Category: Eduardo Herrera

Another Irreplaceable Loss / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Photo downloaded from "cubaupdate.blogspot.com"

Once again Cuban society darkens from the avoidable death of another of its members. The peaceful protestor Wilman Villar Mendoza was detained in a police offensive carried out in Contramaestre, a province of Santiago of Cuba, unjustly and quickly condemned to 4 years in jail for working with a free conscience, in a trial behind closed doors, and they argue that this attracted his naked protest, his hunger strike and the resultant pneumonia — that was attended to too late — costing him his life. The outrage and official teaching toward those who think politically different are the moral rubric and the behavior of the Cuban dictatorship that have become tradition. The impunity with which the state works, the judge, who is part of and owner of all power, forsakes those citizens of the alternative political society who face the oppression of the state. For action and omission, the authorities are responsible for the death of this young man of 30 years.

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

Television Notidrama / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Retrieved from “http://ganardineroadsense.net

On January 30th, the National Cuban Television (NTV) star of the 8PM news, who occasionally dresses strangely, was transparently fawning over problems which are not normally covered on Cuban TV and radio. As we know that everything on NTV is controlled and passes through that inescapable screen of censorship. At home we deduced that it was one more manipulation, due to the Cuban visit of Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, and her delegation.

Unusual reports of low productivity, in general, and the decline in potato production are known evils, in our country, but suspicion is aroused when these reports are accompanied by others that indicate there are few trains on our island and reduced fertility in our population resulting in few births. In this regard, Cubans have an aging population and therefore have not reached 12 million. Ignoring the two million who have emigrated and reside outside our territory, they are only taken into account for propaganda purposes and to fill state coffers.

Ironically, the meteorologist who often appears on camera to do the weather forecast, said there was a decrease in the number of cold fronts and rainfall rates, in January, compared to the same period last year. Anyway, that day’s edition of the news, exceptional for Notidrama, made me wonder. If you didn’t know except by repetition, you would not suspect the favourable economic intentions behind that veiled whining. For them it is worth it because the crocodile tears will revert to an aerosol medicine for their economic suffocation, increase their bank accounts and give them more time in power.

Translated by: Hank Hardisty

February 5 2012

Executioner / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

He was a boy who was accustomed to ask permission for everything; that they should take him by the hand and sometimes lead him through dangerous streets, and as a matter of education, they’d chew him out and impose punishment on him if he misbehaved. When he was an adolescent, he understood that you have to listen to wise advice from experienced people; that you couldn’t go everywhere because danger lurks and you have to behave well to escape punishment. Now he is a man and expresses without permission that he wants no advice nor company to go wherever he’d like. He discovered that the hand that guided him has been and is his executioner, and that this is the larger punishment.

Translated by: JT

January 20 2012

A New Year and an Old Problem / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Downloaded from: portalcomarcal.es

2011 is over. It’s a fact that for 365 days we follow the year’s coffin until its official burial on the last second of December the 31st.  In our own private assessment, we generally make an evaluation of our passage through those 12 months and weigh up the personal, professional and familial results.  We look at the national ones as well, because for those of us involved in the fate of our country, the repeated Cuban practice of thinking about our country and for it, we have created the habit not only of monitoring and condemning the problems that concern us, but also the responsible practice of offering possible solutions to them.

With respect to our archipelago, last year left us with the taste of a certain success for the Cuban opposition.  Although slight and without anyone’s direct or tacit recognition — but rather the exact opposite — the Cuban authorities themselves, every time they introduce reforms — as obscure and timid as they are — they guarantee and ratify whatever the opposition has pointed out and proposed for years.  It is the evidence of the effectiveness of those who propose and protest against the official intolerance, intolerance which hates and makes enemies.

It’s certain that the government distorts these protests with the smoke screen of moving public interest onto other issues, with the clear aim of intelligently erasing the opposition class in Cuba.  The old ruling class octopi and their professionals of subterfuge and intrigue extend their tentacles with their plan to divide and extinguish Cuba’s passive opposition and remain in power.  But although it seems that they have ignored our protests with proposals for years, it is in these that serve as reference to those — adjusting them to their interests — to set the emerging update of its failed model on its course.  It’s worth stressing that to apply fixed reforms they are falling into a contravention of their own constitution.  Will they soon have written a revised, updated Magna Carta?

In their global plan of ‘face washing’, they seem to be at the helm of social restructuring with a ‘mutated reconciliation’ (mutatis mutandis) towards their self-seeking interests.  I imagine that if they continue down this road we will soon see NGOs, which usually support dissident organisations on the archipelago, withdrawing troops and switching their support to Cuban investors — although many are themselves the government officials responsible for the farcical state of the country — to help Cuba to come out of the systematic crisis which is ruining us.  After all, one must forget the ‘peccadilloes’ of ineptitude which broke down our economy and divided us as a nation in favour of trying to spend future decades ‘trying to fix’ what the present system cannot, or has any real interest in resolving.

I accept that in the state domino the actions and dialogue of the opposition — incongruous with the arguments with which the governance show them as enemies of the fatherland — might be out of harmony with their programme to seduce the international community with their stuffy reconciliation. Up until the present they’ve chosen to secretly promote their agents by use of the media, and to keep those aligned to the beliefs of radical transition conventionally ‘besieged’.  On this platform I suspect that they count on places of relevance which have been hoarded (not only in Cuba); and I worry that it will happen as in the 60s, in that in the end State Security led almost all of the armed organisations which fought against the — at that time — young socialist government.

At the moment I will remain a proactive observer, and I support any movement destined to eliminate the injustice — however insignificant they may seem — that limit our ability to exercise our fundamental rights and freedoms and prevent us from being the owners of our dreams and destinies.  Because of the urgent need for improvements for our long-suffering people, I remain dissatisfied, but optimistic, about those who back the cautious steps which the government is taking.  This is the visible goal currently within our reach to start walking towards.

Translated by: Sian Creely

January 10 2012

The Manipulative Dossier / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Image downloaded from buenosenlaces.com

In Cuba we have six television channels, but at 8 p.m. our options narrow, because the national news (the primetime program) is broadcast repeatedly on three of them (channels 4, 6, and 27), we are treated to sports news on channel 2, on channel 21 they show a documentary (the ones during that half hour are generally less interesting), and on channel 15 they rebroadcast (they never show it live) the “friendly” news show from TeleSur. Our satellite newscaster “informs” us how well things work in Cuba in contrast to other countries, mainly capitalist, of the world. He tells us of the abundance of products in the markets, “satisfied consumers” are interviewed, and the magnanimity of our government is sugarcoated daily. So in the face of such “marvels” I am quick as a hare with the remote control, surfing through channels and looking around in the scraps of programming for topics which I expect won’t make me nauseous.

There is a journalist on the TeleSur program who wears an eye patch in the old style of buccaneers and pirates. They say he lost that eye in a helicopter accident during a mission. His image strikes me as somewhat grotesque, because I think that his warlike nature and the blackened eye-socket which highlights it are part of a well-modeled image of the militant journalist committed to a 21st century socialism without manual or program, who bases his raison d’être on the perpetuity of the power of the strongmen and on the fight against the “Empire of the United States”. I have to give credit to this man, the anchor of “Dossier”, which opens and closes with a catch-phrase, saying that it broadcasts “from our beloved, contaminated, and only (here he raises an index finger) spaceship”, referring to Earth. I credit him and his production team, because it seems that they are getting their signal out to various corners of the Milky Way. That feeling leaves me every time he uses that unnecessary sentence to refer to his location. It wouldn’t surprise me if on the same program we found another host wearing a surgical mask because he had a decaying smile or was missing his teeth. It would simply be yet another eccentricity.

TeleSur, with its headquarters in Caracas, and which counts on financing from Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, among others, is transitioning on its journalistic path toward the “Cuban disinformation style”, evidence of the protective and consultative role of the largest of the Antilles in that Latin American media outlet with international distribution. It is an echo discordant with democracy and anachronistic in a particularly fashion to repeat the formulas of this long-lived, mature, and failed sociopolitical and economic experiment, and to adapt them to a project which claims to promote regional integration in societies where, despite the influence of our Antillean archipelago, plurality still survives. What would be fairer with respect to the realities of our brethren to the south is the exercise of objective, impartial, and truthful journalism in which there is no need, as there is in Cuba, for recourse to the “censorship patch” or the “surgical gag” to violate their people’s rights and deceive them with disinformation and manipulation.

Translated by: Adam Cooper

December 20 2011

Recurring Arguments / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Image downloaded from the site: jorgegamezusa.blogspot.com

Cuba’s elderly leaders must be celebrating, because once again their Cuban-American adversaries in the U.S. Congress have served up to them, on a golden platter, the old, spruced-up reasons that provide their cadres and officials the banquet of arguments with which they justify and “feed” the rigidity of the model. It’s the recurring, long-distance slap from the extremists under a fossilized policy which hasn’t worked, which is almost 53 years old, and which even so they refuse even to reconsider for the welfare of Cuban society.

On December 13 the front page of the daily Granma informed us that the United States Congress was considering a bill which would again restrict travel by Americans and Cuban-Americans to our archipelago, as well as remittances to Cuba. The article cites the Chicago Tribune and points out that the initiative is sponsored by Mario Díaz-Balart, a Republican representative for the state of Florida. It goes on to say that the measure is intended “to reinstate the restrictions approved during the George W. Bush administration, such as a single trip every three years for Cuban-Americans for the purposes of ‘family reunions’ and a limit of $1200 per year on remittances”, and that the relaxing of the sanctions approved by President Barack Obama would be annulled ipso facto. It is a strategy designed to slam the doors on any possibility of dialogue, instead of extending a hand in national reconciliation.

Some time ago, in these parts, the country’s leadership announced — among the timid reforms they inserted due to the burden of the disaster that is rotting Cuba — the abolition of the exit visa and the facilitation of travel for Cuban émigrés to our common home. In the measures announced most recently they have neither commented nor legislated on the matter. I don’t know if they’ll be supported given this senile strategy which divides and serves both sides so that they can defend their respective territories and rhetoric. I will go on defending the truth, and as in a game of dominoes, I choose a third position so as not to be a wild card for either faction; I pound the table and act in accordance with what I consider best for the Cuban nation: Stop bickering!

Translated by: Adam Cooper

December 20 2011

The Pineapples of Wrath / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

I’m not referring to John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath written in 1939. I’m talking about the culinary experience that led me to the farmer’s market: I decided to make a cold salad with a pasta base. For any mortal in another country, it’s probable they would have the option of buying the dish ready-made, or if they wanted to make it at home, of buying all the ingredients at one time, or perhaps making a second trip because they forget something, but everything would be available.

In Cuba it’s an exercise in mental hygiene requiring huge portions of patience. This recipe calls for — at the least the one we make at home — lots of mayonnaise and white onions, as well as boiled potato cut in small pieces. Some reinvented their own recipe for mayonnaise, and by saving great quantities of oil (a scarce product selling dearly in hard currency), make it by giving the oil body with mashed potato, milk with cornstarch, or some other ingenious and available substitute.

Rafa and I preferred, this time, to spend the hard cash — I don’t think mayonnaise is sold in Cuban pesos — to give it the familiar taste. For a customary exercise in survival, we Cubans often forget to eat, and so to feed ourselves is a pleasure.

Recovered from the horror of the fiftieth anniversary of Castro, I didn’t want to find myself surprised by the usual shortages and was collecting some of the ingredients several days in advance. After roasting the quarter chicken I was going to throw shredded into the salad, I tossed my lucky coin and went out shopping to buy what I lacked. As we were packed like sardines in the farmer’s market I searched quickly for what I needed so I could get away from so many people rabid for food. The onion cost me very dear, I bought it with a little mountain of national currency, and I also acquired the mayonnaise easily — notwithstanding the excessive price which I paid in hard currency — but it is the third ingredient that led to this post.

Incredibly, the farmer’s market near my house only sold green pineapples. To avoid disgracing my salad with sour pineapple, I walked from market to market and found the same thing at some while others had none at all. After two hours and so as not to waste the whole day, I went to a stall and asked the seller for a ripe one. “Señora, all that I have are ready to eat and very good.” As she had them in front of her and I am not colorblind, I responded and we got into an argument because she wanted to tell me that a green rind is a sign of ripeness, and that I shouldn’t “be picky” and ask for “difficult things,” but just be grateful there was pineapple at all.

In the end, as I didn’t have enough cash to substitute apples — which are only sold in convertible pesos — and I left the crush of people disgusted by the dispute, wanting to punch myself for my stupidity in demanding “ripe tropical fruits in the tropics” and in frustration for “leaving the party” empty handed.

I left mentally fuming, making an analogy with the title of the Pulitzer Prize novel of 1940 which is considered a major work: The Grapes of Wrath. I also remembered the phrase attributed to the late Armando Calderon — anchor and host of the long-gone Sunday TV show, “The Silent Comedy” — who said that one morning he had modified his usual chatter for the children present: “This is de piña*, dear little friends!”

*If you substitute “ng” for the letter “ñ” in “piña” (pineapple), we have the name of the masculine sex organ which is a part of so many expressions and expletives in the vulgar Spanish of Cuba.

Translator’s note: This text in the original Spanish plays with longer words that include the letters “piña”; unfortunately this wordplay cannot be reproduced in translation.

November 15 2011

The Church Taken by Parishioners / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

The temple of the Evangelical Pentecostal Church, located at Infanta and Santa Marta in Central Havana, displays an unusual situation since a few days ago, in that more than 60 people, among them 19 minors and 4 pregnant women, have remained in the church for a lengthy period of time, found in withdrawal behind closed doors.

These people, reunited on their own volition in the temple since this past August 21st, were summoned by Braulio Herrera Tito, whose religious denomination removed him as a pastor since May 2010 for reasons of an internal nature.

In light of this situation, a group of family members reached out to the authorities, particularly worried about the children, who are not attending school, and for the pregnant women, who do not receive the medical attention prescribed for them.

By virtue of these circumstances, conversations have been held with family members, religious leaders and some members of the congregation. The premises have also been protected and people provided with medical attention.

After various contacts with those directing the site, a medical team assessed the health of the women, who have decided to remain on site. Medics alerted them that a prolonged stay, without specialized attention, could affect the health of the expectant mothers. They expressed equal worry about time passing without the children attending school.

The public order authorities will maintain protection of the citizens’ security to avoid any incidents and offer apologies to the population for troubles caused by the situation.

The order has been confirmed to continue the necessary procedures for a favorable solution to this situation, whose origin is beyond our authorities, who reiterate the desire to collaborate with the family members, the community and the representatives of the religious institutions involved.

Translated by: Courtney Finkel

September 20 2011

Increase of Dengue in Cuba / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Image taken from miniatlas.com.ar

Participants of an anti-insect fumigation brigade from the Cuban public health system commented on November 3rd that there is an elevated number of cases of dengue in the Havana municipality of La Habana del Este.

Calling our attention is the recent increase of this acute viral illness — transmitted by the female aedes aegypti mosquito — and the official silence on the subject, explained by the overused pretext of not alarming the public, but with the result of disinforming society about topics of fundamental interest. Due to public service announcements on national television and the intensity in calls by health workers to eliminate the possible focus — reproduction springs and breeding grounds — already there is popular distrust, “he has read straightness in the twisted lines,” and suspicion of the increase in cases for this pandemic in our country. They further mention that the reported patients are being attended to in their houses for the number of infected people and the people’s distrust of being admitted to the hospital, given their substandard hygienic/sanitary conditions. This illness, that the aedes albopictus also spreads, is known as “bone breaking” and produces fever, headaches, and aching joints; it lasts approximately a week and can lead to death. The increasing incidence of outbreaks has also been detected in other capital area municipalities like Arroyo Naranjo, Old Havana, Central Havana, and Diez de Octubre, but for the lack of informative transparency we do not know the rates of dengue in the rest of the nation.

The causes of the proliferation of this transmitter fundamentally stem from entrance areas, the lack of water in many households, and the shortage of places to store it. In zones lacking daily supplies of this vital liquid, inhabitants are obliged to store it in 55-gallon tanks with improvised caps that do not close properly and facilitate the entrance of these insects which then consequently start reproduction. This is brought about by people arriving in our country with the sickness, which then encounters adequate conditions for its propagation. The state sells plastic tanks in convertible currency and at exorbitant prices in hard currency stores that are not within reach of the average Cuban.

Many distrust the magnitude of the problem and the fact that they are asking citizens to open their doors to the fumigators without hesitating. Secrecy by the authorities in almost all levels of national life is traditional practice and secrecy concerning dengue is no exception. It is taking place just as we arrive at the high tourist season in Cuba.

Translated by: M. Ouellette

November 8 2011

My Baptism By Fire / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Photo by mariacelys.wordpress.com

It was 6:30 in the morning and we rode on a cart pulled by a tractor that shook from the uneven dirt roads.

The guardrail moved and didn’t offer any guarantee that it would support our weight–moving involuntarily as if we have neurological problems–we sat on the floor so that at least the rustic planks of the guardrail would protect us from the dew and cold of dawn. It was the first “school in the countryside” for everyone, except the responsible teacher who traveled with us. I was twelve years old, a girl who had still not had her period.

Our breath condensed in the air and the silence overcame us the night before, when a melancholy student from our shelter fell prey to the mockery of the group because she missed the privacy of her own room and bed when it was time to sleep. They began to call her “coward”, “weak”, and with these “little bourgeois attitudes” she wouldn’t be a good communist. One of the tests of stoicism that we “autoimposed” (as an policy and a political guide common to all schools), was that of spending the 45 required days in the countryside, without leaving no matter what happened–unless it was a compelling reason–and to be an example by working the furrows, which amounted to working like a beast for a simple and invisible recognition–that no one could confirm–in the school record. Breakfast that morning, in a little aluminum jar as hot as the scorching midday summer sun, consisted of burnt milk. Washing our faces in the washtubs with icy water from the tap–at Camp “La Concordia”, like in others, sinks did not exist–had the advantage of waking us up as if we were in the Siberian tundra and we had the “high honor” of forming part of the Komsomol.

On our inexperienced expectations, the day arrived, and even though the thick fog robbed us of our view of the landscape, we watched the faces in silence, listening to the song of the rooster, the moo of some cow, the warble of the birds, and the rumble of the tractor. We dressed in androgynous clothing that the revolution had “fatherly and generously” provided for us so that we could freely accomplish hard agriculture work during the next month and a half. To break the mist and the muteness that we dizzy and inexperienced aspiring communists were suffering from, the teacher in charge of our group sang a chant copied from from the indoctrination program made in USSR that she repeated over and over again so we could learn it.

I even remember the wet grass covering and moistening my canvas tennis shoes and pants to celebrate my baptism by fire and “our battle against the softness and hereditary diseases of capitalism”. We looked like test tube girls abandoned in the laboratory of the New Man. They lost us in the winding literary paths and we jumped from fairy tale to political fable. To the schools in the countryside, I thank you as I thank the revolution: the deep deception and thanks to the voracious appetite that I had from working the earth, I learned to eat peas with weevils; this eagerness has transformed over the years to a hunger for freedom. That was my “collision” in the Cuban countryside, my baptism by the colored earth.

Translated by: Meg Anderson

November 8 2011

Of Errors, Terrors and Horrors / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

“It is not about trying to forget everything that has happened, but to reread it newer understanding, precisely from experiences suffered, that only love can build, while hate produces destruction and ruin.”

– Pope John Paul II

I still remember the indignity and sadness generated by the terrorist attack against a Cuban airplane in Barbados in 1976 and how I went, of my own accord, to pay tribute to the 73 victims in the Plaza de la Revolucion. I am sure that many went spontaneously to demonstrate solidarity with the fallen, as I did, feeling saddened by this barbarism. The Cubans in the archipelago felt a great sense of brotherhood after terror pointed and fired at us, wounding us profoundly and demonstrating that hate, impotence and malignancy also result from bombs.

There are wounds that never heal, and losing a loved one to a criminal act is something that impedes the psychological recovery of family members and those close to them. But if this loss is a sad, cruel and irreparable action on one hand, it is much worse when the person who committed the act goes unpunished. It is then compounded by the Cuban authorities who constantly bring this up, not just to commemorate the event, but with propagandist political objectives. Moreover, because they intend to clarify their goals and explain to their followers why political inflexibility is needed, they repeatedly talk about the threat that emanates from the north, bringing a catechism of terror, sculpted in murderous plaster. They lie openly and repeatedly from the state leadership, conveniently casting disparaging generalizations about all of Cuba’s exiles, because this is the convenient narrative about an enemy who has “besieged the plaza”, guaranteeing a long, rigid and inflexible presence in power.

Manipulation of historical information — common practice among our national leaders — foments anger that divides, degrades, influences and exhausts people. No one should exacerbate hatred in order to justify coercion and repression. Rereading with new ideas, putting constructive strategies into practice that contribute to understanding, and healthy coexistence is the path toward common good.  Repeatedly reopening old wounds with belligerent manipulative intent, is a cruelty to society. In order for governments to be considered responsible, they should learn to end these practices; the Cuban government is no exception. Our relations with the Spanish government would not be the same if we had not forgiven and refocused on a more edifying vision, and instead brought up Valeriano Weyler‘s role in 1897 during the Cuban War of Independence. What would have become of the European Union with Germany — one of the region’s economic engines — if Israel and the world had not forgiven them for the Holocaust?

It seems inconsistent and unjust that our national leaders campaign to defend the rights of people all over the world, while ignoring the rights of their own compatriots. I urge then the eradication of any government that establishes and practices civic terrorism, without considering the rights of its own citizens. When the good of the people is not considered, but is rigidly ordered from the seat of government, the interests of both the people and the government become disassociated, leading to totalitarianism. There should be no room in modern society for terrorism — neither from governments that sow fear or those that violate the fundamental rights of its citizens — nor should there be any justification for any sort of crime. I raise my voice to demand a democratic coexistence that respects differences and in which the state guarantees the people’s rights, peace and pluralism.

Translated by: Erico

October 31 2011

My House’s Ants / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Tambochas are carnivorous ants, feared for their venom, resembling a wingless wasp that has a green body and a red head. Their relatives, the termites, seized my home a while back.

My house was built from precious woods and had a solid structure and architectural design that stood out in the urban environment. Over the years, I have tried various methods to eradicate these destructive occupants, but the methods have been useless. Some beams have already given way to the constant piercing of the insects and of the passage of time. I ask for advice to remedy my case, while the property is in a state of deterioration, so much that I am afraid the breakdown is irreversible. I don’t know if the ones that dominate my floor, roof and walls, are of the neoptera or arthropod family, if they’re termites, tambochas, or a hybrid of both, but in any case I will continue combating them to see if I can at least neutralize the plague that has seized my house since 1959.

Translated by: Alicia Fremling, Josephine Larke

October 31 2011

Antics of the New Class / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

lecciones.btiburrillo.net

It is nobody’s secret that we Cubans are comiendo el cable (“eating the cable”).  This is an expression of the popular argot in Cuba used to allude to a person or group that is going through a hard time, that feels itself to be a victim of neglect and that accumulates many unresolved needs.  Many cannot visualize a horizon where satisfying their needs doesn’t entail moving beyond our borders; others, have the luck of belonging, maybe even from a seminal accident, to the olive-green royalty, and enjoy the benefits that their relatives or contacts trained in the ideology of the chat in time and the public and opportune praises for the historical leader can allow them.

They are the children and grandchildren of the so called Revolution, the paragon of “those who don’t traffic in influences” nor do they stoop to oligarchic behaviors to establish their own — because it would be immoral to practice that which led them to armed struggle first and then to power; those who are models of loyalty and its problems, as long as they haven’t committed a disloyalty or problem of principles, who minimize themselves through a thoughtful gift and stereotype it as an antic, never as corruption.

They are the descendents and unconditionals of the sharks who fear freedom of information, those called to work side-by-side with the foreign investors, those enabled to occupy a position that results in juicy returns with “enemy money” in the accounts that they probably have overseas providing for the inevitable change, while Cuban workers are exploited with symbolic salaries and a currency turned evil.

Despite the official excessive secrecy that they have turned into tradition, by different means the comments of a new scandal of corruption reach them, associated with the higher echelons and reliable businessmen installed by the nomenklatura in mixed enterprises and foreign corporations.

The fiber optic conduit that left Venezuela, arrived in our territory in February this year, and should have been operational in July, but it was a disaster because those chosen by the authorities were so busy planting dollars in their own financial grove, that they bought the cheapest technological cable, one without the shielding required to protect against bites from sharks that inhabit the Caribbean.

Hasn’t it been a policy directed by the caste of the country that products be acquired elsewhere so we can save our currency reserves? There is also talk about the abduction of funds destined for the cable’s activation, that have frozen its implementation.  I don’t know if this is real or if it’s an information cocktail that they allowed to filter to continue violating  Cubans’ rights to the internet.

In any event, any skullduggery by the state elites and their partisans is credible when they train their chosen in the practice of their capitalism.  It is also rumored in Havana that the media grave weighing in this matter is due to the lineage of those involved and their hangers-on, and that soon they will get the blow required in such cases.

To simple citizens, we who know of unripe and ripe, we get spoiled and it looks as if we continue to be witnesses to the crumbling of this deja vu dictatorship and the immobility they hold on to, like the chrysalis of rock discordant with the modern world’s democratic symphony

Our anguish to scream sticks in our throats; but the death rattles of the model are so evident that the opportunists of the upper class leadership risk exchanging their Communist party red cards for green paper money, and we wonder how many more of these are hidden, still shouting out empty slogans in exchange for favors, which is to sin against ideology. While these hindrances of a discredited system fatten their personal fortunes with their influences and their false doctrine, we ordinary Cubans the true sharks that for these last few decades eat the cable of hope, and of undelivered promises that, in a model like this, will never come.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 4 2011

Potatoes with Police / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Image from stockphotos.com

I heard it when I was in the patio taking in some clothes I had washed because it looked like rain.  I don’t know who shouted to someone on the block that there were potatoes with police. I perked my ears because, like the smartest of the bunch, I was intrigued by this pronouncement.  The person addressed asked and got an explanation that there were potatoes in the store, but they were only giving ten pounds of potatoes per person, and that the queue and order were being controlled by the police.  In Cuba, the same way that what the authorities call liberty and democracy aren’t, ten pounds aren’t ten, because the scales are damaged by the corruption that gangrenes at almost every level.

We Cubans are accustomed to persuading our young children of the importance of eating “la papa” — potatoes — to grow strong. For the Cuban adult population, not only has this staple disappeared for five decades, they have been weakened by being made to run from one place to another in our country in the search for food,but their time and energy has been diverted to prevent them from using it to think about other topics.

If a product is scarce for many years, as has been the case with this root vegetable – and for most everything in Cuba – it’s natural that people want to buy the largest quantity permitted by their budgets, so as to guarantee variety in the diet of their family for a greatest number of days.  Others, perhaps, place it on the table as the only option, but we would all like it to be on sale all the time, accessible to whomever wishes to consume it, in the amount desired and not when the authorities want or direct it.  But we are a country blocked by inefficiency, incompetence and lack of order.  These, among others, are some of the prejudicial signs that cause the necrosis of our economy.

I started fantasizing during my domestic chores and imagined how my city should be in this 2011; without piles of garbage in the corners, without rats and other disease-carrying vectors running through it, with houses with a coat of paint (not only the facades), with gutters also dressed up and with well executed ramps to prevent handicapped people from encountering architectural barriers; children reciting childhood texts and not poetry about a soldier who died firing his weapon for the politicized morning school assembly; a press that is free and truthful  – reliable rather than “realigned” – unions equally free, trade associations, political pluralism, a civil society that is independent from the state, monitoring and observance of human rights and fundamental liberties, where people aren’t jailed for wanting to promote democratic change by peaceful means, where all Cubans can enter and exit our country freely, independent executive, legislative and judicial branches of government, a mixed economy, etc.

I was also of a mind to solve, also in my imagination, Cuba’s food problems when the strident voice of a street vendor – not mindful of grammar – returned me to my routine:  “Sponge mops, sticks to hang clothes, floor mopppps …!”

Translated by: lapizcero

October 27 2011

Sugarcane Flower / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Ecuación gráfica del daño ocasionado con el cierre de las dos terceras partes de los centrales en Cuba.

(diagram)  Closing of sugar mills >> reduces direct employment of workers in the sugar agro-industry >> diminishes planting of sugarcane >> reduces production of derivatives of sugarcane >> depresses services and production related to the sector >>  impoverishes the quality of life of communities of farm workers >> affects in general sugar production >> hurts the country’s economy.  (end diagram)

As if we were dealing with an erotic passage, each day, the arbitrary and improvised nature of the system or policy of prices in Cuba gets undressed.  Like the policy itself – being designed by the pyramid of power, we find it capricious and illogical sometimes – permeates all societal strata and impacts the actions and speech of diverse aspects of our reality, including household finances.  Like a well established culture of sultanístico volunteerism, many prices seem to be determined from the fly of the pants of some leaders, independent of the law of supply and demand; even more, after a process as long as the Cuban, January 1 of 2012 will mark fifty-three years of doing and undoing at the whim of the original “guides”.

I say this because after “digesting”and concatenating certain news offered in different occasions by the newspaper Granma, mouthpiece of the Communist Party, regarding the sugar cane agro-industry, sugar cane itself, the mills and the equipment required for its exploitation, I reflect on this important sector which for centuries was the fundamental industry of our country.

The problem is not simple, happening first because a bad decision to close two thirds of the sugar mills in Cuba with the consequent decapitation of the economic activity of the sugar mill communities and the whole infrastructure created around the mills, affecting other rural communities that exist around these agro-industrial centers; which led to a reduction in the number of jobs in planting and harvesting of the cane, depressed production of syrups, electric energy and other derivatives of sugarcane such as alcohol, animal feed, waste for furniture making, etc.

It may be central to the economy to diversify agricultural production, but fighting the monoculture should not be accomplished by destroying the sugar industry, but rather through the creation of other productive sectors or agro-industrial bases so as to avoid dependency on a single product.  The bad decision to close sugar mills occurred in the very moment when it was booming and expansion of ethanol in an international scope was occurring; which suggests a lack of foresight and resulted in the lack of one important source of income for the country.

The economic determinations of a state should be subject to satisfying the needs of citizens and always oriented towards that purpose, it is not fair or smart to subject them to the irresponsible or irrational whims of one person or group of them in detriment to the well-being and quality of life of the majority.  Another element of importance is evidenced by the potential loss of sugar traditions by reducing the number of employees involved in agricultural industry; moreover, the waste of the resources invested in developing intangibles over the centuries to foment sugar culture.  Equally it seems they forgot or ignored the importance of multiple sugar mills to insure sugar culture areas that are as near as possible to the mills.

In the newspaper they also pointed out the reduction in price for inputs and the doubling in what independent producers are paid for a ton of sugarcane. Here I go back to the old proverb “better late than never”, but why did we wait this long?  It would be good if the population knew who sets the prices for plows and other agricultural implements.  The extinction of the Sugar Ministry transpired as well and the creation in its stead of an Entrepreneurial Group of the Sugar Agro-industry.

In the same way, they mentioned the deficiency in diverse aspects in the Ministry of Agriculture and “(…) the approval of instructions from the President of the State Council and the Ministers to shed light on the general policies and work plans of the entities, Organisms of the Central Administration of the State, other national entities and the Local Administrations of Popular Power.”  Isn’t it the excessive centralization that has damaged ostensibly their development and prevented the positive functioning of Cuban society in the economic, political and social realms?  So many contradictions persuade us that we cannot advance with the controlling way of thinking of the mega-proprietors of a country.

Production is stimulated precisely by decentralizing and interesting workers in a common project, and in the results of their labor, the opposite of what they have done for more than 50 years and apparently intend to continue doing.  If they are unwilling to institute the foundation so society grows and develops healthy in support of better individual and collective productive yields, it is time for a real liberation of mindsets and a transition towards more just and efficient models for the development of Cuba.

Translated by: lapizcero

October 4 2011