Translating Cuba

I WILL NOT SHUT UP, I WILL NOT LEAVE CUBA

Jorge Luis García Pérez Antúnez

In view of certain statements appearing in the media and on the Internet saying that, together with the dissident Juan Juan Almeida Garcia, I had accepted political asylum in the Republic of Chile through the efforts of that country’s Foreign Minister, I think it an opportune moment to clarify that at least in my case, I have not undertaken the slightest effort to leave my country, although I sincerely appreciate any efforts made on my behalf, and I once again reaffirm my position that I will not leave. I remain consistent with my watchword: I will not shut up, I will not leave Cuba. Any statement, affirmation or insinuation to the contrary should be considered erroneous and unfounded, though I am infinitely grateful for any gesture or concern for my person and for my compatriots.

Interview with Pedro Argüelles

Click Here for Audio of Interview with Pedro Argüelles

Transcript, translated:

Yoani Sánchez: What is your current situation? Where are you and what have they told you?

Pedro Argüelles: I’m in the provincial prison of Canaletas in Ciego de Avila. And what I have been told is on Saturday, July 10, I went to the office of the head of the prison and there they put me through on the phone to talk to the Archbishop of Havana, Cardinal Jaime Ortega. He informed me that I was on the list of those who would leave for Spain if I would agree to go. I told him that no, I had no interest in leaving my country. He asked me about my wife as well, if she would have any interest. I said no. Well, he told me, he would report back and he said goodbye. That is all I have been told, they haven’t told me anything more, I’m here waiting for events and their development.

Yoani Sánchez: Pedro, do you think these releases will strengthen or weaken the dissident movement and independent journalism inside Cuba?

Pedro Argüelles: Well, look, whether or not it will affect the strength honestly I can’t say right now because I am here inside and I’ve been here seven and a half years, here in the prison. I know there are new groups, I know there are new people doing independent journalism, carrying on the civil struggle. I think it doesn’t weaken it because in any case there are new pines, as our apostle Jose Marti said, and well, since 1976 when the first cell of the Cuban Committee for Human Rights was created in the Combinado del Este prison, that was the first cell, and we could get to this point because there have been relays, reliefs, there have been people who have carried on, people who died, new people coming out into the public arena. So I think that, ultimately, here we fulfill the law that everyone has the right and the freedom to decide for their own person, my brothers who would like to go I have absolutely nothing against them, that is their sovereign decision, it is their freedom. I make use of the thoughts of Marti who said that the duty of a man is to be where he is most useful. I believe that here is where I am most useful, that this is my place to fight for the rights and freedom inherent in the dignity of the human person and this is where I want to be. I don’t want to be in any other place, here on the front line of combat facing the Castros’ totalitarian regime.

Yoani Sánchez: And what will Pedro Argüelles do once he is outside Canaletas prisons?

Pedro Argüelles: Continue what we started in mid-1992 when I joined the Cuban Committee for Human Rights here in Ciego de Avila and then in 1998 founded the Ciego de Avila Independent Journalists Cooperative. Continue to denounce human rights violations and continue with the independent press and civil struggle. In order to achieve what we have so longed for and suffered for, the transition to democracy in Cuba.

Yoani Sánchez: Well, Pedro, thank you very much and we really hope that your name is among the next to be freed. We wish so much to give you that embrace so long postponed.

Pedro Argüelles: Some day it will happen, and I too am longing to meet with all all these new pines that have arisen.

Yoani Sánchez: Well, thank you very much.

Pedro Argüelles: A hug.

Meeting Once Again Postponed

It was pouring on the morning of February 23, 2003. The independent journalist Pablo Pacheco and I had arranged a meeting at the Central Park in Havana.

Pacheco, a resident of Ciego de Avila province, nearly 500 kilometers from the capital, was passing by the city. We would talk a lot by phone about our families and about politics, but mostly about sports, for we would write about it in our respective alternative press agencies. The heavy rain did not allow us to meet up.

When he called me in the first days of March 2003, I told him, “During your next visit to Havana we’ll meet each other.” It didn’t happen. On the morning of Wednesday, March 19, Pablo Pacheco was detained by the political police, put on trial, and condemned to 20 years of prison.

He was one of the 75 prisoners of conscience of the Black Spring. The world already knows about the absurd jurisdiction of those cases. They were peaceful men whose only weapons were their pens and their words. And as time passed, they became precious coins of trade for the Castro government.

On the afternoon of Saturday, February 21, 2009, nearly 6 years later, my phone rang while I was writing a post about the next baseball series for my blog, Desde la Habana (From Havana). Surprise. It was Pablo Pacheco calling from the prison of Canaleta in Ciego de Avila.

He was in good spirits, as if six long years had not passed, especially for Pacheco, who nightly slept behind bars. He told me about his wife, he read me some poems, most were about his son, and also read me something he wrote about Cuban civil society.

He even had time to read me something about the baseball series, which he wrote in the boring and slow hours of his life in prison. And I thought that no newspaper or website in the world would publish his stories or poems. Just like most other prisoners, they write for themselves. If anything, they write for their families or companions in struggle, also.

When I hung up, the tears came up to my eyes. The last time I had cried was on November 25, 2003 when my mother, my sister, and my niece, all left for a hard exile in Switzerland. I cried at the time because I thought that it was possible that I would never again see my mother alive, for she was 61-years-old when she left Cuba. It was a trip with no return.

Now, I cried because a 40-year-old man could not see his only son grow up, all thanks to an intolerant government. And also for the ill fortune when the rain impeded me from personally getting to meet my friend, Pablo Pacheco, on that 23rd of February 2003.

One year and five months later, on July 7, 2010, I received the great news that Pablo Pacheco was going to be released. He would travel to Madrid together with his wife and son. “I will finally be able to personally meet him,” I thought. I prepared my bookbag and went off towards Ciego de Avila.

But bad luck followed me. The trip was in vain. The authorities of Havana are going to put Pablo Pacheco aboard the plane without being able to say goodbye to anyone. It’s probable that I won’t even be able to hug him. The appointment continues to be postponed.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Since I couldn’t photograph myself with Pacheco, I decided to take pictures of the books which he will take with him to Spain.

Translated by Raul G.

Congratulations Spain!

Yesterday was a day of many emotions. From the early hours the largest theaters in the capital were completely full. The young and sweaty faces of those present, decorated with the colors of their teams, eagerly awaiting the start of the last game of the Series, to gaze in full color on the gigantic screen. Homemade flags and other original handicrafts were waving in the tight space. It was a great party, above all for the youth of Cuba.

A close game where both teams showed their wonderful skills and greatness. Each team had a fantastic goalkeeper, finally Casilla showed who was the best in the world, and together with to the goal by Inhiesta, it ended with a resounding victory for Spain, making Queen Sofía herself jump for joy.

I hope that very soon, in our little planet Cuba, we can enjoy baseball games in the same way, on a large screen in full color in the Big Leagues, because that is the sport that is the true passion of all of us natives who live here.

Translated by: MarcosD in NYC

Restriction and Violation of the Right of Association in Cuba

The establishment of an association in Cuba requires authorization from the Ministry of Justice. It lies in its discretion to allow or disallow a group of citizens to exercise its constitutional right of freedom of association. Its decision depends on an investigation of the legality and appropriateness.

The right of association is widely recognized as a basic individual civil right of utmost importance. Principally, because it provides protection against arbitrary state interference when people choose to associate with others. Furthermore it is an indispensable condition for the existence and functioning of a democratic society.

To protect these rights, the state is not only obligated not to interfere with their exercise, but, under certain circumstances, should take measures to encourage the effective exercise of this freedom. These rights could be restricted, but only under certain strict conditions, not at the discretion of government authorities.

The Cuban state not only grants discretionary power to the Ministry of Justice to authorize and register associations in accordance with the law. It also imposes relations of subordination and functional dependency upon authorized associations, thus unnecessarily restricting the freedom of action of Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) within the Island.

A sine qua non for the constitution of an association is the adoption of rules stipulating its relation and functional dependence on a state organization. It is also subject to double taxation. The Ministry of Justice also monitors its activities and can impose administrative sanctions.

The gravest of all violations of this right, however, is committed when the authorities do not respond to dissidents who request legal recognition to operate as an NGO. To this is added the threat, commonly used by the organs of State Security against the opposition, of accusing them of the crime of illicit association.

The penal legislation provides a sanction of one to three months imprisonment for the person who belongs as an associate or affiliate to an association not inscribed in the register. The sanction is tripled for the promoters or directors of the same.

Faced with these violations there was not much that could have been done. However, a recent event, unprecedented in 51 years of the “Revolution,” showed that it is still possible to take legal action against the silence of the socialist administration.

An organization of independent lawyers called the Cuban Law Association (AJC), on June 24, filed a lawsuit before the People’s Provincial Court of the City of Havana against the Minister of Justice, María Esther Reus, for preventing them from exercising their legal right of association.

For the first time a dissenting organization brings a lawsuit before a court against a representative of the government.

Translated by: undef

Twenty-First Century Diversions

According to my parents and grandparents, forty years ago circuses would come to the towns and over two or three days present various entertainments to delight children and adults. Today our realities are not of spectacles with fire-eaters, nor magicians, nor trained animals.

Each year for a short season the so-called children’s party arrives. A small group of outsiders, but with papers and permissions from the Holguin provincial government, is installed in a town field with portable equipment, some unknown. Never mind the health warnings about the spread of the H1N1 pandemic, warning people to avoid unnecessary crowds. They settle in because they bring “they say, a provincial program to provide entertainment to children.”

They recently came through my town to hold one of the best parties we’ve seen around here. One that every kind of person could enjoy after they launched the festivities. I was there with my two little ones to see what they offer through their inventiveness and how others develop what God has given them: talent.

Tattoos painted on the skin with acrylics, a machine that is like something out of a local Disneyland, and many more that I didn’t know how to capture. To live, this seems to be the theme of salvation, and as it has been for centuries, here are some examples of human survival.

To comment on this article please visit:
Luis Felipe’s Blog: Crossing the Barbed Wire.

Time Stopped

It’s as if all the clocks had been stopped. In unison, the same day at the same time. The unease is widespread around the Cuban political prisoners and their families.

Despite the official announcement that 52 opponents of the Group of 75 will be released, they still don’t know exactly when those releases will occur. Much less who are the candidates to leave the country immediately and who in the coming months. And if it’s true that they will exchange their cells for exile.

Arnaldo Ramos, 68, sleeps little and badly. And he always has the same dreams: that his wife Lidia is preparing his favorite dish, while running her fingers through the long hair of their granddaughter Roxana.

Right now, all the prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003 are a bundle of nerves. A group of men who never should have been imprisoned.

I seem to see the doctor Oscar Elias Biscet, praying before bed, with the Bible at the head of his bunk in the Combinado del Este prison.

Or the reporter Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso, full of aches, thinking about David and Daniel, his sons who aren’t little boys any more and after seven long hears he will see them as teenagers.

Either way, there are hopes. At this moment I can’t forget Reina Luisa, Orland Zapata’s mother. The hunger strike that cost the life of her son forced the government to reconsider its rigid postures.

In the solitude of their small and poor dwelling in Banes, Holguin, Reina knows that Orlando will not knock in the door carrying his duffel bag, like the rest of those released. She will not be able to hug hum, nor sit down and talk with him.

I also think of all the men and women of Cuba and in the world who in a loud voice, without fear, have called for democratic changes on the island.

In Madrid, a friend listens to the boleros of the singer Olga Guillot and drinks strong coffee, typing with two-fingers his chronicles for the newspaper El Mundo. Morón, his hometown, he keeps under his pillow.

This gesture, the result of three-party negotiations, could be a first step. Pablo Pacheco would like to watch Sunday’s final between Spain and Holland sitting next to his son. And I want to hug my niece, Yania, who left Cuba when she was 9 and just turned 16.

In this battles there are no winners. We have all lost something. And we all want change.

Iván García

Photo: Reina Luisa Tamayo is consoled by a Lady in White, shortly after the death of her son, Orlando Zapata Tamayo.

Progress of Review

Written by: Yadaimí Domínguez

Earlier this week, Coronel Lazaro Martin Diaz, who visited us at our home, told us that the Petition for Review filed by the family of Jamil Dominguez, with the Ministry of Justice, on 27 April had been sent up to the People’s Supreme Court on Friday July 2. He showed us the letter by the Head of National Review’s Criminal Affairs Ministry, which would reach the hands of Jamil during the week.

With this process, we must wait for the Supreme Court to notify us, thereby to appoint lawyers to defend the case. Although the information is encouraging, we despair with regards to the sentencing process, given the situation in which my brother finds himself since April 14.

It turns out to be that once received in writing by the Ministry of Justice, the competent court, it must arrange, within three days, the emplacement with delivery of copies to those people who have been parties to the case or to their successors, so that within a term of ten days, they are notified in writing to appear as is their right. The court deeming it necessary, will proceed to consider the evidence offered by the parties and in possession of the office, and require the pre-trial hearing, signaling the right to appoint counsel to represent him establishing that consideration of the formalities is complete it will give it through the roll and the actions to the District attorney, and later to the defender, and if there is no designated attorney it will appoint one, giving him three days to prepare for the hearing. Finally, the hearing will be occur within 30 days following the expiration of the previous term.

The haste with which this case should be conducted, given the circumstances, and prolonged time in which Yamil stays, it is inevitable. In situations like this is essential to violate the terms of the law indicated, if the aim is above all not to cause irreparable prejudice to a human being, especially when he been evilly condemned by those who represent the law.

The Procedure to Legalize an Association in Cuba

After a group is formed, it submits an application to the Registrar of Associations of the Ministry of Justice for a certificate stating that no other official or non-governmental organization (NGO) exists in the country with the same name or the same purposes as the new association. This certificate accompanies the rest of the documents for the application for the charter.

The rule requires that when the association is of national scope, the application must be made to the government department or agency that is relevant to the objectives of the proposed association.

If the goals are of a provincial or municipal nature, the entity responsible for receiving the application will be the executive committee of whichever Administrative Board of the Assembly of the People’s Power is appropriate (provincial or municipal).

These entities make evaluations and submit reports to the Ministry of Justice (MINJUS), setting out their considerations regarding approval or denial. MINJUS issues the order that either authorizes or rejects the charter of the association, in accordance with the law and regulations (Article 7, Law of Associations).

That decision can be challenged by lodging an appeal with the Minister of Justice, and his or her resolution of the matter may be challenged in the courts. (Article 20 of the Act).

The state agencies maintain a close link with the chartered association and oversee its activities, coordinating and collaborating with the development and operation of the entity so that it achieves its intended goals. The Ministry of Justice also oversees the functioning of the association and may impose administrative penalties. These rules of connection and dual control over its actions govern the relationship of dependence and subordination of the organization to state interests.

Conclusion: an association in Cuba is created by a private autonomous act, followed by administrative control of that initiative, a process that leads to entry in the appropriate registry, which determines its legal status.

There are associations in Cuba that have a special form of constitution, for example, cooperatives of credit and services (CCS), and of agricultural production (CPA). In these cases the applicants must have the State declare that it recognizes the group as a legal entity, provided that it is organized in conformance with the terms and conditions imposed by Law 36 of July 22, 1982.

The State verifies whether these conditions have been met by the proposed entity, and if so, the official confirmation of the prescribed requirements, and the subsequent order of registration and publication, are what confer legal status upon the entity. The law is not the source of that status.

Political, social, and mass organizations recognized as legal entities in our legal system are also formed in a unique way. They are regarded in the legal system as organizations of people, with legal independence, whose decisions and contracts are given the status of voluntary acts, with the power to dispose of or encumber their assets, for historical-political issues.

Translated by: Tomás A.

IN UNION IS STRENGTH

EN UNIÓN ESTÁ LA FUERZA, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo.

“Mark of Eggs”

Ernesto Pérez Chang
HAVANA TIMES Intervene

In 1980 the Marxist Louis Althusser murdered his wife in the middle of an attack of schizophrenia; also dead – but not at the hands of Althusser – Sartre, Roland Barthes and Bon Scott, the lead singer of AC / DC; but we remember this year in Cuba because chicken eggs were still not rationed or available only in the illegal market; but a peso a dozen and you could buy as many as you wanted.

The hens had not been extinguished nor were they as nervous as those today who lay only under more conditions than can be generated, together, by the legal paperwork of two transnationals of steel who generate a peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis.

Those chickens, maybe a Russian breed, produced at any time and throughout the year, faster than we could eat the eggs. So there came a time in which some officer came up with a policy initiative: launch them against the “enemy.”

Something strange happened that year that it was all over, and if they were given to the Marxists for murdering their wives, a few Cubans, perhaps, watching their neighbor’s beard burn, they were given for escaping the island leaving a country divided between those who were leaving because, among other things they could stand neither the eggs nor the thrown eggs, and those who were left had to comply with the order to launch them in “acts of repudiation” or “marches of the combatant people.”

They shouted slogans against Jimmy, who also agreed with Torrijos who boycotted the Moscow Olympics, and eggs were thrown against the elusive and perhaps a wise economist got them for calling out “worms” because they foresaw that in a not too distant spring, when a shortage of eggs and rubles would have to return processed pupae in gorgeous green-winged style of “federal reserve.”

I was only nine years old but I remember the afternoons the Chairman of the Committee of Defense of the Revolution would send us to pass by the house to leave slips of paper with the names and addresses of the “scum.” The slag, in my neighborhood, was never a “military.”

The slag was not exactly a vile or contemptible person or even a scrap of cast iron. The scum were those “civilian” neighbors who wished to emigrate to the United States; and the Order of Party was disavow them with posters and eggs; “lightning rallies” were a sort of brief, impromptu pedagogical carnivals seeking to teach, first, those who practice “treason” suffer the consequences, and second, in international public opinion, the Mariel boatlift that was the plot of a tiny undesirable clique.

But the house of the “worm-scum” was always the same as that of some friend of ours; however, after seven or eight at night, we obeyed our parents – who in turn obeyed the Party – and we accompanied them shouting slogans and throwing eggs forgetting that until that evening the ones we listened to weeping, terrified by the mob, had played with us in the park.

Some – especially those who never accepted that the neighborhood was invaded by “civilians” -were so inflamed they even hit the doors and windows of the houses with sticks, shouting obscenities and violent phrases. Once they knocked down a door and pulled a family out to beat them. I can still hear the cries of the children’s pleas as the parents bent over their children to protect them from an excited torrent tearing their clothes and spitting. I remember the face of every one of us who were there, and I can ensure that there was no compassion.

Today it is rare to hear someone talk about those days. Of the enraged a few remain who do the same again. Despite that after all these years, they haven’t spent the time; others, most, I don’t know, some no longer live in the neighborhood. Years later in the nineties, they built rafts and boats, and no one threw eggs or called them worms or scum, as they emigrated to the United States.

Of the families repudiated, a few remain. Patience and silence has been a lesson. They walk and wave at their attackers as if nothing had happened. Sometimes I think they didn’t understand what happened that year, I can not believe that everyone has forgotten. Is it resignation, simple resignation?

A visitor to Havana today, can see the marks of exploded eggs still remaining on some buildings. Despite rains since 1980, and although the attempt to cover them with paint and slogans, the tossed eggs refuse to disappear, but I don’t know if it is to remind us of the folly of that year on the island or to talk about resignation or faith.

Prologue to The Little Brother

Finally, yes, I yielded to necessity. I often wondered how long I could resist the stimulus, the temptation, and I delayed my response as if it had something to do with the uncomfortable or inevitable.

Because to admit the need for a blog, these days, is a bit like adopting the latest style, and I am ashamed to admit that over every trendy fashion hangs the suspicion of childishness. At times without discrimination. And so, as so often, I renege.

Eventually, circumstances overcame my stupidity, and I told myself: there are times when fashion saves and redeems us. We fill our lungs with oxygen when we feel overcome by routine, and find new paths, beautiful solutions.

Thus was born my abdication. And in consequence, thus arises The Little Brother. From the recognition that without our own voices, men strangle us in their thoughts. The cumulative thinking becomes a matter that needs expansion, otherwise it turns against itself, crashes against the cranial walls, and self-destructs.

To avoid this, we have our voice. Oral or written. Nut we need to use it. And if no one around you gives you a place to extend it, if all the parks and plazas are closed to you, if they prevent you from screaming or writing in a newspaper, something must be sought, no? The alternative word had become so essential that if we didn’t have it in our language, we would have to invent it.

So, I repeat, thus arises The Little Brother.

This blog is a view from below. A camera from underneath. But it is a view that doesn’t admit bandages nor tolerate disadvantages. Because even though Big Brother outweighs you, and even though he will put a lot of effort into stopping you (like the one who burned the scores of Johann Sebastian Bach, and didn’t let him play the harpsichord with freedom), the Little Brother has eyes to see.

And, fortunately, a clear voice, very sincere, that also knows how to speak.

The First Sip of Water

After 134 days without solid food, or even a sip of liquid, Guillermo Fariñas lifted a red plastic cup to his lips and drank a little water. It was 2:15 in the afternoon on Thursday July 8, and from the other side of the glass in the intensive care ward where he was being treated, dozens of friends watching him burst into applause as if they had been witnesses to a miracle.

Fariñas had won one battle but still remains in a fierce war against death, because the land that has seen the action of this singular belligerency is his own body — ultimately the only space available to him to carry out this campaign. His intestines are now like fragile paper conduits distilling bacteria through their pores, his jugular vein is partially obstructed by a blood clot which, if it detached, could lodge in the heart, brain or lungs; or more precisely, in his heart, his brain or his lungs. He has suffered four staph infections and at night a sharp pain in his groin barely allows him to sleep.

His shriveled esophagus was not ready for that first sip of water. It created such a pain in his chest that for a minute he thought he was having a heart attack, but he endured it in silence. On the other side of the glass, expectantly watching, were those who for days had been keeping a vigil outside the hospital, praying for his life, and others who had come from very far away to ask him to end his martyrdom and to be a witnesses to his victory. Not wanting to dampen the celebration of his jubilant colleagues applauding the triumph of his cause, he managed to turn a grimace into a smile.

Guillermo Fariñas’s family allowed me to watch over him on this, the first night after the end of his hunger strike, and he allowed me to be a witness his suffering, his occasional crankiness, and his human weaknesses. Only then did I discover the true hero of this day.