Author: Miriam Celaya

In fact, now the ‘villain’ is being offered a welcome with privileges: if in 1960 US companies coexisted in Cuba with majority private property of domestic capital, the impending return of the vilified Yankee capital would enjoy rights that Cubans do not have, since the latter are excluded from the possibility of investing in their own country.

However, the elders of the Palace of the Revolution insist that “we have triumphed over the Empire” and that we are “more sovereign and independent” than ever. That is, US companies are now welcome in Cuba, not because the structural crisis of the Castro regime has become insurmountable or because the absolute ineptitude of the Castro saga to even manage the wealth that was seized by spurious laws has plunged the country into poverty, but because the ‘imperialism’ has finally become reasonable after being symbolically beaten for over half a century “by the resilience and revolutionary convictions” of this people.

Thy dollars cometh onto us 

Nothing shows Cuban deterioration as much as the artificial glorification of the past. Unimaginative and lacking in political capital, old revolutionaries continue to choose to appeal to an epic nobody is interested in, except the morbid curiosity of a globalized world that views the Island as a Jurassic stronghold of the Cold War that includes species that are extinct elsewhere, such as dictators satiated with impunity and people who are as meek as sheep.

However, despite the verbal energy of Granma’s writers, General-President Castro II seems to have forgotten his impromptu speech on that July 6, 1960 afternoon, when he took advantage of his older brother’s momentary loss of voice to show off his vocation as unrepentant lackey in all its splendor, and to improvise a little snack of exalted mystical inspiration, praising the virtues of the leader in his conquest of “glory that belonged to only him” and in addition proclaiming “our America” as the “true one.”

It was at that event where “Cuba sí, Yankees no” was born, the famous slogan that the most hardened ventriloquists of the vernacular flock were bleating until just yesterday.

Now, when it’s clear that the fiery leader of the past is not eternal, and when the octogenarian heir to the estate-in-ruins gazes at the fields overrun by the invasive marabou* weed covering the landscape of what was once an orchard, it seems that, beyond the official discourse designed to please idiots, the “real” America is no longer “ours,” but the one that rises north of the Rio Grande.

Everything indicates that the following also ceased to be: “the duty of the peoples of Latin America must be to tend to the recovery of their national wealth, removing them from the domain of monopolies of foreign interests that impede their progress, promote political interference and undermine the sovereignty of our peoples.” It just so happens that new times are in effect, where foreign capital has mutated, from onerous for the people to advantageous, even for this anti-imperialist Island-lighthouse-of all the Americas, where the same politically immutable old leaders remain attached to power, gobbling up the nation, as if they were lampreys.

Soap Opera Journalism

This is why the official press becomes increasingly improbable, to the point of mimicking the plot of a Latin American soap opera, the kind where “nice” characters spend their lives suffering ridiculously from the first to the next-to-last episodes, to end up happy and forgiving “the bad guys” in the final episode.

The plot of the soap opera-lampoon offered by Granma, where once there was an enlightened leader followed by his people and where crowds foolishly hailed the foreign plunder without realizing that this is the best way to legitimize their own, aims to insert that shameful past in the context of reconciliation between the spurned lover (Cuba) and the feckless lover (the United States) who returns for the re-conquest, always convinced of his power of seduction

But, at the same time, the lover-victim of so many excesses and cruelties by the faithless lover feels she must prove to the native audience that, once she falls again (into the arms?) of the irresistible charmer, she does not commit a sin of weakness, or better yet, of imperative need for survival, but that – quite the contrary – this an unquestionable proof of her (“our”) political and moral superiority.

At any rate, the leap turns out to be at least counterproductive. It is as absurd to try to attract foreign capital on the one hand and to shake the memory of nationalizations that undermine this capital on the other. It could be stated that two governments and two parallel strategies exist in Cuba, and if any revolutionary has survived, it might be creating a regrettable confusion for him.

The current olive-green deputies of mass manipulation should consider not only the ambiguity of the discourse, but – at the level of farce that they have chosen – understand that many consumers prefer negative soap opera characters over heroes and heroines. They assume, judiciously, that it is preferable to enjoy oneself most of the time and to suffer only once than the other way around. It is not by chance that the only thing that is growing in Cuba at such leaps and bounds as apathy or uncertainty is the number of people fleeing the glorious national poverty to benefit from the evils of imperialism. They have chosen the villain.

Meanwhile, inside Cuba, and without speeches from the grandstands, the xenophobic slogan of the popular romance years with the olive-green hero (Cuba sí, Yankees no) has changed radically. Today, the island is awash in American flags and the most vilified symbols of the American way of life; the slogan is now “Cuba yes and Americans too.” And if our revolutionary glory days of the past are good for one thing it is to mourn the irreparable loss of these 56 years of suffering between capitalism and capitalism.

*Translator’s note: Marabou (sicklebush) is weed brought to Cuba in the 19th Century that poses serious invasive species problem, occupying close to five million acres (20,000 km²) of agricultural land.

Translated by Norma Whiting

After all, the General-President always said that with the implementation of self-employment, new ways to reactivate the economy were being “experimented with” for a more prosperous and sustainable socialism. Nevertheless, it is unnecessary to recall that he also made assurances that there would be “no turning back”. What he did not make clear then is that there would be numerous constraints for this sector; so many that they would end up strangling many small entrepreneurs, forcing them to give up.

The crusade began almost on par with the openings, just a couple of years later. Suffice it to review some not-so-random events. In December 2013, dozens of self-employed persons who were engaged in imported apparel surrendered their licenses after liquidating their goods. They were bound by the express official ban against continuing with their business activities. The restrictive measure at that time was justified by a simple appeal: licenses to market imported goods had never been issued, since the self-employed did not pay import taxes and the State has an absolute monopoly on that activity. Those merchants were only allowed to sell handmade clothing manufactured in their capacity as dressmakers, tailors and seamstresses. Ergo, there was no official deceit, but the letter of the law had been misinterpreted or deliberately distorted by the self-employed.

Unofficially, it was an open secret that State stores dealing in hard currencies had had significant declines in sales of clothing, shoes and other items since the beginning of commercial activity of the self-employed because the small business owners’ merchandise offered more variety and was of better quality and price. On the other hand, in the shadow of this new trade, and in the absence of a wholesale market, a whole shenanigans of “mules” had proliferated, bringing goods from different countries of the region and keeping private markets stocked.

In short, individuals in the private trade successfully emulated the State, not only just in sales, but also in rustling, thus creating efficient supply channels that outwitted official controls.

The healthiest logic in that case would have been to set import tariffs and to expand the content of what was included in the sellers’ authorizing licenses. We know that such a concession would go against the restrictive nature of the system itself, though the State has proven, amply and sufficiently, its inability to meet the demands of the population, not to mention the deplorable quality of its offerings. As we say in classical Cuban, “we had to ditch the couch**.” Thus, 2014 began with a considerable decrease in the self-employed sector, although the official press declared otherwise.

In recent days, however, it has finally been officially acknowledged and spoken by the very officials in charge of the case that a high number of self-employed individuals have returned their licenses. The sector has been contracting and this time the decline covers a wider spectrum of occupations.

Everything indicates that the amount of the excessive tax imposed – which has gradually been increased for some occupations — the permanent scourge of an army of corrupt inspectors, the absence of the promised wholesale market, the arbitrariness of the established rules and fines, the “under declarers” and other equally absurd legal restrictions, are taking a toll on these “entrepreneurs” who once believed in the good intentions and the irreversibility of Raul’s reforms.

Interestingly, the segment of those engaged in the rental of rooms and apartments has benefited from a significant tax decrease, though taxes still remain high. It is likely that the faulty hotel infrastructure and the lack of State variants to meet the influx of tourists and other visitors is influencing official tolerance in favor of those who are legally making a living from this activity. Goodwill towards landlords will go on, at least until the State produces an adequate number of units to assimilate the tourist boom that is beginning to surface.

For now, let’s allow the fluctuations in the saga of the self-employed sector to be an example of the ineffectuality of our laws for those who venture to negotiate with old olive-green thugs; but also as an indicator of the high expectations of the Castro regime before the arrival of the cherished foreign investors, which will be – without any doubt — shroud and epitaph of what was once the domestic business sector prototype… dead before being born.

Translator’s notes:
*”Revolutionary Offensive” is the name Fidel Castro applied to the final government confiscation, in 1968, of all remaining private businesses in Cuba, down to the smallest shoeshine stand. 
**This common Cuban expression comes from a joke about a cuckolded husband who comes home and sees his wife snuggling on the sofa with her lover. Enraged, he decides to throw out the sofa.

Translated by Norma Whiting

The messenger, meanwhile, had to have sufficient intuitiveness and training to sort out certain obstacles.  His was an illicit occupation, so the risk of an envious denouncement on the part of a member of the CDR [Committee for the Defense of the Revolution] or police harassment.  Law enforcement officials would hunt down the messengers to confiscate the tapes and later resell them on the black market to another messenger or the owner of some video store, which was also illegal. Thus, the circle was complete.

The authorities had arranged a police hunt to end this practice, which favored “the imperialism’s ideological penetration” in the Cuban population, and affected “especially the young.” In workplaces–in particular those involved in social sciences and research–the battle against the subtle enemy propaganda was an essential point in the guidelines of the nuclei of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and the administrative and syndicate leadership, though many of the leaders themselves and almost all of the workers were regular users of the “venomous” product.

Thus, while during working hours the system’s bureaucrats railed against “track two,” the official label for the “ideological war” of the US government against Cuba, on the domestic front the consumption of the demonized product was growing exponentially. Without a doubt, the same “black” propaganda that the government whipped up against foreign shows and movies only managed to interest the audience in favor of its consumption. The olive-green battle against Yankee influence was doomed to failure.

The “antenna” and DVD’s, imperialist agents of the “zero years”

With the arrival of the twenty-first century and of new informational and communication technologies, video-cassettes were falling into obsolescence, even on this backward and un-computerized island.

During the last few years of the previous decade, DVD technology made its entrance, supplanting old video equipment and favoring the proliferation of CD’s“burned” in some living room, and distributed the same way by a whole army of messengers. The use of satellite dishes proliferated, and their owners rented out their networks to the homes in their vicinity which were able to pay for the use of those services.

Although limited to the preferences of the owner’s shows, the system expanded rapidly in the capital and main cities with large population concentrations, which made it difficult for the repressive forces to detect and confiscate the equipment.

On the other hand, the more technology moved forward, the more difficult the struggle against it. It was no longer about pursuing messengers fleeing on bikes through the maze of streets, but it was necessary to mobilize specialized resources, personnel and equipment, in addition to police patrols that needed to take part in confiscating equipment and arresting offenders.

Such deployment of repressive forces carrying out their duties on one block allowed for entertainment dealers to dismantle equipment in the surrounding areas, stowing it in secure sites. Soon Cubans learned to identify the minivan with the signage “Radio Cuba” that headed the police delegation, and soon the owners of the antennas also had their own informants at the police station, who, through bribes, would warn them ahead of time about the confiscating operations. At any rate, each piece of seized equipment was like a Greek war victory dance for the authorities, taking into account the cost of the operation and the meagerness of the harvest.

The government would score another embarrassing defeat against resources dictated by popular fancy and the experience of half a century of survival in the midst of ploys and unlawfulness.

The Internet, the devil incarnate

With that stubbornness of the mentally castrated, today’s official lackeys pull out their hair and rend their garments before the evidence of the inevitable: the preference of the overwhelming majority of Cubans for the cultural products of “savage capitalism.”. The illegal vessel that now often lands on a weekly basis in Cuban homes is the so-called “package” which has broken all records set by its predecessors’ audiences.

Today, it is almost impossible not to hear from a neighboring home the sounds of regular foreign TV. The package has invaded national domestic life to such an extent that Cuban TV has become an almost furtive intruder amidst an empire of consumption of smuggled audiovisual materials.

An external hard drive is all it takes to transport terabytes of capitalist entertainment and culture that is broadcast in “socialist” Cuban homes at affordable prices, between 25 and 30 Cuban pesos, to break through the grayness of State TV programming.

However, the appointed censors, with that infinite vanity that makes them believe they are arbiters of what should be the general taste and the managers of what each Cuban on the Island should culturally consume, labels as “banality” peoples’ tastes favoring a soap opera from wherever over Cuban TV’s La Mesa Redonda (The Roundtable) and knowing by heart each new series that airs, every movie that comes out, and what Alexis Valdés newest joke is, in addition to a host of musical talents and of the most diverse foreign shows, including cartoons and a great variety of kids programming that fills in the gaps, the blandness, and the poor quality of Cuban TV programming dedicated to children.

Much to the despair of frustrated cultural bureaucrats, the antenna has now been enriched by the undisputed power of the Internet, that “runaway horse,” shortening the time between what is produced and what is consumed in the cultural field, in addition to allowing coherent news updates outside the government system.

A lost war

In this vein, it is not surprising that the official cymbals and trumpets have summoned their cultural curators and their rusty institutions to fight yet another battle against Yankee penetration, as if this was not already a fait accompli. The cultured officials, like vestal virgins, are outraged with the surrender of the former warrior people to the seductive charms of the consumer society.

With their characteristic lack of creativity, the ever-killjoys have launched their own strategy: “backpack” — a ridiculous parody of the “package” — whose most eloquent proof of modernization is the inclusion, among their offerings, of Cuban TV series that made history with the national audience in the ’80s: ” “En Silencio ha Tenido que Ser” [It’s had to be in Silence], “Julito el Pescador” [Little Julio the Fisherman] or “Algo Más que Soñar” [Something Else to Dream About]. And they still expect to be taken seriously.

The truth is that, as technology makes strides and its messengers refine their strategies of survival to escape official controls and sell their products, repression –just like the system it represents — continues to be tied to the same methods of surveillance and prosecution typical of the Cold War era. They remain anchored to a past that will not return.

By now it is obvious that Cubans like a colorful world that arrives each week in the package more than the promise of eternal poverty that everyday life throws at them. The socialist mirage that mobilized us decades ago has died a natural death: it suffocated, submerged in its own failure. The date that today excites humble Cubans is with capitalism, even if, for the moment, it’s only through their TV screens.

Translated by Norma Whiting

— could be treated with oxygen. Almost by happenstance, an experienced doctor who heard the child cough took an interest in the case, and, after a more detailed examination, made her diagnosis as whooping cough, a disease Maritza had never heard of and against which – at least in theory — all Cuban children are protected, thanks to subsidized national health system vaccination programs. Furthermore, according to official statistical records, whooping cough (pertussis) was eradicated from Cuba many years ago.

Thanks to that doctor’s providential presence, Alain was treated with the appropriate antibiotics and, following the advice of the doctor, Maritza asked a relative who resides abroad for an emergency shipment of a medication that does not exist in Cuba, pertussis suppositories, used in the treatment to lessen the child’s coughing crisis.

Alain is recovering now, but his convalescence may take up to three months or more. Maritza has overcome her anxiety, but wonders how many children will be in the same predicament, considering that this highly infectious disease is circulating around the Island, and health authorities have not sounded the alarm. In fact, she recently found out that in the past several years the incidence of whooping cough has been on the rise, not only among children, but also among adults.

The lack of information in the official media results in the population not having a clear perception of the risk, and turns Article 50 of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba into meaningless babble. The article establishes the right of all Cubans to medical care and health protection, and points to the State as guarantor of that right.

Turning back the clock

Dengue fever, tuberculosis, whooping cough, chikungunya*, cholera … With the reappearance of old diseases, the introduction of others that did not exist on the Island and the lack of effective drugs, it would seem that Cuba has regressed to the nineteenth century. However, the Cuban national health system remains a prestigious benchmark for international agencies, particularly since lending Cuban medical services abroad has become the most important source of the government’s capital income and a powerful political tool, given that it allows displaying as example of solidarity and altruism what is actually a poorly disguised form of modern slavery.

So, while the government exports the service of tens of thousands of medical professionals at the expense of a loss of attention to Cubans, and the exposure of the Cuban population to multiple imported diseases, the institutional bureaucracy of international organizations congratulates itself on being able to count on a whole army of doctors mobilized by the regime to deal with epidemics and other pathologies. The government of any moderately democratic nation would never be able to recruit doctors as if they were mercenaries.

The truth is that Cuba currently has two opposing systems: one of “health”, which only exists in theory and today is a sad imitation of what it once was; and the other of “unhealth”, much more efficient, endorsed in a completely dismal hospital and services infrastructure, and in the continuing incursion of exotic diseases, imported by our doctors from the most infected corners of the globe, since, upon their return home to Cuba, the practice of a rigorous quarantine plan and infection risk control is not followed.

All this in a nation that, in the late 50s of the last century, stood out among the top in terms of health care at the regional and global levels, with a respectable hospital network in addition to membership clinics, emergency clinics, maternity hospitals and other health services, both free and private.

At this rate, it is likely that, when the Castro regime finally ends, we may have to request emergency services from the World Health Organization itself and from the International Red Cross in order to address Cubans’ health crisis, as occurred during the US occupation after the 1898 War of Independence, which created the basis for what would become, during the Republic, one of the most enviable health systems of its time.

*A viral disease transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes.

Translated by Norma Whiting

Tania Bruguera, in short, has suffered the same fate that the other members of the opposition and of the independent civil society have faced for decades: censorship and repression by the regime, while those same “common Cubans” suffer from the proverbial ignorance –be it as a result of misinformation or disinterest. So we reaffirm the urgent need to avail all Cubans of the bulk of information that allows them the civic empowerment and the willingness to come out as actors of the changes.

Ineptness or intention?

The reasons for Tania Bruguera’s intention to perform are too well-known and are more than justified. The repression orchestrated by the Cuban government, however, though predictable, is counterproductive at a time when it should strive to present a more tolerant face.

The General-President has lost a golden opportunity to score before the international public opinion somewhat, showing such an outrageous stupidity that could only be understood if he had the deliberate intention to launch a challenge to Barack Obama’s conciliatory position and the democratic world as a whole.

Anyone who knows the Cuban reality knows that it would have been very easy for the dictatorship to annihilate the “Tatlin effect” and, incidentally, make a fool of the artist using its usual methods. Namely, to let her reach her stage and her microphones, and then control or prevent entrance to the “counterrevolutionaries” – probably the only Cubans who would have dared to exercise their freedom of expression publicly and to voice their opinions and demands – mobilize its more loyal militants (and also their milidummies) to fill the space and to have them take the microphone to launch the usual praises of the revolution and its leaders.

They could even have used their agents, infiltrated in the opposition ranks, to offer the “mad-dog faces” of those who want to see the end of the socialist paradise, to have faked their support for Bruguera’s play by sharing the Plaza’s venue with works of La Colmenita, or by simultaneously celebrating any other “cultural act” with the participation of the many artists who usually lend themselves for such cases. It would have been, no doubt, a massive event, and the General-President would have shown the world, at the same time as the existence of “the most genuine and spontaneous freedom of expression of the Cuban people,” the firm commitment by the people to the revolution and its unquestionable conquests.

He chose, however, brutality, a disproportionate official reaction that sends misleading signals that are inconsistent with the relaxed atmosphere that we should be starting to breathe with the burial of the war hatchets after half a century of confrontation with the natural enemy of the people. But did anyone really expect a different outcome?

Behind the performances

There are those who wonder, following the events, if Tania Bruguera’s performance was worth it, since it turned into an occasion of unleashed repression at a time of year when family traditions are of peace and celebration. The answer to this depends on the artist’s objectives, not on the reaction by the Cuban government.

If her intention was to draw attention to international public opinion about the dictatorial nature of the government, the mere purpose was a success and was worth it. But its price, namely, the official repressive reaction, is the norm in Cuba – as is well known by independent civil society on the Island, with decades of first-hand resistance against the government – and the artist is not responsible for this.

On the other hand, exercising civic rights and free expression of all kinds are worth the effort, be it a performance or simply an everyday practice, but we must not enhance the facts or attribute to the artistic event the capability of “obstructing the normalization” of relations between Cuba and the US.  The propensity for drama is definitively one of the evils that we Cubans drag with us, which turns us into myopic politicians.

So, to pretend that “common Cubans” – not “mercenary” dissidents, or the usual disobedient individuals – could make spontaneous use of open microphones in a public place (particularly “that” public place) for citizens’ complaints and demanding of rights from the government is naive, a utopia, or a combination of both. The idea is beautiful and romantic, but far, far away from reality.

Let’s idealize it: the fact that ordinary Cubans, immersed in survival, need venues for freedom, does not mean that they are ready to openly challenge the government, especially if after the performances they will continue to be inevitably tied to this Island prison. A lot more is needed to overcome the fear of one minute on stage and before a microphone.

A quick poll is sufficient to verify that the recipients were unaware of the act. In fact, neither the artist’s proposal nor the wave of related arrests has emerged in national public opinion.

Havana residents who this last December 30^th observed the unusual police presence in the areas adjacent to the Plaza never knew what it was about, and probably did not give it  much importance. We have to understand them: those were the days of the agricultural fair and, as the last straw, in many municipalities, chickens “for the people” were being distributed.

It’s not cynicism, but realism. In terms of rights, we Cubans we have a long way to go, including –by the way – overcoming the temptation to place on the desk of the US Presidential demands that the Cuban authorities will be responsible for complying with. At least, such is the opinion of this Cuban, for whom the exercise of freedom of expression has always been practice, not performance.

Translated by Norma Whiting