illegal. Why does that happen? Simply because of the total lack of respect for the law, both on the part of the person carrying out the work and also the person who has benefitted from the failure to observe it, both private individuals and companies.
What role is performed or should be performed by the lawyer or advocate in the OACE, an organisation, a company or association? As far as we are concerned his main role is founded on the preaching of respect for all current legislation, ensuring his behavior adheres to and complies with it, which is almost impossible to do, given that his boss’s wishes take precedence; he can’t act as consultant or advisor, because at best he is not listened to and at worst he is kicked out for going against his superior’s decisions.
Everything that we have described, merits a special illustrative space showing how the laws are violated or infringed, which according to us (all of us) we approve. There is an old saying: “killed himself like Chacumbele”. Are we (all) Chacumbele?
A group of internal dissident leaders on the Island, led by Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, unveiled on Wednesday morning, January 9th, Project Emilia.
This initiative, like the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, arises from the incontestable fact that the Cuban State is not subject to the law. This, citizen freedom and human rights are undervalues and have succumbed before the needs of the Communist system as expressed in the 1976 Constitution, modified in 2003. Thus, the Emilia Project considers the Constitution and the National Assembly of People’s Power with its organs of State power illegitimate.
The document also calls for the Cuban people to subscribe to this project. Once the signatures are collected, it will be presented directly to the International Criminal Court, the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council.
The 2003 modification of the 1976 Constitution was the government’s reaction to the Varela Project, promote from Civil Society by the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, who died in July, 2012, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas
The Emilia Project takes its name from Emilia Teurbe Tolón, the fighter in the War of Independence who made the first national flag.
Listening to Dr. Biscet reading the document reminded me of a couple of sentences I had read recently in one of the winning essays in the Freedom Road Contest’s 4th edition. They bring light to the cause of freedom for Cubans, as opposed to the Battle of Ideas which is the Communist Party’s ongoing propaganda in the mass media in the country.
“All that freedom requires is that the individual can do something to restrict the actions of the government. I do not believe that imparting positive instruction to the government about what it should do is part of freedom, but the truth is that there can be no freedom if we can not exercise the right to prevent the government from doing certain things.
The only moral principle that once made possible the growth of an advanced society, has been the principle of individual freedom, which means that the person is guided in making decisions by rules of right conduct and not by specific orders of another individual.” Friedrich von Hayek: The Road to Serfdom.
To be able to change Cuba in a non-violent way, is the aspiration of all members of Civil Society. It is the Communist State which is not in a position to cede territory because it will end up succumbing. Violence is an attribute of government where there is socialism, communism, collectivism, populism.
Is it possible to file a legal claim against someone to whom you have given your car to carry out some bodywork, paying him something in advance, who has not carried out the work in question, and where there is no contract documentation? How can you enforce the contractual obligation?
Is it the case that a piece of paper, containing the personal details and reciprocal obligations to which those who agree to provide a service in return for payment commit themselves, constitutes, when the occasion requires, an element of proof for the purposes of a Tribunal when making an application for completion of a contractual obligation?
There are thousands of questions, like the ones above, which are raised by Cubans when, as happens, legal relationships, which should be created in accordance with provisions of the law and good faith, lead to a sorry outcome with the bitter experience, for one or both persons, of being jailed for what ought to be and should proceed as a satisfactory legal relationship.
And this ominous outcome is, not infrequently, the result of various elements which are to be found in legal relationships, conspiring against their normal development; ignorance of rights and how they are to be applied within the social framework; little or no dissemination of information by the mechanisms and institutions which are there to guarantee the exercise of those citizens’ rights, little publicity about the requirements and best options for those wishing to enter into a legal transaction with adequate guarantees, a legal vacuum in relation to the regime governing defined options for the self-employed. These and other limitations are part of the legal reality of present-day Cuba, at the same time as they are of potential assistance to those trying to make a living by way of cheating and extorting from others.
Although the decentralisation of the State monopoly on employment has been accepted and welcomed, what is also needed is an effective strategy to ensure the legal protection of the citizen.
The growing scale of the non-public economy, taken with the ever-more-necessary reduction of prohibitions and restrictions which muzzle the life of Cuban people, takes us inevitably in the direction of an increasing quantity of legal relationships, and the urgent need to dispel the air of mystery, as far as many Cubans are concerned, which has surrounded them for years.
When I was a child, I heard my grandmother talk about the hard times of cholera, and of how her family had escaped from this terrible disease. That was all I knew of this plaque, pure history.
And it turns out that now, in the 21st century, in “my beloved planet”, that terrible word is mentioned again. After those stories told by his grandmother María, I again heard about this pandemic when I enjoyed reading the famous novel by García Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera, passionately losing myself in his unforgettable character Florentino Ariza.
I was surprised, it’s true, that for so many years we had weathered the danger of such a plague, because our beloved island is increasingly sinking into more precarious hygienic conditions die to the apathy and neglect in all sectors, in all social spheres. Thanks to our relentless sun, we have survived some diseases.
I have written a great deal in my blog, about the lack of hygiene and cleanliness in public places, among them, unfortunately, polyclinics and hospitals, as well as cafes and stalls, State and private (some), selling light and not so light food for public consumption, especially for those who do not have hard currency and are forced to go to them.
I avoid at all costs, and so I tell anyone whom I can within my power, not to consume these drinks made with flavored powders, because the lack of safe drinking water is very common, especially in places like Old Havana, where there are the largest number of tourists and local visitors.
Another of the reasons I resist, when the impertinent fumigation brigades, try to break into my house when they want to fill it with smoke from burning oil, is that time has shown that it is completely ineffective in liquidating the famous mosquito, while the hygiene of the environment and the city are so precarious.
Now, more worryingly, and in what must be emphasized to the authorities and the population in general, is the need to maintain the highest possible hygiene in our homes and our environment, so that this outbreak of cholera does not become endemic as has its other relative, dengue fever.
Introductory Note: On July 24, 2012, during the funeral of the opposition leader Oswaldo Payá, there were violent arrests of several activists and dissidents, among them Antonio Rodiles, who was held for 24 hours at the Fourth Police Station and interrogated by State Security, two years to the day after the first meeting organized by the Estado de SATS project. A few days earlier, Rodiles had granted this interview to Cubanet.
Estado de SATS (State of SATS) was born two years ago, but it has been mostly in the last year that this project has generated more interest and has experienced major growth, despite the efforts of the political police against it. Many people, on the other hand, are asking what could be the meaning of such a peculiar name. Antonio Rodiles explains it very clearly: “Estado de SATS is a term used on the theater that represents the moment when all the energy is concentrated to begin to action, or when an athlete is at the precise moment before the starting signal. It is the concentration that later explodes.”
There is no description more graphic and exact for the spirit of what emerged in July of 2010, when the first meeting was held at Casa Gaia, in Old Havana, organized by Rodiles, a mathematical physicist, and his friend Jorge Calaforra, a Cuban-Polish civil engineer, and with the notable support of the OMNI Project and the participation of the theater group Cuerpo Adentro and Darwin Estacio, who organized a painting exhibition.
Antonio Rodiles himself provides more details in this interview with Cubanet, in the midst of the intense undertaking that occupies most of his time.
Cubanet: How did the idea of the Estado de SATS project emerge and develop?
Antonio Rodiles: What we set out to do in the first meeting was to break the ice; to do something independent where we could generate debate about current topics from different perspectives, artists, intellectuals, professionals. It was a very interesting event that lasted three days, and the result was interesting. There were about seven lectures and three panels, an exhibit of paintings, a presentation of the film Memories of Underdevelopment, which had just been released, and on the last day there was a concert mixing jazz and hip hop.
This first concert was very positive and gave momentum to the idea of continuing, always maintaining the idea of the confluence of art and thinking. The reality of a country is very complex. There are different approaches, and we believe art has a lot to bring. There are things an intellectual or a professional sees that others don’t see, and an artist sees many of them. The ways of approaching problems are also different.
CN: We know that some time ago there were people who expressed the opinion that Estado de SATS was an “opposition-lite” project, prepared by the government. We know the answers you gave at that time. However, what would you respond today now that the project has continued to grow and develop?
AR: I think this is part of a strategy by State Security which has tried to spread this opinion to create internal divisions among political and social activists in Cuba. Everyone can say what they want, but it seems to me that this falls in the plane of conspiracy theories, because in the plane of reality we see that people with distinct visions and positions have participated here.
Just yesterday we had a meeting with three of the seventy-five former prisoners of the Black Spring, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, José Daniel Ferrer and Ángel Moya. We also had Berta Soler, Wilfredo Vallín, Manuel Cuesta, Yoani Sánchez, Elizardo Sánchez, Alexis Jardines, Raudel Collazo, OMNI ZONA FRANCA and many more. They debated everything.
Ultimately, we have met with everyone to call upon the government directly with the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, which is part of a campaign we are initiating to ask the government to ratify the Covenants they already signed (the United Nations Covenant of Civil Rights and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). A campaign we want to carry out throughout the whole country and in which everyone who wants to can participate.
If anyone still thinks that this project is orchestrated by the government, they are definitely suffering from paranoia. Sometimes I think it’s important to talk about this so that it’s perfectly clear, but other times I feel that it’s a waste of time. Anyone, if they are well-intentioned, simply by looking at the work we’ve done this year, which for us has been huge, can understand the truth of our project. To entangle us in so many explanations and responses seems to me exactly what State Security wants: distract you with absurd details so you waste your time and energy.
CN: What importance do you attribute to the space for dialogue and reflection that this project has opened? In your view, what has been the impact of the work done so far?
AR: What has pleased me the most, personally, is being able to show the faces of civil society that the Cuban government tries to hide. They always say that those who oppose them are criminals, mercenaries, people with no vision of the future, no plan for the country, the worst of the worst. To show this range of faces and visions definitely gives the idea that when we can end this long nightmare, there is a clear prospect of a much better country.
It has also been very interesting to establish friendships with so many people, or that many individuals who didn’t know each other do now and they know what they think, what they see and how to collaborate. Another important aspect is that it has created a public space for debate. Here there is no room for the powers-that-be description: “you are my friend or you are my enemy.” Here people can coexist with others who think differently, but who ultimately also want a better country. That exchange is essential to a democracy.
It would be great is spaces like this could emerge across the entire country, if people could do it from their own inspiration. It’s very important to signal that tons of spaces like this exist in democratic societies. This may seem strange only in Cuba because we live under a totalitarian regime.
A process of maturation is indisputably happening in civil society, but new technologies are also contributing: to have a channel on YouTube, or to record a video and distribute it among people has a very important role, because people that see this can get interested in coming, participating, and knowing what happens. At first about fifteen or twenty people came, currently, at some meetings, we have observed over ninety or a hundred people.
CN: What new purposes and plans are fueling the project at this time?
AR: We would like projects like this to spread throughout the whole country, that here increasingly more people with different interests come, including from official institutions. That’s why we are focusing on greater awareness of what we do.
Another plan, on which we are concentrating great energy, is the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba. We believe it is very important that, from civil society, we demand our rights from the government and that, starting from those rights, there is a democratic transformation in the country. We are working very intensely to spread this whole conception of the new society, of what we want the change to be.
We are also very interested in the exchange with Cubans who are outside of Cuba. We have tried several times and we will keep trying. Almost always it has to be through recorded videos.
CN: Can you mention some of the procedures that the political police have used the to deter or derail the project?
AR: They have used many. Starting out, as they thought I would leave the country, they tried to blackmail me by taking away my permit to reside in the exterior, which they did a few months after the meetings began in my house. Then they threatened my parents with withdrawing the license they have to rent rooms, and even mentioned the possibility of taking our house.
The guests who are invited are threatened that, if they come, there will be reprisals. Also many of the public who come are warned not to come again. On some occasions they have organized operations around the house. We are very close to the offices of the National Aquarium and they normally mount their operations there, although lately they are being discreet.
They have also installed two permanent video cameras facing the house. Many time they harass people who leave the meetings, asking for their identity cards in an intimidating way. In short, they closely monitor us and the work they do is systematic in continuing to try to strangle people, especially economically.
The idea is to isolate you, set you apart, and continuously reduce the impact you can have with your work. I think that as the project continues to grow, they will become more nervous, but we hope that they understand that this is a path of no return.
CN: How do you see the current situation of our country, the real possibilities of change?
AR: Look, it seems to me that, almost a year and a half after the Communist Party Congress, which raised many expectations in some who are too optimistic, if not naive, and after the Party Conference, people have realized that it was all words. The government does not have the ability to change. It’s an ancient government with ancient ideas. There is no human capital in the halls of power and they are greatly afraid, because they know that there is discontent and the hopes of citizens are completely different from what they are offering.
This fear creates in them an unchanging attitude that corners us in an even more critical situation. Moreover, economically the country is in a quagmire. The measures taken have failed to capitalize on anything. It was because the company Repsol didn’t strike oil. There is no foreign investment of any magnitude.
And something that has become a sword of Damocles is the Chavez factor. If he will be re-elected or not, if he survives or not. The question of Venezuela is not only the more than one hundred thousand barrels of oil per day, but also the number of professionals who are working there. If they suddenly have to return to Cuba without the possibility of employment, they will become a mass with a high level of discontent.
I think that the political elite has been delaying and delaying solutions and what has been created is an accumulation of problems that are increasingly insoluble. I do not think they have the ability to solve anything because the problems are now completely overwhelming.
That’s where I think the Citizen Demand for Another Cuba plays an important role, presenting as a first step the restitution of our political, economic, cultural, social, civil rights. I think from that restitution there can clearly be a transition to democracy.
If, as citizens, we can organize a nationwide campaign where people mobilize and demand those rights from the government, and following the ratification of the Covenants there can be constitutional changes implemented in the penal code, and we recover the basic liberties, I definitely think the country would go forward to a radical change.
I think the most important thing is to think about how to make the change, specifically; not to say we want a transition or that Cuba wants a transition, but to think about what kind of country we want.
CN: Would you like to add anything to what you said?
AR: Yes, I would like to invite Cubans outside of Cuba to join this campaign. One way to help is to sign the Demand for Another Cuba. Another is to bring materials from outside, the printed text, the videos that have been done to explain the proposal of what we’re trying to do, and also to bring information about the Covenants and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and to give it to their families.
Some may see this as something small, but if every household in Cuba could know what is being requested and in what form we are proposing changes in the country, that would be a tremendous step. As long as our desire for change is an abstraction, we won’t connect; but from the moment we say how to do it and we all push in that direction, the change happens, because the vast majority desires it.
The ratification of the Covenants would benefit the Yoruba Association, which advocates respect for gender differences, all the churches, the musicians, all citizens. So everyone should know the meaning of these Covenants and what benefits their ratification would bring.
I think the conditions are ripe for this to become a formidable campaign. I’ve talked to many people, and they tell me this demand seems very sensible, that it is relevant to beginning to untie this knot. Not even the government could say that this is a crazy idea.
The government must understand that the more prolonged the situation the worse the end will be, because there will be a larger quantity of accumulated problems. I think we are on the threshold of achieving a transition in Cuba, but only if it takes the pace it should. If not, the impulse will cool and then we would fall into apathy and the change could happen spontaneously and out of control, generating violence and leading us all into a dead end.
Ernesto Santana and Antonio Rodiles
Original interview: July 2012. Posted on Estado de Sats 17 January 2013.
In any other country in our continent, the police look after public and private property, and their mission, with rare exceptions, is not concerned with politics. There, the police have an important role to fulfill. Here, on the other hand, things are different.
The greatest number of infractions of the law occur in the central areas of the city of Havana. And it is there where the ordinary citizen is most defenceless in the face of the arbitrariness and ignorance of the cops, who have as a weapon the ignorance and fear of their victims.
The lawyers and other agents of civil society ought not to confine their activities to the area in which they live, but should also cover areas like Habana Vieja where every day dozens of persons are handcuffed and humiliated just on the basis of mere suspicion, often based on the color of their skin or the way they speak.
A few Sundays ago, in Parque Central, I witnessed how they violated the rights of Antonio Loriste de la Cruz, whose ID number is 73110129509. He has black skin, and his only offence was to cross Parque Central at about 11:53 am. I was able to obtain these details from him and before he was handcuffed by his pursuer no.744, I was able to give him a document which set out the rights which applied to him from the moment of his detention, in accordance with the Law of Criminal Procedure.
Although I was assured by the officials who detained him that we were dealing here with a hustler, with someone who is pestering tourists, I can say, as someone who works in this precise location and looks out for the rights of people like Antonio, that I haven’t seen him pestering anybody, but that he was a suspect based on the color of his skin which in Cuba is an indicator of being a thief, a stigma, a cross which he will bear until the day he dies.
Antonio Loriste was found sitting in the shade on a bench in Parque Central, sheltering from the stifling heat, and there he was bothered by two uniformed police, who asked him for his documents, a very common form of invasion of privacy in Cuba.
Antonio Loriste was taken to the premises in Calle de Dragones, an office they euphemistically call “for recognition.” Where they will take him is uncertain.
I offer my open hands to a friend from childhood, a friend I knew when the fair only offered pale convulsed dreams. It was around this time that my friend insisted on weaving hopes against the prevailing winds that announced storms gathering at the end of the street, the wind that in his rise seemed dotted with vivid chaotic colors, beautiful shades that fled the rotting trash coming to live in the plaza. In my dreams — I distinctly remember — my friend rose to an immense height and there, higher than the pigeons fly, recorded his remote signs in the heavens. Then the plaza was flooded with that smell of new dreams.
Today I confide to his warm hands what tenderness, from the low pressure system, my hands saved; my hands sore and tired from the stories my friend told me. He did not say, in those days — forgetting that a child believes everything he hears — that the light, like the truth, has dangers if you take it by force, and this boy was in pursuit of the light and now, for wanting to touch the sun both hands are burned.
But although the wounds put an end to innocence, not to guilt. In face that boy still wonders if he would scare the butterflies, if those paper boats would capsize, if those kites that flew so high would sink under the torrential downpours; although he knows well that today they would bathe in the light of sunsets very different and disparate, and therefore, more human and sublime.
When the evening comes I go to clean the plaza and throw a tricolor line that divides it into two perfect halves. The surprise upsets the pigeons and the rest of the creatures and I note to my dear friend that, in addition to pigeons, the plaza is home to and shelters sparrows, turtledoves, canaries, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, swallows and goldfinches, delicate creations, all from God, who having been born in the same village have the same right to fly, the space and the sun and what they most ask for a little more light, some little corner of peace to ease their life, which is so ethereal and fleeting like the dreams.
I hope my friend understands that this is the most beautiful flock of birds that nest on this infinite island: that with freedom they have enough.
It appears to me that your observations are very wise. As you know very well, I arrived at the Office of the School of Political Science and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities two years later, with the ashes still hot from the ”last battle,” the lassos brandished to hang “the children of the Revolution”; the Saturns* were passing by our Colina* in these moments. dark time, which fortunately today we have already overcome and to which we won’t allow anyone to return us.
The revolutionary intellectuals of this country, can not return to the dark stage of the cavernous combination that occurred in those years between ideology, culture and mass media. Attempts to resurrect those dead on television, where they could confuse so many and even change their history, belong to opportunists.
The Revolution has matured a lot. But we must be alert, because it is precisely at those moments we are experiencing in these months, those who lend themselves to the revanchists, the dusting off of corpses and the opening of tombs. I don’t think we’re confronting ingenuousness. And if they are ingenuous, they wouldn’t have the power to appear on TV.
Greetings
Dr. Esteban Morales
*Translator’s notes: Saturns: The myth of Saturn devouring his children is a popular Cuban reference point. Colina: Reference to the area where the University of Havana is located.na: Reference to the area where the University of Havana is located
From the posters placed around the city urging people to protect themselves from cholera through a set of preventive measures, the increase is visits to doctors and nurses asking about acute diarrheal symptoms, the prohibition of offering smoothies, natural drinks and even water, if they are not industrially canned or bottled, in coffee shops and other establishments, hand washing with chlorinated water at the entrance to some shops, and the disclosure statement that appeared in the press yesterday, it appears that the Cholera has reached Havana.
Cholera had been eradicated in Cuba by the end of the colonial era. Its reappearance is due mainly to two reasons: the inefficiency of the health authorities and social indiscipline. In Havana, with its disastrous health and hygiene situation, it will be somewhat difficult to eradicate: there is garbage everywhere, the streets are dirty and destroyed, neither swept nor scrubbed, landslides and debris accumulated in vacant lots, sewage pours day and night, water leaks from the pipes and, thus, contamination, collecting tanks without lids are exposed to the weather, all these are just some of the manifestations, the reasons.
It is incomprehensible that a government that prides itself on attending international forums dealing with of medical and health in dozens of countries around the world, sometimes from humanitarian impulses and other times from economic and political interest, is unable to provide safe sanitation to its citizens.
It is not enough to have hospitals, polyclinics, doctors’ offices and thousands of health professionals, if the quality of the services offered is low, and many of the installations face major problems in hygiene, sanitation and construction, in addition to the habitual lack of medicines.
Now that cholera has arrived, the most important thing its to confront it: the sanitation authorities efficiently and responsibly doing their duty, and the citizens taking the measures indicated to protect themselves and to help to reestablish social discipline.
Although the press release said that “it is in the process of being eradicated,” we hope that this wasn’t a part of the habitual triumphalism, and that cholera won’t follow the example of what happened to us with dengue fever, which never existed in Cuba and which they repeatedly announce is eradicated, but which in fact had become endemic.
Although the boy forgot to put a note under the bed for the Three Kings, the father wrote: I don’t want any more governments that rob children of their innocence. It’s a few minutes before 2:00 when I walk into Neptune Street, towards the home of the late Laura Pollan, made God put here in the place of glory she deserves and that, she was not given here in Cuba, in her country, by the government, the dictatorship and the people from their cowardice.
A purulent stink massacres the afternoon with the patchwork of sun hidden behind grey clouds. It’s not cold, hot, or windy, and people seem to have taken the miserable landscape by assault. At the corner of Hospital Street the taxes that pre-date the Revolution are a symbol of the stopped development.
Some uniformed cops practically drag a man with his hands cuffed behind his back to a patrol car parked on the left. It’s the usual operation, almost a tradition with the Castro-Communist power around the block when there’s any activity in the house of the fallen leader of the Ladies in White, to block access to those interested.
So I put the car between two taxis, looking confused but trying to go unnoticed. The gentle little voices of the three girls in the back seat touch my soul to think that they stop us, they’re trying to block us from reaching for the celebration of Three Kings Day, that Fidel and the Revolution buried in the mire of his evil imperial chauvinism after taking power by means of arms.
Traffic continues and I cross near the police car taking a sideline at the face of of the man arrested feeling that it could be an opponent I know, but I couldn’t tell. I was wrong, I say again after having passed through the danger zone. Danger Zone! and again I say: I was wrong, a danger zone for those who think differently from Castro Communism is different from any place within the island. I stop the car in front of the door, the schoolteacher’s humble little house is full of children and mothers.
I take the camera and start shooting bullets of happiness for the children leads and deadly for the dictatorial power. A picture is worth a thousand words, say the sages of the photographs but today does not fulfill the adage because I can not translate the pain of the past in them. The soul flies and falls like a wounded bird on the crumbling reef of the Revolution.
First it was this: the toys were disappearing from the shops,the last ones were taken for a robber’s ransom by the revolutionaries. Then they appeared in the ration books followed by anxious days of waiting for the truck transporting them. Later moms and dads ran in disarray to the doors of the shops to form terrible lines of several-day of insomnia.
After some brainy revolutionary came up with the idea of changing the queue for the assault to the counter, then when the doors opened, if before that the push of the mob the shop windows didn’t shatter, the crowd threw itself on the counters that often were detached and mobbed the place. People went mad and fought until police intervened who were still respected because they hadn’t entered into the corruption of this.
The more educated and decent, not because of their grades befor for having a deeper training in respect, remained to the end and took the simplest toy for their children. They were usually the peasants, Christians, along with “people of rank” as the middle class is called in a derogatory manner by the Communist populace. As the years passed respect was forgotten and those who didn’t leave, banished into exile, were added to this rabble that accumulated in front of stores when the day of the Magi approached. Of course, the real magi — the wizards — were the parents and what they had to do to give their children a toy.
They have brought a clown with a tangerine for a nose. Children are crushed together, sitting on the floor, I think of the powers-that-be, the vandalism of the acts of repudiation, the beatings, handcuffing the Ladies in White and not letting their admirers pass, they close the street to traffic with uniformed officers and plainclothes officers at the corners, with the brazen and shameful statement that they are providing “protection”. Today they forgot the “protection” for children, infants whose parents do not share the ideas of the powers-that-be do not need “protection”.
Laurita is dressed in white and standing in front of the little ones to say in a few words about the reasons for the celebration. Mentioning the sensitive teacher, her mother, who for many years gave her heart and soul to the education of children, had her believed people and then the only alternative left to her by the ruthless Castro-power was to launch herself into the street with other wives and mothers asking freedom of their husbands and children sentenced to decades in prison for the sole crime of exercising their rights pertaining to the human condition and despite all that tragedy, the day of the Three Kings is not forgotten for the children tormented by the powers-that-be.
On mentioning the Ladies in White the Clown, scared, exclaims: “Oh, this has to do with the Ladies in White”. Listening to I smile with the joke and he says: didn’t you know?
I think of saying, “You’re at the center of things, you ended the antics, you’ll lose the tangerine nose”, but it seems he is really scared and if he gets more scared he could run out and forget about the children, he too; then there doesn’t seem anything left to do for the clown and I don’t know if it would work.
The funny man exclaims: “Well, I’m a Christian I have nothing to do with politics.” The justification of fear of power with Christianity: a magnificent and widespread way to avoid responsibility with social justice.
“Me too,” I tell him. I’m an Adventist.”
“You’re in trouble if they know. It’s Saturday,” he exclaims.
“’Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,’ says the verse,” I say. The clown is unresponsive and is pondering his situation or perhaps in anticipation of possible future problems to continuing with his work. Will this Christian practice Christianity? I wonder. He doesn’t know that for God nothing is hidden and that the Christian works for God first and then for men. I remember the lesson of December 13 of the book Growing in Christ which says: Render therefore to all their dues… (Rom13:1-7).
“The Christian puts God first in all things, and evaluates every action and accountability from this perspective. So he opposes discrimination in any form, even if it is officially sanctioned. While Christians pay taxes, participate in civic duties, respect traffic laws and regulations on property and cooperate with civil authorities to control crime and violence.”How many times at the door of this house violence been committed protected by or exercised by the authorities? I wonder.
I remember it like it was yesterday: my mother one day, after many sleepless nights in front of one of the shops the managed the heroic triumph of bringing a blonde doll my sister. It came in a pink box and outside it said: “Lily”. A great feat by my mother working for the State in a pizzeria, sometimes days and others at night. More than 10 hours a day to receive a miserable salary at the end of the month.
Since children were forgetting the tender little notes left under the bed on the eve of Epiphany. Now the naive childish illusion of the coveted toy and the conformity that, the day after it was received, was absorbed by the Communist cannibalism. The imperial ideal Fidel Castro was accumulating in the dustbin of history the most naive traditions of a people.
The clown seems to have forgotten his shock and pulls out a puppet that makes children laugh. He puts on a big mouse head and makes fun competitions rewarded with toys, by a Santa Claus who has appeared at the time. He dances, jumps for joy and more laughter again swallows all the noise of the ruined city of zombies and the restless. The timid clown ends carefully and takes the children out to the sidewalk to take a picture.
I’m afraid that a Communist mob of security agents and university students will appear, as officialdom alleges and that all will end in tragedy. Adults are placed in front of children to prevent one of the cars that drive more than 30km/hr from running over anyone. We get the photo and return inside. It’s time for the presents. The Kings banished into exile by the dictatorship and other people of good will have provided a gift for each child, and they do not have to shout a political slogan, put a pioneer scarf around their necks, reciting a combat poem or express hatred toward the U.S. The little blond haired boy, son of the opponent who disappeared in suspicious circumstances is rolling a beautiful truck down the sidewalk in the company of another toddler.
“It’s the first toy he’s received since he was born,” says his mother.
The memories continue to flow, as the process was advancing today Communism the Day of the three Kings and the toys were disappearing from the tradition and the stores. At some point there were replaced by an emerging clandestine artisan world after the State was reluctant to acknowledge the need.
It is not for the common good of the children but to raise taxes before the inability of the State to control the theft of raw materials. So some children could play with rustic toys, while others, children of honorable uncorrupted parents looked on with desire and sadness.
Berta Soler and Laurita finish handing out the the gifts and a kiss to each child. Now the photos speak, but not more than a thousand words because not as many little Cuban children cry without a toy because their parents are not corrupt, or mixed with the indignity to the denigration of their humanity; for whom a rag doll, horse and wooden machete, yoke of oxen made from Coke bottles and cart made from an empty sardine can, of a day gone by when for rich and poor there was for a day of kings.
The sun is setting and by the gray the yellow swallows the white and the shadows of the architectural blog of the revolutionary feud have been dragging and deforming to form grotesque figures, too rancid to assimilate without reluctance. The children ended the raffle and the pinata spilled from its belly candy and dolls that disappeared in the desperation of cries and little arms that extended until they touched their lost dreams.
Later, when the sun is almost buried in the horizon, the cake that was hiding in cardboard boxes and jam was enjoyed by everyone and eaten with great relish. The clown sitting in a secluded little place remained undaunted as if in a state a nostalgic ecstasy he had drunk, or a court had sentenced him to one hundred years of solitude. Then I saw him pick up his head and his puppet mouse and head down on the sidewalk while I followed him with my eyes to the corner praying to God so he would not lose his tangerine nose the the hands of state security and could continue to make Cuban children laugh.
In the south of Havana, underneath a burning sun, half a dozen men are working in a precarious workshop making blocks using a machine made up out of odd bits and pieces. It’s hard work. For twelve hours a day they put in cement, stones and clay, filling up a mold which the Frankenstein machine then, with tired wheezing noises, coughs up again as blocks for use in construction. In a typical month they earn 1,600 pesos (64 cuc – Cuban Convertible Currency). Four times more than the average Cuban salary.
In theory, these precarious factories, put up in a hurry in a deserted recreation area or in the middle of a field, close by heavy industry, could be the key to increasing production of construction materials. For many families, it allows them to repair their dilapidated houses, especially now, following the passing of the devastating hurricane Sandy through Santiago de Cuba and other eastern provinces.
Alfredo’s target, working in the improvised workshop, is to produce 8,000 blocks a month. He usually manages that, working at half-speed, in the space of 10 days. The rest of the blocks he produces, between 750 and 900 a day, are carefully stored in an old state warehouse.
In accordance with the instructions of their senior manager, those blocks aren’t mentionedin the monthly report. They are for “under the counter” sales. If you add the more than 20,000 blocks which Alfredo’s workshop can produce — and there are hundreds of these little mobile establishments throughout the country — to the output ofheavy industry, it is reasonable for people to ask themselves why then are the prices of bricks and building blocks so high.
Each one costs 10 pesos on the black market (0.5 cuc). Demand exceeds supply. And if you go to try to buy them in one of the state flea-markets, you never find any. Nevertheless, the yards of several stores are overflowing with cement, paving stones, aggregate, bricks and blocks.
According to an official of the Ministry of Internal Trade, managers in companies and stores collude in artificially maintaining the scarcity, in order to keep prices up. And that doesn’t only apply to construction materials.
Acopio, whose role is to acquire 80% of the harvests of co-operatives and individual farmers, has transformed itself into a stronghold of predatory corruption. Factories and branches of Internal Trade selling products for hard currency have set up aformidable mafia profiting from the prices of food products.
The regime is in the habit of favoring and turning a blind eye to this sort of activity. A can of beer, a soft drink, or a malt-whiskey, for example, including shipping and unloading, doesn’t cost more than 10 centavos in cuc. But then the foreign currency tax collectors see to it that the shops sell them with a 10-fold markup on the price.
The double currency has created a closed market in the national economy, above all in the companies which sell oil, mayonnaise, tomato paste, soap and detergent, which are among the most profitable, thanks to the elevated income from sales in convertible pesos
These mafia groups, which have taken hold in the local commercial and distribution channels, have amassed fortunes. Information is circulating in the internet about the case of the manager of a factory producing preserves, who has a cupboard full of dollars in his house. Nearly all the corrupt people are bureaucrats. With a red party card in their pocket. And when they speak, like robots, in everything they say they repeat two or more times the words Revolution, Fidel and Raul. An absolute bunch of opportunists.
They make up a compact group, with a monopolistic control over the prices of food, and essential items. Someone who used to work in a state-owned grocery store told me that in the month ofApril last year they received instructions from the provincial government to supply all the state outlets with black beans at the price of 8 pesos a pound.
Good news for the mafia rings. At that moment in the non-state farms, a pound of black beans cost between 15 and 18 pesos. The answer was to delay the distribution. By the back door, trucks full of beans started to deliver to private houses, which were converted into temporary stores. Then later, the beans went out again from these houses to supply the private farmers’ markets.
They sold the beans wholesale to private sector agents for 12 pesos a pound. And with the profit, 4 pesos a pound, they oiled the wheels of corruption: truck drivers, stevedores and senior managers. In this way they sold tons of black beans. And in official reports it was recorded that a pound of beans was selling for 8 pesos — which it never was.
Apples are another good example. In the hard currency shops, they cost between 35 and 45 cuc centavos each, according to size and quality. Right now you can go around the shops and cafes in Havana and you won’t find any apples for sale. Nevertheless all over town hundreds of people pushing barrows are offering apples at 15 to 20 pesos each.
Behind all this Cuban-style “dumping” there exists a clockwork mechanism which carefully manages the availability of foodstuffs and prices. General Raul Castro has created an army of anti-corruption inspectors, headed by Gladys Bejerano, Controller General of the Republic. The idea is to put the brakes on this multi-headed monster which affects the life of the whole nation.
But for every vermin’s head that Bejerano gets close to, five more spring up. It’s totally evil. People think that we are dealing with something quite weak. They only go after the low and mid-level swindlers and crooks. Certain individuals, referred to as the “bosses of the bosses” carry on in their air-conditioned offices, calmly and unconcernedly watching what’s going on.
Iván García
Photo: Collecting bricks from a building which collapsed in the path of Hurricane Gustav in Havana in August 2008
Early Monday morning, the line outside the Department of Immigration and Aliens (DIE) in Plaza
El Sexto has said he will paint a graffiti on my suitcase; a neighbor gave me an amulet for the journey, and a certain friend noted his shoe size so I can bring him a pair. They said goodbye to me although I still haven’t left. I don’t even have a flight date. But something has changed for me since January 14 when the Migratory Reform announced last October went into effect. After waiting 24 hours outside the Department of Immigration and Aliens (DIE) I knew that finally they would issue me a new passport. With twenty “white cards” – the former exit permit – denied in five years, I confess I was more skeptical than hopeful. Even now, I will only believe I made it when I watch the plane lift off from inside.
It has been a long battle fought by many. A very long road of demanding that entering and leaving our country is an inalienable right, not a gift to be given. Although the flexibilizations in Decree-Law 302 are insufficient, not even these would have been achieved if we’d stood around with our arms crossed. They are not the fruit of a magnanimous gesture, but the result of systematic denunciations made against the absurdities of travel and immigration.
Hence my intention to continue “pushing the limits” of reform, to experience first hand how far the willingness to change really goes. To transcend national frontiers I will make no concessions. If the Yoani Sánchez that I am cannot travel, I am not going to metamorphose myself into someone else to do it. Nor, once abroad, will I disguise my opinions so they will let me “leave again” or to please certain ears, nor will I take refuge in silence about that for which they can refuse to let me return. I will say what I think of my country and of the absence of freedoms we Cubans suffer. No passport will function as a gag for me, no trip as bait.
These particulars clarified, I am preparing the itinerary for my stay outside of Cuba. I hope to be able to participate in numerous events that will help me grow professionally and civically, to answer questions, to clarify details of the smear campaigns that have been launched against me… and in my absence. I will visit those places that once invited me, when the will of a few wouldn’t let me come; I will navigate the Internet like one obsessed, and once again climb mountains I haven’t seen for nearly ten years. But what I am most passionate about is that I am going to meet many of you, my readers. I have the first symptoms of this anxiety; the butterflies in my stomach provoked by the proximity of the unknown, and the waking up in the middle of the night asking myself, what will you look like, sound like? And me? Will I be as you imagine me?
Dear Rafael Correa,
