Yunior García Aguilera – Page 3

Now Havana Wants to be Dulcinea

From left to right, Yunior García Aguilera, Rosa Montero, Eva Orúe and Gioconda Belli, during the reading of the manifesto at the Madrid Book Fair. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 12 June 2023 — At the recent Madrid Book Fair, they read out a manifesto: Literature, always on the side of freedom. The regime in Havana, always quick with a smart answer, put out a riposte in the name of Casa de las Americas, with the title: On the side of Don Quixote.

They accuse the editors of the manifesto of “giving in to the campaign by the hegemonic press against anyone who refuses to accept the dictates of Washington.” How very ironic, coming from a people who bend over backwards to the dictates of Moscow, to go out to battle with this faded old cliché. Perhaps they don’t realise that their “joker” convinces no one anymore? Maybe they just have absolutely no imagination left at all? Are they that mediocre that all they can do is cling onto arguments that are so obsolete, so yellowing and worn out with endless, interminable use?

Perhaps it needs to be gently pointed out to the Cuban regime that the principal promoter of this manifesto is Gioconda Belli, winner, no less, of the Casa de las Americas Prize in 1978, amongst many other honours. The Nicaraguan poet and novelist doesn’t need to ’give in to any campaign’ – because she has been, along with her compatriot Sergio Ramírez, at the centre of attacks from a deranged dictator like Daniel Ortega. Also, these two have received the support of an overwhelming majority of intellectuals, along with all of the other people who have been forced into exile – although Havana maintains a stony silence on such immense injustice.

Among the signatories of the Manifesto are some huge names – some of which the centre, at 3a and G in El Vedado hasn’t yet been able to invite to attend. And it’s probable that some names have been gathered in error (something which has already been rectified) but there we see other names like: Rosa Montero, Juan Carlos Chirinos, Joan Manuel Serrat… and the list just keeps growing.

The Cuban authoritarianism’s declaration, having nothing to put forward in its defence, takes futile refuge in the pages of Quixote and tries to pass itself off as Dulcinea del Toboso. They demand that we judge them as good and just people, though everyone knows that there’s nothing left to celebrate there.

The land of Dulce María Loynaz is just a sad wasteland today, in which the hospitals and the schools fall to bits whilst the number of luxury hotels and the number of prisons multiplies. Cuban artistes suffer censorship today like in the worst times of the pavonato, whilst they see all their rights flattened and with no right of reply. Every Cuban tilts against absurd windmills every single day, carrying out great heroic feats just to obtain a plate of food and dreaming about escape from this hell. continue reading

In Cervantes’ book, Dulcinea represents the platonic love of the protagonist – although in reality she is the idealised form of a country girl called Aldonza Lorenzo, whom the author describes, in a cruel manner, with shades of humour, saying that she was the woman who was the most skilled at salting a pig in the whole of La Mancha. And even when Sancho Panza presents Quixote with a supposed Dulcinea it’s really a foul smelling wench with a hairy wart on her top lip. Don Quixote, a prisoner in his own delirium, justifies the woman’s ugliness by saying that she’s been the victim of some “magic curse”.

It’s understandable, that a regime which has nothing at all positive to show in its master plan, would insist on appealing to Utopias. But more than sixty years have already passed and real life could not be more dystopian than it is now. It is utterly unforgivable that they continue with this fraud, passing themselves off as some kind of joke princess with the hairy wart on her top lip. These people neither want nor plan for any project for their peoples’ freedom. The only, only, thing that interests them is clinging onto absolute power at all costs. The reality of Cuba is not a Cervantes one, it’s an Orwellian one.

We Cubans are totally screwed off now with this stupid endless obsession with romanticising the misery and suffering of a people. The Mexican president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, wants us to be a modern Numancia, although the inhabitants of that village situated on the Muela mountain ended up dying of starvation, from slavery or by suicide. Not long ago, Josep Borell said that Cuba will be the Mallorca of the Caribbean. As the top representative for foreign affairs in the EU he didn’t seem in the slightest bit worried about the more than one thousand political prisoners, nor about all the violations of human rights: he saw only beaches of white sand where European tourists go to get tanned. He only sees the threat from the Chinese and the Russians’ plundering our land whilst Europe fails to grap its own share of the pie.

But Cuba does not want to be any kind Numancia, nor a Mallorca, even less a Dulcinea. Cuba wants to be free. And then, when we are, we will tear down all of those windmills.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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An Unfinished Essay on Hate in Cuba

We were lumpen, scum, worms, bastards… and now we are haters. (Ecured)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 30 May 2023 — The Cuban regime behaves like a violent husband who, after destroying his partner’s face, swears he did it out of love. They, the ones with slogans about death and clubs studded with nails, are now the “Care Bears”. Díaz-Canel, after giving his abhorrent combat order, dons a pink dinosaur costume and pretends to be Barney and Friends.

They say they’re on the side of “those who love and found.” First they used José Martí as the intellectual author of an armed attack on the Moncada barracks. Then they attempted to tattoo a hammer and sickle on the apostle’s* forehead, concealing his criticism of Marxism. Later they juggled to reinterpret the phrase, “with everyone for the good of everyone,” insinuating that “everyone” only included them. And now they waste rivers of ink trying to turn a dramatic poem, Abdala, pointing out that it was an adolescent Martí who spoke of “invincible hate”, an immature Martí.

Against us, the beaten, they always used hateful phrases. We were lumpen, scum, worms, bastards… and now we are haters. They think that, after all the beatings they gave, we will be submissive and get in bed with them.

Che, his model to be followed, was a bit less hypocritical. The hesitant guerilla spoke of hate as a factor in the fight, the intransigent hate of the enemy, the hate that should turn them into efficient killing machines. Che said that “a people without hate cannot triumph over a brutal enemy.” Guevara, at least, consciously assumed the role of hater, without pouting or masking his dislike with fake emojis.

I am not a Guevara fan. The asthmatic guerilla’s incendiary philosophy is not my paradigm. But I take responsibility for my rage. I cannot be indifferent when faced with all the crimes of a deceitful regime that has dispensed so much physical and psychological abuse, in the name of an abstract love. continue reading

That love, considered by Albert Camus as worse than hate, resulted in the Holy Inquisition, the Nazi genocide and the horrors of Stalinism. Hitler himself said he fought for love. And Castroism wants us to view executions, concentration camps for homosexuals, parameterization,** censorship, rapid response brigades, the sinking of ships with children aboard, political prison and forced exile as “crimes of passion”.

The regime has exploited the issue of Buena Fe’s Spanish Tour to shed its clothes. Even Alpidio Alonso has been so cynical as to talk about “harassment” and “physical assault in public”. The Minister of Censorship forgets the January 27th when he not only went out to snatch phones away from people on the street, but also to throw punches at young artists, beat them onto a bus, and drag them to a jail cell.

The members of Buena Fe have not been thrown onto a garbage truck, they have not seen decapitated doves at their doors, they are not imprisoned nor prevented from leaving the country, patrol cars don’t harass them. On the contrary. In a free country, Spain, they can call the authorities if they feel threatened, they can count on their protection during concerts. In Cuba, however, it is the very police deliver the scratches. It is they who dress as the people to spit and throw stones at everyone who doesn’t believe their official discourse.

This flipping of the dictatorship’s narrative about love and hate is not casual. Their laboratories know that there is a global controversy around hate on social media, that the algorithms are programmed to promote or contain content, depending on this dilemma. That is why they abuse those little words that sound altruistic and they place them in their hashtags. The order to speak of love is not the result of a genuine sentiment, it is the Party’s official directive to its technicians on the use of social media.

But millions of Cubans refuse to continue suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Millions of Cubans have shut the door, as Nora in A Doll’s House. Twenty-first century Cuba does not want to continue to be hostage to a toxic love. This country wants to report them, take them before the tribunals, so that they will pay for their abuse. And it is not hate, it is justice. This country can no longer stand the slimy phrases of a regime that only loves power, that only wants us so we can iron their shirts. And it is not hate, it is dignity.

This country… wants a divorce.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

Translator’s notes:
*José Martí is known as “the apostle” by Cubans of all persuasions.
**Parameterization is a process of establishing parameters and declaring anyone who falls outside them (the parametrados) to be what is commonly translated as “misfits” or “marginalized.” This is a process much harsher than implied by these terms in English. The process is akin to the McCarthy witch hunts and black lists and is used, for example, to purge the ranks of teachers, or even to imprison people.

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Cuba is Not a Country for Young People

A group of young people sitting on the wall of the Malecón in Havana. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 16 May 2023 — I’ve rewatched the brilliant Coen brothers’ film No Country for Old Men. The 2007 thriller tells the story of a hunter who finds two million dollars and decides to run away with the money, while being pursued by a relentless hit man. The plot is completed by the county sheriff, who ends up baffled and skeptical of a reality that he can no longer understand.

At the end of the film, I thought a lot about Cuba, about the growing violence in a country where everything remains the same, although nothing is the same anymore. I have thought about how the Revolution tried to sell a narrative of itself that ended up as a cliché, in a crude parody of Animal Farm. I have imagined the possible endings of something that was intended to be an epic saga, but ended up as a soap opera: an exhausted model that is endlessly recycled, producing increasingly mediocre and decadent versions of the same failure.

Even those flags that were once arrogantly raised have ended up in rubble. Education, for example, has been reduced to simple indoctrination, and social networks demonstrate it. Our spelling is no better than the most backward nations in the region. The Ministers of Education and Higher Education were among the few removed in the recent parliamentary circus.

Their dismissal is even more significant considering that the others, although they could not have done worse, retained their positions. The tweets of the highest leaders are embarrassing. The first secretary of the Union of Young Communists has written the phrase “Fidel didn’t told them” five times, demonstrating not only the absence of her own ideas, but also an absolute contempt for the most elementary grammar.

Healthcare, meanwhile, suffers the worst crisis in its history. In 2021 we saw 55,000 more Cubans die than in the previous year, due to the Covid pandemic and its mismanagement. In hospitals there is nothing to treat the most common ailments. I have relatives who have had cardboard taped to a broken arm, because there is no cast. Suicide is among the top ten causes of death, even though the regime uses the euphemism “self-inflicted injuries.” continue reading

Meanwhile, the much-vaunted vaccines ended up being another Ten Million Harvest, an excessive expense that affected the rest of the production of medicines and that did not yield the expected results at the international level. More than an honest interest in confronting the pandemic, the Cuban vaccines tried to be a political weapon, although they never hit the target they were aiming for. In the end, they were neither fully recognized on a global scale, nor were they sufficient to satisfy domestic demand. The country had to acquire the Chinese vaccine from Sinopharm to combine it with a Soberana [Sovereign], no longer so sovereign.

The Cuban regime acts with the same psychopathy and violence as the character of Chigurh, masterfully interpreted by Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men. More than once Castroism has decided if someone lives or dies, if they go to jail or exile, as if it were tossing a coin. We are the country with the most political prisoners in all of Latin America. There are hundreds of Cubans who are prevented from leaving and many others who are denied the right to return.

Cuba is a land without law, where the “president” assures that his decrees are a “joke.” The hand-picked office-holder has also said that the separation of powers is an evil of the capitalist countries and that is why they practice the “unity of powers.” The courts are simple lambs that obey the guidelines of the single party, they are puppets in the hands of ventriloquists.

Fidel Castro, the greatest scriptwriter of the tragedy we suffered, has not been and will not be absolved by History. He wanted to blame José Martí for being the mastermind of his fight, but evidently he looked elsewhere for inspiration. One of the last paragraphs of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, literally says: “The judges of this State can calmly condemn us for our actions; but History, which is the embodiment of a higher truth and a better right, will one day despise this sentence, to absolve us of all guilt.”

That’s why our young people flee. They do not want a future that is reduced to clapping or being locked up. But neither do they want to face the beast, only to later fall victim, as in the film, to the extras that swarm on social networks, even attacking brave men like Luis Manuel Otero.

Cuba, definitely, is not a country for young people

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More Lost Than Columbus

Map of the Island with the description “Terra de Cvba-Asie partis,” which means “Land of Cuba— A Part of Asia” (US Library of Congress)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 9 May 2023 — Our history classes, with few exceptions, were insufferable. They hammered our brains with the Marxist view that, from the time of the aboriginal people up to the bearded cacique, the history of Cuba was limited to the struggle of the working class to create communism. Our exams were reduced to organizing events chronologically, coming up with adjectives for our heroes, repeating by heart dates and slogans. I tip my hat to those teachers and historians who come out of that system, but to be sure, they are like gold nuggets at the bottom of a river.

It’s shameful that so many college students have no idea what distinguished the Taino people from the Ciboney, or can’t name more than two presidents from the republican era. What’s worse, these last decades have been a wash, drowned in censorship and propaganda. In this column, I will try to approach, as a curious, avid reader, the hidden story of an island that was first named Juana and later Fernandina.

“History Without Hysteria” originated as a segment that lasted two seasons on the Cuban podcast El Enjambre. I invite you to debate, dissent, add information and anecdotes. Let us make our history a recurrent theme in our daily conversations, so that it is not confined to academic circles.

I’ll start off with Columbus, a figure so misunderstood that even he never knew what he had “discovered.” I begin with him, because he was the first to write down the name of our land, although he did it incorrectly. Without a clue as to what the Lucayans were telling him about a large, rich island to the south, the Admiral wrote in his diary a mysterious name: Colba. continue reading

Upon reaching land, probably at what is today Bariay, he stated that well-known phrase about “the most beautiful land,” etc. But let’s not get carried away with vanity. Columbus had been travelling for more than two months surrounded by water everywhere and with a crew that was about to throw him overboard. The Admiral would see a bird and sigh; a blade of grass would make his eyes water. All the hyperbole and metaphors were meant to raise the morale of the men and reassure the kings they had invested their two million maravedis well.

Another theory states that the first landing in Cuba was in Puerto Padre. In fact, there is a legend that a sailor exclaimed to a priest: “What a port, padre!” But no, friends of Las Tunas, despite all the paintings that depict a priest with a cross at the landing, there was no priest aboard the two caravels, nor on the ship Santa María.

Christopher Columbus, whose name in Genoese means something like “the dove of Christ,” had made his living as a sailor and a vendor of maps, until he found a more ambitious project: going left to reach the Indies. Fortunately, he did believe that the world was round, not like the millions of people who today still believe it is flat. But his calculations were incorrect. The terrestrial sphere was about four times larger than he and others of his age believed.

Even so, upon landing in Cuba, he assumed that he had finally reached Cipango, the name the Europeans then used for Japan. On top of that, the Admiral asked where he could find the great Khan, and the Taino answered, “Cubanacán, Cubanacán.” The Admiral was overwhelmed by the throng in hides and racoons, although his steadfast objective was the gold. He did not see much, however, but for the occasional ornament in the form of snot hanging from their noses.

On his second voyage, Columbus attempted to circumnavigate Cuba by going south, but he gave up before he reached the western end. He then rectified the assessment made on his first voyage: Juana was not an island, but the mainland. The Admiral understood that he was not in Cipango, but in Catay (China). And he made his men swear to it, on pain of losing their tongues.

Today, more than five centuries later, many are still clueless. Sadly, a lot of people still have a romantic and childish vision of us, with no idea about the country pulsating beneath Castro’s propaganda, the tourist ads, and the ideological banners. For all those suffering from Columbus syndrome, there’s a very native expression: “Wake up, we’re in Cuba!”

Translated by Cristina Saavedra

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Killing the Castro We Carry Inside Us

“WE ARE FIDEL” – The greatest challenge that we Cubans face is not only to overthrow a despicable dictatorship, but to know how to build a democratic country tomorrow, truly free, without dogmas. (Cuban State TV Roundtable program)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 May 2023 — The Cuban dictatorship has practiced for decades the exclusion and extermination of anyone who thinks differently. They shot and put thousands of adversaries behind bars, locked others in concentration camps, ostracized hundreds of artists and intellectuals, and pushed almost a quarter of the population into forced exile.

To raise the flags of intolerance, they always used the excuse of the besieged fortress. Anyone who dared to depart from the dogma was accused of being an “accomplice” of the historical enemy, a CIA agent or a mercenary in the service of the empire.

The worst thing that could happen to those of us who oppose fundamentalism would be to end up reproducing their methods. The playwright René Ariza closes the documentary Improper Conduct by saying: “You have to watch out for the Castro that everyone has inside.” The greatest challenge that we Cubans face is not only to overthrow a despicable dictatorship, but to know how to build tomorrow a democratic country, truly free, without dogmas.

Every cause runs the risk of being absorbed by its most radical wing. And that radicalism is sometimes the result of legitimate pain, but at other times only a symptom of opportunism. Some need to be purer than the rest, more upright. In the time of Christ, the Pharisees were the Jewish sect that appeared to be more rigorous and attached to the law. Hitler counted on the fanaticism of the Brown Shirts. Mao mobilized an army of students, with his red book under his arm, to carry out his Cultural Revolution. Díaz-Canel embraces his Red Scarves, the young militia that shouts with devout pathos: “I am Fidel.”

However, in exile we did not escape the jihadist temptation either. Anger is a product that sells well, especially on social networks. And some have exploited the market of anger to the fullest. State Security uses thousands of whisperers to feed distractions. They push us to waste arrows against the periphery and even against ourselves. continue reading

In recent days, while the dictatorship was indoctrinating 300 Americans, part of the exile was entertained by putting Ana de Armas against the wall. And what was the capital sin of the actress who played Marilyn Monroe? Did she shout “Homeland or Death” or take a selfie with the dome of the Capitol? Did she defend the regime or applaud the repression? No, she just went to spend her birthday in the country where she was born, with her friends. The actress, after being nominated for the most important award in the film industry, decided to celebrate with her classmates from her first years as an acting student.

I am not saying, with this, that we should give up debating about the human and the divine. Debates are essential to build a critical society. But the line that separates the expression of opinion from an act of repudiation is usually very thin. Cabrera Infante said that, in those convulsive first years, Fidel Castro called Nicolás Guillén a “slacker” at a university rally. “The bearded one” used his charisma and power to throw a mob of students against the poet’s house, shouting slogans against laziness. Whether the anecdote is true or not, Guillén would not be the only victim of the sinister influencer.

Sometimes one goes on social media wondering, who are they stoning now? Just a few weeks ago we witnessed attacks against the documentary The Padilla Case, by filmmaker Pavel Giroud. But there was not only debate about how he had access to the original files or whether he should have published them in their entirety. It went further. Some even started boycott campaigns to prevent the film from reaching certain festivals. Time showed that his work knew how to reach circuits and spaces where the original material had been Olympicly ignored. Life proved the artist right. Seeing him receive the Platinum Prize and listening to his words in front of millions of people around the world was an unquestionable victory for the cause of Cuba’s freedom.

To achieve the long-awaited democracy, it is not enough to assume the opposite discourse. It is also necessary to move away from authoritarian and totalitarian methods. To win the empathy of millions of undecided Cubans and the international community trapped in doubt, we must never look like that rabid caricature that Castroism tries to sell about us. We must put aside the temptation to pretend that everyone thinks and acts like us. We have to kill the Castro we carry inside us.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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Cuba’s Silent Majority

Regime supporters during an act of repudiation in front of Yunior García Aguilera’s home, November 14, 2021. (EFE)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 18 April 2023 — I have a friend who says he’s not leftist, nor rightist, but the opposite. After his apparently absurd joke, it’s evident he is fed up with the polarization that is shaking Cuba and the planet.

The truth is that those on the right tend to move toward ever more conservative poslitions, exploiting ultranationalist sentiment. The left, for its part, shamelessly defends the current dictatorships, becoming complicit in their crimes. Democracy is neither guaranteed, nor an irreversible conquest.

The world is upside down. Putin’s war embodies the most voracious imperialism, while receiving the support of those who always wave “anti-imperialist” flags. These hemiplegic morals justify Russia’s talk of NATO’s expansion, but forget that six decades ago the USSR placed atomic missiles 90 miles from the United States, converting Cuba into a soviet aircraft carrier. The bearded one dreamt of the glory of the holocaust and recommended to Nikita that he launch the first bomb. Fortunately, Kruschev Olympically ignored the cigar smoker, preferring to negotiate with Kennedy.

China, the power led by an unflappable Winnie the Pooh, is now a champion of modern capitalism and also the nation with the most environmental pollution. All this, while technically being a “socialist” country. To heck with all the proletariat and value added rhetoric. To heck also with all the complaints of human rights violations in the giant Asian country. Consumers need to buy cheap, it doesn’t matter that China fills the world with trifles . Meanwhile, Thucydides’s trap threatens to confront, sooner or later, both world powers, and humanity will buy tickets to view, online, the spectacle that could extinguish us.

On the other hand, the more radical leaders on the right have become populists, in the style of Mao, Perón or Castro. They exploit the ire of non-conformists, speak of refounding and making their nations greater, of rescuing an epic past, glorious and superior. They devote themselves to creating armies of followers who lynch and exterminate anyone with a trace of dissent. And hordes of wrathful people believe that the higher they build a wall, the greater their freedom will be. continue reading

I come from a sick country. In the “revolutionary” Cuba, the New Man was forged by the fire of executions, acts of repudiation, purges, mass exodus and permanent crisis. But none of that left a legacy of a more just and inclusive place, it would have been impossible. Today we are the country with the most political prisoners in the region. A handful of bureaucrats and generals has taken the Island hostage and the ransom they demand is death. The majority has shown, on social media, in the streets, and even at the polls that they do not want to continue living under that regime, but citizens lack a single democratic tool to dethrone them.

Those in power, knowing that they are a minority, bet on confrontation, one against the other. They bet on dividing us, on us wearing ourselves out due to our own differences. They patiently wait for us to practice political cannibalism until there is no one left with a good eye.

In the dozens of interrogations I suffered, they rarely asked me questions. They knew everything about me, they had thousands of ways to find out — placing microphones in my toothbrushes, cameras in the toilet. They could threaten and blackmail those close to me until they felt squeezed. Then, why interrogate me?

In all those encounters they invested hours in talking bad about others, in damaging the image of activists like Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara or Tania Bruguera. They aimed to influence my subconscious so I would try to distance myself from them, so I would disagree with their positions and end up making them my enemies.

Those in power enjoy watching social media be the firing squad. And in the crossfire, there is a silent majority that does not know which side to join, disgusted from so much rot. That majority doesn’t find an alternative that seems reasonable and coherent, when faced with the downpour of insults and slogans. But that silent majority, if they decide to no longer be on the margins and rise up, could be a great force.

When this center awakens from its lethargy and takes on a position without fearing the radicals, fundamentalism, it will be folding in on itself to that point on a circle where both extremes meet. And it will be clear that, to those in power, ideology does not matter one bit, they use it for their convenience. Those in power, in reality, do not believe in left or right, but rather, all the opposite.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba’s Diaz-Canel, Five Years as Hand-Picked Dictator

Díaz-Canel’s international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes (EFE)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 5 April 2023 — That April 19, 2018, when deputies had to “elect” the president of the Republic, there was only one name on their ballots aspiring to the position. Raúl Castro himself cleared away all doubts by declaring that his appointment was not a coincidence, that it was planned and foreseen by the Party’s leadership. Díaz-Canel was the only survivor of a dozen “test-tube” leaders who had been training to inherit the throne.

The electronic engineer and lieutenant colonel had slowly climbed from the Union of Young Communists. His ascent was meticulously calculated, without haste, so as not to repeat the mistakes they had previously made with Roberto Robaina, Carlos Lage, Feliz Pérez Roque and Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz.

The “star of Placetas” fulfilled an international mission in Nicaragua. He next became the highest authority of the Party in Villa Clara, his native province, and then was given his litmus test: Holguín. In the “city of parks” he earned the nickname of Miguel Díaz-Condón [condom] for preventing peasants from smuggling milk. And it was also there that he met Lis Cuesta, broke up his marriage and fearing that his promotion would be frustrated.

I remember that on one occasion they both attended the premiere of one of my works. At the end of the show, they stayed for the toast and told us about the adventures of their romance. The then-first secretary of the Party in Holguín feared that the scandal would affect his image and asked for advice from the most experienced boss in the province.

The old man, Miguel Cano Blanco, was familiar with local customs and situations and suggested to his namesake that he grab his lover by the hand and take her everywhere. For a couple of weeks there would be no talk of anything else in the city, but over time, the gossip would run out, people would end up getting used to the new normal, and his career would not be affected. Creative resistance, is what Cano Blanco recommended. Lis Cuesta would take his advice to the letter, to this day. continue reading

There’s not even a shadow left of that guy I once met in Holguín. His face has hardened, giving him a robotic appearance. Paranoia has made his hair turn white in a very short time, and his belly increased at the same rate as his blunders. Pigeons never landed on the new dictator’s shoulder, only vultures. The crash of a passenger plane, a tornado in Havana, the pandemic, the explosion of the Saratoga Hotel and the fire at the Supertanker Base at Matanzas are just a few examples of the unluckiness (salao) that is Díaz-Canel, according to his own words.

But not everything has been a consequence of misfortune. His obstinacy in giving continuity to a perverse and dysfunctional model makes him a direct culprit for the destitution suffered by the Cuban people. The Ordering Task* was a catastrophe and plunged the country into unbridled inflation. And his international policy has placed Cuba on the side of the most infamous causes, such as Putin’s imperialist war and Daniel Ortega’s criminal extremism.

This has also been a five-year period of protests. On July 11, 2021, more than 40 cities took to the streets in a domino effect, and Díaz-Canel decided to stain his hands with blood. His combat order unleashed violence that left a young man shot in the back and killed, several wounded and more than a thousand political prisoners. The 11J was a definitive watershed moment, and the dictator earned the worst nicknames in Cuba’s history.

Then would come the biggest migratory wave of all time in the archipelago, a mass exodus that has left the country without young people and without a future. The popular disenchantment has been clearly reflected in the polls. The regime’s placebo votes have recorded the highest rates of abstention, apathy and rejection.

It is clear that his government has been disastrous. Not even in healthcare, which has always been the regime’s banner, can they boast of anything. His plan to build 1.7 homes a day per municipality went by the wayside. And Parliament itself gave him a standing ovation when he confessed that his management was a disaster.

In any democratic country, someone with his record would have already resigned or would be swept from power at the polls. But Cuba is a dictatorship. Díaz-Canel has received the order to hold the fort as long as Raúl is alive. And no one would be surprised if his name, on April 19, is again the only option on the deputies’ ballot.

*Translator’s note: The “Ordering Task” [Tarea Ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

Translator: Hombre de Paz

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The (Un)popular Power of Castroism

Díaz-Canel goes along under pressure, from platform to platform, taking advantage of anything, even if it’s a defeat in baseball with a score of 14 to 2. (PL)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 23 March 2023 — Next Sunday the Cuban regime will hold “elections” where 470 candidates for Parliament will “dispute,” nothing more and nothing less than 470 seats. When you try to explain this process to any citizen of a democratic country, their brain usually short-circuits. But that’s the scheme, as absurd and brazen as it sounds. The people choose absolutely nothing; they simply ratify a decision that has already been made previously by the single party.

To carry out this esoteric trap, they resort to the “united vote.” The Government itself will be in charge of spending millions of resources on propaganda to convince you that you should vote for everyone, as if it were a combo. If in Stalin’s USSR the ballots presented a single candidate, then in the Cuba of the Castro brothers they save paper. Just put a jumble of names on a ballot and add a circle on top of it that summarizes them all. By the way, you also save ink.

Fidel himself expressed in February 1993 that the ’united vote’ was not a technical issue, but a political issue, that it was “the strategy of patriots, of revolutionaries.” In reality, it was simply his strategy to play at voting, once every five years, without risking absolutely anything.

No candidate, obviously, can be suspected of having divergences in official thinking. All have passed through several filters to reach the final list and will continue to be watched with a magnifying glass, in case they present any ideological deviation along the way. They will be allowed to have some corrupt behaviors, of course. Cuba is a country where corruption is called “fight” and everyone knows “how bad it is.” But State Security will keep in its drawers any material that can compromise them, just in case they have to “be ruined” to make an example of them, as they did with Carlos Lage and Felipe Pérez Roque.

When I lived in Cuba, I was close to several deputies, and the truth is that the vast majority are indistinguishable. They dedicate themselves to attending endless meetings; they will unanimously approve any decision that comes from above, and they will enjoy some privileges that the position affords them. continue reading

That’s why the electoral campaigns are superfluous. There is no need to have or present any project. All you need is a poorly printed biography showing your photo, the morning assemblies at school in which you participated during your childhood and the mass organizations to which you belong. Hardly anyone will stop to read this nonsense, which is usually identical. That is also why the ballot boxes are guarded by children. After all, what could go wrong?

But Cuba is no longer the place where people used to vote like automatons, to “get it over with.” On recent occasions, the number of abstentions, canceled and blank ballots has increased dramatically. Díaz-Canel goes along under pressure, from platform to platform, taking advantage of anything, even if it’s a defeat in baseball of 14 to 2. What does it matter? He and his bosses (generals with more stars than principles) know perfectly well that this March 26 could break the mold: the rejection of a rigged, grotesque and undemocratic model.

Even seeing it from the perspective of those who sympathize with the Revolution, this management has been, by far, the worst in decades! They have not fulfilled any of the projects that were drawn up (like that plan of 1.7 homes a day); inflation rises at a quadrangular rate; hunger lurks in every corner of the country; repression is more guaranteed than the bread of the quota; the blackouts are a joke; the young people leave, and the violence expands in an alarming way.

To make matters worse, the visible figures of the system could not be more gray or unpleasant. Díaz-Canel and his “wife who works at her work” (as he himself called her) have shone in the art of cantinfleo (with the pardon of Cantinflas*). I’m not sure if they try to emulate Maduro, but their clumsiness is about to set a Guinness world record.

What should we Cubans do? Regardless of everyone’s ideology, we have to be honest with ourselves. It would be enough to look around and understand that the night cannot be eternal. This Sunday we can show them and the world that this obsolete and decadent system does not have our support. We can leave them alone in their circus, without being able to boast of a power that is completely unpopular.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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The Latin American Hybrid Left

The president of Argentina, Alberto Fernandez (on the right), receives the president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, at the beginning of the Celac summit of 2023, in Buenos Aires (Argentina). (EFE/Matías Martín Campaya)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 23 February 2023 — During the Cold War, Latin America was more like a hot zone. It is undeniable that almost all the countries in the area suffered extreme right-wing dictatorships, nor can the United States’ support for these regimes cannot be hidden. The fear of Soviet tentacles was real, and Cuba was proof enough, with a missile crisis that almost exterminated us all.

But Fidel Castro would also use fear as a permanent discourse, governing at gunpoint and deploying a fierce propaganda campaign to seduce fans of violent revolutions.

The left would come out of its first adolescence without being so Marxist or rebellious. The United States lowered the tone and became more tolerant, mainly after the collapse of the USSR. Leftist Latin Americans could then come to power with votes rather than bullets.

This is how the Pink Tide emerged, with its bouquet of enthusiastic figures. The group went along successfully for a while, increasing social spending and managing to reduce poverty. Although, in reality, the initial luck was possible thanks to the increase in the price of oil and other raw materials.

Then came the debacle: corruption scandals, inflation, a return to poverty and electoral defeats. Except some leaders would not be willing to give up power so easily. Today, Latin America suffers from three dictatorships, all of the extreme left.

Some analysts talk about a new Pink Tide after the victories of López Obrador in Mexico, Fernández in Argentina, Boric in Chile and Petro in Colombia, plus the rebirth of Lula in Brazil. And although it is true that the largest economies in the region are governed by progressive leaders, the context is very different. The world has still not recovered from the impact of the pandemic, and Putin’s invasion has disrupted everything. continue reading

Like the war, this tide is quite hybrid. Its protagonists have openly expressed their differences with respect to Russia and have demonstrated nuances concerning the “triangle of sadness” (Cuba-Venezuela-Nicaragua).

Boric, for example, has harshly criticized the three regimes. He has said that the situation of Cuban prisoners of conscience is unacceptable, has urged Venezuela’s President Maduro to hold truly democratic elections by 2024 and has called Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega a dictator. The Chilean has also described Putin as an autocrat who is waging a war of aggression and not, as Russian propaganda claims, a “special military operation.”

For his part, Gustavo Petro, the first leftist president of Colombia, has been much more ambiguous on the issue of Ukraine and refused to send that country the Russian weapons he possesses, a decision that was applauded by Moscow.

Although Petro tried to keep his distance from his authoritarian neighbors during his campaign, his inclination in favor of castro–chavismo is no secret to anyone. With Nicaragua the matter is more delicate, partly because of a territorial dispute between the two nations and also because Ortega’s decision to banish more than 300 Nicaraguans is absolutely indefensible.

For the current president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, Cuba and the ’blockade’ [i.e. the US embargo] will always be part of the same phrase, since he “is not aware of the repression on the Island.” At the recent Celac summit, he said that all those present had been elected by their people and that Maduro was “more than invited.” However, Chávez’s heir canceled his trip at the last minute. He did not want to take risks, since there is a reward of 15 million dollars for those who facilitate his international capture. With regard to Ortega, the Argentine chameleon has also been forced to condemn him after his last tyrannical extravagance.

For the president of Mexico, castro-ortega-chavismo is as innocent as singing Las Mañanitas. López Obrador sabotaged the Summit of the Americas when Biden did not want to invite the triumvirate, which maintained relations with Maduro while 60 countries recognized Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela, and López Obrador recently handed over the order of the Aztec Eagle to the Cuban dictator. But as with Ortega, El Peje* also softened his radicalism. A few days ago he revealed a letter he sent in December to the former guerrilla-dictator, requesting the release of the opposition prisoner Dora María Téllez.

Lula has been a fervent defender of Castroism, going so far as to affirm that Cuba would have the same standards as Norway or Denmark if it were not for the embargo. He also refuses to hand over weapons to Zelenski and has proposed a third way for a dialogued solution, led by none other than China.

As we can see, the Latin American hybrid left is no longer a teenager, but there is still a long way to go before it becomes a democratic adult.

*Translator’s note: El Peje is Lopez-Obrador’s nickname because of his accent. The nickname comes from pejelagarto (literally, fish lizard), an alligator-like fish from his native Tabasco, meaning he’s hard to pin down.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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A Free Homeland to Live In

The filmmaker faced a thousand dangers to leave a memory of the popular rebellion that shook the country in 2018. (fotograma)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 2 February 2023 — I have seen the documentary Nicaragua, patria libre para vivir [Nicaragua, a Free Homeland to Live In], three times, and all three times it has shaken me to the core. Its director, the Andalusian poet and philologist, Daniel Rodríguez Moya, says that you can be born anywhere in the world and love it, but you can also choose a land to love, without necessarily having been born there. And he decided, 20 years ago, to fall in love with Nicaragua.

Daniel sold his poetry publishing company in Granada to finance his film. He went with his camera to the land of volcanoes and faced a thousand dangers to leave a memory of the popular rebellion that shook that country in 2018. Beyond the award at the Invisible Film Festival in Bilbao, what excites the poet is that Nicaraguans have found in his images a bastion against forgetting.

Because they show convulsive times. Sometimes the world prefers to look away and ignore that there are dictatorships in our America, the same or worse than those that stained the Twentieth Century with blood. Sometimes sanctions are not enough to stop those who violate human rights with impunity, trampling on democracy. Sometimes there is an “idiotic left,” as sociologist Sofía Montenegro calls it in the documentary, that continues to support these tyrants in the name of a sick romanticism.

The testimony of someone like Sergio Ramírez, a Cervantes award winner and former vice president of Nicaragua, is overwhelming. Sergio had the moral stature to move away from a revolution that had already lost its course. And after the 2018 protests, Ortega ordered his capture. The novelist had already suffered persecution under Somoza. Now he would be persecuted by his own comrades in the struggle. The founder of the literary festival Centroamérica cuenta, the most important literary festival in the region, recounts how he preferred to be considered a traitor by the beasts, rather than become one of them. continue reading

One shudders to hear the verses of Gioconda Belli, a multi-award-winning writer who has also had to go into exile. The author of La mujer habitada [The Inhabited Woman] would never accept being an accomplice of someone who overthrew Anastasio Somoza to end up becoming another dictator. Nicaragua’s best children have had to leave or are trapped in its dungeons.

I have told Moya that I would love for Cubans to be able to see his movie. It is obvious that the Island’s regime would never allow such a film at its festivals, much less dare to put it on television. But it would be fabulous if it could sneak into the paquete* [“Weekly Packet”] so Cubans could look at themselves in the mirror. There are too many similarities to our own history.

Every time Rosario Murillo, current vice president and wife of Daniel Ortega, mentions the word “love,” one feels nauseated. But in Cuba they also hide behind words such as “solidarity” or “humanism,” while the minions beat our young people in the streets, surveille our poets and condemn an entire country to the most abject poverty.

I have rarely seen an entire audience cry in front of a documentary. And with this one it has happened to me three times. When the father of one of the murdered boys talks about his last meeting with his son, you can’t help but break down. There is too much truth in his words and too much helplessness in his eyes, but not a single trace of hatred. And I think of all the mothers of our boys in Cuba. I think about everything that went through their heads when they saw the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo meet in Argentina with the Cuban dictator who gave the order to fight against our children.

How could those illustrious ladies forget the origin of their causes? How can they put ideological interests before the most elementary sense of justice? I prefer to believe that they are very stunned by the “lobby” and the propaganda displayed by a regime addicted to lies. I prefer to tell our mothers: forgive them, because they know not what they do.

Even the title of this documentary has a close relationship with our reality. The Sandinista revolution has used as its motto a phrase that Augusto César Sandino used as a battle cry in 1927: “A free homeland or death.” And in Cuba, since 1960, Fidel Castro would culminate all his endless speeches with the slogan: “Homeland or Death.” It is no coincidence that both Cubans and Nicaraguans have developed that rejection of the word “death.”

It is time for us, in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Cuba, and in every corner where there is a stupid and hypocritical dictatorship, to close ranks. It’s time to replace death with life, and not just in songs.

*Translator’s note: El Paquete Semanal, the weekly package, is a collection of digital material distributed underground.

Translated by Regina Anavy

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‘She’s Quiet’: Cuba’s University of the Arts (ISA) Has a New Dean

His assignment was never well received by his students nor the professors. José Ernesto continued to be a little snob, well connected but lacking his own merit, a “moron.” (ISA)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 18 January 2023 — A rumor had been going around the Island since December of last year: the dean of the Universidad de las Artes (ISA) had been relieved of his duties. This euphemism is usually used in Cuba when referring to party hacks who are dismissed or dethroned. Many simply go on to occupy other positions. Some, if suspected of disloyalty, are condemned to the pajama plan. While the more fortunate ones, if well connected, tend to fall up.

December 12, 2022 was the last day the Universidad de las Artes’ Twitter account tagged José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero in its publications. The next day, in his place it began tagging Rolando Valentín Ortega Álvarez, who was the director of the Centro Nacional de Escuelas de Artes [National Center for Art Schools]. And just two days later, during a visit by the booed minister Alpidio Alonso to ISA, its tweets were already referring to Rolando Orgega as the dean of that institution. The discrete revelation occurred amid the celebration of Cultural Workers’ Day, while ISA was preparing its delegation to attend the Congress of the Federation of University Students (FEU).

There was no official announcement, nor a press release. There was no farewell in the State newspaper Granma, nor a brief notice of the new tenant occupying the highest seat of leadership. To this day, many professors and students continue to be unaware of the substitution. ISA changed the dean as if he were the subject of a Bad Bunny song, “Ella es callaíta” [She is quiet].

In August 2021, quite the opposite occurred. A month after the most significant social uprising in Cuba, with much fanfare the official media announced one of Iroel Sánchez’s disciples as the new dean of the Universidad de las Artes. Nováez Guerrero didn’t have the CV, nor the degrees, nor the required level of teaching experience for such responsibility. He did not have the slightest idea, but he didn’t need it. The young Taliban had posted on Facebook, “The streets belong to revolutionaries and communists. Homeland or death! The combat order is given.” And that, automatically, converted him into a master and doctor in the eyes of the dictatorship’s bureaucrats. continue reading

His assignment seemed to form part of Iroel Sanchez’s strategy to place his fandom in key positions within cultural institutions. The “Las Villas clan” took advantage of the social whirlwind to position their pawns on the chess board and accumulate power and influence, aware that the party had started. Díaz-Canel, more scared than Ceausescu and not knowing from where the shots would come, preferred to surround himself with those from his province (we know that regionalism in Cuba continues to be key to understanding political moves.) It didn’t matter much to him that his speech abused the word “science.” If they needed to place a novice like Nováez in a position that was too big for him, they’d just do it.

Furthermore, ISA was not just any university. Professors Anamely Ramos and Omara Ruiz Urquiola were from there. From its classrooms graduated Tania Bruguera and a certain playwright they prefer not to mention. The Universidad de las Artes had already been the scene of several hunger strikes, some which received media attention such as the “split pea soup” strike. ISA was playing a role similar to what the University of Havana had played in the past. It was imperative that they put out that flame before it spread uncontrollably to the rest of a sector so dangerous (and powerful) as the students.

His assignment was never well received by his students nor the professors. José Ernesto continued to be a little snob, well connected but lacking his own merit, a “moron.”

But Nováez lasted less time in that position than it takes a Master to obtain their diploma. The cushions in the dean’s office did not have time to adjust to the bottom of the brand new dean. What happened? Did his little poems not motivate those cloistered in the meetings? Did he not realize that corruption tends to run rampant in these institutions? Or did he clash with the big fish of other clans, such as Viceminister of Culture Kenelma Carvajal, the wife of Alex Castro Soto?

For now, Nováez the novice, will need to be statisfied with representing the Network of Cuban Artists and Intellectuals in Defense of Humanity, a network so obsolete it only serves to trap trolls in the southern seas.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Cuba: A Raspberry for the Little Dictator

A gentle ’tilt-up’ shows us the model’s shoes and suit, to end up in extreme close-up, with more filters than on Instagram. (Screen capture)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, January 3, 2023 — Almost everyone has heard of the Golden Raspberry Awards, popularly known as the Razzies or the anti-Oscars, where the worst films and performances of the year are recognized. The video presented by Díaz-Canel to welcome 2023 could very well sweep those awards, if they were to consider it.

With violins in the background, the camera begins its journey revealing the Cuban flag behind some support columns. And there, in front of the sequestered plaza of a silent Martí, appears the divo of Placetas (not to be confused with Eduardo Antonio). A gentle tilt-up shows us the model’s shoes and suit, ending up in an extreme close-up, with more filters than Instagram.

The hand-picked president of Cuba has not learned (and will not learn) to read the teleprompter with ease. His gestures remind us of elementary school mornings, where some ‘pioneer’ recited verses without having the slightest control over the movement of his or her hands. The president’s makeup artists went above and beyond in their efforts to make him look like the late Walter Mercado, the famous Univision astrologer. And the worst thing, after the completely empty speech, was hearing a “venga la esperanza” [hope, come] said in such an inorganic way, that Corina Mestre herself, an official Politburo hack, must flatly deny having advised him.

We already know that the electric engineer (now also a doctor in who knows what subject) does not possess the characteristics for oratory. Although, to be honest, he has not shown to have the slightest idea about communication, economics, public administration, international law or diplomacy either. His very low level of English made him look ridiculous on his recent tour of the Caribbean. And it must be recognized that he has made a great effort to differentiate himself from Fidel Castro, who neither sang nor danced, but Miguelito did not hit a note either.

The whole world has recognized Vladimir Putin as the worst figure of the year. And the Cuban dictator went to Moscow a few months ago to lick the boots of the new Stalin. All of Europe took note of the meeting and very soon the smiling photo will begin to take its toll on the island’s regime. Díaz-Canel returned to Cuba from that trip with little more than a cold and new debts that he will not be able to repay. continue reading

Upon stepping on national soil, Cubans welcomed him with an historical level of abstention in municipal elections, demonstrating that fewer and fewer are pretending to believe in the dictatorship’s electoral farce. Now the National Electoral Council is in a rush, wondering what tricks they can come up with to avoid another disaster on March 26, 2023, when the time comes to unanimously renew Parliament. Math never falters. Considering Cubans’ behavior at the polls during the last electoral process , only a gigantic fraud would prevent a new record of abstention.

For the New Year’s video, Díaz-Canel donned a white jacket, perhaps to be in tune with the Letter of the Year, during which, according to the Ifá priests, Obatalá will be the ruling deity. Díaz-Canel forgets that on November 15, 2021, many Cubans were violently repressed for dressing in that color. He forgets that 2022 has been a terribly dark year, marked not only by the worst revolutionary blackouts, but also by perennial shortages, protests, persecution, exiles, banishment, and death.

In May we suffered the explosion of the Saratoga hotel, with a total of 47 fatalities. In August we dressed in mourning once again following the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas, where 17 people lost their lives. And in October the disastrous history of the tugboat 13 de Marzo was repeated when 7 Cubans, including a two-year-old girl, lost their lives after the sinking of a boat off the coast of Bahía Honda.

For Díaz-Canel 2023 does not bode well, with the exception of “creative resistance”, a synonym for more misery, sacrifices and waiting. His only success has been to stay in power. However, in a country where people cannot freely elect their representatives, where a single party has a monopoly on weapons, where the courts are obedient inquisitors, that “success” is nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory.

The little dictator has already more than earned the rejection of the vast majority, though we do not have democratic and peaceful means to remove him from power. For his terrible performance, both in front of and behind the cameras, Díaz-Canel deserves more than a raspberry.

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Cuba: Havanageddon, Apocalypse of a Dictatorship

Younger organizations avoid caudillismo, they learn to work in a coordinated manner alongside others, they establish linkages with the generations with more accumulated experience. (Photograph from “Juan de los Muertos”, a movie directed by Alejandro Brugués, 2011)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 7 December 2022 — The regime in Havana is aware that its end is near. In the last three years the system’s undeniable collapse has become evident. The “circumstancial” crisis announced by Díaz-Canel in 2019 has been growing and worsening irreversibly. Applying the ’Ordering Task’* amid the pandemic turned out to be a foolish and suicidal act, which increased inflation, stockouts, and popular discontent.

The Cuban economy is like a Carilda Oliver Labra verse: “I am getting messy, love, I am getting messy.” Not only is it more chaotic than ever, but it is underwater in a sea of debt and unproductiveness. As if that were not enough, the leadership today is experiencing its greatest leadership crisis, with cadres that lack charisma, are politically mediocre and incapable of inspiring respect or making effective decisions.

The official discourse can’t manage to generate a single new idea and is limited to recycling old babble. But now the ones who believe the story of the blockade [i.e. the American embargo] as a perennial excuse are ever fewer, very few have faith that the system will turn out to be prosperous and sustainable and no one believes the threat of a foreign invasion anymore. The reality is that Cuba is not a priority for the Government of the United States. “David” has lost his slingshot and desperately seeks to do business with “Goliath.” The ripe fruit is about to fall to the ground and no one seems interested in taking it. continue reading

To stretch out the agony, the continent’s oldest dictatorship manages to strengthen its international alliances. However, its displays of submissiveness to Putin are like a fatal boomerang. Russia is not in a position to help anyone. And any rapprochement with the Kremlin, at this time, is like marking one’s forehead with the number of the beast.

On the other hand, the citizenry has lost its fear at a rapid pace. Never before had the regime had to confront so many protests, in all corners of the country. Social media is a battlefield where the government has lost by a landslide, despite the internet cuts, the creation of an army of anonymous accounts and the millions invested to attempt to control cyberspace. Even at the polls, their false democracy show has lost its audience. If before they used to brag about a participation rate above 95% of the electorate, the latest electoral skirmishes have broken all records of abstentions and no votes.

The brutal repression against everyone who dissents has not managed to suffocate the flames of protest. State Security has fragmented potential threats into three blocks. They take some directly to jail, issuing long sentences while they try to demoralize them, accusing them of being common, violent or marginalized criminals. They force others into exile, pushing them to abandon the country permanently. And for the rest, they simply use their techniques to reduce them to “non-persons,” they fire them or expel them from the university, surround their homes, cutoff their telephones, and submit them to continuous stress with threats, surveillance, and acts of repudiation.

State Security’s greatest achievement has been, perhaps, keeping the opposition fractured. In this way, they prevent opponents from forming a solid block capable of coordinating effective actions and obtaining legitimacy and recognition by international organizations.

To divide us, they exploit distrust among one another, maximizing ego struggles and diverting discussions toward unfruitful and innocuous areas. On social media, the regime counts on hundreds of anticommunist accounts whose only objective is to attack and discredit all leadership or any attempt at unification. And these anonymous accounts, supposedly radical, manage to do more damage than the typical ciberclarias.**

However, beyond their success, it is also palpable that many opponents are reaching a level of political maturity that allows them to put differences aside and focus on common strategies. Younger organizations avoid caudillismo, learn to work in a coordinated manner alongside others, they establish linkages with the generations with more accumulated experience and they create strong connections with opponents of other dictatorships, like those of Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Cuban civil society is becoming aware of its potential. Little by little they claim spaces that the regime doesn’t know and cannot reconquer. Each chunk of power taken from them is ground gained for democracy which we must all build together.

The dictatorship knows its end is near.

Translated by: Silvia Suárez

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Translator’s notes:

*The ‘Ordering Task’ [tarea ordenamiento] is a collection of measures that include eliminating the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC), leaving the Cuban peso (CUP) as the only national currency, raising prices, raising salaries (but not as much as prices), opening stores that take payment only in hard currency, which must be in the form of specially issued pre-paid debit cards, and a broad range of other measures targeted to different elements of the Cuban economy.

**’Ciberclarias’ refers to internet trolls at the service of the government.

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15 November, The Day the Cuban Dictatorship Lost all its Masks

Government supporters during a demonstration outside the home of Yunior García Aguilera on Sunday 14 November 2021. (EFE)

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 16 November 2022 — Ever since we first called for the Civic March for Change we knew that it would be a practical impossibility to make it happen. Even so, it was worth it to make them unmask themselves to show their absolutely tyrannical character, above all in a context in which they tried to present themselves as a State of Law/Rights.

Two weeks after 11J [11 July 2021 protests], the judicial organs of the regime held a press conference that is still shocking in its cynicism. The president of the supreme tribunal, in a faltering voice, denied there was a body of opinion which spoke of an avalanche of judicial trials. According to Rubén Remigio Ferro, he only knew of 19 cases involving 59 people. Later it became known that the number of defendants was, scandalously, approaching a thousand.

Another ploy by this man would be to claim that the tribunals operated independently and that they only had to follow the law. Díaz-Canel himself then contradicted this, saying that “in Cuba we don’t work with a separation of powers, but with a unity of powers”. Remigio must have wanted the ground to swallow him up, although for that he’d have needed to have a sense of shame.

The big lie, which definitively pushed us into organising the march, came when we heard him say that “[holding] different opinions, including political opinions different from those which are dominant in the country, did not constitute a crime”. According to the supreme tribunal president, “demonstrating, far from constituting a crime, was a constitutional right”. continue reading

From the Archipiélago platform, and along with the Council for the Transition we tried to expose these lies. Many of us have suffered prison for protesting on 11 July. And despite having done so unquestionably peacefully, with the international press as witness, we were thrown in a refuse truck and put behind bars.

The first date we chose was 20 November. It was necessary to make our application formally and well in advance. The world would watch our every move. The first reply from the regime was the most threatening possible: the Armed Forces declared 20 November as a National Day of Defence and announced a militarization of the country for the three preceding days.

We kept our composure. Calmly, we explained that we had no interest in a violent confrontation with the army, so we put forward the date to 15 November. This date was chosen carefully because on that day the country would reopen the airports for international tourism and so they couldn’t use the pandemic as an excuse to prohibit the march.

The regime then resorted to using all the repressive mechanisms at its disposal: the municipal governments, national television, district attorneys and all State Security agents. They interrogated any citizen who dared to “like” our posts and filled social media with pictures of the batons with which they would come out to beat us. They even organised vaccination centres for children along the route we proposed for the march. It was clear that almost no one would dare to come out. And so it was.

If the regime had had a minimal amount of intelligence they would just have put low limits on the numbers of people allowed to join the march, or they’d have designated a route far from public visibility. But they couldn’t do even that. The donkey who reckons to be the head of the dictatorship didn’t want to run any risk. And it remained clear for the whole world to see that the people of Cuba have no means whatever to express a political opinion that might differ from the official line.

The international press followed the story closely and barely anyone in the world had any doubt that the banning of the march showed that we, in trying to organise it were justified in our demands. But the dictatorship has a long history of achieving Pyrrhic victories. So they played the only cards remaining to them: discreditation, character assassination, confusion, sowing of suspicion, generation of division, forcing us into exile, launching a campaign of slander against us.

Sadly, this campaign worked for many Cubans. We still suffer like a messiah in that we’re punished if we’re not seen to be flayed and crucified on a cross. It comes hard for us to realize that before leaders we need citizens. And that to face up to a dictatorship isn’t about being a superhero but it’s about learning, effort, resolve and survival.

A year after these events there’s still a lot for us to reflect upon concerning their true impact. What is beyond question though is that on that day the dictatorship’s masks were torn to pieces.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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The Culture Crisis of the Cuban Revolution

The pandemic has finished off what was already the poor state of Cuban cinemas.

14ymedio, Yunior García Aguilera, Madrid, 9 November 2022 — To the grave situation in the sectors of economy, food, finance, energy, politics, social justice, migration and health — all from which Cuba is suffering — we may add a new crisis that could deliver the final death blow to a fading, crumbling model. Because if culture is the “sword and shield of the nation”, then culture’s current scenario would seem to point to the inevitable total breakdown of the system.

From the first minutes in which Díaz-Canel took power he was already stamping his signature on Decree 349 — which is aimed at increasing institutional control over artistic endeavour — and the passing of the decree would only prove to be the beginning of this unfortunate, hopeless and charisma-free little man’s headaches.

The newer generations of creatives championed an independent art scene, one that could make the most of the tiny opening seen in other sectors during the “Obama era”. But the party idealogues preferred a perestroika without glasnost. They were indeed forced to instigate a timid restructuring of the economy, but in no way were they disposed to giving up their iron control of the narrative.

At the Youth Show of the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematographic Industries, ’El Cardumen’ (The School/Shoal) was established, which defended words such as inclusion, question, risk, equality. They declared on their manifesto: “Our films will continue to speak (…), even though they will try to gag us”. Elsewhere, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Yanelys Núñez organised the ’#00biennial’, on the fringes of officialdom and managed to bring together around a hundred artistes. The creation of their San Isidro Movement would mark a decisive chapter in events that were starting to unchain themselves.

In 2019, in great haste, the ninth congress of the UNEAC (The National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) was convened. Its architects conceived the meeting as a dam which could hold back the turbulent cultural waters. But the epic songs of praise to the congress did not take into account an unforeseen event worthy of the Theban Cycle – the arrival of the pandemic.

On 27 November 2020 the abyss that has always existed between Cuban artists and the institutions that regulate cultural policy became unbridgeable again. [Ed. note: See also articles here.] Two months later, the pseudo-poet who served as minister was becoming a vulgar telephone snatcher, and a mob of fat old men would go out to beat up another group of young people in front of the sumptuous mansion (or barracks) in Vedado, where they attempt to direct culture. continue reading

Ever since [the popular song of 1916] La Chambelona, and even before that, songs have always played a decisive role in Cuban political battles. For that reason the tremendous impact of Patria y Vida has not been a surprise, chanted, as it was, in the streets during the biggest social unrest ever seen in the country. It was of no use that the regime charged their hard hitter, Raúl Torres, with the task of getting the government out of a difficult spot. While Patria y Vida was shared millions of times and was awarded two Latin Grammy prizes, including Song of the Year, its counterpart, Patria o Muerte por la Vida, got tens of thousands of “dislikes” in just 72 hours.

With the slogan “Give Your Heart to Cuba“, official journalism took it that it ought to become more “cool” — in reality, the worst “cool press” possible. So national television would be filled with gossip programmes, such as “With Edge”, where bitching about people becomes the norm.

After 11J [the 11 July 2021 protests], a handful of artists with deserved recognition for their work, decided to face their fears and break their silence. Many of them publically renounced their membership of UNEAC or AHS because both organisations decided to turn their backs on their own members in order to yield to the despots who gave the orders.

Today, Cuban culture is suffering the greatest exodus of talent that has been seen to date. State budgets for the arts have been reduced more than ever before, and the paintings that they hang in front of the institutions possess neither workmanship nor artistic merit, nor leadership.

And to make matters worse, the numbers provided by the Annual Directory of Statistics are overwhelming. A quick comparison of the years 2018 and 2021 would be enough to show the magnitude of the disaster. From 1,765 titles published earlier, the figure goes down to just 527. In only three years 5 ’Casas de la Trova’ (music venues), 6 bookshops, 14 theatres, 19 cinemas, 26 arts centres and 27 art galleries have been lost. During that same period, more than 20 theatre companies and almost two thousand professional music groups have disappeared.

This carnival of mediocrity has laid bare another myth of the Revolution: In “The time of the mameys” [ed. note: “The moment of truth’] the first thing they’re ready to sacrifice is precisely: culture.

Translated by Ricardo Recluso

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