Category: Laritza Diversent

Laritza Diversent Weighs In on the Conviction of Alan Gross

Interviewed for Radio Martí, and in a first reaction to the sentence of 15 years in prison authorized by a court in Havana for the U.S. contractor Alan Gross, lawyer and independent journalist Laritza Diversent said the crime – if it existed – didn’t deserve such a penalty.

Diversent explained that the act of distributing equipment to connect to the Internet does not attack the independence and security of the Cuban state, and, therefore, he could have been given a less severe sentence.

The blogger also said that the stipulation in Law 88, the “Gag Law,” could have been used for a lighter sentence, as it took into account that whoever distributes equipment of any kind from the United States or private entities shall be punished with a fine.

According to Laritza, the purpose of harshly punishing a U.S. citizen was, before all else, a fact that has political significance, since it further constrains the deteriorating relations between Washington and Havana. And she thought the sentence could serve several purposes.

One could be the intention of exchanging the contractor for the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States. Another would be to give an “exemplary lesson” to people and institutions around the world who try to help the nascent civil society on the island, said Laritza Diversent from Havana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 13 2011

Many Cubans Steal to Survive / Laritza Diversent

Miguel, married and with three children, used to work as a cook in a State enterprise. He would get up at three in the morning and undertake a trip of more than 12 kilometers and arrive early to work. He paid union dues and on two occasions was chosen ‘vanguard worker’.

But his salary didn’t reach high enough to meet his economic needs. Sometimes more, sometimes less, Miguel took part of the food from the breakfasts of the other workers to sustain his family. Oil, rice, chicken, fish, eggs, meat, beans … he took what he could.

He had to assure the subsistence of his family. On occasion, very discreetly, he’d sell in his neighborhood some of the things he used to steal. With that extra money he used to cover other expenses. His kids needed clothes and shoes, things that are only sold in hard-currency-only stores; hard currency that he couldn’t earn because his salary was paid in pesos.

Somebody informed on what Miguel was doing. He was fired from the center. And because it was the first time, the court sentenced him to six months’ deprivation of liberty for the crime of larceny. He had to work in a correctional facility in agriculture.

In the sentence they didn’t take into account the motives that led him to commit what is called in good Cuban “robbery”. From his new location, when he’d leave on a pass, he’d continue taking food for his house.

Before 1959, in the Cuban Penal Code existed the character of the “family larceny”; a circumstance which, in some cases, exempted the actor of penal responsibility, and in others, diminished the sentence. It was taken into account when a person — hungry or indigent — took objects necessary for his survival and those people in his care.

“Revolutionary justice” eliminated this character of penal law. The supposition was that the government of the bearded ones attended to the needs of all equally. Supposedly, vagrancy, unemployment, mendacity, and vices and causes of misery had all been eliminated.

Seen in this way, this character was unnecessary in the new Penal Code. For socialist legislation, no citizen in the newly created conditions had any extreme necessity which would compel him to steal. It was assumed that Cuba was a nation in which all its citizens enjoyed opportunity and the right to work.

It is ironic that in actuality it should be precisely the ‘proletarian’ class which finds itself in a state of necessity such that it sees itself obliged to swipe the State’s resources to survive and maintain a family. It is one of the social problems that affects the national economy the most and that the government confronts as a “fight against illegality”.

What’s certain is that the justice applied by socialist society is interested more in punishment to set an example than in forgiving a criminal fact committed out of necessity. Fifty-two years later, experience demonstrates that the revolution has been incapable of attending equally to the needs of the population.

Laziness and destitution have increased and bribery and corruption have gone sky high. It remains proven that full employment, by itself, is insufficient to make misery disappear, and with it, the commission of “family larceny”.

Miguel’s story repeats daily in many Cuban families. You can count on different forms and with other people. But the reality is singular: the critical economic situation that has swept the nation for decades has led the majority of workers with labor ties to the State to convert the “swipe” into a way of life indispensable to survival.

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Translated by: JT

March 10 2011

The Law and the Trap / Laritza Diversent

"I am not a criminal."
“He who does not know is the same as he who does not see,” affirms Teofilo Roberto Lopez Licor, victim of an arbitrary government scam. Today, after he and his family were stripped of all their goods, he learned that he should not ever trust in the benevolence of the law, much less if it is coming from those who have the task of applying it.

In 2008, Lopez Licor, a 67-year-old self-employed worker, started receiving visits from inspectors and police officers due to anonymous complaints about illegal rentals of rooms in his home. He did not have time for anything when police officials began searching the house, which is a property of one of his family members, detaining various tenants inside.

They detained him, despite the fact that he is not the owner of the home being rented. After 72 hours in a dungeon, he was released on bail and accused under the crime of “prostitution and human trafficking”. One month later, he was cited by the police. He was surprised when they informed him that he only had to pay a fine of 400 Cuban pesos for carrying out illegal economic activities.

The authorities decided to use the power granted to them by the law to administratively punish the offender instead of remitting the case before the court. He did not understand when they told him they would apply “number 149 for enrichment by illegal means”. He also did not worry, for all his papers were up to date.

He believed in his luck and in the protection of his saints for not having to confront justice. Certainly, a relative did rent out rooms without having the required license, which is a crime under the Penal Code. However, he never carried out any acts of prostitution in this rented area, as defined by the crime of “prostitution and human trafficking”.

He was far from imagining that the authorities were preparing an even graver punishment not only for him, but also for his family: the confiscation of all their goods and earnings — a measure which he was not able to defend himself against. Ingenuous, he never thought that by accepting the proposition of the police authorities he would accept the consequences of a crime he never committed.

He also did not imagine that there were various norms which passed sentences, and by different means: the Penal Code and Decree Laws 149 and 232. The latter laws apply the administrative confiscation of goods due to unlawful enrichment, drugs, prostitution and human trafficking, illegal rentals, etc. No one informed him of the risks. Much less did they give him the possibility of choosing.

He ignored the fact that a court has the obligation to respect his rights and to offer him guarantees, which were also ignored by the administrative process they were imposing on him. In order to sentence him, they needed proofs which would destroy his state of innocence and which would represent his individual actions, without endangering his family.

The administrative process of confiscation, according to what is established in Decree Law 149, derived from his “guilt” and now the weight of having to find evidence which would prove otherwise was on his shoulders. Despite the fact that the authorities were informed about this during mid-2008, the rule had a retrospective effect, and now they were demanding that he turn in all he and his family had acquired during the past 10 years.

On the 23rd of July of 2009, the Minister of Finances and Prices, Lina Olinda Pedraza Rodriguez, dictated a Resolution which declared the confiscation of the assets belonging to Teofilo Roberto Lopez Licor and his relatives Pompilio Lopez Licor (his brother), Teofila Elsa Avila Gutierrez (his wife), and Antonio Lopez Avila (their son).

The decision was appealed. They wore out all legal possibilities. They sent out complaints and petitions to all the authorities they could find. In fact, they even tried to sue the head of Finances and Prices before the court, but their accusation never advanced. All efforts were in vain. The resolution passed by the Minister could not be overturned through the judicial process.

If Teofilo Roberto could turn back time, he would have rejected the generosity of the police authorities and the indulgence of the law when they decided not to send his case to court. “I never thought for a moment that by accepting such an offer, it would automatically cancel my rights as a citizen,” he said, “But I also knew I couldn’t refuse it…whoever created the law, also created the trap,” he concluded.

Translated by Raul G.

March 7 2011

The Curtain is Drawn, Matter Concluded / Laritza Diversent

The trial for the deaths at the Psychiatric Hospital seemed like a bad theater set painted by the official press, which tried to adorn that which we all know with legal technicalities: The setback of public health, the weakness of the judicial system, and the hypocrisy of the communications media.

The daily paper, Granma, omitted the numbers of the involved and the deceased, but it gave details on the number of witnesses examined by the tribunal and the specialties of the members of the commission created — a little too late — by the Ministry of Public Health to investigate the cause and conditions that generated the “deaths that occurred”.

Did the judges of the Second Instance of the Penal Court of Havana see the pictures of the dead, which circulated the city surreptitiously? Skin lacerated by blows, evidence of physical maltreatment. The extinguished faces which, in vain, tried to protect themselves from the cold when rigor mortis caught up with them.

Starving bodies that received severe punishment because their mental illness didn’t allow them to perceive abandonment and protest it. Hunger flogged them with the same strength as their nurses and doctors, from whom need and fatigue took their human sensitivity; the same who, for altruism, travel to the most hidden places on the planet to bring health care in the name of Cuba.

Nonetheless, embezzlement weighs more than death of the sick themselves. Human beings abandoned by men and by sanity, a fact that Granma kindly called “insufficiency in patient care”.

“The prosecutor alleged that those involved knew that in the winter period an increase in deaths is produced by respiratory illnesses”, explained the journalist. Nonetheless, “the picture discovered in clinical progress” revealed signs of malnutrition, anemia, and lack of vitamins.

A cold front doesn’t produce these sufferings, they are consequences of lack of food for months, perhaps years. In those physical conditions, death was a question of time. The low temperatures were a catalyst, perhaps desired.

Many questions remain unanswered. Couldn’t this sad end have been avoided? Didn’t any medical analysis reveal these diagnoses beforehand? What did the government cadres or party members responsible for this institution do? Wasn’t there any inspection, did anyone check out the rumors?

In all that time, didn’t anyone go by there in review, a worthy manager? I forgot — that isn’t a strategic goal of the Revolution. Where was José Ramón Balaguer, the then-Minister of Public Health? He slept safe and warm while about thirty mental patients were dying of hypothermia.

Neither an apology nor his resignation, just silence. He was dismissed at the end of last July, like so many other incompetent ministers, but continued his work in the highest spheres of government. One of the untouchables with the right to taste the honey of power for him alone they sacrificed themselves, even the end of their days. Perhaps because of this the tribunal didn’t have permission to investigate him.

The curtain is drawn, matter concluded. Tomorrow nobody will remember the tragic facts, thanks to the press having disguised the human misery of a “sector that is proud and a bastion of Cuba and of many countries of the world”, and justice differentiated between cooks, cadres, and managers.

Translated by: JT

February 21 2011

Why is it That We Cubans Don’t Protest? / Laritza Diversent


I felt envious as I followed the events in Egypt. The Egyptian people poured out onto the streets and demonstrated to their leaders who truly should be in control.

How I wish the citizens of my country would wake up to this reality! However, I feel that it’ll be a long time before something similar happens in Cuba.

Why don’t we Cubans do the same? What is stopping us from going to the streets and saying “Enough, this is the road we’re gonna take?” Why didn’t we protest when they raised the retirement age, cut social programs and continue massive layoffs to recoup the costs of government payrolls?

I ask myself: Why don’t the workers go on strike due to low wages, or the increase in the cost of food, gas and energy? Any one of these would be cause for social outrage anywhere else on the planet. Not in Cuba; here the workers come out in support of the revolution with banners.

It almost seems as if we don’t belong to this world.

“We shall work more, with less” is the slogan used by the bosses who call us lazy and spoiled. The same bosses, or their children, who cruise the city in new cars, wasting gas charged to the state budget, while the starving working class squeezes into or hangs from the doors of public transit in an attempt to avoid arriving late to work and to unemployment due to “non-suitability.”

Why don’t we insist on justice, instead of making small-talk of those in government who enrich themselves with impunity at our expense, or those whose errors and negligence caused the deaths of dozens of mentally handicapped individuals from hunger and exposure back in January of 2010?

Why do we stay quiet when the bosses point out our short-comings, condescend to us and demand we sacrifice more, when they should congratulate us for working without resources and practically without pay?

Too many questions for a single answer; an answer which lies somewhere between guilt and fear.

Who doesn’t know the omnipotent and omnipresent? Who feels the breeze and doesn’t breathe it in, knowing that an inadequate breath constitutes a violation of the law? Who doesn’t know that breathing is a matter of survival? Who voluntarily seeks death by asphyxiation or strangulation?

Who doesn’t steal? Who doesn’t violate the law? Who ignores punishment that sets examples? Who doesn’t know of accusations of being a secret operative, and of what a neighbor wouldn’t do to save their own skin? Who is willing to defend their fellow citizen above their own personal well-being?

“The Silence of the Lambs,” should be the name of the movie that Cubans star in every day.

Apart from making me envious, the determination of the Egyptian people made me, not only question the reality of my country, but understand it as well. An island, where escape is less dangerous than protest. A place where one is guilty by obligation and has the duty to hide it. And, where fear begets resignation and one is paralyzed by conformity.

Translated by Miguel Camacho Jr.

Humanly Impossible / Laritza Diversent

Pedro Suarez, aka “El Pantera” thought to reorganize his life according to the guidelines of the Priests of Ifa for this year. In his hands he has the brochure with the work regulations for private business. It proposes to legalize a business that for more than five years have been illegal: a small workshop for the production of guava sweetrolls.

In spite of having friends who warn him in advance, he wanted to free himself from the police reports and accusations for carrying out illegal economic activities. Until now he has never been caught, that’s why they call him “El Pantera” (the Panther), but he feels that at 50 years of age he needs to rest.

He must think of everything, for example, what to say in case the police detain him carrying more than 2000 sweetrolls. The act according to the criminal law is considered a crime of speculation and hoarding. The perfect idea occurred to him: sell orders for weddings, birthdays, and quinceañeras–girls’ fifteenth birthday parties.

“Home-based seller of prepared foods, the license that fits my needs,” he thought. Also it is the only way to distribute products in bulk without causing suspicion from the authorities.

El Pantera had a network of distribution in the city: private kiosks, Poli-cake administrators (state bakeries, that also sell their products “on the left”, that is in the black market, in Cuban Convertible Pesos), and occasionally people who resell goods in the street. All illegal activities according to the work rules for small private business.

“It’s a violation to commercialize bulk products, it’s another to do it with a state entity without being duly authorized, without a doubt it’s all illegal,” he said aloud.

While elaborating on his strategy, logic told him that he should warn his contacts, principally his small business clients, about the list of infractions. They should never say that they bought his sweetrolls to resell. Also it’s a violation to use middlemen to commercialize production. And by acting as such the middlemen they commit a violation too.

Rereading he found another problem: Justifying the legality of the materials that he uses in his business. He was obliged to buy the flour and sugar at the market in Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUCs), and bars of guava paste in the official farmer’s market. However, it was not cost-effective to buy raw materials in convertible currency to later sell his product in the national currency, or Cuban peso.

The cake, sold directly to people, cost about 2 Cuban pesos (about $.08 U.S.), he would have to declare this to be the official price. Nevertheless, he gives his product to middlemen for 1.50 Cuban pesos. If he bought the raw material at the stores selling in CUCs it would make the costs of production more expensive and force him to raise prices, in which case sales would go down.

With calculator in hand he summed it up: He had sales of 120,000 sweetrolls per month and had assumed he would invest 240,000 pesos, when in reality it was 180,000. Under these conditions he would have to declare 720,000 pesos that wasn’t entered on his assets. And if he declared that figure that they would apply a 50% tax to it.

For a week he read, reread, analyzed and formulated, but he didn’t find a way to detach himself from illegality. He would always be accompanied by the risk of being accused of engaging in illegal economic activities or of being subject to confiscation processes for illegal enrichment.

He would reach success and prosperity only if he falsified his sworn statements and bought the raw material, and the receipts for it, in CUCs on the black market. From his study of the legislation he only learned new ways to appear legal, but not how to live inside the law.

The frustration this time affected El Pantera. For the first time in his life he was ready to observe the law and he concluded that, in this country, it’s humanly impossible… unless one is willing to die of hunger.

Translated by: Dodi 2.0

February 16 2011

Between Saying and Doing… / Laritza Diversent

The scene opens with several friends sitting on any corner of Havana. They are talking, rather shouting, while passing a bottle from hand to hand. They are heatedly arguing about how bad it is out there; no one contributes a solution for a better way of getting by, and they conclude that the best way is to leave here for “…over there…?…” One of them comes up with a plan of escape. His friend listens to him quietly, takes him away from the group and brings him to a park, where they sit. He tells him:

Kid, when you’re depressed, don’t vent your frustrations in public. You don’t know who is who, you’re looking for trouble. Don’t say you’re going to take the boat to Regla to get the fuck out of here … or that you’re going to bomb the fucking Council of State so all the old people die! … watch out! They can punish you for illegal departure or for terrorism, which is worse. Remember the three black guys they shot for the same thing in 2003 … (His buddy doesn’t let him finish.)

Pal, that’s fucked. You know that when I have a couple of drinks I start talking shit…! But why, I’m not doing anything wrong. “Look innocent,” as they say here. “It’s a long way from words to action.”

I know, but your thinking is dangerous, and if someone hears you, he can steal the idea and develop it, and then accuse you of being the intellectual author, an accomplice or an instigator. Take my advice: in this country, to talk out loud about what you think or your hidden desires is risky. People will always listen and even give you rope, but at the moment of truth they will deny having eaten the cake and will throw you aside like someone to be shunned. I know that rum removes the pain, but I repeat, look, it’s not a joke, be very careful. He says this while insistently waving his index finger.

But how will they find out what I said?

Don’t be naive! For the courts, evidence from secret operations is sufficient. In this country informants multiply like fish in the sea. This is not like the CSI Las Vegas crime scene, where they need physical evidence to incriminate you. Here, just for moral conviction, you can get 20 years.

Don’t exaggerate, he says, with disbelief.

Be careful, you who go all the way to Mariano to get cheaper liquefied gas. Imagine the police stopping you and taking you in and pulling out your criminal record. All the fines for disorderly conduct, every time you pissed in the park after two drinks, arguing with an old Communist. These people have no solution, they’re eating dirt and will continue until “he” dies. But when you ask them to open their mouths, they talk your arm off. That’s a duty for them.

I know, pal, but they get on my nerves, he concludes with resignation.

As I was saying, here they know everything and at the same time know nothing. They get you angry, they can think that you’re doing something to destroy a strategic objective of the Revolution. I’m not trying to scare you; I’m just warning you. He again waves a finger in his face, while he looks to see if anyone is listening.

If that were the case, they would put everyone in jail. Do you know how many people are crazy to leave this country, or to blow up all this shit? No, and that’s not all. How many would kill themselves with bombs and everything, so that Cuba’s problems would disappear?

Don’t you know the story about the guy in the bodega who said he’d dreamt he killed Fidel? They sentenced him to not dream any more. Pal, there are thousands who think like you, but there are more who speak in whispers.

The curtain comes down; the show is over.

Translated by Regina Anavy

February 14 2011

Price and Guarantees of the Governmental Cadres / Laritza Diversent

A Cuban knows that appearing to unconditionally support revolutionary ideas and stepping forward every time you’re called is better than to criticize. The road is bumpy, but the ride is always smoother if it is known that you are an enrolled member of political and mass organizations, especially the Communist Party of Cuba (PPC).

Better yet if you have a position in the government, this increases your chances of climbing the hierarchical ladder and receive training as a government cadre. If the historic moment requires the fulfillment of a task, one must assume the duties. It does not matter that you do not have the slightest idea how to run an enterprise or ministry. If you get stressed or you have no head for heights, there are always options.

Raúl Castro said in his last statement to the Cuban Parliament that “the true modern revolutionary is the cadre that, at any level” resigns when “they feel … unable to fully perform their duties or comply with new guidelines.” He also said that we are in era of reform and the opposition no longer represents counter-revolution.

Of course it is not good to trust too much. The head of government also said: “He who commits a crime in Cuba, regardless of position … will have to face the consequences of their mistakes and the scales of justice.” But so far, none of those removed from office have had to answer to the courts. The dismissal for incompetence is safer than a resignation for disagreeing with the policies.

Similarly it is possible to take deep breaths and resist until those house renovations are completed. The fulfillment of the task is not all sacrifice; friendships are made and those who have friends have a way in. Public office is used for traveling abroad or to get a scholarship in Germany for one’s child.

You can also open a Swiss bank account and if someone questions its moral integrity, do not fret, you are not the first one to do so. The offering of scapegoats is cyclical. Do not misinterpret, it is not malice. It is logical that, if everyone steals from time to time some head must roll eventually. The stagnation and backwardness of the economy is the responsibility of someone. When have you seen that blame falls to the ground?

The process is hard, but it transcends the personal, and has no larger consequences. It is easier to end up in prison for not working, than to omit or alter data in financial reports. The facts are not presented outside of a political trial. Even then, if you acknowledge the mistakes and correct your behavior—i.e. take a few insults—you can keep your status as a member of the party.

Look at the example of Jorge Luis Sierra and Yadira García, one a transport minister, the other a minister of primary industry. Both took on functions that did not correspond to their qualifications, and that led to serious mistakes in management. Today, they find themselves in jobs related to their specialties; or at least that’s what Raúl said.

The worst thing they endured was severe criticism in separate joint meetings of the committee’s political bureau and the executive committee of the council of ministers (by the way, the members of one committee are the same members of the other).

Yadira García, for instance, did a terrible job as head of the Ministry, mainly through her poor control over the resources allocated to the investment process, leading to their waste. Had she committed such offences as director of a base company, things would have been different. Today she would be at the disposal of the public prosecutor and accused of the criminal offence of misappropriation of financial and physical resources.

It does not matter whether it was due to fraud or inexperience; the law is clear and it sanctions the person who oversees the administration and squanders—or allows someone else to squander—financial or physical resources. The punishment increases if there are considerable economic losses. However, García Vera is a close friend of Raúl!

There is no comparison: it will always be better to operate from the top than from the bottom.  One remains certain that the level of misconduct will never be fully known. The Cuban press is official, not sensational; the code of ethics does not allow for corridor gossip, let alone gossip about a leader. That is the price and guarantee of being a cadre of the government.

Translated by: Eric Peliza
February 7 2011

Political Immunity / Laritza Diversent

Raul Castro

Revolutionary justice is extremely rigorous: it punishes illegal exit or plans to hijack a boat. The law also gives a more severe punishment to someone who kills a cow than to someone who commits murder. However, such intransigence is left aside when dealing with misconduct by a government official.

Raúl Castro, in his last speech before the National Assembly, acknowledged that “some comrades, without a fraudulent purpose, provide inaccurate information from their subordinates, without having tested it, and unconsciously fall into the lie. This false information can lead to wrong decisions, with greater or lesser repercussions for the nation,” he argued.

The maximum leader of the Cuban State and Government prefers the resignation of the leaders at any level, when they feel unable to perform their duties fully, rather than dismissing them for not complying with his guidelines. An example of this dominant feature of his administration, one of the most unstable of late, is the dismissal of ministers, mostly for incompetence.

More than 20 cadres were removed from their government posts, including Carlos Lage, Felipe Pérez Roque, Rogelio Acevedo, Juan Escalona, Carlos Valenciaga, Marta Lomas Morales, José Ramón Balaguer, Otto Rivero, Ulises Rosales del Toro, Pedro Sáez Montejo, Yadira García Vera, José Luis Sierra Cruz, etc.

All were put on trial before the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), but no one went before the courts. The Criminal Code, which by reason of the charge is obligated to provide information, conceals and omits information or doesn’t verify it. The penalty is increased if it causes damage to the national economy. It doesn’t matter if the intent had been fraudulent or incompetent.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

Even the historic generation, the leader, is outside the reach of the law. No court of justice has the power to question the many recognized errors in the management of the country, despite the results. Today the Cuban economy is on the verge of collapse.

It’s the same law that puts them beyond the reach of justice. It’s logical; they created it. The courts need authorization to investigate and prosecute members of the Politburo of the PCC — the president, vice president and secretary of the National Assembly, members of the Council of State and the Ministry. The Law on Criminal Procedure sets this out.

On the contrary, the historical leaders feel they have a right that gives them “moral authority” to correct the errors committed in “these five decades of building socialism in Cuba.” They enjoy this privilege thanks to the fact that the courts on the island are constitutionally subordinate to a political body, the Council of State.

The fact that justice depends on politics permits the historical leaders to turn their personal beliefs into law, to impose absurd rules of behavior on the citizens and to severely punish those who dare to challenge them. Above all, it assures them political immunity, both for themselves and their clique.

Translated by Regina Anavy

February 5 2011

The Effect of Punishment To Make An Example of Someone / Laritza Diversent

Rafael Felipe Martínez Irizar, a Cuban citizen of mixed race from Cienfuegos, and the son of Alfredo and Gregoria, will turn 44 this coming May 26. A few days later, he will have served 2 of the 5 years imposed on him as a sanction for the crime of illegally leaving Cuban territory.

I do not know him personally. I read his file, Case #420 of November 26, 2009, filed by the Office of the Popular Provincial Justice Court of Cienfuegos. I also learned about some of his life story, or, better said, his criminal history.

He committed his first offense when he was 20 years old. He had not yet served the term of one year, as imposed by the courts while he was in a correctional detention center, when his term was increased to three years, on the basis of contempt of court.

In 1993 he once again committed an offense. He was first sentenced to pay a fine of 3,600 pesos (national currency) for attempting to flee the country illegally. Afterwards, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison for money counterfeiting and fraud. In 1995, he unsuccessfully attempted an escape from prison and the sentence was increased to 7 years.

Rafael Felipe, despite not being a man who follows a behavioral model worth imitating, is nevertheless someone with a work relationship with the Cuban State. “He talks badly about the Revolution,” the court concluded. “Yet he participates in all activities of mass organization.”

The judicial organ of Cienfuegos referred to his behavior as “dreadful.” “He gets involved with all sorts of people, drinks excessively, and disturbed the peace constantly, for which misdemeanors he has been fined several times between 1998 and 2008,” reads the appraisal. A repeating felon who is well aware of the consequences of his acts and of directing his behavior.

In his story, I see so many Cubans who, daily, at street corners or in parks, drink to vent their sorrows and frustrations. Those who seek, in the deliriums of alcohol, the strength to scream what they would never be able to talk about in sobriety.

Could it be that, in this country, only alcoholics are brave enough to say what they think out loud? Will we need to be entirely hopeless to let go of our fears? Or that good sense simply alienates?

Beyond what his penal antecedents are, Rafael’s life illustrates something else. It is the example that thousands of Cubans witness every day and that convinces them their opinions should remain hushed. His story makes one feel the effects of punishment-to-set-an-example and reaffirms the thesis that ‘”only delinquents are against the Revolution.”

Martínez Irizar is serving his new sentence. This time, because he tried to escape his context. A friend “told him about the possibility“of taking a vessel to flee the country. He accepted, and the Cienfuegos courts sentenced him, despite the fact he never executed the plan.

Translated by T

February 3 2011

The Mazorra Case: Has the Curtain Come Down? / Laritza Diversent

On Monday, January 31, the Havana Provincial Court imposed sentences of between 5 and 15 years imprisonment on the 13 people accused in the deaths, by starvation and cold, of 26 patients in the Psychiatric Hospital, located on the outskirts of the capital. The incident occurred in January 2010.

The steepest penalty, 15 years, went to Wilfredo Castillo, director of the Psychiatric Hospital. The vice-director was sentenced to 14 years and the dietitian, to 12. As authors of the crime of abandonment of disabled and disadvantaged patients, the vice-directors of clinical surgery and nursing were sentenced to 10 years each. The head of psychiatry received a penalty of 7 years.

For embezzlement, sentences ranged between 6 and 10 years, and the accused were seven employees who were in positions subordinate to the hospital, as managers of the store, kitchen, dining room and bar, among others. Moreover, the Court issued a fine for the head of the center’s pharmacy, for “dereliction of duty to preserve the assets of economic entities.”

All those convicted may appeal to the People’s Supreme Court. The ruling also states that “outside the judicial process severe administrative sanctions were also imposed against other responsible parties.”

These, in brief, are the results of the trial held between January 17-22. A trial that was presented as bad theater by the official press, which tried to decorate with legal technicalities what everyone knows: the collapse of public health, a weak legal system, rampant corruption in all sectors of national life and media hypocrisy.

The newspaper Granma omitted the number of those involved and killed, but gave details on the number of witnesses examined by the Court and the specialties of the members of the commission created belatedly by the Ministry of Public Health to investigate the causes and conditions that led to “the deaths that occurred.”

Have the judges of the Second Criminal Chamber of the Havana Court seen the photos of the deceased that surreptitiously circulated in the city? The skins lacerated by blows, evidence of physical abuse? The faces of those who vainly tried to keep warm when the rigor of death reached them? Emaciated bodies, that received severe punishment because, being unconscious, they couldn’t perceive their abandonment and protest it?

Hunger lashed them with the same harshness as their nurses and doctors, who possibly were tired by such hard work and robbed of human sensibility by material need. Granma called this negligence “insufficient patient care.”

“The prosecution alleged that those involved knew that winter could produce an increase in deaths from respiratory diseases,” explained the journalist. However, “the pattern found in the clinical outcome” showed severe signs of malnutrition, anemia and vitamin deficiency.

A cold front did not cause this suffering. The 26 mental patients died as a result of low temperatures, but also from the lack of adequate nutrition, for months or years. In these physical conditions, death was a matter of time. The sharp drop in the thermometer was a catalyst, perhaps desired.

So the trial ended. Sentences were handed out, but many questions remain.

Couldn’t this sad ending have been avoided? Did no prior medical analysis reveal these diagnoses? What did the government officials and Communist Party members who worked at the center do? In all that time didn’t any historical leader pass through there? Wasn’t the Psychiatric Hospital a strategic objective of the revolution?

One last question: Where was José Ramón Balaguer, the Minister of Public Health at the time? Maybe he was eating, all snug and protected, and then went to sleep in a warm bed. Meanwhile, thirty people who had gone mad, who were human beings, died of hypothermia and malnutrition in a part of the system he managed.

Like other incompetent ministers, he was removed in late July 2010, but he continues his work in high government circles, as if nothing happened. No apologies, no regrets, no public acknowledgment of his error. Balaguer is part of that select group of untouchables, men loyal to the Castros, who are entitled to enjoy “the honey of power” until the end of their days.

Maybe that’s why the court did not get permission to investigate. Justice focused on the cooks, employees and directors of the hospital.

The curtain came down. Case closed. Within days, no one will remember the tragic events. Thanks to the official press, which chose to disguise the human misery of a “sector which is the pride and bulwark of Cuba and many countries around the world.”

Laritza Diversent and Tania Quintero

Photo: People wait to enter the trial in the Peoples’ Court on October 10.

Translated by Regina Anavy

February 2 2011

“Don’t Be Afraid to Say What You Think” / Laritza Diversent

Photo: AFP

“A massive discussion of the Guidelines contributes an enormous and rich wealth of arguments,” said Esteban Lazo, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, speaking before the National Council of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. The information appeared in Granma on January 13.

In addition, Lazo said it was very difficult to carry out the proposed changes without the consensus and opinions of all. According to the newspaper, over 55,000 “discussion meetings” had been held in the country, about one-third of those planned.

As a worker of the Municipal Court of Arroyo Naranjo, I attended the meeting in my workplace on January 7. What was disturbing about the proceeding was not the opinions, but the method by which they were received.

The meeting had been announced three days before and scheduled for 4 p.m., half an hour before the end of the workday. As they had not announced what was going to be discussed, the comments started in the halls and fears surfaced. Everyone was waiting expectantly. They thought they would address the issue of who was “disposable,” that is who was going to be laid off.

At the time and place agreed upon, in a narrow room where the majority stood, the meeting began. A lady with sharp acrylic nails, claiming to be a member of the PCC and chair of the event, then reported the matter to be discussed: the economic guidelines for the next five years. They knew that if the matter had been revealed earlier, they wouldn’t meet the required attendance rate.

While each of the participants registered on a piece of paper and signed it, the Party member explained how the meeting would take place. First the document would be analyzed chapter by chapter, and then whoever wanted to give an opinion would raise his hand, give his full name and the number of the guideline he wanted to discuss.

“Don’t be afraid to say what you think, all approaches will be heard,” she said. “The proceedings will go into a computer and will be sent in an encrypted and encoded message to the Council of State, not to fall into enemy hands,” she explained, like telecommunications in Cuba were so developed and available to all, and information could be easily stolen.

I was amazed and I wanted to laugh. Was it fiction or did they want to make us feel like we were the center of the world? The vices of Cuban socialism are difficult to eradicate. Obviously, its followers have not internalized the words of Raul in his latest speech, when he confessed that we should struggle against state secrecy.

While the señora tapped her fingers on the table, my subconscious processed the information that I saw and heard. Would her salary allow her to keep her hands so beautiful? In the informal market, acrylic nails cost 200 pesos in national currency (8 cuc) and 100 pesos (4 cuc) to put them on and fill them periodically. Her Party militancy was not in keeping with her attire or the message she was trying to convey.

“First and last names, for the encrypted information.” In other words, they need to know who gave an opinion and what the workers were thinking, I thought. Under these conditions, the smart ones would weigh their words, especially when after this assembly another one could come, declaring who was “disposable.” Is this the way to encourage debate and divergent opinions?

If they really wanted consensus and everyone’s opinion, they would conduct a constitutional referendum as is legally required by the new transformations. In one day and with one single question, they would know how many Cubans support the upgrade of the socialist model. Of course, the country’s socio-economic conditions do not support that procedure.

Discussion meetings are more effective and reliable. It was the method used when they increased the retirement age. In France, faced with such a prospect, the workers took to the street and protested, creating a government crisis. In Cuba, the proletariat marched on May 1 to give its support for the Revolution.

The political propaganda calls it “a popular consultation mechanism.” And it’s a subtle way to control the citizens and silence opinion. It even allows you to predict the results and put in Granma headlines like this: “The people of Cuba unanimously approve the guidelines. ”


Translated by Regina Anavy

January 30 2011

The Government Demands More Rigorous Police Work / Laritza Diversent

According to the January 6 edition of the newspaper Granma, “Updating the Cuban economic model demands concrete actions from the police to ensure the safety of families and order in society.” The Ministry of Interior made this known during the celebration of the 52nd anniversary of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).

Apparently the Cuban authorities are fully aware of the dangers surrounding the application of its new policies — mainly, the plan to lay off 500,000 workers this quarter. This is something unprecedented in the history of the socialist revolution, which promised, in its state constitution, full employment for all its citizens.

The situation on the streets is tense. “Transportation is getting worse, food is scarce, prices have gone through the roof, and there is no money. The only option left is to steal,” says Peter, a young man of 38, self-employed, who fills lighters. “I chose this activity because I can be on the corner waiting for some business to fall into my hands. The license at least gives me some cover,” he comments.

The government is aware of this reality. It knows that the new self-employed workers need the black market and the illegal trafficking of merchandise in order to finance their economic activities. It’s the only way to guarantee enough resources to stay in business and pay the state taxes. Classified by the population itself as excessive, given the precarious state of the island’s economy.

Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people, and the State, the main employer, has the ability to hire fewer than 3.9 million. There are too many people “inventing,” and we all know that illegal activity is the main source of survival. Faced with this phenomenon, the government increases its repressive force, mainly in the capital. In July, the Interior Ministry graduated nearly 600 officers, and in September, 500 were added to the new class.

The Cuban police, to curb black market activity, control the inter-provincial highways and deploy operatives who hunt down traveling vendors. They can detain someone and make a record of his belongings on a public street, although this power is not derived from the law, but rather from the excessive power that the government places in this body, whose members do not skimp on abuse.

In fact, they decide which citizen will be tried or not by the courts. The Penal Code gives them the power to impose an administrative fine instead of referring a crime to the court. There are quite a few police officers who accept bribes to apply the law at their convenience.

This truth is well silenced by the government. They warn: “The law is applied with the utmost rigor and severity.” However, they tolerate corruption and abuse, in exchange for impunity for members of the police. They are the main force of repression and the only one that guarantees them that an unsustainable system in maintained.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 26 2011

Punished to “Set an Example” / Laritza Diversent

Bárbaro López Villavicencio, 44, and Rafael Felipe Martínez Irizar, 41, both from Cienfuegos and addicted to alcohol, decided, midway through 2009, to take over a boat to leave the country for Mexico, and from there, to go to the United States.

When making their plan they assigned themselves certain tasks. Martínez Irizar was responsible to find people with money who wanted to leave the country, as a way of helping to pay the expenses of the operation. Meanwhile, López Villacicencio was in charge of finding the fuel and the owner of a boat, who would be paid to fake a hijacking.

Pablo Gómez Castillo, a counterintelligence officer, reported the matter. They hadn’t even acquired a single liter of fuel at the time they were arrested. The court of Cienfuegos declared them guilty of the crime of leaving the country illegally.

None of the evidence provided to the court could give the exact dates on which the crime had supposedly been committed. The justice panel admitted documentary evidence about the place the plan was conceived, the research and attempts to buy petrol, between the last days of May and the beginning of June 2009.

The crime was considered proven exclusively by testimony of the witnesses and the accused, who confessed in court to having come up with a plan that they never put into practice. In vain they tried to have the case dismissed. The court did not accept this because “before their arrests they were making arrangements and inquiries related to the aims they were pursuing.”

The ‘dangerous plan’ “happily was prevented by the timely action of the authorities,” who, by arresting the accused, stopped the illegal activity from taking place. There was an acknowledgment in the court’s sentence, at the Division for Offenses against State Security in Cienfuegos, the body in charge of the ‘criminal investigation.’

It meant nothing that the prosecution accepted, in their provisional summary, that López Villavicencio ‘intended to speak about the mission’ to the witness Rafael Jiménez Solís, captain of the ferry and of the tugboat that the accused were planning to hijack, but “he did not carry it out.”

Neither did it help that “in the case the confessions were detailed and explicit, even to the extent of helping to clarify the supposed offense,” according to the court in its sentence. They believed, ingenuously, in the law. The Penal Code relieves of responsibility any person who voluntarily refrains from committing an offense, as long as they inform the authorities.

In its rush to deal with crime and injustice, the Provincial Court in Cienfuegos ignored the fact that all the attempts by the accused came to nothing. The sentence itself acknowledged that Martínez Irizar was unable to “achieve any practical result from his attempts to find fuel.”

An indication of the “efficiency, rational and individual treatment, appropriate communication with people, professionalism and speed in clearing up criminal acts and other services provided to the people” by the organs of justice and repression of the revolutionary government, as the newspaper Granma stated recently.

The court heard the statements of five people contacted by Martínez Irizar, as he sought to bring about the illegal exit. However, the sentence failed to clarify whether they had sufficient resources to finance the operation, which the plan of the accused required. Quite the opposite; the assumption was that they had all refused the offer, something quite unusual nowadays.

The evidence used to back the case was considered “consistent with the principles of science and reason.” Bárbaro was sentenced to 4 years in prison and Rafael to 5, the maximum sentence allowed for the offense of promoting and arranging the illegal departure of anyone from national territory.

If all Cubans who hatch plans to leave the country were punished the prison population on the island would be about 11 million. That truth doesn’t matter, and neither did the sentence reflect the fact that the offense was prevented and the accused repented of their acts. Far better to make an example of them. What matters most to revolutionary justice is applying the law “with the utmost rigor and all necessary severity.”

Photo: Gustavo Rumbaut, Panoramio. A tugboat used for transportation in Cienfuegos Bay.

Translated by: Daniel Gonzalez

January 23 2011

Migration and Xenophobia / Laritza Diversent

Ana Luisa Millares, 43, from Holguin, has lived for less than eight years in a neighborhood of Havana. Nobody can explain how, in such a short time, they gave her a phone line and assigned her a ‘mission ‘ (collaborative work) in Venezuela. She returned full of electrical appliances and enough money, in less than twelve months, to build a house.

Her neighbors are annoyed with the rise in living standards of Mrs. Millares. Many haven’t managed to get half of what she has in their whole lives. Disparagingly and to her back, they call her “the Palestinian” as Havana natives call those born in the eastern provinces.

Migration, mainly from the countryside to the capital, is determined, in the first place, by the difference in economic and social development among the country’s provinces. On the other hand, the government fills the workforce in positions Habaneros reject with people from the east.

Little or nothing is said about it. Until today, no sociological analysis explains the wariness of Habaneros with respect to easterners. Even the legal rules imposed by the government curb migration to the capital, like Decree 217 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers reinforces this sense of rejection.

Some justify the rejection with historic events. Accordingly, they allege that when the guerrillas, mostly easterners, arrived in Havana in January of 1959, they destroyed the capital. They became the dominant group and took over the best properties in the city for themselves and their families. Since then, like the musical group Van Van sings, “Havana can’t take any more.”

Habaneros have other hypotheses. There are those who think it’s a problem of idiosyncrasy and are sure that the easterners are usually unconditionally supporters of the government and, in turn, the most hypocritical. They also argue that the top leaders of the government are nominated and elected by the eastern territories from which they come.

Others mention a reality: easterners make up the majority of the police, the principal force repressing citizens in the capital. A job rejected by capital residents, even before the triumph o the Revolution in January of 1959.

It’s a fact recognized by Raul Castro in the closing of the first parliamentary session in 2008, when he said that, “if the easterners didn’t come to look after the Habaneros, there would be an increase in robberies.” A phrase with more than one interpretation.

In reality, it’s the government itself that foments the migration from other regions to the capital. Raul Castro himself asked, “Who is going to build in Havana if construction workers don’t come from almost the whole country, and especially from the East. How many teachers from the provinces of the interior and especially from the East. And the capital, I believe, is what most inhabitants have.”

As a result of this situation, in Havana the citizens native to the east of the country are the most vulnerable from a social point of view. And some attitudes may even be described as xenophobic. An issue where the government has the major responsibility. On the one hand
it blocks migration, violating the fundamental rights of these people. And on the other, it stimulates it, according to its convenience.

January 25 2011