Translating Cuba

The 21st century. A country called Cuba, where it citizens fight for a transparent democracy and for the freedoms that this encompasses. There are very few resources to achieve the power of the people in a country tossed into the abyss 53 years ago.

The Cuban counterrevolution, the opposition or the fighters for human rights in Cuba; whatever you want to call them, they have exhausted almost all their resources. The only one left is the most drastic option, the HUNGER STRIKE.

The opposition in Cuba has always tried to come to an agreement with the government, but it has always avoided any change and its governmental ideal.

Thus, the hunger strike has become a weapon against the Castro tyranny. Despite the fact that it is a weapon that destroys human being who undertakes it.

In reality the government has no interest in the deaths that could happen with this desperate measure. They are only focused on not losing their totalitarian power and avoiding democracy on the island. Space

But with a clear objective and a well defined goal, this weapon has become the Achilles tendon of the Castros.

October 8 2012

Although October 10 marks the beginning of Cuban’s struggle for its colonial independence, and is a holiday, the celebration has been reduced to a few ads and billboards. The same is true for February 24, but no one mentions May 20 any more, it has gone from being our national day to the execrable beginning of the Republic. The important anniversaries are the assault on the Moncada barracks and the day Batista fled.

My son’s History textbook summarizes it like this: … the energy of the Manzanilleros, led by the attorney Carlos Manuel de Cespedes… determined the beginning of the Cuban Revolutionary process on October 10, 1868… Cespedes’ uprising from his La Demajagua refinery, inaugurated, in national history, the use of the path of armed struggle to achieve independence.

Besides being carelessly written, the book is full of generalizations that prevent young people from identifying with the events and characters they study. My son’s face became attentive when he learned that Cespedes was a notable chess player of this time, that he was in love and liked to write poems to the ladies of his affection, that La Demajagua refinery had a steam machine many years before the famous “Cry of Yara” for independence, and that the help of the slaves, rather than productive, was onerous.

He was amused, believing a joke, when I told him that the head of the uprising wasn’t Cespedes, but rather Francisco Vicente Aguilera, and that Cespedes had not resigned the command to him when he moved forward the date of the uprising to October 10, as the story goes, by a telegram intercepted by a sympathizer, where he let slip to the Spanish authorities about the imminent uprising. I’m sure my son won’t forget any of this detail that doesn’t show up in his book.

I clarified, before his rapid conclusion, that it’s not about a history of the good and the bad, that Cespedes was wrong many times, but he was great despite his flaws. In the patriotic plan I told him about La Bayamesa written Cespedes and Fornaris, of Aguilara whom I’d already talked about, the patrician who even gave a theater to Bayamo and died poor and in exile.

About Perucho Figueredo and his nervous verses that he wrote in the saddle and that today we sing as the national anthem. What can I do! I’m from before, from those who still get emotional about certain symbols; my son, on the other hand, belongs to his era of disbelief. At least I try to be less cynical. At least I try.

October 11 2012

A paper presented at an event sponsored by the Christian Workers Movement, which took place on Saturday, September 13 in Havana, entitled ” The Role of Christian Workers in Today’s Globalized World.”

Alongside the effects from globalization, Cuba is immersed in a profound structural crisis, a crisis of character. This is evidenced by economic inefficiency, loss of hope, apathy, widespread corruption and a massive exodus. Among the causes is the attempt to subordinate individual and group interests to those of the state.

After the transfer of power, carried out between the years 2006 and 2008, the Cuban government decided to introduce some limited reforms to the economy with the goal of perfecting a system that has been shown to be unfeasible–a contradiction that meant these efforts were doomed from the start.

The package of measures introduced can be characterized as the most basic plan of reform, the key elements of which can be summarized as follows:

1) Create a strong and efficient agricultural sector capable of feeding the population and replacing imports,

2) make people feel it is necessary to work in order to live,

3) firmly reject illegalities and other forms of corruption,

4) reduce the number of workers on the state payroll, whose redundancies exceed one million positions, and

5) encourage self-employment.

Among these the most important was Decree no. 259, which covers the use of idle land. It is an important but inadequate measure because, while itacknowledges that food production is a national security concern andrecognizes the inability of the state to produce it, it maintains the state’s role as property owner and reduces private producers to tenants.

Regardless of this, the importance of these measures lies in the fact that, given the national and international contexts, they make it impossible to return the inflexibility of the past.

At the Sixth Party Congress and the First National Conference of the Cuban communist party, held in April of 2011 and January of 2012 respectively, the outlines of a basic reform plan were passed by consent and codified in the Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy, but were subordinated to the failed system of socialist planning and state enterprise.

As a result agricultural production fell 4.2% in 2010. GDP in 2011 grew less than expected. Food imports rose from 1.5 billion in 2010 to 1.7 billion in 2011. Retail sales fell 19.4% in 2010 while prices rose 19.8%. On the other hand the median monthly salary rose only 2.2%.

The 2011-2012 sugar harvest, officially slated to produce 1.45 million tons, had the same disappointing results as in the past. In spite of being able to count on sufficient raw material, as well as 98% of the resources allocated to this effort, it neither met its target nor was finished on time.

The goal of getting people to feel they must work in order to live — an issue widely linked to illegality and other forms of corruption — was not achieved. Instead, criminal activity grew, as demonstrated by the number of legal proceedings that have either taken place or are ongoing.

In regards to reducing the number of workers on the state payroll, limitations placed on self-employment have hindered this goal. Of the 370,000 self-employed workers, more than 300,000 are persons who were either unemployed or retired. The program of self-employment has absorbed less than 20% of state workers, which means that the expectation that this solution would counteract layoffs from state jobs has not been met.

The Causes

To come out of a deep structural crisis like Cuba’s, transformations must be structural. Small changes to the economy must be extended to include the co-existence of various forms of property, including private property, as well as the formation of small and medium-sized businesses and the rights and freedoms stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Civil and political Rights and theCovenant onEconomic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Regardless of the difficulties facing Cuba’s leaders, the decisive factor has been the unfeasiblity of the current model. Even if the government had been working under the best national and international conditions for implementing the reforms, they would have still failed due to the lack of freedom– a prerequisite for modernity– and a high degree of political will, which make any attempt at change pointless. Experience has shown that the capability of any individual or government entity – no matter how high – are inadequate in addressing the crisis in the context of globalization. This is the reality as well as the challenge facing Cubans, including the militants from the Movement of Christian Workers whose mission is to make Jesus of Nazareth present in work and social environments.

Jesus conceived the Kingdom of God as a place of dignity for human beings and liberation for all the enslaved. When he returned to Galilee, he began proclaiming the good news of the Lord – the moment has arrived; the kingdom of God is at hand. Changed your ways of thinking and living; believe in the good news. By his example, Jesus calls on us to change our way of thinking and living as the foundation for the Kingdom of God, a spiritual labor that begins here and now.

Two figures from our past come to mind. The first is Fr. Felix Varela, who, upon joining the struggle for autonomy and later for independence, understood the need for civic education as a means to achieve these objectives and, therefore, chose education as the path towards liberation. José de la Luz y Caballero was similarly aware of the efforts of some Cubans to gain independence from Spain and came to the conclusion that, before revolution and independence came education. But in order to educate, he said, one had to be a true evangelist.

The labor situation in Cuba today is extremely complex and peculiar. At the same time that we have guaranteed certain health services and free education, wages, the principal means of social redistribution, prevent the satisfaction of basic material needs and undermine the spirituality of the world of work and of society in general. This situation has generated an ethical deterioration in society, whose first manifestation is that criminal acts have emerged as important means of livelihood. In that sense, it is an obligation of every Christian, committed to renewing action of Jesus in favor of justice, to fight for work to resume its role as a source of fulfillment and happiness.

Hope, springing from the need for change, moves us from the existing plane to a higher plane, in close relationship with faith and love. Therefore, although hope always incites change, in Cuba it assumes greater significance because of the spiritual and material insecurity the current structural crisis has caused.

The Facts of Life — a permanent review of life and militant action — consists in seeing, judging and acting as Jesus would have in the concrete situations of everyday life. An exercise that makes the Christian face the reality in which he lives through the lens of the gospel.

As rights and freedoms are closely related to spirituality, Christian workers have a great responsibility for the changes that the country needs, to make a reality of what Martí said as a lead in to our Constitution: I want the First Law of our Republic to be the commitment of Cubans to the full dignity of man.

September 24 2012

If one were asked what should be saved of the Castro brother’s communist revolution, the number of responses would be enormous. Followers of Fidel Castro — those who hang his portrait on the walls of their homes and swear he is the greatest statesman of the twentieth century — would come up with an endless list of accomplishments that should be carried on into the future.

Those who are convinced that Castro is the worst political scourge ever to afflict any country would smile quizzically and answer in a single word: nothing.

There would also be nuanced responses. Serious academics and a less passionate segment of the Cuban population, both on and outside the island, would emphasize that any future plans for the nation should include retaining universal and free health care and eduction, but little else.

Intellectuals and political scientists from the modern left argue that, before evaluating any social achievements of the Castro regime, it is essential that national sovereignty be maintained and that, in a future looming just ahead of us, we should not fall under the sphere of influence of any of the world’s power centers.

They argue for a politically independent Cuba, one with good relations with the United States but without being an unconditional ally. And for being able to accuse Washington in an international forum of any given outrage or to condemn it for some arbitrary action in one of its many wars to promote democracy.

If they could be transported in a time machine, armchair democrats would place Cuba at the level of Barbados or Trinidad and Tobago, minus the headlines in the international press on human rights violations and with a better economy and social services.

In debates Cubans committed to their country envision in their minds a spectacular future. Being optimistic is a positive thing. It is interesting that, in occasional discussions in which the admirers of the revolution participate, authoritarianism, multi-party government, the creation of independent trade unions and respect for free speech are openly acknowledged.

Public health and education are not the only unquestionable successes. Certainly teaching carries with it a strong ideological message, but all citizens living in Cuba have the possibility of learning to read and going on to higher education.

Other points in its favor are the access to culture and sports. There will always be asterisks, however. It is not possible for a nation to have a hard-currency economy and expect to be in the top spots at the Olympics.

Schools devoted to sports and arts education for children and adolescents with talent should be retained. Gymnastics and sports centers should also be brought back as a source of entertainment and a healthy option for the mind and body.

The civil defense system should not be touched either. It has worked. Since the devastations of tropical storm Flora in 1963, which cost the lives of two thousand people and caused enormous property damage, the loss of human life from hurricanes and other natural disasters has been minimal.

Broadly speaking, these are, in my opinion, the principle victories that could emerge from the Cuban revolution. Of course, there are many more things that need to change.

Addressing pressing social issues, unresolved political rights and structural changes are an enormous challenge for any future democratic administration in Cuba. But that is another story.

Photo: Dr. José Rubiera, the most recognizable face from the Institute of Meteorology and the man whose forecasts facilitate preparations by Civil Defense and the public for the arrival of thunderstorms, cyclones and cold fronts.

October 7 2012

This Monday, my daughter and I went to her school at 9:15 in the morning. The neckerchief ceremony had already ended.

The teacher did not ask me why we were late this Monday, but she didn’t want to know why my daughter had not come on Friday. I waited until the children had moved away: “This Thursday the political police kidnapped my friends and my boyfriend to block them from going to the court where the trial against Angel Carromero was being held, the only witness to the death of Oswaldo Payá. That day the political police knocked out Yoani Sanchez’s tooth with a blow.

In all countries, especially in Latin America, in which any type of dictatorship has been suffered, it has been also possible to prove that one of the worst social effects, for being the most generalized, is the moral degradation into which people fall. For this reason, when a person becomes aware of herself and decides to practice a life in truth she automatically becomes a dissident, especially in those countries governed by a state dictatorship that also has a discourse about justice – “all justice” as the Chancellor says – and about peace and friendship. The hypnotic power of great ideas.

When I ask myself if perhaps the women of the political police who beat Yoani are, in fact, human beings, the one who falls into a dangerous form of discrimination about what is human and what is not is me.

On returning from school I ran into the wife of good old Orestis in charge of surveillance for the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), who asked me why I hadn’t taken my daughter to the ceremony. She knows the answer, but this time I opened my mouth to say: “She will put on the neckerchief so as not to create an adaptive conflict among her little friends, but she did not go and she will not go to any political activity because, among other reasons, behind all of this, of this adoration for the ’work’ of the leader and all those symbols that don’t mean ’the fatherland,’ are the guys who ordered the repression against my boyfriend and my friends.

This lady is one of those cases of addiction to the regime and even CDR activism and and she hopes to get a visa to travel to the United States based on being claimed as family by her stepdaughter. When Anita expressed her complicity with the politics of the government you can’t help but make note of her being in waiting for a visa to live in the United States and depending on family remittances to defend the dictatorship, only that, the one who is paying, stupid thing, is the stepdaughter in exile in the country repudiated by the politics of an extremely unjust, abusive, kidnapping government that she still defends.

It’s a mouthful; much worse, because in this violent paradox many have lost their lives.

She started screaming, really screaming, that “you can’t hold me to those words.” And then her daughter came out, who is the mastodon to bet on in a contest for people who are ugly within, and instigated by her mother, she began to hit me until I fell to the ground. I regret not having responded to the blows because I am not afraid. I was reminded of all the times that I avoided coming to blows in school simply because I don’t know how to fight by punching.

I told them I would call the police for their assault and so I did. The cops on patrol heard my whole story and I even presented myself as an opponent, doubting that the opponents that I admire would concede my taking such a title, that to me honors me. They then changed their tone, they spoke to me more sharply but they did not refuse my right to go to the station to make a complaint for assault. I told them to give me a few minutes to take my daughter to the home of the only neighbor who is my friend.

When I came down the stairs and out the door of the building, I saw Isabel, the MINIT Lieutenant Colonel, who has made a type of campaign among some of the neighbors not to speak to me, talking with one of the police and I clearly heard her tell him, “Let her make the complaint, we will go and be waiting for her there.”

I thought about saying something but continued walking with the cop and when we got to the car he told me, “Come tomorrow and make the complaint, but I’m not going to take you.” I said, “I am not afraid. If it’s about what she said I have to make a complaint because I don’t respond to their beatings because of cowardice but because it’s not my language and the police are there to stop mobs of people like her who physically assault others. That is a crime anywhere.”

We both argued for some minutes. I telling him that I was not afraid of “Security” if they really were waiting for me, and he said that if I wanted to I could go, but I had to do it on my own two feet. The police station is quite far from my house. The other patrolman came and told him, “Take her to make the complaint.” And that policeman still intrigues me, as if he was wanted to avoid my being ambushed, he never stopped saying, “You’re not going in this car.”

October 9 2012

One of the crude reasons traditionally wielded by the totalitarians in power in Cuba and their spokespeople to society to prevent Cubans from navigating the Internet, was that they could not offer this service to everyone because of the American embargo, which prevented our connecting to one of their submarine fiber optic cables that pass near our coastline. This forced us to “plug in” to the net by way of satellite which is more expensive and slower. But now?

I remember it was in early February 2011 when the cable from Venezuela arrived in Cuba, that would increase by 3000 times the connectivity capabilities in our country. Since then, Chavez twice said the cable was ready and created the effective and multiplied possibility that all Cubans could surf the net; and he also with this maneuver put the ball in the transgressive Cuban court.

Now the authorities cook up pretexts and talk about “regulating access” in order – as is sadly common – to again tarnish the rights of Cubans. They also argue that we must avoid the hackers, the password thieves, terrorist sites, satanic cults, pornographers, etc. It all comes down to a simple formula that identifies their acts towards Cuban society: that they have the dark right to violate our rights with impunity.

I want to think that now there exists the real capacity for all of Cuban society to have the ability to access the Internet – not only a minority group of family members and privileged – that they will not delay one more minute in recognizing this right and allowing us to exercise it. That there will not be a single Cuban tired of having his rights trampled who will put his life at risk with a hunger strike to demand the possible, just and necessary access that already exists in the mega-web.

This coming February 2013 it will be two years since the coming of the fiber-optic electronic rope to our country. Are they waiting for this date to celebrate its birthday? I hope by then – I am a dreamer – we are all interconnected and we go online to schedule for ourselves a virtual fiesta in which we all join together in the great national chorus and sing “Happy Birthday” to the cable.

October 5 2012

What we are most worried about is the vulgarity of Cuban music. Caricature of Garrincha taken from the Internet

By email, this second and efficient manner that we Cubans have a receiving information, I have received a brief text that is attributed to various authors, but that jumps into the ring anonymously.

The triumph of the mediocre is the title and it refers to the situation in Spain. Removing some paragraph or some local reference it fits us perfectly. I will be returning to an old critique, but I don’t get too excited by what I see all around me. The bad taste and the vulgarity are not only in the lyrics of danceable music: the patterns of dress, the design (or the absence of it) that proliferates in the environment, social behavior, the deterioration of services, the bad functioning of education and health, the one time workhorses of the battle, the grayness of politics and politicians; the list where everyone who fills it, has something to do with the fact that mediocrity wins.

I don’t have the cure. There are no magic potions. But in our case, the enclosure in which we live and the exodus that has divided us must be taken into account. A Pyrrhic victory.

The Triumph of the Mediocre

Perhaps the time has come to accept that our crisis goes beyond the economy, beyond this or that politician, the greed of the bankers or the risk premium. To assume that our problems will not be changed by one party or another, by another battery of emergency measures, or a general strike. To recognize that the principal problem of Spain is not Greece, the euro, nor Mrs. Merkel. To admit, to try to correct, that we have become a mediocre country.

No country comes to such a condition overnight. Nor in three or four years. It is the result of the chain that starts in school and ends at the establishment. We have created a culture in which the mediocre are the most popular students in high school, the first to be elected to office, those who have the most to say in the media and the ones we vote for in elections without caring what they do. Because they are us. We are so accustomed to our mediocrity that we have ended up accepting it is a natural state of things. Its exceptions, almost always reduced to sports, serve us to deny the evidence.

Mediocre is a country where its inhabitants spend on average 134 minutes a day in front of the television that shows principally garbage. Mediocre is a country that in every democracy has not had a president that speaks English or had the least knowledge about international politics. Mediocre is the only country in the world that, in its rancid sectarianism, has managed to divide even the associations of victims of terrorism. Mediocre is a country that doesn’t have a single university among the 150 best in the world and forces its best researchers into exile to survive.

Mediocre is a country with a quarter of its population unemployed yet it finds the greatest motives for outrage when the puppets of a neighboring country make jokes about its athletes. Mediocre is a country where the brilliance of another provokes suspicion, creativity is marginalized — if not stolen with impunity — and independence is punished. The country that has made mediocrity the great national aspiration, pursued without complexes by its thousands of young people who look to occupy the next place in the Big Brother contest, by politicians who insult without coming up with an idea, by bosses who surround themselves with the mediocre to hide their own mediocrity and by students who ridicule a classmate for his hard work.

Mediocre is a country that has fostered the celebration of the triumph of the mediocre, cornered excellence until it is left with only two options: to leave the country or to allow oneself to be swallowed up in the gray sea of mediocrity.

October 5 2012

You can help me by recharging my mobile phone. Log onto www.ezetop.com. My mobile number is +53-53340187

THANK YOU! GRACIAS! THANK YOU! and THANKS!

October 9 2012

—-

Site manager’s note: For those of you who regularly help the bloggers by recharging their cell phones… first… THANK YOU… it’s an incredibly wonderful way to help the bloggers directly. Second… these two-for-one offers come along from time to time, and so what better time to do it — your money goes twice as far.  And third, the phone numbers for the bloggers are listed in the Page on the menu bar, above: “Direct Help To Bloggers”

If you have any problems with recharges, please email TranslatingCuba — at — gmail.com and we’ll see if we can solve your problems.

For several weeks now, The Electric Company has been replacing old wooden electricity poles, the majority of which date to the time of the Republic, and which have been in use for more than fifty years. Since they were not regularly replaced over the years, it is now being done on a massive scale, with the resulting inconveniences and impact on the population.

I don’t know how it is done elsewhere, but in Havana, specifically Nuevo Vedado, the method being employed leaves much to be desired. Days and sometimes weeks before, a hole is dug several centimeters around the pole, leaving it exposed next to the extracted earth. This poses a potential danger for passersby, especially at night, when street lighting is scarce. Also, during rainy days like these, the hole often fills with water and the extracted soil around it washes away, making the sidewalk, which generally has deteriorated due to lack of maintenance, unpassable.

To change a pole, a crew of four to six men take ten hours, from eight in the morning until six in the evening, a period of time in which the electricity is shut off in the affected area. If two to three brigades work in the area simultaneously, they can change two to three posts a day. This happens at least once a week. We therefore have a planned power outage of ten hours duration weekly. Due to the large number of poles to be replaced and the “high productivity,” the outages are guaranteed to go on for the rest of this year and even into into the next.

I am not opposed to the poles being replaced, although I would have preferred an underground system — one less susceptible to being battered by hurricanes — but we cannot “squeeze blood from a stone,” especially in moments of crisis. What bothers me is that, while each post is being replaced, only two men are really working. The rest are looking on, waiting their turns while sitting on the curb, accompanied by a bottle of rum. It is possible that this constitutes a new form of “socialist labor” in connection with “the updating” of “the model,” but by all lights it seems quite unproductive. This is not an anomaly. I have seen it on numerous occasions, which leads me to believe it is established practice.

In summary, the method used to replace electrical poles guarantees there will be outages, but without having to declare them as such by disguising them as “maintenance projects.” We enjoy other outages of the same duration, these disguised as “tree pruning projects.” Without a doubt the Electric Company deserves recognition for its originality in creating new forms of outages.

October 7 2012