English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
I witnessed this during the past Provincial Baseball Series in Holguin province. The teams San German and Calixto Garcia (Buenaventura) were playing against each other. I was trying to get a shot of some of the players when I came across this situation and snapped these shots instead, a blow with the ball, one of the most common in baseball, a straight pitch right to the head.
**All photos by Luis Felipe Rojas
New emigration measures take effect on the 14th of January of this year. Passports can be requested at Identity Card and Population Registration Offices, of Immigration and Immigration Matters; also from the Ministry of the Interior of the provinces of Artemisa, Mayabeque, and the municipality of the Isle of Youth. There are 195 office in the entire country.
Now when you have to go to change or get the identity card, you have to get into a line of a thousand hells, they complicate everything, never doing anything so that “the lower ones feel attended” — as someone from the capital municipality of Plaza noted.
The Ministry of Labor and Social Security carries out, together with the institutions of the State central administration, the process of defining which citizens are subject to the regulations established in the Decree 306/12, in which one can upgrade passports without the holder being present.
Minors under 18 years of age and disabled will be able to upgrade passports without a fee, in accordance with Resolution 43 of the Ministry of the Interior. The parents and legal representatives also have to show the identity card of the minor, and an authorization formalized before a notary public.
If one or both parents, or the legal representatives are outside of the country the formalized authorization is presented before a corresponding consular officer; if one of the parents has passed away, the death certificate must be shown, as must the judicial resolution when one of them does not have parental authority or it has been suspended.
The increase in requests for passports for the desire to flee the country, where no one can adequately prosper, is remarkable. While this measure constitutes an opening, it is not for all. Cubans that belong to illegal groups or from the opposition continue waiting to be able to emigrate and admitting the obstacles imposed by the offices that provide these services.
“I don’t want to stay, I want to travel where I desire and return to my homeland, for people that want the same as me, I don’t see anything in writing, nothing more than negative”, expressed a worker in the tourist sector.
Translated by: BW
January 9 2013
Since the Venezuelan president remains admitted in Havana, conjecture about his health seems to revert against the most conservative sectors, and to undermine the credibility of the serious enterprises dedicated to communication. It is no coincidence, it is a very well laid out plan; because as my grandmother used to say, “In a game of patience, you have to think like a man who acts, and act like a man who thinks; when your exits are exhausted, the best thing is a strategy.”
About President Hugo Chavez’s state of health, we believe that we know a lot, but we do not know everything. It is pure and simple manipulation; from one side, we have this reduced group with access to the commander that ably has decided to dispense the truth in order to gain time and legislate; and from the other, those that, consciously or unconsciously speculate with the information.
The Cuban government is expert in managing secrecy in order to boost with it the media roar and profitable mystery that death and immortality always create. Its bunker par excellence is the quasi-inaccessible, impenetrable and murky “Object 20,” nestled in the labyrinthine CIMEQ Hospital, built in the style of Stalinist gigantism.
With audacious engineering and appalling decoration, since 1986 Object 20 has been a temple to the Egyptian belief in life after death. A construction attached to CIMEQ Hospital but with its own autonomy, built for the purpose of satisfying the ego and paranoia of power and security. My experience with that place is stormy; therefore, in my personal opinion, it represents a threat more than a seduction.
Object 20 is a kind of sanctuary. When we enter through the basement, we go directly to a spa designed in accord with the ludicrous taste of whoever still longs for the nights of the erstwhile Communist Moscow. Thick walls, soundproofed and fortified by immense slabs of Jaimanita stone darken the Olympic-sized pool, which the sun never touches; on the side a darkened and unused gymnasium fitted out as an Italian fashion statement follows a musical therapy space, two steam rooms, a sauna, two pools for contrast baths, a jacuzzi, equipment for hydromassage, an area to soothe stress, and a well-stocked pantry. All this is watched by four guards who stay on alert, in front of closed circuit cameras.
Exiting through the rear one finds a squash court and a running track. As the spa is built with very high ceilings, this place has no first floor; on the second are situated the intermediate and intensive therapy rooms. And on the third and last level, after a room for bodyguards, an infirmary and a pantry, there are five patient rooms from which and through a wide, one-way window (of high impact and German fabrication) that they always keep spotless, one can see a pretty countryside with yagruma trees.
The strategical fort turned into a center of international political relations can only be accessed by obtaining authorization from the office of General Raul Castro. And to top it off, when there is a High class or VIP patient, as is the case, neither doctors nor nurses, service personnel, bodyguards, telephone operators – absolutely no one is permitted contact with friends or relatives, let alone with the outside. The comments that come out, either the Cuban government releases them in order to control opinion, or they are scurrilous inventions.
Of one thing you can be sure, the Venezuelan president is the best attended patient on the planet, with products ranging even beyond the world of medicine and pharmacopoeia. A competent team works unceasingly for his improvement. They know that if the Bolivarian leader were to die in Havana, the cause of death would be questioned immediately, divisions within the ranks of ALBA would be created and the little reliability that remains in the Cuban health system would be destroyed.
Translated by mlk
January 14 2013
One of the problems that often confronts young people, although not exclusive to this segment of the population, is the social rejection to which men and women who have been sentenced for some crime are subjected.
It becomes evident in different ways, more commonly in the absence of job opportunities, a current problem for young people on a global scale. A requirement of the employment application is a certificate from the Central Registrar of Sentencing, which contains the criminal record of each individual, along with the police profile that Cuba keeps for every individual in the system, regardless of the resolution of a case. If it indicates that the applicant has been tried or sentenced for anything illicit, no matter how minor the crime, he is denied the job and forced to apply for “another job.” The economic crisis and the current social climate make this already critical problem worse.
I am of the opinion that, while the profiles used by authorities are necessary from a legal standpoint — as in criminal profiling, when even honesty forces one to acknowledge the technical and scientific backwardness from which we suffer in this area — “profiling” with respect to employment is an unacceptable practice, an affront and a lifelong label.
A letter sent to AJC by Maria Emilia provides an example. In it she asks for assistance to help her son re-enter society since, as she says in her own words, he has been subject to detentions and citations to explain his conduct in being involved with other delinquent youths, and I quote … “My son is 28 years old and went to prison when he was 17, not knowing other people I turn to young people who went through the long stay in prison with him, which I suppose are seen in the communal services where he worked when he got out of prison, there are no doctors working there or others of that type, if my son at only 17 was given such a severe sentence, it’s impossible that he would know other people without the Cuban state itself enabling him.”
A separate item requires the social recognition or lack of recognition young offenders coming out of prison receive when they arrive in the neighborhood, referring to the stigma they face, a product of the devaluation of the social aspects with which they are not welcomed and recognized with such defects or social attitudes.
These efforts to mitigate the adverse effects of isolation are laudable, but the remedy is always in our hands, mainly in the hands of young people themselves. Nobody will do for them what they do not want or can not do for themselves.
There are young people eager to move forward. Children and young people are the most precious treasure of our society. You have to give them a great deal of credit, whether they have been prosecuted, punished or not. The day the country eliminates this type of injustice, so bravely, creating, proposing and doing, the harmful consequences that this type of iniquity to this important sector of society will be eliminated
Boston College CASA and RST
September 16 2012
As mentioned in previous works, the most common cases that come to the Law Association for help relate to the subject of housing.
It is interesting to note that most of the people that come to us for advice have already exhausted all other resources in search of a solution to their problem, and bring in documents with numerous letters addressed to different entities.
Thus, Ramon showed up at our headquarters very distressed because for approximately nine years he has been waiting for people who are living illegally in his house to leave.
To its credit, the resolution of the Municipal Housing Office for the municipality of Playa where in its First Resolve accedes to Roman’s interests and in consequence urges the occupants of said residence to abandon the property in 72 hours after the date of notification, otherwise they will be evicted with the help of the Revolutionary National Police (RNP).
In its own resolution, which notifies both parties, it is made known to them that against what the resolution itself provides, reclamation proceeds before the Chamber of the Civil and Administrative Popular Provincial Tribunal of the City of Havana (TPP).
Here is where the absurdity of absurdities begins for Ramon. As expected the counterpart appealed to the TPP and as a result, it declared the counterpart’s pretext baseless.
Unhappy with the ruling of the TPP, the counterparty filed an Annulment Resource before the People’s Supreme Court, which upheld the TPP ruling.
Although Ramon has the judgment dated October 31, 2002 the TPP, which grants the right to occupy the property that is the subject of this litigation, the agency responsible for executing the same has ignored the ruling of the court of justice.
It is necessary here to clarify that all cases that come to our office with housing problems of this nature do not always have the same treatment: some, like the present case, can delay indefinitely eviction of the illegal occupants made, others however, at 72 hours, are unceremoniously evicted.
The obvious question then is, why in some cases are the resolutions quickly enforced in other cases with the same resolution it “sleeps the eternal sleeps”?
I tend to think that there is an “unknown” element involving either result in compliance with the judgments of the courts…although we find it hard to believe.
Translated by: Boston College CASA and RST
January 5 2013
After wrapping up its jubilee year with a program of operas, operettas and zarzuelas of enormous dramatic and musical impact, the National Lyric Theater of Cuba offered three festive events in theGarcía Lorca Hall of the Gran Teatrode la Habana on the weekend of September 14 to 16 to honor the founders and artists who, since 1962, have promoted the lyrical arts, whose beginnings on the island date back to the early 19th century, and especially to 1838 and the TeatroTacón, the current headquarters of the Gran Teatro of Havana (GTH).
Genre notables and representatives of institutions such as the Ballet Nacional and the Opera and Orquesta Sinfónica of GTH appeared each day on the stage to receive diplomas and flowers, awarded by Maestro Alberto Méndez, choreographer and artistic director, and Eduardo Díaz, musical director and the new company director, who was in charge of the gala event, which staged selected segments of Cuban and Universal works brought to the stage during the fifty years of the Lyric Theatre.
Contrasting the cast of young talent there with the outstanding singers, actors, writers and assistants before them in works such as La Traviata, the Magic Flute, the Pharaoh’s Court, or Cecilia Valdés, Amalia Batista and María la O by Cuban artists Gonzalo Roig, Rodrigo Prat and Ernesto Lecuona, respectively; all of these works were reintroduced during the jubilee year.
In the final evening the public applauded classic works by G. Verdi such as Va, Pensiero performed by the Lyrical Chorus; followed by La Donna é Mobile, interpreted by the young tenors Saheed Mohamed, Bryan López and Ernesto Cabrera; the Gran Duo from Cecilia sung by Katia Selva and S. Mohamed; El Cabildo by Lecuona performed by the Lyric Chorus and JJ, the Traditional Dance company; Septimino, from the Merry Widow performed by Milagros de los Angeles, Lili Hernandez, Javier Ojanguren, Junier Estrada, Rey Reyes, Eleonor Cuello, Dayron Peralta and Ian Sánchez.
The program included the Sextet composed by G. Donizetti for Lucía de Lammermoor, P. Mascagni’s Cavallería Rusticana Intermezzo; The Gypsy and bullfighter choral arrangement from La Traviata performed by the Irene Rodríguez Company; also the quartet and the Vals de Musetta, both from Puccini’s La Boheme; the Mazurka of the Parasols, La Romanza from María la O, the duet from the first act of Madame Butterfly, and the triumphant March from Aida, interpreted by the Chorus and the soloists of the Lyric Theatre and choreographed by the Ballet de la Televisión and the other companies already mentioned.
The spectacle, sober and elegant, with minimal use of props, relied on the vocal virtuosity of various performers, the excellent music conducted by Eduardo Díaz and Giovanni Duarte, the choreography of Cristy Domínguez, Johannes García and Alberto Méndez; the effective light design by Carlos Hernández and the choral direction of Catalina Ayón and Denisse Falcón.
According to musicologist Vázquez Millares, the National Lyric Theatre of Cuba reestablshes Havana as the “Philharmonic Capital of the New World”, an operatic tradition of more than 250 years. Its first performance was the Spanish zarzuela Luisa Fernanda by Moreno Torralba, conducted by Maestro Felix Guerrero and Miguel de Grandy and performed by the founding artists of the company. Since its inception, it has staged more than 70 works, among them Italian, French, German, Polish, and Cuban operas, Spanish and Cuban operettas and zarzuelas, many performed in European and American cities and provincial theatres across the island.
Translated by: Marina Villa
September 20 2012
By Jeovany Jiménez Vega
I reread the letter from the surgeons from the Havana “Calixto García” Hospital to Raúl Castro, which was published on 20 September by Cubaencuentro anonymous and undated. At the time of posting my previous post on October 1, I didn’t know that on September 28 another digital site, Cubainformación, had published what it says is the real letter–this time backed by the name of 62 surgeons of the hospital and dated August 15, 2011–in an article that also accused “international media and the so-called Cuban dissidence…” of manipulating the document. The next day, September 29, Cubaencuentro reviewed the indictment and published the full text referred by Cubainformación.
I do not think the letter made public by one of these sites differs too much in its essence from that published by the other. Some words here and there but the poverty, abuse, neglect and hopelessness they describe are unquestionable facts.
So, today I focus not on the presumed authenticity of one or other, but on fact slips into the background here, that this controversial and incredibly important document only comes to light after being published by Cubaencuentro, yet was sent to the highest leadership of the country over a year ago and this is where I ask: did these doctors received any response from the authorities and government policies to their just concerns?
Or perhaps it passed to the Internet because they never received a response to their letter? Did the authorities react with maturity and naturalness or with their usual arrogance? Do events like this finally make the Cuban authorities become aware of the imminent need to accommodate us with more respect or do they eternally perpetuate this laziness?
I hope that by this time this controversy bears good fruit. Hopefully this intolerance that has corroded life is not first and foremost any more since those who from shame have the nobility to speak aloud when others are silent out of fear. Hopefully no other Cuban will suffer what I had to suffer for saying for similar words, which I offer here as a reminder of what must change, but in continuing is the shame of our country.
(*) Letter addressed to the then Minister of Public Health Dr. José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, on November 11, 2005, by Drs. Jeovany Jimenez Vega and Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa. (Excerpt)
…The worker subject to our Ministry has particular characteristics that must be kept in mind in order avoid falling into simplistic analysis… Whoever graduates and then betters himself, as an unavoidable human consequence, aspires to live decently from the fruit of his labor, but today our particular reality is quitepainful and different: we receive an evanescent salary that is exhausted at five or at the most 10 days, being then in the throes ofthe urgency of expenses of that kind of public charity, from the spontaneous gesture of the grateful patient who knows our imperious necessity. We speak of talented and dedicated professionals, of high human quality, working with threadbare gowns and his only pair of broken shoes, with many of his more elemental needs not covered, who has coexisted with this lamentable situation for more than a decade, burdened by shortages that would fill these pages and that we leave to the imagination.
While it’s true that some of our patients, who barely made it to the 6th Grade, earn no less than $300 Cuban pesos a month, selling candy or peanuts, others can earn that amount daily; it would be absurd to compare with the sector made up of the self-employed.
We then want to bring attention to the state sectors that interact around us, which would be valid to take as point of comparison. For example: A SEPSA custodianearns about $200 Cuban pesos a month, includingCUCs, food, and personal hygiene products. An ETECSA clerk, in similar terms, earns $ 1000 Cuban pesos a month.The MINFAR and MININT pay higher salaries than ours and for years, have been systematically implementing a policy of incentives.In all the above cases,the employee receives a uniform and a pair of shoes on a regular basis.
The list of better-paid jobs in the state sector would be a long one.So, I cannot find the answers to the following questions: If the official argument is the lack and unavailability of resources and funds, then what justifies the fact that the person who guards the door at the hospital earns three times more than a professor of Internal Medicine, who have been training doctors for decades, and even the director of the hospital, when National System of Public Health is an entity entirely subordinated to the State that centralizes such resources and funds.
Isn’t it totally absurd that a month of school pays off several times more and results more ’useful’to an individualthan 12 years of higher education? Does it make any sense that this society, which aspires to full equality, pays more back to a custodian thana neurosurgeon who is now saving lives?
What justifies the reality that an MGI specialist or a dentist or the last super-specialist of the Institute are unable to satisfy their basic needs, and when that’s not the case, they fulfill them at the expense of undertaking some other kind of work, but never from their salary as professionals?
Our workers are asked for an altruistic and selfless spirit and great human sensibility, capable of taking high doses of sacrifices, qualities that they certainly have. Unfortunately, in the chain of CUC stores, where the State sets the prices and sells products very expensively, and where many of the basic consumer goods end up being sold, the hard currency (CUC) we are charged with cannot be called sacrifice, altruism, or dignity (that would be truly touching), but simply CUC… Then, our professionals, left with no other choices, go into the street to face that other ’daily struggle’ to avoid prostituting themselves in their profession, selling under-the-counter “certificates of illness,” medicines, or receive some sort of perk.
It is such an overwhelming situation, which forces the individual to seek an alternative source of income, in many exotic and dissimilar ways that would leave one in awe: raising pigs, taking in ironing, selling pizza, ham or eggs, working as masons, carpenters, shoemakers, or simply renting the car that was awarded for participating in an international mission, for a fixed monthly price, so that they can afford to buy gasoline. And all of these activities share something in common: they are discouraging and time-consuming when placed in the balance with professional growth.They take people away from what should be their only worry: studying, which they should pay back byproviding exquisite attention to their patients, from a scientific point of view.
If today we are flying the flag of internationalism with medical missions in dozens of countries, it also thanks to the spirit of self-sacrifice of those of us who stayed in Cuba. Our workers have had to take onthe work of those who left in missions, and so a single doctor is responsible for the work previously performed by 3 or 4; there are even more dramatic cases, and on top of this, doctors try to deliver the same level of care to their patients while receiving in return the same pay, knowing that your internationalist colleague, certainly well deserved, earns several hundred dollars a month and after her/his return they will receive amonthly stipend, not negligible at all underthe present circumstances…
Under this situation, our staff had bigger expectations regarding monthly salary increases in June 2005, which resulted in true disappointment. A $48.00 Cuban pesos raise to the monthly salary of a doctor, under these circumstances, was less than symbolic.In the hallways of our hospitals and polyclinics, you could hear harsh words being said, charged with grief and resentment; insulting and offensive phrases, that we will not repeat here in the name of decency, were muttered all over the place.
Our Ministry has the moral obligation to offer a respectful response to its workers, given the extreme sensitivity of this issue. These are the same workers who, at the peak and during the saddest moments of the Special Period, remained working for $3.00 USD or less a month, holding high the honor of our work, and they deserve to know that their opinions are taken into account…
Everything that has been said here is completely true; it has been said in a measured and respectful way for a very simple reason: If justice is the supreme ideal of the Revolution, the current compensation received by our workerseven after decades of effort and dedication is neither fair nor proportionate, while other state sectors are paid several times more, the situation is not compatible with Marxist principles… ’one should get paid according to his work.’
… The problem itself is much more controversial and profound, and it will never besolved with palliative measures or timid salary increases. We can only humbly alert; those who have ears to hear, listen. Reality is much harsher than any words, and that one, even when it burns our hands, does not fit in any discourse.
There are thousands of workers… who are waiting for a response. We hope that it will be moderate and fair, well-thought and intelligent, and it will show no signs of clumsiness. The harshness of these times has not made us lose the tenderness inour hearts.We have faith in that decisions, consistent with the spirit of this Revolution for the humble, will be made, by the humble and for the humble.
– End of the Document –
P.S. Eleven months from the date when this letter was delivered at the headquarters of the Ministry of Public Health, both of us, its authors, were suspended from the practice of medicine for more than 5 years.
Translated by Chabeli
October 16 2012
Yesterday, while enjoying my coffee in the morning, the children bustling outside reminded me that it was Three Kings’ Day.” It has been a while, for my husband and me, since the suffocation of making this day happen for our son came to an end. Memorable for me, because I believed in the Kings for a long time, but also felt for my husband who, from having been so poor, knew they did not exist. In Rafael’s case, his 2nd Grade teacher decided to cut off this illusion for the entire classroom.
Yesterday, the children got new toys, but without being thankful to Melchior, Caspar or Balthasar. Powerful daddies gave their children Xbox, battery-operated cars, bikes, and the list goes down to the common rubber balls and the pseudo-Barbies from the ’Everything for $1.00’ stores.
Except for street-vendors of plastic toys such as small cars or furniture for dolls and for the slow circulation of certain toys that eventually are sold in Cuban pesos instead of CUC, buying toys in CUC is a problem, especially since what were charmingly called “the basic,” “the non-basic,” and “the additional rationed toys,” disappeared, and even toys themselves for a time.Yet, in the past few days you could see children in toy stores choosing their presents and taking them home, especially on the eve of the 6th.
But, what about the ’Kings?’ Those were forced into exile along with Virgin Mary and Mickey Mouse when we began building Communism.
Mickey Mouse made a comeback in the cartoons pirated from Disney Channel. Virgin Mary came back, invoked by atheists in recent times. Even the birth of the son of the Virgin got his holiday, a concession by Pope John Paul II. However, the star of Bethlehem turned out to be a scientific supernova.
The Three Kings have become a sort of urban legend.There is talk about a cavalcade by the Kings a few years ago; you hear that this year they appeared in some parts of the city.I do not think this ban comes from Santa Claus, this chubby man omnipresent since Christmas has no longer been categorized as an ideological deviation.The Kings do their magic clandestinely, since the effort to dissipate them began with the invention of a Children’s Day, many months away from January 6th.
While disguised, the old traditions loom shyly, without the charm of the grass and water for the camels.
Translated by Chabeli
January 7 2013
January 1, 2013, the Castro brothers’ autocracy turns 54 years old. That leaves 20 years in order to equal the duration of a Communist Party in power, the CPSU, in the former Soviet Union.
Only North Korea, China, Vietnam or Mexico with the PRI, have been governed longer with the same party. In the succession of its governments, Cuba is comparable to North Korea. With the difference that the Sungs have governed since 1948. It is true that on the island the impressive cult of personality that exists in red Korea is not practiced. But what has made us emulators of the North Koreans has been the continuity of power in a single family. No other communist state has created a dynasty.
Fidel Castro is the indisputable leader of the Cuban Revolution. Founder of the July 26 Movement, no one — or few — knew who he really was when he entered Havana on January 8 of 1959. From his turbulent past, some historiansidentified him as a gangster gunman in his years as a university student.
If he was a Marxist, he never practiced the ideology openly. He did not serve in the Popular Socialist Party. Nor in his letters or dialogues with friends from that period has his support or admiration for the Soviet cause been demonstrated. More likely he was a home-grown guy. Future history will tell us what was his true motive for turning 180 degrees in his democratic and liberal discourse of 1959 and making a giant leap, enlisting in the socialist bloc of eastern Europe.
Anyway, Fidel Castro is a quite anarchic Marxist. At his whim, he conciliated the discourse of the humanist Jose Marti and the quotes of the general Antonio Maceo. And he tried to give his support to the Communist ideology bypromoting and supporting with weapons and money the armed struggle in Latin America and Africa.
Despite Castroism not being a recognized ideology or doctrine, nor existing a text that explains to us what it deals with, in Cuba its followers call themselves “Castristas.” A dangerous cocktail of fanaticism, authoritarianism and personal loyalty. If the leader, as they still consider him, tells them they should mobilize for a war against gringos, here go his partisans to build anti-aircraft refuges and to train with AK-47s. In his name and his revolution, thousands of Cubans were disposed to immolate themselves in the missile crisis of 1962. Or they departed for unknown places in Angola and Ethiopia and involved themselves in civil wars.
For the official discourse, Fidel Castro is synonymous with Fatherland. Whoever opposes him is a traitor and can go to jail. Then in 2006, because of illness, Fidel saw himselfforced to cede power to his brother Raul, a clear dynastic intention pervades the air of the Republic. If the sons and nephews of Castro I, in appearances, are not installed in the estates of power, the offspring and relatives of Castro IIdo have intentions of controlling the State.
Now the brothers from Biran are two grandfathers, 86 and 81 years of age, in full retreat. Cuba’s luck will be decided in the next decade. Maybe sooner. The economic monopoly exercised by the military entrepreneurs and the control of special services by Raul’s son Alejandro Castro Espin permit glimpses of the succession within the power apparatus.
With an illegal, hounded and weakopposition, the designs and plans of the Castro brothers to “perpetuate their revolution” are not preposterous. It remains to be seen how long Castroism is capable ofsurviving when its creators no longer live. It is complicated to make predictions about Cuba’s future. It’s the same for an unexpectedsituation changing the path of the island towards democracy, so in 2059 thousands of Cubans may gather in the Plaza in order to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the revolution.
January 1, 1959, few on the island and in the world thought that a bearded young man of 32 years of age and his retinue of guerrillas would occupy power for the next 54 years. No statesman or dictator in the 20th century governed as long as Fidel Castro. A world record thatnow belongs to him.
Ivan Garcia
Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images. Taken from Global Post.
Translated by mlk
January 6 2013
Havana, Cuba – These are some of the realities that Mrs. Mariela Castro hides, leaving the LGBT community in absolute deprivation of all rights.
A number of night clubs that hosted parties for the LGBT community have been closed in the past few days. To cite some examples:
– Due to a general restoration, ’El Café Cantante,’ took over the space of ’Divino’ leaving it without its usual site.
– The public club ’José A. Echeverría’ has a number of regulations, which, in the first place, forced the ’Ibiza Project’ to change its name, and eventually it was moved to ’El Colmado’ in the municipality of Centro Habana, a site in precarious conditions for the activities of the LGBT community.
Also, ’La Mamba,’ which operates at this same location (El Colmado) on Fridays is looking for a new space to continue organizing these kinds of parties.
– Las Vegas Cabaret is in the process of analyzing its role since it had always been a place for the elite in the capital, and it has been transformed like the palace of impersonations in the city, with real international impact.
In regards to ’meeting sites’:
– The very well known tendedera, located across from the Capitol, in Old Havana, has been under restoration along with the emblematic headquarters of former Government, with a great concentration of policemen and celebrities.
– Central Park, on the side of the movie theater ’Pairet,’ young people walking by are required to show their IDs, simply because they are in a tourist area and may be considered potential hookers or hustlers in to the eyes of the policemen.
– Fraternity Park, surrounded by bus stops, now has the highest level of outdoor lighting in the capital.
– Cafeteria Infanta.cu, also known as the Bin Bon, is actually the only place from which the authorities have not been able to eliminate the presence of the LGBT community. However, they are vulnerable to abuses from the authorities on a daily basis.
In other words, we are going back to the era of prohibition. The problem lies in that many of the night clubs had stopped throwing “de Cheo” (boring) parties and had specialized in LGBT community parties only. The ’Karachy’ is closed, as well as ’Asia’ in La Víbora.
There are still a number of open locations.
We recommend you subscribe to text messages and get your information from handouts.
Parties are currently shifting locations and are not taking place in their usual spaces.
Like we said before, the main night clubs in this situation are:
Ibiza, La Mamba, Divino, and El Olimpo.
November 9 2012
Last Sunday the 16th in our church in Taguayabon we celebrated a Christmas concert that we dedicated to the whole town. From the doorway of our temple the musical group “Alabanza DC” from “The Trinity” First Baptist Church of Santa Clara offered the most recent of its musical productions in relation to this special season that celebrates the birth of Jesus for all of humanity. It was exciting to see the front of our church full of people who became partakers of the good news through the musical message as on the original occasion the chorus of angels did for the humble shepherds.
Today Tuesday the 25th, Christmas Day, we again dress in our best. This time in order to, with our own resources, present the classic Christmas drama “A Painter’s Christmas,” written by our beloved brother Luis Bernal Lumpuy, a Cuban exiled in the United States. It is now the second consecutive year that we present a work of his. Last year it was “A Musician’s Christmas” about which we all still have such good memories. Between the choruses and creative movements a group of amateur actors will give their best to present the beautiful story of a father who returns home for Christmas. I hope also that on this Christmas so many needed miracles will be performed and so many wrongs will be righted.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Translated by mlk
December 25 2012
Upon arriving in this corner of France and reuniting with my family, whom I had not seen for seven years, I had the great pleasure of receiving a visit from the son of a very dear friend, whom I had first seen when he was born. Later on, as you might imagine, the subject of the far-off homeland came up, as well as the problems and frustrations that come with abandoning, almost against your will, the place where you were born. This is his case.
This Cuban is not resigned to remaining in forced exile. Life has played him some dirty tricks, so he is undocumented here. They cannot repatriate him, as he would like, because Cuban authorities repeatedly refuse him entry. The last time he was in Cuba, he remained in prison for four months for refusing to leave the country.
This man, who is still young, has two names and a head, so he never stops thinking about the misery to which his homeland is subjected. He has dedicated his free time — which unfortunately is all that he can do since he does not have papers and can work only sporadically — to investigating Cuban issues in-depth.
I was truly impressed when he showed me photos, articles and a wealth of details, to which we Cubans on the island do not have access, regarding the strange accident in which Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero were killed.
For this reason I am uploading the video that my friend provided for your consideration.
Site manager’s note: This video is not subtitled but here is a summary of the contents: The person speaking, a friend of Rebeca’s, is Israel Alejandro Cabezas González. He has put together the evidence he shows in the video, with regards to the death of Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero in a car crash. He believes that the photo of the car — driven by the Spaniard Carromero — was “fixed,” that is altered, and as a point of comparison he offers a photo that appeared in the Spanish press. He says that the official report of the crash was prepared to match the “fixed” photos.
Using Google maps he shows where the crash occurred, and the little collection of houses located 2 km before the crash. He believes that the “operation” was planned there and that the “supposed ambulances” were already waiting there.
The farmer speaking in he video says he was biking from the nearby town to the rice fields where he works, the entrance to which is directly across from the crash site. While he was biking a car passed him and he saw the dust cloud, based on which Alejandro estimates he’s about 1 km (half a mile) from the crash. By the time of the crash he was just meters away and arrived there in 2 to 3 minutes. He said people were already there taking each of the 4 men out of the car.
The person speaking in English is Jan Modig, the Swede who was in the car. He says, “The second memory I have is that I found myself in some sort of ambulance,” which means it wasn’t an ambulance… it was ‘sort of an ambulance’. Alejandro also says the foreigners were saying “why did you do this to us?” and he believes it was a huge premeditated operation to kill them.
He says they took “the Swede” and Carromero (the Spaniard who was driving) away separately and they didn’t know what happened to Oswaldo Paya. Paya was sitting where he received the direct impact from the crash, but that he served as a sort of ‘airbag’ for Harold Cepero who ultimately also died. Alejandro says that since they were being hit from behind everyone was wearing their seatbelts [the official version is that they were not] and that Harold was alive after the crash; he had a very small fracture of the femur.
When they arrived at the hospital — Alejandro goes on to say — State Security kicked the regular doctors out of the hospital and brought in “G2” military doctors, and that he hopes Cepero’s body was not cremated because he did not die of natural causes.
Alejandro’s personal version of what happened was that somebody who was G2 (State Security) infiltrated Carromero and Modig’s visit and told G2 where they were going. G2 followed them from Havana and also there were more G2 agents waiting for them in the collection of houses, where everything was prepared, including the ambulances and doctors.
Translated and video summary by Unstated and BW and Chabeli
January 4 2013
By Veizant Boloy
Last 24th September, Angel Moya, ex-prisoner of conscience of the Spring of 2003, and a group of activists, were arrested for three hours by police agents and the State Security, for having handed out copies of the petition Por otra Cuba (For a different Cuba).
According to Moya, the agents involved in the arrest told him he was not being arrested, but “temporarily held.”
“They didn’t take us to jail as they usually do,” commented Moya. But, can a Cuban citizen be “held”?
According to Spanish law, the ability to hold can only be exercised in relation to goods. It is defined as a means to assist someone to extend his possession of something by way of security. The counter-intelligence people, the political police in the island, in order to avoid any legal or civic constraints, use the status “held” to justify arbitrary arrest.
The term “hold” doesn’t exist in the criminal law process. The agents of the State Security and the police are not authorized to hold anybody, as this term does not exist in the criminal legislation.
The International Treaty of Civil and Political Rights, in Art. 9, First Part, establishes, and I quote: “Every individual has the right to liberty and personal security. No-one may be subject to detention or arbitrary arrest. No-one may be deprived of their liberty, except for reasons defined in law and by way of the relevant established procedure.”
Moya was not “held”, he was arbitrarily arrested, in breach of the precept of Art. 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, signed by the Cuban state in 1948: “No-one may be arbitrarily arrested, nor imprisoned, nor exiled.”
Translated by GH
December 18 2012
by Lic. Veizant Boloy
In shops in the capital where they sell things for foreign currency, they offered various food products and things for the home at reduced price, which pleased the people living there. Jams, packets of biscuits, boxes of caramel powder, packets of fried tomatoes, custard, alarm clocks, and other things costing no more than one CUC (Cuban Convertible Peso).
Both customers and retailers took advantage of the discounts and bought as much as they could afford. “This is a bargain,” said one of the retailers.
The vast numbers of customers didn’t spot the flaw. Some, who took the precaution of turning the product over to note the expiry date, read the information: best before the month of August 2012. Others didn’t notice this until they got home.
The shop assistants told them to try the products, but they wouldn’t accept any returns. The nonsense was that, in the case of the clocks, they didn’t have any batteries so you couldn’t try them. In various parts of Havana there are shops which are skilled in selling faulty products, but this wasn’t the case here. These products had passed their sell-by date and others were just useless.
Selling date-expired food to people constitutes a commercial and public health offence. The offence is the greater when most of the consumers of the jams are children.
The consumer’s rights are set out in the regulations issued by the public authorities intended to protect purchasers or users in the market of goods and services, which bestow and regulate certain rights and duties.
In spite of the fact that the consumer’s rights are not an independent branch of the law, fundamental aspects of the relationship between producers and consumers are to be found in Commercial Law, Civil Law; others in Administrative Law and also Procedural Law.
In Cuba, there are legal regulations which protect the purchaser’s rights, but they are not heeded. The inspectors look the other way. The people are on the whole unaware of their rights, and, in a time of scarcity, accept these infringements of their rights as consumers.
The best advice to Cuban consumers is to check before you buy. And insist on it.
Translated by GH
January 3 2013
A long time ago, when we were happy and believed that we could fix the world by debating about baseball, poetry and politics (much time has passed since then), we found the Sancti Spiritus-Santiago de Cuba based poet, Reinaldo Garcia Blanco, who reminded us of the time when Christmas was rationed, with his poem “Very long eulogy” which conjured images of those ‘Bulgarian onions and some Rene Barbier Rosada wine’. Years later, they gave me this same wine as a welcome present to this poetic site known as Miami. The wine, the books, and friendship are a tribute to Reinaldo, Marta Maria Montejo, Rafael Vilches, Carlos Esquivel and many others who believe in the strength of words when some believe in the strength of physical blows and stonings at night. 2013 could be the year of uniting poetry and life, of finally getting fed up with so much silence and so much screaming. I leave you with a fragment of the poem which moved us that one time:
“From Left to Right”
‘With the stare of an angel, there is a woman with a mustache. It’s Frida Khalo, and her hand lies over the shoulder of Trotsky (who brings an apple towards his face), and then there is a Doric column (now it’s in sepia but during the photo it was red). Then there is a man with a firefly on his hand and a tobacco on his mouth (he makes circles of light so we can see in this darkness) and it seems as if he’s giving his back to a girl called Greta Garbo (she is playing with a kite and the hand which comes out of nowhere to snatch the toy from her belongs to Salvador Dali). Towards the back, there is a sign which reads “Proletariats of the world, Unite”. Towards the far right one man adds with a paintbrush: “Last warning”. My memory fails me, but I would bet it was Pablo Picasso. Others follow him, and it seems that they are Russian, Chechnyans, or Quakers…God knows. On the table, there are Bulgarian onions and some “Rene Barbiera Rosado” wines. The girl and the old man are Maria Kodama and Jorge Luis Borges. The one getting down from the cross is Jesus. The one with the Second World War nurse outfit is Isadora Duncan and the one with the faint stair holding a Beatles CD in his hand is Mao Zedong.’
Luis Felipe Rojas
Translated by Raul G.
1 January 2013
