Month: August 2017

For Havanans who live in areas along the shore, the incursions of the sea, the hurricanes, carnivals, and clandestine businesses, mark a difference with the rest of the residents of the capital. “Here on the Malecon you can see everything. Couples having sex on the wall or against the cliffs, tourists looking for hookers — women and men, and people selling marijuana, take away food, or little cones of peanuts. The Malecon shows you the good and bad of Havana,” affirms Daniel.

The Colon neighborhood, a stone’s throw from the maritime walkway, is the cradle of prostitution, illicit games and the consumption of drugs. A zone where poverty is a difficult cross to bear, potable water is a luxury, and people think twice as fast as most Cubans.

And it was precisely these neighborhoods — Colón, Jesús María, Belén, San Isidro, Los Sitios and San Leopoldo — that were the epicenter of that spontaneous and popular protest that took place on 5 August 1994, known as the Maleconazo.

It is unlikely that any Havanan over age 40 will not remember what they were doing that day.

“In 1994, in this part of the city we were not as bad off as in other parts of the country. During the Special Period we did not have blackouts because the electrical system is buried. But the people were fed up. There was tremendous hunger, very few could eat a hot meal once or twice a day. And even if you had money, there was nothing to buy. At night they put up signs against the government. Plans to hijack the Regla ferry or a port craft were forged in Central Havana,”says Daniel, and he continues recalling:

“The youngest were acting up. Making rafts, stealing bikes, robbing the yumas (foreigners) to get their money or whatever they could. It was an ugly scene. On 5 August I was putting some tiels on a friend’s house, when I heard the hubbub. Then, my friend’s wife tells me that people are breaking the windows in the Hotel Deauville and attacking the hard currency stores.

“When I looked over the balcony,” Daniel continues, “I saw some thousand men and women, different ages and races, had taken to the streets and were protesting. At 11 in the morning there was a human sea. They came from other neighborhoods, they began to raid the state properties and shout Abajo Fidel. Some were demanding freedom. My buddy and I believed that the government had faltered. If there had been cellphones, like there are now, the system would have fallen.”

Susana, a 59-year-old housewife, lives in a basement in Amargura Street, in Old Havana. “August 5th fell on a Friday and like every day, I was selling something at the entrance to the tenement. That day I was selling avocados for a dollar, or its equivalent, 120 pesos. There was a fucking dog. The Cuban peso lost its value. A pound of rice cost 100 pesos and a pound of black beans 120 pesos, if you could find them. Beef had disappeared and pork was over the moon: 150 pesos a pound. People were eating stray cats, pigeons, and making soup with lizards.”

Susana continues evoking one of the worst eras in Cuba in almost six decades of Castroism. “The people were on the point of exploding. When the protests started I put away the sack with the avocados and headed to Avenida del Puerto. That was impressive. People were shouting slogans against the government. The rumor was spreading that boats were coming from Florida to collect whoever wanted to leave. I prepared a bundle of clothes and put some salt crackers in a plastic bag. I already saw myself in Miami.”

Carlos, a sociologist, says that the protests starring Havana’s Malecon left behind a great lesson. “The government realized that people were fed up with so many blackouts, so much poverty and the scarcity of food. If they were able to neutralize the revolt in less than 12 hours it was because it was spontaneous, without a leader or an organized strategy. If there had been leadership in those protests, the story would probably have been different.”

Víctor Manuel Domínguez, a journalist and freelance writer, on 5 August went to Santiago de Las Vegas. “I had gone to visit an outstanding nephew in a military unit. When I returned to my house, near Chinatown, I was struck by several jeeps and special troopers with long weapons. They had broken the windows of shops and the OFICODA. The number of people coming down to the Malecon was tremendous. ”

In 1994, Domínguez was affiliated with an illegal union directed by Carmelo Diaz. Twenty-three years later, Víctor Manuel thinks that it would be very difficult for a popular protest like the one of the 5 of August to be repeated.

“The genesis of this revolt was not to demand political rights or democracy. People threw themselves into the street simply because they wanted to emigrate. I’m not optimistic. The dissidence today is living on the moon, and most Cubans, although we complain, we do not have the option to go out to protest against the government. There is a lot of individualism and citizen solidarity. It’s each man for himself,” points out Victor Manuel Domínguez, and confesses: “I will never forget the extensive blackouts and empty casseroles. Some nights I went to sleep without eating anything all day.”

Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, an economist and former political prisoner recalls: “In August of 1994 I had been an opponent for five years and that day, when the protests began, I was at my sister Elena’s house on Neptuno, at the corner of Lealtad. I remember two women police officers, who took off their uniforms and joined the march. The local opposition did not even see it coming.” And she emphasizes: “I do not believe that the dissidence can lead future protests. It is disconnected from the people, making appeals and proclamations that do not resonate among the Cubans. The changes in Cuba will come from popular pressure.”

August 5, 1994 was an example. 23 years have passed and no new Maleconazo is on the horizon. Fear and apathy are winning the game of everyday poverty and a future between question marks. For now.

Chinese bicycles were distributed at workplaces and as they were too heavy, many workers sold them or took them to the countryside to exchange for a pig; if they didn’t have a patio they kept the pig in the house. A doctor we knew, who was 60, spent so much trouble trying to find something to feed the pig, which he kept in the unused bath in his house, that he died of a heart attack.

In 1994, in the midst of the Special Period, an avocado cost one dollar, or 120 pesos under the counter, and rice was 100 pesos a pound, when you could find it. A pound of roast pork was 150 pesos, and old people stood in long lines for a cup of lime tea. The Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) passed out tickets that gave you the right to eat a Zas* hamburger — one of Fidel Castro’s “inventions” — and drink a glass of soda pop.

Cats disappeared from the city: those who ate them said they tasted like rabbit. More than a few people passed out in the street. The illnesses caused by the lack of vitamins and proteins got worse and worse. If Option Zero was reached, the army would be in charge of distributing food to the blocks. Illegal departures by raft shot up. In this environment of misery and desperation, life passed in the capital.

On the night of 4 August, in the Vibora neighborhood, there was a planned 12-hour blackout from 8 at night until 8 in the morning. Many people put their mattresses on the roofs of their houses and slept like that.

At ten in the morning on 5 August, different versions of what was happening on the Malecon started to spread through the neighborhood. “Listen, this is fucked up. In Colon, San Leopold and Jesus Maria people are throwing themselves into the street. They’re sacking the stores and overturned a police car,” said a gentleman who claimed to have come from Central Havana.

A group of young people and adults, along with the driver on the 15 bus route, who was then at the Vibora stop, decided to travel to the epicenter of the conflict. During the trip the driver was picking up people with big bags, as if they were going on a picnic. It was rumored that illegal sailings were leaving for Florida and anyone who wanted to could get aboard.

Just beside the former Presidential Palace, the combined forces of the police, State Security, and Special Troops, stopped the bus (a converted truck). The driver opened the doors and the we passengers, to prevent the military from taking possession of the truck full of detainees quickly all got off and taking advantage of the human sea already taking shape at that house, we disappeared among the crowds and into surrounding streets.

For the first time I heard shouts of “Down with Fidel.” The huge crowd walked toward the Malecon and the Avenida del Puerto. People with binoculars searched the horizon for boats. The destruction of the “shoppings” and at the Hotel Deauville were obvious. The wide road that runs parallel to the Malecon was filled with stones and pieces of bricks.

At four o’clock in the afternoon, dozens of army trucks, jeeps with mounted machine guns at the back, special unit soldiers and construction workers from the Blas Roca Contingent, armed with baseball bats and thick steel bars were lashing out left and right, beginning to restore order.

Meanwhile, news spread from the TV that Fidel Castro was coming to the area of the revolt.

A military vehicle pulled up in front of the Capitol building. And those who, until that moment, in the area, had been screaming against him, from intuition and fear changed their tune. They began to applaud and shout “Viva Fide,” joined by hundreds of supporters of the government. The mob mobilized by the regime came down Prado Street, shouting revolutionary slogans, with signs and aluminum tubes in their hands.

By eight o’clock at night, the spontaneous popular protest had been controlled by the olive-green autocracy.

What happened 23 years ago deserves an analysis. Could it happen again? Let’s go by step.

During the 1960s, the mass emigration of a middle class made up of politicians, doctors, engineers, journalists and other professionals allowed Fidel Castro to sweep away all the republican institutions, bury the free press and raise his hermetic dictatorship.

Backed by widespread popular support, Castro erected a Soviet-style state. Even the Constitution was a carbon copy. An army that was once the largest in Latin America, a powerful network of agencies that were appendages of the regime, to which was added the effectiveness of the secret services. All this allowed Fidel Castro to found one of the most perfect machines of social control in modern history.

Workers had no right to strike or to form trade unions, and laws condemned those who dared to dissent many years of imprisonment (or death penalty). El barbudo (the bearded one) sowed terror among Cubans.

Opposing the regime had — and still does — a high personal cost ranging from repression and ’murder’ of a dissident’s reputation to verbal lynchings that can end in criminal proceedings.

It is one of the reasons, among others, that explain why Cubans do not rebel. The most they do is complain: the majority of the population is convinced that Castroism is a disaster.

The ordinary citizen perceives the State as a territory of a privileged caste that, due to historical or genetic merits, it is up to them to govern without accountability to the people.

Despite the perpetual economic crisis affecting the nation, it is not likely that in the short term mass protests will occur where Cubans claim their rights or demand democracy.

But, look, any arbitrariness of the regime can trigger small or medium protests. Cases have already been reported. Like the protest of the drivers in Bayamo or bicitaxistas in Havana.

Right now, the new state policies restricting private entrepreneurs could become the embryo of numerous protests. Although, in general, these groups do not have leadership or organizational methods. They are rather spontaneous, driven by government abuses.

The dissidence has failed to connect with that segment of the population that is in conflict with the military junta that governs Cuba’s destiny. And in turn, many disgruntled people avoid contacting the opposition, for fear of being branded as ’counterrevolutionaries’.

But the social upheaval, low wages and distrust towards the regime is present. There are more accumulated social problems than the State’s capacity to solve them.

Today, the island is a box of matches that at the slightest touch can set off a spark. Even fear has an expiration date.

*Translator’s note: “One night [Fidel] asked his consultants to ship some McDonald’s hamburgers to him by air. He wanted to compare them with some burgers he had created and christened “Zas.” After trying the gringo hamburgers, he declared the Cuban versions better. The Zas burgers were sold in cafes that were converted into hamburger restaurants, two per person.” Source: Ivan Garcia earlier post. 

Original version: “Went out last night. Hooked a wild one who was at the pa’comer y pa’llevar (Havana cafe ). We downed a basin-full and then I went with the fool to his “holy room” (reference to a Cuban initiation ceremony). The guy gave me an incredible fuck. In the end he gave me 50 pesos. Today, it’s a second round with this freak; yawanna stringalong, bitch?”

Translation: “What I did last night. I won over an excellent client. We had some beers and then rented a room in a private house.  The guy was the best in bed. He paid me 50 dollars. I’m going to see him again today. Want to come with me?

Sarah and Liudmila, like thousands of young Cubans, prostitute themselves for a fistful of dollars. It’s their right. What is pitiful is the vulgar way they express themselves.

Right now, Cuba is exposed to various interconnected crises. An ongoing economic crisis; and a crisis of identity, with a whole lot of young kids who aren’t interested in their country’s history, or culture, and, fundamentally, the absence of morals and values, which is accentuated by the deterioration of the language. With people who speak worse and worse Spanish and whose conduct is sometimes vulgar and aggressive.

We know that the Castro regime has not done what it should have in economic and social matters.  Starting with services and going on through “revolutionary aesthetics” in design and architecture  – mostly clumsy and in poor taste – and on to its inability to provide meat, fish, seafood or fruit for the people, not just for tourists.

The hardships and shortages could be overcome with a government which is efficient and not corrupt. But, the crisis of values?

It would definitely take a long time to change that. Generations, probably.

You get in a shared taxi and say “good day” and no-one answers. People drop rubbish at every corner, leading to epidemics with who-knows-what consequences. Everyone thinks they have the right to play unbearably loud music in their house, and never mind the neighbours.

People frequently mistreat their children or hit their girlfriend or wife. It’s also become normal to drink beer in a bar and, although there may be a public toilet nearby, the men prefer to urinate in the street. And, in urgent cases, to defecate on the stairs in a building.

A story. I was going to my apartment, when I saw a woman excreting in the entrance to a building round the corner from mine. Seeing me scowling, the woman, the worse for a few drinks, says: “Hey, whitey, don’t act all refined. Everybody taking a shit does it where they can.  I’m not going to keep it bottled up, am I?

But the most lethal attack is on the Spanish language. One way or another, we Cubans have been killing it by incorporating in our vocabulary marginal expressions which many people think are funny or witty.

It’s not a joke. Sergio, a political science graduate, considers that the poor language employed by the official media, a virile and nationalist narrative, with a hint of tropical neo-fascism, has influenced the regression of Castilian Spanish and also affected the rules of civilised behaviour.

“Fidel Castro wanted to sweep away the past and adopted a new language – crude, arrogant and belligerent toward his opponents, inside and outside the country. Compañero and compañera were substituted for lady and gentleman. And he replaced politeness with a “proletarian manner”, which didn’t work in practice. All the government and Communist party propaganda is been filled up with repetitive slogans, initials and a boring lexicon. And that water brings this mud. Now, when they talk, many Cubans don’t have a command of more than five hundred words from the dictionary, they can’t write and their grammar is appalling”.

Sarah and Liudmila, Havana prostitutes, are good examples of this deterioration.

Translated by GH

This is what Mario, a retiree, does, during the afternoon while the grandkids play in the street and in the adjoining apartment a goat bleats before being sacrificed for a Santeria fiesta, as he watches the Telesur channel with indifference, a channel with a shamelessly pro-chavista slant describing the atmosphere in Caracas the day after the elections of the Constituent Assembly.

To the majority of Cubans, the topic of Venezuela sounds like a broken record. It’s like reviving the past of the “marches of the combative people” in front of the former United States Interest Section in Havana — now the American embassy — screaming the demands of Fidel Castro’s latest whim.

To the retired Havanan, Venezuela brings a feeling of deja vu. “It’s the same shit, but with a different collar.  Poor Venezuelans. If this Constituent Assembly thing goes through they’re done for. Wherever Cuban style socialism goes in there’s nothing but a puppet with a head. These systems are impoverished by nature. They just generate pseudo-patriotic discourse, insults to anyone who thinks differently, and societal polarization.”

Mario has a daughter who “serving on a mission in Venezuela. She is in Carabobo and tells me that there are also protests there. She talks with the Venezuelans, although they do not support the opposition, they do not want to know anything about Maduro either. The man is a thug. With those Mao style shirts he puts on and his speeches wanting to imitate Chavez. This is going to blow up in his face. They don’t even want Maduro in the place. The bad thing for us is that when Venezuela is fucked the oil they give us will be hanging by a thread.”

To be sure, people consulted for Diario Las Americas, including four Cubans who worked as aid workers in Venezuela, do not know how the Constituent Assembly can rescue the South American nation from the economic, political and social crisis that the nation is experiencing.

“I do not this Constituent Assembly. What is that thing?” asks astonished Miladys, who has just returned from Guanabo, east of the capital.

For two and a half years, Asniel was a sports coach in the Venezuelan state of Cojedes. “It’s bad. At night you can not go outside. Poverty is huge. I came back a year ago and I think Venezuela, with its lines, shortages, drugs and violence, is much worse than Cuba. There is tremendous corruption among the rulers. Most Venezuelans are disgusted with Maduro, though many do not trust the opposition either, because most opponents are from the wealthy class.”

A Venezuelan couple living in Vargas state often travel five or six times a year to Cuba to sell “this and that, appliances, smartphones. We are mules. With the chavitos (CUC) we earn, we buy dollars and then we sell them in Venezuela,” says the man and adds:

“The situation in Venezuela is ugly, brother. Many people go hungry, because they only get one meal a day. Many people have lost weight. I was a Chavista, but I would not vote for the pelucones (opponents) either. The country is rotten from top to bottom. Government officials are only interested in making money by stealing and profiting from state assets. Crime is brutal. Whatever you have, they snatch it from you. If Maduro remains in power that can end in a civil war. Those who have money seek to emigrate, the poor will be fighting it out among themselves,” says the Venezuelan couple sitting in a park west of Havana.

Delia, a nurse, has bad memories of Venezuela. “I came back in December of last year. Nothing works there. You see the children of 13 and 14 with pistols and even machine guns. In Venezuela, life is worthless. They kill you for anything, a mobile phone, take your money or just for killing. The Chavistas I met work on favoritism and opportunism. They join state institutions to solve their problems. In the hills there are groups that support the government, but some of these types look like hired assassins. They ride on motorbikes armed to the teeth. They support Maduro in exchange for impunity. Venezuela is a very nice country, but the economic crisis and the stubbornness of Maduro have fucked it up.”

Josué, an old man who sweeps parks, smiles shyly when asked about the Constituent Assembly in Venezuela. “I suppose Maduro set up that whole plan to secure himself in power and rule for a long time, like Fifo (Fidel). Hey, when you hear someone talk about socialism and social justice flee, because they just want to be on the throne their whole life.”

Laura, an engineer, believes that Maduro’s Constituent Assembly is going to bring ’peace’ in a simple way, “dismantling the National Assembly, imprisoning most of the opponents and dismissing the prosecutor Luisa Ortega. He (Maduro) wants to imitate Fidel Castro, who implemented a Soviet-style constitution for ever and ever.”

For many on the island, the parallelism between the social processes of Venezuela and Cuba seems homogeneous. It looks so much like what we’ve experienced it’s frightening.