Author: Regina Coyula

Image: jimdo.com

The journalist José Alejandro Rodríguez on his show on the Havana Channel yesterday referenced several complaints about the quality of newly built or repaired housing, which soon begin to show signs of deterioration. Last week on the show Cuba Says, on the TV news, there was an amazing report on the housing offered to people who remain in shelters, some of the for 40 (!!) years.

And what did I see? A rough and crude property, without plaster, exposed pipes. no slabs on the floor in the kitchen and bath. Some of the “beneficiaries” might even say they were happy, and it’s understandable for anyone who has to live with strangers: no privacy, no space, no sanitation, and no respect for others.

When it’s about supplies, Daddy-State didn’t exert too much effort to resolve the problem of housing, which has become critical, especially in the capital, where the number of people living in shelters, in the last year, reached  number similar to the population of Matanzas.

And not only has the State not resolved the problem of housing, but it weaned its babies transferring the problem to them. Those affected should now solicit loans, become hounds on the trail of construction materials, learn the trade, establish working relationships with people with similar interests, as it should always be, I think; only that those who today live badly should do it for themselves.

They were educated in the idea that good labor, political and social behavior would result in their being awarded housing through having earned credits at their workplace.

The dozen slums inherited from the government before 1959 were quickly eradicated. The same government that took them over is entirely responsible since then for the current number of 160 neighborhoods and settlements lacking facilities. Creating these favelas has nothing to do with the blockade or the imperialist threat; it’s one more demonstration of the inefficiency in administration and production from the same group that insists on convincing us that they can do it now.

14 February 2014

A fine irony is my having seen the documentary Gusano* (Worm) the same day I heard the news that this Monday the European Union could take definitive steps to lift its Common Position on Cuba.

The measures adopted by the European countries in 1996 have to do with respect (or rather disrespect) for Human Rights in our country, and in essence little has changed.

No one doubts the diplomatic success of the Cuban government which, in addition, less than two weeks ago, brought together 33 Latin American and Caribbean presidents and the secretaries general of the Organization of American States and the United Nations respectively, without the issue of Cuban Human Rights going beyond a formal mention.

Now the European Union will go on a tangent, and all this without any advances in the area of civil liberties. Clearly, this isn’t Syria or Chad; it’s not even North Korea, they will say on Monday in Brussels.

Ah! the economy, how many crimes are committed in your name!

*Translator’s note: This video will be available with English subtitles in the coming week.

7 February 2014

I don’t belong to the nomenklatura, I don’t receive remittances, I’m not self-employed, I don’t work in any foreign firm not in the tourist sector, I don’t operate in the black market, for me the New Year celebration is as modest as for the majority of my countrymen. But when one thinks things couldn’t get worse, the Devil shows up and breathes on you.

Do you remember in the previous post I had strictly domestic plans? Right. My mom at 97 tried to stand on leg that went to sleep; she fractured her femur, operation included, and I became a nurse. A brief stay between 20-24 December at the Fructuoso Rodriguez orthopedic hospital let me see the lights and shadows of the healthcare system first hand.

And for three weeks I moved to my mom’s house. She didn’t have to worry, it was divine, walking from the second day after the operation, and up and down the stairs of the house. All under the supervision of the little old people who are the candle that creates things and when they come and have to go back to the surgeon it’s for being intrepid.

I didn’t feel well on  24 December and was sick the whole week, but at with both my mother and all because my sister — also — had a blood pressure crisis and had osteoporosis so she couldn’t lift even a bucket of water and my niece was traveling.

Dragging my feet and dying of fever, I took care of my mother and crawled back to lie down in bed. On the 30th my son, extremely worried, insisted on taking me to the doctor and it turned out I had dengue fever.

Tremendous alarm, I didn’t want to infect my mother, but without mosquitoes there is no infection, and in my mother’s house there are no mosquitoes. When my niece got back from her trip I went home, on January 14. Can you imagine a house with two adult (and unconscious) males adrift for three weeks?

In a fit (having nothing to do with the state of the house) I grabbed the scissors. With hypothyroidism, menopause, and red dye, all mixed up, I made my hair a dull crown on a brilliant mind. Now, in addition to ugly hair, it’s badly cut. In the meantime, I broke a tooth and haven’t been able to go to get it fixed. More? Yes, more. The refrigerator, that essential, stopped chilling, and for 25 CUCs, in less than half an hour, the mechanic opened it and injected gas. I think I’m beat.

Plans for this year? Visit the endocrinologist and the dentist and measure the view for new windows. That’s what I want, I leave the rest to you.

24 January 2014

The schoolchildren brought to “repudiate” the Human Rights Conference at Estado do Sats

Organizing my version of this two-day International Conference on the UN Covenants, I keep coming back to the final images of the movie Godfather II. Over in South Africa, the world mourns one of the best politicians I’ve ever known. Our General-President, invited to speak at the mournful event, exalts the forgiveness and reconciliation that define the greatness of Nelson Mandela. While in Cuba, an impressive police and vigilante operation conscientiously lends itself to the task of criminalizing differences, of fracturing our broken society a little more.

As I have decided to behave as a free person, and my visitors last week sought to prevent my attending, advanced my arrival at the venue of the Estado de SATS by twelve hours. It might seem exaggerated, but around midnight a perimeter was established with access controls and by the early morning and there were people who could not come. The few who managed to evade controls reported on the numbers of people who had been arrested, and through text messages and other means we learned of more actions and arrests.

On the morning of December 10, the street in front of Antonio Rodiles’ house, the site of Estado de SATS, was closed to traffic for about 25 yards, and elementary, junior high and high school students began to arrive for festive activity on Human Rights Day, a reactive move by the government since five years ago when the opposition gained the initiative for this celebration. continue reading

The government’s ‘celebration’ was as hard-edged as are all such unspontaneous events; the children delighted to be at a pachanga (party) with music ranging from Silvio to Marc Anthony, and not in school. When the moods are warm under the cloudless sky of this December that denies winter, reggaeton or Laritza Bacallao can get the kids moving.

I imagine they were summoned for a celebration, or at best an act of revolutionary reaffirmation, and I wonder how many parents were consulted about the use of their minor children, among those who assumed they were in their classrooms.

Among the blare of the loudspeakers and the concern as reports came in about more arrests, the panel on Journalism and New Technologies was held. All the theory expressed by the panel is what we are living in practice and we also experience the lacks: Communication via text messages with Twitter and with friends and family, contact with media, documenting everything via audiovisuals, doors within and on the street; the lack of internet connections — once again — that tool that will not free us but that allows us to express ourselves freely.

By noon on the 10th, it was clear they would not allow anyone else to arrive, always creative in managing things, but if I left, I would miss Boris Larramendi on the following day.

The night was very peaceful thanks to the absolute closure of the Avenue in front of the house. From dawn on the 11th it was clear they were going to repeat the spectacle in the street. For those who believe in energy, I can assure you that the atmosphere in the house was admirable: some unknown only the day before, heterogeneous from any point of view. Scaling mountains makes men brothers, a Cuban dissident said.

The fright came at 11:00 in the morning when Ailer María González — artistic director of Estado de SATS– left the house to walk among the small children who had been encouraged to paint on the street in front of the house. Camera in hand, Ailer walked among them without distracting or bothering them.

Immediately, to political police paparazzi surrounded here and Antonio Rodiles and Gladys, his mother, approached from one side and a group of plainclothes and uniformed police from the other. They exchanged words in the midst of the music and it seemed everything would be fine, but in front the sidewalk door to the house, Kizzy Macías, from the Omni-Zona Franco artistic project, was filming and a woman dressed in plainclothes came up quickly from behind and snatched the camera.

Like in the movies, everything seemed to slow down. The videos show it better and I hope they have been distributed on the web thanks to the solidarity of five surprised students from the Semester at Sea who were thinking about an art project and came face to face with the face of the wolf disguised as Little Red Riding Hood.

Ailer sat down in the street as a protest and Antonio’s phone rang on the table. I answered the calls from whomever, because of the arrests of Rodiles, Kizzy, the journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez and the computer whiz Walfrido López went viral on the social networks. And then I went to the kitchen to make lunch for more people than I’ve ever cooked for in my life, me, who is a very lousy homemaker. Being busy kept me calm.

The poster exhibition and the concert began under major uncertainty. Arnaldo and his Talisman and Elito Reve with his orchestra threatened a thunderous night and they played with enormous amplifiers from the street. What can I tell you. I must have been in a ridiculous state singing along with Boris on all the songs and rapping with David D’Omni. At my age I don’t often feel myself to be young, but last night I sang for my son and for all who couldn’t be there.

If prayer has any value, it had it last night, because the prayer of many was that the concert would end without incident and a total downpour, what we call a “water stick,” canceled the activity planned for the street. In closing, our arrested friends showed up at 8:00 at night, and I have no idea what time it was when we took the photo that informally closed this eventful meeting.

After the return of those arrested.

I was afraid. Afraid for Ailer advancing against the crowd in an image that will stay with me when I have forgotten many thing, afraid for my arrested friends who had been treated with the violence born of hatred, afraid for Gladys, the owner of the house, a woman of steel but not a healthy one, afraid because that was the preamble of more, and afraid for myself, not even having a phone at that moment to communicate with my family, who knew nothing of the situation.

Afraid because it’s one thing to be told about it and another thing to see it, and something very different entirely to experience it first hand, which was not what happened in my case. I had a glimpse of the dirty face of repression. But just that. This fear set off an enormous rush of adrenaline, which is certainly bad for my physical health; but for my mental health, there has been a before and an after.

*Translator’s note: Pachanga is a “festive, lively style [of Cuban music] and is marked by jocular, mischievous lyrics.” (From Wikipedia). The word also applies to the party itself.

13 December 2013

I intend to take a vacation from the until the second week of January. If circumstances permit as everything indicates they will, I will devote myself to putting my house in order, an enormous task for me under the mountain of fabric that has accumulated on the sewing machine, and at night, like grandmothers of old, I will knit while watching television, an almost useless labor in the winter (?!) that we experience.

You can always find me on Twitter (@lamalaletra), reporting whatever happens to me in 140 characters.

I’ve told this anecdote many times, but I don’t remember if I’ve told it here. Just before the start of the Panamerican Games in Havana in 1991, my husband turned on the TV waiting for the news that the government, as we knew it, had fallen. In the face of that obsession, without giving it much thought, I said one day that it wouldn’t happen until 2013. He started laughing at me like a crazy person, he’d look at me, point his finger, and go off into more fits of laughter. When he calmed down he said to me, “You’re crazy.”

Well readers, not even a prediction as conservative as mine has come true. Or perhaps it has, and with that unnatural bureaucracy and the usual secrecy, we’re still doing the paperwork.

I have no plans, so I will enjoy the lovely parties to come.

May 2014 be a better year for everyone.

22 December 2013

Piranesi etching of an imagined prison.

Lately the mass media talks a lot about “the Human Rights we defend.” The topic is no longer taboo, with limited coverage of health, education and social security. Very few Cubans know the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, despite that fact that putting it in a tabloid would cost a peso, but no one has dared to publish it. University students don’t know what it’s all about, the whole body of it seems like a venereal disease that no one dares to mention.

For the first time I am aware that to honor the date on which the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was enacted can be risky. The visit from “the comrades” and “the factors” last week opened a parenthesis of threats that can range from instilling fear to physical action. I do not know what will happen tomorrow and I would like that nothing happens, but any action against peaceful people who want a thriving and diverse country, would confirm the need to expose once again a government that says it champions the Human Rights “it defends” while ignoring those it disrespects.

In the imaginations of much of the world, Cuba remains an alternative where altruistic citizens build the social project of the future. Cubans in reaction, for so many years, have constructed a Piranesian project. We are suspicious and it has brought out the worse in us, stirring up rich vs. poor, homosexuals vs. heterosexuals, religious vs. atheists, exiles vs. those on the island.

It would seem these differences are surmountable, but since the government continues to instigate the “good citizens” against the dissidents, and meanwhile the dissidence and different concepts of freedom are criminalized, it remains an unfinished task.

Because it has the means, the government can ban meetings and even imprison activists. But new faces will continue to appear, because the objective conditions exist and in the sleep society there is a secret will for change. A quick look at those who enter the visa lottery, to go to the United States, those who have abandoned and continue to abandon the national territory in all directions — including those who have lost their lives in the attempt — the women who put off giving birth and the couples who barely conceive one child; those who vote blank ballots or annul their ballots or don’t vote at all, those who daily steal from the State by action of omission. People without confidence in the successive promises. It is an enormous subjective figure. Subjective, but as weighty as a plebiscite.

State Security possess all the information about the internal situation, how it’s analyzed and what patterns it shows remain to be seen. Tomorrow we will have a preview.

9 December 2013

I do not like beggars. I was raised on the idea of begging as a holdover from the past, a scheme to get an income without working. From the time of the Special Period here, I have changed my point of view. I’ve seen extremely old people begging, almost with regret, with a dignity that has nothing to do with the act of begging. As a counterpart, professional beggars have appeared in tourist areas. Young women begging to be able to buy milk for rented babies they carry, or gullible foreigners approached with a false colostomy.

Yesterday, I encountered a beggar in my path. As I advanced towards her, I figured she was two parts scheming and one part crazy. She was sitting on the doorjamb of an interior street at 5th and 42nd, one of the busiest hard currency stores in the city, her strategic position enabled her to address everyone who entered or left via 40th Street, especially those using the parking log. The car in Cuba continues to represent a certain status, even if it’s a Palaquito (Fiat). As is my usual custom, I passed at a distance. I was alone and there wasn’t anyone else, so if she was talking to someone, it was to me.

“This is communism.”

I went back to the woman’s side, and to buy time, looked again in my wallet without finding any change.

“Why do you say that my dear? Do you think that in communism you weren’t there?”

The beggar didn’t look at me, nor had she looked at me before. Her gaze wandered from the half-empty bowl of coins at her feet to the opposite wall. Terse and forceful, she earned the chavito (Cuban Convertible Peso, ~one dollar U.S.) this post cost me.

“I worked 35 years and here I am. This is communism.”

2 December 2013

Estrella Madrigal Valdés

I do not believe it, but the rumors circulating about Estrella Madrigal Valdés, former president of the Chamber of Commerce are diverse and nothing good (for her).

They say her replacement was announced shortly before the Fair of Havana, that she is under investigation at home unable to leave, that she (or her spouse, depending on the version), has businesses and bank accounts in Panama or Bahamas.

These are comments from MINCEX  workers and foreign firms, in the press that hasn’t reported even a word on the matter. In any case, it is no surprise that another “box” until yesterday of the highest confidence, fall into a web of corruption. Moreover, if the Comptroller General’s Office finds no others, it’s for to lack of resources (or authorization), because in times of crisis, people can adopt the motto of the CIMEX Corporation’s chain of dollar stores: “Mine first.”

15 November 2013

Several television programs have the format of a presenter-moderator with invited guests to discuss a specific topic of national events over which they have some political or administrative responsibility.

Free Access on the province-wide Havana channel, and The Round Table with its new interest in internal problems, or Open Dialog, on channels with national reach, are the most high-profile in this format. The viewers can call or write in so as to –  if in addition to agreeing with the space and at the right moment, say it in the “correct” way — receive a response from the organizers.

By strange coincidence, overweight officials, very uncomfortable in front of the camera and with the limited language that characterizes them, offer explanations — justifications we might say — of the unsatisfactory performance of the areas within their responsibility, and what is very significant is how a phrase is always repeated, one that the functionaries seem to feel very comfortable: “We’re working on that.”

For decades, that phrase has been the wildcard of the leadership that thrives in the Cuban bureaucracy. Making it no surprise to see the impoverishment of goods and services destined for our working people. This deterioration didn’t happen over night, and not seeing in these bosses a well-argued and convincing explanation should discourage even the most sincere believers in the economic reforms.

Indeed, it’s completely clear what the guests to these programs of Cuban catharsis have been working on with visible success. Four aspects, namely: breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

14 November 2013

I don’t know if it’s yesterday or tomorrow, so let’s say, today. Bad Handwriting is four years old. Congratulations, readers!

13 November 2013