Category: TRANSLATORS

From Havana, Year 1

The old computer in Lucerne

The idea of having a blog where I could post about life in my country and to have the power to write in the first person about the small things in this scene that surround me, that was an idea that was cooked a long time over a slow flame.

It was in 2004, while reading Time and Newsweek, that I learned about the phenomenon of blogs.  With evident delay, some past postings by a very special guy, Andrew Sullivan, landed in my hands.

It was like this that I learned about a North American solider in Iraq, a picketer in Buenos Aires, a nun in Calcutta, and a doctor without borders in Almeria.  I also learned about the legions of Iranian and Chinese bloggers who, in spite being besieged by their governments, continued to write and forcefully denounce through their personal stories.

Let’s get to work, I thought.  But it had limits.  Not having a laptop nor money, I could not easily justify spending the money that my mother, from the mountainous city of Lucerne, would sacrifice for and send me.  Internet access cards in Cuba cost about 6 to 9 dollars an hour.

My family in Switzerland chose to continue using an old computer, pictured here, and sent me a Dell laptop which had been a gift to them.  The keyboard was in English, or maybe German, I am not sure.  But it made me suffer long hours trying to place an accent or compose the letter ñ.  One does not look a gift horse in the mouth, better this than nothing.

At first, I thought of opening a blog just for me where I could write small chronicles and articles.  But then later I thought it would be better to create a collective blog.

Between educating my daughter and managing the daily Cuban vortex of securing a hot meal, the blog was delayed.  Finally in December, 2008, I put two and two together.  You know, the last month of the year is the month of resolutions where one tries to balance what has been with what is yet to come in the next 365 days.

I decided that in 2009 I would take off, full speed ahead.  Luis Cino, one of the best independent Cuban journalists, told me to count him in.  My mother, a political refugee, retired journalist, and blogger since March 2007 was also in. The team would be complete with the chronicles of poet and reporter Raul Rivero who compiled for the daily El Mundo.  (For eight years, Rivero lead the Cuban Press agency where I began as an independent journalist in 1995.)

The platform was ready, but something was missing.  We needed a person that would write about the bizarre Cuban laws and the high rate of judicial illiteracy that exists among our citizens. Our last card would be the attorney and independent journalist Laritza Diversent, of Haitian roots, hyperkinetic, and just as poor as her ancestors from Port Au Prince.

So the network was composed.  And it was just at this moment that the star of the Cuban blogosphere, Yoani Sanchez and her husband, the journalist of wide curriculum Reinaldo Escobar, put the icing on the cake and gave a happy ending to the idea.  They linked me to the portal Cuban Voices born January 28th, 2009.  Thanks to Yoani’s patience, I learned to use Word Press 2.7 and was able to upload photos and post.

It wasn’t easy.  But on that same January 28th, the From Havana blog was also started.  It’s been a year.  Luis Cino, due to conflicts with the independent periodical for which he works was not able to write.  Several other journalists and young Cuban writers, residents of other provinces, have shown interest in publishing their works on our blog.

It is Laritza’s and my dream that we not be limited to only the capital, that we are able to cover all of Cuba.  But we need resources to help organize those volunteers that wish to collaborate. Those who know best can describe what occurs around them. In spite the limitations, the idea still stands. We want the From Havana blog to be open to Cubans and also to foreigners.  Quality chronicles about daily life that will move people.  Or comments about successes, national or international ones.

The good news started towards the end of 2009. Thanks to Carlos Moreira, a friend from Portugal, since October we have a webpage named Cuban Points of View.  And starting in January, 2010, this same friend began to help us administrate the blog.  Moreira, among many other things he’s done in his free time and free of charge, has given the blog a new look and also placed us on Twitter and Facebook.

The blog has also been enriched by videos and news footage prepared in Lucerne by my mother.  This is an initiative we would like to continue with her because finding videos and photos on the internet is not only costly but exasperating as the internet and network connections to the island are very slow.

Foreign friends of Laritza and mine ask in what way they can help and we always say the same.  Technology is expensive and for that reason, we always prefer that they purchase internet cards for us.

A few days ago Laritza and I went to the Marianao neighborhood to plan a profile of Sonia Garro, a woman of the black race who against winds and tides has maintained an independent community project for the poor children of the neighborhood.  You will soon read what we wrote.  But among this work, Laritza and I gave ourselves the satisfaction of gathering 20 CUC to be able buy a few toys to take to the little ones.

In this first year, many things have impressed us.  The history of Sonia Garro is one of them.  The other was the case of Yunia Palacio, a young mother of three with very few means.  She’s 27 years old and looks as if she were 50.   She has a husband who beats her and has kicked her out of their home — if that’s what a cardboard roof, some palm fronds and three dirty mattresses on the floor could be called.

When we spoke with this mixed woman from Santiago, Laritza cried.  My eyes watered too.  Yunia Palacio is the closest face that we have met that has the potential to be suicidal.  As modestly as we can, we’ve helped her pay a fine of 500 pesos (20 dollars).  We also give her clothes that no longer fit my daughter or Laritza’s son.

They are symbolic gestures.  For this reason we believe that the From Havana blog as well as the Cuba Points of View website and the daily El Mundo/America, published since October 2009, serve to amplify these small stories and expose the tarnish that our government and its spokespeople ignore.

And that is the point.  It’s not that these things don’t occur in other countries, they do and possibly even worse.  But journalists there have the liberty to reflect.  In Cuba they don’t.   For the official Cuban media, the revolution is a tropical paradise.

If our text moves you and provides awareness of the reality of our country, then we have met our objective.

In the meantime, from Havana we will continue to report.

Iván García y Laritza Diversent

Photo: Work area of Tania Quintero, in the living room of her apartment in Lucerne, Switzerland, where she has lived as a political refugee since November 26, 2003.

Translated by: AV

Cheap Sex

They don’t have the charm of the “jineteras”(prostitutes seeking foreign tourists) who work for hard currency.*  They don’t wear brand-name clothes, or high-heeled shoes.  They don’t use Chanel perfumes, or wear gold jewelry.  They are the poorer type, who at most smother themselves with large quantities of Cuban-made Suchel talcum powder, and smell of cheap eau-de-cologne.  They wear short tight skirts.  And they tend to plaster on the make-up.

These are the local currency whores.  Many of them get off the train at daybreak and before the sun has fully risen they are already busy at work.  Like Yanelis, 28 years old, an Indian mulatta, born in an eastern province 800 km from the capital.

Her life is a small hell. She never knew her parents and doesn’t have fond memories of her childhood. Her maternal grandparents did what they could. But Yanelis only managed to get as far as finishing seventh grade. And yet her round and shapely backside, her firm breasts and her skin, the colour of coffee with cream, would get men aroused. Especially some of her male relatives.

One night, a cousin invited her to the fair and he plied her with an excessive quantity of a bog standard and insipid brew which is sold loose as draught beer. When she had passed out from drinking so much alcohol, he repeatedly raped her.

She was only twelve years old. Her first customers were her own family members. For 5 pesos (a quarter dollar) she let them fondle her breasts or masturbate and then ejaculate on her face.

“The most perverted of my relatives was also the one with the most money, because he worked in a hotel exclusively for tourists. He forced me to sleep with animals and on more than one occasion I got sick. I’ve tried everything. I’m bisexual and for as long as I can remember, I’ve never known what it’s like to feel in love with someone. That only happens in movies.”

Prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet, Yanelis gulps down a can of Bucanero beer and goes on with her story.

“I came to Havana because business is good here. It’s my third trip. I’ve been caught by the police a couple of times and they sent me back to the province where I’m from. I even spent a year and a half in jail. But I always come back. Things are very tense in my home town. I don’t have, nor do I want, any other way of making money. Perhaps this is the most difficult way, but it’s the easiest for me. I don’t have many options unless it’s coffee picking in the mountains or wiping tables in a café,” says this girl, prematurely aged by a tough life and an even worse diet.

In the capital, Yanelis and some other prostitutes rent an extremely shabby room. They have to fetch their water in containers and live by candlelight because they don’t have electricity. Each one pays 5 convertible pesos for the room. On a good day, she makes the equivalent of 50 or 60 convertible pesos (about 1200 or 1500 regular pesos). If you do the math, to make this amount Yanelis is having to sleep with ten or twelve men. For a quick half hour ‘screw’ they make 100 regular pesos or 5 convertible.

She started working as a prostitute in the area around Fraternity Park, in the heart of Havana. Her stroll was Monte and Cienfuegos streets, the first marketplace to emerge on the island for cheap sex bought with regular pesos, back around 1996. Things didn’t go too badly for her. But every now and again there was a police raid.

When she got out of jail, she thought she needed to be more discreet. She’s a fixture now in a spot on the fringes of the National Freeway. Guys in cars and on motorbikes pass by, drunk and looking for a woman to satisfy their sexual appetite.

That is where you’ll find girls like Yanelis, ready to offer you their a la carte menu: 50 pesos for a blow job, 40 for a hand job, and 100 for the full works, in other words, for penetrative sex. Paying a bit more gets you anal sex. And if you’ve got 20 convertible pesos or 500 of the regular kind, you can head off with two sad and pale girls who’ll offer you a moonlight lesbian show in the middle of a banana field with some dirty bits of cardboard for a bed.

There are at least a dozen such places in the city. In Havana slang they are known as chupa-chupa [suck-suck].

The young women who prostitute themselves for local currency don’t come close to the beauty and silhouettes of the splendid hookers that have dazzled the Iberian and Italian men who have taken them under their wing and married them. No. These are poor lost souls who stoically endure being penetrated by more than ten men in a single day in order to make a few pesos.

Yanelis doesn’t want to think about the future, which is a bad word for her. She lives fast and for the present. Night has fallen. She looks up at the cloudy sky and comments despondently:

“Uh oh. It’s going to rain. Bad for business.”

She prefers picking up men when she’s drunk or after smoking a couple of joints. Sometimes she takes a few parkisonil tablets to get high. When she gets back to her wretched room she sometimes feels guilty.

This is when she remembers that she’d like to have children, a good husband, and to start a family. She soon abandons the idea. That stuff is only in movies. Or romantic novels by Corín Tellado. Then she comes back down to earth. To the reality which is her lot in life. And she has neither the energy nor the desire to change it.

Iván García

Translated by BW and RSP and ANB

* Translator’s note: There are two kinds of pesos in circulation in Cuba, one which can be exchanged for dollars and Euros, the Convertible Peso, and one which can’t, the regular kind. One convertible peso (officially worth $1.08) is equivalent to 24 regular pesos (referred to as moneda nacional (national money) by Cubans, and translated in this text as local currency).

Iván What’s-his-name

In October 2009, in tandem with Max Lesnik, the Cuban journalist based in Miami,  I started writing a blog, called 90 miles, for El Mundo, one of Spain’s national dailies. Plus some notes, articles, features, and stories about what life is like for Cubans and my perceptions of the Castros’ government. Within a few days, I was approached by various people I consider friends (and others I don’t). After congratulating me, they gave me some free advice.

An experienced and foxy old reporter told me in confidence and in a hushed tone, “What you want is lots of curveball and not much fastball. Try and come up with colourful stories which won’t cause you any problems. That way you get paid and life’s good. If you go about with an AKM machine gun at the ready, the government will call you to account.”  Such was this long time journalist’s advice. Opportunistic, cynical, someone who enjoys life, like a lot of people in Cuba who just want to have a decent salary paid in hard currency and not rock the boat.

The old reporter, who knows how much I love the sports pages, made a point of using some baseball jargon. When you cover the island “curveball” means sticking  to subjects like the history of the Malecón, Havana’s Chinatown, or the Capitolio; talk about curiosities or explain how a parcel containing copies of Granma was thrown out of an airplane over the mountains in the East and knocked dead a cow when it landed. In short, his advice was that I should write about unimportant “news” and steer clear of critical articles.

If it meant writing colourful stories and throwing curveballs, I would give up writing for El mundo. I say what I think and tell it like it is. You have the chance as readers to express disagreement in the comments section. I’m very far from thinking that what I write amounts to any kind of absolute truth. Perhaps I get things wrong. But these opinions about an event, theme, or personality are mine.

I’m nearly 45 years old and at this stage in my life I’m not going to be afraid to defend my perspective. Being imprisoned for many years, which is the prospect held out by Cuba’s laws for all those voicing public dissent, does scare me. I don’t have a vocation to be a martyr. But I’m not going to change my ideas. Even if I end up bricked up in a state security cell or in a dirty Cuban prison block.

Disagreement is healthy. And so is debate about ideas and dialogue with people who think differently. But in Cuba, when someone in the media criticises you or attacks you, be afraid. The message is: “What goes around comes around”. In other words, shut up or you’re mincemeat.

We know that the beginning of a vigorous offensive on the part of the state apparatus portends further actions. Ranging from acts of repudiation and even threats and humiliations for your family. Or, in an extreme case, detaining you, penalising you, and locking you up in jail.

I would like to ask a journalist of Max Lesnik’s calibre, or José Pertierra, the lawyer, if at any time they’ve felt paralysed by the US secret services breathing down their necks, or if they’ve ever had their arms twisted by the Yankee government because of holding critical views about the system in the North or for showing admiration towards the Cuban Revolution.

I suspect the answer is no. It’s true that in Florida, in the ’70s or ’80s, a group of intolerant Cubans, terrorists more than anything else, went as far as assassinating people who supported Castro. But in this, the 21st century, things in Little Havana must have changed. And it goes without saying that no US administration has ever instructed its official media, like the Voice of America, to intimidate its political rivals.

The United States is capable of the best and the worst. If he happens to be having a bad day, any madman with a rifle slung over his shoulder and whistling along to a Bruce Springsteen song can rub out a dozen people as if he were at a shooting gallery in a fairground. I have a feeling that Lesnik and Pertierra and their compatriots on the other side of the pond have all the freedom in the world to write and to say what they think.

Not in Cuba. And that’s the point. Since I was born, in 1965, I’ve never known what is called democracy. And before I die, I would like to live in a pluralistic society where you as a person aren’t of the slightest interest to the State.  And where, if the powers that be don’t appreciate me, thanks to certain Constitutional laws, I’m not locked up in prison.

I don’t mind who’s in power. They can be communists, liberals, greens, social democrats, right wing, centrists, or left wing. Just so long as they’ve won an election. I ask myself if this is an impossible dream. I don’t think it is. That’s why I write what I think.

I remember that on a cold and gray afternoon in February 2003, Raúl Rivero, the Cuban poet and journalist, typed with two fingers on his Olivetti Lettera-25: “No decree can stop me writing in the country where I was born and where my grandparents were born. I’m a man who writes.” So am I.  Even though I could lose a lot.

Albeit with my fears and the paranoia typical of those who live under threat, I will send stories, articles, and news about the reality of my country. Written from my untidy apartment in the Víbora district, my neck of the woods. I’m not going to follow the experienced reporter’s advice.  My writing is going to be lots of fastballs, few curves.

Iván García

Translated by RSP

The Day After

Donato, who usually sells newspapers in the area around Roja de la Víbora square, is an elderly man of 67 wearing threadbare clothes; he’s convinced that Fidel Castro has for quite some time been a corpse. Abelardo, 54, a civil engineer, thinks the same. He says, “The people haven’t been told of Fidel’s death to prevent disturbance” In Cuba, everyone has his or her own take on the one and only Comandante’s illness.

For want of reliable information, people invent rumours. Carlos, a 21-year-old university student, swears on his mother’s life to a group of sceptical youngsters that he read an article on the Internet where it said that Fidel Castro was in a deep coma. In every nook and cranny of the island it’s the same.

Never before has a man’s death engendered such anticipation. No sooner does a rumour start over there on the other shore, in other words, in Florida, than it quickly arrives on the Cuban coastline. Many people have family in the sunshine state or else they illegally watch cable TV, and more than a few times some rumour is heard, even in the middle of the night, as happened to Jesús, a 34 year old worker. A friend, restraining his emotion, woke Jesús up at three o’clock in the morning to tell him: “Fidel’s snuffed it, I saw it on channel 41.”

Castro’s been given up for dead so many times in Miami that new reports of his death are taken with a pinch of salt on the island. Deborah, a 29-year-old primary school teacher says: “The day when he dies for real, I won’t believe it.” It’s now been three years and five months since the 31st of July, 2006, when Carlos Valenciaga, Castro’s former private secretary, announced on national television, in a sombre tone of voice, that the Comandante was relinquishing power due to illness.

Since then Cubans have been living on a knife’s edge. And not because their former president’s state of health is of special interest to them. No. The key issue for the majority is what’s going to happen when Castro dies. Some in Cuba take it as a given that Fidel’s brother, General Raúl, is putting off reforms pending the patriarch’s disappearance.

I don’t believe that. I don’t think that Raúl Castro is going to be the Caribbean Gorbachev. The agents of change in Cuba are perhaps men in power now, wearing masks, keeping their heads down and obeying orders. They’re waiting for their moment. Or they’re walking about the country’s streets anonymously. I’m a sceptic and I don’t think a worthy leader for the future will emerge from the Cuban opposition. Almost everyone talks about democracy and makes out that they’re a democrat, but they act like little dictators.

The is what concerns the man in the street in Cuba. The day after Fidel. Cubans take it for granted that Raúl is a transitional president. As such, the health and impending death of Fidel Castro isn’t a problem of personal hatred. It’s simply about discovering what the future will be like without the former Comandante.

There are even people making bets, like Amador, 43 and unemployed. Two years back, Amador and twelve friends agreed on a lucky draw: whoever accurately predicted  the date of Castro’s death, or whoever came closest, wins 1,200 convertible Cuban pesos (about 1,200 dollars). Amador had predicted that God would take Castro I from this earth on the 31st of December, 2009.  He’s sorry that he’s off by a bit.  He says, quite seriously, that it’s nothing personal against Fidel. It’s just a bet. And he wants to win.

Iván García

Translated by RSP

Without Freedom… Even to Travel!

One of the various unresolved and failed issues of the Castro brothers’ government is the Cuban citizens’ lack of freedom to travel. If a foreign friend invites you to spend some time in his country, in addition to extensive and tricky bureaucratic red tape, ultimately, with nerves of steel, you have to wait for the exit permit granted by the Department of Immigration, which is part of the Ministry of Interior.

This department determines whether or not you have the right to travel. Also, if a person has been exiled, said military body is the one which determines whether or not such a Cuban can visit his native land. It’s humiliating. It’s like begging to be allowed to leave Cuba, and, what’s worse, to be allowed to enter your own land.

For me this is the most flagrant violation of personal rights committed by the government of the island. It doesn’t matter if an individual who wants to visit a friend or a relative has an immaculate record and doesn’t have any prior convictions. If Immigration considers you unsuitable, you cannot leave the island.

It’s a form of punishment. Something like, you better behave if you want to see the world. To behave badly is, above all, to publicly dissent from the way the State administers the country. Another major arbitrary act is when a person definitively leaves the country. It doesn’t matter that he owns his house. If he lived alone, he doesn’t have the right to leave or give his house to whomever he wants.

No. The government’s laws put an end to your right to dispose of your own home. This is coupled with a number of tricks and lies to circumvent the unjust measures that the State applies. Whenever people think about leaving the country for good, they put the name of a friend or family member on the deed beforehand so they don’t lose the house.

Days before you abandon your country, an inspection from the Institute of Housing inspects your home and verifies the furniture and electrical appliances that you possess. If, at the moment of leaving, it’s proven that you have given someone these things, your permission to leave can be denied.

What people do is to give away or sell the furniture, refrigerator or television, before the housing inspectors visit. It’s arbitrary. I will tell you a personal story.

My mother, Tania Quintero, an independent journalist, together with my sister and my niece, left Cuba to go to Switzerland, on November 25, 2003, at the beginning of the Black Spring. [Translator’s note: The “Black Spring” refers to the 2003 government crackdown, when independent journalists and democracy advocates were arrested and imprisoned.]

When she left, she did not know my daughter, Melany, who was 9 months old. Because she was a political refugee and a persona non grata for those who direct my country, Melany’s maternal grandmother had to content herself with seeing her in photos and chatting by telephone when her rare retirement resources allowed her to telephone.

She will probably die in the staid city of Lucerne without ever knowing her other granddaughter. The government hasn’t given the slightest inkling of doing away with its absurd rules on emigration. It’s true that in the USA, on account of another stupid law, North American citizens aren’t allowed to travel to Cuba. Ninety miles apart, the two countries are still living in the Cold War era.

Both of our communities, so close geographically and, at the same time, on account of the policies of their respective administrations, so distant, must insist on having our rights count.

There’s no reason why my mother should have to die 9000 kilometres away without ever knowing her granddaughter. It’s unreasonable for anyone to stop her. But the Castros keep in their pockets the files for all exits and entries. And Melany’s grandmother is not to their liking.

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy & RSP

Havana Boulevard

Beginning at Prado street and ending at Galiano, there is a five-block long pedestrian mall in the heart of Havana, replete with stores that take hard-currency or national pesos. Cafes, barber shops, ice cream parlors, markets, a cinema for children and a jewelry store in decline.

Throughout the year the boulevard is very busy. December, the month of summing up and hospitality, causes city dwellers to shop compulsively. It’s possible that in some of its businesses they can get what they want or need.

At the Belinda store, a group of ladies enter, looking for a set of sheets for their home. Their mouths drop open and they remain speechless when they learn the prices in inflated currency.

Nearby, some guys who are drunk, accompanied by cheerful black girls in the same condition, look both ways and surreptitiously enter by a rusty iron gate what were once the Duplex and Rex theaters. They empty their bladders full of beer, consumed in a nightclub called Palermo, where they usually will hook up with the old, cheap whores who don’t have the option of hooking up with a foreigner.

At the National Cabaret, where the boulevard starts at Prado Street, are a line of men in their fifties and a group of young mestizo girls, with the typical body language of females seeking pleasure, trying to find some “Temba” (men in their fifties) to pay the entry fee to the nightclub. The Disco Temba, as it is known, opens at 4 pm.

A stone’s throw away at the gates of the Hotel Inglaterra, Nordic ‘Vikings’ and fat ‘Iberians’ drink daiquiris, accompanied by tapas of ham, cheese, and olives. They listen raptly to a bad version of Chan-Chan by Compay Segundo. Inside the hotel, a Japanese girl with teenage acne complains in English to a clerk about how expensive Internet service is: a card costs 6 CUC per hour. What shall we Cubans say?

Evening falls and the comings and goings of hurrying people increase. To alleviate the thirst caused by the heat from this end-of-year fire, people drink bottled soft drinks, locally produced, at 5 pesos a bottle. In a kiosk they sell unwrapped bread, exposed to the air, with the appropriate dose of microbes; bread with either pork, ham, or a cheese with a terrible smell.

Wherever you sit, to take a drink, or eat a serving of fried rice or a piece of smoked chicken, you are approached by dirty, mangy dogs, which with pitiful faces beg you to give them your leftovers. They are part of the army of hungry dogs that roam around the entire city.

Beggars also do their part in the streets of downtown Havana. Some shamelessly and even aggressively ask you for money.  Others, with the picture of a saint, usually St. Lazarus, ask you for alms, “preferably in hard currency.”

If you look like you have a foolish face, a crook will try to separate you from your money. You can find everything in the Boulevard of San Rafael. Schemes are constantly hatched and if you don’t look like a cop in civilian clothes, you can buy a gram of coke for 35 CUC or a Creole marijuana cigarette for 25 pesos.

The cobblestone streets are painted with large white squares, surrounded by pots with withered plants that the state gardeners do not look after, disgusted by their low pay.

Now at the far end, at the corner of Galiano and San Rafael, a park is a reminder that in this place once stood El Encanto, one of the most chic department stores in Havana. It was devoured by fire on April 13, 1961, as part of the sabotage before the Bay of Pigs invasion. There were 18 injuries and one fatality, Fe del Valle, the head of the El Encanto’s children’s department.

This story is not known to the children, whites, blacks and mestizos who play soccer with a deflated balloon. A black boy pulls off feints incredible for his age, barefoot and with a faded Kaká T-shirt. His fans, sitting on a wall, applaud the small Cuban Pelé.

Maybe the Boulevard San Rafael does not have the charm of Paris or Barcelona. But it is the only one in Havana: meeting point for Havanans, nostalgia for exiles, and headquarters of private guest houses for outsiders. If you pass through Havana, be sure to visit.

Ivan Garcia

Translated by: Tomás A.

The Cuban Facebook


Devoid of Internet and cable TV, people in Cuba get by as best as they can. Newsagents don’t sell foreign newspapers. And if you want to be properly informed, the only way is to listen to the BBC from London, Radio Exterior from Spain, or the Voice of America, from the United States. And that’s it.

Over the last 50 years, the Castro brothers have put a fat lock on information. Zero sports from the Yankees. No news from abroad, if they criticize the Castros, or what is going on the island, even in the slightest. In the dollar stores, short wave radios have “mysteriously” disappeared.

But the regular Cuban in the street wants to learn what he doesn’t know, whatever way he can, even if he has to sacrifice his grub. One of the most lucrative businesses nowadays is to hire out a bunch of foreign TV channels for 10 CUC a month (250 pesos). In Cuba, this is called “renting out your antenna”. Or simply “the antenna”.

If you ask Roberto, he will tell you with a faint smile that “in the five years I have been hiring out the antenna, I have made enough money to buy my motorbike, refurbish my apartment, and eat meat every week.” And this, in a Cuba stuck in an endless Special Period, is plenty.

And, what’s more, he boasts of being well-informed. Usually, the program listings offered by those renting out the Cuban cable, are full of B movies, mediocre Mexican soaps, Spanish humour shows and baseball games from the Major Leagues.

But some offers include news programmes from Univision. “Some people only want to rent CNN in Spanish, ABC, NBC and ESPN. This sort of people pay double, 20 CUC a month”, states Roberto.

The antenna business is a sort of local Facebook, and it sprung up out of the strong desire – and need – for having an alternative to the highly-manipulated news fed on a daily basis by the regime. To avoid state television, which is generally boring and full of tired shows.

“It all begins when some friend or relative from the other side of the Florida Strait pays for a bundle of cable programs, preferably in Spanish. Then, the TV signal receptors are smuggled into Cuba. Once they are here, there are some people who make a living building rustic antenna dishes,” Roberto explains.

“When you have all the gear, that is, the receptor and the dish, then you begin to offer the private cable service to your neighbours. The demand is huge, because even if they are living it rough, many people would make sacrifices to see a different way of life.”

The owner of the antenna connects up all the houses using a coaxial wire. In Havana, you can find people in the business of renting out antenna who have more than 100 homes linked up.

You can do the math! No less than 1,000 CUC (25,000 pesos) a month. That is why, despite the joint efforts by the Cuban intelligence and the police to curb the boom in private antennas, they have achieved little. If they catch you, they can fine you up to 30,000 pesos (1,250 CUC). And if you are a repeat offender, you can even go to jail for up to two years.

But it is a good business, and people like Roberto take the risk. There are hundreds of anecdotes to tell, such as a firefighting station, whose staff enjoy free cable TV in return for their silence.

The regular Cuban on the street wants to be informed and entertained. He doesn’t mind if he doesn’t have pork or vegetables on the table. It is worth it to sacrifice them to watch, with his very own eyes, what is happening on the other side.

And frequently they find out what happens in their own country through the foreign media. When there is no internet and foreign media, the business of hiring out antennas is a sort of social network. The Cuban Facebook.

Iván García

Translated by: trelex

The Letter of the Year


Photo: Reuters. On the right, the Cuban writer and journalist Natalia Bolivar

With the arrival of the first serious cold front, which in these days of January has lowered the thermometer to unusual temperatures in Cuba, the babalaos of the island gave the expected Letter of the Year.

This time it was announced with a drum roll and cymbals. Friday the first of January, Radio Progreso, a broadcaster of national importance, gave the whole reading of the document issued by the Cuban Council of High Priests of Ifá.

According to the Cuban babalaos, this year the sign is Obesa, ruling Yemayá and accompanying Changó. On the island, the devotees of Afro-Cuban religions count in the millions. No one knows the number to a scientific certainty. But religious sincretism is so strong that it is common to see a Catholic who “makes himself a saint” and a Santero being married in the church.

One song from Adalberto Álvarez, who sings Afro-Cuban songs, says in its refrain, “There are people who believe in nothing and they go for consultations at the first light of day.” It’s true. Frowning Marxists from the Communist Party have their bean-tokens and at times “feed them” to the higher power.

It’s speculated that even Fidel Castro, since he was a boy, has a Haitian voodoo doctor. The government never has denied the rumors. But let’s get to the point. In the letter for 2010, the local babalaos offer their recommendations and advice.

In a cryptic reading they offer a series of adages from the signo, which Juan Carlos Ariosa, 25 years old, a young sculptor, believes interprets signs of the political diatribe towards the government. Luis Álvarez, a retired soldier, who, since his participation in the African wars has been a devotee, in capital letters, of Afro-Cuban religions, interprets everything just the opposite.

“It’s a good sign that the government gives the Letter of the Year official publicity. The Council of Priests is a group of patriots who support the Revolution. If you read the document carefully, you will come to that conclusion,” affirms Álvarez, elated, with her necklaces of green and yellow beads and a white hat.

Each to his own. And those who are desperate, because of the extended outcome of the economic and political situation in Cuba, think that the babalaos expressed a weak sign in a veiled way.

If Cubans know anything it’s how to read between the lines. Neither the Catholic church nor the Council of Priests has publicly and openly condemned the politics of the government. At least in the last 10 years.

It’s like a cat and mouse game. If you shut up, we give you space. And at least, in my assessment, a part of the religions on the island have made themselves complicit in this silence.

It’s not possible that the majority of common people think otherwise and the churches and temples don’t speak their minds. As far as the Afro-Cuban religions are concerned, in the last two decades, they have converted themselves into a prosperous business.

It’s become the mode to become a babalao to mount a throne and get hard currency. Hundreds of devotees from Spain, Switzerland, Japan and even Australia come to the country of sun and palms to be blessed. It’s not cheap. For a Cuban it costs a minimum of 10,000 pesos (400 CUCs), a year and a half’s salary for an engineer. For a foreigner it costs double.

Faithful practitioners are many. But some beliefs, like the Afro-Cuban ones, have degenerated and become commercialized. In any event, the announcement of the Letter of the Year always awakens great expectations.

In an ancient mansion dating from the beginning of the 20th century, in the Calzada of 10th of October between Josefina and Gertrudis, where on occasion the babalaos consult the saints, on the afternoon of January 3, a group of 20 to 30 people were trying to read, with anxiety, the Letter of the Year 2010.

Probably they had not heard Radio Progreso. Also, at the same time, some thousands of kilometers away, in Peru, the South American shamans predicted that the Venezuelan president was very sick and that Fidel Castro had a vague death that protected him. According to the Peruvian oracles, Castro could live for the years that he offered.

To confirm the validity of their prognostications, they gave the example that last year they said that Barack Obama would win the US elections. On the island, when people saw on Channel 23 in Miami the news of the religious leaders of Peru, many were astonished.

At least the Peruvians were daring and gave prophecies. The Cuban babalaos were neither one nor the other. You would have to continue reading them between the lines. Something anyone could do by reading the latest edition of Newsweek, where they predict that 2010 might be the last year on earth for Fidel Castro.

Iván Garcia

Translated by Regina

Our Best Wishes for 2010

We wish all readers and their families the realization of all resolutions proposed for this year, and to Cuba, our homeland, we wish for a new beginning with tolerance, respect and a democratic conciliatory spirit, leaving behind the resentment that has blinded us for so long. From Havana, Cuba, a sincere hug from,

Iván García y Laritza Diversent

Translated by Tony de la Fuente

The Joke of the New Man / Ivan Garcia

The formation of the New Man has always been a fruitless task. Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, its precursor, with his straw full of mate (a kind of tea that Argentinians drink from a bulb-shaped container, through a straw), was delirious in his moments of rest in the guerrilla war, on the road to Santa Clara in the last days of 1958. At that point in the war against the dictator Fulgencio Batista, the Argentinian Guevara was convinced that in the future society that would be built in Cuba, they would have to start by designing a “laboratory” man.

Che, a Maoist and radical communist, was dreaming, and he believed it would be possible, but the fun-loving Cuban people–with a tendency to idleness and informality–would need a firm hand to discipline them. According to Guevara, these Creoles, given to unending parties and festivals, playing around and disrespectful with their neighbors’ women, needed a revolution, with a dose of repression and terror that would permit the construction of a Communist society.

The Argentine tried it. In the short time he was Minister and an important man in Cuban politics, besides festively pulling the trigger in the large, damp patios that served as firing fields in the San Carlos de La Cabaña Fortress, he imposed “voluntary” work, moral stimulation and other formulas that the doctor from Rosario (i.e. Che) had read about in his Marxist studies.

Until he realized that fabricating men in an assembly line from a test tube who were monogamous and would not move their hips to the rhythm of drums was an impossible mission on an island of sun, drink and craziness. Che was a convinced fanatic, argumentative and with faith in proof by bullets. But his friend Fidel Castro was another specimen.

The lawyer from Birán (Fidel), in the best of cases, was a pragmatic opportunist, with an inflated ego, a narcissist who saw in guys like Che and Communist ideology the best way to draw up a plan for permanent and effective power. Guevara then marched to his own drummer, creating centers of guerrilla warfare and the formation of killing machines that would annihilate the gringos without mercy, anywhere in the world.

He died convinced, risking his hide to try to demonstrate his truths. This was around 42 years ago in Quebrada del Yuro, Bolivia. After his fall, he was converted into one of the largest marketing operations in history.

Castro, Cuban after all, knew that to modify the souls of his countrymen, who were given to Santería and not taking things seriously, illusion was necessary. In order to dominate for 50 years, he has used, at his discretion, fear, prisons, and a pinch of cheap idealism. And above all, a false morality, excitedly imparted to him by Ernesto Guevara in the days they were in a jail cell in Mexico City, in between chess games and theoretical discussions of what the future would be for Cuba and Latin America.

Not an atom remains of the New Man that Che Guevara dreamed of. Almost all Cubans steal whatever they can at work, from a straw to a piece of paper. When someone begins a new job, he is not interested in how much his salary will be, only in how much he can steal.

A few followers remain. At appropriate moments – historic dates and anniversaries of his death – they put on their masks and at the daily work meetings or publicly, they raise their voices, put themselves on automatic pilot and even act emotional talking about Che. Excellent actors, unseen and missed by Hollywood.

And the Revolution sails on. Now, functionaries and rulers try to gain time and search for hard currency. No one remembers the New Man, nor the stupidities advocated by social engineers like Che Guevara. The supposed New Men are in the lines outside the Spanish Consulate or the U.S. Special Interests Section, crazy about leaving.

They have forgotten about the world crisis. Since they were born, they have lived in a crisis and in ghost-wars against the Yankees. Many of these “new men” go out at night as transvestites, to engage in sex and drugs until dawn, and with luck, to hook up with a foreigner. Or they are dissidents, independent journalists or bloggers.

For the tired and unbelieving Cubans, the true New Men are guys like Kendry Morales or Isaac Delgado, who seized their chances, who are free to name their own price and who make a lot of money, whether it’s by making home runs or dancing in public with their contagious music. To talk about the New Man is today a joke in very bad taste in Cuba.

Translated by Regina Anavy

Ciro’s Swans

The Cuban musician Ciro Diaz, from the group Porno para Ricardo (Porn for Ricardo) made a rock version of Swan Lake, written by the Russian composer, Tchaikovsky (1840-1893). For the title he put “I Hate Swans.” It was recorded on La Paja Records,* an underground music studio in Havana. The drawings are by Charlie Bravo, who was inspired for the story by the supposed clash between swans and crocodiles for the control of a lagoon on the island.

Translator’s Note:

*”Paja” means masturbation, and “Paja Records” is a play-on-words of pajarraco, an expletive for a bird, as in “damned bird.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

Chronicle with a First Quarter Moon

Perhaps I’m not the right person to write this chronicle. Or perhaps I am. I know of colleagues who personally knew Silvio Rodriguez in that first stage of the revolution, ingenuous and difficult, crude and contradictory, where children, as if by magic, were converted into men.

Again I am going to talk about the spell that Silvio cast on my generation, considered by many to be “lost.” All of us under 50 years of age found a rare similarity in the way we agreed with his lyrics.

Perhaps in school, in the theme song for a child’s television show or in the voice of a friend, I don’t remember exactly now, but when I discovered Silvio he was composing songs for a little while, and he had been one of the founders of the Sound Experimentation Group of ICAIC (the Cuban Institute of Art and Cinematography), together with the indispensable Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola and Vicente Feliú, among others, all directed by Leo Brouwer, who already was a maestro.

One year later, in 1973, the New Trova Movement, of which Silvio was a major part, had been created. The Beatles, already a myth around the world, had disintegrated in 1970, and it was no secret to anyone that the geniuses of Liverpool, with their rock-ballads, had left an irremediable vacuum after their break-up, in spite of the psychosis that they gave to the Cuban cultural and political authorities.

Then, I think the experts on culture strategy saw a gold mine, and thus they supported that unkempt group that sang about strange things but in the end were “revolutionary.”

A truce was declared. The media spread Trova, little by little. They were at the service of Silvio and the New Trova. With his reserve, of course. At the beginning, to the disgust of the Trova singers, they were heard only during political events, patriotic commemorations or days of national mourning.

The official propaganda up to then emphasized the known themes of Silvio Rodriguez, like The Era is Giving Birth to a Heart, Gun Against Gun, Song for the Elected and the Mambi Chief, songs that with their metaphoric and poetic language demonstrated support for the revolution. Silvio also sang about the every-day and lost love but, for the moment, until his complete loyalty was not shown, those lyrics sailed away into semi-secrecy.

The singer-songwriter from San Antonio de los Baños was a kind of diminishing quarter-moon. We could aprpeciate only one part of his face. Thus, in that way, he came to our generation.

We hummed the lyrics on patriotic anniversaries or when remembering the martyrs. Silvo was growing up with us. When the 80s arrived, the proven Cuban composer was not censored. It had been a sad and traumatic birth, but here was this Rodriguez, in his proper place. One of the best Cuban composers of the 20th century.

The lyrics of The News Summary and I Hope So stopped raising suspicions. On the contrary, he was a prophet in his own land and also in Latin America and Spain. Many, the same as I, pursued and annoyed him, from concert to concert. We knew almost his whole repertoire by heart.

Human beings need myths, leaders, chosen people….and for us, Silvio was it. Or, at least he marked a precious percent of Cuban youth, although some of them later were converted into critics of his work and his ideological position. Others say that he was blocked, he adapted and was intimidated.

My current political position differs a good bit from that of Silvio Rodriguez during these days of November when I turned 63. But I’m not going to stop admiring his songs for that reason. It would mean negating and betraying an important part of my life.

Now, Silvo, we see you clearly, bereft of the halos whose lights deceived us. And we are grateful to you, we have been enriched spiritually and separated from superfluous and useless music. Millions of those from my generation are far away in other lands, under the sea or have split forever. I don’t know about others, but I want to thank you for having proposed something to us, not imposed. For having freely transmitted to us good values. That is more important than any militancy.

Iván García

Photo: Interiano Vinicio, Flickr

Translated by Regina Anavy

Silvito the Free and I

Before Sept. 20, when Juanes * at the end of his concert made public thanks to Los Aldeanos (The Villagers) and Silvito El Libre (Silvito the Free), the rapper son of Silvio Rodriguez was already known on the internet. “Who said that the Cuban revolution is in the final stage, that there is no renewal or new blood? Here we have Silvito el Libre … We still do not know if he uses the words sunset, hummingbird and soothsayer in his rhymes, but surely he will be a big summer blockbuster. “Don’t lose sight of him,” they wrote August 25 on the Chilean Web site The Clinic. Among his topics that you can hear on You Tube are the Hero, Now We Will See The Faces, Kill Yourself, Mamá and Rap, I’m Still Here, Nothing and The Etik, among others. More about his life, published in the cyber-magazine on the blog Rapdiacion Local.

* Colombian pop singer.

Translated by Regina Anavy

The Cristal River

Río Cristal, a tourist center inaugurated in 1960, is located on Avenida Rancho Boyeros, close to one of the airports in the capital, after passing the Aqueduct of Wind. It’s on the site where, in the 18th century, a slave barracks existed, and, later, a convent for nuns. Remodeled on different occasions, it still enjoys being the choice for the people of Havana, above all those who can pay with CUCs to stay there.

The entrance is still the same, wide and shady.

The swimming pool is in great demand all year.

…surrounded by a tranquility and a vegetation that is absent in the best hotels of the city.

And, for the kids, the park.

…in particular the little castle, in good-enough shape.

Inside the same installation, not only are there unattended areas, there is also the river. According to data published on Cubanet on September 22, between 2008 and 2009, five young people drowned in the Cristal River, which borders the recreation center of the same name.

Because of the deaths and accidents. the police have put up a sign prohibiting swimming in the river, but the young continue to do it. They say it’s because they don’t have other places where they can go to have fun.

Alexander, a lifeguard at the Rio Cristal swimming pool, said that on many occasions he has had to help kids who were on the point of drowning, but he did not always arrive on time.

Ana Lidia, the mother of a child who lives in the area, asserted that the river water is very contaminated. “The time my son escaped from me and went into that filth, he contracted a staph infection.”

Iván García, with text and photos by Robin Thom, of Flickr.

Translated by Regina Anavy