Category: AUTHORS

Opposition Protests in Venezuela Worry Not A Few Ordinary Cubans / Ivan Garcia

Source: uknews.yahoo.com
Protests in Venezuela.Source: uknews.yahoo.com

One way or another, the street protests taking place recently in Venezuela are being noticed in Cuba.  The most nervous are the olive green autocrats.

According to a low-ranking party official, since the death of Hugo Chavez, the regime has had several contingency plans in its drawer, in case the situation in Venezuela were not favorable to the interests of the Island.

“If Maduro falls there exists a plan B.  In the corridors, at least at the level where I work, it was assumed that Maduro might be a president with a fleeting career. Although the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela) has controlled a large number of the threads of power, there are divergent opinions among the Chavez followers themselves about the relationship of their country with Cuba.  This kind of socialism, with democratic streaks, is not reliable.  Maduro might lose power either by a recall referendum or within six years.  In meetings of our nucleus it is commented that Maduro’s term in office only serves to buy time,” the official notes.

The earthquake of marches, barricades and opposition protests shocks different regions of Venezuela, but the epicenter shakes the corridors of power in Cuba.

The Castro brothers risk a lot in Caracas.  Just in case, Raul Castro opened a window to Brazil in the new Mariel Port and Special Development Zone with a different jurisdiction.

And he almost begs the United States, his number one enemy, to sit down and negotiate.  Meanwhile, the Castro diplomacy travels Florida, trying to seduce the wealthiest businessmen of Cuban origin.  Although sensible businessmen would keep thinking.  When they look at the recent past, they only see shady dealings and a cryptic partner who at the first exchange transforms the rules of the game. Therefore, the Caribbean autocracy is going to have to fight dog-faced and with gritted teeth its strategic position in Venezuela.

The key, you know, is oil.  100 thousand barrels daily acquired at a bargain price so that Cubans do not suffer outages 12 hours a day.  When the paratrooper of Barinas (Hugo Chavez) arrived at Miraflores in 1998, Fidel Castro understood that after nine years of crossing through the desert, with finances in the red and exotic illnesses devastating the country, the hour of his resurrection had arrived.

Cuba entered the light phase of the Special Period.  After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the country continued in a fixed economic crisis, but the loyal Bolivarian shared his strongbox.  And it was an important piece of the anti-imperialist project that so excited the commander.

The death of Chavez was the beginning of the end of the honeymoon.  Maduro is loyal and is allowed to drive.  But he does not have charisma.  And after 14 years of foolish economics in pursuit of gaining followers among the most disadvantaged, the debts, violence and inflation have exploded in the face of the PSUV.

Maduro, stubborn and awkward, instead of releasing the uncomfortable and parasitic ballast of Cuba, to govern for all and look more to Lula and Dilma than to the Castros, moved his pieces incorrectly.

He tried to continue the Joropo and the booze party of comrade Chavez.  He designed a simple strategy: he shouldered his comrade’s coffin and tries to govern in his name.

And it is failing. In Cuba, because of selfishness or a short term mentality, the ordinary people, tired from 55 years of disasters, cross their fingers and hope that the Venezuelan crisis does not close the oil spigot opened by PDVSA (Venezuela’s state-owned oil and gas company).

In a park in the Havana neighborhood of Vibora, several retired people opine about the situation in Venezuela.  “If that is screwed, what happens to us is going to be huge.  The blackouts will return, industry will be paralyzed again and we will return to a phase the same as or worse than the beginning of the Special Period in 1990,” says a man of about 70 years of age.

Others are less pessimistic. “It’s true, it will be hard. Since the revolution triuimphed we have been accustomed to living at the expense of foreign sweat. Before it was the USSR, now Venezuela.  If the worst happens there, here reforms will accelerate.  Although this is already capitalism, but with low salaries,” points out a woman who identifies herself as a housewife.

A university student adds to the conversation. “Seeing the marches or strikes on television is something that I envy. That freedom of protesting in front of the governmental institutions, as in Ukraine or Venezuela, we need it in Cuba.” And he adds that “in the meetings of the FEU (Federated University Students), the situation in Venezuela is a top priority topic, but I have heard rumors that in some Party cores the alarm is greater.”

In this warm February, in spite of the news that arrives from Caracas, the ordinary people continue on their own. Standing in long lines to buy potatoes that have disappeared. Going to farmer’s markets in search of other tubers, vegetables and fruits. Or sitting down at the neighborhood corner to talk about movies, fashion, soccer or baseball.

And so it is that for many on the Island, Venezuela is not on their agenda.

Diario de Cuba, 23 February 2014, Ivan Garcia, Havana

Translated by mlk.

“No One Treats Me Like a Prostitute” / Lilianne Ruiz

From the series “Outside the hotel,” Photo by Luz Escobar

HAVANA, Cuba – Yazmín doesn’t do the street. Nor does she acknowledge exercising the oldest profession in the world. She navigates the Internet for 10 CUC an hour, in some Havana hotel with this service. She visits websites to find a partner: cibercupido.com, mejoramor.com, and,among others, the Cuban website revolico.com, in the Jobs section.

The first step was to fill out her profile in those sites and describe it for the gentlemen who seek, on those sites, their desires. Nothing profound. She has added photos, which I am not showing here for reasons of safety; in one she is portrayed semi-crouched, from the back, leaning forward and turning her face to the camera the expression of a naive girl. She says she’s had good luck with this.  In the year she received several “friends,” from different countries of residence or origin. They stay together some fifteen days, to get to know each other and be intimate. All of them send her remittances. She has learned to say “I love you” in several languages.

A friend gave her the idea. Before this she wandered El Vedado, Old Havana, and the Playas del Este, indanger of ending up in jail for “besieging tourism” (a crime created to punish behavior like hers).

This new modality feels more agreeable. There’s no mention of money, but everyone knows their role.

Before, for 50 CUC a night, she rented herself out to have safe sex in some variant of the island Kama Sutra. She admits that she was tired and didn’t see the profits. Now, she has a kind of monthly salary and, especially, no one treats her like a hooker. Except when she plays at surprising her companions in the role of streetwalker. Then she feels like an artist. continue reading

After the searches on each site offer candidates with the characteristics she’s asked for, they start conversations through chat. When the man travels to Cuba she prefers to take him to a hotel: because there is no “commission” there.

Yazmín explains that the rental houses cost 25 or 35 CUC (daily), and anyone who brings a foreigner pays 5 CUC, also for each day. If they go to a restaurant the same thing happens. The watchword is to ask the waiter if there’s a commission. (Discretely, so the foreigner is not tipped off.) Then, the waiter offers another menu, a different menu. For every dish they order she gets between 2 and 8 CUC. The seafood is the most expensive. Sometimes she can get 32 CUC just for accepting an invitation to dinner. It’s sure to make everyone happy.

From the series Outside the Hotel 2, photo by Luz Escobar

She still recalls the fate of one of her old colleagues, who she left at a site called “Don Pepe”; a restaurant located in a shack on the beach of Santa Maria del Mar, where she spent the nights. The presence of the girls served to attract clients. All of them are very young. If they manage to catch the attention of a foreigner at a neighboring table, they go to a hotel.

Although Cubans are now allowed to stay in hotels, most of them have to bribe the doormen. They have a criminal record, having been picked up making the rounds of tourist places. If the police repeatedly arrest them without their managing to “clear it up” — paying in cash or “merchandise” — they can end up on a Rehabilitation Farm, or in prison. Yazmín feels sorry for them and seems to have climbed to another level of life.

I ask her if she is saving money to invest in some business for herself, something like a snack bar or beauty salon. She laughs and asks, “Girl, what country are you living in? I don’t get more than enough to live on: buying oil, soap, and eating a little better.”

She wants to know other countries, for sure. And if she could made a good marriage it would be like having a song in her heart. She longer likes Cuban men, because they would want to live with her or there would be “little jealous scenes.” Also, they can’t resolve her problems, she says.

When she brings boyfriends home, they focus on their needs. Also, this tactic gives them confidence. Her parents serve as an alibi, for not seeing her go out at night like she did before. The neighbors don’t reproach her. On the contrary, everyone understands that times are hard.

“What do the yumas [foreigners] look for in Cuban woman? I don’t know. They say we’re hotter. Some have haven’t tried a black girl before,” she says, with a sly grin.

Yasmín didn’t give up her work as a receptionist at a polyclinic. This way she gets rid of the “bad letter” and maintains the coherence of the preconceived script that she has been converted. Also she gets free condoms; this is a custom she’s never given up since having been given a sexually transmitted disease, curable but very embarrassing she says.

After telling me her story, she asks me to change her name. I want to call her Yazmín not to ruin things for her. Also because, at age 32, she hasn’t given up the idea of being a mother some day. But she doesn’t want her children born in Cuban. That reluctance to have kids in her native country isn’t, she says, because she’s not content with her life. Nor is she interested in politics. It’s something, she says, she doesn’t know how to explain.

Cubanet, 11 February 2014, Lilianne Ruiz

On the Need for Censorship in Cuba / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Independent launch of Orlando's book Boring Home
Independent launch of Orlando’s censored book Boring Home

Within Cuba, contrary to what one might think from outside, one comes to miss the presence of censorship. And this isn’t irony, but a strategy of liberation. In more than one sense, censorship doesn’t exist in a tangible way in Cuba. It’s ubiquitous, but unreachable, unaccounted for. It leaves no spaces for anyone or anything, but at the same time it never stops shifting.

Censorship in 21st century post-totalitarian Cuba has learned to morph itself, mutate and resist being recognized as such. Perhaps because of this we must know how to name it and above all to give it shape. If possible, to institutionalize it, take it out of the closet where the Castro regime without Castros has hidden it, the regime that is already announced as state capitalism.

In a country hijacked by the despotism of a single party — the Communists — where since the beginning of the Revolution the press has been the private property of a military elite, in a context where there’s not much left to do that is logical, and where a first step of the absurd might well surprise the authorities. continue reading

It’s about demanding, in this case, public censorship in Cuba, preferably constitutional, To try to at least make censorship visible, in the midst of the secrecy that kills our society: to return censorship to its colonial candor, its republican rigor, its Francoism freshness, its Stalinist stamina, it’s almost more skilled than malicious McCarthyism, reinstating thus the lost prestige of the national functionary who collects a salary for professional exercising the full-time work of censor.

Perhaps it’s the lack of censors who currently maintain our civil society in its sterile state of intellectual indigence.

My experience as a writer censored in Cuba, for example, is already phantasmagoric. Leaving no fingerprints that would be credible to the next generation. My children will have more evidence to call me “coward” or “Castro supporter” than to believe in my three illegal arrests or the censorship of Boring Home, my book of stories taken out of print by the Letras Cubanas publisher in 2009.

And out descendent will be right in the imminent future, because none of my torturers will ever identify me. Like no editor will confront me to censor a single line nor give me an explanation nor written statement of why I was expelled from the Cuban literary field.

No one signed the orders to entirely remove my books from the editorial catalog, and not to allow me to present my books to my colleagues in any cultural institution. Most likely, in fact, is that no one gave such orders. In the absolute order there are no longer any orders nor intentions, just inertia and discipline.

In practice, my denunciations in this respect are already those of an autistic more than those of an artist. The lack of censorship cut my career as a Cuban writer in Cuba off at the roots, however, in exile — this preview of the future — there is no persecuted writer’s grant that fits the ridiculousness of my civic curriculum. Hence, the moral urgency of restoring the concrete role of censor in the Castro regime, at least until we dare to overthrow through other non-verbal violence all of the repressive apparatus.

On the island there is no single Department of Censorship. The official press — the only legal one — still publishes systematic critiques of the Revolution, but there is no one to demand from it such intellectual silence. It’s possible that such critiques don’t reach their editorial offices and that there is, in those offices, a rather Adamic environment.

There are not even bureaucratic rules that define what can or can’t be published on each topic — whether political or pornographic — to be able to give authors the interpretive legal battle. While it is true that in communism it’s not certain that the author exists, long before Barthes and Foucault. But it is precisely this amorphous condition that allow maximum impunity, because now every author is, in principle, the censor of the rest — fractal Fidelism — including self-censorship with which everyone humiliates himself to avoid being humiliated by the collective.

There is no rational exit from the endless mazes, where repression is mimicked at times with a political crime with global repercussions, and others with a local literary prize. Hope is then reduced to absurdity, pure folly. So, to attract bit by bit freedom of expression to the territory of totalitarianism, perhaps they could start by introducing the censorship mechanisms of the democracies themselves. Create blacklists in Cuban as a measure of restraint against the despotic power. Publish our first Index Liborium Prohibitorum — banned book list — in the selection of names and topics for which the Catholic hierarchy and the Castro regime could huddle together in other shared trenches.

Afterward, the struggle would be much simpler for free Cubans: reduce to the minimum those civic spaces conceded to censorship — pornography and politics — and gradually enrich the atmosphere that today makes even breathing on the island blackmail.

Diario de Cuba, 16 February 2014, Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

#FreeGorki – The Gorki Aguila Case / Lia Villares

Gorki Águila. (CLAUDIO FUENTES)

The trial schedules for this Tuesday against Gorki Águila, leader of the punk rock band Porno para Ricardo, was postponed because of the health problems of his defense attorney, according to the musician himself on his Facebook page. Gorki spoke about the background of his case with Diario de Cuba.

 Gorki, what are they accusing you of?

The formal citation they gave me said the crimes of pre-criminal social dangerousness and illegal drug possession, with many points suspended.

Were you carrying drugs?

When they stopped me on the street and searched me and found two Tradea pills — methylphenidate — for which I have the appropriate prescription, signed and sealed, which are strong proof that they were bought legally. The police investigation has no evidence beyond those two pills.

Why are they accusing you?

The classic recourse of the government is to tie the “uncomfortable” individual to some prefabricated crime. In my case they didn’t ahve much more and I thought it unlikely that they’d convict me, if it was a free trial, for the (completely legal) possession of two tables of a medication that I need, according to a doctor’s prescription.

What’s your impression of this new trial and now the suspension of it?

It has the same characteristics of the 2008 trial, the same intentions, because a despotic government like ours never renounces the idea of silencing protestors like me by constant threats of prison, whether we are artists, activists, journalists or simply citizens. continue reading

On the morning of the day before yesterday I learned that the trial had been postponed because of my attorney’s health. It was to have been held on Tuesday, the 11th, but was delayed approximately a week. I thought this surprise, without any definitive date, could be dangerous because State Security could use it as a strategy and take advantage of less media coverage so I’d have a silent trial with weaker visibility.

Meanwhile, the government could create a parallel campaign to discredit me on the social networks, which seems like a recurring error on their part, because the exaggeration of creating false situations against each and everyone who dares to denounce them or express an opinion contrary to its purposes becomes suspect.

Castro never could admit that his opponents could be dignified enemies and have a body of more elevated moral principles; his attitude has always been not to recognize opponents and so to underestimate them, but taking care that they are never respected, rather defamed and in extreme cases imprisoned and even assassinated.

What are your expectations for the trial? Why summary?

I understand that these trials are held in very few countries and almost always in times of war, as an immediate lesson. The summary trials in Cuba are produced serially, with little documentation, that is, they can hold several trials on the same day, at the same time, with the ruling made in advance, where the political police has everything to gain. In this sense the regime takes great advantage of them against the peaceful opponents.

Gorki Águila. (CLAUDIO FUENTES)

In these trials, mostly rigged by State Security — it’s expected that the ruling will go against the accused. So I think it’s extremely important to maintain solidarity among everyone because, as demonstrated in the previous trial in 2008, the more public opinion was moved and the more visibility the case got at the international level, it was possible with everyone to change a decision already decided by the anti-revolutionary injustice, on the  retrograde sense of the Cuban government.

Your case is not isolate…

The government finds in these moments in the practice meant to “neutralize” the various opponents, one of their bad so-called “revolutionary offenses.” This is the case with my friend Manuel Cuesta Morúa, who finds himself under police investigation with absurd charges like “the spread of false news that threatens international peace.”

It’s incredible that someone who threatened the total destruction of the planet earth, could say that a simple opinion or the exercise of free expression could threaten international peace. It’s something as cynical as his persona, someone who dedicated his whole life to launching the false image of “revolutionary and ecologist.”

There was also the case of the independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez, who spent long months in prison simply for exposing the spread of the cholera epidemic in the country, work that should have been the job of the national press, which has never mentioned, with sincerity, news that is alarming to the population.

Tell me how it was in 2008…

I was in the dungeon without knowing anything that was going on outside. At a specific time a cop came with the file and told me what I was charged with would be changed. Then the treatment inside the jail mutated tremendously. When they reduced the charges, some official even said that all those who were there were criminals while I was just there for being “anti-Castro.”

That is, they changed the crime of social dangerousness to the crime of disobedience and from then is where I can corroborate the rapid collapse of the armed farce.  When they substituted the charge of one crime for another following no procedures at all, completely lacking in rigor: what’s missing is the Rule of Law. This leaves the usual arbitrariness of the Cuban judicial system completely exposed, where terms like “legal certainty” or “res judicata” are alien to is citizens, frequently defenseless before such procedures.

Then I knew I had a strong international solidarity campaign and within the country all my friends and activists supported me making sure everyone knew about my situation and the false charges I was accused of.

I’m convinced that the only way to transform these previous designs of the tyranny is to realize that uniting in the demand against injustice we can multiply the message that we all need right now, that of freedom for civil Cuban society, in short, freedom for Cuba.

I would like to thank all the people sensitive to my situation who have signed the petition and who are continuing to pay attention to what could happen with respect to this inadmissible case.

Thank you so much! Hopefully this is the year that yes, it falls!

Diario de Cuba, 12 February 2014, Lia Villares

Between the “Collectives” and the “Rapid Response Brigades” / Antonio G. Rodiles

8500-fotografia-gState violence has been the Cuban regime’s principle recourse for maintaining power for over 55 years. Beginning with the insurrection against Fulgencio Batista, executions, as a method of punishment, were used relentlessly. Anyone who wanted to show their loyalty had to deliver the coup de grace and take part in executions. A mix of the Communist brutality of Mao’s China and Stalin’s Soviet Union, with doses of the Mexican Revolution.

Watching the revolutionary courts, the shouts of “to the wall,” the ruthless political imprisonment, and the continued executions ratified and defended by Ernesto Guevara on the dais of the United Nations itself, instilled a feeling of helplessness within a great part of Cuban society.

The so-called Cuban Revolution has a violent history that it will never break free of because it is part of its nature. The infamous “acts of repudiation” in the ‘80s led to the more frequent use of vigilante groups, known as “rapid response brigades,” who doled out beatings and followed orders with the objective of instilling terror in citizens.

These rapid response brigades have been transformed in content and action according to the circumstances and needs of the regime. In the ‘80s they focused on those Cubans who wanted to leave the country; starting in the ‘90s they used them against human rights defenders; until finally coming to focus on any opponent or activist.

Today, these groups for the most part are made up by paid agents of the Interior Ministry, working surgically to prevent the spread of outbreaks of discontent or free thought within the Cuban population.

chavez_-_fidelWith the coming to power of Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro’s influence in Venezuela became visible. After the failed coup d’etat against Chavez in April 2002, the Havana regime increased its influence in issues of security and its military presence became increasingly notable. Of course the “rapid response brigades” were also exported from Cuba, now called “Bolivarian militias” or “collectives.” Since then, they have concentrated on arming and preparing them to respond with violence and terror in the face of possible democratic demands.

The reaction of these violent vigilante to the protests of recent days has made clear that the “collectives,” in coordination with the police forces, have orders to stifle any protest through the excessive use of violence. Terror must be part of the Venezuelan imagination for the full functioning of the regime-under-construction.

The Chavista strategy has been to wrest away democratic spaces, fragment them, and even to dismantle not only democratic institutions, but also civil society organizations. Cuba’s ruling elite knows that a change in Venezuela implies enormous pressure on the island and the certain end of the Castro regime. They know that ordering or driving indiscriminate repression in Venezuela has no legal consequences for them, but rather for the regime in Caracas. They would prefer a thousand times over to cling to the oil no matter it costs, rather than coming to a massive repressive crackdown on the island.

The Venezuelan military should know that Havana will lead them to the brink without the slightest hesitation, but at the same time they should understand that the Castro regime’s codes are not those of the present century — in this century they can often be counterproductive and extremely dangerous.

What is happening in Venezuela should raise serious concerns on the continent because it opens the door to a social dynamic with unpredictable consequences. To create and institutionalize urban vigilante groups, which, to sustain power enjoy perks and impunity, creates an extremely complex scenario in a region where the Rule of Law remains a dream yet to be achieved.

In a region where organized crime, marginalization and poverty are part of the reality, the spread of Cuban methods of social control should set off alarm bells. The violence and cynicism of the Castro regime can still do a lot of damage in Latin America. The Cuban pattern is disastrous. To spread it would undermine the still weak Latin American democracies.

It is essential, therefore, to offer major support and solidarity to the efforts of Venezuelans. Not only is the return of democracy and fundamental rights being decided there, but also being decided is putting the breaks on the introduction of state violence through the use of criminal gangs and urban vigilantes as a norm in the region. Those of us who defend democracy, have a commitment today to Venezuela.

Antonio Rodiles, Havana, 22 February 2014

Conversation Between an Opponent and a Colonel / Tania Diaz Castro

HAVANA, Cuba, January, cubanet.org  — It does not matter whether his name is Armando, Pedro or Juan. What is important is that a few days ago my neighbor the colonel and I found ourselves briefly chatting face to face at the entrance to my house. Such are the oddities of life. He, wore an old coat and a scarf wrapped around his neck, apparently from one of the former Soviet countries. I then wondered where the average senior citizen might be able to buy a coat and scarf to wear during these cold winter months.

It was the first time we had spoken, though we see each other almost every day. The reason was immediately obvious. It all started with poor quality of the bread, which we buy at the same place on 17th Street in El Roble, a neighborhood in the Santa Fe district of western Havana.

“It’s because they steal the fat that goes in it,” I said.

“The salt too,” said the colonel.

Tearing down the Berlin Wall
Tearing down the Berlin Wall

We talked about things that later he might have had reason to regret, but I took the opportunity to encourage this exchange since it is not often that such a spontaneous conversation takes place between a government opponent and a colonel, even a retired one, in the middle of the street on a cold January afternoon.

“I wonder how they will put an end to all this theft,” I said, trying to look naive.

“It’s difficult. The problem has been going on now for a long time,” he said. “In my village back in the 1950s it was unusual to come across a thief. The police were mainly concerned with drunkards and revolutionaries.”

“And there weren’t even that many drunks back then,” I added. “Those were the days.”

We then launched into an analysis of the Cuban experience. He did not defend Raul Castro’s “new economic model” (as I was expecting). Sometimes it even seemed to me he had his doubts, such as when he acknowledged that so far they had yielded no visible results.

When I asked him what he thought the path forward was, he pursed his lips and exclaimed, “I don’t believe in God. But if he exists, he must know what to do.”

I smiled. Was he making a joke? Was it a response born of pathos? I do not know the answer now anymore than I knew then.

The Ladies in White being harassed by State Security agents.

“Everything started getting worse when the Soviets threw Stalin overboard and then Gorbachev gave Lenin the coup de grace,” he said. “The Russians wanted to stick us with a bill that was impossible to pay.”

And what about socialism in the 21st century,” I asked. “Does this suggest there will be civil liberties. In Cuba that doesn’t seem likely. Not long ago a government minister said that opposition political parties would never be allowed to take part in elections.”

“You might very well be right,” he said. “Things could change. Everything in life changes. But one must never lose hope, even if it seems there is nothing else that can be done. But if there is one thing that bothers me, it is how much the people are to blame for what is happening.”

“The people are tired,” I said, interrupting him. “They are exhausted. They don’t have hope. They have been living under dictatorship for many years.”

The word “dictatorship” brought him back to his own reality. He frowned, his face tightened and he waved to leave without saying goodbye. Maybe it was the cold evening air in those impassioned times which forced him to see the two of us as we really were: an old man, maybe a little less faithful to the three sprigless stars on the colonel’s uniform he kept in a closet, and an old woman who says what she thinks because she has nothing to hide.

Cubanet, January 31, 2014, 

Jineteras [Hookers] in Cuban Pesos / Reinaldo Emilio Cosano

Havana, Cuba – The colonial authorities never imagined that the covered portals of the buildings and homes of Havana, a mandatory construction to protect pedestrians from the sun, rain and night dew would have another use, also very human.

E.O.F., age 31, counts on the notoriety, although not exclusively, of the portals of Monte street. Or rather Monte and Cienfuegos, the sin corner.

“There is a secret commerce after eleven at night. In the past, you’d find nothing. For a few months pretty women of different ages and races are parked there. They accost the men, inviting them for ’a good time.’ They knew what they were doing there and why men were there at that time. An occupation easy to recognize from the way they walk, the really short skirts, tight clothing, vivid lip colors, eyebrows and eyelashes. Prices are adjusted with few words. They accompany them to a nearby room and pay the rent. In the end, they’re paid. ’A good time…’”

EOF explains a curiosity, “There is no commerce with homosexuals and transvestites with intermediaries. Not from discrimination. They’ve found their half-tolerated space on the Malecon, the Coppelia ice cream parlor, and other places in the capital, although at times the police harass them.

“Now you don’t see them in any of the doorways. It’s the intermediary. He approaches, asking, ’Looking for a girl. They’re good, nice and cheap.’

The doorways of Monte and Prado

Five CUC (in domestic currency, one CUC=25 Cuban pesos) for the jinetera [hooker*], one CUC for the intermediary, and another CUC for renting a room for an hour in some solar [as the tenements are called in Havana]. For the most part small, dark, warm, not very clean.

“You go and six or seven women, who a minute ago were chatting, laughing, drinking, between puffs of smoke, stand up. Not for courtesy but intentionally, rubbing their breasts, biting their lips, trying to be chosen. It’s hard to decide, you have to choose fast, pay by the hour, and not overstay your time. Outside two strong guards have the keys and twist the arms of those who try to leave without paying.

“We climb up to the ’barbecue’ [an improvised platform to extend the space]. Generally there are two ’rooms’ separated by a wood partition across which you can hear the whispers and imagine the positions. Not very hygienic rooms. The same sheet all night. Sometimes no water to wash with. No towels, just newspapers. I ask ’Violeta,’ my occasional companion about the chance of catching AIDS. Immediate response, ’Without a condom, nothing!’”

Alejo Carpentier (1904-1980), a Cuban writer and musicologist called Havana “The City of Columns” (1970). The doorways of houses and important commercial establishments were well-lit at dusk on Monte, Reina, Belascoaín, Paseo del Prado and Diez de Octubre streets. So many that it was pure pleasure to walk along the colonnades and contemplate the full shop windows, ruined, in shadows, with many gaps from the sad collapses of our patrimony.

“Why have the jineteras — a word accepted as natural — disappeared from the doorways?”

’Violeta’ answers:

“The police step up the repression streak against prostitution. Sometimes they resolve it with some fulitas (CUCs — hard currency). But if they’re… A….s, not even that. They grab us and we end up in jail. The situation is tough. But many women and men live this.”

A report from the Minister of Justice published on the website of Foreign Ministry last October, said that 241 people were prosecuted for the crime of pimping. Of them 224 were found guilty. Formerly prostitute was relegated and controlled by the authorities to the so-called Tolerance Zones, which now permeates the city.

“And what if the police surprise them in the room?”

’Violeta’ replies:

“Every trade has risks. We would test fate saying that we are friends who are celebrating one of our birthdays, and may God protect us!”

*Translator’s note: The word for hooker/prostitute in Cuban Spanish, jinetera, comes from “jockey.”

Cubanet, 31 January 2014,

cosanoalen@yahoo.com

Conduct / Reinaldo Escobar

If an imaginary group of Cubans, isolated from all information since 1984, had been shown the movie Conduct today to bring them up to date on reality, they’d have escaped the theater sure that the film falsified the situation: that it was trying to show a pessimistic and counterrevolutionary version of their country.

But that’s not how the people reacted coming out of the theaters, wiping away their tears, their hands red from so much clapping. Especially those Havanans who saw projected on the screen the reality that hits them: their own neighborhood in ruins, the alcoholic neighbor with a child practically abandoned, the lack of ethical values, the police corruption, the discrimination against Cubans from other provinces, the physical misery on every corner, the moral misery in every opportunist.

Fortunately Carmela remained, the retirement-age teacher who, despite having seen her children and grandchildren emigrate, preferred to remain alone on the island, and in her classroom “as long as I can climb the stairs,” because she’s convinced she has the strength to help those kids in need of love and understanding.

Splendid cinematography and excellent editing support a script whose author, Ernesto Daranas, also served as director. Nowhere do the hackneyed topics of Cuban cinema appear: the mockery, the jokes with double meanings, the rain, folkloric touches, sexual exhibitionism and official messages.

But the biggest absence in Conduct is “the New Man,” whom those hypothetical Cubans, asleep or in a coma, conceived even up to the mid-’80s and who they would have expected to see incarnated in this work bringing them up-to-date. The children that those imaginary viewers would insist on finding in the film would be educated children and not those foul-mouthed coarse bullies; the schools would be equipped with laboratories and the houses would appear comfortable and safe.

There would be no dog fights, nor strung out women prostitutes, much less the drama of Carmela facing an attempt to fire her for protecting a student threatened with being sent to a reform school for defending a girl who dared — let’s hear it for audacity! — to place an image of Cuba’s patron saint on the wall of a classroom.

The producers didn’t create an artificial space in the studio in the style of The Truman Show, nor was there some antique store where they found the school desks and blackboards, nor did they make a citadel out of cardboard. The director didn’t have to carefully teach the actors — kids, teenagers or elderly — linguistic models and formulas far from their own personal experiences. Perhaps it was because of this that the audience, after long lines to get into the theaters where Conduct is showing, so identified with it, felt so excited. Because of this and because those present in the movie theaters haven’t spent the last 30 years sleeping, but rather starring in this tragedy.

21 February 2014

Conduct, with the “C” of Cuba / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef01a511718654970c-400wiMiguel has earned a lot of money this week. He managed to sell almost one hundred pirated copies of the Cuban movie Conduct. Although the film is showing in several of the country’s theaters, many prefer to see it at home among friends and family. The story of a boy nicknamed Chala and his teacher Carmela is causing a furor and leading to long lines outside the premiere cinemas. It’s been decades since any national production has been so popular or provoked so many opinions.

Why is the latest creation of director Ernesto Daranas becoming such a social phenomenon? The answer transcends artistic questions to delve into the depth of his dreams. While it is clearly told with excellent cinematography and superb acting, its the realism of the script that is the greatest achievement of this film. The movie generates an immediate rapport with the audience, reflecting their own lives as if reflected in a mirror.

In the dark theaters, facing the screen, the spectators applaud, scream and cry. The moments of greatest emotion from the house seats coincide with the politically most critical speeches. “No more years than those who govern us,” answers the teacher Carmela when they want her to retire because she’s spent too much time in the teaching profession; an ovation of support runs through the theater at that instant. The semi-darkness exacerbates the audacity and complicity.

The “Conduct phenomenon” is explained by its ability to reflect the existence of many Cubans. But it goes far beyond a simple realistic portrait, to become an x-ray that lays bare the bones. A Cuba where there is hardly any moral framework left for a child in this environment light-years away from the ideal claimed by the official media. Barely twelve, Chala supports his alcoholic mother with what he earns from illegal dog fights, inhabiting a harsh unjust city, impoverished to the point of tears.

It’s not the first time Cuban cinema has shown the tough side of reality. The film Strawberry and Chocolate (1993) paved the way for social criticism, particularly with regards the discrimination against homosexuals and artistic censorship. The cost of its daring was high, because it had to wait twenty years to be shown on national TV. Alice in Wonderland (1991) faced a worse fate, with the political police filling the theaters where it was projected, and party militants screaming insults at the screen. Conduct has arrived in at different juncture.

The spread of new technologies has allowed many filmmakers to find ways to make their projects. Critical, acerbic and rebellious scripts have seen the light in the last five years because they have no need for the approval and resources from the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC ). This proliferation of shorts, documentaries, and independent films has been a very favorable situation for Ernesto Daranas’ filmstrip. The censors know that it’s not worth the trouble to veto such a movie on the State circuits. It would run through the illegal networks like wildfire.

A brief conversation outside the Yara cinema exposed the controversy this story unleashed. “There are a lot of people who live better than Chala, that’s true, but there are others who live much worse,” said a man in his sixties. A young woman responded that she wondered if the director ”exaggerated the squalor of the situations shown.” Another girl joined the debate to say, “You say this because you live in Miramar, where these things don’t happen.
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On Tuesday night, the ruling party journalist Randy Alonso also joined the line to see the movie in the final showing of the day. Behind him giggles and comments were heard — “So what’s he doing here?” — given that his face is associated with uncritical journalism, a sycophant of power. Once inside the theater, those who sat near him did not see him join the chorus of shouts of support. With every minute that passed, he seemed to sink more deeply into his seat, not wanting to be noticed. What he was seeing on the screen was the exact opposite of what he explains on his boring Roundtable show.

So it is that Conduct was able to gather in the same room the fabricators of the myth and those burdened by it. After the projector is turned off, the doors open and the viewers exit to reality similar to the script, but one where they can no longer express themselves under the protection of the shadows. Chala waits for them on every corner.

21 February 2014

Cuba and Its Parts in Conflict / Angel Santiesteban

We know that in more than a half century of command, the only thing that has interested the Castro brothers is to keep their damn power. For that they have submerged the nation in profound poverty. In order to maintain their prolonged rule, they have converted the country into a state of terror.

They have filled the prisons with young people who, not having another option, have preferred to become delinquents rather than becoming submerged in the profound, generalized economic crisis. Also the professionals, after pursuing advanced degrees and becoming professionals who would be in high demand in any other country, are obligated to commit crimes of embezzlement. The lucky ones have found a way of leaving the country definitively, or by employment contracts between the states in question, and with meager pay, which helps them to moderate their miserable lives.

Another part keeps hoping to emigrate, and while that wait goes by, they repress their longing to think, criticize, demand better, because they fear reprisals from the political police for daring to dissent from the government program, and they survive on remittances received from the exterior.

The minority remain, those who don’t have even a remote possibility of emigrating or receiving remittances, and although they may also dissent like the rest, they have no other option but to cling to the structures of power to receive the inferior surplus that they let escape for those who get close, which is barely sufficient to breathe and to survive.

Power is maintained thanks to the blackmail of this minority, which they use as a repressive force. The so-called “white collar” crimes are very common, because they toil like prisoners, in economic control or directing construction works.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement, January 2014

Please follow the link and sign the petition to have Angel Santiesteban declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International.

Translated by Regina Anavy

15 February 2014