Month: December 2010

The Australian Julian Assange has succeeded: his Wikileaks website is today’s star of the headlines. I do not think that the history of politics contains another incident more exotic and fit for Hollywood, and one where the revelations of the diplomacy of a certain government mixes so many nations in a complex skein, to the point where it starts to look very like backyard gossip.

Assange, who has just been arrested in London and will soon face some timely charges alleging sexual abuse and harassment in Sweden, has benched Osama Bin-Laden with regards to who attracts the greatest gringo hostility: he has become public enemy number one, starting on the day he announced he had 250,000 Department of State documents up his sleeve. And especially now that he has cleared up any doubts and proved to us he wasn’t joking.

Now that his website makes it easy to find a range of classified documents about the relations of the United States with the world, and has moved Hillary Clinton, and apparently will continue moving the global chessboard of foreign relations, various aspects of the “Wikileaks” case are of particular interest.

International reactions: With the exception of a handful of lawless governments or opportunists — among whom I would like to exclude my country, but I can’t — who have received the news like kryptonite for their rabid anti-Americanism, the vast majority of nations have condemned the leaking of these documents, some publicly, some less so.

It is not, however, about an epidemic of morality. The causes of this widespread rejection point, rather, to the feeling common among politicians: As Mexico’s former ambassador to the United States, Jorge Montaño, recently said, there is nothing extraordinary about the tone in which U.S. diplomats communicate with their superiors on subjects of “strategic” interest. Harder things, in more direct language, are shared among politicians of any nation with a domestic naturalness. And here, let he who is without sin cast the first stone: show us your records.

The only difference between current American diplomacy and that of all other countries, is that Julian Assange chose as a victim the most powerful nation in the world, while the dirty laundry of our governments, at least for now, remains in the shade. The choice is certainly more than reasonable: I do not think any newspaper in the world would have devoted their front page to leaks about the foreign policy of Equatorial Guinea.

Incidentally, we Cubans cherish a stupendous Wikileak, the precursor of those newly released: A couple of years before leaving — officially — the presidency of the republic, our former President Fidel Castro published, in full, a telephone conversation he had with the Mexican President Vicente Fox in which he “diplomatically” urged him to leave his country so as not to cause an embarrassing incident when George W. Bush arrived at the Summit of the Americas. El Comandante was, that time too, a visionary pioneer: the first Wikileaker in history.

Another interesting aspect of the case in question is as follows: From the point of view of freedom of expression, is it respectable or censurable to air objectionable information of governmental interest?

According to the President of the Inter American Press Association, Gonzalo Marroquín, who was asked by CNN about it, it is perfectly respectable for an individual, exercising his right to free expression — guaranteed even by the American First Amendment — to publish documents of public interest if it is within his power to do so. But Marroquín had to acknowledge that the investigation must focus on whether Julian Assange’s accessing of these reports was in violation of any recognized legal provision, in which case it would be subject to a legal, not a journalistic, analysis.

Let’s be clear: Of course there is no way to take over 250,000 State documents without violating the law, unless there is a Department of Copying and Reproducing Diplomatic Documents to which one can come with a flash memory and say, “Please …” Julian Assange’s revelations constitute a personal outrage whose reasons are still unknown (did the Australian ever reveal his real intentions?), and cannot be watched with approval, although they can be with amusement, by citizens possessing civic awareness.

But from the standpoint of universal human rights, which are respected in democracies, Wikileaks itself should be able to publish these records without being censured for it, and without the server behind his portal being knocked out as was accomplished by some higher American spheres, just because someone does not want certain issues to be known.

For its part, and from another perspective, the U.S. government is already accumulating so many lessons that I see no difference from an irresponsible kid in kindergarten: They had to “learn” from security mistakes relating to the Twin Towers; they had to learn from the incident involving a couple of citizens who snuck into the White House and took photos with President Obama, making a mockery of presidential security; and now they must learn to keep their secrets better if they don’t want to see them in the headlines. In the United States today, in many ways, “security” is a word with atherosclerosis.

However, we must recognize, leaving aside political seriousness, and leaving aside our admittedly boorish anticipation of what Oracle Wikileaks is going to surprise us with next, there is something positive that has come from this unusual scandal: It is not only Big Brother who watches the citizens. The citizens have also learned to monitor Power.

Who knows if, after all, these media revelations might generate unexpected side effects among the governments of the world which, though annoying to politicians, would be applauded by us citizens: the obligation to play ever more cleanly, more honestly, and more respectfully, just in case the Wikileaks custom sweeps through the world like one more plague.

December 7, 2010

Reading a cable from the Prensa Latina agency, I am informed that 22% of a total of 44,500,000 Latinos who live in the United States live below the poverty line. Stated another way, 34,710,000 live above this level and 9,790,000 below. I don’t know specifically what that level is. It would be marvelous if in Latin America only 22% of its citizens lived below poverty levels. Another figure from Prensa Latina: in its entirety, in the country (the United States) the poverty level is 13.5%, which means that 86.5% live above this level. It is an enviable percentage, which I think few countries attain.

Analyzing these percentages and figures, I asked some known people who work in this sphere what was the indicator level of poverty in Cuba. All answered that it doesn’t exist and one added that it was because in Cuba there were no poor people. I remembered that neither were there any unemployed and that the country, at least in its official statistics, reported only 3.6% unemployment.

I worked out some figures and came to these results. If the average monthly salary doesn’t exceed 400 pesos in national currency, that which is equivalent to 16.66 convertible pesos, or stated another way, some 20 dollars (keeping in mind the 20% duty imposed on the dollar), the average annual salary is 240 dollars. I believe this average annual salary (I am not talking about annual minimum salary) is far below poverty level, not just of the United States, but of all the countries of Latin America.

You can assert, correctly, that the Cuban people live below the poverty line, with well-known exceptions, mitigated, in part, by remittances sent by family members from overseas, the deviation of resources, and illegal businesses. Perhaps someone — a stranger to reality, might point out free education and medical attention — certainly deficient enough — but one shouldn’t forget that these are paid for with that which is left over after paying workers, maintaining miserable salaries for more than fifty years.

In the new economic measures, in process of analysis and implementation, it has been left very clear that the taxation process to be applied has as its goal to not allow citizens to become wealthy. It would be necessary to ask if the level had already been set, starting at which one might consider a citizen rich. In this way we only grant another recognition to the current poverty, and prevents the legal creation of riches, the only way out of the current crisis.

December 23, 2010

Although I received an invitation by mail and by text messages from a number of friends to go to the National Plastic Arts Award Ceremony for the artist René Francisco, I didn’t go. Since that Pedro Luis Ferrer concert, where I discovered that I am banned from entering the National Museum of Fine Arts and other Cuban cultural institutions, I’ve been overtaken by a strange, “Because as long as that flag is flying, I vowed not to enter.*”

Now my relationship with my country’s art has become subtle and intimate: fragments of event reach me through cables and USB ports. It’s probably much more exciting to listen to Luis Alberto García in person, rather than alone in my house with headphones. But I’ve decided that until freedom of expression in Cuba is more than a performance, I won’t participate.

*Translator’s note: A line from a poem by Jose Marti, loosely translated to convey Claudia’s meaning.

In my country there is this unfortunate custom of generalizing blame. Thus, when someone commits errors and, for one reason or another, sees himself obligated to explain them publicly, he doesn’t say “I made a mistake” but “we made a mistake.” He involves everyone who listens, be it ten, a thousand, or a million people. It must come from the supposition that shared blame touches fewer. Without a doubt, it’s a comfortable and advantageous position.

Anywhere the Constitution and laws are respected, when a public figure makes a mistake and, as a result, affects the lives of citizens, he should answer for it, and until he can, be separated from his duties. Examples are superfluous. Conceding the right to correct one’s errors is not the most usual course, much less to do so repeatedly. Just as no one is indispensable, no one possesses absolute truth — if he fails, he should leave the road free to those more capable and with better solutions. This practice excludes no one.

In closed systems, where power is obtained to hold onto it until the last breath, errors and mistakes repeat cyclically, using the nation as a laboratory and its citizens as guinea pigs, to experiment as it might occur to someone, without any concern for the costs, or the failures, and without having to account for them.

It’s something complex and difficult to solve, but not impossible. Each of us can start taking responsibility for our irresponsibilities and substituting the “we” with “I.” Thus the blame never becomes diluted, and it has a name. Nobody should be considered infallible nor untouchable. This would be a healthy and civilized way to clear paths.

With the advent of a new year, it’s right to think about these things and dream that they might come true, for at least — after so many failed years — to not lose the little optimism that still remains.

December 25, 2010

Bonsai was the last and smallest cat in a litter of three born in the garage of the building. From his early days was surly, hiding from people, to the extreme of only eating his meals after you moved away. Thus he grew and his mother died and his siblings were adopted by other neighbors, and he has stayed with us as a collective cat. He slept in the garage or in the nearby kindergarten and, later, at the opening of the door of the building, he became the owner of the premises on the fourth floor. Breakfast, lunch and dinner on the landing of the stairs, at the entrance to our apartment. There also we kept a pot with fresh water. He adored milk and after breakfast he waited patiently. Then he would wander around until lunch and repeat the process with dinner. At night he had his adventures and often returned wounded and abused, becoming an odyssey to be able to cure him.

So he left behind one and then another of his lives and so became more sedentary. One day a small black and white kitten turned up at the garage and we baptized her Wampi, and after he accepted her they became great friends. They played, ate and slept together. Wampi breathed new life into him and he would look for her in her hiding places when she disappeared. They acted like siblings. One day Bonsai disappeared and with the help of Wampi we found him crippled, unable to use his back leg. We fed and cared for him against all odds, and he recovered and impetuously climbed the stairs of the building, the same as always, even though we knew that he maybe only had one life left.

Time passed and one day I found him in the garden, without the strength climb the stairs to eat. I picked him up with care, as he was always so surly, and put him in the room on the fourth floor. I fed him, but every day he was weaker. I realized that he was living his final days. So passed two and then a third, cherished by me, he purred weakly and died at noon. I wrapped him in the cloth that served as his bed and dug a hole in the ground of the hall of the building, where he’d played with his siblings as a kitten and put him in it. This is his grave. Born, lived and died, with us. I think that, although he was small in size, hence his name, he was a cat who enjoyed his seven lives happily. Now, in cat heaven, he must have met his mother and siblings and greeted Putica and Falcor, his close neighbors, in dog heaven.

November 20, 2010

I was born in 1971. My generation grew up under the imprint of “Revolutionary” humor. I never knew about the Comics, except for those by Cecilio Avilès and Blanquito, the weekly Palante, and the late DDtè. I didn’t enjoy the ones by Quino and Fontanarrosa until I was over 20. I couldn’t see the magic behind Charlie Brown. After I was 25, my passion became Garrincha. I did not enjoy the lombricillas, little worms, that appeared in the military magazine Verdeolivo (Olive-green), but I began to collect every one of their comic strips from the Cuban newspapers starting from the beginning of the ’90s of the twentieth century.

I think we lost them from our national life about two years ago and later found them again in the graphic opinion section on Cuba posted on Miami´s EL Nuevo Herald. Garrincha is a character who exudes the best of humor from all sides. I think that he has, in abundance, the sarcasm that the Cuban press has lacked for a very long time. The lombricillas, his depressed men, super-light women, “cool dudes,” “hot chicks” and bureaucrats are the best of creole satire since Castor Bispo, Gaspar Pumarejo and the best of Enrique Nuñez Rodrìguez when he wasn’t being professorial or excessively pro-Castro.

Every month someone sends me the Garrincha vignettes from that Florida newspaper, and though we know that living in a village like San Germán in Holguin province might cost me my objectivity — given the apathy of the major media that surrounds me — my joy in good Cuban humor remains. Neither far-right and vulgar, nor from the center, nor moderated by luxury, it is simply him, humorous, sarcastic, and without loyalties to dull his sharpness. I celebrate my ignorance in front of my readers: I imagine he has a website or collaborates with various digital publications, but for now I’m content to know that every week I can expect to see him, re-posted from the press, copied on CD, or in some newspaper that managed to slip through the bars of the General Customs of the Republic of Cuba. This is good enough, while this mischievous boy who answers to the name Garrincha sticks out his tongue at the stiff-necks who think themselves safe from a good “raspberry.”

Just what we need to begin to be a real country.

December 24, 2010

Jose Lezama Lima (1910-1976) is not gone. This is the feeling you get when you visit the museum of the master of Cuban prose in Trocadero street, in central Havana.

You don’t need to be supernatural to sense the weary, asthmatic breathing of the fat Lezama while you pass through the halls of this house, residence of one of the greatest authors of this green island.

The Cuban intellectual was born on December 19, 1910. And like nearly all the geniuses, he was misunderstood in his time. His father, Jose Lezama Rodda, of Basque heritage, founded, and eventually lost, a sugar business in Cuba.

Rosa Lima Rosado, his mother, formed part of a family of independent thought. At the end of the 19th century, she felt obligated to leave the island. she knew and collaborated with the national hero of Cuba, Jose Marti, in his exile in Florida.

Lezama Lima had two sisters, Rosa and Eloisa, who both died early in their lives. From when he was a boy, like every good Habanero, he played baseball and caused trouble with his friends from the neighborhood. He was an infielder, and had pretty good hands.

But one day when he was an adolescent, his friends went to find him for game, and Lezama told them “I’m not coming out today, I’m going to stay in and read.” He had started reading Plato’s Symposium. He was fifteen years old, and since he was eight he was a voracious reader of Salgari and Dumas, Cervantes and his Quixote.

He became a lawyer, and began to work in a simple post of the secretary of the Superior Counsel of Social Defense, in the jail of the Castillo del Príncipe, the main jail in Havana. And from this date forward, he was a great man of letters.

In 1937, his collection of poetry The Death of Narciso, was published, which was written in 1931. In his day, another giant, Cintio Vitier, affirmed: “All the poetry of Mariano Brull, Emililo Ballagas, Eugenio Florti, like witches riding brooms, flew out the window when I read ‘Danae wrote about the golden time by the Nile,’ the first verse of the Death of Narciso. Cuban poetry changed overnight.”

Later, he began to circulate in cultural reviews of high esteem, edited in Cuba in the decade of 1940-1950. It was in Origins, perhaps, where Lezama Lima made his impression as a writer.

In 1959, el comandante Fidel Castro arrived, along with his hurricane of radical reforms. So much machismo and testosterone; the caudillo style and an Olympian disdain for the free thinkers, caused more than a problem for the massive Jose Lezama.

Despite being married since 1964 to Maria Luisa Bautista, a noted literature professor, the fat Lezama was a closet gay. We already know how the Castro government treated homosexuals in this time.

They were turbulent times. Whoever had different sexual orientations was sent to prison or to a type of concentration camp called UMAPs (Military Units in Support of Production). And even though Lezama never received a punishment that severe, he suffered. The greatest scandal arrived in 1966.

The name of the scandal was the supreme novel of Cuban literature: Paradiso. It had a limited edition. It put in check the iron censorship of the state, that always held literature suspect, bourgeoisie, and counterrevolutionary. The sexual adventures of Jose Cemi disquieted the Criollo hierarchy, who saw in the gays, and sodomy, a latent danger to the concept of the New Man, dreamed up by Che.

In spite of everything, the Maestro never wanted to abandon his country. In Cuba he found his muse. His house on Trocadero was his heart, he came to say. And there he shut himself in amongst his writings. Tightly.

Difficult years. The economic shortages affected the population. And Lezama, an incurable luxurophile, suffered from royal hunger. He made up for it, and then some, whenever a friend invited him to dinner. It was said that at receptions in Western embassies, on certain nights of ferocious appetite, Lezama devoured an army of croquettes and canapes.

He died in 1976, his fame faded due to censorship and official acknowledgment of a low profile. They then turned him into an exquisite cadaver. A common thing for Fidel Castro’s government with critical intellectual figures or those with little loyalty to the regime. Once they’re buried, of course.

The big guy who would have been one hundred this year died in house No. 162 on Trocadero Street. His thick anatomy permeates the house turned into a museum. If you feel, as you tour the grounds, the coughing and asthmatic wheezing of the Master, don’t be frightened. It is Lezama who would like to greet you.

December 16, 2010