Category: Regina Coyula

Very interactive, our current president, with religious denominations. Now he’s a special guest to a Hanukkah celebration. As far as I can remember, an unprecedented event, taking into account the official government position regarding the Jewish state and its historical solidarity with Palestine. If I were to speculate, the Cuban Jewish community could serve as a bridge to significant international Jewish capital, an injection our people need for reasons of exhaustion, and that the government needs for reasons of governability. Raul was colloquial, almost intimate, delighting the people of Israel gathered in the synagogue, if we are to judge by the faces of those present. Shalom!

December 6, 2010

For years, Cuban television in coordination with UNICEF has produced some short films to promote the rights of children. In general, they are very well done and have a positive message. One that has come out recently with the message that more or less affirms that children and young people have the right to be heard. So is the point then, in Cuba, to not grow up?

December 4, 2010

Only our system is able to overcome difficulties and preserve the achievements. We will update the economic model, yes to planning, no to the laws of the market, economic efficiency, increased productivity. Yes, now we are going to build socialism!

Translated by ricote

December 2, 2010

On the program Free Access on the Havana Channel last week, bread was once again the subject of analysis. Viewers called in to say that the bread was sour, insipid, old; adjectives used together or separately. The money, the bread, the ration book, all mixed up. The call that threw them for a loop and wasn’t aired was why there is bread for sale in foreign currency, but there is no government bread.

December 1, 2010

Photo: Ana Gloria Lucas

Today I honored my grandfather, but we must also celebrate life. Today is the birthday of poet Raul Rivero. I am posting this photo without editing it, because Raul celebrates among his friends Ramón Fernández Larrea, Pío Serrano, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Miguel Rivera and Rafael Alcides.

November 23, 2010

Alejandro is a boy I’ve known for more than five years; he finished his Social Service after university and is looking for work as a teacher that will give him time to finish his master’s. The other day we ran into each other, and as he knows that I have a blog, he began to talk with me about some information that had come to his attention. He told me about a Google service that posts information in real time — he had seen some Yohandy using his time on the internet to talk about Yoani Sanchez, as if he were a paparazzi — and he was curious about the appearance of this modality in our society and was looking for information about that person. Yohandy seems ubiquitous and sleepless, he has an enviable internet connection and is interested in the details. He keeps track of the money Yoani spends on text messages and Twitter, and has even published a photo allegedly showing Yoani’s husband kissing another woman. Alejandrito looked for gossip about others, but Yohandry focused his inquiries only on Yoani.

Almost nothing I heard surprised me. I told Alejandrito that Yoani could spend that money and more, from the prizes she has received. Which demonstrates her seriousness, because given the conditions in Cuba, anyone else would have earmarked that money to fix their house or trade for another one, buy a car, take a great vacation, eat well.

Some time ago I said in a post that in the absence of anything in your life, they will design a campaign to discredit you. Is this Yohandry’s interpretation of what a Battle of Ideas should be?

November 26, 2010

Photo: Katerina Bampaltaki

In one fine detail that rounds up the strange process of “labor redimensionalizing” in Cuba, in work centers they’ll create commissions consisting of the workers themselves. They’ll be the ones charged with determining who goes, who stays. Thus the administrators, with one of them built into the aforementioned commission, will stay exempt from responsibility, diluted among the group. Everything well “tied up,” it is not going to be the commission — believing itself to be sovereign — starting the firings at the base of the bureaucratic apparatus, the pulley farthest from the gears responsible for the economic disaster we’re suffering.

For a documented analysis, I recommend: www.reconciliacioncubana.com

November 25, 2010

I never knew my grandfather Miguel Coyula because he died on 23 November 1948. But his influence has touched even the Coyulas who came after me, the last of his grandchildren. We grew up listening to the courage that earned him the rank of commander of the Liberation Army, standing in the galaxy of young habaneros, according to Loynaz del Castillo in his memoirs. In the midst of the corruption that erupted during the Republic, my grandfather made honesty his main virtue, he died paying rent on a house in the neighborhood of La Sierra and supported his family with the salary of a journalist.

In the House of Representatives, where he became president in 1917, he was reelected over and over again without having to buy a vote. Known as the “Man-Renouncer” for all the public offices he refused, including to be a presidential candidate. I would have liked to ask him how he reconciled his political life at the side to Menocal. To avoid a painful breakup with his former boss in the war, when Menocal allied with Batista, my grandfather took refuge in journalism. He was self-taught, but nobody asked for a degree to collaborate in Bohemia or Carteles, to have a regular column in El Mundo, or to be founding president of the InterAmerican Press Association. And from Bohemia and without leaving Cuba, in a time of billy clubs and castor oil, he demanded the surrender of Machado.

He shone again in the Assembly, where he served as President for several sessions; there he entered into a debate with the Communist delegate Blas Roca about including an invocation to God in the Constitution. He, a convinced secularist, recognized and respected the religious roots of the population.

When he died, he lay in state in the Hall of Lost Steps in the National Capitol and his huge funeral was only surpassed later by those of Eduardo Jesús Menéndez and Chiba. The people who crowded the street were not summoned there and no one went to check the list of attendees. In his honor, November 23 was named as Day of Citizen Integrity. At 30th and 19th, near his home, on the first anniversary of his death, a bust was unveiled and a park bears his name, like Avenue 19, and in Regla, his birthplace, there is also a statue and an Avenue and school named after him.

But Commander Miguel Coyula is a forgotten patriot. He does not exist in Wikipedia (which I intend to amend) and to read about him one must refer to paper encyclopedias. His civic virtue and his anti-imperialism failed to override his convinced anti-communism. Today, no one knows who he is. In keeping with an image fallen into disuse, the bronze bust in the park at 19th and 30th was stolen years ago, no doubt to produce quality articles; and the letters of the identical material with his name, embedded in stone, were also disappearing until there were none left. They failed to delete him entirely from the monument in the center of the park, no doubt because it’s very high and in a well-lit place.

To write this post I searched the family papers looking for photos. My son was full of curiosity, especially with a picture of Grandpa with Ramón Fonst and Capablanca. I had not noticed it and took me a minute to recognize my grandfather, always identified to me by his image as an old man. A photo from 1915 which shows dark hair and handlebar mustache. I was glad to return to these stories, lover of history that I am; to remember where I come from …

… And my grandfather today would have been an alternative blogger.

November 23, 2010