Category: TRANSLATORS

Diary of a Desperado. Our Angel of the Cuban Narrative. / Angel Santiesteban #Cuba #FreeSantiesteban

By Daniel Morales

The writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats has been sentenced to five years in prison by the gang of assassins that, for more than 50 years, dominates every living creature that lives in the beauty and always Faithful Island of Cuba.

That sentence was so expected by Angel himself, like for all of us who, with him, have suffered the process that the repressive officials of the Castro Brothers’ regime have subjected the renowned writer to for the last two years.

And we couldn’t expect more from some criminals who, with the argument of a mulatto sergeant called Batista had inculcated us (that was one of the poor words used in every era by all sides in conflicts, while they were subjecting plenty of innocent victims to the heavy political speech of our prosperous republic) with liberties established by a Utopian constitution, approved since the decades of the ’40s of the last century, and they burst in, with their effective American submachine-guns, their stinky Galician berets, their lousy beards, their filthy long hair, and their hands stained with the blood of thousands of countrymen, in the lives of all the Cubans living and unborn.

Years later that bloodied wheel took Angel and me, when all those feudal lords, from an Spanish lineage of the Galicia region: stinking, full of brute people, ugly, filthy, fat, angry, racist, envious, boring, miserable, resentful, abusive, treacherous, cowardly (the part of Spain the sons of bitches dispute the Iberian throne with the Basque. I apologize to all Galician and Basque that are trying to feign, unsuccessfully, being evil doers, as their cultural fate inevitably has marked them) caught us in a dynasty whose cruelty is still ignored by all world institutions responsible for ensuring the life and dignity of the human beings who inhabit this, our only planet.

We are as Angel called us, The Children that Nobody Wanted, the victims, the serfs of the soil, the slaves, the offspring destined to satisfy the demands of the sons of a filthy Galician officer with the last name Castro, who came to the Island of Cuba with the satanic Valeriano Weyler, and who, imbued with the early fascist spirit of the Mallorcan bastard, initiated his illegitimate sons in the task of converting, as they did their Biran plantation, our mulatto island in a concentration camp worst than the perpetrated by the German Nazis.

Agony, death, grief, hunger, persecution, harassment, torture, suffering, chiefly that: a lot of suffering, I was trying to explain to my American son in my poor English or my profuse Spanish, when he asked me in the midst of his juvenile happiness in winning a tennis match, what I remembered about my youth when I was about the same age as his wonderful 14 years. I dared not recommend him my ineffective novel La Casa del Sol Naciente (The House of the Rising Sun), because Andy was so happy, he looked so beautiful in his happiness, that I found distasteful spoiling his perfect adolescence with horrors of my 30 years of agony on the Devil’s Island.

The capricious massacres of the modern island tyrants that still suffered by all the heretics who dare to defy, intellectually, the ignominious propaganda system that supports the Regime that rules the Island of Cuba, will be an stigmata that will hang over all the “intellectuals” who remain motionless and/or commit to that shit, who maintain, trembling and soft during their humiliating existence, showing off a category that doesn’t belong to them.

I think that Miguel Correa was the one who showed me in the beginning of my prolific exile on a clear night in his apartment in New Jersey on the banks of the Hudson River, under the influence of good wine and excellent marijuana, a copy of an essay about transgressions of his great friend Reinaldo Arenas. In the essay Arenas outlined the thesis that every artist is a transgressor, a kind of dissident, a heretic, that the great works are characterized by the break with the environment that contributed to it, or even fed it.

The extraordinary narrative work of my brother Angel does exactly that, there isn’t even one of his texts that I hadn’t read with a deep exaltation of all my feelings. His stories have a unique intensity in the Cuban narrative, only commensurate with the Stories of Lino Novas Calvo, but above all with the short North American narrative, which despite so many sorrows, has been the most influential for us.

The American writers are very interested in reality, or rather violence, sometimes very cruel, with which reality hits the human being.

From Poe or maybe from Melville, via Twain and all those geniuses of the so-called lost generation: Fitzgerald, Dos Pasos, Hemingway, Faulkner and Steinbeck, to the authors of dirty realism, who choose meticulously with their minimalist style those “real”pictures that allow them to create an unceasing chain of emotional impacts, that in most cases are enough to overwhelm the reader so much that he ends up hating the writer.

Authors like Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, the amazing Chuck Palahniuk, are some of the narrators who, like Angel, including those never published the Devil’s Island: Pedro Juan Gutiérrez and also our generational brother Amir Valle, set up an agonizing battle with their readers, a sentimental struggle where there are swarms of sublime traitors, vulnerable pedophiles, attractive homosexuals, mournful swains, romantic whores, the good cop, the happy alcoholic or the zombie drug addict.

All of them are writers who dare to teach us the colossal quantity of shit that the human being is able to produce, on our pathetic way to the death, in our stupid fight to survive this hell that we have to suffer.

But Angel’s narratives have something different from all these famous authors I mentioned, who despite their teaching us about the stinking part of our lives, despite their characters sharing that common hell, they don’t resign themselves to this wretched life they have to bear, and that’s why they reveal themselves; not in the way of the 19th century romantic heroes, who were looking for a glorious transcendence or a symbolic condition, eminence, no, nothing of Hollywood films with vigilante gunmen, or Japanese movies with samurais whose codes pretend an unlikely exaltation of the man.

The heroes of Angel Santiesteban-Prats make us fall in love with their extraordinary individual little flashes of light, adjusted to a certain narrative situation; those daily flashes that you and I are able to produce in the face of the injustice we find every day, e.g. in our work place, in our prison cell, in our homes, or in the neighborhood where we live.

Angel doesn’t want to be bad, he resigns himself to that satanic generational condition. That’s why he always gives a chance to all his characters; he doesn’t justify them but elevates them to an essential category, the human one. He doesn’t conceive that anybody could be so perverse as to not deserve love or a decent death, even when that death comes for a reason that the character doesn’t believe, doesn’t understand, and that in every case is foreign to him, indifferent, let’s say obligatory.

One writes as one can, and if sincere, as one is. To read the stories of my brother Angel makes me feel so nostalgic for those of us who know him in person, it’s like his image emerges from the text to give us a hug, to irradiate us, as no other writer of our lost generation, that sense of belonging to so strange a paradise, so hard to find in a world filled with so much false egomania, so much evil envy, as the world of art and literature of the Cuban Revolution.

To the narrators of my malevolent generation, our angel was Santiesteban: that big guy, cheerful, that I remember more than 6 feet tall, strong, with fat cheeks, so extremely humble as Amir says, that he used to appear on his fast German bike with an unbearable shyness to share with us some colossal perfect stories. We couldn’t envy him; his greatness was so sublime, so essential to Cuban literature, that we had to chill out, let it be, limit ourselves to crumpling up all the pages that we had drafted with so much effort in order to create our literature.

But he loved us so much that he needed us for living, one day not so long ago, he told me that without our presence there, without his dead brothers, murdered or emigrated from the Devil’s Island, without our fraternal literary competitions, without all those intense national meetings, it would be very hard for him to write the same texts, follow the thread, maybe without knowing, of the Greek masters who founded our occidental and superior culture.

Angel Santiesteban has chosen one of the ways that, unfortunately, we Cubans have suffered since our uncertain national foundation; I mean the category of martyr. Perhaps the beauty of our island is so out of proportion that it encourages perfection, to the extraordinary human condition, and it is the fact that the ugly “reality” produced by our countrymen contrasts so much with that nature, that provokes the extreme conflicts that our national conscience suffers.

I won’t ask for continental or Latin American solidarity for Angel’s freedom, because we Cubans have become accustomed, in these 50 years, to the solitude, to the neglected clamor in the desert, to the slights of all our brothers of the race. We are, as someone baptized us well, the “Jews of the Caribbean.” Hanging over our heads an unexplained curse, irrational, incomprehensible, that despite everything makes us invincible, like the scorned people of Israel, who face a crowd of satanic souls who appeal, with their Islamism, for the extermination of their human dignity.

But here we have those who, showing off their embarrassing membership in UNEAC (the Cuban Writers and Artists Union), thanks to the repressive system that enslaves us now have an excellent opportunity to redeem their guilt of being accomplices, actively or passively, of a regime that has surpassed all the horror of our national history with its evil. To redeem their guilt by going down in history with an act of courage, of intellectual honesty, signing or showing their rejection of the medieval regime ruling the Island of Cuba, which is trying to silence with five years in jail one of most extraordinary writers of our culture. Imagine that thanks to the modernity of the Internet there is a once-in-a-lifetime choice to be against an act like the assassination of the poet Placido or the liberation of the narrator Carlos Montenegro.

You, Cuban notaries, until now official typists for the Castros, here it is a unique personal option, redemptive. Given that your mediocre works are not going to surpass the colossal transcendental works of Heredia, of Martí, of Varela, of Villaverde, of Lezama, of Eliseo di Ego, of Lino, of Labrador Ruiz, of Cabrera Infante, of Lidia, of the madness of Virgilio Piñera, of Rafael Almanza, of Reinaldo Arenas, of Carlos Victoria, of Benítez Rojo, or of Amir Valle, I urge you to sign a repudiation statement against the false sentence given to the Cuban writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats, an act that would guarantee you, like that Dreyfus thing did for Solas and his followers, that so wished-for transcendence that you chase trembling and crouched down in a corner of the Cuban tragedy.

Here is the link to the intellectual Cuban posterity:

https://www.change.org/es/peticiones/free-angel-santiesteban-imprisoned-for-being-a-writer-and-human-rights-activist-in-cuba?utm_campaign=share_button_action_box&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=share_petition&utm_term=36550326

 

Lets see if you have the guts to sign this document; urging you is your friend, or foe:

Daniel Morales

Translated by: @Hachhe

December 16 2012

Why the UBPC Cooperatives Failed / Dimas Castellano #Cuba

cpa peopleindexLast August, the Cuban Council of Ministers approved a new General Regulation for the Basic Units of Cooperative Production (UBPC), which was complemented by a packet consisting of 17 measures. The purpose, according to the daily Rebel Youth on September 23, consists of liquidating the dependency of those with respect to state enterprises.

The original Regulation issued in 1993, although it did not recognize the legal character of the UBPC, which is to say, the capacity to acquire rights and contract obligations, stipulated in its foundational points the correlation between production and income and the effective development of management autonomy.

The breach of those and other positive aspects was reflected in the poor results. Of the 170 thousand hectares that the existing 1,989 UBPCs possess, almost 40% of their lands remain idle; although their extent represents 27% of the agriculture surface of the country, they produce only 12% of the grains, tubers and vegetables and 17% of the milk; only 27% have satisfactory results; the rest, to greater or lesser extent, present difficulties; in the year 2010 15% of the UBPCs closed with losses and another 6% did not even present a balance sheet; and their losses exceed 200 million pesos.

The UBPCs were created when it was demonstrated that the concentration of the country’s arable land in the hands of the State had generated disinterest of the agricultural workers, the generalized debasement of agricultural products and enormous expansions of vacant lands infected with the marabou weed. A deplorable picture aggravated by the loss of the subsidies provided by the socialist countries of Eastern Europe.

In that context the country’s authorities decided to convert a part of the unproductive state lands into cooperatives, but without giving the requisite freedoms nor waiving the monopoly of property. The ignorance of the essence of cooperativism and the subordination of economic laws to ideology explain both the cause of the failure and the effort to repair that decision with the recent measures.

The Declaration of Cooperative Identity, adopted in 1995 in the 2nd General Assembly of the International Cooperative Alliance (ACI), defines the cooperative as an autonomous association of people who voluntarily join to address their economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations by means of a business of jointly and democratically controlled property.

In accordance with this definition — of an organism like the ACI, that since1985binds and promotes the cooperative movement in the world — the UBPCs are not classified as true cooperatives since they were not created voluntarily by the owners of land and means of production but emerged from an agreement of the Communist Party.

In spite of the new General Regulation (Resolution 574 from August 13, 2012) the UBPCs will count on legal personality; the power to elect the administrators for the majority of the General Assembly of Partners; to buy products and services from any legal or natural person; to establish direct contractual relations with the input provider companies; and to decide the percentage of the utilities to distribute among the partners; other vital aspects are still missing.

Again it is the State and not the agricultural workers who make the decision to join in cooperatives. If it is added to that that those workers are not owners but usufructuraries (a kind of lessee) of a state property, it is not difficult to envision that we are facing the beginning of a new failure and therefore the need to implement new reforms, good for the current government or good for the successor, until the UBPC members become collective owners of the land they work.

The virtual lack of agricultural cooperatives before 1959 is understandable because of the advances in the sugar industry since the end of the 19th century which had generated enormous landholdings through the dispossession of thousands of small owners. What is absurd is that with a revolution that declared itself socialist, cooperativism, akin to that social system, has been absent and in its place they have experimented with arbitrary and subjective forms applied vertically by the revolutionary State.

Before 1959 there were in Cuba some hundred thousand landowners, to whom were added another hundred thousand to whom the Revolution delivered ownership titles with the First Law of Agrarian Reform of 1959. Those two hundred thousand farmers constituted the basis for the development of a true cooperative movement. Nevertheless, the concentration on the part of the State of 70% of the arable land was a coup de grace to a process of association that had contributed much to the Cuban economy and society.

The first manifestation of state arbitrariness in the agriculture cooperativization was the creation in March 1960 of the sugar cane cooperatives in areas that previously belonged to the sugar mills. Nevertheless, the decision to monopolize landownership made these businesses become property of the State. Then the true cooperativism was limited to a few associations formed over the base of private farmers.

Fidel Castro himself once expressed: “those cooperatives have no real historical basis, given that the cooperatives are really formed with the farmer landowners. In my judgment we were going to create an artificial cooperative, converting those agricultural workers into cooperativists. From my point of view, and maybe applying some of the verses of Marti, slave of the age and the doctrines I favored of converting those cooperatives that were worker cooperatives and not farmer cooperatives into state enterprises.”

Not satisfied with most of the soil in the hands of the State, instead of promoting voluntary cooperativsm, there began a process aimed at diminishing the quantity of independent farmers. In May 1961 the National Association of Small Farmers was created, and a policy aimed at trying to “cooperativize” the 200 thousand farmer owners began. Farmer associations were created, then came the Mutual Help Brigades and next the Cooperatives of Credit and Services (CCS),made up of farmers who maintained ownership of the land and the means of production but lacked legal character.

cpaindexAfter 1975, with the thesis of the 1st Congress of the PCC concerning the need for cooperativization of the land, the development of the Cooperatives of Agricultural Production (CPA) were promoted, formed by farmers who united their farms and other means of production “voluntarily” as a means of socialist development of the countryside.

At the end of 1977 the number of CPAs was 136 and in June 1986 it was 1,369, representing 64% of the farm lands, at the same time that state ownership had increased to 75% of the arable land due to the reduction of volume of land in the hands of private farmers.

The results were not long in coming; Cuba has to buy from outside agricultural products that are perfectly growable in our soil, as is the case with the coffee that we have had to acquire in Vietnam, a country that Cubans taught how to reap the grain. That’s why insisting on reforms of the cooperatives without permitting the farmers to be the ones to voluntarily organize and without counting on the collective ownership of the land that they work, is to insist on failure.

Published Wednesday, November 21, 2012: http://www.diariodecuba.com/cuba/14133-por-que-fracasaron-las-cooperativas-castristas

Translated by mlk

November 26 2012

Part Seven? / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

I do not understand how it occurred to the Sunday staff of the “Art 7″ movie theater to exhibit, on December 9th, an Indian film just when the 34th edition of the Latin American film festival is being celebrated in Cuba! I know that my compatriots from that environment have a high level of professional and cultural instruction and that in order to work in Cuban TV the aspirants must pass through several filters of ideological verification in order to prevent “politically disagreeable accidents” in that vital medium of mass circulation for governmental propaganda. As we all know, to err is human, and that program’s collective committed a blunder like anyone. I just want no upstart to want to take advantage of that slight fumble in order to go whisper in some intolerant ear abouthidden subtexts and intentions where perhaps there are none. Or are there?

Translated by mlk

Spanish post
December 19 2012

The Effect on My Life of the Death of Oswaldo Paya / Mario Lleonart

opindexThe sacrifice of the precious life of Oswaldo Jose Paya Sardinas and of so many other martyrs that have preceded him in this type of targeted assassination, far from terrorizing me, stimulates me to continue forward in my ministry which cannot exclude the condemnation of this despotic regime.

When I said goodbye to my friend Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia, beaten to death in May 2011, I was already asking who would be the next victim in one of the posts that I then wrote, and we have buried after him Laura Pollan (October 2011), Wilman Villar Mendoza (January 2012) and now Paya (July 2012).

I am heir to an uncountable multitude of martyrs who preferred dying over refusing to preach or live the liberating faith of Jesus Christ, the same faith that motivated the life and work of the irreplaceable author of Project Varela.  In this sense, as a follower of a Jesus who gave me an example by not shunning the cross, and who asks us to follow him also carrying ours, I do mine, as also Paya did his, his own responding words before the death threats sent by Herod:

And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following: for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets. (Luke 13.32-34, KJV)

But throughout history what tyrannies never seem to learn is what Paya himself had already noticed about tyrants:  Be careful with those you kill, they might spur the people’s yearning for liberty.

Translated by mlk

November 21 2012

Convalescence and Gratitude / Miriam Celaya #Cuba

My readers must forgive this long and abrupt absence. After so much talk about the Cuban health system, I ended up getting sick. Luckily, it was not cholera or dengue fever, but I just had the most aggressive flu that I can ever remember, and it kept me home for many days without even having a chance to play with the computer keyboard, since I had an acute case of conjunctivitis as a complication. Not for nothing, but they “threw everything at me”, but they haven’t been able to do away with me… at least for now.

Although a lot has happened during these days and, of course, there are many things to comment on, today I just want to announce that I’m back and to thank everyone for the many e-mail messages, asking about my health. I also would like to take this opportunity to extend my deepest appreciation to everyone who, all through this long and difficult 2012, have shown their solidarity in the most diverse ways. You have really helped me, and the medications that you sent me on occasion came in handy on this critical juncture. I also want to thank you for your PayPal donations that allowed me to buy internet connection time in Havana hotels when I can’t get on line through more friendly venues; the numerous times you have made possible my cell phone recharges, which allow for immediate communication with my “fellow travelers” and protect me against any potential adverse circumstance with the boys of the repressive forces; text messages that quickly inform me from the outside about events not published in the press within Cuba, and finally, all the words of encouragement that inspire me to return to this blog to meet with you in the ongoing effort to push down the wall together.

Without you, I’m sure the road would be a thousand times harsher. Thank you with all my heart. We will, once again, meet here next week.

Translated by Norma Whiting

December 14 2012

Primary School in Cuba: Crisis or Regression in Quality? / Ivan Garcia #Cuba

I have a nine-year old daughter, and due to the laxity in primary education, her mother and I have seen ourselves obliged to invest more time and money than we would like in order tostrengthen her knowledge.

When she was in first grade, her teacher, 18-years-old with poor teacher training, used corporal punishment against the students every time she lost her patience. The mistreatment happened often. The girl was vulgar and angry. Besides, she scarcely had any culture and little or no teaching vocation.

Repeated complaints to the director of the school and letters sent to theMinister of Education by some parents provoked a transfer of the teacher to another school. The logical thing would have been to expel her from teaching. But the lack of primary teachers in Cuba caused the educational authorities not to take drastic measures.

My daughter came home fearful because of the screams, blows and insults of her teacher. She began to reject school. She barely progressed in reading and math. After her school day, her mother and I reviewed with her for two hours daily.

For 10 convertible pesos, half the salary of a professional in Cuba, we hired an experienced, retiredprimary school teacher for the purpose of elevating the quality of her instruction. Also, we paid 3 convertible pesosmonthly to an English teacher.

My daughter’s situation is not an exception in Cuba today. I would say it is the norm. Many families surely have a history of complaints to tell about faculty mismanagement.

According to the official press, there is a deficit of 14 thousand teachers in primary and secondary teaching. Fernando Ravsberg, reporter for BBC on the island, says on his blog that it takes great abilityto write an article of 1,400 words about the scarcity of teachers and not oncementionthe low salaries that they earn.

The regression in the quality of education is intimately tied to the ridiculous salaries. A teacher does not earn more than 500 pesos. He receives no extra money in currency. And his social recognition has fallen precipitously. When a young person chooses the teaching career, it is almost always because he has failed in his effort to pass entrance exams in other degrees considered more “prestigious.”

To be a teacher is the last card from the deck. Many men opt to study in lightening teaching courses as a way of escaping military service. It is not rare to see a former primary school teacher washing dishes in a luxury hotel or preparing homemade pizzas in a private business.

A good teacher is one of the most valuable contributions to the country that the GDP does not usually pick up. Who does not remember superb classes in history or literature by a virtuoso teacher? The good teachers are never forgotten and they are not only thanked for what welearned, but also for the way in which they taught us. Behind great professional and honest men, there is always the hand of a great teacher.

At this point we are going backwards. Right now, in the homeland of Felix Varela, Jose de la Luz y Caballero and Maria Luisa Dolz, among other outstanding educators, being a teacher is somewhat trivial. An office of last resort to notswell the unemployment statistics.

If in Finland, a European nation in the vanguard of education in the world, they assign the highest level teachers to primary teaching, in Cuba the opposite happens. The statistics reflect that on the island there are more than a million university graduates. Thousands of technicians. Zero illiterates.

It is laudable. An achievement of Fidel Castro. With his stains: teaching is highly ideological. And on the higher level, if you openly demonstrate your political discrepancies, they might throw you into the street.

In his timid and incomplete economic reforms, Raul Castro must have contemplated an important improvement in the salaries of primary and secondary teachers. An official from the Ministry of the Interior or the Revolutionary Armed Forcesearns a thousand pesos a month. They have a mobile telephone paid by the state.

They can get goods at cost in exclusive stores for officials. And every year they go on vacation at military villas where they pay for their services with very little money. The generals’ club enjoys greater prerogatives. On the other hand, Cuban teachers earn miserable salaries, and their work is not recognized by the government.

Low quality education is now reaping its fruits. Mediocre professionals, with spelling mistakes and incorrect use of language. Youngsters without morals or civics whom school does not motivate. The refrain, you can never know too much, fell into disuse.

The qualitative regression could be stopped if the State dignifies the teaching profession and its role in society. To the contrary, the educational crisis will continue to become more acute. We are going down that path.

Photo:Year 1950-51. Third grade students in Public School No. 126 Ramon Rosainz, located at Monte and Pila, Havana. They appear with their teacher, Miss Ines. At that time, teachers were very valued and respected by society. Before 1959, in public and private schoolsin Cuba, individual photographersmade portraits similar to this one, which were sold to parents for 50 cents or a peso. The first on foot on the second row, to the left, is Tania Quintero, my mother, then 8 years of age.

Translated by mlk

December 12 2012

For Shame! / Angel Santiesteban #Cuba

By Amir Valle

Ángel Santiesteban is a writer.

It’s a truth so absolute that it can make whoever reads this think, “Amir Valle still doesn’t know what he’s going to write.” And he would be right. Because I could have begun by saying directly what I mean:

“Ángel Santiesteban is a writer, but they want to disguise him as a criminal.”

And now that’s very different. Still more if we see ourselves obliged to remember that Ángel Santiesteban lives in a country that spends its time “crowing” everywhere that Cubans “live in the best of worlds that exist today”; that is to say, almost in a paradise on earth, and that the accusations made by enemies — who in all cases are called “mercenaries of imperialism” — that human rights are not respected in Cuba are false.

Ángel Santiesteban is a writer, and he has told about a Cuba that the government doesn’t want to show; a Cuba that refuses to accept many honest beings of this world who once pinned their hopes on what the Cuban Revolution meant in those beautiful and, I repeat, encouraging, years of the Seventies. But the saddest thing is that Ángel Santiesteban has written, persists in writing and speaking about a Cuba that certain intellectuals of the Left strive to hide.

I have spoken with some of these colleagues, and it has called my attention to discovering that, determined in their personal war against “the evils of imperialism,” against “the genocide that capitalism is causing in the present world,” against the “dangerous and growing loss of liberties and human rights that the United States and the rich countries of the First World are carrying with them wherever they plant their boots,” they don’t want to understand (and even search for thousands of justifications, among others, Ahh! The North American blockade!) that on a more reduced but also criminal scale, the Cuban government has converted “Cuba, the beacon of the Americas and the world” into an absurd marabuzal (convoluted mess) of economic, social and moral evils.

They don’t want to recognize (and even try to find forced explanations) that because of the failed economic experiments and the “war mongering internationalism” of Fidel Castro and his minions, the Cuban people have suffered a true genocide that already numbers more dead than all the deaths that have occurred on the island since the beginning of the 20th century up to today (just trying to escape Cuba for the United States on makeshift rafts to reach “the capitalist hell,” around 30,000 Cubans have perished); and above all, those intellectual colleagues of the Left lose themselves in labyrinths of slogans from the epoch of the Cold War when they try to defend a government that shows its true dictatorial face eliminating freedoms and human rights for all its citizens, enraging itself especially with those who dare to think with their own minds, to say and write what they think.

It’s a shameful position, without doubt. But more shameful is the silence in response. And it’s in the face of evidence of the total disaster that today is the political and governmental “system” imposed on Cubans (and the quotation marks are because more than a system, it’s a desperate experiment to gain time in power to prepare the way for the “sons of the Castro Clan and their acolytes” to assume that power). Faced with the impossibility of defending such a debacle with solid arguments, they now count on changing the subject, and when they see themselves obliged “to fulfill their honorable professional careers” to face the stubborn truth of the facts, they respond with a theatrical “I didn’t know” (at least this happens with the majority of those I know).

But there is even something more embarrassing. A good part of those intellectuals personally knew Ángel Santiesteban when he still hadn’t decided to say out loud and to write journalistically to Cubans and the world what he thought about the harsh reality of his country. At that time he was limiting himself to writing only short stories, which were hard, critical, not at all complacent. But even so he was then considered a prestigious voice in the concert of Cuban narrative. The official critics, many of them cultural functionaries in important political posts, categorized him as “the best storyteller of his generation.”

But none of those critics, none of those functionaries, could ever explain why, while the Latin American Literary Agency (that represents and manages internationally the literary works of the resident writers on the island) placed in good, mid-range and even unknown publishers abroad works that were “not conflictive” (many of them of lesser quality than the books of Ángel), the Agency never managed to place one single one of the much-praised books of Ángel Santiesteban.

We heard the unofficial response from the mouth of a Cuban editor, then the director of one of the most prestigious publishing houses on the island, at a party in the Pablo de la Torriente Brau Cultural Center. And perhaps that explosion of sincerity had something to do with the several plastic cups of rum and cola that the editor had drunk. Now we know, because life has shown us: children and drunks tend to be implacably sincere. Later I knew that the weight of conscience bothered that poor man, the guilt of not having been able to overcome the fear that obliged him to leave his ethical principles to one side and convert himself into the worst of intellectual marionettes: a censor.

“Some day many things I did will come out into the open…the many masks I had to put on…to save you from the hell that I had to go through…to defend the right of writing with freedom, believe me, I did a lot…a lot….,” he said, with a nasal voice.

“I saved your ass when you wrote the true Manuscritos…and now I can tell you that was a great book….,” he told me, pointing at me with a trembling finger.

“And you, for your book of stories about Pinos Nuevos,” he told Alejandro Aguiar, who I didn’t think was really listening because he was talking with Alberto Guerra, who now also had ears as red as Mandinga from the alcohol.

“And just now I came from a meeting where a bastard from the Agency, whose name I won’t mention, said clearly, clearly, that he is not promoting outside Cuba “gusano books” — the books of worms — like those of Ángel Santiesteban.

That I remember. Of course with all the repetitions, all the babbling and all that comic slurring of words that drunks usually do. Even tears, especially when he complained that it hurt him to be seen as a censor by colleagues like us.

The period of time, and above all the secrets that some writer friends told us under their breath who also were functionaries “of confidence” would allow us to prove that that behavior was not an aberration of one particular censor. It was a clear political tactic: books that showed the island in a way that was “not convenient” to the official image that Cuba projected were shelved and the authors were always told that “we don’t know what’s happening, but we are not able to place your books…it’s difficult, the international market is very hard.”

And when they placed some of those books it was strictly for propaganda purposes, well calculated. One writer who protested too much had to shut up (and was then published by a very small house of almost no distribution, so that the book didn’t circulate except for guaranteeing a few samples for the author who boasted of being published abroad) or had to show that it was a lie that Cuba censured him, for which they flocked to false or blandly “conflictive” books of writers who clearly adhered to the Regime, most notably the “critical” novel “The Flight of the Cat,” by Abel Prieto.

Nothing of that, of course, do they accept, those foreign intellectuals who then came to Cuba and were astonished at the “fabulous narrative capacity of Ángel Santiesteban,” as some told me personally in those years. I even dare to assert that some, if they are asked, upon receiving the official version (in which, I am also sure, they don’t believe) have decided to make like ostriches and hide their heads in the sand.

None of them, even where it is known in the intellectual milieus of the island and exile, has interceded for this writer they praised so much when he was unknown by “the enemy press, mercenary of imperialism”; none of them, in their numerous trips to Havana, has demanded that the right of Ángel Santiesteban to say what he thinks, to publish what he thinks inside and outside Cuba be respected, not even with 0.5 percent of the rage with which they defend a phony like Julian Assange (who presents himself as a paradigm of free expression of the press but runs to seek refuge under the wings of a government that is a paradigm in the world of repression of a free press).

None of those who verified with their own eyes that Ángel Santiesteban is, above all things, a sincere writer, with a literary career that has persevered since its very beginning in offering a critical look at the Cuban reality, none of them, I repeat, has pronounced publicly, like they should, to simply defend the right of Ángel Santiesteban to be considered thus, a writer.

Berlin, November 9, 2012

Translated by Regina Anavy

Silver Invitation / Regina Coyula #Cuba

comucuba

As has been my custom, yesterday I went to “Last Thursday,” the space of the magazine Temas (Themes). The theme of Temas was quite attractive to me: Internet, social networks, culture. I arrive late so I missed the presentation of the invited guests, among whom I recognized Iroel Sanchez, former president of the Cuban Book Institute, and Rosa Miriam Elizade, director of the portal Cubadebate. Those I didn’t know turned out to be the blogger Paquito from De Cuba; Milena, I believe from Cubarte; and Juan, professor at UCI (University of Information Sciences); they didn’t say their last names. I concentrated on those I didn’t know, because those I did know couldn’t surprise me.

Paquito and Milena struck me as interesting and inclusive. Paquito loosened up quite a bit to improve the image of the press, which everyone there knew to be horrible. Juan, the professor at UCI, very informative, but his opinions were a tribute to the Cold War. I listened to him reiterate the premise of the political character of the internet representing special interests, but mostly about its creators, and I could not stop thinking of the political activism in official cyber pages and blogs, and all the cyber activity against capitalism that’s posted worldwide. He concluded with the endorsement of the status quo, somewhat out of tune with the mostly young audience which he tried to convince that the intranet was as good as the internet; so much so, that Rafael Hernández, who functioned as moderator, issued menacing words to stop the ensuing harassment.

As often happens in venues where the public has the opportunity to use the microphone, a few like to show off their wisdom, (or what some might interpret as wisdom). Others are happy to hear themselves talk, since they were not paying attention and asked questions that had already been answered.

Not everyone asked to speak in order to waste the two hours scheduled for the venue. Enrique Vega, student of Pedagogy explained that our society is technologically outdated and out of touch, and how can the gap be addressed; Antonio Rodiles from “Estado de SATS” approached the topic of freedom in terms of our poor connectivity and discouragement of usage; Luis Rondón LGBT activist, asked how we can pretend to prepare our society for the internet without the use of the internet; Harold Cárdenas, one of the administrators of the retired blog Cuban Youth (La Joven Cuba), asked when will the debates are going to move from the virtual to the real.

When it was about to get truly interesting, the time expired. While the topic was social networks and culture, the question of the twenty-four thousand pesos surfaced: And what about the Cable?

Translated by: Marina Villa

November 30 2012

Strange Christmases / Rebeca Monzo #Cuba

Workshop of Rebeca

From girlhood, the happiest time of year for me was Christmas. Maybe because the general atmosphere that surrounded that date was happiness and relaxation. All the adults became friendlier, maybe because they received their “bonuses,” which generally equaled another month’s salary,making them more tolerant of the smallest and youngest of the family and of the neighborhood, who back then were like an extension of this.

I always observed with curiosity, but also with the naiveté of a girl, that my aunts and my mother, days before the key dates — Christmas and the day of the Three Kings — would restore old toys and dolls, cleaning them and making them new clothes, so that everything was shiny. I remember that one of my aunts made tin soldiers, which my grandfather later took charge of painting suitably. All this process of pouring the melted tin in the molds fascinated me, and I watched with delight. I never associated this busy workshop with anything but another chore, in a home where everyone was very hard-working. It was not until my cousin Ignacito, the most mischievous of us, approached me in secret and told me: “Cousin, the parents are the Kings. If you want to prove it, the night before stay awake like me to see my father dressed as a King, placing the toys around the Christmas tree.”

After he made this confession to me, I realized that these restored dolls and toys had become the property of other children in the neighborhood from families with fewer resources than ours.

I adored my cousin, he was my hero, and tried to follow him in all his antics. I joined him the night before the anticipated day. Trying to fight sleep, finally Morpheus overcame me before I could see my fantasy shattered. But now things would not bethe same, and in later years, I did not feel like leaving water and straw for the camels. Nevertheless, I do not know for what hidden reason, I continued believing and feeding that illusion for several more years.

I grew, and with my adolescence came the year fifty-nine. The first thing that I saw vanish was that pretty family that I had always so much enjoyed: my aunts and uncles and with them my cousins. That was a strange pain that I had never before felt, as if something was broken inside of me. Later my friends left. No more walks to window shop, no more scent of fresh pine in the doorways of the stores, no more garlands or toys. All that disappeared. I never again heard those Christmas carols and songs, not in the streets or on the radio, much less on television: they were replaced by marches or anthems.

For more than fifty years I longed to again hear a Christmas carol or song. This never happened. Nevertheless, this year, with the new boom in the small businesses and the ingenuity of the self-employed, we have spent the whole summer, until today, listening to the improvised ice cream carts, announcing themselves with music of carols, which evidently (because everyone has the same) have been incorporated, possibly with the music that comes with the garlands, which are sold at the currency raising shops — as we call the hard currency stores.

This has become something like that “you did not want soup, but you drink three bowls.” Nothing, that for more than half a century was a shortage, now has become an overdose. The only signs that it’s Christmas are those little carts and the paladares, the private restaurants.

Translated by mlk

December 8 2012

Eagles Don’t Eat Bird Seed / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

Tío Sam
Taken from “Wikipedia Kiwix”

It is a secret to no one that the Cuban government has fixed its attention on the possibility of negotiations with the United States that could be advantageous to them.  To divide a part of that society and its US investors who want to trade with Cuba seems to be the strategy designed to keep them entrenched at the head of the Antillean country without the threat of politically binding commitments.

They have outlined a plan of selective commercial bites that permit them to have lucrative benefits with capitalist associates, who worry about the enlargement of their bank accounts and are not interested in other matters that could affect their ties with Cuba. That is why they silence we Cuban dissidents who are committed to a process of normalization of relations with the giant from the north.

It is like the irony of asking the United States to lift the embargo, but only that part that impedes their obtaining earnings, not in a complete way. Sometimes it even seems to me that they are thinking of doing the same thing with respect to the Common Position of the European Union, where they prefer to take care with its dividends so that “they do not risk their businesses with inappropriate petitions for rights and freedoms for Cubans.”

It is possible that the planned and “shiny” package, also includes the intention of creating controversy and debate within the US and European societies, in which it is an advantage to them to be treated as an underdeveloped, small, blockaded country, that “fights strenuously to move forward.”

That seems to be the motto they have been repeating for years to the rest of the world, including fundamentally to Washington and Brussels. No one mentions the dictatorship or the embargo on civil and political rights and liberties that the government imposes on its people: whatever does not suit them does not exist. They are victims before the foreigners, victimizers with their fellow citizens; they are humanitarians with others, but with us they have been a barbed whip in almost all aspects of society.

In the almost 54 years of this model, we have learned that they are only effective at militarization, political discourse — not always well founded — strategies for permanent command and control. The militarism established in the early years made it possible for them to be rapacious with their compatriots in the exercise of power and facilitated their systematic violation of the fundamental rights of Cubans.

In the present, they are taking steps in issuing, revising and repealing some laws, and although they are not making all the progress that we need, at least it means a small advance in dismantling old structures and procedures that anchored and formed mentalities with which they cannot advance towards a model a little more human, which seems to be the objective of the leadership of Raul Castro.

They want to reestablish relations with the United States — clearly with conditions — and they were working to pierce the nest that they publicly despised and verbally attacked so many times — and still do — by which they trampled their rights — as well as with those of many Cubans — by confiscating their property without compensation.

It seems that so many years in power have deluded them so much that they believe they can fool their opponents with some few moves on the bilateral political chess board, like easily defeating an opponent with a bishop check. Today they present themselves to US society as innocents and tempting prey, but they only offer bird seed to the rich descendants of the bald eagle, which as everyone knows, are also carnivores.

Translated by mlk

December 6 2012

Cuba: An Economy Does Not Rise Selling Croquettes / Ivan Garcia #Cuba

Some years ago, when the Politburo headed by General Raul Castro was studying alternative ways to apply reforms capable of reactivating the moribund island economy, Marino Murillo, fattened ex-colonel converted to the “czar of transformations” said that Cuba was gambling by using unproven methods in its transformations. It is not bad to think for yourself.

The only thing that the proposal from the same group pompously in power for five decades has demonstrated is the failure of its management. I do not call into question the capability of Cuban economists and technocrats. Although their pioneering theories have never resulted or drawn attention in western academies or on a jury for the Nobel Prize, audacity and experimentation are preferable to the habitual inertia in closed and totalitarian systems.

Something had to be done. The economy had fallen by some35% of GDP, if we compare it with 1989. After crossing a desert, where the mission was to survive, with thousands of people desiring to emigrate, sparse and very bad food, 12-hour power outages and factories turned into museums of idle machinery, Fidel Castro applied some of the advice that Carlos Solchaga — sent urgently by the Spanish president Felipe Gonzalez in order to advise tepid reforms on the island — whispered in his ear.

The patches permitted opening some individual work initiatives and pockets of mixed economy. It was a stream of oxygen. Always with a lone scowling commander watching the car’s advance. When in Caracas there appeared a loquacious anti-Yankee skydiver, declaimer of poems and singer of Venezuelan dance tunes, Fidel Castro understood that the era of facing those insolent gringos was back.

With high taxes, he locked and blocked the work on his own account. He no longer needed that legion of “hucksters.” People who demonstrated that they could live better without the shelter of the State. While the licenses of the self-employed expired, Castro I resumed the discourse of Father State, he unsheathed the saber and anti-imperialist oratory. Thanks to the Venezuelan Santa Claus there was light.

The bearded one was thinking big. Economic alliances with Latin American insurgents that only worked in theory, energetic plans for revolution and discussions about the properties of chocolate bars and baby cereal. Suddenly he got sick. Cuba is like a family farm: after me, my brother. Decided beforehand, it fell to Raul Castro to administer. So it was.

Castro II has his rules. He knows that in order to govern a long time or to cede the dynasty to a son, relative or other trusted person, he needed to ignite the economic plan. He had to make changes.

When one decides to make economic reforms, one must make them. For one overwhelming reason: if the parallel utopia keeps living on news loaded with optimism, inflated macro-economic figures and cheap nationalism, the citizenry might lose fear and furiously explode on the streets.

The General’s theory resumes the popular refrain of “full belly, content heart.” For the official technocrats, the Cuban is happy with rum, women, reggaeton and hot food in the pot, as if we were modern slaves.

With enough food and options for making money, the crowd would ignore that “foolishness about human rights” and not demand democracy or a multi-party system. That is why the sacred premise of Raul Castro is “beans are more important than cannons.”

The native reforms suffer from authentic reformers. It’s the same breed. Another weak point is the incompleteness of those reforms. Except for the authorization to buy or sell a home, where an owner has the right to do what he wants with his property, the other hyped liberalizations have flaws. It is like a house over a swamp.

When Castro II gave the green light for Cubans to have mobile telephones, he wanted to demonstrate that the regime was “democratic.” And he did away with “tourism apartheid” when he permitted citizens to lodge in hotels. On eliminating the two prohibitions, it was discovered that under the command of Fidel Castro we had been third class citizens.

The Lease Law of the land has suffered several amendments in four years. At the beginning land was rented for only ten years and the peasant had no right to construct his home on the parcel. Later it was corrected. I ask myself if it would not have been more viable to start from the beginning with the option of renting the land for 99 years and license to raise a house.

So it happens with the sale of cars. One can buy an old American car 40 or 50 years of age or a ramshackle car from the Soviet era. Now in order to get oneat an agency requires permission from the State. It would be simpler if anyone, money in hand, could buy a new car. It would end price speculation and the framework of corruption that has been created around the sale of cars.

Immigration reform also has deficiencies. To have to pay for a passport in foreign currency is an anomaly. And an absurd law that the regime grants itself, by maintaining a blacklist of professionals, athletes and dissidents.

Another big problem, not approached by the General’s reforms, is the double currency. It has been talked about and debated, but the first thing that should have been done is to implement a single currency. Cuban workers pay the equivalent of 52 pesos for a liter of oil, 235 pesos for a kilo of Gouda cheese and from 360 to 1,200 pesos for a pair of jeans. And they may only earn an average salary of 450 pesos. The honorable worker, who does not steal on the job, lives the worst.

The government says that in order to raise salaries productivity must increase. But the workers think that for so little money, it is not worth the effort to labor with quality and efficacy. A vicious cycle that the regime has not learned or wanted to cut. In four years of reforms and six of Raul Castro’s government, ostensible improvements in the country are unseen. Cafes and trinkets have increased. More than 380 thousand people work on their own account and do not depend on the State to raise their quality of life. That is something good.

But an integrated economy is not built selling bread and cakes. In great measure, the government is to blame for the high prices of many products,by not creating a wholesale market intended for private work and maintaining quotas of 80% of agricultural production that a farmer must sell at laughable prices to the State.

In 2006, when Castro II was designated President, a pizza cost 7 pesos, now the cheapest costs 12. A haircut was worth 10 pesos, now it is worth 20. The list is long. In this rainy fall of 2012, the price of each article and service is higher. Salaries have stayed the same for six years.

There is a crunch in the pockets. The segment of the population that receives hard currency can keep paying for food and products of a certain quality. But their money continues to lose value. 100 dollars in 2004 are worth 60 currently. Due to the 13% state tax on the dollar and the rising prices, currency in the hands of those who receive remittances has devalued.

Nor do people have much confidence in the reform managers. They are the same ones who in one way or another brought the country to the edge of the precipice. Cuba needs reforms. Serious, urgent and profound reforms. According to Mart Laar, who was prime minister of Estonia and was at the head of structural reforms in the ’90’s, the simpler the reforms, the more successful they will be. Laar points out that in politics there is only one sure thing: sooner or later you will be out of power. If fear of reforming deeply is too great, you will leave sooner. And most importantly, you will be out without have done anything.

These are not hollow words. Estonia is one of the nations that took a giant leap, from a communist economy adrift to a functional national project. Another case is Taiwan, where their own citizens initiated changes knowing that they would lose power. Now they have returned it to the government with a fresh start.

It is good think for yourself. But also you should learn from those nations that have triumphed in their reform processes. It is worth it to take account of experience. And logic.

Translated by mlk

December 1 2012

A Comment and a Controversial Article / Miriam Celaya #Cuba

I originally published the article that follows on the website Penúltimos Días last November 26th. Since there are several and conflicting opinions about the post, I will submit it to the regular readers of this blog for their consideration. I just want to make a preliminary clarification: what some may consider inadequate demands of the Spanish government, which, according to them I should also make of the Cuban government, I will remind that my words are based on words of the Consul of that country in relation to Cubans who have obtained Spanish citizenship, which includes me, and which gives me the right to review the decisions and actions of that government’s policies. On the other hand, readers have witnessed my habit of demanding the rights that are due me as a Cuban.

Here goes:

Ravings of a Cuban-Spaniard

A few days ago, I read a note published by the editors of Cubaencuentro, dated in Madrid on October 30th under the title “Spanish Consul in Havana asks Island Hispanic societies to welcome new Cuban-Spaniards”, which seemed a bit perplexing to me. Besides offering some interesting facts, the article deserves careful reading: often, the essence is in the details, especially when it is a diplomatic discourse, full of omissions and half-truths.

The issue of the Cubans who have crowded the headquarters of the Spanish Consulate in Havana in order to qualify for the nationality of their ancestors under the Law of Historical Memory is an eloquent sign of how depreciated the condition of native-born Cubans is. Suffice it to check the figures to get an approximate idea of the mobilization unleashed by hundreds of thousands of Spanish descendants who in the last three years have sought to restore the citizenship of their grandparents.

According to that note, admissions by the Consul General of Spain himself, Tomás Rodríguez Pantoja, at the end of 2011, 65,000 new Spanish citizenships have been granted, and 70,000 have been obtained to date, while 140,000 requests still remain. If we add to that the 28,000 Spanish nationals who were living in Cuba before the application of that law, you can easily conclude that the number of citizens of this country (i.e. neo-Spanish Caribbeans) that have emerged in a few years almost exceeds the total Spanish immigrants who arrived in Cuba in the first third of the last century. These figures do not include the tens of thousands of Cubans of Spanish descent who, for various reasons, have been unable to obtain the necessary documentation required for requesting Spanish citizenship -as, for example, the grandparents’ birth certificates- and, consequently, have not even submitted their applications to the Consulate.

In a meeting held with the leaders of Spanish associations in Cuba, the Spanish Consul stated that “one of the biggest challenges we have, and I ask you to take this with the deepest affection, is to integrate into our societies the vast number of new or old renovated Spaniards, Spanish-Cubans who, through the Law of Historical Memory, will recover their ancestors’ nationality” and he asked that the Spanish communities assume “the responsibility of integrating them into the spirit of Spain” since some of the nationalized [Spanish] Cubans “can’t even tell the difference between communities”. He had previously stated, in another instance, that these people “don’t yet have the Spanish sense (…), don’t feel for our country or are united onto our reality, though they are as Spanish as we are”.

As a recent Spanish-Cuban, I must admit that, to a certain extent, the Consul is right: around here, we don’t even have the vaguest idea of how “having a Spanish sense” might feel, at least not in the same way as the diplomat might regard it. We are, simply, and purely, Cubans, regardless of the number and variety of citizenships or passports that we might come to cherish if we could. It is no secret, even to the consul, that the overwhelming majority of those who have benefited from Spanish citizenship has done so in the hope of emigrating, and, by the way, a Spanish passport is not in as much high demand as an American visa.

And at this point I want to emphasize that I am the exception to the rule: I have no interest in escaping from Cuba, or settling in Spain (or any other country) and if I decided to take my grandfather’s citizenship, a Basque born in Busturia, is because I have the right, and if one day I have the possibility of visiting Spain, it would be better to do so as a citizen of that country, with a passport that would open the doors that my Cuban passport closes for me. I’m definitely an incurable addict when it comes to rights. I’m not interested in “asking for help” to be a parasite on the public purse sustained on the taxes of the Spanish, to which they contribute with their work and effort. I have neither a lazy nor a beggar’s soul.

Personally, I have no idea what the consul means by “a Spanish sense” I don’t think that a nationalist feeling is necessary to experience deep emotion in the presence of the Spanish history and culture. The great masters of the art of Spain, her artists and the numerous geniuses of her literature, especially her poetry, with Antonio Machado as my favorite, the force and uniqueness of her music and dance, the richness and variety of her traditions, the fascination of her rich history, full of light and shadow, which largely holds the key to the very course of the history of my country, Cuba, and also explains the idiosyncrasies of my own nation and identity, are sufficient elements to understand the singular empathy between Cubans and Spaniards.

Spain is closer to me, in addition, since a reverse migration began to take place: decades of dictatorship have contributed to the displacement of thousands of Cubans who have made Spain their adopted country. Many of them do not have Spanish citizenship, and a considerable portion hasn’t even obtained legal residence, but they do their best to survive from a disadvantaged position in the midst of a prolonged and severe economic crisis. I love Spain more since it has become home to so many of my countrymen, and since, for the past five years, I have received the support and affection of Spaniards who write to me and follow my digital blog, because, though this may not be important to Mr. Consul, I understand that the Spanish government might not have made a good investment when it gave me my citizenship: I am an unrepentant dissident, and I oppose any authority abridging my rights. As a Cuban, I oppose the Cuban government, and as a Spaniard, condescending speeches aside, I would love for the Consul, representative in Cuba of my other nation’s government, to clarify some of my doubts.

I would be interested to know, let’s say, how the Consulate is going to help those Cubans who are recovering the nationality of their ancestors “have a sense for the country (Spain)” or “join” the Spanish state of affairs. Let’s say, for instance, that the Spanish diplomatic seat in Havana could start by introducing practices that recognize the rights of Cuban-Spanish as the same ones of Spanish-born citizens, since, so far, treatment given to the former and the latter is markedly different, as evidenced by the detail that native-born Spanish need only present their passports or their Spanish identity cards to gain access to the embassy, while Cuban-Spanish are required to use their Cuban identity card to do so, though they have Spanish passports. Are we second-class citizens without pedigree, amateur Spanish?

The passport is another fundamental point. It is almost as cumbersome to obtain a Spanish passport as to get a Cuban one. In my case, I was given notice of having been granted my citizenship in October, 2011, and over one year later, I have yet to procure a passport, and I don’t know why. A lot of Cubans who got their citizenship after I did already have theirs. For lack of answers, I have applied several times, without success. I am registered in the Havana consulate, but I am an “undocumented Spaniard”, without knowing what bureaucratic ineptitude (if only that were the case!) prevents me from accessing the document that identifies me as a citizen of Spain. Could it be that the Spanish passport is as selective as its Cuban counterpart and certain people have no right to it?

I know of no new Spanish-Cuban who has been invited to the Columbus Day celebrations held each October 12th, and haven’t heard any news that the consulate has given any attention to this sector of its “nationals”. For example, despite the known limitations of Cubans to access the Internet, all consular procedures require prior appointments to be requested by e-mail, however, the consulate has not seen fit to enable a location with access to the web, even for the use of Cubans who have already obtained their documentation as Spanish citizens. The service is likewise not offered in cultural Spanish associations. Wouldn’t this be an effective way for the Madrid government to demonstrate its good will and a way for the new Spanish citizens to be better informed about their adopted nation? Aren’t the new computer and informational technologies the most expeditious means to the free cultural exchange in the so-called global village?

Nor do I know of Spanish-Cubans who are freely contracted and considered as such by Spanish companies that have invested capital in Cuba. What prevents them to be hired as overseas Spaniards and enjoy the same benefits and labor rights? Similar exclusions extend to those who have decided to become independent from the official employer –the Cuban government- after obtaining their Spanish citizenship. I know of Cuban cases that, while they were contracted through an official Cuban employment purse, they could practice their profession in Spain without the need to be re-qualified in that country, however, when they tried to get employed as Spanish citizens doing the same work, now they demand Spanish education credentials. Could it be that there is an agreement with the Cuban government to limit the rights of Spanish abroad? How can the “Spanish feeling” be consolidated this way? How would the consul explain such discrimination and how does he suppose these neo-Spaniards will be able to “penetrate” the economy of their companies when in principle they are marginalized?

I don’t think Mr. Consul is very clear in that integration cannot be sustained only on “trade and cultural activities.” That is, tambourines, castanets and bagpipes seem all well and good, but as “rights”, they are insufficient. Spain’s government could do much more for the Spaniards on this Island and also for its own nation if it conceived effective policies that stimulated them [Cuban-Spanish] to remain in Cuba while benefitting the Spanish economy. In fact, that is just what men like my Basque grandfather and hundreds of thousands of Spaniards did. Like him, they arrived on this Island hopeful to work, prosper, and help their relatives in the distant homeland. We are not talking about offering handouts, but drawing mutually beneficial strategies. If only Spanish policy makers in Cuba today were so determined, creative and authentic as those immigrants, who long ago left their beaches to make landfall on ours!

Translated by Norma Whiting

November 30 2012

Our Great Challenge / Antonio Rodiles #Cuba

The arbitrary arrest of the lawyer Yaremis Flores on November 7 was followed by two waves, one repressive, taken to the extreme by the regime against numerous activists of civil society, and the other, impressive and appreciated by us, of solidarity with the victims. Personally, what happened reaffirmed my vision of the fundamental challenge that we face as a country: the articulation of all of its parts in order to transition into a democracy in which the entire nation participates.

Visualizing and working in support of a transition towards democracy in the convoluted scenario in which we live is a process that implies, above all, political and intellectual maturity, honesty, and a high level of civic awareness. We need to understand that such dynamics would not involve just one axis, just one angle. It is impossible to imagine a transition that does not take into account Cubans in Cuba today who hold different points of view. And a transition without full participation of those Cubans outside the Island, who constitute an essential part of our nation, is also inconceivable. It is not possible to outline a transition without the workers, intellectuals, professionals and entrepreneurs both inside and outside the country.

To think that change in our country will happen magically, that in the blink of an eye we will generate a modern society, a state of rights, is too simple and deceitful a fantasy. We, the  totalitarian regime’s opposition, have the duty and responsibility to show all segments of society the nature of the plural and inclusive country we are advocating and what we expect of democracy.

The strategy of the regime has always been the same. It has systematically tried to prevent by all possible means the growth of a civil society. Intimidation, repression, imprisonment, bleeding the country, generating mistrust within the opposition, creating internal conflict to undermine our work, “distracting” us so as to leave us little time to effectively advocate in society, is a strategy that has always borne fruit and should be dismantled now. We have to fix our ethics, our suppositions, our rhythm.

To responsibly work on a transition implies a true knowledge of the scenario confronting us in which are manifested the particularities of groups and individuals from a global perspective. To guarantee this range of interests and visions it is necessary they every Cuban enjoy his or her fundamental rights, thus the importance of the campaign “For Another Cuba” and our request for support from all Cubans and international public opinion.

Facing this peaceful citizen initiative, the government has responded by intensifying the repression and  excessive use of violence, slamming the door on yet another civic proposal. Nevertheless, this violent scenario begins to profile factions in society; on the one hand there are those who, although inside the system, believe a prosperous nation is possible, one where political and ideological differences are part of everyday life, where respect and decency are paramount; on the other there is a rarefied segment, formed by mixed interests, cynicism, and low ethical morals, which tries, with its irresponsible and arrogant acts, to lead us down a bruised path at the hands of violence and brutality. It is time for Cubans to decide which side we are on, from which perspective we wish to advocate and act.

Translated by: Boston College CASA

December 5 2012

End of the Year and Beginning of Problems / Rosa Maria Rodriguez Torrado #Cuba

Manos esposadas
Image downloaded from: “w-75.com”

In the area where I live we have a shopping center called Monaco that in my childhood was an important and pretty place. Even today, in spite of its ugliness and general neglect, it has a certain importance because multiple private merchants that sell even coffins gather there, and all around are establishments like the theater, ice cream shop, a semblance of an amusement park, pizzeria, farmer’s market, bank, bakery, store and several state kiosks that make it a frequented area in this part of Vibora.

In the dollarized store of that complex,where my husband and I sometimes buy groceries and other basic necessities, they stole the mobile phone of the jam seller barely a week ago. The man, between indignant and surprised, did not explain how they had gotten it from under the counter where he is accustomed to putting it, far, as he believed, from the view and reach of the shoppers. “It’s that the end of the year is approaching and things are tight,” he commented.

This December 1, in the same business they surprised a woman categorized as “good looking,” who on exiting they discovered was stealing two packages of chicken and two tubes of hash. That tropical Aladdin with agile hands and bad fortune, spent, possibly, the worst time of her life, because the store workers called the police. My husband and Ileft without knowing how that ended, but we think they exaggerated in soliciting the presence of the policemen,as everyone imagines how much the people who work in those centers lift daily, like almost all of Cuban society,which is compelled to be on the edge of the law in order to survive.

The last month of the year began and, like every December, thefts are increasing in the capital. There are those who offend because they have chosen that parasitic occupation for obtaining easy money and objects at everyone else’s expense, but there are those who do it because they are tempted by opportunity, generalized poverty, low salaries and the hard currency products displayed like insults in the windows. Also because they are hungry or simply because they want to draw the look of satisfaction that a good lunch brings to the faces of their children or maybe they long to have something to put on the family table on the so-symbolic dates of Christmas and New Year’s. Many of us may celebrate the birth of Jesus or the advent of a new year with some spaghetti or simple bread with ingenuity, but within our families we pray together to strengthen ourselves in faith and honor, which must be two of the fundamental petitions that we believers raise with our pleas on those dates.

Translated by mlk

December 4 2012

December 3rd: Requiem for Cuban Medicine? / Miriam Celaya

The picture illustrating this post, which I downloaded from an official site, relates to one of many that exist on the intervention of Cuban doctors in Haiti after the earthquake that struck that country in 2010, and also about the cholera epidemic. Interestingly, on this December 3rd, Latin American Medicine Day, I failed to find any photograph of our doctors caring for victims of cholera in Cuba.

Of course, some might say that you cannot photograph what does not exist. Judging by the official press, and in the absence of convincing medical reports, it appears that what is circulating in Cuba -especially in the eastern region of the Island- is not cholera, but an outbreak of acute diarrhea. Another euphemistic phrase that a few months ago defined cholera in the official media was intestinal infection from water contamination, which in turn was also reported as being under control and eliminated.

Today we woke up with a phony media celebration. The TV morning news was pleased with the doctors’ day, and once again listed the countless achievements and sacrifices of health professionals, while Cubans on the Island continue to be exposed to the dangers of cholera and dengue fever, two epidemics that have already claimed many lives and remain hidden, concealed under the government triumphalist speeches and the accomplice silence of health authorities.

There is nothing to be celebrated this December 3rd. In actuality, we should be mourning the lack of freedom that keeps Calixto Ramón locked up in a government prison. He is the freelance journalist who first made mention of the presence of cholera in the province of Granma and other regions of Cuba, who has been on a hunger strike for 22 days, so far. We should be mourning the loss of human lives due to the criminal lack of responsibility of the government and healthcare officials. We should be mourning the helplessness of the people against the rampant lack of hygiene and the death of medical ethics.

What good is so much professional talent, so many hours sacrificed, working in appalling conditions, or the internationalists’ absence from country and family, if our doctors are unable to comply with the ethical obligation to disclose the risk faced by the population? When did the sacred duty of those who once swore to protect us become subordinate to the commitment of political ideology?

At present, only a few doctors dare to overcome their fear and compromise their personal and professional interests to alert patients about epidemics silenced by government policies. Most remain silent.

This December 3rd reminds us that there are very few doctors with dignity in this country, once such an example of medical care, that for so long had such a great primary care health system. So far, the silent docility of those who one day took the Hippocratic Oath constitutes a desecration to the memory of the illustrious Cuban doctor, Carlos Juan Finlay, born on this day in long ago 1833.

Translated by Norma Whiting

December 3 2012