It’s very difficult to get used to living in a country which gives off the image that nothing is happening, when in reality everything points to the fact that were are walking down the eternal path to nothingness.
The country falls apart and the single party rises. People die of desperation and dismay while the official newspapers announce the government’s international high ranking position in regards to health and education. I mutter these words while the media presents the new political cabinet which is supposed to “ventilate” the future of the nation, but my neighbors and I know very well that nothing we haven’t seen before is going to occur. Not even the supposed measures which some dreamers had hoped for can lift our fallen spirits.
The family sitting beside me on the truck which brought me back from my monthly trip to the cyber-cafe all agree that if they miraculously sell their car, their house, and move to Havana without a special permit, then such actions will bring relief. I, on the other hand, just think it would be a drain. My neighbor, standing next to me in line to buy sweet potatoes on the Sunday before the Congress, crossed her fingers so that her daughter would be able to return from South Africa after being denied permission to return to her homeland for 6 years. In all honesty, she was actually waiting for this from the Party Congress. It seems as if the grand communist meeting is functioning as a sort of “open sesame” for all the national ailments. The worst part is not what they expect, because in the end people are owners of their own ingenuity. The worst part will be when the meeting is over and there is total disappointment.
In the midst of the international crisis, the country is headed downward, but the only two newspapers, which in reality function as one entity, say the opposite. The television shows images of the nation we have never been and millions of spectators await the turning point of this olive green authoritarian misgovernment melodrama which we have helped fabricate with so much silence and permissibility.
I’ve spent some nights now trying to talk to the wife of Ariel Arzuaga, a defender of human rights in the city of Bayamo, in Granma province. He is currently imprisoned because of the malice of the local military authorities.
Yakelin Garcia Jaenz worriedly told me that Ariel remains in a very poor state. He is now confined to “Las Mangas” Provincial Prison, and being kept in the area of those who have pending trials. He is being accused of “assault”.
Ariel Arzuaga’s suffering began on February 23rd of this year, 2011, when he was on his way to pay tribute to the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
“We had a funeral garland in the house, but the political police agents Julio Cesar and Abel violently barged in. They tore down the door and told us that we were not allowed to leave our house. That’s when Ariel went out to the street and told them what they were doing was a violation because there was a child in the house that had to go to school and they were stripping that right from us”.
“I ended up taking my son to school and they took me to prison. Ariel stayed at home taking care of our 2-year-old daughter and they started to accuse him. They were saying that he wanted to kill our girl, which is a huge lie. The Special Brigade entered our home through the bathroom window and seized Ariel. They twisted his arms in a lock position, they grabbed his neck, and then dragged him to the MININT Delegation located on the road to Santiago de Cuba. At midday, they moved him to the Instructional Police unit where he was kept until March 11th, where he declared himself on hunger strike from March 9th”.
“On March 14th, while he was out on the street again, he tells me that around 5 pm he was verbally and physically attacked by a paramilitary officer who had also been present during the February 23rd demonstration when he was detained. This man really attacked him and screamed at him: ‘Worm! Counter-Revolutionary!’ and other obscene words. Ariel, according to what they tell me, simply got off his bicycle and that’s all. He was later detained on March 17th and has been behind the bars to this day, which is soon going to be a month exactly. He has been kept in the Las Mangas jail in Detachment 1-2”.
“Today, I got to visit Ariel there. He told me that Major Joel had informed him that he could no longer use the phone every three days as is the norm established for common prisoners. They also informed Ariel that family visits will no longer be held in the salon but somewhere else and separately”.
Ariel Arzuaga Peña lives in 21 Street, No. 12-A, e/12 and 14, in the Ciro Redondo Housing Complex, Bayamo, Granma. He is the director of the local “Light and Truth” Human Rights Center and is the President of the Opposition Municipality. He is also an activist of the Eastern Democratic Alliance.
It was during the last days of March that I heard the unfortunate news: those of us who are cinema fans have lost the “Humberto Solas” Poor Cinema Festival. A disagreement between the convoking groups of Holguin and Havana left us helpless — those of us who would visit a film theater without prejudice and with less intentions than the those who have commercial tendencies or transcendent postures which some filmmakers want to include in every moment of their lives.
All sorts of artists would come to this festival with desires to showcase fresh ideas and rigor through other essences and other discourses in a more democratic and participatory form of cinema, and of course, without ever ceasing to entertain. Solas helped that magic. Many people from Holguin helped him, while some others planted trials and tribulations along his path so that he would get knocked down from time to time. Between so much bureaucracy and vulgar provincialism, they would have soon stripped the author of “Lucia” from his desire to go on.
What is happening now could have been seen coming. Finally, during the beginning of Spring, the effort took place (at least the public ones in the province) between the opinions and decisions of Alexis Triana (the Provincial Director of Culture) and Sergio Benvenuto Solas (nephew of Solas and president of the Festival Organizer Committee).
First came some e-mails, they say, and later the local publication of “La Luz” which informed a small number of Holguin natives of Triana’s reasons. Since so few of us have access to our e-mail, we have to go along with what Triana has to say about Benvenuto’s position. The fact is that the festival will be annual, but will be held in the capital of the country.
Gibara, one of the Cuban paradises of the North Atlantic, had sharpened its teeth. A swarm of men and women prepared their homes to offer rentals for foreign and national visitors. Drinks, fish, and seafood already spread their aroma throughout the red roofs which characterize this seaside villa.
Mario is a childhood friend of mine. For three years now he has been aiming to make the salary of a few months in only one week through cinema: “People buy and look for all sorts of things, from old books, old pieces of artwork, precious woods, corals, fish, everything. The festival was the important moment”, he painfully told me.
During the beginning of March I had passed by Gibara and firsthand witnessed the anxiety. To me, Gibara produced two very different emotions. It was there that I discovered weekend breaks during the 90’s. It was our escape from the city into that paradise we believed in. Later, in 2006, I received the worst repudiation attack ever. That specific hate session was prepared by the then Captain Abel Ramirez. We were at the house of the dissident Alexander Santos and they placed the mobs there to bark against us. Afterward, I returned to that place with somewhat of a painful sensation.
Last Saturday, April 2nd, they distributed “La Luz” newspaper, the informative paper of Provincial Culture, and apparently the remedy was worse than the disease. Since no one can be blamed, the people do not believe in the absurdities of a Benvenuto who only comes once a year. They also do not accept much diatribe from the provincial Director of Culture.
Apparently, the justifications don’t matter when it deals with an event which placed the town at the spotlight of the entire nation for a few days, and which also provided food for dozens of families (with room, car, and bike rentals) from the recently caught fish and with a cinema festival full of young blood.
I ate at the home of two new friends and spent an afternoon of coffee and good conversations with the recurrent theme of the festival. Everything points out to the opinion that the majority would have preferred a dialogue, saving the film festival in Giabara at all costs. If the supposed clumsiness had not been ordered from an ideological position of the Communist Party, then there would be no reason to not have been able to find a solution.
A concert by Carlos Varela or X Alfonso, a contemporary art exposition, and interesting debates (which I took part in various times) which accompanied the film screenings were well worth sitting at the table to debate if it would continue being held here in this worm-eaten land or not.
I am translating the feeling of local families, and I think I have the right to condemn the fact that the weapons of fruitful dialogue have been ignored, although the previously mentioned provincial functionary has stated in his article that “a new habitual round of anti-Cuban paranoia” has occurred.
The festival was mine as well, and although an invisible edict dictated nearly 4 years ago has left me outside of the debates, the public readings, and the possibilities of publishing, I would have added my signature in favor of saving that festival which vanished in our very own hands. Wherever he is, Humberto Solas must be furious.
In 2003, the excessive sentences which he and his brother, Luis Enrique, were condemned to served was shocking news among the youth of the time. Shortly after being arrested, one could already sense his bravery in confronting the regime and not remaining silent before so many injustices. He carried out various hunger strikes and headed civic protests which forced the prison authorities to give in to some of his demands. In one case he protested against the restriction of telephone access in the Combinado Prison of Guantanamo. This protest was recorded and heard throughout various radio stations heard by Cubans.
In the year 2006 he was awarded the “Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Dignity Prize”. This award is handed out each year by the Eastern Democratic Alliance to a local political prisoner. I heard Guillermo Llanos Ricardo and Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leyva refer to this “lion” with much devotion. His decision to demand 25 minutes on the phone weekly so that he could use it “for whatever he felt like”, and according to what he told me, he made the police guards who kept an eye on him to accept him as the journalist he is, even if he was in jail, and he kept reporting to the rest of the world.
A few days ago, I was able to interview him at his home in Palmarito de Cauto, a small neighborhood lost at the edge of an old road which leads to Palma Soriano in Santiago de Cuba province. When I arrived, I noticed some vigilant faces casually standing around the area. He was only “half-freed”, for the document which authorized his release from prison states that his sentence expires in 2028. Jose Daniel Ferrer really worries the political police in that province, and his refusal to accept exile kept him as one of the last ones behind the bars to be released.
Here’s one of the questions he replied to for me in an interview which has already been published by “Diario de Cuba”:
You have returned from hell, you bring the chronicles of horror. What can you tell us?
“I went through various prisons. What shocked me the most when I got to Pinar del Rio was that the common prisoners carried the scars from prison on their faces and bodies. The torture methods most used are those known as “The Little Chair” and “The Shakira”, both of which have been described so many times before. After being in Aguadores, in Santiago de Cuba, I heard of cases where prisoners had their feet and hands cuffed for up to three days. While they are being kept in these positions, they have no other option but to urinate and defecate on themselves. Over there in Kilo 5 1/2 Prison of Pinar del Rio they even went to the extreme of shoving dirty clothes into the mouths of those being tortured so that we political prisoners would not hear the screams and report such horrific acts.
On July 29, 2007, in Kilo 8 Prison of Camaguey, the jailers assassinated three prisoners after savagely beating them because they had gotten into a fight with another prisoner. They announced that the victim was already dying, but instead of tending to his wounds they handed out knives and began to attack those who committed the crime. There were more than 40 guards in a matter of 3 or 4 minutes and they all unleashed their anger using sticks and iron bars against these three men. Two of them died instantly — one of them was beaten so hard that pieces of his brain filled the hallway. As far as I have understood, the only one who survived was left completely insane. Those killed were Amaury Medina Puig, 25 years of age, and Carlos Rafael Labrada Oses, who was also very young. And what happened to the police guards? They got away with all of it thanks to the complicity of the authorities. They ended up accusing the only survivor of causing the fight, stating that any deaths were the sole products of that quarrel.
In Pinar del Rio, one prisoner threw his own excrement at one of the penitentiary chiefs, and as punishment, the latter sent the prisoner to the cell of his worst enemy. The corpulent man who was kept in that cell saw this incoming prisoner as a prize and he quickly began to beat him. He also raped him, ate his food, and ended up killing him and buried him under sheets until his stench became unbearable for the other prisoners. The guards made all prisoners evacuate the cell, but in the end nothing happened. Cases such as this one can be found in the dozens and dozens. I have a heavily detailed written report, and will find time to denounce it”.
The recent ousting of the economic minister, Marino Murillo, seems to have proven the theory of the expiatory goat, that infinite night full of long knives aimed at all those who reside in power or who walk around anywhere near power.
Murillo was the face used by the Castro tyranny to expose its own version of massive lay-offs scheduled to take place this year. But they needed that: to explore, but if they could get no results from it, then to hell with the experiments. For now, his was the first head that has rolled after president Raul Castro himself publicly made it clear that the decree of “work force availability” (a euphemism for massive layoffs) should not be inflexible.
During the last few days of December 2010 he was congratulated with a week’s stay at the tourist resort of Gualdalavaca, located in the northern coast of Holguin province. This is a place which is forbidden to common and everyday mortals of this country, yet which is always accessible to ministers, generals and their families, and tourists.
But days before, Murillo had spoken before the cameras and microphones on national TV, asking for an adjustment on spending at the domestic level. He was asking people to tighten their belts as much as possible again, because another period of job rationing for 1 million Cubans had begun, and now one had to play the game with aptitude. However, as the saying goes, the drunkard thought one thing while the bartender thought another. Murillo was authorized to stay in a luxurious Gualdalavaca resort for a few days along with twenty relatives. In less than 48 hours, half of Holguin already knew how much had been spent on the hobbies of each of the relatives and friends of this economic Minister who was the successor of Carlos Lage. And of course, it was very shocking to see this man engage in such spending just a few days after telling the country to tighten their belts one more notch.
Since the Cuban press does not publish any reasons explaining why someone was laid off, everyday Cubans living in this area have to confirm for ourselves the information given to us by the hotel companies, which they claim they saw and heard. Before returning to Havana, the amount on the visitors’ check was extremely high, according to those who work there.
Others say that certain communists of high rank and responsibility who work in the hotel complained to the authorities in Havana about the high expenses of Murillo and his clan. However, they just received silence for an answer. The truth is that this reckless spending has only been matched by the actions of little Elian Gonzalez and his gang.
Now, we just have to wait and see what move will be made from his new position next to the General-cum-President, where according to a note, he will be advised on certain issues, including “economics”. This gives me to understand that as a minister he no longer has a head, but as an adviser he will have his two hands deep in the pocket of “Father State” and he will take out as much as he likes. And nothing will happen
Translated by Raul G.
I met Jose A. Triguero Mulet during a heated political debate. The nearly 70-year-old Mulet is a freedom-loving man. I’m writing this after he gave me an article he wrote about the humiliations he has lived through just for daring to scream the truth at the militants which rule my country. It was from those experiences which I took these living testimonies. I’m simply re-telling his griefs and hopes:
“On July 29th of 2004, I was detained in San German. For two hours I was interrogated and threatened by State Security Captain Abel Ramirez and Major Parra from State Security in Holguin. That’s where the harassment really started, through the phone and in person, towards me and also towards my family”.
“On September 10th 2004 I was then harassed in the middle of the street by State Security Captain Abel, just for participating in a vigil held in San German”.
“Then, on October 19th 2004 at 9 PM, he tried to hit me with his car. Since I quickly tried to jump out of the way, I fractured my finger and suffered various bruises and wounds on my left hand”.
“On March 15th, 2004 Lieutenants Wilmer Sarmiento and Jose Hidalgo, an unidentified State Security sub-official, and two witnesses from the neighborhood named Yolanda Mompel and Odalis Velazquez showed up at my house. The reason for such a visit was to carry out a search in my home for articles used in illicit sales. Of course, they did not find anything of the sort, so they revealed their true intentions, which were to dismantle my independent library. They not only confiscated all my prohibited political literature but also anything written which attacked the Cuban dictatorship, as well as 2 portable radios and an old typewriter. The home of my eldest daughter was also searched. There, the authorities behaved in a gross manner. They took my stuff and threw it up on their jeep and they took me to the P.N.R (People’s Revolutionary Police) unit. Nothing was returned to me, and they did not even give me a copy of the confiscation letter after I was detained for 8 hours”.
(…)
“On June 17th 2006, when I was on my way to the city of Holguin, the bus I was on was detained at the entrance of the city by a Captain. This official boarded the vehicle and walked directly towards me, asking for my ID card. He then told me to follow him off the bus with my bookbag. When we arrived to the P.N.R sector I saw that Lieutenant Colonel Enrique and Leonides Licea (both officials from State Security), a police named Emilio (and nicknamed “SOUR YUCCA”), and 5 other uniformed officials were also there. In total there were 9 of them, standing there like police dogs waiting to pounce on me in that tiny office we were crammed in. They snatched my bookbag from me and found documents which were to be sent to the Cuban Liberal Party of Havana. This detonated all those henchmen to fire the most humiliating and offensive insults at me. As if that was not enough, they took advantage of their strength and they rushed up on me, pushing my shaky body down, despite the fact that my blood pressure was through the roof. They forcibly took off all my clothes and told me to squat. I am guessing that the purpose of this was to make sure that I did not have anything hidden behind my genitals. While I was getting dressed again, my hands were shaking with fear (I am not ashamed to say it) and I noticed that my nose was bleeding and my right eye hurt. Apparently, while they were forcing the clothes off of me, one of them actually hit me. Whether they intended to do so or not, I do not know, but I had been hit with a ring, and that’s how the small wound on my nose and the pain on my eye was produced. They seemed to have gotten scared when they saw the blood, so they decided to let me go, but only after they threateningly told me that I was already an old man and that prison would not be easy on me”.
(…)
“During February 3rd of 2010, at around 5 PM, a group of Eastern opposition members, along with others from Camaguey, were all savagely beaten. I was among one of the victims. There were also 8 women. In my case I received a strong blow on my neck and a strong kick on the back of my left leg. All of this was perpetrated by the political police, all dressed as if they were civilians. Some civil functionaries also took place, led by the first secretariat of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) from Camaguey, Julio Cesar Rodriguez Garcia. Also present was the chief of the Provincial Camaguey Prisons, Lieutenant Colonel Bombino. They were beating us because we were carrying out an act of solidarity with the demands made by the prisoner of conscience from the group of the 75, Orlando Zapata Tamayo”.
“I hope that this testimony will serve to inform readers that, without a doubt, the entire Cuban island is a large prison where some of our brothers have been summarily sentenced and jailed in hundreds of small jails away from their loved ones”.
That’s the testimony of Triguero. It is a truth that is similar to a tree planted in the middle of the forest. Jose A. Triguero Mulet is coordinator of the Cuban Liberal Party in the eastern provinces. He is also one of the 4 members of the secretariat of the Human Rights sector of the Eastern Democratic Alliance. Every semester, his role is to write up a report of the human rights violations committed in this region.
Jose resides in Ave. 29, No. 1806, e/ 18 and 20. San German, Holguin, Cuba, and his telephone is (53)243-81594.
It was Sunday, and amid the suffocating heat and the sluggishness of the truck which was taking me from Santiago de Cuba to Las Tunas, I chose to instead get off at Bayamo, that symbolic land full of rebellion and patriotism bequeathed to us by our ancestors. I gulped down a refreshing drink, an “Eastern Pru”, which consists of a fermented base. I went all the way to the home of Yoandris. For quite some time now I had really wanted to talk to him; I wanted him to tell me about his jail experience and how life was treating him now as a freed dissident.
“In the year 2006, my grandfather Manuel Gutierrez returned to Cuba to see his family. After just a few days of being here, he was taken to a tourist hotel in Guardalavaca (Holguin province) by political police officials. The argument given to him was that Mr. Fidel Castro was going to visit Bayamo for the celebration of that unfortunate date- the 26th of July. That was a day when many Cubans died on both sides. My grandfather was relocated to Holguin and had to pay the mandatory hotel guest fee. He had to spend the little money he had left which he had brought from the United States since he is already a retired man.”
“Since they were giving out little flags during those days in order to decorate the streets, I took one of those flags which were slipped under my door and I painted the white stripes black as a symbol of mourning. I then wrote a “75” on it, in reference to the prisoners of the Black Spring. I hung it outside my house and it stayed there through the night. Then came the attacks from the so-called authorities. It was on July 23rd 2006. On that day, State Security took me to the barracks known as “El Punto” (“The Point”) on the outskirts of Las Tunas. They shouted at me, they offended me, and they threatened me thousands of times. In addition, they even fabricated a crime for me, something about offending patriotic symbols. Afterwards, my family was left abandoned.
My 4-year-old son was stripped of his father and protection, seeing as I was the one who sustained the family. They sentenced me to 1 year of imprisonment which I served in the Provincial Prison of Las Mangas. That is where I met Jose Luis Garcia Paneque, Jorge Gonzalez Tanquero, and Felix Navarro, all 3 from the group of the 75. Within a few days, I got to witness firsthand the torture that political prisoners were subjected to, all the threats and humiliations they force on them.”
“I arrived the same way thousands of other youths did, without knowing what a prison was like. In that place I was threatened by Major Nunez from State Security. They quickly locked me up in a room with a group of violent men who actually had knives with them. The leader of the group was Nilson, who belonged to the Council, and they all operated under the freedom granted to them by State Security, the Prison Security, and the Interior Order Chiefs.
They told me that they were going to kill me if I publicly protested against the government because they had been authorized to do so by all their bosses. They are people who are sadistically used to create terror, which is the only discipline exercised by the prison authorities. Nilson later died in the Manzanillo prison for causing the death of another young prisoner, Yuliet, who was a 19-year-old homosexual that had been “bought” between one prison and another. Yuliet was assassinated by a so-called Negrito. And Nilson was charged for the death of Yuliet.”
“There, I received beatings and plenty of restrictions just for protesting, as a dissident, against the government. Later I was imprisoned again under the pretext of ‘disrespect towards the figure of our Commander in Chief.’ That’s the name they have given to that cause which has taken so many Cubans to prison. The law was applied to me when this self-titled ‘Commander in Chief’ wasn’t even exercising the role of President anymore. I was sentenced to 2 years which I served in the prisons of Las Mangas and the one known as ‘El Secadero’ (‘The Drying Room’). In the provincial prison, I received multiple beatings carried out by Colonel Modesto, as well as one by Lieutenant Silvera on September 2nd. The re-educator, Eddy, was the one on guard, and he ordered I be taken, injured, to the punishment cell with no medical attention. That’s where I spent my birthday on September 6th. I was not allowed any visits, my family was not allowed to see me at all until 2 months had passed and my bruises had disappeared.”
“When I heard the disc containing an excerpt of ‘Against all Hope,’ by Armando Valladares, I felt as if I was once again hearing the screams of the prisoners, the abuses of the jailers, as if I was once again living behind the bars, because every single thing he narrates is real. And it is even possible to say that today it has multiplied. In modern Cuban prisons, they still assassinate and torture, they continue harassing family members of prisoners, and when they are political prisoners it is even worse.”
“Now, besides being a member of the Republican Party of Cuba and of being an activist from the Eastern Democratic Alliance, I am also a missionary from the First Baptist Church of Bayamo. My pastor is Samuel Columbie Iglesias, who has been attacked by State Security on multiple occasions. Despite of all that has happened, I tell my oppressors to repent, to cease staining their hands with blood. And to those who have kidnapped the happiness of Cuba, remember that we have all been created by the same God. I tell them to repent before it’s too late for them. Cuba needs to live in freedom, just like other nations of the world. We Cubans have the right to be free and that is why many of us are fighting for it.”
I left Bayamo late that night, the land of Cespedes and Fornaris. I left without snapping a photo of Yoandris, but I kept his words in my pocket. This is a voice that needs to cross the barbed wires, I repeated to myself over and over again.
PS: Yoandris Gutierrez Vargas lives on 19th Street-A No. 11, e/ 12 & Liberty, Zamora Complex, El Valle, Bayamo, Granma.
Amid boredom and curiosity, I started to ponder on my personal relationships during the last few years. The geography of my good friends had considerably changed. When I count all those friends who crossed the sea, the oceans, and other frontiers and who are no longer by my side, I also realize that some undesirable relationships have patrolled my existence.
Although they are not my friends, every once in a while I have to deal with my police interrogators, the neighborhood snitches, and other people who make a living out of something so wrong due to their ideological difference with others. This is the chain of oppressors which, during recent times, I have spoken to more than my uncles and cousins who reside on the other end of the island.
Lieutenant Saul Vega, Major Charles, Captain and Penal Instructor Luis Quesada, Major Roilan Cruz Ojeda, officer Caneyes, and the military prosecutor captain Juan Carlos Laborde, all of whom are from Holguin. In Guantanamo, there is Lieutenant Colonel Caraballo, in Baracoa there are Majors Diesel Castro Pelegrin and Gerneidis Romero Matos (the latter who is the chief of the State Security Confrontation Unit in Villa Primada), and the one with whom I lived the most deceptive moment, Captain Ariuska from the G2 (Operations) unit in Guantanamo.
Ariuska is an olive-green lady who promised me, while nearly trampling the constitution she claims to defend, that the “Cuban government holds the ultimate power to decide who goes and who does not go from one province to another.” Similarly, I recall the day when the above mentioned Captain Laborde, after communicating with the military prosecutors, rejected my denouncement against the security officials while he leaned over the table and assured me that he ran a reception office which catered to the needs of the people, and that although I was from that town because I was born there, I did not have access to certain benefits since I had “attempted against the powers of the socialist state.”
These are dangerous relationships provoked by the special circumstances of living under a dictatorship and in a closed society.
They told me about it a few weeks ago and I couldn’t believe it. In my neighbor city of Holguin, they are about to inaugurate the Museum of Clandestinity. They are renovating the building and have invested plenty of money on fine woods and expensive accessories to improve their looks.
It is the same building in which, more than half a century ago, the commercial offices of Cuban Air once stood. On November 23rd of 1957, one of the commandos from the 26th of July Movement fired his gun and perforated colonel Fermin Cowley Gallegos (chief of the Holguin Rural Guard Regiment) with bullets. A year prior to that, many Cubans had been killed during the dark period known as Bloody Christmas. The animosity ran so deep that more Cubans were killed even after the death of Cowley, who himself had carried out a wave terror throughout Holguin.
Now, 54 years later, in the very spot of those bloody events, they are going to exhibit the arms, some of the 26th of July bonds, documents, and various paraphernalia to commemorate an era of hate and violence among Cubans who did not see eye to eye. These Cubans decided to solve the problems of a country the same way they would have solved a domestic brawl and they started a war.
Photograph: "Automobile of Cowley parked outside the offices of Cuban Air, the very same spot where the assassination took place, on Liberty Street."
In this “Museum of Clandestinity” they will display dry blood-stained clothes, pliers and nail clippers, and photographs of the street where the automobile of the colonel and his driver once stood before he was assassinated.
Yesterday, I walked by Liberty street, located in the corner of General Angel Guerra, and I could not believe it. Of course, I don’t know the exact amount of money they are spending on doing this, but I do know that with this same money they could restore a theater, re-open a library, or install working computers which provide internet service. And if this seems to be too much for them, they could even renovate a children’s park or invest on the Museum of Natural Sciences, which is about to collapse any moment now. But I must realize that I am only dreaming. For an autocracy, there is nothing more gratifying than to pay tribute to its own aura of “strong guerrilla fighter”, and to its spirit of violence. And they have to inject the new generations with this as well, for it is in that age group where they seek to create their “back-up.”
A few days ago, the 20th Annual Book Fair concluded in Holguin. This event traveled from Havana where it was presented as an event of international character, but other provinces received a watered down version.
When I walked by the small stands where books were displayed for sale, it seemed as if there were two fairs, two countries, and two provinces. On National TV, they had been enthusiastically promoting books which contained testimonies from soldiers who had gone to the war in Africa, as well as other titles which consisted of discourses, essays, and other documents belonging to Fidel Castro. The TV would show the publications from the Ministry of the Interior: police novels where the bandits were always caught and such.
But the fair that we actually miss is the one where true political or social literary novelties were sold. Those were the days where some books would be snuck in, and although they bothered the vigilant eyes of the ideological apparatus of the PCC (Cuban Communist Party), they always somehow found their way into the hands of readers. The frank and open debates which challenged the current radical thought which prefers to cheer on the so-called Bicentennial Collection (of American Independence) before bringing some clarifying texts of current social thought to light.
I bumped into a rather amusing sight in Holguin: a tent with many books on display, some happy and expectant customers browsing through the titles, and a gang of uniformed MININT (Ministry of the Interior) officials keeping a close watch from behind. I asked myself, “What were they guarding? What were they searching for? What are they defending?” Maybe this would be logical at a bar, one of the ones known as “Perreras” where Cubans go to empty out their worries over fermented drinks. Maybe, there it would make sense to have some sort of authority to calm down so much energy (never through beatings, right?), but at a book tent…
As a product of the budget cuts, we were once again presented with the same old books which had been circulating among some of the darkest libraries throughout the island months ago. Here, they were presented to us as if they were brand new literary publications. Once again, that old custom of going to a bookstore or library to always find some recent publications has been lost. It’s all an absurdity, an urgent measure taken by a fair which has gotten worse each year, just like the euphoria which instantly vanishes time and time again.
Translated by Raul G.
I received very strong testimonies via telephone by Ramon Rodriguez and his son Rolando about the situation Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina — on hunger strike — is facing in the convict unit of the provincial hospital of Guantanamo.
Hours later, news of the death of my grandmother, Maria, left me incapable of putting together a coherent and precise post like you all deserve. My cherished Maria is now resting in peace and I know that God will receive her as it should be.
But with Nestor, I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I don’t want to believe that another Cuban man of mixed race — and an eternal defender of human rights in Cuba — is already taking the first steps down the path which Orlando Zapata Tamayo also went through.
The Council of Ministers of Cuba expanded its quorum in order to hold a session this past February 28. Nearly 30 thousand proposals were already calculated in the meetings to discuss the lineaments, and now the olive-green leaders are rushing to put band-aids on the wounds of the battered Cuban society.
Now, it turns out that the layoff process is not the purpose, but instead it is an attempt to recover some unknown sort of efficiency. After 52 years of arbitrary administration, the ruling hands have been informed about the worst evil present in the Cuban ecosystem. Thousands of acres of untouched lands destroyed with the purpose of establishing fields of sugar cane, which are no longer of economic interest, leading to a grave mistake which is now very difficult to fix. The charred and salty ground has lost its fertility. The effects of this are present for everyone to see. The full-blown process of establishing a system of hotels with better beaches in nearby keys has dried out natural lakes, lost a great amount of sand, and destroyed much of the vegetation along the Cuban coasts.
This is how the next planned Communist congress in April has designed its agenda. Now, we will have to believe that we have benefited, and continue benefiting, from the economy of an Old Havana which was saved by the sacrifices of the messianic Eusebio Leal. The trained forces of the National Revolutionary Police, which are stationed in the historic district, have not had much training in the area of safeguarding peace among the population. Instead, they have had more experience in the field of harassing their own citizens who approach tourists in an attempt to get their hands on any crumbs, establishing a friendship, or engaging in simple human communication.
In the past few days, I have seen trucks full of workers and professionals heading toward fields of sugar cane in an attempt to “change jobs” or join in on “voluntary labor”. This is happening in various Eastern provinces of the country. It’s the new institutionalized blackmail strategy aimed at those who will attempt to enhance their standing before the massive layoffs arrive. It’s the open door for those who are laid off.
We must be very attentive, for these are the whip lashes of a country, of a government which looks out for itself in the midst of a crisis… which has been going on for more than 50 years.
The news of the arrests of more than fifty Human Rights activists throughout the entire country has only further confirmed the violent nature of the regime which governs my country.
Some people had illusions. Once again, those detained and beaten in their own homes were peaceful dissidents and their families. No voluntary actions, little solidarity among neighbors, and a great wave of fear which can be seen on the faces of people. It is a profound fear which “inspires even further fear.
“The arrests began during the early morning of February 21st, when activists from the Eastern Democratic Alliance, Francisco Luis Manzanet Ortiz, Omar Wilson Estevez Real, Annie Sarrion Romero, her husband Juan Carlos Vazquez Osorio, and Milagros Leyva were all taken to a police unit in the Villa Primada in Baracoa. From this group, Manzanet Ortiz and Estevez Real remained detained until the 24th. The main goal of the pro-Castro soldiers which guard the gardens of the Plaza of the Revolution was to prevent any tributes to Orlando Zapata Tamayo to take place on the 1st anniversary of his death on the 23rd of February, as well as tributes to the shot down pilots of “Brothers to the Rescue” on the 24th.
As usual, the homes of human rights activists, other dissidents, and independent journalists from Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, and Holguin were all extensively watched over by the combined forces of the political police (G2), the National Revolutionary Police, and the paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades. On the 21st, in fact, the independent Baptist pastor, Desmides Hidalgo Lopez, was brutally beaten by members of State Security in the town of Buenaventura, Holguin. While I was writing these paragraphs, Desmides had already been released but his house was surrounded by soldiers.
On the night of February 22nd, I received a call from Yanet Mosquera Cayon. She was telling me that her husband, Rolando Rodriguez Lobaina, the general coordinator of the Eastern Democratic Alliance, and other dissidents had been detained in the streets of Guantanamo.On the 23rd of February, after a strong military deployment, Reina Luisa Tamayo was able to visit Zapata’s tomb in the cemetery of Banes, but only with 11 other family members.
On the morning of that same day, Jorge Corrales Ceballos, Jose Cano Fuentes, and Isael Poveda Silva (all from the Eastern Democratic Alliance), were detained in Guantanamo. According to the testimonies of ex-political prisoner Fidel Garcia Roldan, in Holguin political police agents began to beat the journalist Maria Antonia Hidalgo, her mother Maria Mir, and the activist from FLAMUR, Marlene Pupo Font. Caridad Caballero Batista, her husband Esteban Sande Suarez, and pro-democratic activist Juan Carlos Gomez, were also all beaten in this eastern city.
Other arrests occurred in Palma Soriano. Raudel Avila Losada confirmed arrests of nearly 30 activists all of which, according to his testimony, were released in less than two hours. On the morning of February 24th, Avila Losada confirmed that Cauto Marino Antomachin and Reinaldo Martinez Rodriguez were still detained in that Santiagan city on the banks of the Cuato river.
Restrictions of movement, with special orders preventing dissidents from leaving their own homes, were confirmed in Antillas, Banes, San German, and Santiago de Cuba. In the latter (Santiago), there were reports of arrests of various dissidents in the town of El Caney, without having a clear figure of who they were or how many there were, because they were all detained while on their way to another point of the city. Idalmis Nunez Reinosa was in her home, but her telephone line would constantly drop.
I also received news that Antunez, just like Idania Llanes and others, also suffered arrests. The home of Antunez was also attacked by Castro forces. From Havana, where I am currently writing this post, a neighbor of the independent journalist Hector Julio Cedeno Negrin tells me that Hector did not return to his house after an opposition activity which took place on Neptune Street outside the house of Laura Pollan Toledo. Cedeno Negrin was beaten and still remains detained.
I have been able to write this short report after calling the few phones which had not yet been disconnected. It is the 24th of February and I do not want to wait until tomorrow to post a partial report. Surely, today there will be more arrests if any dissident goes near the ocean to toss some flowers in memory of the fallen Brothers to the Rescue. I am writing in haste because I am being followed.
My wife tells me that far away in San German there have been troops stationed around my house for more than 24 hours. She does not know if the purpose of this is to detain me upon my arrival, or because they are not sure whether I am inside.
Here, in the streets of Havana, I see a tense calm. But I walked to the cybercafe and went ahead and sent this post.
This time I have avoided walking into the trap of my captors in order to send out some tweets with the little credit I have left in my cell phone, and to write up this note for all of you. I fear that there will be a fight in the afternoon if they try to detain me.
Fellow activists and dissidents have asked me to send them messages through my cell phone. They all want news of what happens.I also had the illusion, or the dream, of Egyptian or Libyan streets lit up at night, of that same sound of the people’s demands which filled the middle-Eastern desert air. But the Cuban reality is different. There have been arrests and beatings, and there are fewer of us than those who filled the plazas of Cairo to demand freedom.
The massive layoffs so frequently announced by the Cuban nomenclature have not yet been implemented, but we can already see some of the first effects.
Despite the initial impulse of those who have seen an incentive, escape, or “breath of oxygen” in this, others have decided to “take justice into their own hands”. The absence of labor options, and the economic incentives, has actually really gotten to some people, and everyone has thought up something different.
So far during this new year, there have been a few robberies in some grocery stores, warehouses, and other public service businesses in the city of Holguin. In San German, a series of robberies left a couple of other grocery stores empty. They took the oil, the coffee, and nearly all the rice. All these products belonged to the “basket of basic goods” category, or in other words, they were products monitored by the rationing cards. Now, people do not hesitate one bit when they see 4 ounces of chicken or some kind of “texturized” ground beef (as it’s called here). They immediately go to buy any such products. “Just in case they run out fast,” someone–who nowadays is one of the first people in line whenever products arrive to the local grocery shop–commented to me.
The products mentioned in the Rationing Card are few and seldom available (only once a month), and the distribution company gets caught up, and one day the oil comes in, the next the soap arrives, and then the following week is when the coffee would arrive.
The incursions of the burglars go from the most basic thefts, with the usage of crowbars and pliers, to the sophisticated use of lock picks. In some places, they have left behind some messages warming that what was happening was only the beginning of much more to come. In other cases, these messages point out the negligence displayed by those in power. The unfortunate fact about this is that we are now witnessing a wave of theft which, on the one hand, puts many innocent people at risk, while on the other hand it serves as a “mirror”, as the only way of being able to achieve what one wants.
Robberies in local grocery stores are the reflection of thievery taking place in the high ranks, where men with white collars have amassed personal fortunes, and when this was not enough for them anymore they decided to stick their hands in the coffers of “Father State”.
“The General’s men are the ones who are robbing”, a street corner know-it-all tells me, while adding, “Nobody robs 6 millions dollars from the local shop, and nobody asks to borrow 2 airplanes to later return them. In order to do any of that, one must be up in the high ranks,” he reassures me.
The truth is that in order to carry out such robberies they did not have to get some people from Planet Mars to do it. They have used the same ones who one day went to the Plaza to scream slogans which were forced down their throats, or in the worst of cases, traveled to Africa to kill people they did not even know. They are also the very same ones who scream at the top of their lungs, “This street belongs to Fidel!”
