Category: Translator: JCD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iván García

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

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

Translated by: JCD and others
17 December 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iván García

Photo Credit: Martí Noticias.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Translated by: JCD

14 December 2013