Author: Yoani Sánchez

The arrival of the Biennial to our city is a good time to enjoy the aesthetic surprises that await us around every corner, but it also confirms the collision of art and need. Near the artworks employing major material resources the inquisitive eyes of a guard are always watching. The protected works, with their “Don’t touch” signs or surrounded by closed perimeters, abound on sidewalks and in parks, more than they should. A contrast between the interaction sought by the artists who place their works in public spaces, and the excessive protection to which they are subjected, precisely so that this public doesn’t end up taking them away in their pockets, piece by piece.

The guard who prevents vandalism or looting also adds an ideological curator who ensures that no installation, performance or show deviates from the official script. A group of watchdogs of the artistically correct impeded Tania Bruguera from entering the Museum of Fine Arts at the end of last week. These censors of free creation also forced Gorki Aguila into a car, after preventing him from hanging the face of the graffiti artist El Sexto on the same walls where he had left us his indelible signature.

Need marks each work of art of the Havana Biennial. Material need, where a screw used in some pedestal could end up in the door of a home, or in a chair or even in the bed where four people sleep every night. And the other need, that of freedom, makes us approach the art to take for ourselves a piece of its rebellion, before the guard blows his whistle and we leave, empty handed.

 

In a lecture at the University of Havana’s Great Hall, Hollande said that “to come to Cuba is to come to a country that represents for Latin America a form of expression, of vindication of dignity and independence.” Although he didn’t say it, the French president knows that he is in a nation with prisoners of conscience, without political parties, where opponents are threatened and repressed. A land without union rights, with an illegal independent press, and a military power that is handed down in the family.

On this visit we needed reaffirmation that the France of the Rights of Man still believes in the unshakeable values that recognize the rights of individuals to disagree, to express their differences without fear and to organize around them. We demanded some words of support, words that would confirm for us that the government of the European country is willing to support, in Cuba, the desires for freedom that have so marked and modeled its own national history.

In the minds of many, the first French president on Cuban soil will be remembered for his complacent posture toward the authorities

A man who has declared that French and Cubans have “shared the same movement of ideas, the same aspirations, the same philosophical inspiration, cannot believe that he has visited a country where citizens have chosen by their own free will to subordinate themselves to a totalitarian power. Does Hollande think that we have tacitly chosen the cage? Does he suppose, perhaps, that we are comfortable in our chains?

On the positive side of this visit, we will be left with the opening of the new Alliance Francaise headquarters, and a wider collaboration in tourism, education and health. However, in the minds of many, the first French president on Cuban soil will be remembered for his complacent posture toward the authorities. Hard to remember, after all these years, a trip with a script so very played-out.

Hollande was accompanied by a business delegation made up of companies such as Pernod Ricard, the hotel chain Accor, Air France, the distribution group Carrefour, the telecommunications company Orange, and several banks. Closing deals in the energy and tourist sectors was ultimately the most substantial share of their presence in Cuba, although the meeting with Fidel Castro has dominated the headlines.

Time will pass and our country will progress to a new political situation. We will hear some historians say that the influence exercised by the French president was decisive on this path to change. But that will be later, when the historians rewrite the past and adorn it at their convenience. For now, it is difficult to know how this insipid visit could influence our future.

However, the symbolic effect of this relaxation reaches dimensions that transcend the political gesture. We live on an island and this has given the sea, for us, the character of an insurmountable frontier, a wall that isolates us from the world. When a Cuban prepares to visit another country, we rarely use the verb “to travel,” but rather appeal to a more dramatic word, salir: which means to “go out” or “get out” or even “break away.” To escape our insularity, to get to the other side, we have to saltar: “leap over.” A catamaran from Florida arriving along our coast every day would break – at least metaphorically – this geographic isolation used, for the last half century, for ideological purposes.

People in the street, however, are waiting for more than allegories. Now hopes focus on trips by Cuban-Americans becoming cheaper with the new maritime connection. Many dream that the holds of these boats can also bring the resources for private enterprise, agriculture and domestic life. “The pieces I’m lacking for my Russian-made Lada car,” Cheo, an engineer turned taxi driver, dreamed yesterday. His brother bought some Soviet car parts in Miami but he can’t send them because “they weigh too much and it’s too expensive by air.”

In the afternoon, two men were arguing in a crowded bus about whether the Cuban government would authorize a ferry landing in Havana. “Not even crazy people are going to allow that, boy,” shouted the older one, continuing his argument with, “Do you really think they’re going to let a boat with an American flag dock here?” The younger one, however, turned the conversation to his interests, ”What we need them to do, in addition to a ferry line, is put in an Internet line.” And so he finished with an ironic laugh.

Cubans appear ready to make up for lost time. To fit into the world in every way possible. To convert the sea that for so long was a barrier into a path, a road, a connection.

The drama of those still cleaning out the mud with own efforts, shoveling it from their living rooms and bedrooms, doesn’t fit with today’s “workers’ glory,” foreign guests, and even Nicolas Maduro’s trip to share the platform in the Plaza of the Revolution with those who live in houses well-protected from inclement weather. Meanwhile, a few yards from the place where they waved flags and chanted slogans this morning, those affected by Wednesday’s storm tried to recapture the rhythm of their lives. The high water mark, which reached nearly six feet in some areas, is still fresh on the facades and in memories.

They should have suspended a parade that has cost thousands of pesos needed to help the victims

There are countries where it costs a president his job if he doesn’t personally go to the scene of an accident or a natural disaster. The absence of government officials in an area affected by a storm, a volcano or an earthquake earns the enmity of the citizens in many places, and the condemnation of the international community. In Cuba, however, fanfare has been imposed as a strategy to divert attention from the problems. This May Day has been an example of how official propaganda privileges triumphalism and minimizes misery.

A lady was sitting on the corner of Amenidad and Infanta Streets this morning, looking at the sky. Her hands wet from bailing out the water from the downstairs apartment where she lives. “I’m just waiting for the parade to end,” she said in a loud voice to anyone who would listen, with that wave of courage that overcomes us when we no longer have anything to lose. “When that’s over, maybe they will remember us,” she reaffirmed with a certain illusion.

They didn’t organize any parties in this miserable place. Out of shame, they should have suspended a parade that has cost thousands of pesos needed to help the victims. A little political sanity would have been required… but, who can ask those who have lived as well-to-do bourgeoisie for 56 years to think like the proletariat?

Like any artist, Maldito is daring and irreverent. His works are provocative and even the title of his blog, Castor Jaboa, is an anagram* which, when we reorder its letters, delivers its message loud and clear. However, beyond his art, this young man who studied at the San Alejandro National Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, is a real cubanazo** who boasts the talent, mischievousness and the humor that so characterizes us. So how is it possible that, for political reasons, he is prevented from being in the place where he’s from, the site from which flows much of his art and his world of reference?

Maldito’s is not a new story, but that is no reason why we should get used to such abuse, nor cease to denounce it. After more than two years of immigration reform, its implementation has not eliminated the blackmail that Cuban emigrants are subjected to in order to enter the Island. The punishment of those who criticize the Cuban government from their residence abroad remains a denial of their right to return.

A few, protected by their power, decide who can once again walk these streets, embrace their friends, be in the house where they spent their childhood. And they do it from the arrogance of believing that they, with their ideology and their military uniforms, represent the essence of Cuba, when in realty they only manage to deform it, to restrict it… to kill it.

Translator’s notes:
*Castor Jaboa is an anagram for Abajo Castro — Down with Castro.
**A cubanazo is a boisterous, shamelessly stereotypical Cuban man (a woman would be a cubanaza) who dresses, walks, speaks and thinks in uniquely Cuban ways.

 

Afterwards there were her shoes, the wallet where she treasured her money and a nutmeg. Her clothes hanging in the wardrobe along with some photos from her youth that we never got to ask her about where they’d been taken.

The things the dead leave us are sometimes more difficult to deal with than the memories themselves. What to do with that note they wrote before leaving home to remember to buy eggs, salt and a little oil? Their drawers, the sheets they slept on their last night, the cookies they liked so much? How to quiet the way the comb speaks, still with their hair, the Facebook account in which they recorded their last “like” or that red circle on the calendar that marked their birthday?

The things the dead leave us have their own voice. They remind us every time we look at them that in that fabric, wielding that pen, or looking into that mirror, until yesterday, had been someone who breathed and whom we loved.

We live between two speeds, beating on two different wave frequencies. On the one hand, the slow routine of a country stuck in the 20^th Century, and on the other, the rush that seems disposed to mark the whole process of the giant of the north. The measures approved this last 16 January, which relax the sending of remittances, trips to the island, the collaboration in telecommunications and many other sectors, suggest the idea that the Obama Administration seems willing to continue making offerings to the opposing force. Obliging it to hoist the discrete white flag of material and economic convenience.

The feeling that everything can be accelerated has made some within Cuba reevaluate the price per square foot of their homes, others predict where the first Apple Store will open in Havana, and not a few begin to glimpse the silhouette of a ferry linking the island with Florida. The illusions, however, have not stopped the flow of emigrants. “Why should I wait for the yumas to get here, if I can go and meet them there?” a young man said mischievously, as he waited in line for a family reunification visa outside the United States consulate in the Cuban capital at the end of January .

The fear that the Cuban Adjustment Act, which was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1966 and offers considerable emigration benefits to Cubans, will be repealed has multiplied illegal migration. Those who don’t want to leave, are preparing to take advantage of the new scenario.

A few years ago emigration fever led thousands of compatriots to dust off their Spanish ancestors in hopes of obtaining a European Union passport, and now those who have family in the United States sense an advantage in the race for Cuba’s future. From there can come not only the longed-for economic relief, many think, but also the necessary political opening. Lacking a popular rebellion to force changes in the system, Cubans pin their hopes on conditioned transformations from outside. One of the ironies of life in a country whose political discourse has so strongly supported national sovereignty.

Those who have more problems dealing with what happened are those whose lives and energies revolved around the conflict. The most recalcitrant members of the Communist Party feel that Raul Castro has betrayed them. Eighteen months of secret conversations with the adversary is too much time for those stigmatized by a colleague in their workplace because they have a brother living in Miami or because they like American music.

Just outside the United States Interest Section in Havana (SINA), the government has not replaced those ugly black flags that used to fly between the anxious gazes of Cubans and the well-guarded building. No one can even pinpoint the moment in which the billboard boasting, “Gentlemen Imperialists, we are absolutely unafraid of you” was taken down. Even TV programming has a vacuum, now that the presenters don’t have to dedicate long minutes lambasting Obama and the White House.

Miriam, one of the independent journalists who is slammed by government television, wonders if now they are no longer demonizing anyone because of the rapprochement with American diplomats, or in order to cross the feared – but seductive – SINA threshold. Many wonder the same after seeing Cuban officials, like Josefina Vidal, smiling at Roberto Jacobson, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.

In a house in the Cerro neighborhood where they have opened a pizza stand, a man in his 50s turned off the radio so he didn’t have to listen to Raul Castro’s speech on that Wednesday. He clicked his tongue angrily and shouted at his wife, “Look out, afterwards we get screwed!” Santiago, as he is called, couldn’t graduate as a doctor because his whole family left in the Mariel Boatlift in 1980 and he was declared “unreliable.” Although, since the mid-nineties he’s back in touch with his exiled siblings, he still feels uncomfortable because now what was previously forbidden is applauded.

Twenty-four hours after that historic announcement, all around the capital’s Fraternity Park it was like an anthill. Old American cars that operate as collective taxis in Havana converged there. The owner of a 1954 Chevrolet pontificated on a corner that now “the prices of these cars are going to go through the roof.” Surely, the man concluded, “The yumas are going to buy this junk like it’s a museum piece.” A country “for sale” waiting for the deep pockets of those who, until yesterday, were rivals.

This feeling that the U.S. will save the island from economic hardships and chronic shortages underpins an illusion clung to by millions of Cubans. We have gone from Yankee go home! to Yankee welcome!

The blacker official propaganda painted the panorama in the U.S., the more it helped to foster interest in that country. Every attempt to provoke rejection of the powerful neighbor brought its share of fascination. Among the youngest citizens this feeling has grown in recent years, supported also by the entry into the country of audiovisual and musical productions that celebrate the American way of life. “Sometimes, to annoy my grandfather, I put on this scarf with the United States flag,” confesses Brandon, a teenager who greets the dawn on weekends sitting on some bench on G Street. All around him, a fauna of emos, rockers, frikis, and even vampire imitators, who gather to talk loud and sing together. For many of them, their dreams seem closer to materializing after the embrace between the White House and the Plaza of the Revolution.

“We have a group of Dota 2 players,” says Brandon about his favorite pastime, a videogame that’s causing a furor in Cuba. He and his colleagues spent months preparing for a national tournament, but after 17 December they have begun to dream big. “The international championship is in Seattle in August, so now maybe we can participate.” Last year, the Chinese team was crowned champion, so the Cuban gamers haven’t lost hope.

The first Netflix user in Cuba was a foreigner, a European diplomat who rushed to get an account on the well-known streaming service, just to know if it was possible. It costs him just $7.99 a month, but the broadband necessary to reproduce video required him to pay the Cuban Telecommunications Company another $380.00 a month for an Internet connection. Now in his mansion he enjoys the most expensive Netflix in the world.

Baseball games with major league teams; famous rock bands coming to the island; Mastercards that work in ATMs all over the country; telecommunications companies that establish direct calls to the US; Colorado farmers willing to invest in the troubles of Cuban peasants; made in USA TV presenters who come to film their shows in the streets of Havana; and attractive models – weighed down by their own scandals – taking selfies with Fidel Castro’s firstborn. Cuba is changing at the speed of a tortoise that flies by clinging to the legs of an eagle.

Despite everything, the Plaza of the Revolution does not want to acknowledge its failure and has surrounded the reestablishment of relations with the United States with an aura of victory. It claims to have won through surviving for more than five decades, but the truth is that it has lost the most important of its battles. It doesn’t matter that the defeat is now masked with cocky phrases and boasts of having everything under control; as a jaded Santiaguan says, “After so much swimming they’ve ended up drowning on the shore.” Seeking that image of control, Raul Castro has not reduced the repression against dissidents, which in February reached the figure of 492 arbitrary arrests. The Castro regime extends a hand to the White House, while keeping its boot pressed on the non-conformists in its own backyard.

However, the disproportion of the negotiating forces between the two governments has been noted, even in popular jokes. “Did you know that the United States and Cuba broke off relations again?” one of the incautious mocked in December. Before an incredulous, “Noooo?!” the jokester responds with a straight face: “Yes, Obama was upset because Raul called him collect.” There is all the material poverty of our nation contained in that phrase.

While no one believes that the Castro regime will end up crushed by McDonald’s and Starbucks, the official propaganda occasionally revives a cardboard anti-imperialism that no longer convinces anyone. Like that in Raul Castro’s bombastic speech at the 3^rd CELAC Summit in Costa Rica, in which he made tough demands for the reestablishment of relations with Washington. Pure fanfare. Or like Fidel Castro’s latest message to Nicolas Maduro, offering him support “against the brutal plans of the U.S. Government.” Or like the calls to defend the Revolution, “before the enemy that tries new methods of subversion.”

The truth is that on December 17 — St. Lazarus Day — diplomacy, chance and even the venerated saint of miracles addressed the country’s wounds. We needed a half century of painfully crawling along the asphalt of confrontation on our knees to bring us a little of the balm of understanding. Nothing is resolved yet, and the whole process for the truce is precarious and slow, but on that December 17^th the ceasefire arrived for millions of Cubans who had only known the trenches.

*Translator’s note: This is the longer version of this article originally published in El País Semanal.