Category: AUTHORS

In No Man’s Land / Jeovany Jimenez Vega

By Jeovany Jimenez Vega

Life has led me to two basic conclusions. The first: the solution to the world’s most serious problems will not be capitalism, because although it fosters creativity and the entrepreneurial spirit, it’s also an exclusionary system that exacerbates man’s most primitive instincts.

Despite the few dozen countries that have achieved a good economic status under this scheme, more than 150 are in a more or less dramatic state of poverty — a dynamic consistent over several centuries and that persists in relation to the social stratification within countries — and given its speculative nature, it has been proven to be incapable of avoiding the economic crises that characterize it.

This scheme has failed to rid the world of hunger and its neoliberal variant only ended up accumulating political and economic power in a select block of nations that have turned global institutions in a casino that articulates the strategies of domination against the poorest countries. Capitalism seems to me an intermediate stage or step on the way, perhaps a necessary one, but never the end goal of the human species.

The second conclusion: the solution is not the “socialism of the barracks,” a sequel to the Soviet model, whose Stalinist variant produces dire consequences for the individuality of man. After 50 years of implementing this scheme, the economy of my country is destroys, my people are subjected to a constant and unjustified impoverishment, directly opposed to the entrepreneurial spirit of man and his freedom of expression, generating a sickening climate of immorality.

If the Cuban Revolution triumphed specifically to end class privileges, half a century later there persists a caste that lives above the law and that enjoys privileges denied the common people. Although in Cuban well-stratified social classes still persist — an exclusivity that some ideologues attribute to multiparty capitalism — because if someone earns 100 times the income of a doctor and looks over his shoulder, it’s because he feels he belongs to a different social stratum.

So far I would only consider that what point societies governed by democratic socialism, but despite their boasting enviable standards of living and social security, they are not exempt from political corruption, nor do they escape the consequences of capitalist crises like the current one, which left the world bankrupt when the bubble burst.

When I venture into these neophytes meditations — very personal, indeed — I am stepping on a minefield and run the risk of being stranded in no man’s land, but to assert otherwise would be dishonest on my part, or would be speculating on matters that remain, for us, too distant in time.

The name does not define the essence, but whether it’s called communism, or Project Venus of the Reign of God on the Earth, I am referring to that future society that we all want to live in — which would make us all potentially communists or Venusians or Christians — where man freed of selfishness finally thinks of his neighbor as himself; a world without famines or wars, generator of the most advanced technology that would function exclusively for the progress of humankind; a future where states would be supplanted by a superstructure that would harmonize the pulses of a single global society in the midst of universal peace.

But before this can happen man would have to be reborn. This hypothetical world — which would be the final solution — is still not visible, it’s far beyond the horizon and in any case it remains to be seen whether it would be possible within the next 500, 1000, or 2000 years, and if so it would be only if we escape the annihilation that threaten us because of human greed and stupidity.

Never has man known his world better, never has he launched a deeper or more profound look at the universe or at the details of a cell, and yet never has there been more spiritual poverty or known less about himself; never has he been so helpless against his own demons.

Thus, I conclude that the next leap must be qualitative: it would be a profound ethical transformation that would be called upon to save humanity. So far these are just chimeras for a being that carries with him too many miseries. But sometime will happen that brings us the humility and reminds us that we are only ephemeral stardust left by chance by God navigating the universe. Even if after everything the end of the world doesn’t come, perhaps he wants to say that the forgotten, condemned to 100 centuries of solitude, this time will have a second opportunity on the earth.

2 December 2013

 

Fashion and Reality in Cuba / Ivan Garcia

moda-cubaIf, like 22-year-old Yoan, you consider it a priority to dress in the style of a male fashion model and you spend all your spare time in the gym sculpting your body, then the bill could exceed your income.

Yoan maintains a lifestyle similar to an average middle-class guy in any developed country thanks to his family in Florida.

A European fiancé and a Canadian lover allow him certain whims and niceties such as frequent lunches in good privately owned restaurants and mojitos in exclusive bars.

Bisexual and discreet, he prides himself on being a high-end male prostitute. He does not work as a gigolo nor does he have a Hummer parked in his garage, though this is his dream.

He has a closet filled with expensive jeans, Italian loafers and athletic shoes. He is well-stocked with Chanel No. 5, Heno and Prava soaps and American-made Colgate toothpaste, which he acquired for six dollars on Obispo Street.

He likes to buy brand-name clothing in high-end stores in Havana’s Miramar district and the Hotel Saratoga, places whose prices rival those of Manhattan. He just bought a pair of Diesel jeans for 120 CUC (Cuban convertible pesos), a pair of Nikes for 127 CUC and a Puma pullover for 93 CUC.

This comes to 340 CUC, the equivalent of a year and a half’s salary for a professional on the island. And believe me, his story is not some surrealist portrait of Havana in the 21st century. Yoan is not the son of that privileged class made up of the Communist Party politburo elite. By no means.

There is in Cuba a segment of young people of both sexes who can can afford to dress stylishly and polish their figures with the money they earn selling their bodies to foreign tourists.

Successful artists, communist businessmen and slackers supported by a constant flow of dollars from relatives in Miami are also able to maintain their wardrobes, but they are the minority.

Most Cuban families try to buy clothing and shoes at a discount. The state does not give them many options. After Fidel Castro took power, he introduced two types of ration cards in 1962, one for food and one for manufactured goods. Every Cuban was allowed a yearly pair of shoes, a skirt or pair of slacks, and two shirts or blouses made of unremarkable fabric. Their prototypes were created by decree, without originality or quality.

It was the period of social equality and uniformity. This socialist form of poverty provided Cuba with Minsk refrigerators, Aurika washing machines, Selena radios and Lada cars, all from the former Soviet republics. Other manufactured goods came from Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Albania.

At the end of the 1970s the Cuban exile community in the United States began travelling to Cuba, packing their luggage with jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes, things that were novelties in the island of the Castros.

Trafficking of clothing has always been good business on the underground market. The 1980s saw the emergence of a network of speculators who bought dollars at a time when possession of foreign currency was illegal and then used them to purchase inexpensive fabric from shops intended for diplomats and foreign technical workers.

Prices were high. At the time the lowest salary did not top 120 pesos. However, a pair of denims cost 150 pesos, a pair of Cast shoes was 120 and a “bacteria” shirt went for about 130 pesos.

After 1959 dressing fashionably in Cuba was an aspiration whose costs could not be defrayed with the average monthly salary. After it became legal to possess dollars in 1993, shopping malls were opened that sold clothing bought in bulk from free trade zones in China and the Carribean.

A high-powered segment of the consumer market has access to boutiques with heart attack inducing prices. They carry brands such as Mango, Zara, Dolce and Gabbana and — in a mockery of the embargo — Guess jeans and items by Nike, Reebok and New Balance.

The average Cuban often has to turn to hard-currency stores where the regime sells low-end clothing at high-end prices.

A pair of pants, a shirt and a pair of jeans of questionable quality costs a total of 60 CUC, three-month’s salary for the average worker. The now-outlawed private clothing stalls provided some relief. Cubans with family members overseas continue to benefit from the packages they receive, which contain essential items such as shoes.

Cubans care for their footwear as though they were precious jewels. Shoes are expensive so, when they wear out, people take them to shoe repair shops. In any given neighborhood you will find people who specialize in recycling and refurbishing shoes that in another country would be thrown in the trash. Athletic shoes have uses their designers never imagined.

They are repaired several times and are usually worn by kids, teenagers and young people who play baseball or football in the street. Yoan the hooker knows. So when they get new shoes they give the old ones to the neediest neighbors.

Except for the revolutionary aristocracy, who live in exclusive enclaves, one finds in Cuba hookers, johns, police officers, doctors, self-employed workers, dissidents and agents from State Security all living in the same block. And all know first hand of the cost of dressing decently.

Iván García

1 December 2013

Twenty-five Cents / Regina Coyula

I do not like beggars. I was raised on the idea of begging as a holdover from the past, a scheme to get an income without working. From the time of the Special Period here, I have changed my point of view. I’ve seen extremely old people begging, almost with regret, with a dignity that has nothing to do with the act of begging. As a counterpart, professional beggars have appeared in tourist areas. Young women begging to be able to buy milk for rented babies they carry, or gullible foreigners approached with a false colostomy.

Yesterday, I encountered a beggar in my path. As I advanced towards her, I figured she was two parts scheming and one part crazy. She was sitting on the doorjamb of an interior street at 5th and 42nd, one of the busiest hard currency stores in the city, her strategic position enabled her to address everyone who entered or left via 40th Street, especially those using the parking log. The car in Cuba continues to represent a certain status, even if it’s a Palaquito (Fiat). As is my usual custom, I passed at a distance. I was alone and there wasn’t anyone else, so if she was talking to someone, it was to me.

“This is communism.”

I went back to the woman’s side, and to buy time, looked again in my wallet without finding any change.

“Why do you say that my dear? Do you think that in communism you weren’t there?”

The beggar didn’t look at me, nor had she looked at me before. Her gaze wandered from the half-empty bowl of coins at her feet to the opposite wall. Terse and forceful, she earned the chavito (Cuban Convertible Peso, ~one dollar U.S.) this post cost me.

“I worked 35 years and here I am. This is communism.”

2 December 2013

NONcommunal Solutions / Rebeca Monzo

“Communals” is the People’s Power Company charged with garbage collection, among other tasks.

Behind the “12 Floors,” as they call the building in the block formed by Tulipán, Loma, Colón and 39th streets in Nuevo Vedado, the solution to trash collection for this gigantic apartment block, as well as for the adjoining houses, has been to place an enormous dumpster there to collect the garbage. This huge container is left uncovered, exposed to wind, rain rodents and insects. The space all around it is fulled with empty plastic bags, paper, cans and every kind of object, which the residents themselves throw there, on finding the container overflowing. This is without taking into account the stinking sewage that leaks from the sewer pipes coming out of the building itself, which leads to the subsequent contamination, which makes it almost impossible to walk by the place.

According to what some residents told me, it can take a week or more for the crane that is supposed to lift the container to come by to collect it, not to mention that in doing so, it is carried across the city to its destination, contaminating everything along its long journey. They also tell me that the garbage trucks don’t have the necessary equipment to collect what is outside the containers, so they leave this trail of filth which is gradually blown all over the pavement by the wind.

With this in the environment there is no point in going any further to invade the privacy of the residents, but the famous health brigades try to force their way into people’s apartments without any prior notice, fining those who have a bowl of water, not to mention that the fumigators, who use that annoying burning oil, tell you to close and leave your house on the pretext of eradicating the mosquito that causes dengue fever, an illness than has become endemic due to the unhealthy conditions prevailing in the city.

2 December 2013