Author: Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

The Cuban government and its supporters abuse the ballad — they already made traditional — of the Cyberwar against Cuba. They don’t speak about their own, that floods our media with propaganda, offends those who disagree with their political model, violates many of our rights — among others the right to have Internet access from our homes — and speculates with excessive prices for Internet connectivity offered in the hotels.

If there is something they should recognize in the authorities is their capacity to improvise arguments and pretexts according to their convenience. It doesn’t matter if they’re very convincing or not. Before the fiber optic cable came from Venezuela, in February 2011, the argument was that the United States, with its blockade, prevented the Cuban State — relying on satellite connections — from having the capacity necessary to allow its own citizens to access the mega-web. However, foreigners have had the right for years.

Now, thanks the Venezuelan cable expanding the Cuban bandwidth by 3,000 times, it is still the United States with its blockade that is guilty, “because they are the owners of the Internet and have focused a media war against our country.” You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t! In other words, a raft of excuses for why Cubans can’t surf.

We Cubans on the island already have a wide experience over half a century of audacity against our fundamental freedoms, and for those of us who have computers in Cuba, they kill our chances of being able to independently surf in this sea of knowledge, culture, economic, communication, and globalized information that is cyberspace. We assumed that with the arrival of the fiber optic cable we should be enjoying this right, but the “government sharks” ate this cable — all by themselves.

March 28 2012

Present relations between Church and State and the Papal visit have turned unbelievably controversial. Nonetheless, for Catholics and devotees of the Virgin of la Caridad del Cobre, the arrival of the Pontiff Benedict XVI in Cuba will culminate the Jubilee Year for the 400th anniversary of the discovery of our Beloved Mother and Patroness. For 365 days, our beloved “Cachita” has made a pilgrimage throughout our country, surrounded by the faithful who came to pay tribute to a replica of her image, to ask for her grace and to reaffirm themselves in faith.

Across the years, many Cubans from different places called for the reconciliation of the Cuban State with the Catholic Church, for religious freedom, for the return of the Church’s property, the rights of parishioners to processions, the respect of pastoral and evangelic spaces, etc. And now that a climate of compromise has been established between the Cuban clergy and the authorities, a political and propagandistic bitterness has reawakened in some sectors with contradictory edgings. Which is it? Do you want reconciliation or confrontation? I really don’t understand. Now it turns out that the Marxist government, which fought, marginalized and harassed the ecclesiastic institution and its faithful — and wielded the presupposition that religion is the opiate of the masses — is now the good, that which defends her, as well as her flock. Doubtlessly, there is an interested and intelligent manipulation behind this change of roles.

The Catholic Church always has its doors open to all. We will attend the Mass that the Successor of Peter will celebrate in the Plaza of all Cubans, that although it has been militarized, it is public. It was constructed during the previous government, it is civic and in it officiated Pope John Paul II. We will go — as one must — to listen to the Liturgy of the Word and to receive the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

The Mass which will be officiated by the Vicar of Christ and Maximum Authority of the Vatican on Wednesday the 28th, will welcome Cubans who attend to join in fellowship and pay tribute to the Word of God with faith and gratitude. It doesn’t seem fair that people should have to use the establishment of a religion as an excuse to voice a claim to their rights.

Translated by: JT

March 27 2012

Recently Rafe, my husband went to renew his identity card. He had to do because it was expired and he needed to renew it for some other paperwork he was immersed in. He went to the office in charge of this function, patiently waited his turn in the fifty-year-old system of lines, handed over the photos, the five peso regulatory seal, and spent several exhausting hours, his feet hurting from the long wait, and was given the information that he should return the following day to pick it up.

When he appeared once again, they told him they could not give it to him because he was in the country illegally, because in their computers it appears that he stayed in Canada during a mission in 2000; he would have to go to the National Directorate of Immigration and Nationality, located at 3rd and 22nd in Miramar, to resolve his situation.

Of course he protested, because he knows it’s a manufactured error giving the authorities a pretext to destabilize him, which resurfaces every time he’s invited to participate in some event abroad and seeks the ignominious “exit permit.” But this is the first time they have refused him the indispensable document of identity.

Naturally, he refused to put himself in the bureaucratic orbit where they want to spin him. “The mistake is yours, you who are representing the authority and therefore you  are called to resolve it. If I emigrated in the year 2000,” he argued to the official, “how is it that this same office handed me the card in the 2002?”

Given this obvious slip, the manager promised he would look into it and would call to report the results of these efforts. And he did a few days later. Today my spouse is already documented, but only to stay within the country. What to do? Who to appeal to? This is another of the abuses, against which they are helpless, that the historical elite of Cuba are subjected to by their leaders. It is inconceivable that there are other people who have the same names and surnames, who were born the same day, and whose parents had the same names. No, it is a way to treat an opponent in the old-fashioned and antiquated totalitarian Cuban model.

This is the real face of the authorities who violate the rights of their fellow citizens and behave viciously toward political dissidents in a dictatorship that allows them, with impunity, to sculpt a no one, or to maliciously and “officially” crush and discredit those who oppose the system.

It is not in Rafa’s hands — nor should it be — to amend “the mistake” that appears in the network of the National Directorate of Migration and Alien Affairs of Cuba,that would trap him in the vain, humiliating and exhausting game they subject him to — perhaps interminably — of the “bureaucratic mischief” of the political police. For now we have only the option of denouncing it, in writing, one more time.

March 22 2012

From: “skyscrapercity.com”

They arrived early to “visit me” as a couple — as they generally do, whenever they are ordered to harass an opponent — young people of both sexes who identify themselves as agents from the Ministry of the Interior. The pretext was a survey conducted for the National Housing Directorate, and they wanted to know my opinions about the purchase and sale of houses and used cars.

The first inconsistency that jumped out at me was that they came to me directly, they knew my name and surnames and they didn’t have the forms usual in such cases. However, they said, politely, that my participation was voluntary, but my husband had already invited them in — also politely — and they sat on my living room sofa quite disposed to chat. So despite such a phony pretense, I answered their questions honestly to see what the real motive was of their visit.

I answered questions and thought about the subliminal message I wanted to send to the gendarmes of the political police. But for someone who started in the human rights movement in Guanabo, in 1988, and has long since learned to interpret some behavioral codes of the officers of the Cuban State Security, why not speak out?

I thought — when it was my turn to listen — about the first part of the film The Godfather and the fish received by the ’family’ of Vito Corleone wrapped in the bulletproof vest of his hitman Luca Brasi, to communicate that he had been murdered and lay at the bottom of the bay.

I concluded that they had been sent so I would not forget that “they” are there, paying attention to how much say and do — as exercising my freedom and rights is important to me — and they wanted to try, once again, to coerce me. They then raised the question that I found then — and still do — to be the key to that visit. Who is the owner of this home? I said it was me and they insisted, “And the title of the property is in your name?”

Summoning my husband in 1996 or 1997, the police threatened to take the apartment he had acquired with his father in 1959 and they stripped him of it in 2000; since then I have taken steps; the documentation that names me as the owner is not going to appear in any of the offices where one duly registers deeds.

We Cubans who live in this dictatorship and exercise freedom of conscience, are accustomed to the visible (and invisible) presence of the cops, who as devils of the guard, sent “to guard us and keep us” when they like; they attack us with diatribes and without right of reply, covertly harass us or not, sniff in our private lives and enter it without permission and with impunity. And not just threats, but when it’s convenient, they carry them out.

Days later, friends in the area alerted me to the operation that was surrounding my house, which lasted seventy-two hours. It seems that the personnel graduated from the academies of the Ministry of the Interior must be hardened in the exercise against the peaceful dissident through maneuvers that these days, in practice, are more costly than effective.

Anyway, although they threatened me they did not intimidate me. They only reaffirmed the precedent of using its enormous power, among others, to join the gang against those who disagree with their policies and express it freely and publicly, although his ideas are driven by a commitment to the homeland.

It doesn’t matter how many agents repress us; they are members of the military that responds only to the interests of one party and have the strength and ammunition to try to quell — in vain — the libertarian aspirations of this peaceful and defenseless woman, who like others, only grasps the “weapon” of her words.

March 20 2012

Just to let you know that I had some personal problems which, added to the pothole of accessing the internet, let me to interrupt my work on this blog for a month. Thank you for your patients and I hope that this restart the generous practice of your sending me your collaboration and comments will continue. Thanks for visiting the blog and letting me know your opinions.

March 20 2012

In recent years we Cubans have witnessed through the media — mainly from TV — the work in favor of respect for sexual diversity. A psychologist of guerrilla ancestry, called Mariela, surname Castro, directs the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX) and is its most visible face — perhaps in consideration of her creating it, being its principal “in-chief” and fundamental instigator — of this noble campaign. It is a path based on respect and involves freedoms and legal recognition being established to remove old prejudices and discriminatory structures.

Cuban television. from its massive reach, is playing a leading role in this human task. Almost daily we see education-oriented spots to that purpose. But the just performance of this project is clouded by the remnants of a society still sexist, which you can not change its way of thinking if it doesn’t see the example in the sponsors.

The faint silhouette of two men kissing, men walking with hands intertwined, two razors in the bathroom and two briefs hanging from a clothesline – as if every Cuban had only one pair — are some of the spots. It is likely that the “daddy’s girl” is also vindicating the actions of her uncle and father, who were particularly harsh with male homosexuals.

But is Mariela missing something? What about Eve? Perhaps she would prefer that some of the the space now being given to homosexuals as a way to combat sexism, but omitting lesbians, be put at the service of supporting the rights of women. As director of CENESEX and advocate for the GLBT community, she should expand her audiovisual campaign without contradictions and ambiguities, as both sexes are due the same respect and equal rights.

Maybe the anti-democratic guerrilla is a totally bad example, with the false paternalism that has controlled Cubans in almost every aspect of life, and which for many years showed signs of homophobia and even discrimination against and violations of the rights of their fellow citizens.

February 17 2012

Wilman was the victim of the abuse of power and the police who appeared to be directed by the high leadership of the country. Accustomed to vex and judge roughly the peaceful political dissidents and independent journalists in order to plant the seeds of terror in the citizenship, to avoid with intolerance what the independent civil society grows, and to maintain unharmed their cabinet and perks. To blackmail Maritza Pelegrino –now widow of Villar Mendoza — threatening to take away her daughters if she didn’t abandon the ranks of the Ladies in White, is an act lacking in ethics. Facts like these do not serve to “defend their Revolution” but to sully it. When they use violence, when they publicly denigrate and have paramilitary men hit women and defenseless people, they are serving a shameful, unspeakable and arbitrary order. They don’t change the mentality with slogans or through a decree, but with an appropriate government code of ethics and and in the just exercise of power.

This tragedy happened within just in a few days of the awaited visit of the president of Brazil, an ex-political prisoner who was tortured, and the visit of Pope Benedict XVI scheduled in March. In this hostile environment that has propitiated the intolerance, the Cuban government hides behind “convenient” criminal offenses in order to sanction political activism while awaiting these dignitaries. You can’t reform a country destroyed by the same people who pretend to fix it with ideological propaganda, but must do so with humane ideas and logical ethics and by including people who contribute to the respect of justice in all orders of national life. The new Cuba which inevitably will be reborn from this rubble of ignominy, should erect itself humanely with the respect and the harmony of all of its children inside and outside our borders, where there exists plurality of parties and ideas and where there is not mistreatment or oppression toward its children who defend their differing opinions from the official ones.

I sympathize with the pain of the families and I join the “outraged” members of Cuban society to condemn this death which could have been avoided. It is left to us to continue working to honor the example and the valiant souls of Pedro L. Boitel, Orlando Zapata, Laura Pollán and Wilmar Villar, rest in peace.

Translated by Jackie Isaksen

January 24 2012

I want to share with my readers my concern about why the Cuban government is betting on a Republican administration in the United States. The Castro brothers have found it easy to justify their inaction to their party, civil and military cadres and the population in general, with the aggressive and recurring discourse that, since 1959, has blasted the north, and which they have maintained for more than five decades; but it has brought colder and more aggressive winds when “the hawks” have been in power.

That has permitted the Cuban leadership of the last fifty years to take refuge behind the strategic wall that guarantees its continued rule in Cuba. Why do I think they desire a Republican government in power in our neighboring country? Looking at and analyzing the current situation of an evening gives me an idea of what may be happening. As I do not have full information, here is an outline of my brief opinion, burnished over 53 years of totalitarianism and excessive politicization.

A few days ago the Cuban government published its interest to participate, if it is invited, in the Summit of the Americas to be held in Columbia this year. In the previous event, held in Trinidad and Tobago in 2009, I wondered why the countries of the Bolivian Alternative for the People of America (ALBA) didn’t demand the presence of the Antillean government.

I deduced then that it was to avoid a meeting between Raul Castro and Barack Obama. Now, they support this even and want Cuba to participate. What changed? What right does the totalitarian government of Cuba have to attend to negotiate the items on the agenda of a meeting of democratic governments when it, itself, is not one? Why boycott the upcoming Summit?

In my post “Diversity vs. Demogoguery,” I discussed the creation of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and of the fact that our country is the only one on the continent where there is not political plurality. Perhaps the historic Cuban establishment was only conspiring against the “imperial power” with the creation of CELAC, and wants to encourage to “friendly” governments of ALBA to adopt a confrontational attitude toward the United States that would facilitate their radicalization Cuban-style, with the same tactic of a “country besieged.”

To try to create a difficult situation for president Barack Obama in an election year, makes me thing they are betting — inspired by the experience of the Castro regime — on the election of a Republican in the upcoming U.S. elections, that would allow Cuba to continue with its messianic manifesto and convince its friends to follow in this venture that has been profitable for them, but that has nothing to do with democracy. What do you think?

February 14 2012

Foreign and domestic news pours forth in Cuba with extensive coverage of the international and national press; academic, intellectual, social, and cultural events, contests, speeches and appearances: all manipulated, at the convenience of the powers-that-be with a huge media coverage.

Almost simultaneously the authorities unleash a wave of repression that stirs concern and solidarity. So new information arises that will take prominence and displace other no less important news. Wilman Villar died without having been morally vindicated by those who caused his death and later, as an aggravation, they reviled him.

Hmmm! It is a strategy repeated endlessly with one arm so long that it extends beyond our borders. Some might think that luck accompanies the Cuban totalitarian government and safeguards the aftermath of world opinion, but I think that traditionally and historically they have pulled the strings of the Creole political puppet and will continue to do so, with the reins firmly attached behind the scenes and from time to time the scriptwriter-in-chief comes to light. I watch and comment, because it is my duty and right to freely express my opinion.

February 12 2012

The contractions of the womb “favored” María del Carmen Peña with her birth on January 1, 1959, the same day the guerrillas led by Fidel Castro came to power. I met her in seventh grade and we studied together through the tenth.

Her classmates and teachers knew that every year all those born on that day met with Castro, took photos, and received multiple and expensive gifts that were not available in the entire network of stores nationwide.

Once she rejoined us in early January displaying a fat Rolex on her wrist that had been presented at the most recent annual meeting. We all admired the generosity of the leader of the revolution, who was more generous than the Swiss manufacturer, randomly rewarding some young people with this symbol of authority, which was only worn, at that time in Cuba, by leaders of the upper echelons of real power.

It was the misuse of office to reward at will because he was master of everything, he had and could do everything, and disposed of the resources available to him as if they were his own.

She lived in Santos Suarez and I have not seen her since. Years have passed, the Mariel Boatlift, the Cuban emigration maintained and growing, the domestic human rights movement and opposition … and I wonder if the Rolex survived the Special Period, or if it was converted into a savior in that painful period and perhaps helped — exchanged for paper money — to “warm the plate” and diversify the family table for a few days. But what then?

From the early stage to the onset of the ’70s we did not grasp the signs of arrogance coming from  power. This was just a tiny sample of the encyclopedia of disasters they have brought us and the rights they have taken away. It was cheap and broken watch that we are still paying for, that they left we Cubans who did not have the ’privilege’ of being born with the new year when Cuba was turned into a feudal fiefdom by a group of guerrillas.

January 31 2012

In remembrance of Wilman Villar Mendoza

The Cuban state talks nonsense with the traditional verbiage with which they usually justify their inexcusable acts and remain silent about the reasons and abuse that led to the death of Wilman Mendoza. The chess strategy that “the best defense is an offense” ends whatever possibility of dialogue with sectors outside the state dramaturgy, undermines the approach to democratic governments and truncates the necessary spaces of reconciliation between all the children of the nation. To keep Cuban society subjugated and divided remains its primary objective.

We are more than a few well-wishers who were hoping that this time an investigation of the causes of our compatriot Villar Mendoza’s death would be ordered, but for the authorities, the harassment, coercion and abuse are weapons that guarantee political control and their remaining in power. A “macho” state militarized, prohibitive and completely choking us, which,  despite having so much power, is afraid and shows its moral weakness by insulting and lying about the hunger strike of an opponent.

The luxuriant tree and good of the country, which should give shade for everyone equally, is torn apart with verbal and physical abuse of the imprisoned peaceful opponents — according to statements from prisoners, ex-political prisoners and their families — and they pour insults and defamation over those who dissent from the system. But they don’t fool anyone. The leaves of the wicked continue to fall in this perennial autumn and their exuberance of slander is lost with new winds of disobedience by peaceful citizens, who throb expectantly behind the locks of this repressive society that increasingly refuses to live without speaking up.

February 2 2012