HAVANA, Cuba, October 11, 2013, www.cubanet.org.- The residents on Maloja Street at the corner of St. Nicholas in the Los Sitios neighborhood (Central Havana ), face the serious problem of the accumulation of garbage in front the doors of their houses.
“We have written to the government and to our delegate to the People’s Power. What they tell us is that they know that this is a mini-garbage-dump, but they have nowhere to put it,” said one of the residents of the place who declined to give his name, fearing reprisals.
The garbage truck takes up to 20 days to collect the trash. The residents of the surrounding streets throw their trash in the containers and on the ground. “This here is a phenomenon. I open the door of my house and I have to jump over the trash to get by. My house is full of worms and cockroaches,” says one of the outraged residents.
When the garbage piles up in front of the containers, the garbage truck passes it by. The workers explain that they have to wait for the brigade that collects the garbage from the ground with shovels. But the production of garbage continues.
The sidewalk and the wall of the house immediately facing the dump were broken when they picked up the trash with a backhoe, when the mound of garbage had grown huge. The owner of the house says, “I accused them. It took them more than a month to tell me they were going to fix the sidewalk and the wall. But they didn’t come and they told me, “You build the formwork and we’ll pour the concrete.” I got two or three men on the block to build the formwork and they still didn’t come. It all got broken up and I lost the money I’d given to people to help me.”
Besides breeding worms, the smell of putrefaction is unbearable. When the situation becomes most critical, the residents leave their house and go elsewhere so they can breath.
The fumigations fail to scare off the mosquitoes, flies, worms, cockroaches and rats swarming down the block.
There is a bodega in the area that the sells sugar, rice and beans that the State assigns to each inhabitant, upon presentation of the ration book, euphemistically called “the supply.”
The animals and insects infest the bodega. The shopkeeper tries to exterminate them, but the plague becomes uncontrollable. “In the bodega are the goods for all the people. Everything gets in there. Ask the shopkeeper,” says one of the neighbors .
At the counter, the shopkeeper smiles resignedly. But he won’t give an interview. All his energy goes into killing the bugs.
Over several days, the only ones who poke through the hill of waste are people looking for things in the trash. In Cuba we call them “divers.” Some old garments taken. Others through a piece of bread or some spoiled foot in a sack. People explain that they are collecting a “stew” to feed the pigs being raised in backyards and on rooftops.
But they don’t look like pig farmers, or people trying to make a living, but rather like people who have fallen into the depths of poverty.
Others come to collect empty cans, which they then take to the “raw material” office. The state pays 8 pesos in national currency for 1 kilogram of aluminum cans (75 cans). And the bottlers pay 1 Cuban peso (about 4¢ US) for a clean glass bottle or 50 centavos for a dirty one.
The hill of garbage in the corner of Maloja and St. Nicholas, growing, leaves the residents to get used to breathing infected air and the sight of the filth as a recurring image.
Lilianne Ruiz
Translator’s Note: Eusebio Leal is the Havana Historian.
Gorki Águila, leader of the punk rock band Porno para Ricardo, was released on bail a week ago, after a People’s Revolutionary Police (PNR) patrol stopped him in the early morning of Sunday, 29 September, and found in his backpack two tablets of a medication for epilepsy, an illness Águila has suffered from since he was a teenager.
What’s your legal situation now?
I’m out on bail now, waiting for a trial with no date. What I have, if I have something, are two pills in a backpack. I made the mistake of signing the bond with the full offense. After they released me, the legal assistance from the Cuban Law Association (AJC) helped to understand what I signed, in order to be set free, I should have written, “for an alleged crime, that has not been proved.”
The crime they put in there was the whole nine yards of the penal code. The full paragraph referring to drugs. But at the time I signed, I didn’t have legal advice, because even though I asked for it, they didn’t let me see a lawyer. If I made a mistake signing those papers so they would release me, it was because I was under a lot or pressure with a violent migraine, I wanted to go home and without legal advice, I did it.
The instructor/investigator told me to sign, that the crime he put (“so this is how it should be put,” he said) didn’t mean they would accuse me of all that, that he was going to wait to see how things were evolving to tell me the crime I would be charged with. That is, they put the full paragraph to choose what crime they were going to put or if they were going to put a crime.
Those are my fears, that now I can’t be sure of what they’re accusing me with. The instructor also told me, “It could be that all this goes in the file and the prosecutor doesn’t approve it. Because if you bring the papers, at best, nothing will happen.” He also told me that it’s possible they’ll take it to the prosecutor and then tell me what crime I’m accused of. I’m in limbo, without any definition of the crime nor a date for the trial.”
Do you have all the medical documentation?
I already scanned the document from the doctor in Mexico who prescribed the Tradea. My family sent it to me, but my family doesn’t know the full process, since the document isn’t legal until it passes through a notary and then through the Ministry of the Interior in Mexico. And ultimately it has to go to the Cuban consulate. To send proof to Cuba that the doctor exists and the notary exists. And then the Cuban Consulate will say that “the whole world exists,” because it has legal force. I’m in this process, but I’m worried, because I don’t have a trial date, they could summon me tomorrow without my yet having the documents that would be my defense. continue reading
The legal document says that I am taking Tradea on a medical prescription. Basically, in a normal country, that eliminates the crime they are inventing of “trafficking and possession,” in two epilepsy pills, for a disease I’ve suffered from since I was a teenager.
I also went to the doctor here to get a clinical medical history where it explains why I take Carbamazepina. In Mexico they prescribed me Tradea, but here in Cuba it’s on record that I’ve been epileptic since high school. The pills are for epileptic seizures that I don’t get very often. And Carbamazepina and Tradea (metilfinidato) are similar.
How did the police authorities treat you?
The arrest followed the classic treatment you get in those places. They started out by threatening me: “Now you’re going to roast. Are you the guy in Los Adeanos*? You’re being tracked by your Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR)…” I told them that in this country everyone is tracked by the CDR. [*Translator’s note: Gorki is not in Los Aldeanos.]
From the beginning, I started to ask for my medication, but they wouldn’t give it to me. Although my girlfriend brought it for me, they didn’t want to give it to me.
I was detained from early Sunday morning — for us it was Saturday night because it was a little after midnight — until 4:30 Monday morning. And I can’t describe the lack of hygiene in a Cuban jail cell. The jail bathroom looks like hell, not to mention there’s no water, you can’t flush. You are constantly breathing a stink of shit and piss. The cockroaches crawl all over everything, the filth of the floor is never cleaned. When a cell is filled with 4 people, everyone is sweating and breathing in the heat, it gets more and more uncomfortable and it makes you anxious to get out of that place.
There was something in particular that made me feel very humiliated. I was sitting on the floor, because I hadn’t eaten. I didn’t want to get dizzy and I had a bear of a headache. And one of them took out his cellphone and shouted at me, “Hey, look over here,” to take my picture.
They wanted to do a urinalysis. Looking not only for “evidence” of the two Tradeo tablets, but also the supposed drugs in my bloodstream. I would never agree to this. They even threatened me, “We’re going to give you 8 years for contempt because this is an order and you have to comply.” I told them, “I’m not going to give you any urine, because I don’t know what you’re going to put in it.”
And then they said, “That’s defamation.” Every time I spoke it was more years… I told them, “Look, if you notice, this medication is sold in Cuba, but not with this trade name. Tradea is metilfinidato. That is sold here.”
It’s the same medication, purchased outside, by medical prescription. I have Mexican residence, I have the right to have my pills. The police told me, “Ah, that’s international trafficking.”
What were the circumstances of your arrest?
We were seated, Renay (the drummer) and I, on the wall of the Obrera Maternity Hospital, in Marianao. It was the night of Saturday, 28 September, “CDR Day.” Before that we had an open-air interview with a journalist, an American university student, in La Puntilla, on the beach in front of the Commercial Center. We talked as a group, about our music, about all the censorship our band has suffered.
I’m not sure if this had something to do with the arrest. We left there, partly by bus and partly walking, to get to the party of a friend. We were relaxing sitting there and suddenly we saw the patrol that stopped dramatically. The police got out, asked for my ID, and told me to show them the entire contents of my backpack. We didn’t have anything to hide, I showed them my things and said, “And this is my medication.” The only thing they have as evidence of a supposed crime they’re trying to involve me in are two “fucking” pills.
Supposedly the police present the facts, not valuations or judgments, because that’s would make them a Court.
Do you think the pressure exerted by the media was crucial in your being released on bail?
I think so. Pressure from the medial is crucial. I thank my friends, the media in Miami, who always respond to this kind of abuse. Every time the media exposes the helpless position of a detainee, they limit the spaces of impunity in the behavior of the repressive bodies. I thank them from my soul. The first thing I advise is to lodge the complaint.
After all those hours locked up, it was Monday and they came to my cell and asked, “Do you have something there to call your family?” I told them, “No, but I need to, because among other things I need Carbamazepina, and you won’t give it to me.”
The police even gave me a card to use the public phone, and told me they were going to “bail me out.” I was surprised, because that right is not usually recognized by the police. I asked, “Did my friends already get me a lawyer,” and they said, “No, we decided among ourselves.” I think it was from the pressure of some of the media, thanks to the journalist Reinaldo Escobar, who was the first to make it known.
But I think they might be waiting to drop everything that has taken shape in the media and at a specific time, when it’s no longer being talked about, they’ll summon me to court and do what they please without any coverage or scandal.
Or, in the event that they see they have very little to arrest me for, and it’s going nowhere, they’ll wait until they have a kilo of cocaine to accuse me with because for two pills they’re going to make the same mistake again, “We know that with two pills we’re not going to put him in prison, let’s put a side of beef in the refrigerator.”
Cubanet interviewed Eliezer Avila, the computer scientist who once faced Ricardo Alarcon, former president of the National Assembly. He moved to the capital in order to participate more directly in the changes in civil society.
What have you been doing in your public life lately?
Since I arrived in Europe I have focused on my personal life. One of my biggest frustrations was that I’ve always lived nearly 500 miles from the capital (in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas). I had to take a bus or a train and travel sometimes for days in order to participate in public life, which is not only all that is written which overseas readers may read, but what happens in debates within of Cuba, within the intelligentsia who, with or without criticism, is what touches us.
We must mention the debates of the journals Temas [Themes], Espacio Laical [Lay Space], a series of good debates, in which I want to participate. Then, making an effort to be able to insert myself in a more coherent and consistent way in public life, I have had to spend the last two months to stabilize my life in the city of Havana.
From your previous social work we perceived you as a human rights activist and then a freelance journalist. But you have defined yourself as a politician. So: What political leaning do you identify with? Socialism, Social Democracy, Liberalism?
Bayley interviews Eliecer
I said in an interview with Bayly (in Miami) recently, that I define myself as a rational politician, perhaps a mix of “liberal center.” The truth is that I have infinite belief in individual freedom as the sole driving force of initiative, progress, the maximum effort to get ahead, and freedom. Now, I also believe in social responsibility, and I believe in a government that offers opportunities.
In European politics, as far as I could see, especially in the Nordic countries, there is a strong tendency for political rationality. That is, the issue we are talking about is the specific issue of what we should do. We don’t have to look through black or white glasses. We are going to study the issue in its totality and make a decision that at times could be a little to the left and at times a little to the right. The truth is it’s looking for the better good. I lean that way.
There are a ton of projects there that don’t consider economics, but the tendency of the left says that we have to do them because they sustain a group of services, of subsidies, because this is a social policy of interest to the left. But, well, it’s an economic disaster, that ends up undoing the policy itself because of the lack of resources to sustain what remains on the large screening, that can’t even sustain itself, and then, which way do I lean? For a balance between what is efficient and what is necessary.
Although you have defined yourself as a politician, Somos + [We Are More] is not a party but a movement. Has it been founded yet?
We are at the stage of conceptualization. I’m trying to gather a nucleus of people, especially young people; university students, workers. I’m looking for young people who aspire to have a future in Cuba. We can design a proposal addressing different subjects, in accordance with our dreams for a future for everyone in the country, including those who today make up a part of any political tendency.
The new acquisition of Somos + is a specialist in biology, who is designing the policy proposals in the environmental field, which in Cuban is disarmed. We want to have economists, sociologists, workers. That is, we want to have a directing nucleus of the Movement as diverse and comprehensive as possible. And we are engaged in this effort. We have not yet officially launched the Movement.
You also said that the Movement could accept some communists as members. What, then, is is precisely the purpose of Somos +?
The point of departure of our Movement should be, above all, the most common demands of the largest possible number of Cubans. I know Communists who are Democrats. So, we are associating with tendency to the left, a hegemonic opinion, dictatorial, that doesn’t have to be that way. In Spain there are communists, in France, in Canada, the United States is full of communists who are democrats. Because they respects the rights of everyone else who are not communists to compete politically, fair and square, and to create a social balance, based on what we all think. Then, you can have whatever political position you have and at the same time be a democrat. What I will always defend is that our Movement is democracy. There’s no room for doubt about that. We will not accept people who are not democrats, that’s it. But for me, I don’t think it’s necessary to label people and ask them what color they are for them to be, in one way or another, a part of the Movement…
Have you been inspired by any movement within or outside Cuba to conceive the idea of the Somos+ Movement?
I would say I’ve had very broad influences. I have had excellent conversations with leaders of movements in Cuba. For example, José Daniel Ferrer, a person I admire and respect very much. Other people who are not actually a political movement, but they do have some very interesting ideas for the future of Cuba , such as Antonio Rodiles, Yoani Sanchez, Dagoberto Valdés and well, a long list… They have nurtured me in all this, but also the trip to Europe, especially to northern Europe, where I think they are the most balanced politics in the world… The German Green Party really left me very inspired… I like doing politics that way. A relaxed politics, no angry grand passions that try to move the world, a conversational politics. I saw in the German Parliament the most heated political discussions, and then everyone has a glass of wine, hugs each other, shakes hands.
This to me seems to be the best example I’ve seen of what we have on a small island. We don’t have to have these great conflicts that some people want to encourage until they’re unsalvageable. We have the same language, the same idiosyncrasies, we have the same aspirations. What do we want? A state of decent comfort, of dignity, a freedom of information that allows us to be believe we have entered the world, and we are not in a small cave in the Caribbean and that we are not part of the development.
We want to be respected for our work, we want to be paid, and according to this we can have the life we deserve.
Why are you leading Somos + instead of joining one of the already established movements within the opposition?
It has always seemed necessary to me for a new seed to be born, a new flower, that is not conditioned, permeated by a group of things that can be positive or negative but that have been longstanding.
It is good to assume responsibility for success if we achieve it, but also bear the weight of failure if it comes to that. It is very interesting to travel this whole road, we have the right, as a new generation, to make mistakes, to forge our way, to be neither better nor worse than those who started earlier and whose work I respect.
Now I want to ask questions to get an idea of your profile: What books do you read, what music do you like, what movies do you remember?
I like old music, from the ‘70s and ‘80s, in English and in Spanish. As I am a computer scientist I’m passionate about programming sometimes whole nights, whole weeks, without going to bed, listening to a lot of hard rock, “System of a Down,” “Nightwish.” Movies: I very much like historic films, and adventures. I like all the movies about World War II, including the reflections of those who make you questions yourself, to think about the essence of humanity itself, above all, this capacity to create hatred. I really like “Life is Beautiful.” At the same time I very much like movies that exalt human valor. In books, as in movies, and in music, I like true stories. I was reading “The Rage and the Pride” by Oriana Fallaci. I finished reading the novels of Padura. I like Cuban writers who defined an era, with a writing that was very brave for its time, because it was ahead of many things that happened then.
How do you intend to add more people to Somos +, taking into account the fear that people have of reprisals from the government with its repressive apparatus?
First, I don’t think I should feel badly that no one has beaten me, I haven’t been in jail. Then, I think it is normal that it happens, that many people tell me, “I don’t want to sign up, I don’t want anything to happen to me.” You have to show these people that they are standing on safe ground. A ground in which I have confidence and which anyone can also rely on because there is nothing hidden. Political transparency can, in every sense, be a weapon that will help us to add many people.
The underground Cuban opposition has its advantages and disadvantages. One of the greatest fears that I have is that once we engage in politics in a democracy, too many people were accustomed to hiding.
This recent event with the musician Roberto Carcasses asking for changes at the concert of September 12, do you think it’s a sign of new times ?
I think so, recently I was talking to my wife. There are many people who are willing to assume some measure of responsibility for what touches them, according to their place in society, and I mean artists, intellectuals, many people who have responsibilities within the media …
People who travel, and Robertico Carcassés is one of them, they realize that in the whole world today a new wave is happening, they sometimes say, “Well good, the Arab countries are being shaken up.” I think the whole world is being shaken up…. These people who travel, who leave, they are seeing everything that is happening, when they get to Cuba it’s like traveling back in time 54 years… Sometimes there are situations like that of Robertico Carcasses, which I think it was mostly an awakening of consciousness that marks a before and after. It marks a precedent, as did what happened at the University of Information Sciences (UCI) as well.
With that speech I had the opportunity to make … It raised the bar a little of what would be done and what could be criticized, and after there was a trend in the newspaper Granma, in the News, of creating spaces where people began to discuss a set of issues . Well, I think it is very healthy and very necessary for a country to have things happen like with Robertico Carcassés … Far from being the exception, it should be the rule.
It’s said that the reforms within Raul Castro’s government are a fraudulent change, and that one of their tactics is the replace the real opposition, organic within the society, with what the spokespeople themselves have called a “loyal opposition.” If you agree with this opinion, what do you think of this phenomenon?
Today what we have in this second stage, to give it a name, in the government of Raul Castro, is a setback, including a discourse that already seems to come from the past. We have seen once again the pioneers reciting with their neck veins bulging, almost in the style of the “open platform.” We have reading in the newspaper again these discourses that label things “Revolutionary” and “truly Revolutionary,”or that abuse the word Revolutionary.
Yes, but when I gave the example of what they call loyal opposition, I was thinking of places like the official blogosphere, where there is a certain amount of criticism, but it is fabricated by the government to create an impression of openness…
I also include that in what I was saying. In any of those spaces even La Joven Cuba could enter, but the result is that you can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can not fool All of the people forever. These spaces were opened and people began to feel a catharsis there. It turns out that criticism is only the first link in a chain of a process that should end with political decisions. Then, something very interesting has happened in Cuba, it is that we have already talked too much. We bring too many years of criticizing.
HAVANA, Cuba , September 2013, www.cubanet.org.- Lech Walesa Institute in Warsaw hosted a workshop on nonviolent struggle (from September 4-14), participating in it were a group of human rights activists, political opponents and independent journalists living on the Island.
Leannes Imbert, who leads the Observatory of the Rights of the LGBT Community in Cuba, and is also Cubanet correspondent, was invited.
She says that one day before her departure, on September 3, she left early to complete the last steps in preparation for her journey.
On G Street at the corner of 21st in El Vedado, a green Lada car was waiting with two agents of State Security, who did not allow her the option of refusing to get in.
These arbitrary arrests and kidnapping have an extralegal character:
“They were not wearing uniforms with badges, they did not show an arrest order, they did not allow me to call my family. They took me not to a police station, but to a house on the outskirts of the city,” says Imbert.
“Later they took Avenue Boyeros, at the intersection of 100th Street they turned the corner and drove on a street that a sign showed to be El Cotorro. But they continued toward a rural area.
“We came to a very well-built house that could easily be confused with a family home, with a fence and very well painted facade.”
Once inside, they invited her to take a seat, insisting on a specific place:
“I assumed the place they pointed to was in the view of the camera so they could film it.”
In the house the only people visible were in domestic service. However, the victim’s mobile phone remained outside the room, indicating that there had to be Ministry of Interior workers in other rooms, in charge of what they call the “technical operation.”
Imbert referred to the words they used to express their main concern; they were:
“Be careful with what you say out there. Many people have left and have been saying things they shouldn’t say, things about the Cuban Government. The result is they’re not going to be leaving any more.”
According to Imbert, they showed her photos of her activities and reiterated the threat to condemn her to 20 years in prison for the things she’s writing and the people she meets with. But they said automatically that they were very worried and wanted to look after her. They mentioned her family, saying “you know your mother is sick and it won’t go well for her if you go to prison.”
At 4 pm that day she was released and allowed to leave for Poland.
In Warsaw
During the ten days the workshop lasted, in addition to talks, the Cubans visited the Institute of National Remembrance, dedicated to documenting the unfortunate events that occurred during the period of Soviet occupation and the government of the Polish Communist Party.
In this Institute are the files of people who belonged to or who collaborated with State Security in charge of implementing the Communist terror in all countries where such a party governs.
“Physical evidence is still appearing of what the brutal repression meant for these people, in certain periods in history.
“For example, someone knows that in an area there was some killing of people who were against Communism; then forensics goes in. In the 21st century human remains were found,” says Imbert.
They were also invited invited to participate in street protest, led by veterans of the Solidarity Union (which today is a Movement). One week a year they recall the protests that ended the Communist dictatorship, and take advantage of it to address the current government on today’s issues.
This time it was about a demand to increase pensions.
“There is a culture of protest in Poland. It paralyzes traffic. There we saw the police working to create security around the protestors. One of them took a picture of the current Polish Minister of Finances and hit her in the head. No one did anything to him.”
They were able to see first hand that the majority of time the government responded, giving legal status to the citizen demands, and the society has been transformed in a non-violent way.
Back in Cuba
Imbert arrived at Jose Marti International Airport on September 14.
On the third day of her return, the same agents in the same green Lada were waiting for her outside her house. The scene was repeated:
“They approached and warned me to get in the car. They took another road and I had the impression that the house where they took me was farther away.”
This time they were interested in the photos that Imbert saved on her phone, photos of Poland.
“They were trying to get information about the participants and the organizers, using the method of appearing to have a conversation with no pressure, commenting on the photos and asking questions, which I didn’t answer.”
Among their sarcasms, they let her know that they were at the airport the day she returned because, according to what they said, they noted the amount of luggage she had.
This time the detention lasted from the early hours of the morning until 6:00 in the evening.
Nonviolent Struggle
Communist dictatorships produce a complex social situation. Besides engendering fear among residents about loss of employment, freedom, even your life, they maintain a discourse that they are acting in the name of peace and for the freedom of the people from capitalist oppression. This combination of factors is extremely disturbing.
But in Europe, even the ones that appeared to be the most impregnable, these dictatorships were overthrown when the citizenry realized they wanted a future of freedom and agreed to participate in the change, which they achieved through non-violent struggle.
Poland overcame the dictatorship in 1989. The Solidarity Union managed to mobilize the population, which was determined to challenge the Communist Party government, and through labor strikes, mass protests and civil disobedience, the public will rescued, one by one, the kidnapped freedoms.
Note : Any similarity to the Cuban dictatorship is not pure coincidence.
Not one lonely statement from the Cuban intelligence services’ spy recently released from US prison after serving out his sentence regarding political prisoners in Cuba. Nothing regarding Kilo 8, Kilo 9, Boniato…[1]
A guy that calls for a campaign to create the illusion that an entire people expects and demands freedom for his 4 colleagues, could well be a man of peace, with empathy with all who are in prison for political reasons. But, it was not like that.
This is the government’s man. He looks like a carnival puppet, but he’s responsible for his actions for he articulates a message, and that message is always on the government’s side, a government that intends to be there always, without really consulting us.
That is why no one should believe that our people have come out to demand the release of 4 spies who tomorrow will ignore their suffering, their hunger, their fear of losing whatever little they have or the nothingness they possess; as does this already released spy, seen in public demonstrations carrying little children. He wants to make believe that this idea of the yellow ribbon was born from civil society, and not the government, as if this human tidal wave that refuses to acknowledge its right to deny itself could also be called a civil society. In slavery there is no power structure.
But, he is there, in that intermediate space. Between the powerless[2] and the State there is the political police, armed to prevent each group from assuming the powers that belong to them.
In school, during the morning assembly of children, a teacher admonished “Tell your parents to put a yellow ribbon in you tomorrow. They are available for two regular[3] pesos at the neighborhood trinket store.” I saw people in my building who are waiting for a US visa to leave this misery behind (and they think that they are leaving behind the only misery….but, there are miseries that cannot be left behind)…dressed in yellow.
Lastly, looking at the people dressed in yellow or wearing a yellow bow – people who did not have that air of the functionary trying to get ahead, simple people who do not want to know what they are doing – I remembered what I had been reading the previous night to my six-year-old daughter before bed, Platero y Yo (Platero and I).[4] I had taken in this entire quote of Juan Ramon Jimenez’s magnum opus:
“Look, Platero, at the donkeys of Quemado: slow, bent, with their pointed red load of wet sand in which they carry nailed, as if to their hearts, the green rod of the wild olive tree with which they are beaten…”
[1] These are the names of some of the most notorious Cuban prisons where political prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions.
[3] As opposed to CUC or “convertible” peso, the other official currency of Cuba, artificially paired to the US dollar.
[4] Children’s book written by Spanish poet, professor and Nobel Prize laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez in 1917. It narrates the relationship of a boy and his little donkey named Platero. It has remained extremely popular in Latin America and Spain to these days.
Moderator Gustavo Pérez (left), Eliecer Ávila (center). Photo by Lilianne Ruiz.
HAVANA, Cuba, September 6, 2013, Lilianne Ruiz / www.cubanet.org. – Recently, the Patmos Forum held its third conference. This time the topic of discussion was The Quality of Life, in connection with politics.
The meeting was attended by about 30 people, gathered in the courtyard at the home of independent journalist Yoel Espinosa Medrano, located in the center of a Santa Clara favela (squatter settlement), a few meters from the most important political plaza of the province.
The moderator was Gustavo Pérez Silverio, the historian and researcher on racial matters, who maintains a working connection with the regime.
The special guest was Eliezer Ávila, who is slowly ceasing to be identified only as the young University of Information Science student who got into trouble with the former President of the National Assembly, and is becoming known as a political leader who could have some role in the future of the island.
Ávila began his talk by defining himself as “a Cuban citizen who wants to exercise his right to engage in politics in Cuba.”
The lack of civic culture was addressed as the key to the whole question, recognizing that in the lack of civic responsibility lies the problem of freedom for Cubans. “A citizen is a person who has power, not someone who has to sacrifice themselves for a project in which they are not involved in the decision-making process, “said Avila.
After his speech of over an hour, the floor was opened to audience questions. Librado Linares, the former political prisoner from the Cause of 75 (from the Black Spring of 2003), began by recognizing the invited guest as a man with political talent, motivation, and strength. But he said he was unable to discern in Avila’s “We Are More” movement a concrete strategy for enlisting citizens, overcome by terror and apathy, or for dealing with the pattern of repression by the political police against the Movement.
The We Are More Political Movement would bring together people of different political persuasions, united by the common interest of presenting concrete demands to the Castro government. It would not be limited to Cubans living on the island, but would also welcome Cubans from the diaspora.
“This is a project that I want to build with the views of as many people as possible, because I do not want the people to serve one point of view, but for the point of view to serve the people,” he said.
The bloggers from La Joven Cuba (Young Cuba), labeled by the regime as the “loyal opposition,” had been invited to the Patmos meeting.
Regarding the absence of La Joven Cuba bloggers, Ávila told Cubanet:
“I don’t believe that any political distance is healthy. I had hoped this dialogue would occur, but at the last minute I was told that they had no interest in participating and invited me to dialogue on their blog. It is ridiculous for one Cuban to invite another to a discussion on the Internet, knowing that we don’t have that possibility.”
The Patmos Forum, created in February 2013 by a group of activists led by Baptist pastor Mario Félix Lleonart, was conceived as a space for the discussion of various topics in which different schools of thought are represented.
Previous events were devoted to the Origin of Life and the Right to Life, consecutively.
On this occasion, Lleonart announced the adoption and adaptation by “Patmos” of the Manual of Political Advocacy of the organization Christian Solidarity Worldwide, with the intention of providing workshops that equip Cuban believers with the power to influence the country’s politics, and end the myth that Christians are alienated from partisan politics that affect their quality of life and respect for human rights.
I have lost my little scissors, the ones for cutting fingernails. For a moment I thought the world had ended because here things are very well kept. A lot has to change to find good scissors, especially with the characteristics of the ones I thought I had lost.
I was still talking with a friend on the phone about that matter and Ernesto’s call came. He is the son of Raul Borges Alvarez, a well-known political dissident.
Fifteen years ago he was imprisoned for political reasons. In 1998, being still a captain of counterintelligence and analyst in that department, he collected files with classified information about more than 20 baited agents prepared for international espionage, and he tried to get them to a US official based in Havana.
The story was more or less this: He threw the files into the garden, near the front door. With a pole he managed to ring the bell but the door never opened. He was detained for a few hours, taken to Villa Marista and advised that the penalty was death. But that broke up the Wasp Network and the fact is that Ernesto thinks that is why they did not shoot him.
Five years ago he should have been on parole according to the law. Because the prosecutor recognized the family on the day of the trial as being military and having no criminal background, having been judged by a military tribunal, he would only complete a third of the 30 years to which they sentenced him.
But, although after two hunger strikes last year he received a visit from the Commission to examine his conditional release, he has received no answer. Until a few days ago he was called together with his father and brother to the office of the Combinado del Este prison, where he has spent recent years, and notified that his parole had to keep waiting.
Among the arguments given by the military of Section 21, known also as “confronting counterrevolution,” was that his father Raul Borges Alvarez attended Santa Rita in order to march near the Ladies in White, which is the Movement that most effectivtely works to make visible the situation of Cuban political prisoners, and that continued its “counterrevolutionary” activities. Because father Borges is president of a Christian democratic party.
The second argument brandished to refuse conditional release was that Ernesto Borges had carried out two hunger strikes.
Some few have achieved their liberation with that recourse of the hunger strike, others like Zapata Tamayo and Villar Mendoza (recently, because history has more examples) have died because they have let them die.
Ernesto ends the call reminding me of a quote from The Social Contract, by Rousseau, “When one man is above the law, the rights of others are in danger.” He also tells me that after the second hunger strike, last year, he received a visit from a general, Chief of jails and prisons, who told him that his case was not in his hands but at “the highest management level.” What do you think?
HAVANA, Cuba , August, www.cubanet.org.- Undocumented and with the stigma of “terrorist,” Jesús Rojas Pineda barely survives in Jagüey Grande, Matanzas; after having been released on October 19, 2012, from Kilo 9 Prison.
Last August 7, Rojas Pineda turned 70.
His cause is the same one that Armando Sosa Fortuny was tried for: The 15 October 1994 disembarking together for Caibarién, more outraged than organized, as you will see below.
Before enlisting in the group of seven men who landed that night, Rojas Pineda had been a fisherman in his native Caibarién until on July 12, 1994 he took to the sea in a plastic boat and rowed, coming ashore in Florida
“We were well received as rafters, they helped us right away,” says Rojas.
He also got a job: “I started making pots to catch lobster.”
But, according to his own words, on 12 August of that same year, in a funeral home on Calle 8, the bodies of two Cuban rafters were laid out. “That day 600 boat people arrived on U.S. shores.”
He says that right then a protest was organized against the Cuban government, holding it responsible for the death of the rafters. “The protest lasted 24 days… on October 10 a group of seven of us agreed to return to Cuba with some weapons but without chemicals substances nor explosives.”
The rest of the story is well known. They tried to cross the newly opened causeway that connects Cayo Santa Maria with Caibarién, to the Escambray. On the road a car appeared in which were traveling, among others, the Communist party secretary of the province of Villa Clara , who was killed in an accidental shooting by the gun of Humberto Real Suarez, another of the expeditionaries.
“At the trial, the prosecutor himself admitted that the shooting was accidental, since the weapon Humberto was carrying Humberto was modern and if he had pulled the trigger intentionally it would have released a flurry of shots instead of one, as it happened,” recalls Rojas Pineda.
Nevertheless, the sentences were for between 20 and 30 years in prison; the firing squad Humberto Real Suarez standing out; he had testified at the trial, “I did not come to kill innocents, but to fight against the dictatorship.”
Several of the seven men had been badly wounded by their captors. Fortuny in the head and shoulder; Real Suarez in the wrist; Rojas Pineda by the impact of 82 glass particles after the car windows were blown out; and Diaz Bouza, handcuffed on the ground, was shot by an AK that struck him in the jaw and arm.
The sentence for Rojas Pineda was 20 years, even though at the trial it was recognized by the prosecution that his gun was never fired.
“I lost the key“
After the trial, they were transferred to maximum severity prisons.
To describe the Cuban prison inside, Rojas Pineda says: ” Monstrous, in ever respect.”
Kilo 8 Prison in Camaguey , known as “I lost the key,” was one of the first places they went.
“There I was in the cell No. 50, maximum security. They didn’t let you out in the sun, and denied us medical care claiming that we were terrorists.”
In that prison, Rojas Pineda was nicknamed the Matador because the officials wouldn’t stop mistreating him. “They imposed extra punishments on you, like reducing your water and taking away the foods sent by your family.”
At some point he was in need of an operation of hemorrhoids and for him to see a surgeon he had to stage a hunger strike that lasted 18 days. “They refused not only to let me be seen by the doctor, but also the painkillers.”
When he was 18 days into the hunger strike, a visit was scheduled from the MININT Commission from Havana to inspect the prison.
Rojas Pineda took his blood-filled rags and threw them into the corridor. Only then was he taken to hospital where he underwent surgery the next day. But back in the cell they cut off his water supply. “I had to get up and go to get some water for the toilet, recently operated on.”
“One night, a boy started calling after the order for silence: Let me go to cell of the Matador, he always gives me something to eat,” Rojas Pineda continues his story.
“A guard pulled him out and along with three others beat him nearly to death. The prisoners began shouting, ‘Abuse! Abuse!’ and started hitting the bars. The second night, they called in special troops, that even had flamethrowers, because the prison called them saying it was a revolt against the government. The prisoners were expressed themselves, saying, ‘This is a problem of the daily outrages and abuse.’
“They retired the troops and in a few days a commission of officials from Havana brought 50 releases, 50 paroles and 50 minimum conditions,” he adds.
Parole was denied on many occasions. Finally, on October 19, 2012 he was released “for completing the sentence.” In all, he spent 18 years in captivity.
Until the last day, shared the same task and the same small space with Armando Sosa Fortuny, whom he calls “brother.”
After being released, an opportunity came to visit Fortuny bringing him food, but “they didn’t accept the crate nor the bag, because they said it wasn’t visiting day.” Every afternoon, Rojas Pineda goes to the phone and waits for the call from his “brother.”
Currently, he suffers from hypertension, circulatory problems and an advanced degree of deafness, in addition to all wear and tear from so many years as a political prisoner.
Undocumented
Rojas Pineda’s family is the opinion of this man does not want to be in Cuba any more. At first he could not close any doors in the house.
Rojas Pineda was in the midst of the formalities for U.S. residency when he decided to return to Cub . The mailing address in Miami is the one on the document they gave him when he left the prison, which is not an identity card, but a kind of letter of freedom.
But he can not emigrate legally to the United States, primarily because his U.S. documentation was held by the Cuban authorities after his arrest.
What the Cuban Office of Immigration and Nationality is proposing is to being the paperwork for “repatriation,” to be able to obtain an Identity Card. But Rojas Pineda doesn’t feel well in the land where he was born, that didn’t sufficiently raise its voice for his cause, and that didn’t save him and his family their 18 years of suffering when he was a political prisoner.
When this reporter comments that his story could be read by the Cuban public in exile, he expresses his desire to send a big hug to his brothers and the request that, “If anyone knows of a way in which I can obtain a duplicate of the documentation retained by the Cuban authorities since the day of our arrest, if it might be left in some file in Florida, let me know. I want to spend my last days in peace,” he concludes.
Everything seems to indicate that there are members of the administrative council (neighbors) who don’t know the rules of social coexistence, even though the president of the country, Cop. Raul M. Castro Ruz [dedicated] three-quarters of his speech before the National Assembly of People’s Power to these questions.
We cannot allow these things to deteriorate in our building:
Civil moral values,
Sensitivity to the problems of others
That allow us to live in peace.
Lately recent events have occured characterized by: scandals, loud music at night, defecation and urine in the elevators by rational or irrational animals, as well as throwing solid waste in the areas outside the building and patios, among others.
To the neighbors who have committed scandals and loud music at night and playing board games, you were personally notified. But for the future we will proceed to take notice and if necessary pass the information to the corresponding authorities.
We must give notice that everyone who has pets should take into account that everything done in the common area is the responsibility of the owners, gentlemen find a bag, bucket for the solid waste, don’t throw it in the common areas.
Secretariat of the Administrative Council of the Building
This notice, which I thought it was unusual, was stuck and stuck again on the walls, the front door and the door to the parking of my building. I live at 702 Lombillo Street. My friends who come to visit me have always found it a little crazy — a little eighties-ish — the way the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) has stuck propaganda on the walls. The new signs were put up by the CDR after that speech by the general-president where he called the people scoundrels, he who has been holding the yoke imposed by his family for over five decades, almost without protest.
In the first paragraph there is a gap, a dynamited bridge, between the fact that the neighbors don’t know the rules of coexistence and still haven’t learned them, even when the general explained to everyone how to live together nicely.
As if presidential opinion was the beginning of havng a conscience. As if we didn’t have a conscience. But in Cuba the people can not understand their responsibilities when they have never tasted what it means to have rights. Rights against the government, which here has been sold as something sacred, unquestionable, supported by the international left. And turned into an ideology, where conscience is drifting, scared, powerless.
If we look closely there is a moment where it says it’s unknown whether the urine in the elevator is the work of rational animals.
It’s not clear to me if it’s a joke, in a communication that displays so much indignation and that has been written, obviously, by someone who has felt satisfied with the definition of “species in danger of extinction,” as the expresident of the Island — who ruled from 1959 — has called humanity.
A tyrannosaurus rex, no doubt. Doomed to extinction.
And the way it is worded it seems like some idiot making jokes in bad taste. However, all is true.
Here we see the end result of this experiment. And the notices are still appearing. I intend to attach photos of them all.
INFORMATION TO THE PEOPLE
The National Revolutionary Police (PNR) and Member Inspectors are part of the factors confronting social indiscipline and illegalities which include:
– Games in public streets and common areas: baseball, football, dominoes, cards, four square and others.
– Walking on public streets without a shirt.
– Drinking alcoholic beverages on sidewalks, common areas, housing entrances, and walking on public streets and common areas under the effect of alcohol.
– Alterations to the public order at any hour like: discussions in common areas, playing music that affects the community, groups, scandals, discussions,
Armando Sosa Fortuny. Photo by Alexis Zabaleta, courtesy of the author
Havana, Cuba, August 2013, www.cubanet.org- Armando Sosa Fortuny has turned 71 in the prison known as Kilo 9, in Camaguey province.
In the photo, which was secretly taken by a member of the Committee for the Liberation of Political Prisoners (CPLPP) who visited him this past January, you can see that he looks like someone’s grandfather.
He has been in prison for 18 years. He was sentenced on April 25, 1996, to 30 years in prison on charges of “infiltration”, “illegal entry into Cuba” and “other acts against the security of the state.”
He is a man from another time, from a time when armed struggle was presumed to be an acceptable alternative for overthrowing dictatorships. So he seems left behind, obsolete in this age when civic struggle and nonviolent resistance garners greater sympathy.
Recently, in a telephone interview from prison, he told this reporter: “It was a different era. If I were in the streets now I would be struggling for recognition of the civil and political rights of the Cuban people.”
His diabetes is being controlled with insulin. Ironically the poor prison food keeps his blood-sugar levels stable. After having gone from bad to worse for years, he says candidly:
“The food is OK.”
A sister who used to visit him died in Miami. Now only the members of the CBLPP come to see him, once a month. They bring him a box with the food that they are allowed to bring in, and talk with him for a few hours.
As he tells it, early last month, July, he was taken to an office where an immigration officer was waiting to tell him that he and his comrades-in-arms were included in the Cuban government’s immediate-release program, on the condition that they left the country at once.
“That’s what I want. It’s been many years,” he said.
Then, State Security came to visit him later that month, two weeks after the first visit, to tell him signs were appearing, written in crayon, saying “Free Fortuny!”, or “Castro, free Fortuny!” on the walls in some parts of the city of Camaguey. Paradoxically they told him that this was not much of a problem, because it was a simple matter for the CDR to cover over the posters.
Sosa Fortuny interpreted both visits as “a psychological game, maybe because they wanted me to tell the boys not to put up any more posters.”
Other causes from the early Castro years
This is not the first case for which Sosa Fortuny has spent prison time. In 1960 he was tried on similar charges for having come with 25 men to fight in the mountains against the recently-established dictatorship. Many of those convicted on that occasion were immediately executed by firing squad.
That first case ended with his release in 1978, as part of an amnesty that benefited over three thousand political prisoners, accomplished through international pressure in the face of human rights violations in Cuba.
He only spent 15 years in freedom in the United States, returning on October 15, 1994, when he decided, in his words, “to create an Eastern Front to overthrow tyranny.”
But the night of the landing, a member of the infiltration team fired a shot that killed the Party Secretary of Villa Clara Province, and that provoked a firefight in which he and some of his companions were wounded.
“We saw the car coming from the causeway and our intention was to get the occupants out so we could go down the Yaguajay road to Escambray. But as Humberto motioned at them to get out of the car, it was so dark that when I passed between them the noise startled Humberto, who fired the shot accidentally,” says Sosa Fortuny.
Regardless of the responsibility that they blamed him and his companions for, the punishments — imprisonment of up to 30 years, and a sentence of death by firing squad for Humberto Real Suárez — were excessive.
Until 2012, when they commuted Real Suárez’s death sentence to 30 years in prison, he suffered for 17 years the torture of attending the mock firing squads of those who came back shouting anti-government slogans, as related by former political prisoners who shared a cell with him.
In the Cuban prisons there are many testimonies of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment to which the prison population is subjected. Everything indicates that the guards are given carte blanche to carry out beatings and abuse that have come to infuriate many.
Sosa Fortuny and his companions have not accepted the government’s political-ideological re-education:
“In Kilo 7 we’ve had to scream a lot against beatings of other prisoners. They abandoned a boy in a wheelchair. There you have to take a stand, and cause a problem. That cost us punishment cells, but I’m not sorry. I always express my ideas, wherever,” he added.
Finally, Sosa Fortuny hopes to convey a message to Cubans inside and outside the island:
“That I send a hug. On my wounds I bore the pain of the Cuban people.”
He also says he is awaiting a decision by the Cuban government to release him.
Others who are still prisoners from Sosa Fortuny’s case are Miguel Díaz Bauzá, age 70, and Humberto Real Suárez, 42. We will be updating them in the next few days.
Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart in front of a pile of shoes in Auschwitz. Photo: Lilianne Ruiz
Havana, Cuba, August of 2013, www.cubanet.org — “As long as the Office of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party’s Central Committee exists to monitor pastoral work, one cannot speak of religious liberty in Cuba.” So said Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart from the Baptist Church of Taguayabon to Cubanet in the province of Villa Clara.
The absence of a religious law offers an opportunity for the Office of Religious Affairs to control the churches, driving them toward the political goals of the only party. If there were a law regarding religion, churches would be able to count on a legal foundation with duties and rights. All those religious who do not threaten the society in which they live could be legalized, but this message of non-violent resistance could bury the ideological pillars of the dictatorship.
Monitoring by the Office of Religious Affairs translates into rigorous control over those who have been chosen, or appointed, as leaders of legally recognized religious institutions, and into maintaining strict contact with them. “Faced with any matter that they think requires them to put pressure on a religious denomination, they quickly call its leader. They coerce him, they blackmail him, they manipulate him, depending on his reaction,” commented Pastor Lleonart.
“Many enter into open plotting with this office, and there’s suddenly a divorce between these religious guides and the people of this denomination. They take advantage and make business deals out of the perks that the government can give them, while the people suffer from shortages and lack of liberty,” he added.
The good pastor
Lleonart is a human rights activist and from his Twitter account he was the first to break the news of the political beating in Santa Clara, which caused the death of the political opponent Juan Wilfredo Soto in 2011.
Everything indicates that the approximately $27,000 bank account of the Baptist Seminary of Santa Clara, which is frozen by the State, is being used, among other reasons, as a means of coercion to keep Pastor LLeonart and his wife on the school’s faculty and Reverand Homero Carbonell as its president. These two figures, who are active members of Cuba’s persecuted and authentic civil society, are not to the liking of the Office of Religious Affairs. For this reason, they are pressuring them to abandon their positions of influence.
This bank account is the result of the generosity of other Baptist churches in the United States, but they are not in communication with the Cuban government. “Maybe if the churches making the donation had come to say ’Liberate the Five’*or gave the regime what it wanted, then they would have maintained good relations, but that is not the case.”
The Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, founded in 1905, does not submit to the interests of the government. The church in Santa Clara, which is a member of the Convention, opened its account with the International Financial Bank (BFR), which assumed they had been able to use the money. That is until one day when the government declared that, because of “political sanctions,” it would be frozen. The following was the BFI’s response when asked why the funds were not available: “These are directives from the Party in Havana, from the Office of Religious Affairs.”
When the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) held its seventh General Assembly a few months ago in Havana, the government made a show of unfreezing the seminary’s bank account. But it was a farce, as noted by the pastor:
“We cannot withdraw so much as a penny. They let it be known through the BFI that the account would be unfrozen, but only for construction purposes. Who are they to tell the church how to use its money? Or that to withdraw a penny we have to verify that it was used to buy a brick and not cement? Even then we have not been able to withdraw one cent because we are waiting for a signature that never comes.”
State Security, in the person of one of its agents, told Pastor Lleonart on one occasion that he “would not be treated like a pastor but like a counter-revolutionary.”
Another agent told the pastor while in detention that he had heard very good things about him from the community he had gathered together through his pastoral work in Taguayabón, but that there was no reason for him to be in Santa Clara, spending time with “those blacks,” a reference to the province’s opposition leaders, who for the most part are black, such as Guillermo Fariñas, Jorge Luis García Perez (aka Antúnez) and Damaris Moya Portieles.
“The agent from State Security took the liberty of briefing me on what I should do in my pastoral work, presenting it as though it were completely divorced from my work in the field. His briefing is the same as that of the Office of Religious Affairs which — though perhaps not using the same words he did but with the same goal of limiting one’s rights — asks pastors in Cuba to be calm, to focus on singing, on prayer, on giving sermons only within our four walls, to do our part to keep the people calm and to distance ourselves from the reality outside,” says Pastor Lleonart.
In 2009 the prestigious magazine Christianity Today chose for the cover of its July issue a photograph of Lleonart with a quote from him: “Here I am, easing the suffering of my people.”
On July 7, 2013 a religious service was interrupted by a man suffering from mental disabilities. As he was being led out of the church, he shouted death threats against the pastor. The man’s family regularly attends the church and described how he was locked up for twelve days, but was returned home without having received medical treatment and in worse shape that when he left, still threatening the pastor and his family.
“It is not my own life that concerns me, nor that of my family. I hope and trust in God that absolutely nothing will happen. But for me the evidence that State Security is indeed involved is when I realized that — even though everyone knows about the incident and it has even been discussed on Twitter — the authorities have done absolutely nothing. They have let it be known that this matter does not interest them.”
HAVANA, Cuba, August, www.cubanet.org.- Similar to the theme of Steven Spielberg’s movie Minority Report, where someone is imprisoned for crimes they had not yet committed but it was assumed they might commit, the Cuban Criminal Code devotes several articles to “the state of danger and measures of security.”
An index of pre-criminal dangerousness is practically nonexistent in the world. It translates to applying a coercive measure in the present for something a person “might do” in the future. People call it “the law of dangerousness.” It’s common to hear, “They applied ‘the danger’ to him.”
Vicente Rodriguez is a former political prisoner who knows the law for having suffered it firsthand. “Both men and women who are sentenced under the law of dangerousness, when they get to prison, are sent to the galleries for 21 days. After that time they are sent to Prison 1580 or other so-called State ‘settlements’,” he says.
Photo: Lilianne Ruiz
According to Rodriguez, in these “settlements” the prisoners work from Monday to Sunday, “Building buildings for people in the Ministry (of the Interior), and other State interests. And with a minimum wage. The prison has these ‘minimum security’ camps for those charged with ‘danger.’ The ‘danger’ (law of dangerousness) is minimum offense. As it’s not a crime, you go to prison with a job. As an imprisoned worker.”
Rodriguez says that the law is, “Nothing more than a justification to find a workforce.” If the prisoner has a good attitude, it’s possible that a sentence of two years will result in parole after eight months, or a four year sentence is served in just two years. Analyzing the phenomenon, it doesn’t seem convenient to leave the barracks empty. “So if 25 are set free, 25 have to come in. To do the work,” Rodriguez adds.
“A good share of the buildings built after 1959, have been built by prisoners. Alamar, Barlovento, buildings in Guanabacoa, in Cotorro the CIMEQ hospital,” says Rodriguez, who claims to have been in the latter when it was held in Valle Grande in 1983. “There are brigades they take out and they give them incentives, such as passes to visit their family every 45 days. If you work hard in the time you’re working, you get a five-day pass, not three. The slaves are right here.”
In a prosecution for dangerousness, “The person has no right to defend himself, he has a lawyer who is decorative. It seems that the trial is already over, you’re penalized because ‘the factors’ [the investigator/prosecutors] say that you have to be deprived of your freedom for two years.”
To remove the law of dangerousness from the Penal Code, it is necessary that the state respect human rights and particularly the right of every person to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.
It’s worth mentioning that in the world there is a post-criminal dangerousness index, where if a person commits a crime and is found to be mentally unstable, and so cannot serve a sentence but is potentially dangerous; it is as if they had already committed a crime as it is feared they will continue to violate the legal well-being of the society. In that case, a measure is taken such as placement in a hospital.
Writer Ángel Santiesteban has fallen through the net
Recently, the writer Ángel Santiesteban was transferred from prison 1580, where he was serving a sentence of five years for alleged domestic violence — which the artist denies — to one of these “settlements.” As explained above, it is likely that the author of the blog The Children Nobody Wanted will be used as a construction worker.
Through third parties, his blog is still active from prison, so through him we could learn about the forced labor caps which are so similar to the notorious Military Units to Aid Production (UMAP)*, implemented by the Castro regime its early years.
*Translator’s note: UMAP was a set of forced labor camps where people the regime considered “anti-social” or “counter-revolutionary” were incarcerated, including homosexuals, religious believers, and others.
The most important is integrity
even before buying a padlock or
pullys.
Both facts are important
Integrity is a bridge
that leads to a castle surrounded
by a forest of hawthorns, in custody of
a blasphemous dragon.
In this castle there is a woman who is
very wise
who tries to liberate herself with words.
When it is the woman’s time to talk
everything (the dragon, the forest
of hawthorns, the contaminated
and wild water) everything hesitates
like a virtual game and
through the serenity
integrity settles
in the world leaving a
vote of confidence.
The absence of integrity is
this bridge demolished and
the unsteady voice of someone
who is the reflection of a
subordinate.
The padlock secures the gates
through which some girls might
leap into the emptiness.
It’s been a while since I blogged. I’m wanting to learn to write articles on the reality of my country. Reality is complex. It’s based on a discourse, and our thinking is a discourse. The panopticon described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish, was implementable in hospitals, prisons and insane asylums and totalitarian societies are a little bit of all these. Yesterday I talked this over with a friend.
During the day I was in a taxi at a stoplight and while the light changed I noticed the car that came up beside us. The classic employees and civil servants of the State were arguing over papers, probably receipts. I saw this happen so many times in my father’s work. Then they divided up loot. They settled with food. How disgraceful. But we toasted at the end of the year with Chivas Regal. Brought directly from the warehouses of Guatao. My father was a decent man, in other circumstances he wouldn’t have accepted the whisky, the Spanish nougat, or the meat to celebrate. “I had a family to feed,” this is how the Cubans excuse themselves. This is how the dictatorship lives. How it is prolonged. With terror and corruption. This is only going to change on the day that we Cubans make it stop. The day we strike to demand dignity. Here, and personal.
After 8 at night, they were broadcasting Chancellor Rodríguez Parilla’s speach. More of the same. The deceiving bet of Latin America on Socialism. What a venture. After that it could be half a century before we reach the yearned-for liberty. Why don’t I give more time to this dictatorship. Be careful with wishes in the right mailbox. Mine always come true.
HAVANA, Cuba, July 2013, www.cubanet.org.- When a Cuban family is afflicted by disease there are many who depend on the favor of some neighbor with a car to take them to the hospital. Moreover, the paramedics and nurses of the Comprehensive Emergency Medical System (SIUM) depend on the “thanks” for their patients to “resolve” a chance to eat a better lunch or a to get a few pesos above their salary.
Juan López (he has asked me use a pseudonym), in order to take his father to the hospital, called SIUM and waited three and a half hours for the ambulance to come. The Center Coordinator told him onthe phone: “Your case is the first on the list be we can’t resolve it.”
“After that long wait I was at my limit. I went to look for a neighbor with car, some way to get him there,” said Lopez. “Time passed and the disease was evolving.”
Once a medical emergency is reported the time stipulated to a rescue is 10 minutes. A young SIUM worker asked not to be named to provide testimony. We will call him Nurse X.
He has a license in nursing and counts on their being a key system, in communication with the Provincial Coordinating Center at 44th and 17th, in Playa. Key 1 means there’s an emergency call. Key 2 indicates they’re on their way and should be there in 10 minutes. From 2 to 3 is working with the patient. And 4 is on the way to the hospital. Key 5 means that the case has been admitted and they’re ready to take on another.
“In reality, we spend up to 12 hours to pick up a patient, but there are seven bases all over Havana and on occasions there are seven or eight cars (ambulances), no more. Other times there are 11 or 12 for the whole province. For example, the based in Plaza also covers the demand for Cerro, Centro Habana and Habana Vieja. There are days, like today, when we are working with just one ambulance.”
The delay experienced by the population is the result of a long list that prioritizes the most severe cases. But from the position of Nurse X the work is continuous.
“Often, we leave at eight in the morning and it’s three in the afternoon and we haven’t eaten lunch. People offer us a soda, some snack, even money. Others have nothing to offer. Some are upset by the delay and protests. Sometimes we’re notified of a case of hip fracture, but after 10 minutes we get a case of loss of consciousnesses and the fracture has to wait. If then a heart attack comes up, the fracture falls further behind.”
Few Cubans have car; you can’t even say that one member of each family has one. The salary of a worker is so tiny that it’s not even enough to take a taxi to the hospital even when it’s a medical emergency.
There are three categories of ambulances, intensive, intermediate and basic. But Nurse X tells us that “it is possible that an basic care ambulance arrives for a critically ill patient and all you can do is verify it and call back to the Coordinating Center. Then they send a second ambulance has that has electrical equipment and a defibrillator, but that isn’t equipped with artificial ventilator and the patient needs to be intubated.”
The look of incredulity on my face leads to, “It happens.”
Nurse X works in an intensive care ambulance, supposedly designed to assist the most severe cases of the city. But because of the deficit of cars, he has even had to take care of transferring patients between hospitals. “I have come to work with 14 or 15 cases in a day, not only life support, but whatever shows up.”
Many buildings of Havana, especially in the downtown area, are several stories, with very narrow stairs. After an exhausting effort, no time to rest, nor is there a coffee before the next call. The SIUM staff work 24 hours. They complain about working conditions and the lunch menu: “Many times you can find yourself with a tray of flour with boiled or scrambled egg, soup with rice. ’International Nurse’s Day’ seems like a lot of hogwash.”
Someone with a degree in nursing, with SIUM, working 24 hours on and 48 off, earns between 740 and 750 Cuban pesos a month, the equivalent of about $30. “There are like 12 or 13 shifts a month. You have to put your feeton the ground, you have to eat and I have a daughter. That’s not nearly enough.”
Like many of his colleagues, Nurse X aspires to leave on a medical mission (outside the country) to improve his economic situation, but to do that he should first leave the ambulances and work as a nurse in some hospital.
“The SIUM is my life, but there comes a Training Course and they won’t release you for lack of personnel. So you stay and unfortunately if Public Health personnel don’t go on a foreign mission they’re nobody.”
The system also serves a political purpose
At the SIUM National Base, based in Arbol Seco Street, Central Havana, things are different. From the outside you see a parking lot with several modern ambulances. The first impulse of the reporter is to ask the medical staff chatting at the door how many cars the National Service has and what kind of cases they serve. A doctor’s response is blunt: “You have to go with a paper to the institution to which you belong, at the direction of the center, to get answers to those questions.”
We do know that people complain of the delay and the quality of service. ’’The population is poorly educated. This is not a taxi service,” he replies.
I insist, invoking the public interest in the matter. The doctor’s answer is a lie flung in my face with cynicism: “There is no conflict between the interests of citizens and the interests of the State.”
The national SIUM is responsible for performing institutional transfers between provinces, but mainly for covering international events or other events, as on May Day at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand. They are sent to the airport, to the Palace of Conventions. To the Parliament and any activity that has to do directly with the government. It was employees of the Cuban Red Cross who, during the previous visit to Cuba of Pope Benedict XVI, took the stretchers on hand for the public that might “suddenly fall ill,” and as observed worldwide, used a stretcher to assault a peaceful opponent.
Provincial SIUM workers see the nationals as “people working with very few tools and delivering very good service.” But also “ideologically filtered.” A paramedic from the provincial service who has also requested anonymity explained that “even the driver of the national delegation has passed courses in political training. They are internal officials working for State Security.”
The national SIUM ambulances themselves are equipped with everything you need to face any emergency. He himself asked to be part of that service because ” these people eat well” and don’t have the problems of the provincial SIUM. “When people see these ambulances they believe they’re looking at SIUM, but they’re not. In those cars all equipment works.”
HAVANA, Cuba, October 11, 2013, www.cubanet.org.- The residents on Maloja Street at the corner of St. Nicholas in the Los Sitios neighborhood (Central Havana ), face the serious problem of the accumulation of garbage in front the doors of their houses.
When the garbage piles up in front of the containers, the garbage truck passes it by. The workers explain that they have to wait for the brigade that collects the garbage from the ground with shovels. But the production of garbage continues.
