Category: Reinaldo Escobar

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 13 November 2022 — Amongst the hundreds of people who gathered in front of the entrance to the Bertolt Brecht Centre on Saturday evening, few knew the reason why the comedian Rigoberto Ferrera was celebrating 30 years on the stage.

1992 was a long time ago for the majority of young people struggling to get into the venue — those who follow him on Instagram — and those who comb their grey hair or who already have no hair left to comb who follow him on Facebook, they probably never passed by that impromptu venue in a tanker truck, on 25th street in Vedado, when ’Riguito’, as his friends call him, played the role of Pepe Grillo in a free adaptation of Pinocchio.

In every one of the many performances of that show, a group of local children learnt the speeches, copied his gestures, and from there was born what became La Colmenita [The Little Beehive] — that ambitious project which took Carlos Alberto Cremata, El Tin, beyond even his best achievements.

Sitting at the keyboard of his piano, or standing on the stage, Rigoberto still holds the attention of that brotherhood of admirers — for whom he stops speaking to allow them to chant the ends of his lines. He doesn’t need the words themselves. He relies on his face. His eyes and his mouth — which spell out everything, but in silence — say it all.

But he also relies on the infinite vocabulary of his body, flexible and elastic, which allows him to demonstrate, say, the difference between how the driver of a big old almendrón-style taxi moves his body, and the contortions of a different driver squeezing behind the wheel of a very small polaquito car. This had to be seen! As Rigoberto stretches out his hand trying to retrieve what remained of his left leg outside of the car. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 2 October 2022 – The night of Saturday, October 1, 2022 will be remembered in our Havana neighborhood of Nuevo Vedado as the moment we came to think of ourselves as protestors. After more than 100 hours without electricity in the wake of Hurricane Ian, only few lights could be seen in our community. In addition to numerous individual private homes, the blackout impacted multi-family buildings of twelve, fourteen and twenty-four floors, the equivalent of 5,000 people by conservative estimates.

At 9:00 PM, the exact same time that a few months ago people went out onto the balconies of these buildings to applaud the health care workers who were battling the Covid-19 pandemic, one could hear the first recognizable shot being fired: the shy, almost casual sound of someone banging a metal pot. It was like the fuse that sets off an explosion of long-repressed desire. For an hour and a half the sounds continued. Government skeptics confirmed there were many who participated; officials feared there were too many.

Most of those who obtained homes in these buildings, products of the micro-brigade system,* had to go through a rigorous screening process to determine if they had a distinguished revolutionary background. Housing distribution regulations called for applicants to be judged on how many “labor and social merits” they had earned. Inspectors also secretly noted if these applicants kept religious images in their homes or maintained relations with relatives overseas.

This meant that being a member of the Communist Party or the Young Communist League, having spent time in an overseas mission or holding an official leadership position was considerably more advantageous than having three, seven or even ten years of hands-on construction experience. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 26 September 2022 — Cuba’s Family Code referendum has provided important signals beyond whether or not the electorate has accepted what was being proposed. The most notable is that 26% of voters chose to abstain, a record high for an election conducted by the Communist regime.

The electoral law stipulates that only valid ballots may be considered in the final results. Those who abstained or canceled their ballots or left them blank are not taken into account. That is why the currrent tally indicates a 66.87% approval (the lowest ever for a government proposal). But if the entire electorate is included in the tally, the figure falls to less than 47%. The will of those who abstained as well as those who canceled their ballots or left them blank are not taken into consideration

If President Miguel Diaz-Canel had not said that a vote in favor of the Family Code is a vote for the revolution and for socialism, no one would be able to now claim there is legal evidence that supporters of the system are in the minority for the first time.

Furthermore, we are talking about an electorate that has been denied the chance to hear from those with differing opinions. No matter how much intelligence and political acumen one might want to attribute to those who have the right to vote in Cuba, informed pubic consent lacks a key component: awareness of opposing arguments. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 31 August 2022 — In April 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev appeared before a full session of the Soviet Union’s Communist Party Central Committee to present his initial proposals for what would ultimately be known as perestroika (restructuring). My friend, the poet and journalist Julio Martinez, was the first to warn me that what was happening in the USSR was unprecedented and could have repercussions for Cuba.

At that moment we became “perestroikos,” addicted to News from Moscow, a weekly publication that for years had been sold on news stands but which overnight became a source of revelations on the failures of Stalinism and what had been known as real socialism.

The fantasy that our own country could undertake a similar restructuring, and the informational transparency that came with it (glasnost), thrilled those of us who still believed in the myth of socialism with a human face. Though we were many, few dared to publicly align themselves with this experiment.

Gorbachev’s actions, almost 10,000 kilometers from the island, had a lasting impact on me. At the suggestion from my poet friend, I decided in early 1987 to leave my comfortable position as a journalist for Cuba International, a monthly magazine dedicated to sweetening our reality, to become an op-ed columnist for the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, from where — oh, how naive! — I tried to promote a kind of tropical perestroika.

At a historic meeting with students from the University of Havana’s School of Journalism at the headquarters of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee, the then all-powerful Carlos Adana announced that there continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 1 July 2022 — The unexpected death of General Luis Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja has given way to a list of questions and a mountain of speculation.  [See also.]

Among the questions that have arisen since Friday, we should mention those that refer to his possible successor and whether whoever replaces him will have the same degree of concentration of power that the now deceased maintained due to his “family condition.” Something as important as access to certain bank accounts or as seemingly simple as the password for his phone or his personal computer may be causing insomnia in many people right now.

As expected, speculation has begun to question the cause of his death. Some have gone so far as to recall that the death certificate of the (also) General Arnaldo Ochoa, executed by being shot in July 1989, listed “acute anemia” as the cause of death; and that a heart attack was the official explanation for the death in prison of the (also) General José Abrahantes in January 1991.

The opacity that surrounded the life of López-Calleja allows us to suppose that he was a person who knew an enormous number of important secrets. Among them, the identity of those who have signed their names to register as owners of Cuban companies abroad to circumvent the economic restrictions imposed by the United States. Economic restrictions that the regime calls the “blockade,” and names that the opposition calls “figureheads.”

If he was the only contact, the only one who knew, and he didn’t have time to tell others he trusted, then there is a risk of a stampede by those who guard the values ​​that belong to the Cuban people. Upon learning that their boss has died, it cannot be ruled out that alleged businessmen in Monaco or Zurich might auction off their companies and run away with the money. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 15 June 2022 — It has been the reading of El tirano, el oficial y el cuerpo de lobos [The tyrant, the official and the wolf pack] by colleague Carlos Manuel Álvarez, which has motivated me to write this text, which neither argues nor attempts to add anything to his article, but I feel obliged to recognize the source of inspiration.

Neither history, nor mythology, nor even the imagination are really useful to answer the question of who is in charge in Cuba today. And I say today, because in the time between 1959 and 2006 it was clear that the one who ruled in Cuba was a single person who answered to the name of Fidel Castro.

The position of premier, that of president of the Councils of State and of Ministers, that of first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba and any other were only important, in the period of time indicated, because they were held by Fidel Castro; or to put it another way, those positions did not make him important, but it was he who gave relevance to the position.

But today is another thing. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 20 May 2022 — The recently approved Penal Code punishes with sentences of up to ten years the citizen “who arbitrarily exercises any right or freedom recognized in the Constitution of the Republic” if that exercise has as its purpose “to change, totally or partially, the Constitution of the Republic or the form of government established by it.”

The previous paragraph is the result of reading articles 119 and 120 of the aforementioned code, which I recommend reading in full and not partially, citing as I do here.

Article 119.1 allows punishing even with the death penalty “whoever takes up arms to obtain by force,” among other things, a total or partial change of the Constitution of the Republic or the form of Government that it establishes.

Article 120.1 provides sentences of up to ten years for anyone who “with any of the purposes stated” in article 119 “arbitrarily” exercises any right recognized in the Constitution.

What does it mean to arbitrarily exercise a right granted by the Constitution? continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 15 May 2022 — A new form of macho exhibitionism (even more sordid) is spreading in Havana. Instead of unzipping their fly they choose to show their wallet. They no longer whisper to their victim what they would like to do to them or what they would like her to do to them: “Look girl, if I catch you I’m going to…” or any other nonsense. Now the offer is priced in pesos, dollars or telephone recharges.

As is known, compliments, even the most “elegant,” have fallen out of favor. Although part of the female population may perhaps feel flattered when a man tells her something about the beauty of her eyes or the charm of her smile, it must be accepted that, in the end, it is an assault on privacy, which, depending on how rudeness demeans you, can become an insult.

A teenager who is still in junior high school has had to change her daily route to school to avoid the proposals that the same guy makes to her every day. “The first time he offered me 500 pesos if I let him put his hand under my blouse,” says the girl, noting that the man, who could be her grandfather, explained it to her in stronger and more direct terms. “Every time the figure went up, he launched into something more daring, until he showed me a hundred dollar bill, but that time I didn’t even understand what he meant.”

A young woman who sells fruit juices in a Havana market had to ask the custodian not to allow the entrance of a regular customer who bought a bag of lemon juice every Saturday by putting a hundred-peso bill on the counter and adding under his breath” For the other juguito [little toy], I’ll give you whatever you ask for.”

Lacking the slightest respect for their targets, these indecent assailants project on their victims the low self-esteem they have for themselves. As if they were at a fair where sexual favors are auctioned off, they put a price on touches that are not caresses, on contacts of the flesh that remain in outrage. They price each part of another’s body with the added value of what they want to do with it.

The street is difficult and money is worth less and less. The values ​​have also been degraded and it is difficult to calculate how steep the slope is. This new form of sexual harassment is another symptom of this degenerative disease, of this multiple trauma that the country suffers. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 25 April 2022 — In a recent interview, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who holds the position of President of the Republic without the consent of the voters, stated that “in Cuba no person has been prosecuted for speaking against the Revolution.” He said more, but I will limit this comment to that phrase.

Although he answered the questions of his complacent interviewer, referring to the events of July 11, the leader of the Cuban communists should have been more explicit, if not more truthful.

What does Díaz-Canel understand by ‘speaking against the Revolution’?

The first question is whether “speaking” includes “writing”; the second is whether the concept changes when speaking into the microphones of a foreign or independent media outlet and whether the words are spoken in the presence of other people, say, in the public square. What if on the streets of Havana a young man displays a placard asking for freedom ?

Here we enter fully into the content. It seems that Díaz-Canel was never informed that distributing or talking about the Declaration of Human Rights was the reason for numerous imprisonments in Cuba; nor have they told him that, in 2003, 75 Cuban opponents were condemned to long sentences, people whose only fault was to express themselves against the ruling party’s policy. continue reading

14ymedio, Reinaldo Escobar, Havana, 21 April 2022 — The figures do not say everything, nor does the news, the official reports, the terrifying images in front of the current of the Rio Grande or the thickness of the Central American jungles. In every Cuban who emigrates there is a dramatic inventory that counts what he carries in his luggage and what he had to leave on the Island.

They carry with them everything they learned in school, the vaccinations they received as a child, their work experience, their academic titles; what their parents invested with love and patience so that they would be a good person, what the country (not the Government) invested in subsidizing their precarious diet.

They also drag along the perhaps useless tangle of tricks and simulations that allowed them to evade surveillance, sneak into a line, invent a medical certificate for not going to work, an excuse to miss a fashion show, waste time at the office, get a snack to facilitate an appointment at the dentist.

They leave behind that part of their family that could not or did not want to accompany them on the adventure. They had to get rid of books, clothes, shoes, music records; the posters, paintings and ornaments with which they decorated their most intimate surroundings. They abandoned love letters, childhood photos; they left promises to keep, appointments to keep, thousands of things to do. continue reading