On the Edge of the Precipice

In Cuba we live on the edge of a precipice. If you want to get by, you have to take risks. In almost every sector of Cuban life you have to resort to illegal activity to be able to survive.

Market shortages in freely convertible currencies have become a frequent prospect. Furthermore, its normal to turn to to the black market to obtain the best selection and prices of goods.

In the street, hidden under a cloth you can even find a coffin if you need one, but you cannot forget that you are committing a crime by obtaining these goods. In Cuba, almost everything is illegal. If you sell or buy with the intention of re-selling the item afterwards, depending on the case you could be brought before the Commission for crimes involving the acquisition or the hoarding of goods.

The same thing can happen to you where you live. In each area a committee watches people 24/7. A culture of suspicion has been created, which doesn’t accept any proof of innocence. The reality is that no worker can live on just their monthly salary alone. You have two options, you live off remittances from your family or you improvise, you hustle and in Cuba this means you turn to the black market, like the illegal trade during the Franco dictatorship in Spain.

On Castro’s Island you can draw attention to yourself for the wrong reasons simply by painting your house, buying a television, eating meat from time to time, throwing a good birthday party for your children or owning 3 or 4 pairs of shoes. This would be considered as having a quality of life which is too high, which is enough to result in the confiscation of your possessions for making money illegally. In this case, the responsibility to provide evidence is reversed, as it is up to you to prove that your “riches” are not a result of illegal activity.

It’s rare not to know what certain neighbours are up to in your area; not out of curiosity, but mainly out of necesity. You return from work and you discover that your cooking oil has run out, so you can take an empty bottle and ask around the neighbourhood. Straight away someone informs you who is selling oil. The same thing happens if you don’t have the right money when you’re out shopping and you need to buy detergent, soap or sausages or if you need to get hold of a chicken for your child who is ill.

Despite having spent 51 years basically living illegally, Cubans allegedly have to denounce all acts which go against the law. A failure to do so is considered a crime under the penal code; in other words turning a blind eye is also illegal.

Could you imagine turning in the person who sells you chicken for a lower price than the state or pointing the finger at the people who enable you to buy food, clothes and shoes at prices which you can afford? These people let you pay in two or three installments with other advantages which the state-run businesses do not offer. As the people consider this law unfair, you will find that in Cuba today there is a great social tolerance towards illegal activities.

The government is also aware of this situation so as a result a complex network of anonymous informants has been set up. People are betrayed not only due to strict vigilance or a desire to obey the law, but also due to jealousy, quarrels or sexual passions. This demonstrates the loss of morals in Cuban society and above all, the way in which the government can interfere in the private lives of citizens with complete impunity.

The wealth of a neighbour can worry one person or irritate another, including those “Revolutionaries,” who over the years have become frustrated with a life which seems to be going nowhere. An argument about loud music, a fight between brothers, a confrontation over the boundaries of an adjacent patio or simply just being proud and not saying hello to anyone can be the catalyst for a tip-off.

In other cases, you can give information in return for being left alone by the authorities. In all the neighbourhoods there is no lack of unscrupulous people who say “I am involved in illegal activities, but I will also inform on what others are doing.” These type of people have become the main source of information for the authorities, to fight against the “new rich,” the Cubans who supposedly represent a real danger to the political power of the communists. This is a twisted way of looking at things, but the informers are also acting out of necessity.

Despite these areas of 24 hour vigilance and denunciations, the number of people breaking the law increases every day. This is normal when you forbid a person from doing something against their natural survival instinct. All the individuals who flout the penal code do so for this reason and come from all walks of life.

There are acts which do not represent a danger to society, as they already classified as illegal in the legislation. It is certain that the only thing that is legal in Cuba is to work in a state owned enterprise, study and go shopping with your ration card in the warehouse. To do anything else means to cross over into illegality.

What damage does it do to a society when a citizen cannot sell eggs and advertise his goods in the street? What kind of feeling is created when the government prevents its citizens from going into private business when it is unable to meet their individual needs? The state knows that it is irrational to maintain a ban on something which it cannot provide a substitute for. The authorities are also aware that the citizens need to resort to illegal activities to survive, and the economic situation makes sure that this vicious circle prevails.

Illegal activities and corruption are closely linked. The shortage of resources encourages the black market and all this contributes to the collapse of the economy, hinders law and order of the state and removes the necessary social consensus which legitimizes the state’s power. By allowing individuals to live like barbarians in an uncivilised society without rules which must be obeyed, the state contributes to the breakdown of the fundamental components of education and the moral code.

if there are so many disadvantages from the illegal sector and rational measures are not taken to stop them either, what is the real purpose of the Cuban government? Their intention is not clear except to remain loyal at any cost to a system built upon illegal activity.

From this point of view, the illegal actions suit the government as their excessive bans help them to completely control the population who are suffocated by a repressive police presence and the population will be loyal as they need to survive. Under these conditions their power could last for another half a century.

For people in countries where a government of laws and rights exist, it is very difficult to understand why Cubans have to break the law in order to achiveve their aspirations or realize a dream. You commit a crime whilst accepting the crimes of others or run the risk of being turned in simply on a whim or out of spite.

This is an incomprehensible and surreal situation, but this is how we have lived in Cuba for 51 years since Fidel Castro came to power.  Without civic values.

Ivan Garcia and Laritza Diversent

Photo: juanmrivas, Flickr

Translated by : Ellie Edwards

The Fortress, the Books, and the City

Havana from La Cabaña fort

From Feb 11-22, Havana is the center of the 19th International Book Fair.  Then, the Book Fair will tour the major Cuban cities for a month.

The Book Fair will take place at the Fortress of San Carlos de la Cabaña.  This is  a building in the form of a polygon, composed of numerous bulwarks, moats, barracks, and warehouses.  Its construction was started in 1763, and finished 11 years later in 1774.  Of the military buildings Spain constructed in America, it is the largest.  As well as lodging for the best units of the Spanish Army in Cuba, it served to protect Havana from pirate attacks.

By order of Fidel Castro on January 3, 1959, Ernesto Che Guevara occupied La Cabaña and established his command headquarters there.  From that date, it was transformed into a military unit for the guerilla fighters.  And also into a giant prison.  In its humid cells, the same ones where they happily sell literary titles,  hundreds of political and common criminals used to be crowded together.

Serial executions took place in the yards where now the fascinated children run and play hide-and-seek behind the solidly built canons of the 18th century.  Stories are told that in the first days of the revolution, Che personally supervised the executions of the Batista party members accused of crimes.  In those same pits, the opponents of Castro were executed.  In 1991, after various years of remodeling, the old fortress was converted to the Military Morro-Cabaña Historical Park.

The 19th edition of the Book Fair is devoted to Russia.  In various pavilions, a heap of books by authors like Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol, and Pushkin are sold.  I didn’t see books from Solzhenitsyn, Pasternack, or Nabokov.  If there is one whose books should have been sold, it is Yevgeny Yevtushenko, symbol of the post-Stalinist thawing, because the controversial poet is one of the more than 200 Russian intellectuals, writers, and artists, among them the Bolshoi Ballet, that traveled to the Island like special guests, purposely for the Fair.

Eighteen Years ago, Russia said goodbye to the communist ideology, but in Cuba, such a trustyworthy ally of Moscow that in 1976 a paragraph was included in the Constitution highlighting the “indestructible relations between both nations,” certain Russian literature, music, and movies are still considered dissident.

Having been dedicated to Russia, this Fair has brought loads of nostalgia to supporters of the Castro brothers.  Opened by the president, who has never hidden his veneration for the Soviet feat during World War II.  According to professor Jaime Suchlicki, from the University of Miami, “the Soviet army seemed to have always fascinated Raul, who exhibits photos and statues of soviet generals in his office in Havana.”

Together with the Russian Chancelor Sergei Lavrov, the general Raul Castro presided over the inauguration on Thursday, the 11th.  In subsequent days, people turned out en masse to the different areas of The Cabaña.

Havana – Book Fair 2010

With an impressive and unique view of Havana, and a multitude of books and kiosks with an ample gastronomic offering in the two currencies that circulate on the Island (the Cuban Peso and the Convertible Cuban Peso), thousands of people crowded the pavilions in search of literary novelties.

In pesos, the national currency, they sold a few tattered books.  More of the same.  At the entrance, they gave out the title Niños del Milagro (Children of the Miracle) published April 2004, about the eye operations of Venezuelan children, written by the Cuban journalists Katiuska Blanco, Alina Perera, and Alberto Ñúñez. By means of a human wall and with a little luck, you could acquire novels from universal pens or police procedurals from the Spaniard Juan Madrid.

There were ample offerings in strong currency.  Above all, for children.  Ricardo Rojas, 43 years old, seated with his back to the sea and with his daughter, under a bright sun and an irritating wind commented: “I spent 54 Cuban Convertible Pesos (some 50 dollars) in books for my daughter.  When I got back home, I will have to put up with the argument from my wife, for the money wasted only on books.  But they are didactic works that will serve in her education.”

At least Rojas can give himself this luxury.  The majority think about it twice when it comes time to open the wallet. The books are expensive, even the ones sold in pesos, as well as those sold in convertible currency. Nora Diaz, spent five hours with her 3 kids spinning like tops by all of the pavillions.  In her purse she had 120 pesos (4 dollars) and 6 convertible pesos (5 dollars) to spend between books and something to eat.

At the end she bought a pair of infant stories from a Russian author, a cookbook, and 4 apples that she and her kids ate seated on the heights of the Fortress of the Cabaña, looking at the still intense blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean and scant anchored boats, waiting to enter the Havana port.  Nora does not believe that it was a lost day.  “It is an oasis of tranquility to see from the city from here.  We will go back with few books, but hopeful,” she said captivated by the splendid scenery.

In spite of its shady past, the vision offered from the grounds of La Cabaña offers is fabulous.  If only to look at Havana from the other side of the bay it is worthwhile to challenge the lines, the empty wallets, the daily disgust, and the deficient public transport.  Book Fair or no Book Fair.

Iván García

Photos: CalQBN, Flickr and Iván García

Translated by BW

Ballplayers Longing For Six Figure Salaries

They can’t sleep easy at night.  The millionaire salaries that they pay the ballplayers in the Big Leagues of the United States give the Cuban players a migraine.  It’s no small wonder.

Every time a newspaper from the other side of the pond falls in their hands, or they watch it through Florida TV Channels, they see the Angel’s great hitter, Kendry Morales, who had a dream career, or when they see that the lefty Aroldis Chapman pitching 100 miles per hour signed six seasons with the Cincinnati Reds for 30.25 millions dollars (he will make a minimum of 5 millions dollars per season). It is inevitable that the young local baseball stars like Aramis Mendez sighs to play one day in the big arena.

The drip drip drip of desertions from the national sports increases. When in 1991 the right handed pitcher René Arocha from the Havana town of Regla, from the other side of the bay, opened the spigot of baseball players that preferred to play as professionals and manage their money without the inference of the State, since then the number grows year by year

A little more than 300 baseball players have left the country. At the first opportunity, however it might be, by abandoning the team in the middle of a game, or throwing themselves onto the sea in any floating object. They want to leave behind their modest lives of playing the whole year just to get the salary of a simple worker.

In Cuba a baseball player plays in the national classics, he does not work, and he competes the whole year like his counterparts, the professionals, do. When he goes to the pay window he collects super modest salary. Noelvis Rodríguez, a shortstop with good hands and a hot batting average, makes 278 Cuban pesos a month (around 12 dollars) as an exterminator even though he has never done this job before.

It is an old trick of the countries with totalitarian societies. They say that the athletes are amateurs, but actually, since infancy they are groomed as sportsmen of high efficiency. Since the now-extinct USSR appeared in the sports arena, back in 1952 in the Olympic games of Helsinki. The hierarchy of the communist states was eager to obtain great results in the sport arena to be able to show the superiority of the socialist system over undesirable and wild capitalism.

In all these nations, including Cuba, they could go without butter and beef but they will have plenty of Olympic winners; since an early age, their athletic abilities are manufactured like sausages and polished in the sporting schools.

In the quest for Olympic glory, they even practice dirty tricks. The biggest cheaters were the East Germans. To a swimmer like Cornelia Ender or an arrogant runner like Marita Koch, they were stuffed with forbidden substances to achieve results that border science fiction.

On the Island they also resorted to doping, although not with the same intensity as the East European athletes who had shining scores, like the disk thrower Luis Mariano Delis, or the weight lifter Daniel Núñez, they incurred in the use of forbidden substances to place themselves among the best of the world

The main sports of all times in Cuba are boxing and baseball. Before 1959 baseball players, the size of Adolfo Luque, Orestes Miñoso and Martin Dihigo, and pugilist like Kid Chocolate.

After the arrival of the bearded ones, sport was diversified, and they were great winners, like Las Morenas del Caribe in volleyball, track and field athletes, headed by the phenomenal runner of the 400 and 800 meters Alberto Juantorena, double Olympic champion in Montreal in 1976.

But the unexhaustible quarry was always in baseball and boxing. In the first years of the Revolution, the athletes who ran away from their Country to make money and compete for whichever country would take them were few. After 1991 when René Arocha started the stampede, the exodus of boxers and baseball players has increased

Mediocre athletes do not leave, no way. They want to make juicy salaries, Olympic boxing champions like Guillermo Rigondeaux, Yan Bartelemí, and Odlanier Solís. Baseball players the caliber of the brothers Liván Hernández, José Ariel Contreras, Kendry Morales, Dayán Viciedo and Aroldis Chapman.

That is the reason why young talents like Noelvis Rodríguez watch mesmerized from home at the spectacular plays of their idols. If one day they make it to the Major Leagues, they also expect six figure salaries, and to be able to rescue their relatives out of their poverty. The government of the Castro brothers maintains a sterile struggle with its athletes.

The Castros plead that they compete in the name of honor and the love of the motherland. That money is not important but the love of their compatriots. Baseball stars like Kendry Morales and Aroldis Chapman got tired of hearing the string of patriotic rhetoric, while living in their humble concrete shacks

Their meager salaries disgust many Cuban baseball players. A long time ago, they glanced to the north. They wait for the opportunity to escape from the Island and make their dreams come true.

By the request of those interviewed, the names has been changed.

Translated by: Mari Mesa

A Calvary of Problems

El Calvario (Calvary) is a dusty and steep village, with many half-paved streets. It is located south of Havana, in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, the poorest and the one with the greatest number of imprisoned men in the entire city.

It was once a major town. When it was founded in 1753 by a family of Canary Islanders it had pretensions of being a middle-class neighborhood. There were three sugar mills, a municipal park, a church and a cemetery.

It is even said that the Cuban national hero José Martí had a girlfriend in the village. This is a typical claim of inhabitants of lost villages, inventing fables to add prestige to the soil of their birth.

In this January of 2010 in the 21st century, the village is a collection of sad one-story houses. Some have roofs of palm fronds and dirt floors. At the local cemetery a sallow, mentally-challenged guy acts as gatekeeper and gravedigger. Like something out of a horror movie.

In the space between graves, he grows squash, which he offers to the mourners and the curious who visit the rundown cemetery. The fool, which is what he really is, takes advantage of the ground and its possibilities.

A few days ago, between swigs of cheap rum, filtered with molasses and the smell of pork barbecued over charcoal on the grill, in the squalid old town they held the Assembly of Accountability.

What kind of assembly is that? It’s a review of what has been done by the delegate (a kind of council member) before the people who elected him. That night the atmosphere was warm. At the meeting, under the stars and surrounded by marabou weed and banana plants, the rotund president of the People’s Power in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo and his deputy were present.

The People’s Power emerged in 1974. It is a poor imitation of a Western parliament, where they play at practicing democracy. People go and raise a long list of complaints, which are very rarely solved.

That night, someone tape-recorded the Calvary Assembly. The local chiefs expressed themselves so badly,  mixing lies with the prepared government speech and partisan jargon, that it seemed like it was taken from a film script by Berlanga. They appear to propose ideas. The reality is that they impose them. They discussed issues such as lack of doctors, the possibility of having a market, and what to do to get a phone.

If it were not for the poor audio, it would have been worth listening to. It is a sample of Cuban democracy. The best in the world. According to Fidel Castro.

Iván García y Laritza Diversent.

Translated by: Tomás A.

Love in the Time of the Special Period

Julia Romero, a 20-year-old university student, will never forget the day she lost her virginity. Forget the fairy tale of a magical night, surrounded by a pleasant environment.

“My first night of love was terrible. It was in the middle of spring, we left a mediocre disco and had sex in a pitch-black park, surrounded by onlookers and in a heavy downpour that surprised us. The only pleasurable thing was that we were two people in love.”

And so it is that to make love in decent conditions in 21st century Havana is a luxury. Before 1989, there was an extensive network of motels, known in Cuba as posadas or inns. They were discrete, inexpensive, and air conditioned. They offered sandwiches and alcoholic beverages. They were open 24 hours. And for young couples, unfaithful spouses, and others who lived in overcrowded conditions and enjoyed no privacy, the only option they had to engage in sexual relations was to go to these motels.

But in 1990, with the arrival of the special period, a crisis that has lasted 21 years, among many other things, the inns quietly disappeared. The most common situation on the island is for up to four generations to live together under one roof. Having a single room is a convenience that few enjoy. Even young couples, when they have children, tend to sleep with them in the same room.

Ask the married couple Jose Ramirez and Delia Iznaga, about the problems they face when having sex. And with a frown, they will give you a long list of calamities. The Ramirez marriage produced two sons, 8 and 11 years old.

“They sleep in the same room. We barely have time for married life, it’s been a month since we had sex. And although we’re both 35, when we go out at night, my wife and I look like a couple of teenagers. We’ll make love in a staircase, the courtyard of a school, or a vacant lot. Several times we have surprised the custodians of the place or the police. We were shamefaced when we had to go pay a fine for ‘obscene acts in public.'”

With the legalization of the dollar and self-employment, private houses proliferated that rented to couples. They are comfortable and offer a wide assortment of food and beverages. But they are very expensive for the average Cuban.

Rudy Ramos, 43, owns one of these “tryst houses.” “The business is not going badly. I have expanded to 9 rooms, air conditioning, television, refrigerator, and shower with hot and cold water. The charge is 5 Cuban convertible pesos (CUC) for two hours. And 10 CUC for the entire night. My papers are in order.

It happens that 10 CUC (250 Cuban pesos) is the minimum monthly wage in Cuba. These kind of houses for rent by the hour arose with foreigners in mind. It is well-known that one of the attractions of the island is sex tourism. But Cubans who work in hotels, or in cafes for CUCs, or who receive remittances from abroad, can with some frequency lie on a good mattress with a girlfriend, while drinking Crystal beer, and can shower with warm water after making love.

But they are the minority. Most, such as the Ramirez couple, or the college student Julia Romero, have sex without spending a dime, in a park under the stars or on any staircase of some building in the city. And believe me, in Havana there are many of these places.

Iván García

Photo: la imagen, Flickr

Translated by: Tomás A.

Revolutionary Tax

It’s like a casino.  Pure gambling.  Cuban government economists don’t have to envy the financial wizard George Soros. Since October 25, 2004, when Fidel Castro levied an 18 percent tax on the U.S. dollar and 8 percent on other currencies, from this source alone Cuba has banked more than 600 million dollars a year in hard currency.

Let me explain. There is no trick whatsoever. Of the one billion dollars in remittances sent every year by Cuban exiles in Florida, the government pocketed 200 million. Without investing a dime.

If we accept as valid that two million visitors enter the island every year — naive northern Europeans, horny Spaniards hunting dark-skinned girls, relaxed Canadians fleeing the cold, and thousands of Cuban-Americans who come to visit their families — to all without exception, when they exchange money, the government applies the revolutionary tax.

As good Galician descendants, the Castros are reluctant to give figures, especially when it comes to money. So one has to keep accounts on paper. To the 600 million dollars, add 200 million for the tax applied to tourists, assuming that each of them, on average, exchanges 3 thousand U.S. dollars or euros.

And to complete Operation Robin Hood as implemented in Cuba, let’s add another 200 million dollars from high prices charged in establishments that sell goods or offer services for foreign exchange. Since 2004, commodities like oil, soaps, detergents and garments are sold exclusively for Cuban convertible pesos or CUC, the straw currency that hides the Yankee dollar.

$100 in 2002 translates to $60 in the newly released 2010. It’s simple arithmetic. You lose $20 when you change money in the state banks and another twenty when they mercilessly suck your taxes, sometimes in excess of 240 percent, when you go shopping at hard-currency stores.

At the time, the Comandante only justified that kind of abusive tax because the U.S. Department of Treasury, with its regulations resulting from the embargo, had made it impossible to trade with Yankee money. It was really because the Americans discovered four billion U.S. dollars deposited in the Swiss bank UBS from transactions with Cuba, which the Havana government claimed came from sales in hard-currency stores.

I’ve always wondered why they saved so much. Then came the plucking operation. Including Castro’s “good one”; one sunny morning in 2005, told the foreign press that this money was paying for the vaunted “energy revolution”, as he called the replacing of millions of electric appliances from the prehistoric era in most Cuban homes.

Forty-year-old American refrigerators, home cooling fans with industrial motors that made as much noise as an airplane taking off, and Russian television screens in black and white. He distributed poor-quality Chinese rice cookers, televisions and refrigerators. In addition to paying for the new equipment, people had to surrender the old. And the best of it was that the operation to save fuel and to replace archaic appliances was paid for by Cuban exiles, as well as tourists and foreign visitors, with the government tax on foreign exchange. Business full-circle.

Alan Greenspan had to be green with envy. With a government that does not take money from the rich, as did the hero of Sherwood Forest. No. It punishes the Cuban emigre who has to work two jobs in Miami and live in a cheap apartment and make sacrifices to send money to his family in Cuba.

The government always makes a monumental miscalculation, when it supposes that by having a second-hand car, an Apple Computer, a Motorola phone, air conditioning and a satellite dish, a Cuban is a rich guy. Maybe they should look in the mirror. Because they usually have all that paraphernalia and the rest of the people don’t, they presume that the “worms” in Miami are rolling in greenbacks.

It is not new to impose a revolutionary tax that the people don’t want. The Basque terrorist group ETA, made it fashionable for entrepreneurs and bankers to pay large sums of money, as one of the ways to maintain their terror campaign against the Spanish government. Leftist groups have also robbed banks and kidnapped wealthy people, and then demanded a lot of money. Anything goes in pursuit of the conquest of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Of the many omissions that the Castro brothers are silent about, the revolutionary tax on foreign exchange is one of them. As it is also obvious that for 16 years the exiles and their relatives in Cuba have to a large extent maintained the stunted island’s economy.

It is well-known that the Cuban economy is in bankruptcy. And with these reprehensible practices they keep it afloat. The least that the Castros should do, as fond of museums and statues as they are, is to erect a great monument in the heart of Havana to those Cubans in the diaspora who give oxygen to their economy.

Iván García

Translated by: Tomás A.

Independent Journalists’ Avatars

Damn.  What do I do now?  I had planned an interview with a lady from the Marianao neighborhood who does community service with needy children.  Because of reasons beyond my control I had to postpone it.

It’s 8:00 in the morning of an unusual and cold month of January in 2010.  I look at the wallet, 28 cuc’s left.  I have to improvise for the failed interview.  Already inside an “almendrón” (antique American car in use as a shared taxi), I decide to share with you the avatars and dreams of an Independent Cuban Journalist.

When, in October, 2009, the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, in its digital version, asked me to write a debate blog titled 90 Miles in partnership with Max Lesnik, the idea seamed brilliant.  Also, if I could, the Mister of Editing with his Madrid accent asked me, some stories.  Great!  Hands to work.  But — there’s always a but — to write in Cuba is a task worthy of Tarzan.

I’ve seen Robert Redford’s film about Watergate seven times.  Incarnates the famous Washington Post reporter, Bob Woodward, and his celebrity source, Deep Throat.  A majestic case of journalism.  With avidity the stories get published in the magazines Time or Newsweek.  Also reports in El Mundo or the Sunday edition of El País.  They’re over the top.  To be a journalist in the First World must be gratifying.

No bureaucrat can deny you public information.  Nor dangling over your head is a horrific law that can condemn you to 20 years in jail.  Also no one in the neighborhood where you live can mount a “repudiation act,” a verbal lynching, German fascist style, where the least they’ll scream at you is a verbal assault on the mother who gave you birth.

Never, in that First World where for breakfast there’s a variety of dishes and with frequency you can eat meat, will a candid intelligence agent pay you a visit to threaten you, that if you continue to write you could be processed.  Must be good to be a journalist in the First World.

In the civilized, because in Colombia or Mexico, a paid thug of a drug cartel can spray you with bullets.  Or in the Venezuela of the delirious Hugo Chavez where the Bolivarian, without contemplations can fill you with improprieties on his television program Aló Presidente.

I have the habit of reading the comments left me.  I like to be criticized.  More so when they are views with weight in them.  If I adore something from the 21st Century is it’s feedback.  I write what I think, be it in a chronicle or in an opinion piece.  For the government, I’m a mercenary.  A traitor to my people and the Socialist Revolution.

I don’t frighten.  I take the work seriously.  Believe me.  And I’m a dreamer, who believes that deep down inside people are good.  For this 2010 I’ve got my plans.  I’d like for Raul Castro to give me the answers he denies blogger Yoani Sanchez.  Also I’d like to interview Fidel Castro in his private clinic.

The encounters list continues.  With Cuban athletes Kendry Morales and Dayron Robles.  And afterward have them sign their autographs for me.  I’d be happy if Usain Bolt, the man who came from another planet, the Swiss Roger Federer, the Argentine Lionel Messi or the Spaniard Pau Gasol, would grant me a few minutes.  Of the politicians, apart from the Castros, with pleasure I’d talk for El Mundo or for my blog, Desde La Habana, with the prisoner of conscience Oscar Elias Biscet or with the exiled Cuban journalist Carlos Alberto Montaner.  Of foreign statesmen, I’d pour off with Lula or a polemic interview with the Father Christmas of Caracas.

Well, why not?  Also with the charismatic Barack Obama and the insipid Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who I’d ask to explain his government’s position with respect to Cuba.  I would miss a fist-full of artists and my little right eye, Oprah Winfrey.

It’s good to dream.  But I’ve arrived at the Parque Central Hotel.  An Internet card for one hour costs 8 cuc, a ton of money.  I tuck away well in my wallet the rest of the 20 cuc’s.  For next time.

I’d give what I don’t have to try out extensive reports, controversial and balanced and with good pictures.  And because someone from the said list granted me an interview.  But that’s jerking off.  Now I have to put my feet on the ground.  And besides this chronicle, see what else I can write for El Mundo and my blog Desde La Habana.  Afterwards I can continue dreaming.

Iván García

Photo:

Translated by: Mickey Garrote

Beggars and Mentally Ill Havanans

In the city of Havana, the number of mentally ill street people in their filthy and ragged clothing increases on a daily basis.  The number of beggars is also going up — you can find them in just about any doorway lying on cardboard asking for change with their lost looks.  And on any corner there are street vendors selling peanuts, cheap things, loose cigarettes and second-hand items.

It is almost a legion.  Walk around the old Capitol Building and Central Park and you will see more than a few senior citizens, dressed in worn-out but clean clothing, all asking for money from the pale European tourists, who, fascinated by all of this, shoot photographs in bursts with their digital cameras.  You’ll also see 11- or 12-year old children begging for money from the foreigners.

Not far away, a robust black man announces that he has souvenir pictures for the photo albums of the travelers.  He takes their photographs in black and white using a box camera from the beginning of the 20th century.  Close by, a group of beggars takes turns holding out their hands without thinking twice about badgering the foreigners.

The troupe of beggars doesn’t just swarm around the areas where distracted tourists tend to wander.  No.  The scene is a frequent one on any central street in Havana.  Or in cafés or stores that only deal in foreign currency.

When the brutal cold wave passed over Cuba during the first fortnight of January — 26 patients admitted into the psychiatric hospital in the capital died due to hypothermia and lack of food — when this happened, the mentally ill street people and vendors magically disappeared.

They were sent to decrepit shelters and guaranteed two frugal meals a day.  But the sun warmed things back up again and they returned to their everyday affairs of trying to win some small change or sell cigarettes and cheap items of limited utility.

If there is anything that fills the revolution of Fidel Castro with pride, it is that at the beginning of 1959, when the lawyer from Birán took the reins of power, you hardly saw any beggars who were out of their minds and demanding.

Back then, there were lunatics who were brilliant and agreeable, like the famous Gentleman from Paris, who was born in Galicia.  He was a crazy, extravagant person who composed poems, and who on avenues and corners in the center of Havana, gave passionate dissertations in the style of an 18th century Spaniard.

Later, when the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR closed the spigot of oil and rubles to Castro, there was a resurgence of a range of flabbergasted scruffy vagabonds who rummaged around in garbage cans looking for left-over food or an old piece of clothing or something to sell.

It is a habitual sight to see extensive legions of poverty-stricken people who have nothing in any Latin-American city you might name.  Those images which used to be unpublished in Cuba, now form part of our urban landscape.  As a result of the 26 deaths in the psychiatric hospital, known as Mazorra, and the hair-raising earthquake in Haiti that snuffed out the lives of almost 100,000 people, those of us here on the ground on the island have been left in shock.

Caridad Ruiz, who is 73 years old and an indigent without a roof who sleeps on newspapers on the pavement of the 10th of October Street, says that on those icy days her beggar’s cup with the faded image of Saint Lazarus filled with coins.  “People were more sensitive, I could eat hot food and have some rum to warm my stomach.”  That’s what the old lady says as she continues to beg for money from anyone who walks through the doorways of the popular avenue.

It could be that in Havana the crowd of beggars, the alienated and the vendors of peanuts, cigarettes and newspapers are not so numerous as in Lima, Río de Janeiro or La Paz.  But we are getting there.

Iván García

DHL Switzerland Does Not Inform Its Cuban Clients

The flood of publicity with which DHL inundates the world floods in telling us that they will deliver packages in 72 hours from door to door.  Well, that will be the case for the rest of the world.  In Cuba, generally, it takes a while longer.  And you have to pay a lot for their services.

I have experienced for myself how the leading firm of global couriers tricks its clients.  I will tell you my story.  I have a daughter who turned 7 on February 3rd. Several weeks in advance I asked my mother to buy her a red outfit for her birthday.  My mother lives in the prim city of Lucerne, a German-Swiss city that never captures international media headlines.

What appeared to be a routine procedure turned into an odyssey and this time Cuban Customs was not to blame.  According to Moraima Vargas Hernández, who is in charge of the DHL Import Office in Havana, the office of the multinational on the outskirts of Lucerne had been informed by email that “for anything with a value over $100, the sender must acquire a consular invoice from the Cuban consulate.”  This consular invoice costs 210 Swiss francs (some 200 dollars).  And in this document one can read that the invoice is required regardless of the contents and weight of the package.

In 2009, my family in Lucerne sent us four packages via DHL. To send a package to Cuba, a country located in Zone 2, the geographic area most distant from Europe, you must use a box, which they give you for free, that is one of five sizes.  The tariffs from Switzerland to Cuba are not cheap: 155 Swiss Francs for the smallest package and 320 for the largest (some $147 to $303).

The point is that DHL in Switzerland had never told my mother, who is 67 and who had to take a bus to Dierikon where the Lucerne DHL office is located, some 40 minutes from her house, that to send a package to the Island she had to get the consular invoice from the Cuban consulate in Berne.

That is  not all, besides of this flagrant violation of the worldly courier, the implacable Cuban bureaucratic state machinery came onto the scene. According to official Vargas, the time allowed for these errands was only ten working days, a very short time in comparison with the two months allowed by DHL for these types of errands.

I agreed with my mother to reclaim the box and pay the money she had to pay to have it returned to her house.  As she lives in a country with rights, there are mechanisms to complain and even sue the international company for providing bad information.

From Cuba it’s a waste of time.  In its desire to deposit money in its depleted coffers, the government imposes high taxes on any commercial transaction or sale of products.  Not to mention that on the Island, the law does not protect the consumer.

For the Castros, emigrants are a kind of cow, the more they can milk them and the more foreign currency they can obtain the better.  DHL, like nearly all transnational companies when it’s about money, is apolitical and unscrupulous, and they negotiate with the highest bidder.

The giant Google, anxious to grow its user-base, has established itself in China, a nation where fierce censorship and human rights violations are enforced  Or the famous Nike, has also installed factories in the Asiatic giant to produce low cost goods, without caring that the Chinese government pays miserable wages and exploits their workers mercilessly.

Unfortunately, this is the way most multinationals operate. They are more interested in a piece of the cake than adhering to ethical business practices or principles. They negotiate with tyrants and closed dictatorial regimes, knowing that these countries violate human rights and the free press is notable for its absence  Each time the contradictions between the politician’s speeches and those of the business people are even more evident.

Doing business with Cuba could backfire for DHL. Employees from DHL in Switzerland were alarmed upon learning that their offices in Havana charge 200 Cuban pesos for delivering the package to your door. According to what we know, DHL global pays for the fuel for the delivery vehicles that bring the shipments to their destinations in all of the countries where it does business.

In this tug-of-war between a company that cheats its clients and a government that for any transaction charges high amounts of money, my daughter Melany will not be able to premiere, on her birthday, the clothes that her grandmother bought for her. Thankfully, she is a happy girl. Not even DHL in Switzerland or the Customs of Cuba are going to erase her naughty smile.

Melany still does not understand the diabolical mechanisms established, in the country where she was born, to continuously put obstacles in the way of the free flow of goods. They form a part of the embargo of the Castros against its people. Three times more effective than that of the United States against Cuba.

Iván García

Translated by: caribbeanmanny@yahoo.com

Another Year Without Hope

When winter comes, Ruben Soriano, 42, is hoping more than anything for the arrival of a cold front. He takes his straw hat off, looks up at the sky and exclaims: “It’s not going to rain again today.” That’s bad for his business. Ruben works hard on a not-very-fertile field on the outskirts of Havana, where he plants tomatoes and vegetables in season. High temperatures and prolonged drought have decreased his crops. With a simple and compelling logic he says:

“If I harvest little, I earn little. And if I don’t get good money I live badly, and I will not have much money to buy seeds and farming tools for the next year. So I pray that the weather will help me.”

Soriano was one of those who benefitted when in 2008 the government of General Raúl Castro gave out rights to farm vacant land. He, his wife and three children were full of hope.

The only thing that Ruben Soriano has done and has done well in his whole life is to work the land. He complains about the low prices that the State collection centers pay for his crops. In theory, he must sell the state about 70 percent of what he grows.

In practice, that’s not what happens. He is forced to under-report the true figures, so that he can sell to private buyers who pay triple the price for his products. “But if the heat and lack of rain continue, I’ll have to do something else,” he worries. And he admits that all he watches on TV are the weather forecasts.

Oscar Suarez, 56, couldn’t care less if it rains, or is cold or hot. He is a private taxi driver, licensed to drive for hire since 2006. Each December, he has to report his earnings to the Treasury and pay the bank between 2,000 and 3,500 pesos.

“It’s always the same. When the last month of the year comes, I have to work like a mule to get that money. For me the important thing is not how much time I have to work, it’s whether there are people needing to go from one place to another who have the ten Cuban pesos to pay the fare.

Suarez is a taxi driver with an elevated cultural level. He doesn’t have to envy his counterparts in Buenos Aires, where according to what he has read, they talk about opera, the stock market, the Boca Juniors, an Argentine soccer team, and the situation in Iraq. “I am like them,” he boasts.

“I am not like the taxi drivers in Argentina, or anywhere on the planet, in that I drive an ancient Chevrolet, a real Frankenstein.” And laughing, he says: “It’s an old lady with rouge. I’ve painted it seven times, and done body work as many times. It’s a mechanical monstrosity; it has the engine of a Volga (Russian car) and parts from so many countries that it seems like a product of the United Nations.”

But it runs and makes money, which is all that’s important to him.  Nor does he worry about whether it pollutes the environment.

“This old Chevy is part of the family. My grandfather, my father, and now me and my children have all driven it. I am more grateful to it than I would be to a watchdog. I often say that in my house, before dinner, instead of praying to the Lord, we pray to General Motors.”

For 2010, Oscar Suarez wants peace and harmony throughout the world, and that Cuba’s economic situation improves. “I have wanted this since 1989, but I’m getting tired of keeping my hopes up. Although it would be good if those above” –and he makes a gesture with his hand indicating the beard of Fidel Castro — “would change direction and be guided by the market economy, but who knows what’s best for the coming year …”

Diego Ramirez, a 34-year old engineer, does not expect great things from 2010. Quite the contrary.

“More likely we’ll have to punch another hole in our belt. In my company there are rumors of pay cuts in hard currency. They took away our lunch and give us 15 pesos a day for food. The outlook is gray and getting darker.”

Diego is a textbook skeptic. “The only ones who see where the country is headed are the people leading us.” And he shows a copy of the daily newspaper Granma, with a grinning Hugo Chávez, and a headline in black letters with the good news: 13 billion dollars invested between Cuba and Venezuela.

Guys like Diego Ramirez long ago stopped believing in the exaggerated triumphalism of the official media. Every day he hopes for a different kind of news.  “Deaths, changes of power, political and economic changes …” And dreams of learning from foreign media. “The Cuban press won’t report anything until everything is under control. So it’s possible that by next year, something really good will happen. ”

– Deaths, firings, political and economic changes…

And he dreams of what he’s learned through the foreign media.  “The Cuban press wouldn’t report anything until everything is under control.  So it’s possible that in the coming year, something good could happen.

According to Diego, many Cubans want the same thing.

Iván García

Translated by: Tomás A.

Sonia Garro, or the Cruelty of a Regime

Sonia Garro at her sewing machine

It all started one sunless noon, on the 24th of February, 2007. “Up here,” said Sonia, a laboratory technician, who sews on a 50-year-old machine on the porch of her home, from where she often saw accidents involving children playing without the watchful eyes of their parents. And her large eyes filled with tears on nights when she saw girls 12 years old, with emaciated bodies, like that of her daughter, prostitute themselves for trinkets.

And it was decided. That day Sonia established an independent community project that would help poor children in her neighborhood, regardless of the ideology of their parents.

We introduce to you Sonia Garro Alfonso, 34, a black woman, somewhat overweight, who lives on Avenida 47 No. 11,638 between 116 and 118, in the populous and humble district of Marianao, at the north end of the City of Havana. If anyone can talk about poverty, prejudice, and setbacks in life, she can.

“I can count the happy moments of my childhood on the fingers of one hand. I am the tenth child in a family of twelve children, desperately poor. Forget Christmas presents. We always wore second-hand clothes given out of charity to my mother by a neighbor. I went to school with my old, broken-down shoes, but with an immense desire, always thinking that studying and outdoing myself could change my fate,” Sonia tells us in the narrow room, panelled with mustard-colored wood, in her precarious two-story house.

Unfortunately for Sonia, her luck did not change in her early youth. On her own, and against obvious shades of racism, during the years when she studied to become a laboratory technician, to climb the hill and leave poverty behind, choking down bread to ward off hunger and be a person who is solvent, it was almost a mission impossible.

“I lived racism firsthand. I remember one day I wanted to make a complaint at the school and the assistant director, with hatred, told me “Go wherever you want, who’s going to listen to the case of a black woman?”  When I graduated from the technical school in laboratory science with a first class degree, they had a ceremony in the Astral theater in the middle of Havana.  The Minister of Public Health was to hand out the diplomas to the most outstanding, and another person from the minister’s circle approached me and said someone else would receive my diploma for me, because to have someone with such black skin in the photo wouldn’t look good. “No offense, it’s not because of racism, but with skin that dark you’ll spoil the photo,” recalls Sonia in her calm voice.

That night, which should have been the happiest of her life, she had to swallow the bitter pill that another person, of the white race, had taken her diploma. She was so humiliated that she left the theater. “I never got that diploma,” she confesses. But as the saying goes, on a skinny dog, all that falls are fleas.

Then, when she was employed in a clinic in her neighborhood, in an “emergency” meeting, she was expelled from the health center for having a husband who was a political opponent. “‘You can do one of two things,’ they told me, ‘either separate from him, or you have to leave the clinic.'” Sonya left.

If anyone has pushed this woman to dissent, and to set her own standards, it is the government itself, with its absurd way of acting. Until for her the light went on. After spending hours sitting on her porch, watching children get hurt, getting stuck between trash dumpsters, playing barefoot and squabbling among themselves, Sonia knew she had to do something.

Then with the help of her husband, she founded the Independent Cultural Recreation Center, on February 24, 2007.  In their house, every afternoon after school, scores of children between 7 and 15 years old meet on the porch and in the living room of their modest home.

The children

“The first rule I have is not to talk about politics at all. I organize activities of drawing and cutting and sewing. My husband, Ramon Alejandro Muñoz, a musician by profession, is in charge of preparing dance choreography and teaching them to play musical instruments. When we can, on weekends we have parties and distribute children’s books and toys. Some foreign non-governmental organizations have helped us with materials and medicines. Also embassies of European Union countries, and individual people, who give us what they can. Because this is not a work of one person,” says Sonia, while showing us many photos of activities with clowns, where the common denominator is the bright smile on the faces of those children.

After that initial experience, Garro decided to go for more. She opened another community center in the El Palenque slum, in the borough of Marianao. If you want to know how El Palenque is, look at photos of a sordid favela of Rio de Janeiro or a shantytown of Port au Prince before the earthquake. It is almost the same. There, Sonia and her partners serve between 16 and 18 children.

What looks like a healthy activity of civilized society, which brings more benefits than problems, has unleashed a small hurricane from the State Security forces of the Cuban state. Accustomed for 51 years that any good idea always starts at the desk of a senior official of the Communist Party, it always raises suspicions and makes a person suspect when a citizen, on her own, creates a project without the support of Father State. And Sonia Garro has had to pay a price for her humanitarian work.

“The government’s response to my social work has been three acts of repudiation and a couple of beatings. The last act of repudiation they tried to give me did not work, because nobody on the block went to support them, they had to march with empty hands,” she says, without animosity or emotion.

Most of the children who attend the project live in little hells at home. Almost all come from dysfunctional families where the father is in jail or his children do not know him. At the very least, revolutionary neighbors, supposedly integrated into the system, “congratulate the Garro Muñoz couple.”

“There are even police who welcome and encourage us for what we do,” says Sonia’s husband.

Sonia Garro is far from being a sociologist or expert, dedicated to studying just why in Cuba, a paradigm of a happy childhood, cases like this occur in her neighborhood. Neither does she want to emulate Mother Teresa of Calcutta. Nor Zilda Arns, the Brazilian doctor who died in Port au Prince as a result of the Haitian earthquake, and left a legacy of thousands of children rescued from poverty and marginalization.

The task of this Cuban is simple. Seeing the children laugh and grow in a healthy environment, free from violence. If in the future these children become professionals, educated in civic values, and not locked up in jail, she will be satisfied. She does not ask for anything more. And that is why she doesn’t understand why her work arouses such resentment among the authorities.

By other pathways, Sonia Alfonso Garro assumed that the State wished to accomplish the same thing. But the government does not think like she does. On the contrary.

Iván García and Laritza Diversent

Translated by: Tomás A.

From Havana, Year 1

The old computer in Lucerne

The idea of having a blog where I could post about life in my country and to have the power to write in the first person about the small things in this scene that surround me, that was an idea that was cooked a long time over a slow flame.

It was in 2004, while reading Time and Newsweek, that I learned about the phenomenon of blogs.  With evident delay, some past postings by a very special guy, Andrew Sullivan, landed in my hands.

It was like this that I learned about a North American solider in Iraq, a picketer in Buenos Aires, a nun in Calcutta, and a doctor without borders in Almeria.  I also learned about the legions of Iranian and Chinese bloggers who, in spite being besieged by their governments, continued to write and forcefully denounce through their personal stories.

Let’s get to work, I thought.  But it had limits.  Not having a laptop nor money, I could not easily justify spending the money that my mother, from the mountainous city of Lucerne, would sacrifice for and send me.  Internet access cards in Cuba cost about 6 to 9 dollars an hour.

My family in Switzerland chose to continue using an old computer, pictured here, and sent me a Dell laptop which had been a gift to them.  The keyboard was in English, or maybe German, I am not sure.  But it made me suffer long hours trying to place an accent or compose the letter ñ.  One does not look a gift horse in the mouth, better this than nothing.

At first, I thought of opening a blog just for me where I could write small chronicles and articles.  But then later I thought it would be better to create a collective blog.

Between educating my daughter and managing the daily Cuban vortex of securing a hot meal, the blog was delayed.  Finally in December, 2008, I put two and two together.  You know, the last month of the year is the month of resolutions where one tries to balance what has been with what is yet to come in the next 365 days.

I decided that in 2009 I would take off, full speed ahead.  Luis Cino, one of the best independent Cuban journalists, told me to count him in.  My mother, a political refugee, retired journalist, and blogger since March 2007 was also in. The team would be complete with the chronicles of poet and reporter Raul Rivero who compiled for the daily El Mundo.  (For eight years, Rivero lead the Cuban Press agency where I began as an independent journalist in 1995.)

The platform was ready, but something was missing.  We needed a person that would write about the bizarre Cuban laws and the high rate of judicial illiteracy that exists among our citizens. Our last card would be the attorney and independent journalist Laritza Diversent, of Haitian roots, hyperkinetic, and just as poor as her ancestors from Port Au Prince.

So the network was composed.  And it was just at this moment that the star of the Cuban blogosphere, Yoani Sanchez and her husband, the journalist of wide curriculum Reinaldo Escobar, put the icing on the cake and gave a happy ending to the idea.  They linked me to the portal Cuban Voices born January 28th, 2009.  Thanks to Yoani’s patience, I learned to use Word Press 2.7 and was able to upload photos and post.

It wasn’t easy.  But on that same January 28th, the From Havana blog was also started.  It’s been a year.  Luis Cino, due to conflicts with the independent periodical for which he works was not able to write.  Several other journalists and young Cuban writers, residents of other provinces, have shown interest in publishing their works on our blog.

It is Laritza’s and my dream that we not be limited to only the capital, that we are able to cover all of Cuba.  But we need resources to help organize those volunteers that wish to collaborate. Those who know best can describe what occurs around them. In spite the limitations, the idea still stands. We want the From Havana blog to be open to Cubans and also to foreigners.  Quality chronicles about daily life that will move people.  Or comments about successes, national or international ones.

The good news started towards the end of 2009. Thanks to Carlos Moreira, a friend from Portugal, since October we have a webpage named Cuban Points of View.  And starting in January, 2010, this same friend began to help us administrate the blog.  Moreira, among many other things he’s done in his free time and free of charge, has given the blog a new look and also placed us on Twitter and Facebook.

The blog has also been enriched by videos and news footage prepared in Lucerne by my mother.  This is an initiative we would like to continue with her because finding videos and photos on the internet is not only costly but exasperating as the internet and network connections to the island are very slow.

Foreign friends of Laritza and mine ask in what way they can help and we always say the same.  Technology is expensive and for that reason, we always prefer that they purchase internet cards for us.

A few days ago Laritza and I went to the Marianao neighborhood to plan a profile of Sonia Garro, a woman of the black race who against winds and tides has maintained an independent community project for the poor children of the neighborhood.  You will soon read what we wrote.  But among this work, Laritza and I gave ourselves the satisfaction of gathering 20 CUC to be able buy a few toys to take to the little ones.

In this first year, many things have impressed us.  The history of Sonia Garro is one of them.  The other was the case of Yunia Palacio, a young mother of three with very few means.  She’s 27 years old and looks as if she were 50.   She has a husband who beats her and has kicked her out of their home — if that’s what a cardboard roof, some palm fronds and three dirty mattresses on the floor could be called.

When we spoke with this mixed woman from Santiago, Laritza cried.  My eyes watered too.  Yunia Palacio is the closest face that we have met that has the potential to be suicidal.  As modestly as we can, we’ve helped her pay a fine of 500 pesos (20 dollars).  We also give her clothes that no longer fit my daughter or Laritza’s son.

They are symbolic gestures.  For this reason we believe that the From Havana blog as well as the Cuba Points of View website and the daily El Mundo/America, published since October 2009, serve to amplify these small stories and expose the tarnish that our government and its spokespeople ignore.

And that is the point.  It’s not that these things don’t occur in other countries, they do and possibly even worse.  But journalists there have the liberty to reflect.  In Cuba they don’t.   For the official Cuban media, the revolution is a tropical paradise.

If our text moves you and provides awareness of the reality of our country, then we have met our objective.

In the meantime, from Havana we will continue to report.

Iván García y Laritza Diversent

Photo: Work area of Tania Quintero, in the living room of her apartment in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she has lived as a political refugee since November 26, 2003.

Translated by: AV

Cheap Sex

They don’t have the charm of the “jineteras”(prostitutes seeking foreign tourists) who work for hard currency.*  They don’t wear brand-name clothes, or high-heeled shoes.  They don’t use Chanel perfumes, or wear gold jewelry.  They are the poorer type, who at most smother themselves with large quantities of Cuban-made Suchel talcum powder, and smell of cheap eau-de-cologne.  They wear short tight skirts.  And they tend to plaster on the make-up.

These are the local currency whores.  Many of them get off the train at daybreak and before the sun has fully risen they are already busy at work.  Like Yanelis, 28 years old, an Indian mulatta, born in an eastern province 800 km from the capital.

Her life is a small hell. She never knew her parents and doesn’t have fond memories of her childhood. Her maternal grandparents did what they could. But Yanelis only managed to get as far as finishing seventh grade. And yet her round and shapely backside, her firm breasts and her skin, the colour of coffee with cream, would get men aroused. Especially some of her male relatives.

One night, a cousin invited her to the fair and he plied her with an excessive quantity of a bog standard and insipid brew which is sold loose as draught beer. When she had passed out from drinking so much alcohol, he repeatedly raped her.

She was only twelve years old. Her first customers were her own family members. For 5 pesos (a quarter dollar) she let them fondle her breasts or masturbate and then ejaculate on her face.

“The most perverted of my relatives was also the one with the most money, because he worked in a hotel exclusively for tourists. He forced me to sleep with animals and on more than one occasion I got sick. I’ve tried everything. I’m bisexual and for as long as I can remember, I’ve never known what it’s like to feel in love with someone. That only happens in movies.”

Prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet, Yanelis gulps down a can of Bucanero beer and goes on with her story.

“I came to Havana because business is good here. It’s my third trip. I’ve been caught by the police a couple of times and they sent me back to the province where I’m from. I even spent a year and a half in jail. But I always come back. Things are very tense in my home town. I don’t have, nor do I want, any other way of making money. Perhaps this is the most difficult way, but it’s the easiest for me. I don’t have many options unless it’s coffee picking in the mountains or wiping tables in a café,” says this girl, prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet.

In the capital, Yanelis and some other prostitutes rent an extremely shabby room. They have to fetch their water in containers and live by candlelight because they don’t have electricity. Each one pays 5 convertible pesos for the room. On a good day, she makes the equivalent of 50 or 60 convertible pesos (about 1200 or 1500 regular pesos). If you do the math, to make this amount Yanelis is having to sleep with ten or twelve men. For a quick half hour ‘screw’ they make 100 regular pesos or 5 convertible.

She started working as a prostitute in the area around Fraternity Park, in the heart of Havana. Her stroll was Monte and Cienfuegos streets, the first marketplace to emerge on the island for cheap sex bought with regular pesos, back around 1996. Things didn’t go too badly for her. But every now and again there was a police raid.

When she got out of jail, she thought she needed to be more discreet. She’s a fixture now in a spot on the fringes of the National Freeway. Guys in cars and on motorbikes pass by, drunk and looking for a woman to satisfy their sexual appetite.

That is where you’ll find girls like Yanelis, ready to offer you their a la carte menu: 50 pesos for a blow job, 40 for a hand job, and 100 for the full works, in other words, for penetrative sex. Paying a bit more gets you anal sex. And if you’ve got 20 convertible pesos or 500 of the regular kind, you can head off with two sad and pale girls who’ll offer you a moonlight lesbian show in the middle of a banana field with some dirty bits of cardboard for a bed.

There are at least a dozen such places in the city. In Havana slang they are known as chupa-chupa [suck-suck].

The young women who prostitute themselves for local currency don’t come close to the beauty and silhouettes of the splendid hookers that have dazzled the Iberian and Italian men who have taken them under their wing and married them. No. These are poor lost souls who stoically endure being penetrated by more than ten men in a single day in order to make a few pesos.

Yanelis doesn’t want to think about the future, which is a bad word for her. She lives fast and for the present. Night has fallen. She looks up at the cloudy sky and comments despondently:

“Uh oh. It’s going to rain. Bad for business.”

She prefers picking up men when she’s drunk or after smoking a couple of joints. Sometimes she takes a few parkisonil tablets to get high. When she gets back to her wretched room she sometimes feels guilty.

This is when she remembers that she’d like to have children, a good husband, and to start a family. She soon abandons the idea. That stuff is only in movies. Or romantic novels by Corín Tellado. Then she comes back down to earth. To the reality which is her lot in life. And she has neither the energy nor the desire to change it.

Iván García

Translated by BW and RSP and ANB

* Translator’s note: There are two kinds of pesos in circulation in Cuba, one which can be exchanged for dollars and Euros, the Convertible Peso, and one which can’t, the regular kind. One convertible peso (officially worth $1.08) is equivalent to 24 regular pesos (referred to as moneda nacional (national money) by Cubans, and translated in this text as local currency).

Iván What’s-his-name

In October 2009, in tandem with Max Lesnik, the Cuban journalist based in Miami,  I started writing a blog, called 90 miles, for El Mundo, one of Spain’s national dailies. Plus some notes, articles, features, and stories about what life is like for Cubans and my perceptions of the Castros’ government. Within a few days, I was approached by various people I consider friends (and others I don’t). After congratulating me, they gave me some free advice.

An experienced and foxy old reporter told me in confidence and in a hushed tone, “What you want is lots of curveball and not much fastball. Try and come up with colourful stories which won’t cause you any problems. That way you get paid and life’s good. If you go about with an AKM machine gun at the ready, the government will call you to account.”  Such was this long time journalist’s advice. Opportunistic, cynical, someone who enjoys life, like a lot of people in Cuba who just want to have a decent salary paid in hard currency and not rock the boat.

The old reporter, who knows how much I love the sports pages, made a point of using some baseball jargon. When you cover the island “curveball” means sticking  to subjects like the history of the Malecón, Havana’s Chinatown, or the Capitolio; talk about curiosities or explain how a parcel containing copies of Granma was thrown out of an airplane over the mountains in the East and knocked dead a cow when it landed. In short, his advice was that I should write about unimportant “news” and steer clear of critical articles.

If it meant writing colourful stories and throwing curveballs, I would give up writing for El mundo. I say what I think and tell it like it is. You have the chance as readers to express disagreement in the comments section. I’m very far from thinking that what I write amounts to any kind of absolute truth. Perhaps I get things wrong. But these opinions about an event, theme, or personality are mine.

I’m nearly 45 years old and at this stage in my life I’m not going to be afraid to defend my perspective. Being imprisoned for many years, which is the prospect held out by Cuba’s laws for all those voicing public dissent, does scare me. I don’t have a vocation to be a martyr. But I’m not going to change my ideas. Even if I end up bricked up in a state security cell or in a dirty Cuban prison block.

Disagreement is healthy. And so is debate about ideas and dialogue with people who think differently. But in Cuba, when someone in the media criticises you or attacks you, be afraid. The message is: “What goes around comes around”. In other words, shut up or you’re mincemeat.

We know that the beginning of a vigorous offensive on the part of the state apparatus portends further actions. Ranging from acts of repudiation and even threats and humiliations for your family. Or, in an extreme case, detaining you, penalising you, and locking you up in jail.

I would like to ask a journalist of Max Lesnik’s calibre, or José Pertierra, the lawyer, if at any time they’ve felt paralysed by the US secret services breathing down their necks, or if they’ve ever had their arms twisted by the Yankee government because of holding critical views about the system in the North or for showing admiration towards the Cuban Revolution.

I suspect the answer is no. It’s true that in Florida, in the ’70s or ’80s, a group of intolerant Cubans, terrorists more than anything else, went as far as assassinating people who supported Castro. But in this, the 21st century, things in Little Havana must have changed. And it goes without saying that no US administration has ever instructed its official media, like the Voice of America, to intimidate its political rivals.

The United States is capable of the best and the worst. If he happens to be having a bad day, any madman with a rifle slung over his shoulder and whistling along to a Bruce Springsteen song can rub out a dozen people as if he were at a shooting gallery in a fairground. I have a feeling that Lesnik and Pertierra and their compatriots on the other side of the pond have all the freedom in the world to write and to say what they think.

Not in Cuba. And that’s the point. Since I was born, in 1965, I’ve never known what is called democracy. And before I die, I would like to live in a pluralistic society where you as a person aren’t of the slightest interest to the State.  And where, if the powers that be don’t appreciate me, thanks to certain Constitutional laws, I’m not locked up in prison.

I don’t mind who’s in power. They can be communists, liberals, greens, social democrats, right wing, centrists, or left wing. Just so long as they’ve won an election. I ask myself if this is an impossible dream. I don’t think it is. That’s why I write what I think.

I remember that on a cold and gray afternoon in February 2003, Raúl Rivero, the Cuban poet and journalist, typed with two fingers on his Olivetti Lettera-25: “No decree can stop me writing in the country where I was born and where my grandparents were born. I’m a man who writes.” So am I.  Even though I could lose a lot.

Albeit with my fears and the paranoia typical of those who live under threat, I will send stories, articles, and news about the reality of my country. Written from my untidy apartment in the Víbora district, my neck of the woods. I’m not going to follow the experienced reporter’s advice.  My writing is going to be lots of fastballs, few curves.

Iván García

Translated by RSP

The Day After

Donato, who usually sells newspapers in the area around Roja de la Víbora square, is an elderly man of 67 wearing threadbare clothes; he’s convinced that Fidel Castro has for quite some time been a corpse. Abelardo, 54, a civil engineer, thinks the same. He says, “The people haven’t been told of Fidel’s death to prevent disturbance” In Cuba, everyone has his or her own take on the one and only Comandante’s illness.

For want of reliable information, people invent rumours. Carlos, a 21-year-old university student, swears on his mother’s life to a group of sceptical youngsters that he read an article on the Internet where it said that Fidel Castro was in a deep coma. In every nook and cranny of the island it’s the same.

Never before has a man’s death engendered such anticipation. No sooner does a rumour start over there on the other shore, in other words, in Florida, than it quickly arrives on the Cuban coastline. Many people have family in the sunshine state or else they illegally watch cable TV, and more than a few times some rumour is heard, even in the middle of the night, as happened to Jesús, a 34 year old worker. A friend, restraining his emotion, woke Jesús up at three o’clock in the morning to tell him: “Fidel’s snuffed it, I saw it on channel 41.”

Castro’s been given up for dead so many times in Miami that new reports of his death are taken with a pinch of salt on the island. Deborah, a 29-year-old primary school teacher says: “The day when he dies for real, I won’t believe it.” It’s now been three years and five months since the 31st of July, 2006, when Carlos Valenciaga, Castro’s former private secretary, announced on national television, in a sombre tone of voice, that the Comandante was relinquishing power due to illness.

Since then Cubans have been living on a knife’s edge. And not because their former president’s state of health is of special interest to them. No. The key issue for the majority is what’s going to happen when Castro dies. Some in Cuba take it as a given that Fidel’s brother, General Raúl, is putting off reforms pending the patriarch’s disappearance.

I don’t believe that. I don’t think that Raúl Castro is going to be the Caribbean Gorbachev. The agents of change in Cuba are perhaps men in power now, wearing masks, keeping their heads down and obeying orders. They’re waiting for their moment. Or they’re walking about the country’s streets anonymously. I’m a sceptic and I don’t think a worthy leader for the future will emerge from the Cuban opposition. Almost everyone talks about democracy and makes out that they’re a democrat, but they act like little dictators.

The is what concerns the man in the street in Cuba. The day after Fidel. Cubans take it for granted that Raúl is a transitional president. As such, the health and impending death of Fidel Castro isn’t a problem of personal hatred. It’s simply about discovering what the future will be like without the former Comandante.

There are even people making bets, like Amador, 43 and unemployed. Two years back, Amador and twelve friends agreed on a lucky draw: whoever accurately predicted  the date of Castro’s death, or whoever came closest, wins 1,200 convertible Cuban pesos (about 1,200 dollars). Amador had predicted that God would take Castro I from this earth on the 31st of December, 2009.  He’s sorry that he’s off by a bit.  He says, quite seriously, that it’s nothing personal against Fidel. It’s just a bet. And he wants to win.

Iván García

Translated by RSP