Month: May 2011

Few intellectuals more timid than the Cuban must have existed in the history of art and contemporary thought. Few intellectuals with such iridescent skin that it amusingly changes tone and nuance according to the light that passes over them.

In these days when a monumental name in Cuban art has just suffered the endless fruits of intolerance, of ideological militarism, it occurs to me to ask where are those intellectuals committed not only to their society, but to the destiny of art itself through its practitioners.

The new ousting of Pedro Pablo Oliva, his beautiful and transparent statement, and the sepulchral silence of those for whom the weight of their titles requires them to take part, presented a new scenario for the intellectuals of the island to show off their pale condition.

Where are they, in this second, those writers and playwrights who staged an electronic fuss after the television appearances of Luis Pavón and Papito Serguera? Yes, where now is the host of the National Literature Awards, who only appears to jump–shyly, timidly, when they step on the keys of his memories, his memories of exclusion and punishment for hidden homosexuality or conflicting poetry? Where are the presumed chroniclers of their time?

Where is the discordant denunciation of the members of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, demanding explanations, rejecting the methods, lining up on the side of an irreplaceable creator in his moment of courage and honesty?

Under what pretext, with what pantomime as an excuse have the purported names of Cuban thought, let’s say Desiderio Navarro, Reynaldo González, Alfredo Guevara and Anton Arruda closed their throats? Or is how they won’t touch with the tip of an opinion the Theoretical-Cultural Center homonym; how the practices of institutional homophobia and film censorship seem to have eased off; and how The Seven Against Thebes is published without reprisals, so it’s not worth it to raise your voice?

While a senior representative of Cuban art is accused of being a traitor and unpatriotic, and is forced to close his workshop of artistic fantasies, where are the words of the media figures Nelson Domínguez, Alexis Leyva (Kcho), Ernesto García Peña, Roberto Fabelo?

Will Amaury Pérez denounce in his much loved television program this offense against an author whom I dare say is among those he most admires? Will Roberto Chile feel motivated to turn the focus of his lens, and will he film not a postmodern promotional, but a documentary about the outrage against Pedro Pablo?

I know these are all rhetorical questions. I know they are sullen and empty questions. Because we all know the answers. And because Pedro Pablo Oliva knows them too.

In the presentation of his catalog, I read some words of Pedro Pablo Oliva that come to mind now, as if caught on a hook. Pedro Pablo who, incidentally, does not write as dazzlingly as he paints… but almost.

In this text the Pinar del Rio artist evoked his mother, in the old house where the family lived, scaring away a flock of sparrows which every day sought rest within. His mother waged a war without quarter. But one afternoon of stifling weather, of the island heat, the painter’s mother decided to escape by passing the time under the damp shade of the fruit trees that crowded the entrance to the mansion. There, above her, were the same sparrows that she frightened from her home with curses. They were perched on the branches of the tree: their home. And they did not attack her for sitting underneath. A few hours later the woman returned to the old house and proclaimed, “I will never again frighten a sparrow from this house. Here there is room for everyone.”

Unfortunately, dear Pedro Pablo, on your beloved island there is still no room for all the sparrows.

May 24 2011

I met her in 2004, we had a mutual acquaintance, a neighbor of mine. She spent her life in clubs and at concerts, always with boys who came to collect her in a car. I liked her, she was fun. In the afternoons when she woke up sometimes she’d come and have coffee at my house. With her parents abroad, she lived without working and even though she was sometimes short of money, her nights out weren’t affected because the men paid.

Chance, that had one day put us in the same neighborhood, separated us. For years I didn’t hear from her and thought, as is common on this island, that she’d left the country. Recently we ran into each other and I discovered I was right, she lives in New York now and comes to Cuba on vacation. I don’t know what happened, Cubans find so many ways to run away from this land that I don’t even take the trouble to inquire, though the stories can be funny, but also very sad and sinister. Also, I’m a little sensitive on the topic of emigration, wondering who will be here beside me in ten years, when all my friends have left.

In the short time we shared, she told me that she worked a great deal over there, and that generally speaking, she’s considered a communist. “Communist?” I exclaimed, “You were a big fat worm. What happened to you?”

“The system in the United States,” she said, “is inhumane, here it’s better, more humane.”

I looked at her with my mouth hanging open. She doesn’t like the new country where she lives because she has to work; in Cuba she didn’t have to because she was a kept woman. How can you use politics to justify your own inability to be productive?

“I don’t agree with you,” I said, trying to contain the passion that comes over me when people come from a democracy and tell me fairy tales about the dictatorship. “Sure, a lot of people don’t work because the salary is ‘inhumane’ and no one is interested in breaking their back for nothing. But still it seems very good to me that you have to work to earn your own bread. It’s normal.”

“Cubans don’t like to work,” she replied, and then I knew that because she didn’t want to work she assumed everyone else didn’t want to either. What a capacity for generalization!

Before we parted she told me she was about to have an operation. I assumed it would be in Cuba, given what a humane government we have. You can’t even imagine my surprise when she exclaimed, “No! I’m having it over there!”

24 May 2011

I was eight months pregnant when I met two Basque radicals living in Cuba, Rosa and Carlos, or at least that’s what they called themselves then. They invited us to their Miramar mansion for a party with troubadours and chorizos. They had some sources for Serrano ham and dried fruit, foods we only knew of from the movies. But not even the aromas and flavors could dispel our rising doubts as we observed them. How did these people manage to live in a such a place, with a car with private plates and such a well-stocked pantry? What had they done to access privileges unthinkable for nationals?

My son was born a month later, the Serrano ham didn’t reappear in my life for many years and a decade later I ran into Carlos in the street. I called him by name but he didn’t answer. He jumped as fast as he could into a car and lost himself in the bustle of Avenue Reina. Of Rosa, I knew that she had moved and was now introducing herself as Daniela. Her new facade was distributing tour packages. But, as happens in Havana, stories were rife, gossip circulated, secrets made the rounds, and I learned that they were wanted by Spanish justice and the mansion to which they’d been assigned functioned as an official guest house. The two of them could not return–under their real identities–to Spain.

Nonetheless, their pampered refuge came to an end. Today their hosts have become their jailers. The same government that one day sheltered and provided them resources has refused, for months now, to falsify new passports so they can go to France or some other place. I don’t know under what new names Rosa and Carlos are known, where they are living, or how many of their previous privileges they have now lost. I imagine they have ended up confined to this Island, distrustful of those around them, cursing their fellow travelers who gave them shelter, those “generous” protectors of earlier days, who ended up imprisoning them here.

The relentless attack, the deep antagonism (philosophical?) and the extreme criticism–constant and unrelenting–of capitalist countries, marks the “Roundtable” program Cuban television broadcasts every day for an hour and half starting at 6:30 PM on Channel 6 or Cubavisión.

It’s worth mentioning that in Cuba we have only five TV channels and that the super-politicized program–overseen and directed by the senior management of the government and only party defending only the interests and points of view of the Cuban State–is broadcast simultaneously on three of them; rebroadcast later the same day, and then shown again as highlights of the week on Sundays. Thus, they continue simplifying and manipulating our options and leaving us with the caustic, reductionist and frustrating taste of “take it or take it,” that Cuban society is subjected to and that characterizes our national life. Paraphrasing the old adage that “it never rains but it pours,” in my country, Monday through Friday, we do not want the Roundtable and we have to see if on three channels.

May 18 2011

For ordinary mortals in Cuba who are informed about what happens in the world through the newspaper Granma, the Roundtable TV show and the Television News, it appears that in Spain capitalism is facing its imminent demise. For many, even the ghost of the Fifth Regiment seems about to rise from the Republican ashes. The signs that were raised in the Puerta del Sol left no room for doubt, the images were worth more than words: the cameras took pains to focus on the youngest people and, I say it without shame, the most lovely, those who danced most beautifully and chanted the slogans of the Madrid May.

But this morning we learned that in the local and regional elections the Popular Party (those rightists!) had wiped the floor with the Socialist Party (PSOE) and that the Spanish electorate, for whom the exercise of democracy is no longer a novelty, had gone to the polls if not massively at least in a higher proportion than five years ago.

Adding to the confusion for Cuban readers of the official newspapers and television viewers, they warned us that the anti-system popular rallies had been called using social networks that rely on the new technologies of Twitter and Facebook, the same ones, as they have explained to us, that imperialism used to try to overthrow the regime in Iran and to oust the Egyptian president.

Now, those who won the elections hope to definitively liquidate Zapatero and his team, invoking, among other arguments, the demonstrations that from an irate left demand, in public plazas, the end of the government. I can can assure you that our commentators classify this demand as political opportunism or something similar.

Something is missing in the explanation that allows us to fully understand what happened. Will Spaniards suffer the same kind of confusion about what is happening in Cuba?

23 May 2011

From what I hear on the radio, see and hear on television and read in the newspaper, I’ve come to the conclusion that Cubans, at least those who have some role in these media or who are interviewed, have stopped thinking and devote themselves to repeating old slogans and common phrases, particularly those that have been said by someone important. It’s the syndrome of inability to use their own heads and, at the same time, of self-censorship, taking care not to overstep the established boundaries.

Like catch phrases, every time they say or write something, they use the well-known “as the compañero said in his speech,” and so on. It’s like a protective shield to avoid disgracing oneself, by saying or writing something that hasn’t been authorized. The original responsibility is transferred to the compañero in the speech, and it’s assumed that anyone who speaks or writes only has to reaffirm because they are unable to think for themselves. The slogans are incorporated here, although they don’t contribute anything important, because they sound good to receptive ears, trained by years of media manipulation.

When someone, tired of hearing and reading nonsense, or by mistake, says or writes something interesting that goes beyond the ordinary, it creates a scandal and is softly whispered, “Did you see what he said!” or “I think the same myself.” There are those, more dogmatic and fearful, who add, “They’re going to make him pay for that!” Unfortunately, these different cases are rare, and it’s very difficult to hear or read anything truly interesting, to not be demonized in the alternative media.

For many people, especially leaders, officials and journalists, they will find it very difficult in a democratic society to overcome years of repetition of slogans and ideas of others without exercising their minds and developing their own opinions. They coud even fall into a depression, finding no words left to use, weakening their lexicon. They might even have to wait for the list of approved words and–why not?–the list of those forbidden. Habits, over time, become the law!

Let us hope that in new times, they will be different, and freely use all the richness of our language, without straitjackets or guidance from above. Receptive ears also will be different, having grown civilly, and will not be shocked at the truth, but will demand that it be said.

May 12 2011

He died, in the end, without a name, the poor little high-contrast black and white kitten. He died of hunger and cold despite our sheltering him in a warm cloth with all the warm milk we could drop into his strawberry mouth. Separated from his mother by the mean hand of dim-witted resident of Buenavista in Havana. They threw him way behind the backdoor of house, still so small (would it have cost them so much to wait a couple of weeks?). They tossed him like a promise at this “counterrevolutionary” house where pity for animals still remains. A house where perhaps they would use “the imperialist dollars from the CIA” and other imbecilic inventions of our country to buy evaporated milk in hard currency, and dedicate hours and hours to saving a meowing life that no one else in this Cuba in the midst of a General Crisis of Socialism (CGS) cares about saving.

Who cares about it. If you live every day to kill or be killed, just like in the army or in prison: Favorite logic of the Total State.

Just this week the political police experts rounded up another Cuban television directly (another Padilla Case just months after the Piard Report), and they sat down with no explanations on the editing room of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT) to erase, chapter by chapter, my work as photo-set of the soap opera of the day on this Island of Iniquity (the tetragram OLPL terrifies them). Just this week, too, various paperwork issues of mine were interfered with by an operative in real time who listened into my cell phone (+53) 5-334-0187, without the cautious CUBACEL company being aware of it (to them it’s enough to collect the dollars that the “enemy” sends me thanks to our capitalist-loving system of digital recharges through ezetop.com).

What will it take for them to get the message. I’m sure the majority of the operators and directors are already finishing up their paperwork to become Spaniards and flee, as soon as they can, to the Plaza del Sol, to peacefully protest the European establishment and forget their complicity with the censors, their left-behind compatriots.

Kitty died, in the end (I knew, at his young age he would never survive) and he is not the first to die on me. Nor the first I’ve had to sacrifice to not see them suffer from the pangs of hunger or from a beating, or non-accidental poisoning. Kitty stopped moving in the early morning, blaming me for my entire species with each cramp in my hand, complaining to everyone each time I forced him to open his mouth and swallow.

I decided to bury him in the anonymous early morning of this insipid Sunday in May. The Day of the Nobodies.

I put him in the red earth. Stones from the sea. And a stolen postcard. I talked to him a bit before leaving.

Still, I have things to do for him. For others like him, feline or human. Beings turned into zeros by the pedestrian apathy of my country or planet.

My heaven, heaven doesn’t exist. I keep you much closer than this rotten word. My my window I see you.

Goodbye Kitty (I have written like this before in this blogspot cemetery).

May 22 2011

Today, May 20, as in all countries that respect their history, we should mark the 109th anniversary of the birth of our Republic, but here, officially, that’s not the case: This date, like so many others, has been demonized and expunged from the national calendar. Like hundreds of thousands of Cubans whom we have seen forced to live in exile or in the memory of those who do not accept the erasure of history. This bad habit, absurd to many, has been a natural practice of our government for years, with regards to the figures and dates of our nation which they find bothersome, regardless of their era.

On this date our flag was raised for the first time, free and sovereign, throughout our entire country, hoisted by the glorious hands of General Maximo Gomez as he announced to the world the emergence of a new nation. Simply for that fact alone, for what it meant to those who participated in it as principal figures, and for what it represented to different generations of Cubans who had the good fortune to witness such an event, that day in 1902 deserves to be remembered, regardless of any subsequent assessment which may or may not be fair. This changing-changing of history over the last fifty years is neither healthy nor serious: It conspires against the true identity of the country, subjecting it to harsh ideological shift.

The Republic instituted this day as a result of the struggle and efforts of several generations, like any human endeavor, was not born perfect, but in the short period of its existence (only 56 years), despite caudillos, regionalism and political and social tensions, it achieved results that placed it first in many things among the countries of the Americas and the world, which is easily verifiable by studying the publications and documents of the time.

The epithets of neo-colonial, pseudo-republic and mediated-republic, as used by the present government and its officials, have no purpose other than to discredit the work of generations of Cubans, which, in many respects has been destroyed without something of greater worth being substituted. It is difficult to hide an involution such as this nation has experienced, making it now one of the most backward in the Americas and the world, one where the poverty level (never officially released) affects the majority of citizens (the income of a person does not exceed two hundred fifty dollars per year).

It is true that the Republic was born with a constitution that included an Amendment as an appendix whose Third Article concerned sovereignty and independence, but it was repealed in 1934. Also let us not forget that the Socialist Constitution was born with an entire Article of submission to the Soviet Union, and that did not disappear until the extinction of the USSR. It seems that the same sins repeat themselves in different historical times, although some they criticize and others they pretend to forget.

With lights and shadows, as in all other things, on May 20, 1902 the Republic arrived, and it is a date that should be remembered with pride by all honest Cubans, regardless of the political ideology they profess. Because over all of them, transient beings all, love should prevail in the nation, the land where, fortunately or unfortunately, we were born, and we must respect the work of our ancestors which no one has the right to invalidate.

May 20 2011

The Cuban government doesn’t censor, persecute and punish its nationals enough, though they live in the diaspora, but that it also is expanding to foreigners its need to teach a lesson to anyone who dares to break the “untainted” — and only authorized — image that it exports of the deteriorating “Revolution” which, if it ever was, has now lost its way.

For eleven months the Cuban authorities have held the Spanish citizen Sebastián Martínez Ferraté, who authorized one of the Spanish journalist who reports for TV5 in that country to do an expose, professionally done of course, on child prostitution in Cuba, which is clandestinely carried on in a great number of homes on the island.

It’s worth mentioning that there are no images in the report of pedophilia, nor anything morbid, much less the corruption of minors; the documentary only uncovers public opinion about the food chain of prostitution on the Island, particularly in Havana, where young girls are sold to the highest bidder. The saddest part, not just for the Government, but for all Cubans, is that the supply chain operates with the complicity of teachers who, for 10 CUC, allow the girls to leave school during class hours and cover up their absences to avoid the notification of their parents, who rely on them for the “rigor and protection” of Cuban education.

Time passed and, through a Cuban “friend” who lives in Spain, they deceived Sebastian and brought him to Cuba believing that he would be airing some reports on hospitality. The day his plane landed at the airport in Havana, was the last day of the World Cup in South Africa, and Cuban Security took care to note, once again, a penalty without a player in, and so the most universal sports was celebrated.

As soon as he stepped foot in the airport terminal, they were waiting for him and without offering him any explanation he was arrested and taken to an unknown place, which reminds me of the complaints of the Cuban Government itself against the United States with regards to the prisoners at the Guantanamo Naval Base without any criminal proceedings.

Eleven months have passed and his family has not been authorized to visit him nor to receive news of his legal status nor even a report on his health. His wife, Dr. María Ángeles Sola, is–consistent with her name, Sola, meaning alone–on her own with their five-year-old daughter, having taken every possible measure at the Spanish Foreign Office in Madrid, but in the first six months the only response she’s gotten from the Cuban authorities was to deny her any contact with the Ambassador in Havana; they will not even tell her the reasons for keeping him in prison.

Maria says, as she recently declared on a Spanish radio station, that the Government has ignored Sebastian’s situation. And that the declarations of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Trinidad Jimenez, have only served to placate the media and the press and to justify her Government.

Cuban authorities have allowed Maria to contract for the services of an attorney to represent Sebastian, and paying several thousand euros, she’s come to the conclusion that it’s useless, a waste of time, and that they’ve stolen her money.

After great insistence by the Spanish mass media, the wife managed to get the Consul in Havana to visit him in prison, without receiving any concrete response to his kidnapping, given that to date no legal charges have been filed against Sebastian. Maria strongly denies the statements of the Spanish Foreign Office, and charges that the Government and the Spanish Socialist Party is complicit with the Cuban dictatorship.

The question we all have is why doesn’t the Spanish Foreign Office defend Sebastian’s rights as an ordinary citizen. When will the Spanish Government assume a critical posture, without complications of any kind, with the totalitarian policies of Cuba, and turn its back to later justify what it did not witness. The truth is that both the Spanish Socialist Party and the Spanish Government have abandoned Sebastian, even as they affirm that he’s receiving consular assistance.

His wife Maria Sola and a mutual friend, Manual Fernandez, have appealed to me to use this space to help in spreading this outrage against international rights, and of course I have urgently complied. Knowing that the regime specializes in constructing false crimes and simulating trials where, before they’ve heard a single word from either party, they’ve already passed sentence.

I would hope that within this grain of sand that I am launching at international opinion–like that of Jose Marti for whom the whole glory of the world fit into a single grain of sand–can fit all the righteousness of good human beings, and that we can join our voices in demanding the Rights that belong to a defenseless man who suffers unjust imprisonment for doing his job as a journalist.

I want this kernel of corn that launched international opinion, like that of José Martí, the whole glory of the world fit into a kernel of corn, now it fits all the righteousness of the good human beings, and we demand our voices joining the Rights that corresponds to a helpless man who suffers unjust jail for doing his duty as a journalist.

Hopefully we will achieve our aims.

May 20 2011