Category: Rebeca Monzo

This year marks four years since I started a blog, without really knowing how to pull it off. With the help and advice of Yoani, “Through the Eye of the Needle” — the title based on a biblical phrase that was also the name I gave my first major exhibition outside “my planet,” as I refer to Cuba in my posts — went into cyberspace to describe our everyday reality.

I wanted to share this satisfaction with you, and to wish you with all my heart a 2014 of recovery of our liberty and sovereignty, as well as reconciliation, forgiveness without forgetting, and the union of all Cubans in a future homeland without charismatic leaders but with very efficient ones, where democracy reigns for everyone without any exceptions.

30 December 2013

The streets are empty and unadorned. With their paltry displays of gifts, shop windows only hint at the season, which was once so colorful. There is an absence of ornaments but also of products and resources, and 2014 is forecast to be full of hardships and difficulties. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day do not seem to exist for the media, which only makes reference to the “celebration” of the 55th anniversary of an event that brought pain to the Cuban nation.

In the early hours of the appointed day, we could not observe the old sight of happy people full of packages circulating through the neighborhood. At night the streets are dark with only a few neighbors about. Unlike us, very few people bother to decorate their balconies and doorways with garlands of lights, not only because the custom has been disappearing, but also because they are expensive and are very few shops sell them. continue reading

In a country like ours, completely bankrupt, where all future promises have been broken, where the citizens have been cheated again and again, few expectations remain.

The majority of the young people with whom I have spoken would like to live in a country where their dreams and perspectives are unlimited. Sadly for them, they dream of emigrating because they know that here and now there is no other option.

Older people look forward to their retirement, a product of so many years of accumulated work. They hope it might allow them to live comfortably and treat themselves to a little luxury once in a while without having to depend on help from overseas relatives. Besides being humiliating, this is a constant reminder of the failure of their lives and the separation from family, both very painful and difficult feelings to overcome. Others even less fortunate find it necessary, in spite of their advanced age, to clandestinely sell “jabitas” (plastic bags), homemade candies and loose cigarettes outside farmers’ markets, always running away from the police who harass them.

And those of us who are no longer so young but not yet so old want freedom for Cuba and the restoration of the democracy that was lost more than half a century ago. We long for a country where the dreams and aspirations of all Cubans can be fulfilled without having to abandon the place where they were born. But it is not enough to only dream about this; one has to do something to achieve it and fundamentally it has to be done from within.

In spite of this dark present, I wish all Cubans — especially my readers, wherever they may be — a bright future in a free country, where we share joys and sorrows together in an embrace. Merry Christmas!

24 December 2013

I suggest that the new Cuba Tourist Guide be a reprint of Orwell’s 1984. At least that’s the closest thing.

Given how the sugar harvest is going, I’m thinking of planting some sugar cane in a flowerpot so I’ll be able to sweeten my coffee.

This is the only country in the world where, with so many problems, they waste time in the National Assembly talking about defective cooking pots.

While President Raul Castro pays homage to the late Nelson Mandela with a speech on unity, tolerance and reconciliation, acts of repression throughout the width and breadth of Cuba speak otherwise.

Antonio Rodiles’ house, headquarters of SATS, has been literally under siege since the night of December 9, Human Rights Day, by State Security, which is preventing access to it. As though that were not enough, today they mobilized neighbors and Young Pioneers from neighboring schools to liven things up with shouts, music and political slogans. They have surrounded the property with the goal of intimidating and sowing confusion so that, in the midst of this confusion, they can arrest anyone trying to approach the building.

While many have not been able get there, others have found various ways to circumvent the cordon and attend a function celebrating a day much feared by Cuban authorities. But undoubtedly the most shameful thing about all of this is their having used schoolchildren for political ends, probably without the knowledge of their respective parents, an action with should warrant the attention of UNICEF. I believe that today’s actions have been possibly the worst tribute paid to Human Rights Day or to the late African leader.

11 December 2013

My neighborhood, Nuevo Vedado, was one of the last to be developed in the 1950s. It promised to be among the most modern and beautiful, with well-designed two and three-story single-family homes and large rental properties. Along with these beautiful residences were some more modest ones as well as others which displayed an outpouring of good taste and architectural distinction, designed by architects such as Porro, Cristófol, Miguel Gutierrez and Frank Martínez to name but a few. It also boasted the magnificent Acapulco park as well as wide sidewalks, streets and avenues.

On 26th Avenue and Kohly Avenue there were some lovely planting areas filled with pink and white oleander. The beautiful Acapulco cinema, one of the most comfortable in the city, screened the latest foreign films every week.

Today, during a brief tour from the 26th and 41st to 26th and 17th in search of hair dye, which unfortunately I did not find in any of the area’s understocked stores, the images I observed left me only with worry and sadness.

6 December 2013

“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

Finally Patricia is a grandmother. Her daughter was admitted a few days ago to Gonzalez Coro Hospital, formerly the Sacred Heart Clinic, in Vedado, Havana, because her baby was born underweight, something very common lately.

She took some photos that helped me to offer this testimony with regards to the comfort and hygiene of this hospital.

Another of the surprises awaiting the new mother were the disputes between other patients, due to the theft of cigarettes. She doesn’t smoke, but she had to breathe the smoke from cigarettes shared between the mothers and the health care workers who cared for them.

11 November 2013

Once again this phrase, so often repeated for more than five decades now, came to my mind when I found out about another step backward, instigated by those who handed down this maxim like a precept at the dawn of the 1960s.

We now have another great setback, this time well into the 21st century and within the framework of the famous “Raul reforms.” Privately-run, home-based 3D cinemas have been closed and self-employed vendors of imported clothing have been given a deadline of December 31 to cease operations. All this has generated a lot of discontent, but that’s as far as it goes. All those affected are trying to figure out how to sell off part of their inventory and recuperate some of their sizable investments. This is especially true of 3D cinemas, which imported equipment and furniture, for the most part from Panama. Everyone is “racking his brains” but no one is going to confront the state, as it knows all too well.

It seems poor nutrition over many decades has adversely affected that part of people’s brains having to do with memory. They do not recall “Operation Bird on a Wire,” when craftspeople in Cathedral Square — from whom everyone bought, including government officials, because of the quality, originality and variety of the goods these artisans produced — were persecuted. Many ended up in prison while others went into exile in search of freedom and new opportunities. And so overnight a little marketplace — one that gave life to the city, supplied goods unavailable in state stores and provided a livelihood for many — simply vanished.

Later on, in the 1990s, came a new offensive — “Operation Potted Plant*” — that abolished the Free Farmers’ Market, which at the time was alleviating the problem of significant food shortages but whose suppliers the government accused of “illegal profiteering.” Many of these suppliers were arrested and had their assets confiscated, just as had happened years earlier to the artisans.

Let us also not forget that other great crusade at the end of the 1990s against the first paladares — home-based private restaurants which were limited to twelve seats — of which only the strongest or most “fortunate” were able to survive.

So we can see, the lack of memory of our citizens, or the desperate attempts to come out of the economic stagnation, has been what has made some take risks now and again, those “optimist” people who finally do not realize that is hard to “play capitalism”, inside a dictatorial regime with more than half of century installed in power.

Therefore, and so there are no mistakes, the government undertakes these types of “operations” cyclically so nobody forgets “who’s in charge”.  Only in a future free and democratic country, is where security will exist for those who want to start their own business.  Then, and only then, is when the private initiatives will flourish.  Perhaps in a future not too far off, we’ll give another connotation to that sadly known phrase of:  “never backwards, not even to gain momentum”, because evidently no one will want to repeat those mistakes.

*Translator’s note: In Cuban slang the term maceta, or potted plant, refers to someone with newly acquired wealth.

6 November 2013