TRANSLATORS – Page 311 – Translating Cuba

What do Cubans Hope For in the New Year? / Ivan Garcia

December is a month of epilogues. 2013 brought new things for Cubans. After the 14th of January, those born on the island could travel abroad without so much government oversight.

Even the dissidents. Although with exceptions. Opponents, hostages of the Black Spring of 2003 who are considered by the olive green-autocracy as being on parole, cannot leave Cuba.

In business new legal concepts have emerged. Service cooperatives have been created and the State leases premises to individuals. In the Mariel port there will be a special zone with a different wage and tax system.

In 2013 Hugo Chavez and Nelson Mandela died. The two had repercussions on the island. If Mandela is on an altar, the death of the Venezuelan leader brought worries.

And if the national industries work and do not produce extensive blackouts, it is thanks to the agreement that Chavez initialed with Fidel Castro, by which Cuba pays with doctors and advisors for more than 10 thousand barrels of oil a day.

And although Chavez does not have even a trace of Mandela’s symbolism and the people on the street are not loyal to that social experiment that the Bolivarian called as 21st Century Socialism, typical human selfishness to not lose benefits make many Cubans, simply to keep the status quo, prefer the unseemly Nicolas Maduro.

Maybe Maduro would get votes in Cuba than in his country. And when people have lived 12-hour periods without light and someone offers it to them, in spite of Venezuela being mired in chaos and Caracas being a jungle of violence, people are capable of voting for Satan.

In 2013 Cubans continued on their own. News of the protests in Kiev, the gag law in Spain, the re-election of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the global electronic espionage by the United States denounced by the analyst Edward Snowden or the apprentice dictator of North Korea executing his uncle, passed almost unnoticed.

Through illegal satellite antennas, SMS or those that pay 4.5 convertible pesos for an hour of internet — finally commercialized in 2013 — people prefer to be up to date on the latest record by their favorite singer, to see Brazilian soap operas, the films that are chosen for the Oscar, to see who will win the Soccer World Cup, to see the games of LeBron James’s Miami Heat or MLB baseball games in which Yasiel Puig or Arnoldis Chapman are playing.

Although for three years Cubans have enjoyed more economic liberties and now can stay in a hotel, buy or sell a house or get a car, in relation to political matters, people prefer to stay on the sidelines.

The ready arrests of dissidents, beatings of the Ladies in White or the acts of repudiation they keep watching from the sidewalk across the street.

The opposition continues being a particular clan. They say and write things that the majority desire or lack, but the average Cuban sees it from as a great a distance as an Australian tourist.

In the syndicate meetings they get mad about the miserable salaries and ask out loud for a change in the system. But if you suggest creating an independent syndicate, they look you up and down as if you were a strange insect.

Ask any Cuban what he wants for 2014 and he will tell you a better life for himself and his family. Earning a decent wage and being able to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner every day.

The workers for their own account want more autonomy, a wholesale market, lower taxes and less State interference. That 3D cinemas return and cheesy shops re-open.

The dissidents long for the Castro era to end. For Cuba to enter the ring of democracy. And that liberties be respected.

They have spent decades demanding it. But they dedicate very little time to political proselytizing of their neighbors, which is whom they must convince.

Ivan Garcia

Translated by mlk.

20 December 2013

Barriers Because of Indolence / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

Several years ago we often heard talk in the Cuban media about architectural barriers. Eliminating them is a goal injected some years ago in our national actions and lexicon by the teams of town criers from the government, who have tuned their radar pay attention to campaigns undertaken by international agencies like the UN, FAO, UNESCO, WHO, PHO, etc., in order to blow their own horn without muting their propaganda and showing those entities and the world the achievements of the 50-year revolution.

Since childhood I have heard reference to the immodesty of people who praise themselves, using the phrase: “they doh’t have a grandma.” Such lack of humility corresponds in many respects with the boastful conduct of the Cuban government.

The eradication of architectural obstacles is a consideration that many countries have incorporated into their urban aesthetic and laws, and they quietly implement them out of respect for the mothers who travel the streets with their baby strollers, the physically disabled who cross in wheelchairs and the rights and quality of life of others in general.

Here they made of that project a cloying campaign with which they saturated — among other always present historical-political themes — our communications media and showed it on television with such enthusiasm that it seemed a native initiative. The lack of information is a blindfold that limits the capacity of Cubans to freely think and discern.

The aspiration, in Cuba, of fixing in pitfalls of the streets and sidewalks in our neighborhoods is great, but it advances little and badly. Of course there are exceptions, but generally the ramps that they put on the corners to climb to the sidewalks constitute an obstruction themselves because of how misshapen and badly made they are.

And don’t mention the number of broken sidewalks that we have seen in different parts of our city for decades! They symbolize the architectural barriers because of indolence that belie and disprove the good will of the leaders of this subject.

It seems that the authorities quickly grabbed this international baton to direct the orchestra of bungling and mediocrity, but they noticed later that the project required the investment of great quantities of cement, an important exportable item for the state for years.

In short, that campaign initiated years ago in our country, like so many other matters, became more tall story than movie. It is regrettable that they have converted all of Cuba into a country of obstacles. That’s why we don’t stop advocating for the project of eliminating physical, moral and legal obstacles that impede the travel of Cubans through our streets, but also of all those that cloud our senses, blind our comprehension of the world and prevent us from inserting ourselves, in full use of our sovereign faculties, in the concert of the world’s democratic countries.

Translated by mlk.

5 December 2013

Mandela Has Died: Hopefully One Day His Real Thoughts About The Dictator Fidel Castro Will Come To Light / Angel Santiesteban

I always assumed, out of respect and ethics, not to speak disparagingly of the dead. This time I will not. To this I will turn to a literary level suggestion. Nor will I agree to see the stains on the sun, when this African leader has filled pages of heroism for his pacifist stance toward which belonged to him in his own right, and which he demanded for his people; but trying to be consistent with our actions and thoughts, I remember I wrote a post of respect and sorrow to suffering Madiba, because he had not wanted to look at the pain of the Cuban people, and publicly assumed friendship with Fidel Castro, and his sympathy for the “revolution”: “I am a loyal man and I will never forget that in the darkest moments of our country in the fight against apartheid, Fidel Castro was on our side.”

He was also a friend of Saddam Hussein and the then head of state of Libya, Muammar Gaddafi (whom he awarded the highest distinction in South Africa, the Order of Good Hope), which he justified by saying: “I do this because our moral authority dictates that we can not abandon those who have helped us during the darkest moments in the history of our country. They provide us with both resources and instruction to struggle and win. And those South Africans who have scolded me for being loyal to our friends, can literally go to hell. “

We must not fail to recognize that the struggle in Angola, particularly the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, helped crack the racist regime of South Africa in the last century, hence it is not wrong to say that Cuba influenced the defeat of apartheid, and consequently in the release from prison of which was later the first president democratically elected by universal suffrage in that country, which from that point of view, justified his gratitude to the Cuban leader and his dictatorship.

But ignoring the pains of Cubans and being a personal friend of the tyrant, will be one of the great contradictions that history may be responsible to explain, or make us understand. Arguments may then validate his attitude, particularly when he openly criticized Sani Abacha, a corrupt and brutal Nigerian dictator in the 90s.

What is certain and less understandable is that during his visit to Cuba, just to be consistent with his history and consistent with his thinking, he should have demanded the release of political prisoners and, in particular Mario Chanes de Armas, a former fellow soldier of Fidel, considered the world’s oldest political prisoner, who surpassed, at the time of Mandela’s visit, the time of imprisonment suffered by Mandela. However, he sank into the embrace of totalitarianism, something against which Madiba had fought and risked his life for.

Hopefully one day it will come out into the open, away from the grateful man, his real thoughts about the dictator Fidel Castro, and his decision to keep his criticism silent, because I refuse to think that a man of such magnitude, as was Nelson Mandela, has been honest and approved a process which is devoid of the slightest democracy, going in contradiction to his thinking and way of being: “I do not want to be presented in such a way that whitewashes the darker parts of my life”, he said. So God has taken him to that place which has been earned, and the Cubans too.

“Real leaders should be prepared to sacrifice everything for the liberty of their people”.

“To be free we must not only get rid of the chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.”

“It is the duty of journalists to examine and bring to light the conduct of public figures”.

“If I am your leader, you must listen to me. If you do not want to listen to me, what you must do is abandon me as a leader”.

“Let freedom reign. The sun has never illuminated a more glorious human achievement.”

“To be free is not only free from one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others”

“When I left the prison that was my mission: to liberate both the oppressed and the oppressor.”

The great reality, in which must those who supported him and his critics must agree, is that with his continuing struggle he managed to free his people; being selfish, he was interested in nothing else other than the welfare of his own.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison Settlement. December 2013.

Editors note: Difficulties with the internet of our contacts in Cuba have been the reason why this post comes so late and when Mandela is no longer the “theme”. These are the same difficulties which I have mentioned in connection with the allegations published by Dania Virgen García on Cubanet on harassment and threats against Ángel Santiesteban which he has not bowed to.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

19 December 2013

The Electrical Re-Involution / Rebeca Monzo

In 2005, the then president and prime minister of our planet appeared before TV cameras in order to explain to the population the benefits of the hitherto despised home appliances, which from that moment would be distributed in all the country by household through the infamous Ration Booklet.

Refrigerators, air conditioners, “Queen” pots, rice cookers, personal water heaters, energy saving light bulbs, electric burners, in sum, a series of home appliances manufactured and imported from the People’s Republic of China.

I remember that, when in the 1970’s I moved to Nuevo Vedado, I had an electric stove with three burners and an oven, acquired in Paris in my diplomatic years, and each time I went to buy products with the Ration Booklet in the market that I was assigned to, they talked to me about consuming too much electricity.

Three decades later, the same people who reprimanded me came to offer to exchange my old but magnificent 1949 Admiral refrigerator for a Chinese one, which according to them would consume less. Of course I refused, because you had to give up the perfectly functional one you possessed, without getting a cent of its value, as if it were scrap, and pay an exaggerated price for the new one.

Fortunately, I maintained said negative response on repeated occasions, until they got tired and insisted no more. All those people who fell in the trap of the new appliances are regretful, because they broke after a while and there are no parts with which to fix them, but they still have to continue paying for them.

The same thing has happened with all the low quality Chinese equipment: mountains of aluminum and twisted cables fill the shelves and warehouses of the famous consolidated workshops without them being able to be repaired for lack of replacement parts.

It is shameful that some commission from the National Assembly has to spend so much time and saliva talking about “Queen” pots and broken appliances, in a country where there are so many urgent problems, like the bad state of schools and hospitals, the almost non-existent sugar production, the lack of basic necessities in the stores, problems with milk production, potatoes, in sum, with everything that is vital for the population. Gentlemen, certainly it shames the National Assembly that you have to air issues as ridiculous as the broken electric pots, already obsolete.

I believe that the decision I made three decades ago, not to be dazzled by the “electric re-involution” and not to go into debt buying those Chinese products, was most wise. My old Admiral refrigerator, decorated by me, continues cooling like a charm, and I do not owe a cent to the State.

Translated by mlk.

20 December 2013

Cuba: Diplomacy and Repression / Ivan Garcia

While General Raul Castro, a president handpicked by his brother Fidel, squeezed the hand of the United States’ leader Barack Obama at the State funeral of Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg, the special services and combined forces of the police mounted a strong operation around the home of dissident Antonio Rodiles, director of the Estado de Sats, a project where diverse political and civic strands that coexist in the illegal world of Cuban opposition come together.

Also on December 10, while the headlines of the dailies of the world media highlighted on their front pages the leaders’ unprecedented handshake, the hard guys of the State Security were repressing activists in the eastern region of Cuba and detaining some twenty Ladies in White in Havana and dozens of opponents in the rest of the country.

All this happens under the indifferent gaze of ordinary Cubans, whose central objective is to try to get two plates of food to the table each day. Neither for the corner grocer, the individual taxi driver or people waiting for the bus at a busy stop was the greeting newsworthy.

The regime knows that an elevated percentage of the population remains in the bleachers, observing the national political panorama. What is of the people is to subsist, emigrate or see the way to set up a small shop that permits one to earn some pesos.

Meanwhile, the olive green autocrats clamor to negotiate. But with the United States. It does not matter to them, for now, to sit down to dialogue with an opposition that has unquestionable merit: the value of publicly dissenting within a totalitarian regime.

It has paid its price. Years in jail, exile, and repression. But neither the right which it should enjoy — of being considered a political force — nor the acts of repudiation and beatings, have cemented a state of favorable opinion within a majority of citizens disgusted with the lousy governmental management by the Castros for 55 years.

Here is the key. By being focused on the exterior, the dissidence does not count on popular support, on men and women who before the regime’s gross injustices throw themselves into the street to protest. That weakness is what permits the authorities to not take it into account.

I do not believe one owes a handshake to a ruler who represses those who think differently. This December 10 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, of which Cuba is a signatory, turns 65.

No high flying political strategy has paid off after a series of steps that democratic countries have taken trying to push Cuba.

Neither the Ibero-American Summits or leading CELAC pro tempore have impeded the Havana Government in continuing to repress the dissidents with laws and physical violence.

Fidel and Raul Castro have dismissively mocked everyone and everything. They initialed the Economic, Cultural, Political and Civil Rights Pacts in February 2008, and later did not ratify them.

Cuba is the only country in the western hemisphere where the opposition is considered illegal. And the only nation that does not hold free elections to elect its presidents.

Cuba is not a democracy. Obama well knows it.

If behind that handshake, the second in a half century by a president of the United States (the first was that of Bill Clinton with Fidel Castro at the Millennial Summit in New York, September 6, 2000), there exists a discrete message about future negotiations to repeal the embargo or improve relations between the countries, ordinary people and a sector of the dissidence would not see it as a bad thing.

Maybe the greeting does not come to be something more than ceremonial and isolated. Or maybe a change of policy by the White House. The gringos have always been very pragmatic.

In a serious negotiation, both sides must give. The bad news is that the regime feigns change, but continues repressing the opposition. Diplomacy on one hand, clubs on the other.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: One of the Ladies in White detained Tuesday, December 10, during a peaceful demonstration for the Day of Human Rights on the downtown corner of 23 and L, Vedado, Havana. Taken by ABC.

Translated by mlk.

17 December 2013

When Cuba Had No Christmas / Ivan Garcia

The first time Juan Carlos saw a Christmas tree, he was 43-years-old and working as a bricklayer inside the house of a top counterintelligence officer.

“That was 19 years ago. Those were the harsh years of the so-called Special Period. People had nothing to eat. Avocado was a luxury and a pound of rice was 60 pesos. Due to all sorts of vitamin and nutritional deficiencies, men and women succumbed to illness and some even lost their natural teeth. Back then, I was a civilian worker for the Department of the Interior and our crew was asked to work on painting and remodeling the home of a State Security bigwig. The guy was living at full throttle luxury. His kitchen was a quarter size bigger than the tenement room where I was living. That was the first place I ever saw a Christmas tree.

Cubans are not atheists or Muslims. No, sir. Before Fidel Castro’s autocratic regime, the poor and rich celebrated Christmas if on different budgets.

The same could be said for Three Kings Day (Epiphany), and Easter celebrations. But our radical commander launched a crusade against reproducing the slightest hint of the bourgeois lifestyle. He opened fire on the Church, on free thought and on abstract painting. Down with the Three Kings. Now, our New King Magus dressed in olive green fatigues.

In 1959, Fidel climbed aboard an aircraft and made it rain toys for children of the Sierra Maestra who’d never owned such a thing. But in one fell swoop, by the end of the 60s, he eliminated all mom and pop shops and Christmas.

Gustavo, a 72-year-old retiree, remembers, “Only New Year’s Eve parties were left standing, and even those came to be used to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution. The pretext used to eliminate Christmas and the Carnivals of February was that such events shut down sugar cane production. In his madness, Castro had invested all of Cuba’s resources to attempt the production of ten million pounds of sugar per year. The effort failed. Cuba’s economy payed dearly for such folly.

Just like the State openly frowned on the Afro-Cuban and Catholic religions — Castroism was the only acceptable religion — Christmas had to be suspended until further notice. Of course, you can’t really change anyone’s beliefs by edict.

“Some neighbors would very discretely place Christmas trees in their family rooms. They’d also shut the windows so neighborhood whistleblowers who patrolled for the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) couldn’t see any of the tiny Christmas lights. When pig was roasted, the aromas were carefully masked and Christmas Carols were barely audible,” reported Aida, a 69 year-old housewife.

It was a long journey through the desert. Even parties had to be authorized by the state. The government tried to micromanage every detail of your life.

To avoid being singled out as a counterrevolutionary, you had to attend political meetings and participate in government parades. If you aspired to housing, a Soviet TV or an alarm clock, you had to list accumulated merits in the workforce and enumerate your revolutionary accomplishments.

You gained points if you’d fought in Angola or Ethiopia, if you were militia, if you worked lots of volunteer hours, and if you could quote good chunks of the Maximum Leader’s (Fidel’s) speeches by heart.

You lost points, if you owned a Bible, went to church, got mail from relatives in Miami, listened to the Beatles or Led Zeppelin, liked Levis blue jeans; with these characteristics you did not qualify to buy an Inpud refrigerator or two-speed Karpaty motorcycle.

To blacklist you, any envious neighbor or political extremist could turn you in to Special Services if you were caught celebrating Christmas or giving your kids any toys on January 6 to celebrate the day the Three Kings (the Three Wise Men) arrived at Jesus’ manger.

To keep himself in power, Fidel had to do all kinds of ideological backflips. In Europe, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the U.S.S.R. — the mecca of Communist looney wards — had disappeared. Somehow, he had to cling to whatever branch could sustain him.

The regime eventually sealed a pact with a docile Catholic Church. People who once professed a belief in Yoruba syncretic spiritualism (Santería) again nailed old and familiar amulets on their doors.

In December 1997, Pope John Paull II visited Cuba and Christmas returned.

But all along, the official Nomenklatura never stopped celebrating Christmas if you take into account all the roast pork, all the traditional sweet Spanish nougat and all the wines consumed.

Maybe those folks could indulge because they thought of themselves as being above the rest.

Iván García

Photo Credit: Front cover of winning lottery number sporting a Criollo Christmas image and published in the magazine Carteles in 1959. Up until 1959, we had Christmas cheer on the Island. You could find the popular A Cuban Merry Christmas postcard celebrating the Cuban book and reading fair, and the advertising sign for A Boy’s Cuban Christmas printed by the Ministry of Culture and with pictures of the Three Magi done by René Portocarrero. The Book of Cuban Recipes, launched for Christmas and edited by the Ministry of Education, carried a special introduction: “This Christmastime, a book of traditional Cuban recipes was especially created so every young city-dwelling housewife can come to know and enjoy the traditional cooking that forms part of our national heritage and still endures in various parts of the country.”

But during the 60s, Christmas started to disappear from the life of Cubans, and only a few kept up with the tradition from behind closed doors (Tania Quintero).

Translated by: JCD and others
17 December 2013

Communique: Castro, The Guardian Of Human Rights In The United Nations, Returns To Harass And Threaten Angel Santiesteban

Detention of a Woman in White, Havana, 10th of December 2013. (EFE)

The detention of Antonio Rodiles.

A few days shy of ten months of wrongful imprisonment, after a show trial in which they have never proven one of the crimes brought against him because he never committed them, and without which the prosecution hasn’t responded to the appeal for a review of the case which submitted by the lawyer Amelia Rodriguez Cala on July 4th of this year, in the Lawton prison settlement where he is now detained since his birthday (August 2), Ángel has started being harassed and provoked by his jailers, in what we consider a clear strategy to push him to commit any misconduct that would justify a new transfer to a stricter regime of prison or which would allow his accusers to prove his supposed violent nature in the retrial, after which, if the Cuban legal structure works, they will be required to release him.

These are not isolated events: the re-educator had already tried to set the other prisoners against Ángel and told them he would put him “in a box”. Inmates assumed he was referring to a coffin, but another reading could be that Ángel would be “tamed with dirty or violent methods.”

Then on Friday the 13th during the night, the settlement was visited by the new head of CETEM, the Major Cobas, along with the aforementioned re-educator. Ángel recounts that: “The other night they searched me, there was the head of the camps, as the Chief re-educators, and I did not permit him, he opposed me then threw my stuff on the floor and kicked it so that I could not touch it. They told me that it was a serious breach of discipline and that they would make a record of it immediately. Then they took all of my belongings and searched them.”

How far do you plan to take the abuse dictator Raul Castro, now shelterd by the Human Rights Council of the UN? Shame is what all the member countries of the UN which sit on the Council should feel towards this systematic violator of all rights and freedoms of the Cuban people, who only seeks to extend his archaic but deadly reign of terror to the rest of the continent.

All international press with dignity, last December 10, the International Day of Human Rights, showed the world what the pathetic UN Council was trying to hide: the Cuban government celebrated that day by repressing its opponents in what is considered one of the darkest days of repression in Cuba. But the truth always triumphs, Mister Dictator. And Justice too, of that you should not have the slightest doubt. But if you do however, study some history.

I repeat what I have told you many times, you and the whole army of thugs at your service are absolutely responsible for the life and safety of Ángel Santiesteban-Prats. And remember that while the world is watching in horror as you send paramilitary mobs to beat up peaceful Ladies in White carrying gladioli as the only weapon and as you use children as shields in acts of repudiation against those who think differently and also serves as a witness of the most abhorrent scenes of physical violence against activists who, moreover, weren’t even demonstrating in the streets, as was the case in the door of the headquarters of Estado de Sats; that same world continues to recognize the talent of Ángel, rewarding him, as happened in September when he was awarded the Franz Kafka International Prize for Novels from the Drawer, and they paid tribute to him, just as he received a few days ago in Montreal. Oh how it hurts! Doesn’t it?

So do not forget this: You are responsible for what happens to Angel, and for the orders which you give to your henchmen. The world is watching.

The Editor

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

18 December 2013

URGENT: Angel Santiesteban Harassed And Threatened In The Prison Of The Regime Which Is A Member Of The UN Human Rights Commission

The incommunication problems because of our lack of internet connections in Cuba have prevented us from offering, as it should have been, the inside scoop on the harassment and threats that the writer Ángel Santiesteban-Prats is suffering since early this month at the prison in which he is currently located. We were hoping to offer firsthand reports narrated by Angel, to those witnessed by the family who related this to us by phone.

But not even these communication problems have gotten the regime off the hook: the journalist Dania Virgen García sent from the island an article denouncing this new violation of the rights of Angel. It proves once again that there are many who are willing to stop the injustice committed against Angel from going unpunished.

We publicly thank Dania Virgen García and all those who have already reproduced this article in their blogs and other digital media.

The Editor

Here is Dania’s article:

Lambasting in the prison of the writer Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

by Dania Virgen García

Havana, Cuba, 17th of Decebmber 2013, Dania Virgen García/www.cubanet.org.-

In the penal settlement of MININT (Ministry of the Interior), in Lawton, in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre, where the writer Ángel Santiesteban-Prats is held, the re-educator tried to use the common criminals against him, this past 11th of December.

In the ten months that the writer has been held in the settlement, he has never participated in the physical countings, inspections or political activities.

On the day in question, Santiesteban remained in the barracks, when the prisoners were called to be counted. The re-educator, not seeing the writer, was annoyed and began to shout insults against him.

Then, from the mouths of the prisoners themselves, he knew that the re-educator had said he would put him “in a box”. The inmates assumed it was a reference to a coffin.

The reeducator said, moreover, that he would make a report to his superiors for his misconduct and that Santiesteban was not a political prisoner.

The inmates realized that reeducator had lied, because some of them have seen the writer’s ID card which has a green stripe that crosses from one side to another, and over it are the letters CR (counter-revolutionary), and under his picture the is the word “Warning”.

On the night of Friday 13, the settlement was visited by the new head of CETEM, Major Cobas, who tried to provoke and question the writer.

Since entering prison, the writer Santiesteban-Prats has never eaten prison stew; instead he eats the provisions which his family has sent him. He is never seen dressed in prison clothes and he has never accepted the personal supplies which are given to the prisoners.

He was withdrawn on April 9th this year, from the camp of forced labor known as CETEM, La Lima, located in the town of Guanabacoa, to Prison 1580, with the intent that he will not be present during the visit of international journalists who were manipulated by the regime officials.

Currently, the Casa de las Americas Prize for narrative maintains the same denial in the settlement.

Santiesteban thinks it was naive of the jailer or else that the new boss wants to provoke him, thus causing a prison indiscipline, accusing him of a crime to be able to send him to a closed prison. He suspects that the guards are being manipulated by the repressive Department 21 of the State Security.

Rest assured that whatever the intention, he will remain with his principles and ethics, which he has maintained in the 10 months he has been held for an alleged domestic assault that the trial could not prove.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

17 December 2013

Living in a Shelter: The Tragedy of Thousands of Cubans / Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba, December 2013, www.cubanet.org – The poverty in which most Cubans live — and to which they adapt, thanks to the meticulous mechanisms of power that 54 years of State terror have imposed — is not an insurmountable fate. It would be enough for the Cuban government to respect all human rights, opening the political and economic game, in order to improve the living conditions of the island’s inhabitants.

Misery is aggravated when one has neither a place to live nor economic resources to rent, build or buy a house. It is estimated that, in the Central Havana municipality alone, 6,201 families (24,584 people) are affected by the uninhabitable condition of their dwellings. Of that number, only 125 families are located in the so-called transit communities: collective shelters, as they are known in Cuba.

But those figures do not shed light on what it means for a family to live sheltered. One must cross the threshold of figures in order to see up close the true face of the tragedy.

The “Collective Shelter” of San Rafael 417 in Central Havana

According to those who live there, the building previously housed a factory for sanitary napkins (intimates in the Cuban language). Decrepit posters with some communist slogans are not missing. The hall is divided into different rooms where the belongings of those who have come to stop in this site are grouped. What seems to be the bathroom is in fact a latrine. Nor is there seen anywhere a sink with running water.

Iverlysse Junco is 29 years old. The door of the little room of wooden planks where she lives with her husband and four children creates a false illusion of privacy. Everything looks poor and ugly, but it is impressive to see the white of the diapers that cover the cradle of her baby born a month ago. She has not neglected her personal appearance in spite of the fact that she is not expecting anyone; she keeps her dignity in the cleanliness and order that she maintains in the 4 x 4 meters where they live.

Six years ago they left a tenement in danger of collapse. The room has not a single window. The first thing that she shows us behind a curtain is another sliding wooden plank that gives onto the street.

“When we came it was completely closed, but one day I could not endure any longer the lack of air and I grabbed a saw in order to make that opening,” she says. “The bad thing is that now my husband and I cannot leave together, because one of us two has to stay in order to make sure no one enters and takes our things. They came to assess a fine against me, for nothing less than for altering the facade. But I told the district delegate that they are very familiar with my situation.”

On an improvised kitchen counter is a pair of electric burners where she does everything: from cooking to boiling the diapers, as is customary among Cuban mothers who have no way to pay for the luxury of disposable diapers, which involves a greater cost than a month’s salary.

The baby is cold as a consequence of the humidity: she has to hang out clothes there inside. The water she asks of a neighbor on the block. He lets them fill the buckets that they then carry to a little tank in the corner of the room. That limited water has to serve them for washing, mopping, cooking and bathing in the same room. Part of everyone’s routine every day is to keep the deposit full. But with other needs there is no arrangement; they have to urinate and defecate in a bucket dedicated to that purpose and then go out to pour it down the drain in the street.

“Everything is hard here. The most difficult is getting up in the morning and having to be watching the people to be able to go out to dispose of the bucket. I cannot not have the bleach for cleaning and the freshener.”

Her husband works in demolition, which is why she is aware of the quantity of collapses that occurs, especially when it rains.

“When do I leave here? The collapses are going to continue because Havana is falling down.”

Although Iverlysse and her husband work a lot, they see themselves reduced to total dependency on the State. In a collectivist system, which condemns private property and the free market, the hypothetical solution is that, not with one’s own effort, but with collective work, the Junco family will get a house in which to live.

In practice, society has submitted to state control and planning. The happiness of the Junco family depends then on their file being privileged in the eyes of the official, who next December 20 will have to decide if, among the 900 cases that are presented in the whole of the Havana province — after prioritizing the “cases” that have spent 20 years sheltered, hoping — theirs qualifies as sufficiently affected by an extreme situation.

“I have already gone to the Province (Office of Dwellings) and to the government. Three times I went to Revolution Plaza and seven times I wrote letters to the State Counsel. On all those occasions the answer was: You have to wait. There are worse cases than yours. What can be worse than this?” Iverlysse asks herself.

The statistics about the numbers of sheltered people and those waiting to become sheltered, were offered by the Municipal Unit of Attention to the Transit Communities (UMACT) of the Central Havana municipality by a person who requested anonymity. The number of the 900 cases that will be presented next December 20 was provided by a housing worker who also wanted to withhold his name.

December 15, 2013/ By Lilianne Ruiz.

From Cubanet

Translated by mlk.

Is Cuba Now Celebrated by UN As Custodian of Human Rights Despite Blatant Violations? / Angel Santiestebad

Detaining of a Woman in White, Havana, 10th of December 2013. (EFE)

We are all too aware Cuba’s dictatorship does not possess the slightest modicum of remorse or self-reproach, so we cannot ask such a State to behave honorably. The Cuban dictatorship is not worthy of respect. Time to stop looking in vain for something that is just not there. Best we just resign ourselves to reality. If anything, the serious question that begs asking is why certain governments keep close ties to our two warlord brothers. Not easy to stomach how some apparently respectable and democratic nations accept having Cuba take on the presidency of CELAC.*

Before allowing Cuba to become a bona fide member, the proper thing would be for the UN to kick Cuba out of the Human Rights Council. Just how on earth has it become possible for the Castro brothers to — without any trace of unease or embarrassment – shamelessly mock the international community of nations under the auspices of the UN?

In Cuba, on Human Rights Day what the State commemorates is the opportunity to violate as many human rights as possible. On that Day, all manner of human rights are violated in a proud and peerless display of the Regime’s totalitarian access to military and judicial might. Dozens of women from the honorable roll call of Ladies in White (Damas de Blanco) were beaten and arrested in front of people who remained silent for fear that any alliance to the voice of opposition — no matter how humane or reasonable — would spell reprisal from oppressive government forces. Once again, people did nothing to stop the abuse and humiliation of their fellow citizens. At the home of Antonio Rodiles — a.k.a. the SATS headquarters for open thought — Calixto Martínez, Kizzy Macías and Rodiles were all taunted and later arrested in order to contain the initiative for Human Rights meetings that openly challenge the regime and its totalitarian laws.

I am convinced and pray to God that one day soon we will be able to celebrate the Rights every human being born on this planet has the right to enjoy in order to be protected from Fascist states. The very fascists states shaped after WWII but unknown in Cuba.

When that day dawns, we will exalt those brave enough to suffer mental and physical abuse under this regime. And those who keep silent or feigned support to the current dictatorship will only feel shame.

Fair to say that despite the State’s hatchet men and the well-oiled machinery of repression, Human Rights Day on December 10 was still felt on the Island archipelago.

Down with Dictatorship! Nation and Freedom!

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison settlement. December 2013

Translator’s note: CELAC – Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. An organization created to promote deeper intergration within the Americas.

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy and JCD

16 December 2013

North Americans Eye Opener in Havana / Miriam Celaya

HAVANA, Cuba, December, www.cubanet.org – During the days when the cruise ship Semester at Sea was anchored on Cuban territory, over 600 visitors, including students and teachers -mostly Americans– carried out a tight schedule of “meetings” with Cuban university students and toured “sites of historical and cultural interest”.

The December 11th edition of Granma published some of the opinions of the young northerners during “a brief meeting with reporters”: “I had never been so well received by the population as we were here,” commented a student from the University of Nebraska, while another one from the University of Virginia said that “Cubans are very welcoming”.
But according to some in Havana who tried to contact the visitors, there was a strong undercover operation, with agents dressed as fruit vendors, pedicab drivers and even “pompously attired mulatto women” -those who dress in costumes around Old Havana to entertain tourists- monitored the area the whole time the cruise ship was anchored at port.

Other undercover individuals were posing simply as regular Cubans. However, Cubans’ sense of smell was not fooled when it came to identifying members of the pack of hounds.

Cubans who were interviewed by the visitors in each of the official program activities were selected among the most loyal communist militants, while Castro journalists covered the visit with their usual triumphalism, as if this were about another one of Castro’s achievement.
But despite the careful planning of the visit’s programming by the Cuban authorities in the interests of the government’s political promotional agenda, and despite the students’ lack of contact with the population or with the diverse independent civil society, a group of them, despite controls of the political police, attended songwriter Boris Larramendi’s concert offered at the home of Antonio Rodiles (Estado de Sats), where they held a live dialogue with those in attendance, according to testimony of blogger Walfrido López, who was later detained at a police station after being violently arrested along with Rodiles and other activists and dissidents.

These students heard first-hand testimonials from those who are vying for a new Cuba, and they learned of repression and terror. They were also witnesses of the repudiation rally organized outside the home of Rodiles, in which the authorities had no qualms about using elementary school children, high school teens, and musicians who are eager to keep their perks and travel privileges, as in the case of Arnaldo y su Talisman. Arnaldo may need a huge talisman someday to explain his criminal complicity with those who repress other Cubans.
There may probably be other trips and exchanges with these and other American students. Many of them reported the lack of information they have about the Cuban reality and about the true nature of the dictatorship. Hopefully these visits, laden with messages to the free world will recur. Totalitarian regimes don’t have antidotes against openness, and the satrapy will definitely not be able to keep hidden any longer the slavery and repression it has imposed upon Cubans for 55 years.

Miriam Celaya.

Translated by Norma Whiting

From Cubanet, 15 December 2013

The Rice Boobytrap / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Count on earthworm remains, bits of assorted garbage, tiny jaw-breaking pebbles, and the odd piece of moon rock mixed inside the minute ration of the people’s rice being offered by the State; this is the quota for December which was released for sale November 30 in the bodegas (ration stores) in Vibora and everywhere else. Go figure why the government chose December — a time when many families celebrate various Christmas or New Years gatherings and meals — to get rid of a large portion of dirty and off-color rice more fit for bird than human consumption. All that the store manager at my “designated” bodega could say was that the grain crop available was from Pinar del Río (West of Havana) and was the only rice supply being distributed to consumers in the Tenth of October (Diez de Octubre) municipality of Havana.

I went to another local bodega and got the same song and dance. My gripe upset a neighbor to the degree that I got scolded for taking a stance. I was soon reminded how some brownie point seeking official would be chomping at the bit for the opportunity to nag us for hours on end — and pep-rally style — about the great job the State does for the people by providing free rice. Beyond that, we would also get some impromptu group shouting slogans thanking the Department of the Interior for poultry, pig or any other State farm for giving us such piss poor quality products. Fine. But nearly inedible State products are unnerving: Cuban family members trying to put decent food staples on the table are forced to endure unbelievably time-consuming and exhausting hardships just to make a meal edible.

Most exasperating of all: Why can’t rice ever be “deregulated” so restrictions can be lifted and we can buy whatever we would like or can afford to pay? Instead, like helpless slaughterhouse pigs, we always get the same condescending mantra: “Eat the stuff or eat the stuff.” For consumers, the outrage ultimately becomes subsumed in listless apathy — or oddly enough — a pact of collective silence when the State decides to run roughshod over our rights. Almost imperceptibly, people do murmur. Many are alarmed the local rice crop might suffer the same fate as our potato production when a substantial Cuban government subsidy to Bolivia all but eliminated potatoes from our sight for most of 2013.

An elderly neighbor tried to console me by saying, “Listen: If you cook it, it’ll taste O.K.” But honestly, after wasting three whole hours sifting and washing rice to clean the grain, I could care less about the flavor, the quality, or whatever the rice’s appellation of origin might be.

Translated by: JCD

3 December 2013

Obama – Raul Handshake Overlooked On The Island / Ivan Garcia

In Cuba, most news reaches us via Miami. Look, given such limited access to the internet where one official hour puts us back a whopping 4.50 convertible pesos (i.e., the equivalent of one week’s pay for a laborer), people resort to foreign short wave radio or whatever illegal cable connection the neighbor down the street managed to set up but charges 10 cuc to let you listen to the news.

Don’t ever think you’ll get any real news about Cuba from local newspapers. Out of the six pages of dull newspaper made from sugar cane pulp, the national press only publishes Pollyanna stuff and overly compliant economic indicators.

Out on the street, we think of our newspapers as pure science fiction. Good for nothing except to help keep track of the baseball season, to get a peek at the TV guide, or as a good substitute for toilet paper.

The cut and paste ordeal to get information is a lengthy process. While Barack Obama and General Raúl Castro were shaking hands in the Johannesburg soccer stadium, Rebel Radio a.m. (Radio Rebelde) went on and on about the sugar cane harvest and the great and successful efforts made by our cooperative social service units.

Moraima, a 29 year-old housewife found out about the event because she’d been watching TV through some illegal cable connection. She comments, “every day, I watch channel 23 News and a few Oscar de Haza programs. That’s how I get a whiff of unreported local Cuban news ranging from the latest crime, to another dissenter arrest, to the North Korean ship in Panama or to the handshake between Obama and Raúl.”

While the Obama-Raúl thing sent a large part of the exiled Cuban-American community living in Miami into an uproar, in Havana the whole thing was little more than just another bit of news. Gerardo, a 74 year-old retiree thought the encounter was positive, but his main morning concern was being able to buy a leg of pork.

“Pork meat is sold in agro-markets for 24-25 pesos per pound. But I was hunting for the 21 peso bargain I’d get if I could find a state slaughterhouse carrying it. I was in line for an hour and a half, but I finally got my pork leg for Christmas Eve dinner. Maybe the handshake will bode well for the future — I’m not really certain — but the good news is that I’ll have food to last me for a few days. Politics is a dirty game. Government reforms do not benefit retirees. I don’t have relatives in Yankeeland, so no one sends me dollars. Whether those two shake hands or tell each other off doesn’t really matter to me.”

Common folks in Cuba are just tired, that’s all. Tired of a bunch of stuff. Of bad government. Of the now ancient embargo used as a pretext by the regime to justify depriving us of scarce goods and services. And worst of all, tired of not having any political voice or say.

A 38 year-old teacher, Zoila feels like a pawn for the State. “Whatever we think about the future we’d like to have is nothing the government cares to take into account. Any one act like Obama’s handshake can easily morph into cheap and superficial politics. Our government leaders don’t want to change. All they are doing is stalling for time.”

In Parque Central located in the heart of Havana, people could be seen rushing around stuffing plastic bags with whatever they could find. A loaf of bread. Two and a half pound of tomatoes. Maybe some dry fruit.

On baseball hill just next to the statue of José Martí, countless fans argued over baseball or predicted results for the European Champions League soccer matches.

At the Payret, about fifty people queued up waiting for the movie theater to let them in to see an Argentine flick brought in by the International Festival of New Latin American Film.

Meanwhile, beggars were sorting through garbage cans. And a pair of very old people begged for money right next to the Inglaterra hotel. And workers hired to repair the Capitol building were selling their own lunch for 25 pesos.

Obispo street was a beehive of pedestrians swarming in and out of stores. Some discreet street vendors offered cigars. Others, girls. Blondes, mulatto, black. Young men were also an option.

Our bus service is still in crisis. Bus stops are stuffed to the gills, and people feel antsy and are upset about not being able to get where they need to go. And even at the cusp of winter, temperatures in Havana still hover at unbearable 86 degrees of Fahrenheit humidity.

When people are forced to live like this, it is logical that a greeting between two heads of State might be overlooked. That’s a fact even if the two men happen to be Barack Obama and Raúl Castro.

Iván García

Photo Credit: Martí Noticias.

By request, we are resubmitting the article, “Nothing To Do With Mandela” taken from Spain’s newspaper, El País on December 11, 2013.

At Nelson Mandela’s funeral service, more world leaders came together in one fell swoop than world history can recall. Despite rainy weather, one hundred world leaders collectively sat on bleachers at Soweto’s soccer stadium to pay tribute to a man of principles.

The man had the strength to fight in the name of freedom, the level-headedness to redress his thinking, the courage to disagree among his own rank and file, the empathy to step into his opponents’ shoes, the magnanimity to embrace forgiveness, the brains to build bridges, and finally, the decency to accept a timely retirement.

In light of Mandela’s track record, why would leaders stomping on the core ideals of the South African leader wish to render tribute? Case in point, the three ogres: Raúl Castro, Robert Mugabe and Teodoro Obiang. Front-row-center, the fearsome threesome certainly hardened the mood and turned all the magic in the air sour.

Right on cue, Obama drove the point home: “There are leaders here today who praise Mandela but silence protest.” The words were intended for iron-fisted leaders who gravely overstep to crush human ideals, religious beliefs or the acceptance of gender preference. Only official protocol could possibly explain how despots were invited to attend and got the opportunity to grandstand for absolution under Mandela’s glow. Tyrant and apprentices filled the gallery. Simply review the list of shameful human right violators from anywhere: All were in Soweto.

Well, almost all human rights violators went to the funeral. A few hardliners stayed at home. For instance, the President of Sudan, Omar al Bashir was absent, but probably due to the fact that the International Criminal Court is hot on his trail.

Fortunately, Caucasus strongmen ignored the news and the event. Also absent (for reasons of their own) were big human rights abusers like Russia, China and Iran.

But it was Czech Prime Minister, Jiri Rusnok, whose silent microphone was on long enough to record him saying that a full agenda made going to a funeral out in the “boondocks” inconvenient and something for which he was not in the mood. No way to save face with mourners after that kind of faux pas. Rusnok apologized, of course. But he, at least, certainly expressed an honest opinion.

Translated by: JCD

14 December 2013

Reinaldo Arenas’ Nest of Suffering and Partying / Jose Hugo Fernandez

An interior room on the second floor was R. Arenas’ nest of pain and parties

Havana, Cuba, December, http://www.cubanet.org. In Havana, at the corner of Prado and Dragones streets, the regime affixed a plaque to honor the memory of a foreign fascist: Manuel Fraga Iribarne. But not even the tiniest plaque or sign exists in this city that invites us to remember the most notable among those Cuban authors educated during the revolutionary period: Reinaldo Arenas.

Although he was born in the eastern part of the island, Arenas came into his own as a writer in Havana and it was this city that witnessed his most joyful and painful experiences, insofar as he was ingenious, rebellious, Dionysian, irreverent, a rabble-rouser and dead set against obeying any rule that wasn’t that of his free spirit and his insatiable flesh.

Many are the sites through which we could trace the footprints that he left in this city. Someday, in a democratic future, when the cultural authorities decide to honor themselves by revitalizing the memory of this man by means of a tour-homage to the places where he created, reveled, and suffered in Havana, it will be enough for them to use as their guide the descriptions from his book, Before Night Falls, a work as dramatic and simultaneously funny as its author.

Precisely in that book, Arenas dedicates an entire chapter to the Hotel Monserrate (corner of Monserrate and Obrapía Streets), a former whore’s den in whose second story he managed to carve out the tiniest private space in Havana, a room that he was to buy secretly. In that Hotel, according to the author himself, there lived a veritable cornucopia of misfits who lived outside the law. “If the police would come,” he comments jovially, “the only thing they had to do was put up some prison bars across the main entrance to the building, the only door in the place, and everyone inside would be held prisoner.”

A few days ago, curious to know if anything had changed, I visited the Monserrate, more than thirty years after the details described by Arenas.

There are no substantial changes. The building remains as dilapidated as always. The same atrocious front door. The dark hallways, the walls and ceiling with chipped paint, that hasn’t been retouched in more than half a century. The ancient elevator, which inspired in Arenas such great jokes and so many furtive sexual adventures, continues its astonishing balancing act, while contemplating a fall without ever actually falling. The clothes hanging on the lines on the balconies…

Yo soy Bebita, la amiga de Reinaldo Arenas - Foto de Jose Hugo Fernandez — My name is Bebita, Reinaldo Arenas’ friend. Photo by José Hugo Fernández.

With respect to the “wildlife” that is the neighbors, the old whores have all died by now, after their conversion to the Communist Party, but it’s still possible to find there several of the recurring characters from Before Night Falls. A few have left (for Hell or God knows where) and others remain the same, stranded in time, only now so much older. But almost all of those that remain couldn’t be photographed because, as if they were Hollywood A-listers, they demanded that I pay them in CUC (convertible pesos) for appearing in any photos or for affording me a brief interview. One exception was Bebita, who not for nothing had also been an exception when she gave her friendship and her generous help to the writer. “I am Reinaldo’s friend,” she told me, while she opened the door to her room to offer me a seat, very willing, and even enthusiastic about the possibility of bringing me up-to-date, for free, on life and miracles in the Monserrate.

Through her I learned that the character who sold the room to the novelist (he calls him Rubén) continues to be as warped as ever and that he charged him for using the bathroom, 50 centavos a pop, according to Arenas, but Bebita clarifies that it was 50 centavos for using the toilet and a peso for taking a bath. With some help from Bebita, who allowed him to put a waste pipe through the middle of her room, Reinaldo was finally able to have his own bathroom. Later, the room would revert back to the aforementioned Rubén.

“On the first floor lived Bebita with her friend; they were two women who played the drums and who would get all caught up in problems caused by jealousy on a daily basis,” wrote Arenas. Well, she still lives there, also with a friend, perhaps not the same one as before, since she is much younger than Bebita. But now peace reigns in Bebita’s room, although her personal saint is still the same: Shangó, the orisha of storms (thunder and lightening).

“Some day if they decide to put up a monument in honor of Reinaldo,” she said to me, “no other place would be more ideal than the Monserrate Building, nest of his suffering and his partying. And I assume that the monument ought to be in the shape of a phallus.”

The ancient elevator of Arenas’ sexual adventures and tricks.

Dark hallway on the first floor of the Monserrate.

They pay homage to a fascist, while they relegate Arenas to oblivion.

If the police would come, the only thing they would have to do would be to place prison bars across the main entrance to the building.

Photos and article by José Hugo Fernández.

Note: The author’s books can be bought here.

Translated by: K. Rauch

Cubanet, 11 December 2013

Mandela: My Belated Personal Tribute / Miriam Celaya

Photograph from the Internet: No Comment.

Time goes on and the funeral of the famous first black president of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, still occupies the pages of the press. Almost everyone feels indebted to praise the infinitely glorious Madiba, re-editing, in countless paragraphs, the deceased leader’s life and seeking to enhance his virtues persistently, to the point that we no longer know for sure if Mandela was a human being or a saint on earth. It is praiseworthy to remember with admiration and respect people who have realized valuable deeds, but I don’t personally react well to icons, paradigms or however they are defined.

Well, then, for all good things Mandela did for his people, for his example of relinquishing power when he could have retained it, due to his charm and charisma, his ability to forgive, so necessary and lacking among us, and all the good things he did throughout his long life, but I prefer to remember him as the man he was, an imperfect individual, as all of us human beings are, which puts him in a closer and more credible position in my eyes.

So, in the presence of so many stereotyped speeches and so much politicking brouhaha deployed at the funeral of a deceased who may have wished less fanfare, I decided to honor him in my own way: celebrating his existence because he lived to fulfill such lofty mission as freedom and justice for his people, during the pursuit of which he suffered repression and imprisonment, just as Cubans aspiring to the same ideals for their people are still suffering, as those who have lived in the confinement and injustices of a dictatorship not just for 27 years, but for over half a century.

But I will allow myself a special tribute to Madiba by modestly imitating him in forgiveness and reconciliation: I forgive you, Nelson Mandela, for the friendship with which you paid tribute to the vilest dictator my people has ever had, and for the many instances on which you exalted him and gave him your support. I forgive you for having been wrong in granting privilege to the oppressor instead of the oppressed, for placing your hand –redemptive for your people- on the bloodied shoulders of the one who excludes and reviles mine. I forgive your accolade to the myth that was built on violence, although you were a symbol of peace for humanity. I forgive you for having condemned us though you hardly knew us, forgetting the tribute in blood that my people made in Africa for which you, like a fickle mistress, thanked the satrap, who has never had the dignity to sacrifice himself for us, for you, or for your kind.

I forgive you, then, and I am reconciled with your memory to keep remembering and respecting the best in you. I know many, with vulgar hypocrisy, will demonize me for questioning you, but they won’t hurt me, because my soul is hardened by virtue of having been attacked and criticized before. It is my hope that this time my detractors will be so consistent with your preaching of kindness they seem to admire so much that they will eventually forgive me. May you also forgive this Cuban’s audacity and irreverence, who believes in the virtue of the good works of men, because she has no gods, but I was not able to resist the temptation to also utter what’s mine in the hour of your death.

And if either you or the mourners of the day won’t forgive me, I don’t care. At any rate, it will be further proof that, deep down, you’re not perfect; at least we’ll have that in common. Don’t take offense, in either case, you were a great person, and I will never match any of your many merits. Rest in peace, sincerely.

13 December 2013

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: