Author: Reinaldo Escobar

However, in the street everyone is talking about it because they hear about it on foreign radio broadcasts, despite the interference, they see it through prohibited and persecuted satellite dishes, or they hear of it by using anonymous proxies to access the internet sites so delightedly blocked by the soldiers of information. In the most dramatic cases, they learn about it first hand, because they have a relative or friend suffering through it.

Cuba is bleeding into an uncontrollable migratory hemorrhage, but listening to officials and official journalists gives the impression that this is the country’s least important problem.

Cuba is bleeding into an uncontrollable migratory hemorrhage, but listening to officials and official journalists gives the impression that this is the country’s least important problem. The speeches follow a script drafted from above and focus on demanding more discipline and a high level of command and control. Inspectors go to stores and count the inventory to the last nail, checking for missing or diverted resources, but fail to note the thousands of employees who leave the island each year, be they warehouse workers or inspectors.

The nation’s expanding desire to leave appears to be of no importance nor cause any pain according to the government’s rhetoric. It is as if there is no interest in the fate of those who launch themselves on the sea or put themselves in the hands of coyotes, leaving everything behind: their professions, property, part of their family, promises of love, debts…

We are becoming a plague issuing from a country that boasts of its healthcare services. We are rejected, disdained, in airports and at border crossings despite our reputation as a sympathetic and friendly people that took us centuries to craft. This new scum* that has leapt from the oven, from the “crucible of the Revolution,” does not want to melt in the mold where they try to tame its nature. In Cuba there is no war, as in Syria, no famine like that of some African countries, only the fear that with improved relations with the United States the privileges awarded by the so-called Cuban Adjustment Act will be eliminated.

In the same way that parents do not divorce their children, States should not lose interest in what happens to their citizens, before whom they have duties, some of which are not even promulgated in laws or articulated in the Constitution. Worse still is the silence of the media, gagged by the same old culture of secrecy. The ostrich buries its head in the sand from cowardice, but its wings are too short to cover the eyes and ears of others.

*Translator’s note: During the Mariel Boatlift Fidel Castro said “let the scum (escoria) go.”

And although emotion and reason don’t usually mix in academic environments, everyone there was both reasonable and emotional. Some thought about the Cuba they lost, others about the one they never managed to achieve. From the nostalgia and frustration emerged the best threads of this fabric.

What country can we build? That is a question that can only be fully answered when – in one way or another – the illusion in which we live comes to an end. But the prophetic exercise is essential if we do not want to arrive at “the day after” with our saddlebags empty of projects.

On more than one occasion, while a precise issue was discussed, such as the critical problem of confiscated properties or the presumed overwhelming entry of foreign companies, or the need to raise the birthrate, both viewpoints promoted their different takes on the issues.

While some warned that the nation cannot be mortgaged to satisfy the claims for compensation, others prioritized full respect for property under the rules of a State of Law. Where some proposed protectionist measures to avoid strangling the initiative of small native entrepreneurs, others expounded that the solution is to stimulate the entrepreneurs and not to regulate their competition. Where some demanded subsidies for women who have more children, others aspired to a prosperity that favored growing families.

The proposals of both sides were duly noted and even balanced, avoiding rivalry, but without looking for a consensus, because this meeting of ideas was intended to develop an inventory of proposals, without pretensions of pleasing an eventual electorate, without partisanship or populism.

There are still many issues pending: education, healthcare, legal matters, culture, science and technology, among others. If the spirit of the previous meetings is maintained, both on and off the island, this nation-beyond-borders where Cubans live and dream will have taken an enormously important step. Ideas, solutions, issues for future discussions will have been compiled. The dilemmas that we do not have today, but that we will inevitably have tomorrow, when there is the freedom to have dilemmas.

I had been led to believe that those Burundians were a “savage people” and suddenly I see them walking the streets in an enviable gesture of civility to protest the intentions of President Pierre Nkuruziza to get himself re-elected for the third time (which succeeded in controversial elections last July 21). The opposition managed to unite although they continued to disagree about whether to participate in the elections and about the decision of whether to occupy seats in the parliament.

It was the Prensa Latina agency that released a report saying that the main opposition leader Agathon Rwasa would take his place in the Assembly with 20 members of his coalition. Meanwhile the leader of another opposition group, Charles Nditije, declined to occupy the 10 seats he won in the elections.

The newspaper Granma surprised many last Wednesday with the following comment on the elections in Burundi:

“Seven days after the presidential elections, the commission of UN observers concluded that the election was not “free, credible and inclusive.” In its preliminary report, the commission said that the vote was marked by violence and there were obstacles to freedom of expression, assembly and association. In addition, it stated that “freedom of the press suffered severe restrictions” and that “the public media did not guarantee a balanced coverage of the candidates.”

What might be the “preliminary report” of a commission of observers from the United Nations if it were allowed to witness an electoral process in Cuba? Would they say it was free, credible and inclusive? Would they dare to assert that there were no obstacles to the freedoms of expression, assembly and association? Would they notice the severe restrictions on press freedom and note that the public media did not provide balanced coverage of the candidates?

I apologize to the people of Burundi. We have fallen to a level that is below that racist category of “savage people.” We have provoked a greater prejudice, that of being a tamed people.

However, now Juan Carlos has gotten into serious trouble. Saturday the 3^rd and Sunday the 4^th of July a work directed by him was staged by the group El Ingenio in the Tito Junco hall of the Bertolt Brecht Theater in Havana. The play was The King is Dying*, by the French-Romanian playwright Eugene Ionesco, the story of a king who resists the idea that death can touch him any day.

The leadership of National Performing Arts decided to suspend the play and accused the prize-winning artist of the worst insults. But, unlike others, Cremata did not choose to remain silent and responded, leaving nothing out.

Defending the censored artist could be dangerous in the short term, but silence, or even worse, complicit approval, would be disastrous.

Now it only remains to see the reaction of the Cuban intellectuals in the face of this despotic display of censorship. Defending the censored artist could be dangerous in the short term, but silence, or even worse, complicit approval, would be disastrous.

The youngest among us, those who do not know the work of the Soviet journalist and narrator Boris Polevoy, will be tempted to search for “A Real Man” in the digital dictionary Wikipedia, but will be surprised to find there that is a CD by the group Alaska y Dinarama. Some relationship will be found with the polysemic playwright, but those who read the odyssey of the mistreated pilot and who read the arguments of this courageous artist might conclude that, like Alexey Petrovich Maresyev, Cremato will once again fly and fight.

Translator’s note: The play has been staged in the United States under the name “Exit the King”

 

The Cuba-US Dispute

Before December 17, 2014 the discussion centered on whether or not the US economic restrictions toward the island should be maintained, what some call “the blockade” and others “the embargo.” The mere choice of one of these words has prevented prestigious leaders from signing a collective declarationen masse. On this plane we also find the issue of Americans traveling to the island, the reopening of embassies and eventual normalization.

Some are betting that the rigidity of the Cuban system cannot be maintained in an environment of good economic and diplomatic relations with the neighbor to the north. Others believe that the commercial interests of the United States could take precedence over human rights and in the end would award the Cuban Government the benefit of undeserved legitimacy.

The recognition of the reforms made by the Government

Between those who think that, “As long as what has to change isn’t changed, nothing has changed here,” and those who believe that “In this house of cards the slightest movement could lead to the collapse,” there is a large gradation.

This has led some to consider self-employed people as accomplices to the dictatorship, because with the payment of their taxes and their growing habits of consumption they sustain the dictatorship. While others see them as the most dynamic part of the population, who by empowering themselves economically could point the way to political emancipation in defense of the middle class.

The reluctance at every step of the reforms, adjustments, or whatever they prefer to call them, awakes in some the suspicions that it is all about an operation of recycling to maintain themselves in power – a fraudulent Change – and in others hopes that behind every little change there could be lurking a tropical Boris Yeltsin.

In the event that the announced but not yet proclaimed legislation opened the tiniest crack for the participation of the opponents, the divisions would become more pronounced

The attitude toward elections

Not going to vote, voiding or leaving the ballet blank and, more recently, casting one’s vote in favor of a lesser evil or for some malcontent who has managed to get past the controls, are the different attitudes with which some want to demonstrate their disagreement.

The Government’s announcement that it will formulate a new Electoral Law has given the issue new scope for disagreements, as there are those who believe it makes sense to disseminate proposals that could open a space to something like a multiparty system; on the other hand, those who see in the new law another maneuver by the regime to buy time or who call for an independent plebiscite.

In the event that the announced but not yet proclaimed legislation opens the tiniest crack for the participation of the opponents, the divisions would become more pronounced between those who accept involving themselves in the hard-fought elections, and those who consider participation in them as something that gives the game to the dictatorship, and even as a betrayal.

In the street or indoors

Although a consensus is seen in the opposition for the renunciation of violent methods, especially weapons or terrorism, there is a clear difference between those who have chosen to express their differences by going out into the streets, and those who express their critiques through documents, programs or opinion columns. From both sides there are sincere calls to weigh as valid the methods chosen by each grouping or individual, but still, in isolation, expressions appear that label a posture as uselessly provocative proposals of victims, and another as a convenient methodology, free of risk and displaying little solidarity with those who dare to receive beatings.

We are not willing to easily give way before a semantic dilemma; we all agree that it would be easy for the other to accept our terminology

Terminology

I have left for the end an element that affects the text that I am writing. The difference between use the labels Government or the authorities, and others who use the terms regime, dictatorship or tyranny, is perhaps one of the most frequent differences in the opposition endeavor. Other incompatible binomials enter there, like the already mentioned embargo-blockade, or election-voting reforms-cosmetic changes, exile-diaspora, not to mention how difficult it is to classify someone as an opponent, dissident, activist, or independent journalist.

To this is added the generational definitions, which mark a dividing line between those who have spent “more than thirty years in the opposition,” and the recent arrivals; or the contrast between having suffered a prison sentence versus having been detained for only a few hours.

We Cubans depend too much on orality, and are not willing to easily give way before a semantic dilemma. Moreover, we all agree that it would be easy for the other to accept our terminology.

Of course this is an incomplete inventory, I could have mentioned the way in which the role of the churches is seen in the problematic Cuban politics; the choice between remaining on the island and leaving for exile; the relentless pursuit of “doing something” or the patient resignation that time and biology will do its work; with or without dialog with the Government; resisting arrest or letting them take you prisoner; accepting financing from foreign organizations or rejecting it on principle; attending a government-sponsored “Rendering of Accounts” to channel complaints, or not attending to deny its legitimacy; going abroad to participate in events or declining invitations to not miss even a minute of the main struggle, and so on, until we run out of imagination in choosing the very colors of our arrogant identity.

But the newspaper Granma wasn’t having it: In the top right corner of the last page, where anniversaries often appear under the heading “Today in History,” it said: “1902: The neocolonial republic was installed in Cuba.”

I can foresee that in the future, that bright morning of the first day of the year will not be remembered as the end of a dictatorship, but as the beginning of another

The protagonists of History are not to blame for how the future interprets their acts. For example, the massacred aboriginals who inhabited our beautiful island never could have suspected the enthusiasm with which Cubans would celebrate the 500^th anniversary of the Spanish colonial settlements. The people of Bayamo who watched their properties burn could never have imagined the degree of voluntary unanimity today attributed to the glorious fire of 1869. No one could have convinced those who lost a son, a father, a brother in the bloody events of 26 July 1953, that that date would be a national holiday.

On May 20, 1902 dozens of countries around the world publicly recognized the advent of Cuba as an independent nation. The joy was massive, sincere and overwhelming. And I do not say unrepeatable because 56 years later there was a first of January on which Cubans never thought that a tyrannical regime would be installed in Cuba.

I can foresee that in the future, that bright morning of the first day of the year will not be remembered as the end of a dictatorship, but as the beginning of another. Nor that when my great-grandchildren are asked what happened on that date, they will respond “nothing happened that day.”

The park is named in honor of the employee who died around this time, trying to rescue goods store in the middle of a raging fire that left the building completely destroyed and which also injured 18 people. Material losses were valued at $20 million. Another shop worker named Carlos González Vidal, known for his opposition to the Revolution and identified as an active member of People’s Recovery Movement, was convicted of sabotage and subsequently shot.

Fe del Valle Ramos, affectionately known as Lula, was born in Remedios on August 1, 1917 and worked at the store from the ‘50s and served as department head. She was a member of the Federation of Cuban Women and in the militia. Eyewitnesses say that she was on duty that night and, although she was found safe when the firefighters arrived, she returned to save funds that had been collected for a daycare center for the children of store employees. Her burned body was found days after the fire amid the rubble.

Nowhere around the sculpture can be found the sculptor’s name. The woman represented there looks more like a kolkhoz from Socialist Realism times than a Cuban woman working a department store. The neighbors didn’t record the date on which her hands were torn off and no one even suggests the motives — political, personal or religious — that led to the vandalism.

In 2016 a celebration will be held for what specialists call a “closed anniversary” – ending in a zero or five. The commemoration of 55 years will be an opportunity to restore the statue, but it will probably follow the passions that were behind each of the acts of this tragedy: the confiscation, the revenge, the sacrifice, the desecration…