Category: Ivan Garcia

Economic Reforms: More Questions than Answers / Iván García

People on the street in Cuba look sideways at the recent reforms designed for the impoverished national economy. Few are counting on these changes put forward by president Raúl Castro. They don’t believe they will make the country function more efficiently.

They know what a group of Cubans think. In a survey of 48 persons of both sexes, with an average educational level of 12th grade, between 18 and 71 years of age, white and black, there was more pessimism than optimism. Many don’t trust the system. So expectations are low.

There were four questions:

1) Do you believe that real reforms will bring satisfactory, short-term changes that will improve your standard of living? 2) What do you think is missing in the government’s new economic proposals? 3) Do you believe that Raúl Castro’s administration can give a boost to our economy? and 4) Do you think the Cuban social system can generate wealth and motivate independent business people so that they will benefit from the government plan?

Thirty-nine (39) of those polled think that the much-vaunted reforms are more of the same. “It’s not the first time that the country has brought up a supposed change to put socialism back on track and make it more efficient. As I remember, it was tried in the ’70s, the middle of the ’80s, and now again. Nothing makes me think that the third time will be the charm,” said a cab driver.

The answers of the other 38 are similar in tone to that of the cab driver. They feel pessimistic about the government’s economic suggestions. They laugh ironically at the thought that changing only the polish would change their lives for the better. They doubt that General Raúl Castro can make the weak local economy function.

Even fewer believe that the present model of a collective society will generate creative and dynamic people who will produce wealth. “That’s the principle of these systems that combine Marxist ideology with authoritarian forms of government: to control man. They come with a dislike of people who make money. They don’t want there to be a class of rich people. It’s a kind of society that’s allergic to capability and individual liberty for its citizens. They are seen as enemies. They are a contradiction,” says one university student.

The 39 people polled do not expect great things from the regime’s economic update. They believe there are interesting matters that are not considered in the plan, which these days is being discussed at work places and CDR meetings in the neighborhoods.

“No one is saying that Cuban Americans can invest in the country. Also, they ought to abolish all the immigration regulations for those born in Cuba, introduce a realistic investment law that will give incentive to foreign businessmen to invest in the island. Eliminate entrance and exit permits. Abolish the high taxes for people who work for themselves. Drop once and for all the role of the State as a prison warden that must control its citizens,” adds an intellectual.

Nine (9) of those polled gave the benefit of the doubt to the government. They are not fully optimistic, but they think that the changes will bring, in the long term, a haphazard version of capitalism to the country.

“No one wants this. Socialism is a system that is purely superior in theory. If it has not shown results it’s because the human factor has failed in the practice. The Cuban revolution has been more political than economic. In order to involve a large section of the population in the changes, we should abolish absurd laws and not look at those who make money as an enemy. The reforms may fail. But there is still the question, asked by an engineer, “What if they work?”

The economic reforms launched by the government have not created a state of favorable opinion in the majority of the population. They think they are subsistence measures. That they can bring a new plate to the table. And perhaps a glass of milk.

But basically the government can’t commit to a profound turnaround, which is necessary for the economy to be efficient, robust and long-lasting. The dream of millions of Cubans. Whoever accomplishes it will be a giant.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The Sinister Ones / Iván García

There is too much perversion in the world. It is a feature of serial murderers, pedophiles and sexual deviants. Or of the ETA (Basque) terrorists and those irrational people who crashed two planes into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11.

But there are — and there have been — sinister governments. In the name of whatever cause. The most handy, from October 1917 until the present, has been imperialism, the bourgeoisie and the exploitation of man by man.

I’ve always wondered if Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Mao, Pol Pot, Ceausescu and Idi Amin, among others, already had macabre governing designs in mind when they began their careers as politicians.

I would like to think not. That these were once dreamer types who wanted the best for their people. And maybe a mental condition, not yet studied in depth by the scientists, converted all of them into miserable satraps.

All these dictators have a common stamp. They speak in the name of the dispossessed and in the name of nationalism. They believe they have a redemptive mission to fulfill. They consider themselves to be enlightened. The Little Fathers of their countries.

Without exception, they are manipulators with an ego that is beyond reason. They do not tolerate disagreements. And it is just at that moment when sinister politicians pull the trigger, the tortures, concentration camps, summary trials and unsanitary prisons.

In the end, history chooses them as the best example of what not to do in the exercise of power. In the 21st century there are few who remain alive.

One of them is now a sick old man who writes his memoirs in a hurry. And in his raptures of lucidity, he still believes he has something to say to his people. And he scribbles pathetic reflections about any event in the world, except that which he should write about: The complicated and uncertain future of his country.

I hope that all these caudillos, before they died, recognized that they were arrogant despots; that they made monumental errors, destroyed nations and were detested by millions.

Photo: Stalin, from the photographic archives of Life Magazine

Translated by ricote

December 17, 2010

Tending Bridges / Iván García

A contagious song by a Cuban salsero asks in its chorus for a long bridge to be built between La Havana and Miami. Perhaps in the not so distant future the engineers and architects will consider such a possibility.

The so-called City of the Sun appears to be an appendix of Latin America. In jest, it is said that the next Congress of the Communist Party, expected for April 2011, will designate Miami ‘a new Cuban province’.

In Florida live more than 800 thousand Cubans. That number of inhabitants is more than that of ten of the fourteen provinces on the island. While the politicians in Cuba and the United States carry on with their cold war language, the common people, musicians and intellectuals, have broken dikes that only a few decades ago were a minefield set by the Castro government.

In Havana it makes news each time important musicians appear in comedy programs or debates from Miami. Thanks to the illegal satellite antenna, for which families pay the equivalent of 12 dollars a month, it is known that orchestras like Adalberto y su Son, La Charanga Habanera, Bamboleo or the songwriters Silvio Rodriguez and Amaury Perez, among other musicians, have participated in television programs from the other side of the puddle.

Segments conducted or directed by distinguished humorists and presenters like Alexis Valdes or Carlos Otero, who decided to emigrate a while back. A few years back, if you spoke in public or private with Cuban ‘deserters’ they would label you as a ‘traitor to the homeland’.

The politics of tending bridges is not applauded by all Cubans on either shore. In Miami, compatriots that have suffered the typhoons of Fidel Castro’s radical politics, have burned or taken axes to the CDs of musicians from the island who have performed in Florida.

I can understand their pain. I know exile is hard. I have my family and friends far away. I know from firsthand accounts, of the rigors of the jails for those that have dissented publicly. I think of the hundreds who were shot by the regime during the first years of the Revolution.

All that happened and can not be thrown in the garbage. But there should be a before and an after. A turning point in the way we reason. Try dialogs, not monologues. Hate affects lucidity. Also in Cuba we have ideological Talibans. And there is good reason behind those who shout for the flow of a cultural interchange in both directions.

The Cuban government kicks and screams when an intellectual, academic or musician is denied their visa by the American authorities. Of course this is wrong. Just like I think it’s a cruel joke to list Cuba among the other countries that practice terrorism. But Castro is also intolerant.

I don’t see the hour when Willy Chirino or Gloria Estefan will be allowed to sing in Havana. The Cuban authorities should apologize with their heads lowered and build a mausoleum for that giant of the guaracha that was Celia Cruz, censored by the national media.

Before we speak of democracy and of what kind of society we Cubans want in the future, the Castro brothers should abolish the perverse permission required for people born in Cuba to enter and leave the country.

The politicians dictate laws and decrees that later burn their hands. They become a boomerang. You can’t divide what’s united. And all Cubans, regardless of where they live, were born of the same homeland. And the dinosaurs of the cold war can like it or not.

Photo: Cubans dance with Adalberto Alvarez y su Son at ‘La Casa de Tula’, in Miami.

Translated by: Yulys Rodriguez

December 11, 2010

We Were Few and Grandma Gave Birth / Iván García

When Raúl Castro assumed the presidency in 2008, it was rumored among the population that the general carried a fistful of changes up his sleeve. The most desirable, the elimination of entrance and exit permits for traveling to and from the country. Cubans on the island already saw themselves getting passports and boarding planes to visit their families in other countries.

It was also said that he would allow free access to the Internet. There were days of speculations and euphoria. And what they were able to buy were cellular phones, DVD players and computers, old and expensive. Nationals were allowed to stay in hotels exclusive to foreigners. Paying in foreign currency, of course.

Two years later, many Cubans have cell phones and DVDs in their homes and some have stayed in nice hotels. It’s certain that employment has grown on its own accord, and certain measures have benefited certain sectors, like hairdressers, taxi drivers and the rural population.

But today the topics of conversation in Cuba are very different. “When your job is what’s in play, the internet and the ability to travel outside the country become secondary,” says Lorenzo, 42-years-old and employed.

In Havana, nothing else is discussed: Massive layoffs, taxes, private businesses and the rationing book. The latter is what bothers Caridad — 78 and retired — the most. “My boy, you know what it is at these heights with a pension of not quite 200 pesos, old and sick, they’re taking more products out of my ration book. They took cigarettes from me, which I traded with a neighbor for sugar”.

The disappearance of the ration book keeps awake the older people who have low pensions, those who have it rough to stay alive. The stronger of the old folks go out on the street to earn a living, selling cigarettes, peanuts, plastic bags or newspapers.

For the laboring population what keeps them awake are other issues. “For me, the worse is not knowing exactly what the government is planning. I worry, a lot, what’s been said, that we will be paying very high taxes”, says Ignacio, 46-years-old and a mechanic.

“Rough stream, better for the fishing”. Like in all crises, there will be those who will be able to play along. Especially all the vermin, unscrupulous people, experts in the art of cheating.

It happened during the 90’s, during the hard years of the Special Period. Roberto, 48 years old, had a brilliant idea of rounding up empty containers from shampoos, creams and deodorants….he would wash them out and would refill them with his own concoction, he would put in a few drops of cheap cologne and would sell then for a few pesos. “I am thinking of doing that again”.

Could be that during these desperate times, some would take advantage of the people’s frustration. “But I think that the majority is going to try to improve themselves honestly. At least that’s what I will ask the Lord for when I go to church this Sunday”, confesses Lourdes, 61 and a housekeeper.

In the midst of many questions and suspicions, discouragement and uncertainty, a few rub their hands, plotting how to cheat others. Or dreaming of establishing small businesses, even if they have to pay abusive taxes.

But the majority pulls their hair out and visits the babalaos. This new Special Period could turn out to be darker than the one twenty years ago. Now with almost one million unemployed and with the same speeches and slogans as always.

Translated by Yulys Rodriguez

September 21, 2010

He Left Without Meeting Almodóvar / Iván García

They called him Almodóvar. He idolized the director from La Mancha, of whom he claimed he was a distant relative. People didn’t take him seriously.

He was as black as coal and as hefty as a circus elephant. He was 69 when his heart literally broke one afternoon, while drinking cheap liquor on the corner of Carmen and 10 de Octubre, in Havana.

He wasn’t a bad guy. He used to clean patios and gardens, and repair batteries and plumbing. He drank a lot, and from a little bowl he’d eat enormous quantities of rice and beans. If money caught up to him, he’d add a helping of chicken, fish, or pork.

Other than alcohol distilled with molasses, he loved baseball and the movies. When Pedro Almodóvar was in Havana, he seriously thought about introducing himself at the hotel so that the director of “High Heels” might know that in Cuba he had a poor, black relative who idolized him.

He knew all of his films. The last one, “Broken Embraces“, he saw several times. But his favorite movie was “Everything About My Mother“. On seeing it, he left the theater crying. He knew all the dialogs by heart. The day that Almodóvar got an Oscar for “The Sea Inside“, he celebrated it with good rum. “My namesake is a crack”, he’d say.

On a typical afternoon, he died in Havana. Without a penny in his pocket. The State had to finance his funeral. He couldn’t enjoy the victory of the Industriales, his baseball team.

Black and drunk. A sad fat guy. He left us without meeting his Spanish ‘relative’.

Translated by: JT

September 14, 2010

Havana is Waiting for Chico and Rita / Iván García

It would have been perfect. That Chico and Rita, by the Spaniards Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal, could have inaugurated the 32nd edition of the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema, scheduled from the 2nd to the 12th of December in Havana and other Cuban cities.

If they’d exhibited at the event, it wouldn’t have gotten a lot of play. As already happened in 2000 with Calle 54, the film where Trueba — then not having been seen for several years — set the stage for the reunion of Bebo and Chucho Valdés and sat them down to play the piano.

Starting from a love story between two Habanero mulattos, Chico and Rita exposes facets of Cuban music and Latin jazz in a very original style, with animation. The plot develops in Havana and New York. Until then, everything goes well.

The problem is that the soundtrack is from Bebo Valdés, 92-years-old. And the tape is dedicated to him. Bebo, Chucho’s father, is considered a ‘deserter’ by the Castro regime.

That’s not the only obstacle. There are also some statements of Javier Mariscal, who has said “the Castro Brothers are a disaster as agents”, which set one off that the island “gets worse every time”.

It is a shame that in Cuba everything passes through the political sieve.The people pay the consequences of not being able to see a pleasant movie that narrates part of their rich musical heritage in the theaters.

One has to content oneself with knowing that Chico and Rita was very well received in London and already received a prize at an animated film festival in Holland. On February 25, 2011, it will be premiered in Spain and might even be nominated for an Oscar.

Or do like always: hope that a DVD copy shows up, ‘burn’ it, and pass it along clandestinely. If we Cubans are accustomed to anything, it’s movie and television piracy.

Translated by: JT

December 11 2010

A Glance at 1960 Havana / Iván García


To go back to the Havana of 50 years ago, I haven’t used a time machine, rather a telephone directory from 1960 that a collector of magazines and old books sold me for 50 pesos (2 dollars).

The first novelty was to find that the Spanish Embassy was on Oficios, a street less central than its present location on Cárcel and Zulueta. And that the ambassador was Juan Pablo de Lojendio Irure, Marqués de Vellisca (San Sebastián 1906 – Rome 1973), posted in Cuba since 1952.

This Spanish diplomat became famous because on January 22, 1960, just past midnight, he showed up in the television studio where Fidel Castro, in a live appearance, accused him of helping Catholic priests set up clandestine printing presses and of protecting counterrevolutionaries.

Lojendio, an adventuresome Basque, was watching this speech in his residence, and at hearing it, shot out like greased lightning, headed for the Tele Mundo channel. He interrupted the program and got in Castro’s face like nobody had ever publicly done until then. The transmission was cut off. The guards took him out of there and in 24 hours he had to abandon the country.

Of great interest, at least to those of my generation, is to discover the great number of companies — national and foreign — that existed in that era. Many with English language names, like McCann Erickson de Cuba S.A., General Electric Cubana, or Pan American World Airways.

Something that is hardly surprising if one recalls that a year after the bearded ones came to power, Cuba was still the seat of American firms like Coca Cola, Esso, Shell, Goodyear, Dupont, Firestone, Sinclair, Swift, and US Rubber, among others. Or banking entities like The Chase Manhattan Bank, The Bank of Nova Scotia, and The Royal Bank of Canada.

To the younger drivers of “almendrones” (old American cars), you’ll find it difficult to believe that in 1960 — only in the capital — you could find various automobile dealers: Chevrolet, Ford, Chrysler, Buick, Fiat, Volkswagen … and if one wanted to rent a car, you could do it at Hertz Rent A Car, at Infanta and 23.

Cubans who today have to buy — in foreign currency — soaps, deodorants, shampoos, colognes and detergents, in the first years of the revolution, for pesos, you could even buy toiletry products made by the two great national businesses, Crusellas and Sabatés, and by the foreign Revlon, Max Factor, Elizabeth Arden, Helena Rubinstein and Avon, among others located in the capital.

Also in Havana were located the five principal breweries of the island: Hatuey, Cristal, Polar, Tropical, and Cabeza de Perro. In Guanabacoa, Miller High Life had an office.

In that directory appear the names, addresses, and phone numbers of 131 cinemas and 3 drive-ins in Havana. On the main cinematographic circuit debuted “Our Man in Havana”, a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Graham Greene, filmed in April of 1959 in locations around Old Havana and starring Alec Guinnes and Maureen O’Hara.

In 1960 not only was Ambassador Lojendio expelled from Cuba. Also having to go were the Bacardí Family, owners of the distillery and rum factory that, in 1862, in Santiago de Cuba, had been founded by the Catalán Don Facundo Bacardí Massó.

The revolutionary government nationalized all of its facilities, but it couldn’t prevent Bacardí from being the best rum in the world. Although today it is produced in Puerto Rico.

Iván García

Photo: Peter Stockpole, Life Magazine, 1959. The actor Alec Guinness during the filming of “Our Man In Havana”, in Sloppy Joe’s, a bar situated on Zulueta and Ánimas. Since its founding in the 1920s, its owner, the Galician José Abeal Otero converted it into one of the preferred tourist and military spots for Americans who, before 1959, traveled to the island. Among its more famous clients was the writer Ernest Hemingway.

Translated by: JT

September 8, 2010

Cubans on the Verge of an Anger Breakdown / Iván García

You can cut the social tension with a knife. You can see it at a glance. Let me tell you. On a bus on the P-3 line, full of passengers, a skinny black man blew up, furious, and got into a heated brawl with a student. Just because he had been stepped on.

In addition to kicks and punches, each swing of the man’s huge machete, totally out of control, caused a fearful roar of the nearly 200 people who crammed the bus. People escaped through the windows to avoid being hurt.

A little later, two drivers of state vehicles came to blows in the street. The trigger was that one of them had abruptly made a dangerous turn and almost caused a collision. Those who were in the cars also took part in the street fight.

On the same night, a few guys, drunk to the gills, started a ‘war’ with stones, cold steel, and loud cursing, for no apparent reason, in a quiet neighborhood in the Diez de Octubre municipality. The residents, terrified, watched the brawl from their windows.

Too much violence for one day. As usual, the police arrived late. As if that were not enough violent incidents in various parts of Havana, reports came of others in different locations on the island. Some ended up in acts of protests against the regime. The most notorious example was in the city of Santa Clara. The spark that started the scuffle was not showing the awaited Barcelona-Real Madrid soccer match in a theater.

In Bayamo, famous because in 1868 many villagers set fire to their houses and properties before giving them up to the Spanish army, a group of drivers created a ruckus over what they considered unfair taxation.

A freelance journalist told me that in October, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo alone, the number of cases of excessive violence was about 100, among family members, and in the worst kind of bars, nightclubs and slums.

A sociologist who was consulted explains that increases in social tension and discontent which have recently occurred on the island are caused by unemployment, lack of any future, and high taxes on self-employment. Previously, the government used to open the door to emigration to the U.S. when the social situation became ugly.

In 1963, 1980 and 1994 hundreds of thousands of Cubans fled to Florida to escape a hopeless life. But now the Castros know that they can not open the valve of the pressure cooker that is Cuba, triggering a massive wave of migration.

Senior Pentagon officials have said publicly they would consider this to be an act of war. Therefore, the way to drain the high tensions of the beleaguered Cubans could be serious and profound political and economic reforms.

Meanwhile the sensible locals search for effective answers to the outbreaks of violence, the ordinary people who, for whatever reason, get into brawls.

This is a serious matter. A time bomb with incalculable consequences. Believe me, what’s to come is not exactly good news for the Castro brothers.

Photo: Roly63, Panoramio. Street Brawl in the Havana neighborhood of Cerro

Translated by ricote.
December 8 2010

The Latest Apparition of the ‘Holy’ Comandante / Iván García

The same day that Cubans celebrated the 398th anniversary of the apparition of Our Lady of Charity in the Bay of Nipe, Santiago de Cuba, news agencies revealed the latest confession of Fidel Castro: “The Cuban model does not work even for us”. Something that we who live in Cuba have known well, for a while.

A resident of Havana would say, “Damn, that guy just fell out of the tree” A housewife: ” It took me so long to realize.” A student: “Pal, he just discovered hot water” A peasant: “The leader fell from the saddle.” And an intellectual: “It took long enough to discover the Mediterranean.”

Although the people on the island are more concerned with daily survival than with paying attention to what Castro says or allows to be said, his statements left almost no one indifferent. “We’re fucked now that he’s coming out with these things, because if anyone is guilty of the fact that Cubans live so badly and so far behind, it is Fidel,” says Roberto indignantly, a retired 75-year-old.

“After this resurrection of the comandante, I cannot understand what is the goal of these public appearances. If he is doing this to stay in the limelight, or support to his brother Raul. Maybe he’s decided to become an independent analyst,” says Lourdes, 51, unemployed.

A few days ago, his mea culpa about the repression against Cuban homosexuals sparked a flurry of opinions among gays, transvestites and lesbians. “It seems that he wants to clear a bit of his soul before kicking the bucket,” Samuel, 35, a hairdresser who is proud to be queer says cheerfully.

In Cuba, due to the lack of internet, cable TV and foreign media that can reach the entire population, people often learn the news via shortwave stations and calls from family and friends living abroad.

Sara, a professor, 58, is annoyed by Castro’s too-late defense of the Jews that he just came out with. Her parents were Jewish and found a home in Cuba. “I can go live in Israel. But I want to die and be buried next to my family, in the Jewish cemetery in Guanabacoa.”

One of the moments that she does not forget was when in September 2006, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran was in Havana, “Because he denies the Holocaust,” said Sara. Six years earlier, in 2000, Fidel Castro welcomed Khatami, the former Iranian president.

Because if there is anything that the Cuban government has boasted about, in particular after 1961 when Cuba joined the Non-Aligned Movement, it is its excellent relations with the Arab and Muslim world. Although Cuba does trade with Israeli businessmen under the table.

The latest apparition of the sainted comandante took place standing next to the American-Israeli journalist, Jeffrey Goldberg (born in New York, 1965). Goldberg is publishing, in dribs and drabs, the contents of three days of conversation in his blog, The Atlantic.

We await the next chapters. And confessions with a touch of regret (or of a guilty conscience), like his reference to his role in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October of 1962. Certainly, before retiring, the star reporter for CNN, Larry King, wants to interview Fidel Castro. Surely he’ll get that interview. We already know of his preference for U.S. reporters.

Returning to Jeffrey Goldberg. Will he take advantage of his stay in Cuba to intercede for Alan Gross, a Jewish American who allegedly traveled to the island to help the local Jewish community and has been jailed in Havana since December 2009?

Translated by ricote

October 8 2010

The Cuban Press: Rather than Inform, It Disinforms / Iván García

Cubans are readers of newspapers by habit, and after dinner at 8:00 in the evening they sit and watch the television news, not knowing all the details of the current conflict on the Korean peninsula.

The people of Cuba have been well informed that the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea responded with heavy artillery to the island of Yeonpyeong, because of supposed South Korean military aggression in the Yellow Sea.

There is no hint of criticism or questioning of the deplorable action from the Sung dynasty, which, if true, seems a disproportionate response to an island inhabited by civilians and which resulted in four deaths and dozens injured.

When the Asian bullies, addicted to the Juche ideology created by their “dear leader” Kim Il Sung, already had an arsenal of atomic bombs, the Cuban press, would only publish the occasional article, noting that it was all a United States disinformation campaign, because they were looking for a pretext to attack North Korea militarily.

The same thing happens with Iran. Ahmadinejad is almost a saint to the media. The events of March 2009 in Tehran were reported in a biased manner.

The conviction of an Iranian woman to death by stoning has also been overlooked. They remain silent before the latest reports from the IAEA on whether Iran is able to manufacture nuclear devices. Or they present is as a “new manipulation by groups tied to imperialist interests.”

The editorial policy of Cuba is clear. The Yankees are the evil ones. Them and the rich and capitalist nations. They might oppose certain actions of the United States or the European Union. But from there to applauding and remaining silent about the outrages of counties like Iran, North Korea or Venezuela, just because they are enemies of Washington, is a disgrace.

Now, the Spanish government has asked Venezuela to extradite Arturo Cubillas, a member of the Basque separatist group, the ETA, with solid connections with the Bolivarian administration. The strong man of Caracas has denied the request. Cuba has ignored the subject entirely.

The official press responds to the institutions of the State. The daily paper Granma is the organ and voice of the Communist Party, the only party in the country. The other publications that circulate represent the social and mass organizations controlled by the Party and the government.

A journalist who prefers to remain anonymous says that every sensitive and important topic is bared by the Department of Revolutionary Orientation (DOR). Even to the point that, the reporter says, before Granma is printed Fidel or his advisors go through what’s going to be published with a fine-toothed comb.

This iron control by Castro has waned lately. Despite the fat that only 4% of citizens have internet connections, the appearance of new tools like Facebook, Twitter or mobile phones are widening the information dispersal to the man on the street.

Relatives and friends who live abroad often send news, through text messages, that the national media doesn’t publish or distorts. The same thing happens with email. Many people have internet accounts at their work, and take advantage of the slightest slips of the virtual guards to open a link to a social network, read El Nuevo Herald, or the Spanish digital daily, El Mundo.

People who seek out other sources also listen to the BBC, Radio Exterior de España, The Voice of America, or Radio Francia International.

The management of certain international news in Cuba is, at times, biased. Rather than inform, they disinform. Not that the Cuban press always tells lies. But at times they obscure the truth.

December 4 2010

The Cachita of Central Havana / Iván García

In September, Havanans venerate three virgins: on September 7 the Regla virgin; the following day the Virgin of the Charity of Cobre, and the Merced virgin on the 24th. Regla and Charity are mixed race, and one of them, Our Lady of Charity of Cobre, is the Patron Saint of Cuba.

Rain or shine, Havanans gather on September 8 at the church that bears her name, a construction from the 19th century, painted white and yellow. For some time, a procession passes through the streets outside on this day.

The temple is located in Los Sitios, a neighborhood of poor, black, marginal people in Central Havana. It is a few miles around and from everywhere you can see overflowing trash containers, sewage running in torrents, and a frightening odor of shit that emerges from the cracked and filthy tenements.

The area is one of the most densely populated in the city. In miserable shacks, and high houses propped up on stilts with twisted iron balconies, innumerable families live crowded together, many consisting of “Palestinians,” citizens who come fleeing the extreme calamities of the Eastern provinces.

Almost all are living in Havana illegally. On the day of Cachita, as Cubans call their patron saint, the easterners carry the devotees in their bike-taxis. And they charge double. And they aren’t the only ones making a killing. One woman in dark glasses reads the cards for one convertible peso (less than a dollar). Other neighbors sell roasted peanuts, homemade candy, and bread with thin slices of ham and cheese.

With so many people crowded together the “choros” (pickpockets) take advantage of the least chance to grab a wallet from a pants pocket or a backpack, looking for money or anything of value. A black-haired young woman flies into a rage at an older man who for some time, according to her, had been pressing his penis into her ample buttocks. She threatens to call the police and the guy disappears.

The police, of course, flood the area around the church. The State Security agents keep their distance with their short hair, Motorola cell phones and Suzuki motorcycles.

Tourists usually show up with video cameras. A well-built black boy hugs his Spanish girlfriend. Hookers dressed in the latest styles try to make it inside the church to put a roll of coins on the altar.

The priest announces that the procession is starting. The figure of the virgin is taken out in a class case and mounted on a convertible car.

The crowd starts to move. Some are praying and some are drinking rum and beer. Others eat peanuts and chew gum. They take photos and record videos. Although perhaps only once in their lives, Cubans go to this church to pay tribute to Cachita. It doesn’t matter that her Havana temple is surrounded by poverty.

Fortunately, her real home, in the Cobre Sanctuary, in Santiago de Cuba, is located on a beautiful place surrounded by mountains.

Translated by RST

September 15, 2010

Who is Arnaldo Ramos? / Iván García

He arrived home on Saturday. After 7 years and 8 months behind the bars of a cell and the creaking of locks, the dissident economist Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, 68, at 6:30 in the morning of his first Sunday in freedom, sat in the park facing the modest apartment where he lives in the neighborhood of Central Havana.

He wanted to watch the sunrise, breathe the fresh air and see ordinary people carrying plastic bags for Sunday shopping. He wanted to feel like a free man. After two hours of meditation, the sun began to warm the Havana morning and the sound of children with their bats, balls, skates and soccer balls, broke through his personal spell.

Then Arnaldo Ramos began what was always his daily routine. Joining the long line to buy the official press in a tobacco shop. It is one of his hobbies. Collecting the daily papers and filing them in boxes.

“When I was arrested on 19 March 2003, it was around 9 in the morning, and State Security spent five hours demanding papers and documents,” he says sitting in a mahogany chair.

Ramos, a thin mulatto, short in stature, is well preserved. He is hyper-kinetic, with a fixed gaze and acute analysis. His apartment is furnished in a Spartan style. For the last 45 years he has been married to the doctor Lydia Lima, who is now retired. He is the father of two, with two grandchildren.

He has an extensive history as a dissident. Like other leaders of the current opposition, in the first years of the revolution he had hopes for the project of Fidel Castro. Before realizing they were applauding a fraud, Arnoldo worked in that factory of technocrats that formed the central planning board, JUCEPLAN, an institution that governed the island’s economy and ordered the number of boots, combs and toothbrushes that were to be fabricated every year.

“After graduating in economics in 1971, I started working in JUCEPLAN, with the cream of the economic gurus of Cuban socialism, like Irma Sanchez and Humberto Perez. There I lived, in its entirety, the financial lie, how to doctor the figures to coincide with the interests of Fidel Castro, who skipped all the rules and when some plan occurred to him, however crazy, he sent the draft and the agency had to carry it out to the letter.”

His first problems with the system began with the economic analysis done for the JUCEPLAN newsletter, in which there were some underhanded criticisms. “It was the era of the billions of rubles that the USSR sent us. Waste and improvisation. Burying money in imaginary projects or making purchases in the capitalist countries with super modern factories, which did not accord with the logical development of the country. I remember that in 1978, when thousands of taxicabs were purchased in Argentina, I made the report without ever having traveled to that country,” said Arnaldo, while sipping a powdered orange soft drink .

By 1987 things were already clear to Arnaldo Ramos. The economic system, including the political system, was not working. In 1991 he retired. The following year he began working with another dissident economist, Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello. Together they organized an institute of independent economists. “In 18 years in the opposition, my main contribution was theoretical: to dismantle the government’s complacent discourse and point out the real background of the supposed economic successes.”

On a leaden gray April afternoon he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for insisting in his articles, studies and investigations that the Cuban economy was heading towards the ravine.

Seven years were very hard for a person who was already 60. “Except in Holguín prison, where they beat me, I did not receive physical punishment. Harassment and verbal abuse, yes. It was also a punishment for my family, who had to travel nearly 500 miles loaded with crates, to visit me. Still, I never thought to leave my country.”

He was in two of the toughest prisons on the island. That of Holguin and Nieves Morejón, in the province of Sancti Spiritus. In the past six months, the authorities transferred him to 1580, a prison on the outskirts of Havana.

He was released on parole, a sort of legal limbo that technically allows the government to send him back to jail whenever it wants.” An official of the State Security told me I was free to engage in any activity, and they would not imprison me again. But that was a verbal commitment. There is no document that confirms that.”

Of the alleged economic reforms of the government of General Raúl Castro, the independent economist does not expect anything positive. Nor does he believe that anything important will come out of the Sixth Communist Party Congress, scheduled for April 2011.

The one thing of which he is indeed convinced is that profound changes must occur in Cuba in order to make a leap forward in the economy. And Arnaldo Ramos will be one of those voices for change. Count on it.

Text and photo: Ivan Garcia

Translated by ricote

November 25, 2010

The Cuban Blood of Rubén Blades / Iván García

“Buddy, is it true that the mother of Ruben Blades was Cuban?”, Arian, a 16-year-old student asks me, incredulous. “Cuban and from Havana”, I reply.

On the island, young people know who Rubén Blades is, know his songs and dance to his music. But many are unaware that his mother, Anoland Bellido de Luna-Caramés y Perez, was born in 1927 in Regla, a town just across the bay from Havana.

Since her name was so long, she took the stage name of Anoland Díaz. in addition to being a singer and pianist, she also worked on radio dramas. Myriam Acevedo, now a leading actress in Cuba, knew Anoland as a young child.

“Anoland was also an exceptional child. From childhood she could play the piano like a true professional. She sang soprano and as a child I sang as a young contralto. The owner of the CMQ (the main radio station in the country) had the idea that our two voices could do a duet, and so it was. They called us Myriam and Anoland, the perfect duo” remembers Myriam, who has lived in Italy since 1968.

Anoland was very young in the 40’s when she went to Panama. One night, while performing at a night club, the Cuban woman noticed the man playing the bongo drums in the orchestra that accompanied her. It was Rubén Darío Blades Bósquez, a Panamanian of Colombian and English descent. His work as a police detective did not prevent him from sharing his passion for music and percussion. The couple had five children, and the second was Rubén Blades Bellido de Luna, who came into the world on July 16, 1948 in the San Felipe neighborhood of Panama City.

His paternal grandfather, a native of the island of St. Lucia had gone to work on the Panama Canal, and his maternal grandfather, Joseph Louis Reinee Bellido de Luna, from New Orleans, went to Cuba to fight in the Spanish-Cuban-American War. He liked the country and decided to stay, marrying his third wife, Carmen Caramés, a native of Galicia, with whom he had 22 children, including Anoland, who died in 1991.

The Cuban writer Leonardo Padura swears that Rubén Blades came to music through Benny Moré, one of the greatest musicians that Cuba has given the world. Blades himself confirms it:

“I was 10 when my father took me to see Benny Moré, on tour in Panama. He did that like someone going to see the tallest building in the world, because Benny was unsurpassable. After the blockade (by the United States against Cuba), I found more revolutionary offerings like Juan Formell and Los Van Van, Adalberto y su Son, Gonzalito Rubalcaba in the line of Afro-Cuban jazz (latin jazz). I realize now that Cuba was developing a new and tremendous music. And then it produces a reunion with the contemporary Cuban music, especially starting when Juan Formell and Los Van Van recorded the song, Muévete.”

In the Blades home they also listened to Perez Prado and the Orquesta Casino de la Playa, founded in 1937 and considered to be the first big band in Cuba.

In 1990, to celebrate the 45th anniversary of its founding, the group Clave y Guaguanco, which together with the Muñequitos de Matanzas and Yoruba Andabo played a more authentic rumba, dedicated to Rubén Blades the record Dime si te gustó, which includes three songs of Panama: Para ser rumbero, Tiburon, and Te estan buscando.

When Rubén Blades sang in Havana with the Fania All-Stars, in March of 1979, he was in Regla, his mother’s homeland. The story is in this video.

His mother’s family injected the best Cuban music into his veins, and from his father’s side he received life lessons, especially from his grandmother, the Panamanian Emma Bósquez of Laurenza. “My grandmother Emma was the best. I always said that the worst poverty was spiritual. She was a teacher and writer who painted, and defended the rights of women, a Rosicrucian, spiritualist and vegetarian in the 30’s. It was she who taught me to read and write, when I was 4”, he says.

A lawyer by profession, the career of Ruben Blades has been linked to both music and politics.

In 1993, in an open letter to Fidel Castro, he protested the arrest of the Cuban poet Maria Elena Cruz Varela and criticized Castro’s long tenure in power. More recently, in April of 2010 he said that Cuba’s government “continues to exhibit a level of intolerance, intransigence and fear that is contradictory to its thousand-times expressed conviction that the overwhelming majority of the country supports Marxism-Leninism.”

Translated by ricote

September 13, 2010

Movie Days / Iván García

The Havana Film Festival starts on Thursday, December 2. The 32nd International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.

The common people, who go without milk in their coffee every day, count the coins in their pockets; during the ten days of the Festival they can put aside the burdens and sink quietly into that dark magic is the big screen.

Year after year, when December comes, Havana is a sea of people and long lines in various neighborhoods of the city. Elena, 54, often asks for days of work and from 12 noon until about midnight, she jumps from one movie to another and enjoys the latest of the Latin American cinema.

Rogelio, 60, a librarian, has just acquired a 20 pesos (one dollar) ticket book for the central Payret cinema. This book will allow him to see 10 films without having to stand in the long lines (each entry costs 2 Cuban pesos, 0.10 cents).

Apart from a lot of movies from the the continent, in this edition, as usual, there will be European productions. You can also discover the new Canadian films or Independent U.S. productions.

Alfredo Guevara, president of the Havana festival, announced in a press conference that this year the festival will showcase over 500 films, of which 122 will compete for Coral awards. Argentina tops the list with 88 titles in the seven categories of prizes. Followed by Mexico, with 79 and Cuba with 78, including four feature films that aspire to win a Coral.

The homegrown films are: The Eye of the Canary, from the director Fernando Perez; Long Distance, by Esteban Insausti; Ticket to Paradise, Gerardo Chijona; and The Old House, Lester Hamlet.

Guevara also confirmed that the 32nd edition exceeds the previous in numbers of films and is distinguished by the diversity of genres. “We approach the days of the celebration of the intelligence and visual art, at this festival with an overflowing loyal following, which is the greatest gift we could have. Already 32 years. It’s a lot,” he said.

More than 20 works of fiction and 24 operas vie for the Coral prizes. Among the favorites are Brothers, by the Venezuelan Marcelo Rasquin, winner of the Colón de Oro prize this year in Huelva, and Abel, produced and directed by Mexican actor Diego Luna.

Despite the poor condition of several theaters and the common problems of public transport, film festivals are always well received by the Cubans. For moviegoers it is a unique opportunity: the rest of the year, movie listings are quite poor on the island.

And for those who do not have the cinema as one of their priorities, is an opportunity to clear their heads, take the wife and go to the movies and eat peanuts or popcorn.

Then, off, to buy a hot dog and watch the sunrise sitting on the wall of the Malecon. One way to escape the economic crisis. It is also in December. Month of wrapping-up. And best wishes.

Dreams / Iván García

I wish that as adults we could ask Santa Claus to fulfill our desires. Right now, on this fresh Havana morning, with a black sky brimming with starts, I would like to have the power to fulfill my dreams.

What would I give to be sitting in a corner of the massive Camp Nou de Barcelona stadium, this Monday, November 29, to enjoy the best match up that can be seen on the planet today: el Barça-Real Madrid.

If it’s football we’re talking about, I have many dreams to fulfill. To visit the Maracaná of Rio de Janeiro during the Flu-Fla derby. Or Anfield Stadium, in Liverpool, when the Reds take the field while their fans sing, “You’ll never walk alone.”

I would also love to see a baseball game in the new Yankee Stadium in New York. Or be entertained by a seeing my idol, Kendry Morales, painting the four corners with the Angels. then eating at a Taco Bell or a McDonald’s and hopping over to the Los Angeles Lakers to see the fantastic play of Kobe Briyant and Pau Gasol.

I wonder if one day we’ll be able to be tourists. Take a walk in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo or the old San Juan. If not all of them, at least one city. Whatever.

I’ve saved the best wish for last. To visit the Swiss city of Lucerne with my daughter Melany. And beside the peaceful Lake of the Four Cantons, to chat with my mother, my sister and my niece Yania.

Seven years ago, on November 25, 2003, they were forced by political circumstances to leave their homeland. My mother had two options: risk going to prison for her work as an independent journalist, or try to make a better future for her oldest granddaughter and her daughter.

Left behind in Cuba are her other child and her other granddaughter, 7, whom she has never met in person. It is the price we pay for thinking differently from the Castro brothers. My family in exile and I on this island, more of an island than ever, mired in the deteriorating economy and a ferocious crisis of the system and of values.

There should be a Santa Claus for adults too. And the power to ask for wishes and dreams, And to make them come true, in my case, to spend a few days with my family, visit places and sites that enchant me, and return promptly to Havana. The 491-year-old lady who is always there, waiting for her family to return.

December 1, 2010