Misc Authors – Page 6 – Translating Cuba

I Defend My Lawyer / Rene Gomez Manzano

The lawyer Amelia Rodríguez Cala. Photo by X. — The lawyer Amelia Rodríguez Cala. Photo by Jorge Ignacio Pérez

Havana, Cuba, February 2014 – Last week disturbing news circulated throughout the Cuban dissident community: The top permanent body of the National Organization of Collective Law Firms (ONBC) suspended Amelia Rodríguez Cala—the great defender of accused opponents of the regime—from practicing law for a period of six months.

As the days passed, additional details about the clumsy maneuver surfaced. It became clear that, although they invoked other reasons, what is at the heart of this new hoax is the aim of punishing this learned woman because of her upright stand in the exercise of her profession.

As usual, other pretexts are deployed. They initiated disciplinary proceedings against Amelia based on alleged complaints from two clients. At this point, it is reasonable to suspect that at least one of them is a provocateur in the service of the regime. In any case, a cursory examination of the two complaints demonstrates the weakness of the allegations.

In the case of Caridad Chacón Feraudy, it is claimed that the attorney did not submit her evidence in time. Never mind that a technical assistant breached her obligation of notifying and informing the lawyer about the matter. Nor that Amelia ultimately won the case, as the evidence was presented to better purpose, and accepted and used by the Court. continue reading

For her part, Regla Capote Alayo claims that there was no notification to the firm to report the judgment in her case. In this regard, the same lawyer exhibits the documents showing she met with that woman no less than ten times, without the woman giving her the courtesy of bringing this up.

Anyone examining the matter impartially would conclude that Dr. Rodríguez Cala should be exonerated. But the outcome was otherwise, and to ask for objectivity from the ONBC leaders is like expecting mangoes from a pine tree. What has now been decided against Amelia is just the latest link in a long chain of constant acts of harassment against her.

We know of the constant harassment that the leaders of the Carlos III Collective Law Firm have maintained against the jurist. In this, the unit director, Ileana Sandoval Roldán, and the team leader Franklyn Menéndez Tamayo, have distinguished themselves.

They have made her life impossible. In haphazard fashion they constantly question her about supposed deficiencies in her work. This has been repeated in the presence of several different clients, who can attest to the despotic and abusive way that the leaders of that law firm treat the attorney. This is no accident.

Rodríguez Cala has defended over a hundred dissidents. At the time she was excluded from her professional practice, she was representing almost all the independent personalities who are today involved in court cases: Berta Soler, Martha Beatriz Roque, Sonia Garro, Ramón Muñoz, Ángel Santiesteban, Marcelino Abreu Bonora, Reinier Mulet, Miguel Ulloa Guinart Angel Yunier Remon, Gorki Águila.

This reality is what arouses the hatred and ferocity of the mediocre, for whom the barrister’s robe is nothing more than another kind of uniform. In their lawlessness, the repressors from the collective law firms have even exceeded their powers. Decree-Law 81, which regulates the practice of law, empowers them to apply to a member of the organization, among other sanctions, that of “transfer to another position of inferior category or, after proper coordination, to another unit nearby.”

The disjunctive conjunction indicates that they can choose between the two penalties: either give you a lower position, or transfer you to another firm (implying, to work there as a lawyer). In this case, in violation of the law, both measures were applied. As for “nearby,” you only have to realize that they sent her to the distant town of La Lisa.

This week, the attorney plans to fulfill her unjust sanction. In her new position she will earn 300 Cuban pesos per month, just over $12. They want to silence her voice, but her honesty and pure love for the profession place her far above all these dirty tricks. Will she be able to work in La Lisa without difficulties, or should we expect more provocations and acts of harassment against her?

We’re waiting on the outcome of her situation. Also that of the political prisoners, whose defense, it seems, the regime wants now to be assumed by the docile lawyers that these same “leaders” of the firm have chosen. As for Amelia, I’ll keep myself informed, not only because she is a colleague who has worn the robe with dignity, but also—and now on a more personal level—because she was my advocate during my second political imprisonment.

Cubanet, 25 February 2014, René Gómez Manzano

Translated by Tomás A. and José S.

Huber Matos’ 1959 Letter to Fidel Castro

Letter from Hubert Matos to Fidel Castro

Camagüey, 19 October 1959

To Dr. Fidel Castro Ruz, Prime Minister, Havana

Compañero Fidel:

Today I have sent to the Chief of Staff, through regulation channels, a radiogram regarding my position in the Rebel Army. I am assured that this matter will be elevated to you for your solution and consider that it is my duty to inform you of the reasons why I have had to request my discharge from the army, explaining to you the following conclusions:

First: I do not desire to make myself an obstacle to the Revolution and I believe that having to adapt myself or cut myself off so as to do no harm, the honorable and revolutionary thing is to leave.

Second: From an elementary modesty I must relinquish all responsibility within the ranks of the Revolution, after learning of some of your comments in the conversation you had with the compañeros Agramonte and Fernández Vilá, Provincial coordinators in Camagüey and Havana respectively: while this conversation did not mention my name, you were thinking of me. I also believe that after replacing Duque and other changes, anyone who has been talking frankly with you about the communist problem should leave before they are removed. continue reading

Third: I only conceive of the triumph of the Revolution with a united people, willing to endure great sacrifices… because a thousand economic and political problems will come… and this united and combative people will not manage or sustain itself if it is not based on a program and satisfies equally their interests and their sentiments, and with a leadership that captures the Cuban situation in its proper dimension and not as a question of ideologies nor struggles among groups.

If you want the Revolution to triumph, say where we are going and how we will get there, listening less to gossip and intrigues and not branding as reactionaries or conspirators those who honorably state their opinions of these things.

On the other hand, to use insinuation to compromise figures who are clean and disinterested who did not appear on stage on the first of January, but who were present at the hour of sacrifice and who took on this work for pure idealism, is also unfair and unjust, and it is good to remember that great men begin to decline when they cease to just.

I want to clarify that none of this is brought forward to hurt you, or to hurt other people: I say what I feel and what I think with the right that attends my condition as a Cuban sacrificing for a better Cuba. because although you silence my name when you speak and those who have fought and are fighting alongside you, the truth is that I have done for Cuba all that I could, not and forever.

I did not organize the Cieneguilla expedition, which was so helpful in the resistance of the spring offensive for which you thanked me, but to defend the rights of my people, and I am very content to have completed the mission you entrusted me with at the head of one of the columns of the Rebel Army that fought the most battles. As I am very glad to have organized a province as you ordered.

I think that I have worked hard and it satisfies me because regardless of the respect I have earned from those who have seen me close up, the men who know to dedicated their efforts to achieve the collective good, I enjoy the fatigue proportioned by being consecrated to the service of the common interest. And this work that I have enumerated is not mine personally, but a product of the efforts of some few who, like me, have known to do their duty.

Well, if after all this I’m thought to be ambitious or there are insinuations that I am conspiring, there are reasons to leave, if not to regret have been one of the many compañeros who fell in this effort.

I also want you to understand that this determination, well thought out, is irrevocable, so that I ask you not as Commander Huber Matos, but simply as one of your compañeros in the Sierra — do you remember? From those who came fully prepared to die following your orders, may you respond to my request as soon as possible, allowing me to return to my home as a civilian without my children having to hear later, in the street, that their father was a deserter or traitor.

Desiring every kind of success for you and your revolutionary projects and desires, and for the country — the agony and duty of all — I remain as always your compañero,

Huber Matos, 1959

Obituary

During the day he received calls from Cuba and the main leaders of his party, the Independent and Democratic Cuba (CID) movement, who assured him the organization would not rest until the island is free.

Activists in Holguín sang the national anthem to him and members of the organization throughout Cuba were notified of the situation and of the commitment of their leader. His last words were: “The struggle continues. Viva Cuba Libre!”

Huber Matos left a political testament and a letter to Venezuelans. There will be a service for him in Miami on Sunday, 2 March, and he asked to be taken to Costa Rica, the country that sheltered him when he went into exile the first time during the Revolutionary struggle in 1957. It was from Costa Rica where he left for the Sierra Maestra to join the guerrilla war, and to this nation that he returned after spending two decades in prison in 1979.

“I want to return to Cuba from the same land whose people always showed me solidarity and affection, I want to rest in the earth of Costa Rica until Cuba is free and from there go to Yara, to accompany my mother and reunite with my father and with Cubans.”

Huber Matos Benítez was born in Yara, Cuba, in 1918. He earned his PhD at the University of Havana in 1944 and was a member of the Orthodox Party.

He resigned his position as Commander in 1959 in protest against the communist government’s deviation from the democratic principles of the Revolution.

Fidel Castro condemned him to twenty years in prison in a trial in December 1959, a sentence which Matos served to the last day.

His autobiography, “How the Night Came” (2002), describes his rupture with Castro, his trial and his years of prison.

27 February 2014, Cubanet

Former Commander Huber Matos Dies

Former commander of the Cuban revolution Huber Matos Benítez, one of the most important figures of the opposition to the regime of the Castros, died early Thursday morning in a Miami hospital, reported his organization Independent and Democratic Cuba (CID). He was 95.

Matos (born in Yara, Granma province, on November 26, 1918) had been admitted two days earlier to Kendall Regional Hospital “where he was diagnosed with a massive heart attack” according to the CID report.

“On the 26th he asked to be disconnected from breathing equipment because he wanted to say farewell to his wife María Luisa Araluce, his children and grandchildren,” it added.

The organization said that during his hospitalization Matos received call from Cuba from the principal leaders of his party, “who affirmed that the organization would not rest until the island was free.” continue reading

According to CID, shortly before he died Matos declared “The fight goes on. Long live free Cuba!”

There will be a wake in Miami next Sunday for the former commander, who participated in the struggles that brought Fidel Castro to power and then spent 20 years in prison on the island for dissenting from the direction that the regime took.

CID said that Matos requested that his body be taken to Costa Rica, the country that welcomed him when he was first exiled in 1957 and from which he went to the Sierra Maestra to join Fidel Castro’s men.

Costa Rica was also Matos’s first destination in 1979 when he was released after serving two decades of political imprisonment imposed by the regime.

“I want to make my trip back to Cuba from the same land whose people always showed me solidarity and affection; I want to rest on Costa Rican soil until Cuba is free and from there to Yara, to rejoin my mother and my father and all Cubans,” Matos explained about his wishes.

Huber Matos, a school teacher, opposed the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. He was captured in 1957 for participating in operations providing logistical support to the rebels who were in the Sierra Maestra, but managed to escape into exile in Costa Rica.

In the Central American country he gathered weapons that arrived on a cargo plane in the Sierra Maestra and were instrumental in the offensive against Batista’s troops.

Because of his courage and leadership, Matos was the rebel who rose fastest through the ranks to commander, as head of the Antonio Guiteras 9th Column, in charge of the positioning, surrender, and capture of the city of Santiago de Cuba.

In 1959 he was named Commander of the Army in Camaguey province. Having discussed several times with Fidel Castro the increasing alignment of the revolution with communism, he resigned, stating that this was a betrayal of the democratic principles that the Revolution had promised the Cuban people. In response, Castro ordered his arrest on October 21, 1959, a week before the mysterious disappearance of Camilo Cienfuegos, who according Matos shared his concerns.

Matos was subjected to a summary trial for sedition in December 1959. During the process, he insisted on denouncing the deviation from the goal of the revolutionary movement for which he and others had risked their lives.

He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, which he served in full.

In exile, Matos tirelessly denounced the betrayal by the Castro regime.

In 1980 in Caracas he founded Independent and Democratic Cuba, with social democratic leanings, today headquartered in Miami, and claiming activists throughout the island.

In his autobiography How Came the Night, which, according to CID has sold over 100,000 copies and that circulates clandestinely in Cuba, Matos recounts in detail his participation in the revolutionary army, his subsequent imprisonment and the tortures to which he was subjected.

Diario di Cuba, 27 February 2014

Translated by Tomás A.

Huber Matos: “The struggle continues. Viva Cuba Libre!” / CID

Huber Matos died on the morning of 27 February in Miami. On the 25th he was admitted to Kendall Regional Hospital where he was diagnosed with a massive heart attack. On the 26th he asked that they withdraw his respirator because he wanted to say goodbye to his wife María Luisa Araluce and to his children and grandchildren. During the day he received calls from Cuba and the main leaders of his party, the Independent and Democratic Cuba (CID) movement, who assured him the organization would not rest until the island is free.

Huber Matos Benítez was born in Yara, Cuba, on 26 November 1918. He was a schoolteacher turned Revolutionary from his opposition to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. In 1957, during one of the rebels’ logistical support operations, Matos was captured by Batista’s army in the Sierra Maestra area, but he was able to escape and go into exile in Costa Rica.

There, with the support of president José Figueres, he raised arms with which he landed in a cargo plane in the Sierra Maestra. These arms were decisive for the triumph of the small and poorly equipped Rebel Army against the offensive launched by Batista in 1958. For his courage and leadership in the guerrilla struggle, Matos was the rebel who rose most quickly to commander, as head of the Antonio Guiteras Column 9.

The frequent battles and triumphs of this column converted Huber Matos and his men into a legend. Column 9 was in charge of the siege, surrender and taking of the city of Santiago, a deciding action in the final victory of the revolutionary movement. Photographs of Fidel Castro’s triumphant entry into Havana show Huber Matos and Camilo Cienfuegos at his side.

In 1959 Matos was named Army Commander in Camagüey province. After having discussed several times with Fidel Castro the growing alignment of the process with Communism, he renounced it, stating that this constituted a betrayal of the democratic principles of the Revolution as they had been promised to the Cuban people. In response, Castro ordered his arrest on 21 October 1959.

A week after his detention Camilo Cienfuegos, who shared Matos’ concern, mysteriously disappeared with his plane and pilot and they were never found.

During the summary trial for sedition in December 1959, Matos insisted on denouncing the deviation from the objective of the Revolutionary Movement for which he and so many others had risked their lives. He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, which he served in rebellion until the last day in 1979.

When he left prison, a representative of the Costa Rican government traveled to Cuba to accompany him on his trip to Costa Rica, where a large group of Cubans met him at the airport, along with the president Rodrigo Carazo, José Figueres and Oscar Arias.

From exile, he worked tenaciously to denounce the Castro regime. This led him to found, in 1980 in Caracas, Venezuela, the Independent and Democratic Cuba movement (CID), which today has a large membership organized in delegations throughout the entire island. Members of the CID are frequently harassed, imprisoned, and at times tortured by the Cuban authorities.

In his autobiographical book “How the Night Came,” which has sold more than 100,000 copies and which circulates clandestinely in Cuba, Matos relates the details of his participation in the Revolutionary army and his subsequent imprisonment, in which he was subjected to every kind of torture.

As Secretary General of the CID, from his base in Miami, Florida, Huber Matos engaged in intense activity reporting and campaigning in the United States, Latin America and Europe. In 2002 his social-democratic party published the Project of the New Republic, which has five key programmatic fundamentals:

1. Independence and sovereignty

2. Multiparty democracy

3. Free market economy

4. Human rights and social justice.

5. Latin American and continental integration

In addition, in 2011 the CID published a draft Constitution that guarantees the exercise of democratic freedoms and respect for human rights for all the inhabitants of the island, and includes a variety of provisions on education, social welfare, the economy and the environment.

Commander Matos qualified as a teacher in Santiago de Cuba and received a PhD in Teaching from the University of Havana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kO-ky9lp5c

Rogelio Matos Araluce 1-321-759-8066, rogeliomatos@gmail.com
Huber Matos Garsault 1-305-906-1950, hubermatos@hotmail.com

27 February 2014

No-one Knows What Fish They are Buying / Ernesto Garcia Diaz

Fishermen at Playa de El Chivo - Photo Ernesto Garcia — Fishermen at Playa de El Chivo – Photo Ernesto Garcia

Havana, Cuba – At la Playa de El Chivo (El Chivo beach ), on the northeast coast of Havana, at the foot of the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro (Three Kings Castle), people carry on fishing for sport and business, between the marine waters and sewage, without the health authorities, environmental authorities or the coastguards taking a responsible attitude. The zone receives thousands of cubic metres of polluted water and its sand dunes are deteriorating as a result of the man’s actions.

The grunt, snapper and barber fish, among others, turn the rocky beach into both a centre for boats which arrive every day to seek their economic support; and at best, some people who are enjoying their leisure and are fishing for sport.

This is going on in the mouth of the submerged sewage outlet pipe which runs from the Havana sewage treatment plant, which filters the solid waste coming from the northern and southern collectors of the capital. A concrete pipe of about 375 metres in length crosses Havana Bay, as far as Casablanca, where they pump the dirty water up to La Cabaña, so that it then falls by gravity down to the El Chivo beach, about 150 metres along the coast.

The most astonishing thing is that many fishermen enter into the area of the lower reefs, without any protection, on the edge of where they are fishing in a contaminated area, breathing in the fetid smell from the drain, which keeps the coastal water cloudy with its permanent discharge from the Havana sewers, whose pipes and canals are not lacking in cracks and leaks. continue reading

When it comes to the end result of the activity, various fisherment indicate that they eat the fish themselves, and that they also sell some, but they don’t say where the fish come from.

These citizens, impelled by their desperate need to support themselves and their families, imperil the health of people who are unaware that they are buying a product of uncertain or unknown origin, as many are offered as skinned fillets, or say that they are deep sea fish, which prevents the consumer seeing the physiognomy of the species, so they can at least identify them, in order to avoid the “ciguatera” (tropical fishfood poisoning syndrome ) which is transmitted by the picúa or the aguají, among other species which it is forbidden to fish.

Murky waters at Playa de El Chivo – photo Ernesto Garcia

Additionally, on this beach’s rocky and sandy coast, the environment is being damaged by the dumping of plastic handles, fish-hooks, fishing lines, and other discarded items, which are thrown away by people living there or those passing through the area who don’t take any notice of the prohibitions.

Alberto, an ex-fisherman, known as “The Wizard”, admitted that he used to sell fish for a while, but that it was very hard work, always running the risk of a consumer falling ill, because the species caught in this area end up eating the discarded rubbish in the sewage, or a shoal of sardines who have also come over to eat toxic residues.

Concrete drain pipe in El Chivo beach – photo Ernesto García

El Chivo Beach, by the Castillo de los Tres Reyes del Morro, classified by UNESCO in 1982 as a World Heritage site, has been converted into a contaminated focal point of bacteria and micro-organisms which can affect the health of those who fish in its waters, pass through there, or consume its fish.

The authorities would be perfectly able to preserve the cleanliness and health of the ecosystem of this sandy coastline, which has been abused and is hardly a good example of sustainable development of a zone of natural, historical and cultural value which should be cared for.

Cubanet, 22 January 2014, Ernesto García Díaz

Translated by GH

Shelves of Misery / Victor Ariel Gonzalez

The old Carlos III market was transformed into a “mall.” At the beginning, Havanans found a wide selection of merchandise (in CUC — hard currency); today the showcases are empty.

The shelves where the most common ingredients should be found often appear empty or offer only one product of its type without options of quality or size. Those foods that Cubans eat the most are exhausted rapidly, sometimes missing from the shelves for weeks. On the other hand, the most expensive foods stay for sale for so long that many wind up expiring.

Carlos III market, inaugurated in 1957 as Plaza de Mercado

Not to mention the toiletry section. This week there was only one kind of soap for sale, a small bar for 0.25 CUC. The counter where there used to appear dozens of offers for varying budgets now presents a desolate emptiness. continue reading

Another features of the supermarket is the disorganization. It is no surprise that at midday the aisles are full of boxes, piled one on top of the other. “Don’t touch” has been scrawled on them by the establishment’s clerks, who also work as stockers and have neither time nor intention for assisting customers. The boxes that have been empty for hours still wait for someone to retrieve them.

That same disorder is expressed in that the supermarket’s departments have been inconveniently separated: on one side, the meat and dairy where the rotten odor is unbearable, and there are only two types of cheese. There a Cuban resident of Spain visiting the Island comments to this reporter that she has brought all her food from abroad for her stay, and that she is in the place just to buy something for a friend. “I don’t like the quality here,” she confesses is the motive. On the other side is the preserves department as in other stores where packets of coffee or cookies can be obtained. The products may repeat from one department to another.

The lack of sanitation is also seen in the dust on the bottles of wine in the liquor section, one of the most Cuban products offered. The main current suppliers for the shelves of Plaza Carlos III are the Spanish brands Gourmet or Spar, food of national production has almost disappeared.

In this atmosphere, when a humble and fortunate customer in the end has found what he needs, he must confront a long line to pay because one of the two cash registers never works. The difficult mission of obtaining food ends when, at the exit, a character sometimes not in uniform and with a very bad look on his face treats the clients like criminals, being able to search bags shamelessly.

This process is not applied to foreigner who visit the store. This is done to remind Cubans that, as miserable as the shelves of the supermarket are, also miserable is the spirit that the regime has developed.

Cubanet, February 25, 2014 / Victor Ariel Gonzalez

Translated by mlk.

Havana: Castro-McDisney Theme Park / Luis Cino Alvarez

HAVANA, Cuba- Some years ago the American sociologist George Ritzer adopted the perspective of the “McDonaldization of society.” Within this, and thinking of the Disney parks, he coined the term, “McDonaldization of tourism.”

It would be interesting to know Ritzer’s opinion about the great theme park that Cuban has been turned into. Or the several sub-parks that it’s divided into, according to the interests of the visitor.

For ideological tourism, Cuba continues to be the mecca of the world left, now before than yesterday, in the face of the proto-capitalist reforms, they call them “Guidelines,” updating the economic model or as they call it, taking it apart and auctioning off the pieces.

Then, they rush to make the pilgrimage before the Revolutionary story is exhausted, the almendrones (the old American cars) stop rolling, before they tear down the old buildings and the prostitutes and pimps adjust their rates to those of Bangkok or Amsterdam. continue reading

Of the Revolutionary utopia, all that’s left is what the tourists see, planned in advance, and that’s exactly what the guides show them. The tourists don’t like unpleasant surprises or upsets. Before, with unpredictable people, they could ruin their day talking about their troubles; the tourists prefer to talk with happy, helpful people, salsa dancers like they expect them to be, although they can get rude about the tip.

The do indeed assume that here the Revolution doesn’t abandon anyone to their fate, instead of certain crazies and beggars who roam the street, the tourists prefer to take pictures of those who resemble the Comandante, those old guys with the long beard, olive-green shirt, military cap, and licensed by the City Historian as “extras.”

The Havana on sale from Eusebio Leal is like that recorded by Landaluze. A shed to raise hard currency. Tourist postcard folklore. Orthodox mosque and cathedral without worshipers. A garden-cemetery for the rich, with colorful earth and the shadow of a convent. Black-robed fortune tellers with Bayajá scarves.

A virtual Havana, sepia, Technicolor or olive-green: of the wallet and the private taste of each person depending on how they color it.

Cohiba cigars, mojitos and Cuba Libres without Coke. Artisans, guerrilla berets and posters and T-shirts with the fiercely dreamy face of Che Guevara. Pseudo postmodern and almost post-Castro art, just enough to sell well. Salsa and son. Girls and boys for rent: sexy, tanned, healthy and educated at bargain prices.

A picturesque scam just meters from the deep, real Havana. The one that talks loud and swears so as not to explode from rage. The city that smells of the rum and roast pig of hard currency restaurants, with stinking sewers, sweat, grease, coffee mixed with God knows what, dirty reefs and uncollected garbage.

In the midst of the Havana tournament for the crumbs of tourism, foreigners wander around sunburned and laughing, as if they were in the best of all worlds. That other that says it’s possible and that they seem to see embodied in Cuba, where the only annoying thing is the heat.

They roam between the columns, gratings, establishments with first world prices, and buildings in ruins. Dour police in black or grey berets everywhere they look, with their rubber nightsticks and unmuzzled dogs, keeping order. If they exaggerate the task, no matter. They are the guardians of the park, don’t forget, and the place is also under siege by the Yankees, which explains any inconvenience.

Cubanet, 25 February 2014 | Luis Cino Álvarez

luicino2012@gmail.com

Another Inconsequential Congress / Fernando Damaso

One of the main problems confronting Cuban workers is low salaries, an issue that affects manual, service, technical and professional workers alike.

The current annual monthly salary of 440 pesos (some 20 dollars) means that many people are able to survive only by resorting to collateral activities, both legal and illegal. It matters little if there is more than one wage earner per family since, as the number of family members increases, so do the costs. As the saying goes, “If there is only enough for one, there won’t be enough for two, much less three.”

Until now the government’s response has been one-sided, claiming that “before raising salaries, production must first be increased.”

Among the issues to be addressed at the 20th Congress of the Cuban Central Workers’ Union (CTC), however, this does not appear to be one of them. It seems priority will instead be given to ratifying of the so-called Labor Code — drafted by government officials and put up for discussion by workers — though it is no secret that such discussions have always been and continue to be mere formalities. As in similar instances, once approved, it will be a dead issue. (Such was the case with the so-called Family Code, Civil Code and Governmental Ethics Code, among others now forgotten.)

The new CTC statutes to be discussed will address such things as how to increase production, conserve resources, replace imports, be more efficient, encourage strict compliance with existing legislation and collective agreements, fight corruption, restore discipline and preserve moral values — topics that address the interests of the State more than those of workers.

Cuban workers need labor unions that will truly represent them, with leaders that emerge from their own ranks and are democratically elected, not hand-picked by the Communist Party. Rather than be a governmental organization, the CTC should instead serve as a counterweight restraining the excesses of the state and its leaders who, even when drafting and implementing measures which disadvantage workers, claim they are acting in those same workers’ behalf.

Currently, the Cuban workers’ movement lacks a key battle weapon: the right to strike. Last used on January 1, 1959 to consolidate the gains of the insurrection, it was completely banned by the new authorities.

This is a one of numerous taboo subjects that will not be discussed at the workers’ congress.

It is striking that this has never been a cause of concern to the many union activists from overseas who have been invited to previous congresses, though it is a tool used routinely in their respective countries to defend their rights. It is safe to assume that it will be of no concern at this conclave as well. Do they really believe that here it is the workers who are in charge? Well, anything is possible in such a complex world.

Officially, the congress “will be a great success” and the workers’ delegates — carefully chosen by the party — will unanimously approve the accords being submitted to a vote, including the obligatory clauses calling for the release of “the Cuban Five” and a “lifting of the blockade,” in yet another “demonstration of the unbreakable bond between the “workers and their government.”

It will all be done for benefit of the authorities and their foreign guests who — after much celebration, special treatment, fine dining and sightseeing, with all expenses paid by Liborio — will return to their respective countries, touting the marvels of Cuba, of its unique system, of its “original workers’ movement” devoid of demands, demonstrations or anything of a similar nature.

This will ensure they are invited back to the next congress… assuming there is one.

Diario De Cuba, February 19 2014, Fernando Damaso

The Day Fidel Castro Eliminated Private Businesses / Baldomero Vasquez Soto

On 13 March 1968, on the steps of the University of Havana, Fidel Castro delivered a speech where he announced the so-called “Revolutionary Offensive” stage, a speech that we consider — from the ideological point of view — as the most important among his countless speeches.

In retrospect, that date represented the final lift-off of the tragic journey, with no return tickets. which would lead the Cuban people to socialist totalitarianism, toward the hell of misery and repression in which we are still living today. For decades, until today, we would also feel the catastrophic consequences on the Cuban economy of the measures announced and implemented by Castro, which swept away the productive fabric of the small urban businesses of the country.

The Commander in Chief announced, to the leaders of the Communist Party, of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, student leaders, the unions, and the Women’s Federation, that the time had come: “this moment is one for embarking on an all-out, powerful, Revolutionary Offensive.” continue reading

Leaving aside the previous manipulations and deceits, where he swore he wasn’t a Communist, he knew he could reveal the intentions that always his between his bushy beard because he already controlled, the press, radio, television, unions, universities and all the other institutions of the country, aside from the Armed Forces.

The objective of the Offensive was to built socialism, communism in Cuba; and to do this, he said, “Capitalism his to be uprooted.”

What the dictator had in mind, he said without mincing words: “It must be said that there will be no future in this nation for private business, the self-employed, private industry, or anything.”

What he proposed, then, was to remove the entire small private commercial sector left on the island, since the large and medium enterprises had always been expropriated. He would confiscate all the small urban businesses and they would become state property, and he would turn the business owners into state employees, or his, which is all the same.

To discredit the office of the small businesses, and expropriate them, Castro classified commercial activity as unproductive and parasitical. He said:

“There still remains among us a real scum of privileged persons, who live on the work of the others and who live considerably better then the rest. They are drones in perfect physical condition who put up a stand or open a small place and earn 50 pesos per day…if people were to ask what kind of revolution is this that allows these groups of parasites.”

The Revolution against the bars

Posing as a moralist, as a good Communist, Fidel Castro justified the guillotine that he applied to small businesses, based on surveys of the Communist Party about the bars of Havana and about small businesses in general.

We quote verbatim for the unbelievers:

“We see incredible things … there still remain in Havana… 955 private bars making money hand over fist and selling everything.”

And the figure is stressed with the histrionics that he always performed: “Nine hundred and fifty-five bars!”

The “investigation” of the bars inquired about data such as gross revenues and profits (55% had insignificant earnings of 25 pesos a day), Revolutionary attitude (72% didn’t support the Revolution, hence Castro’s interest in ruining them) and the type of clientele that frequented these businesses (which was classified derisively as antisocials). Based on this information, the study recommended that “the bars should be operated or closed.”

The Revolution against all businesses

The survey of the Communist Party of the small businesses in Havana yielded data about the legality and hygienic conditions of the businesses, but also about their owners: how many asked permission to leave the country and how many ran their companies directly.

The data did not support the savage expropriation carried out against all businesses: 72% were legally constituted, 50% had good hygienic conditions, only 5.8% of the owners had asked for permission to leave the country and 88% of the owners worked in their businesses. But, none of this mattered because Cuba’s owner made his decision. He expressed it with the following phrase:

Gentlemen, we did not make a revolution here to establish the right to do business! … When will they completely understand that this is the revolution of the socialists? That this is the revolution of the communists?

The fatal “Cuban March” of ’68

So, to do away with the “privileged,” “parasites” and “lazy,” in March of 1968 Castro attacked small private businesses, to confiscate them all:

“There were 55,636 small businesses, many operated by one or two people. Among them 11,878 grocery stores (bodegas), 3,130 butchers, 3,198 bars, 8,101 food establishments (restaurants, friterías, cafeterias, etc), 6,653 laundries, 3,643 barbers, 1,188 shoe repairs, 4,544 auto mechanics, 1,598 artisans, 3,345 carpenters.” [Source]

This commercial raid has been the principal cause of the impoverishment that Cuban people are suffering even today, and not the embargo by the American imperialists, as the Castro propaganda manipulated in his complaint the UN since 1992, and which had echoed through the Left throughout the world.

Cuban Script in Venezuela: War on private companies

Agnes Heller reminds us that “history, for good or ill, is a learning process.” We learn from the ill-starred experience of Cuban socialism and recognize the importance of the private sector to generate employment, income, goods and services that improve the standard of living of the population. We don’t cultivate our anti-merchant prejudices, product of nationalized oil, because we play the socialist government’s game of war against the businesses. We must openly defend private enterprise to stop Venezuela from being turned into a socialist hell like that the bearded dinosaur established in Cuba.

Heller suffered Communism in Hungary. Given our circumstances, I conclude with some guiding words of this author:

“When the majority of the population choose these strategic options (like socialism) they have not had any personal experience with them, and later they no longer have the slightest possibility of changing their mind.”

Cubanet, 19 February 2014, Baldomero Vasquez Soto

Opponents’ Attorney Can’t Practice / Lilianne Ruiz

Abogada-Amelia-Rodríguez-Cala_foto-Jorge-Ignacio-Pérez-300x200 — Attorney Amelia Rodríguez Cala in Miami, July 2013, photo by Jorge Ignacio Pérez

HAVANA, Cuba – The attorney Amelia Rodríguez Cala, hired by Gorki Águila to conduct his defense — in a trial against him still unscheduled since it was postponed on 11 February — has been suddenly sanctioned to six months without the ability to practice her profession in court. For this reason, the singer of the punk band Porno para Ricardo will have to find another attorney to represent him.

Although Cubanet could not obtain statements from Rodríguez Cala, this information was provided first by Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello and confirmed by Gorki Águila and Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, who told this paper she had hired Rodríguez Cala on 27 January to represent her before the courts of the Department of State Security, responsible for looking that organization’s headquarters on 3 January, a judicial action without precedent since 1959, according to Soler.

She also said that her attorney had taken her investigation to the Picota police station where they had taken the various items stolen from the headquarters that day at 5:30 in the morning, but there they told her everything was in the hands of Villa Marista, main interrogation headquarters of the Cuban political police. continue reading

The labor sanction against Rodríguez Cala also left incomplete the process initiated by Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello to ask the court to revoke her parole or immediately cease the physical and psychological attacks, the siege and the police cordon that surrounds her own house and that flares up every Wednesday to prevent her meeting with Network of Community Communicators, over which Roque Cabello presides. The answer of the Court, so far, as been that it “has no evidence” to proceed.

Roque Cabello says that the attorney Rodríguez Cala has defended her since 1997, and she especially remembers the time before the trial began that would once again send her to prison in March of 2003, when the attorney for the defense hugged her, visibly moved, to tell her that they hadn’t even allowed her to see the file against her.

During the 3 days that the so-called Black Spring trial lasted, Rodríguez Cala defended 25 of the 75 accused. In total, she has defended 150 dissidents in her career.

Gorki Águila, meanwhile, faces a trial still without a date and now without an attorney, where he would submit the complete documentation stamped by the Notary Registry of the Mexican Department of the Interior and the Cuban Consulate in that country, which proves that he takes the two Tradea pills that the police found in his backpack on prescription.

The prosecutor — because of the police complaint — seeks to try Águila for “production, sale, demand, trafficking, distribution, having illegal drugs, narcotics, psychotropics and other similar effects.”

In Section 191, subsection C, under which they want to condemn him, reads: “The mere possession of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and other similar effects without due authorization or prescription, is punished: -C) with privation of liberty of three months to a year, or a fine of one hundred to three hundred shares* (…)”

According to Águila, Rodríguez Cala showed she was sure of being able to free him from prison, thanks to the documents proving his innocence.

Gorki Águila shows his documents. Photo by author.

Because of the summary nature of the trial against Águila doesn’t allow the defense to produce proofs until the moment of the trial. Numerous of the singer’s friends on the social networks remain alert and have opened the website: La Libertad de Gorki es la de tod@s! [Gorki’s freedom is everyone’s].

Finally, Rodríguez Cala also was the writer of Review Appeal document for Angel Santiesteban. The award-winning Cuban writer being held at military forced-labor center in Havana. On 28 February he will have been in prison for a year. The document intends to demonstrate that his trial was spurious, without due process, in which the defendant was defenseless.

The Minister of Justice has not responded regarding whether he will order the promotion of the Review Appeal initiated by Cala Rodríguez

As of now and for six months, the attorney has been demoted, with a much lower salary than she had as a professional, to a technical position (which in practice is carried out by an associate), fetching and carrying papers for other attorneys, in a Legal Collective in La Lisa Municipality.

*Translator’s note: The Cuban legal system establishes fines as “shares” so that the actual amounts can be administratively adjusted over time without having to change the underlying laws.

22 February 2014

The Internet Isn’t Eaten, But it Feeds / Agusto Cesar San Martin

HAVANA, Cuba – In the first half of the year the ironic character of the restoration of some of the people’s rights will be perfected with Internet for cellphones. Cubans will have access to the network from our cells, in proportions equal to the costs of unattainable hotels, real estate and cars.

The government announcedthat the cost of activating the service will cost 5.40 CUC. The cost exceeds the 4.50 CUC Cubans have topay for the same concept to connect to the Internet in one of the navigation rooms.

In its 54th edition of 11 November 2013, the Official Gazette of the Republic of Cuba established official service prices. Every Kb downloaded will cost 0.0005 CUC, which is 5,000 CUC (125,000 Cuban pesos, more than $5,000 USD) per gigabyte.

El servicio que ofrecerá la única Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba (ETECSA), no solo inspira en los cubanos la crítica negativa de los precios. Existen dudas sobre la afirmación oficial de que el servicio multiplicara el ancho de banda y alcanzara velocidades semejantes al resto del mundo. La desconfianza de un servicio óptimo se sustenta en la tecnología GPRS instalada en el país que ajusta la capacidad hasta 2 Mb.Un ex funcionario de ETECSA, que solicitó omitir su nombre y profesión, explicó al

The service offered by Cuba’s only Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), not only inspires negative critiques of the prices. There are doubts about the official statement that the bandwidth and speeds will match those of the rest of the world. The lack of confidence in an optimal service is based on the GPRS technology installed in the country that adjusts the capacity up to 2 Mb.

An ex ETECSA officia, who asked me not to mention his name explained, “If you have 2 Mb in optimal conditions (which he clarified there never are) and three people connect with you to the GPRS, and you divide 2 MB by 4, you have 500 Kb. A low bandwidth because what the towers permit is very limited.”

“You have a 4G phone in Cuba and the most you can get is 2 Mb because the cellphone transmission system is GPRS,” he adds. To the specialist, the service announced is not only limited, it’s one more highway robbery of the user.

“In Italy the LTE norm of 100 Mb costs a flat fee of 30 euros. At that price you can download whatever you want simultaneously,” and he added. “To install LTE in Cuba, they have to change the antennas, the base radio, the central…”

Terrifying prices

To inquire about rated we talked to ETECSA’s office of commercial information. The official identified as Lucia alleged she had no information about it. For her, the topic is an unknown.

“… We have no information for the user about what is going to happen in the future, nor when it could be (the Internet) for cellphones… Martha, Lucia’s supervisor, explained that there is still no “guidance” to explain to the users about the information offered by the Official Gazette and the Round Table on television.”

ETECSA sources unofficially revealed that the prices announced by the government could be open to discussion. For Cubans to download a page of 1 Mb could cost 5.12 CUC, perhaps a few cents less if it’s HTML, just text. A modest volume of downloads of 10 Mb a month would cost 51.20 CUC (1,280 Cuban pesos).

Robbing the poor

The disinterest and ignorance of people about a service that they can’t afford makes it hard to talk to them about it on the street. In a four of the so-called cellphone clinics visited, those present were unaware of the details published about our new service.

Raul, a sports teacher, referring to the prices announced for cellular Internet, said, “They remove the prohibitions from the legal point of view and establish them from the economic side.”

A Chinese tourist named Kwang, said that in his country there were plans for contracting Internet service on a cellphone. He added that he pays 7 dollars (42 yuan) a month for the service. “I never focus on the kilobytes I download, I just have it,” said the foreigner.

Josvany, 24, who sells TV antennas in the street, explained his interpretation of the prices based on what people are saying in the street. “You put 25 CUC into an account, and in four months you have to recharge it even though you haven’t spent it.” According to the young man the recharges are made from abroad.

With prices so far from people’s reality, the government returns services that have been prohibited for years. The right of Cubans to stay at hotels on the island, to have a cellphone, to sell their property (houses and cars), and the Internet, to mention a few.

In this respect, Osvaldo, an unemployed restaurant worker, summarized in his opinion, that of the people. “They can’t eat cars or the Internet. They have to start lowering the price of food… They (the government) want to fill their pockets with the poverty of the people.”

Cubanet, 20 February 2014 | Augusto Cesar San Martin

Opposition Protests in Venezuela Worry Not A Few Ordinary Cubans / Ivan Garcia

Protests in Venezuela.Source: uknews.yahoo.com

One way or another, the street protests taking place recently in Venezuela are being noticed in Cuba. The most nervous are the olive green autocrats.

According to a low-ranking party official, since the death of Hugo Chavez, the regime has had several contingency plans in its drawer, in case the situation in Venezuela were not favorable to the interests of the Island.

“If Maduro falls there exists a plan B. In the corridors, at least at the level where I work, it was assumed that Maduro might be a president with a fleeting career. Although the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) has controlled a large number of the threads of power, there are divergent opinions among the Chavez followers themselves about the relationship of their country with Cuba. This kind of socialism, with democratic streaks, is not reliable. Maduro might lose power either by a recall referendum or within six years. In meetings of our nucleus it is commented that Maduro’s term in office only serves to buy time,” the official notes.

The earthquake of marches, barricades and opposition protests shocks different regions of Venezuela, but the epicenter shakes the corridors of power in Cuba.

The Castro brothers risk a lot in Caracas. Just in case, Raul Castro opened a window to Brazil in the new Mariel Port and Special Development Zone with a different jurisdiction.

And he almost begs the United States, his number one enemy, to sit down and negotiate. Meanwhile, the Castro diplomacy travels Florida, trying to seduce the wealthiest businessmen of Cuban origin. Although sensible businessmen would keep thinking. When they look at the recent past, they only see shady dealings and a cryptic partner who at the first exchange transforms the rules of the game. Therefore, the Caribbean autocracy is going to have to fight dog-faced and with gritted teeth its strategic position in Venezuela.

The key, you know, is oil. 100 thousand barrels daily acquired at a bargain price so that Cubans do not suffer outages 12 hours a day. When the paratrooper of Barinas (Hugo Chavez) arrived at Miraflores in 1998, Fidel Castro understood that after nine years of crossing through the desert, with finances in the red and exotic illnesses devastating the country, the hour of his resurrection had arrived.

Cuba entered the light phase of the Special Period. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country continued in a fixed economic crisis, but the loyal Bolivarian shared his strongbox. And it was an important piece of the anti-imperialist project that so excited the commander.

The death of Chavez was the beginning of the end of the honeymoon. Maduro is loyal and is allowed to drive. But he does not have charisma. And after 14 years of foolish economics in pursuit of gaining followers among the most disadvantaged, the debts, violence and inflation have exploded in the face of the PSUV.

Maduro, stubborn and awkward, instead of releasing the uncomfortable and parasitic ballast of Cuba, to govern for all and look more to Lula and Dilma than to the Castros, moved his pieces incorrectly.

He tried to continue the Joropo and the booze party of comrade Chavez. He designed a simple strategy: he shouldered his comrade’s coffin and tries to govern in his name.

And it is failing. In Cuba, because of selfishness or a short term mentality, the ordinary people, tired from 55 years of disasters, cross their fingers and hope that the Venezuelan crisis does not close the oil spigot opened by PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company).

In a park in the Havana neighborhood of Vibora, several retired people opine about the situation in Venezuela. “If that is screwed, what happens to us is going to be huge. The blackouts will return, industry will be paralyzed again and we will return to a phase the same as or worse than the beginning of the Special Period in 1990,” says a man of about 70 years of age.

Others are less pessimistic. “It’s true, it will be hard. Since the revolution triuimphed we have been accustomed to living at the expense of foreign sweat. Before it was the USSR, now Venezuela. If the worst happens there, here reforms will accelerate. Although this is already capitalism, but with low salaries,” points out a woman who identifies herself as a housewife.

A university student adds to the conversation. “Seeing the marches or strikes on television is something that I envy. That freedom of protesting in front of the governmental institutions, as in Ukraine or Venezuela, we need it in Cuba.” And he adds that “in the meetings of the FEU (Federated University Students), the situation in Venezuela is a top priority topic, but I have heard rumors that in some Party cores the alarm is greater.”

In this warm February, in spite of the news that arrives from Caracas, the ordinary people continue on their own. Standing in long lines to buy potatoes that have disappeared. Going to farmer’s markets in search of other tubers, vegetables and fruits. Or sitting down at the neighborhood corner to talk about movies, fashion, soccer or baseball.

And so it is that for many on the Island, Venezuela is not on their agenda.

Diario de Cuba, 23 February 2014, Ivan Garcia, Havana

Translated by mlk.

“No One Treats Me Like a Prostitute” / Lilianne Ruiz

From the series “Outside the hotel,” Photo by Luz Escobar

HAVANA, Cuba – Yazmín doesn’t do the street. Nor does she acknowledge exercising the oldest profession in the world. She navigates the Internet for 10 CUC an hour, in some Havana hotel with this service. She visits websites to find a partner: cibercupido.com, mejoramor.com, and,among others, the Cuban website revolico.com, in the Jobs section.

The first step was to fill out her profile in those sites and describe it for the gentlemen who seek, on those sites, their desires. Nothing profound. She has added photos, which I am not showing here for reasons of safety; in one she is portrayed semi-crouched, from the back, leaning forward and turning her face to the camera the expression of a naive girl. She says she’s had good luck with this. In the year she received several “friends,” from different countries of residence or origin. They stay together some fifteen days, to get to know each other and be intimate. All of them send her remittances. She has learned to say “I love you” in several languages.

A friend gave her the idea. Before this she wandered El Vedado, Old Havana, and the Playas del Este, indanger of ending up in jail for “besieging tourism” (a crime created to punish behavior like hers).

This new modality feels more agreeable. There’s no mention of money, but everyone knows their role.

Before, for 50 CUC a night, she rented herself out to have safe sex in some variant of the island Kama Sutra. She admits that she was tired and didn’t see the profits. Now, she has a kind of monthly salary and, especially, no one treats her like a hooker. Except when she plays at surprising her companions in the role of streetwalker. Then she feels like an artist. continue reading

After the searches on each site offer candidates with the characteristics she’s asked for, they start conversations through chat. When the man travels to Cuba she prefers to take him to a hotel: because there is no “commission” there.

Yazmín explains that the rental houses cost 25 or 35 CUC (daily), and anyone who brings a foreigner pays 5 CUC, also for each day. If they go to a restaurant the same thing happens. The watchword is to ask the waiter if there’s a commission. (Discretely, so the foreigner is not tipped off.) Then, the waiter offers another menu, a different menu. For every dish they order she gets between 2 and 8 CUC. The seafood is the most expensive. Sometimes she can get 32 CUC just for accepting an invitation to dinner. It’s sure to make everyone happy.

From the series Outside the Hotel 2, photo by Luz Escobar

She still recalls the fate of one of her old colleagues, who she left at a site called “Don Pepe”; a restaurant located in a shack on the beach of Santa Maria del Mar, where she spent the nights. The presence of the girls served to attract clients. All of them are very young. If they manage to catch the attention of a foreigner at a neighboring table, they go to a hotel.

Although Cubans are now allowed to stay in hotels, most of them have to bribe the doormen. They have a criminal record, having been picked up making the rounds of tourist places. If the police repeatedly arrest them without their managing to “clear it up” — paying in cash or “merchandise” — they can end up on a Rehabilitation Farm, or in prison. Yazmín feels sorry for them and seems to have climbed to another level of life.

I ask her if she is saving money to invest in some business for herself, something like a snack bar or beauty salon. She laughs and asks, “Girl, what country are you living in? I don’t get more than enough to live on: buying oil, soap, and eating a little better.”

She wants to know other countries, for sure. And if she could made a good marriage it would be like having a song in her heart. She longer likes Cuban men, because they would want to live with her or there would be “little jealous scenes.” Also, they can’t resolve her problems, she says.

When she brings boyfriends home, they focus on their needs. Also, this tactic gives them confidence. Her parents serve as an alibi, for not seeing her go out at night like she did before. The neighbors don’t reproach her. On the contrary, everyone understands that times are hard.

“What do the yumas [foreigners] look for in Cuban woman? I don’t know. They say we’re hotter. Some have haven’t tried a black girl before,” she says, with a sly grin.

Yasmín didn’t give up her work as a receptionist at a polyclinic. This way she gets rid of the “bad letter” and maintains the coherence of the preconceived script that she has been converted. Also she gets free condoms; this is a custom she’s never given up since having been given a sexually transmitted disease, curable but very embarrassing she says.

After telling me her story, she asks me to change her name. I want to call her Yazmín not to ruin things for her. Also because, at age 32, she hasn’t given up the idea of being a mother some day. But she doesn’t want her children born in Cuban. That reluctance to have kids in her native country isn’t, she says, because she’s not content with her life. Nor is she interested in politics. It’s something, she says, she doesn’t know how to explain.

Cubanet, 11 February 2014, Lilianne Ruiz

On the Need for Censorship in Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Independent launch of Orlando's book Boring Home — Independent launch of Orlando’s censored book Boring Home

Within Cuba, contrary to what one might think from outside, one comes to miss the presence of censorship. And this isn’t irony, but a strategy of liberation. In more than one sense, censorship doesn’t exist in a tangible way in Cuba. It’s ubiquitous, but unreachable, unaccounted for. It leaves no spaces for anyone or anything, but at the same time it never stops shifting.

Censorship in 21st century post-totalitarian Cuba has learned to morph itself, mutate and resist being recognized as such. Perhaps because of this we must know how to name it and above all to give it shape. If possible, to institutionalize it, take it out of the closet where the Castro regime without Castros has hidden it, the regime that is already announced as state capitalism.

In a country hijacked by the despotism of a single party — the Communists — where since the beginning of the Revolution the press has been the private property of a military elite, in a context where there’s not much left to do that is logical, and where a first step of the absurd might well surprise the authorities. continue reading

It’s about demanding, in this case, public censorship in Cuba, preferably constitutional, To try to at least make censorship visible, in the midst of the secrecy that kills our society: to return censorship to its colonial candor, its republican rigor, its Francoism freshness, its Stalinist stamina, it’s almost more skilled than malicious McCarthyism, reinstating thus the lost prestige of the national functionary who collects a salary for professional exercising the full-time work of censor.

Perhaps it’s the lack of censors who currently maintain our civil society in its sterile state of intellectual indigence.

My experience as a writer censored in Cuba, for example, is already phantasmagoric. Leaving no fingerprints that would be credible to the next generation. My children will have more evidence to call me “coward” or “Castro supporter” than to believe in my three illegal arrests or the censorship of Boring Home, my book of stories taken out of print by the Letras Cubanas publisher in 2009.

And out descendent will be right in the imminent future, because none of my torturers will ever identify me. Like no editor will confront me to censor a single line nor give me an explanation nor written statement of why I was expelled from the Cuban literary field.

No one signed the orders to entirely remove my books from the editorial catalog, and not to allow me to present my books to my colleagues in any cultural institution. Most likely, in fact, is that no one gave such orders. In the absolute order there are no longer any orders nor intentions, just inertia and discipline.

In practice, my denunciations in this respect are already those of an autistic more than those of an artist. The lack of censorship cut my career as a Cuban writer in Cuba off at the roots, however, in exile — this preview of the future — there is no persecuted writer’s grant that fits the ridiculousness of my civic curriculum. Hence, the moral urgency of restoring the concrete role of censor in the Castro regime, at least until we dare to overthrow through other non-verbal violence all of the repressive apparatus.

On the island there is no single Department of Censorship. The official press — the only legal one — still publishes systematic critiques of the Revolution, but there is no one to demand from it such intellectual silence. It’s possible that such critiques don’t reach their editorial offices and that there is, in those offices, a rather Adamic environment.

There are not even bureaucratic rules that define what can or can’t be published on each topic — whether political or pornographic — to be able to give authors the interpretive legal battle. While it is true that in communism it’s not certain that the author exists, long before Barthes and Foucault. But it is precisely this amorphous condition that allow maximum impunity, because now every author is, in principle, the censor of the rest — fractal Fidelism — including self-censorship with which everyone humiliates himself to avoid being humiliated by the collective.

There is no rational exit from the endless mazes, where repression is mimicked at times with a political crime with global repercussions, and others with a local literary prize. Hope is then reduced to absurdity, pure folly. So, to attract bit by bit freedom of expression to the territory of totalitarianism, perhaps they could start by introducing the censorship mechanisms of the democracies themselves. Create blacklists in Cuban as a measure of restraint against the despotic power. Publish our first Index Liborium Prohibitorum — banned book list — in the selection of names and topics for which the Catholic hierarchy and the Castro regime could huddle together in other shared trenches.

Afterward, the struggle would be much simpler for free Cubans: reduce to the minimum those civic spaces conceded to censorship — pornography and politics — and gradually enrich the atmosphere that today makes even breathing on the island blackmail.

Diario de Cuba, 16 February 2014, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

#FreeGorki – The Gorki Aguila Case / Lia Villares

The trial schedules for this Tuesday against Gorki Águila, leader of the punk rock band Porno para Ricardo, was postponed because of the health problems of his defense attorney, according to the musician himself on his Facebook page. Gorki spoke about the background of his case with Diario de Cuba.

Gorki, what are they accusing you of?

The formal citation they gave me said the crimes of pre-criminal social dangerousness and illegal drug possession, with many points suspended.

Were you carrying drugs?

When they stopped me on the street and searched me and found two Tradea pills — methylphenidate — for which I have the appropriate prescription, signed and sealed, which are strong proof that they were bought legally. The police investigation has no evidence beyond those two pills.

Why are they accusing you?

The classic recourse of the government is to tie the “uncomfortable” individual to some prefabricated crime. In my case they didn’t ahve much more and I thought it unlikely that they’d convict me, if it was a free trial, for the (completely legal) possession of two tables of a medication that I need, according to a doctor’s prescription.

What’s your impression of this new trial and now the suspension of it?

It has the same characteristics of the 2008 trial, the same intentions, because a despotic government like ours never renounces the idea of silencing protestors like me by constant threats of prison, whether we are artists, activists, journalists or simply citizens. continue reading

On the morning of the day before yesterday I learned that the trial had been postponed because of my attorney’s health. It was to have been held on Tuesday, the 11th, but was delayed approximately a week. I thought this surprise, without any definitive date, could be dangerous because State Security could use it as a strategy and take advantage of less media coverage so I’d have a silent trial with weaker visibility.

Meanwhile, the government could create a parallel campaign to discredit me on the social networks, which seems like a recurring error on their part, because the exaggeration of creating false situations against each and everyone who dares to denounce them or express an opinion contrary to its purposes becomes suspect.

Castro never could admit that his opponents could be dignified enemies and have a body of more elevated moral principles; his attitude has always been not to recognize opponents and so to underestimate them, but taking care that they are never respected, rather defamed and in extreme cases imprisoned and even assassinated.

What are your expectations for the trial? Why summary?

I understand that these trials are held in very few countries and almost always in times of war, as an immediate lesson. The summary trials in Cuba are produced serially, with little documentation, that is, they can hold several trials on the same day, at the same time, with the ruling made in advance, where the political police has everything to gain. In this sense the regime takes great advantage of them against the peaceful opponents.

Gorki. (CLAUDIO FUENTES) — Gorki Águila. (CLAUDIO FUENTES)

In these trials, mostly rigged by State Security — it’s expected that the ruling will go against the accused. So I think it’s extremely important to maintain solidarity among everyone because, as demonstrated in the previous trial in 2008, the more public opinion was moved and the more visibility the case got at the international level, it was possible with everyone to change a decision already decided by the anti-revolutionary injustice, on the retrograde sense of the Cuban government.

Your case is not isolate…

The government finds in these moments in the practice meant to “neutralize” the various opponents, one of their bad so-called “revolutionary offenses.” This is the case with my friend Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who finds himself under police investigation with absurd charges like “the spread of false news that threatens international peace.”

It’s incredible that someone who threatened the total destruction of the planet earth, could say that a simple opinion or the exercise of free expression could threaten international peace. It’s something as cynical as his persona, someone who dedicated his whole life to launching the false image of “revolutionary and ecologist.”

There was also the case of the independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez, who spent long months in prison simply for exposing the spread of the cholera epidemic in the country, work that should have been the job of the national press, which has never mentioned, with sincerity, news that is alarming to the population.

Tell me how it was in 2008…

I was in the dungeon without knowing anything that was going on outside. At a specific time a cop came with the file and told me what I was charged with would be changed. Then the treatment inside the jail mutated tremendously. When they reduced the charges, some official even said that all those who were there were criminals while I was just there for being “anti-Castro.”

That is, they changed the crime of social dangerousness to the crime of disobedience and from then is where I can corroborate the rapid collapse of the armed farce. When they substituted the charge of one crime for another following no procedures at all, completely lacking in rigor: what’s missing is the Rule of Law. This leaves the usual arbitrariness of the Cuban judicial system completely exposed, where terms like “legal certainty” or “res judicata” are alien to is citizens, frequently defenseless before such procedures.

Then I knew I had a strong international solidarity campaign and within the country all my friends and activists supported me making sure everyone knew about my situation and the false charges I was accused of.

I’m convinced that the only way to transform these previous designs of the tyranny is to realize that uniting in the demand against injustice we can multiply the message that we all need right now, that of freedom for civil Cuban society, in short, freedom for Cuba.

I would like to thank all the people sensitive to my situation who have signed the petition and who are continuing to pay attention to what could happen with respect to this inadmissible case.

Thank you so much! Hopefully this is the year that yes, it falls!

Diario de Cuba, 12 February 2014, Lia Villares