Category: Translator: Jim

But necessity obliged her again to barter of sex for favors. “They say that the bird always returns to the mountain. The fact is that in 1970, after the Ten Million Ton Sugar Harvest, with three children and divorced, I went to bed with a FAR officer who in exchange gave me cans of Russian meat and condensed milk, among other canned food, and gave me money to support the children. Fidel Castro did not encourage prostitution, but mi’jo, the country has never worked, and when it is not one problem it’s another. People cannot live on speeches or promises,” says Luisa.

One of her daughters was a jinetera — a prostitute — at the end of the ’80s. The oldest granddaughter inherited the “office.” When night falls, she goes to a bar south of Havana and hunts for customers.

“It seems we carry being hookers in our blood,” emphasizes Luisa with a grimace that pretends to be a smile, but reflects shame. The olive green autocracy tried to change the customs of society, to dignify women and those who never had anything and to build a New Man immune to the vices of consumerism.

The goal was to achieve a citizen loyal to the Revolution. Atomic bomb proof. Who was circumspect, almost a saint, who drank little, did not practice sex too much and was able to recite from memory excerpts from important speeches of the Maximum Leader.

Like their efforts in crossing cattle breeds or experimenting in a laboratory with guinea pigs, Fidel Castro and Ernesto Guevara set to work. The first thing was to create a political commitment and a culture of hatred of Yankee imperialism.

The state propaganda apparatus and the party commissars were in charge of carrying out the task. It was an ideological war of high intensity on radio, television and in literature.

The shelves of Cuban bookstores overflowed with classics of socialist realism. The novels of Corín Tellado were forbidden. The directions for being a future communist passed through “No One is a Solldier at Birth,” “August of ’44” and “Panfilov’s Men,” among other works of Soviet war literature.

At that time, control over the media was absolute. Internet sounded like science fiction, a shortwave radio was something subversive and don’t even dream about a computer, something very large at that time.

The regime dominated the information flow at will. This allowed it to easily rule. In the 1970s, says Gerardo, an ex-combatant in the Angolan civil war, “We Cubans all believed that the Ku-Kux-Klan lynched blacks in every corner of the United States and that that nation’s days were numbered. Our mission was to build socialism first and communism later. The future belonged to us.”

Gerardo still remembers the litany of slogans they repeated every morning in the military camps. “Many believed that we were breeding a new future. We did not learn about, or we looked away from the abuses of power against those who thought differently. I came to know of the harassment of opponents and homosexuals and the creation of UMAP — internment camps for homosexuals, religious, dissidents and other “inconvenients — in the 90’s thanks to the internet. We lived in a bubble.”

Thousands of men and women were separated from their families with the mission of evangelizing Castroism. The journalist Tania Quintero, 74, says that in 1960, after listening to Fidel Castro talking about the creation of volunteer teachers, who would prepare in the mountains of the Sierra Maestra and later would be destined to rural schools, she decided to leave her job as a typist in the People’s Socialist Party offices, and become a teacher.

“I enrolled in the third and final contingent of volunteer teachers. From March to June of 1961 I was in La Magdalena, in Las Minas del Frio. Along with elementary notions of pedagogy we received classes in political indoctrination. We did not have a radio and every day the press came to us, that’s how I heard about the Bay of Pigs invasion,” Quintero recalls, adding:

“We young women who had better records were selected to take a course in revolutionary instructors, newly created by Fidel Castro and the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). It was a one year study and work plan. From Monday to Friday we lived in residences in the old Havana Biltmore, renamed Reparto Siboney by the Revolution. The professors were University of Havana graduates in teaching, but the subjects were not limited to mathematics, Spanish, history, geography … We also had to study Marxism-Leninism and its creators: Marx, Engels and Lenin.”

Tania studied in the morning and afternoon and at night gave classes in “revolutionary instruction” — that is, in commenting and discussing Fidel Castro’s speeches — to former maids, prostitutes and housewives. “Fidel spoke almost daily, but it was not easy for those students of low academic and cultural level to express themselves freely. And I confess that I succeeded because I ignored the dense paragraphs of his speeches. At that time, one of his mono-themes was artificial insemination and that allowed me to give animated classes. I remember one student saying to me: ‘I do not know why Fidel wants to do away with the zebu cows, if those are the ones we have always had and until 1959 they gave us a lot of meat and lots of milk.’ ”

Carlos, a sociologist, can not demonstrate that the new social essay, including the plan of study and work created in 1961 by Fidel Castro and the FMC was scientific. “I think that it was an empirical plan and gave its results, because, if I am not mistaken, it spoke to thousands of women, old maids and peasants. But there were well-defined codes with regard to the evangelization of Castroism and the creation of a new Cuban. It was a well-structured protocol for achieving the purpose of transforming the human being into a zombie. The result of designing a laboratory man is now being collected. Simulator, liar and generally rude.”

The great adversary of the regime of Fidel Castro, first, and of his brother Raúl later, has been the new information technologies. What the anti-Castro insurrectionist strategy in the 1960s could not achieve, and what the subsequent peaceful activism of dissent also failed to achieve, the Internet and social networks are achieving now.

Despite the fact that an hour of internet costs the equivalent of two-and-a-half days of a worker’s wages, facts can no longer be hidden. The information highway has made evident the failures and the proverbial manipulation of the state press.

The network of networks is the weapon that has destroyed the outlandish project of building the New Man on a Caribbean island. For the autocracy, the internet is a Trojan Horse. That is why they try to censor it.

Photo: Members of the Second Contingent of Volunteer Teachers who graduated in Havana on 23 January 1961. The first contingent graduated in April 1960 and the third and last in June 1961 in Holguin. About 10,000 young people from all over the country were trained as rural teachers in makeshift and rustic camps in the Sierra Maestra. As a culmination of each course, the young people climbed Pico Turquino, which at 1,974 meters is the highest mountain in Cuba. The photo was taken from the newspaper Granma (TQ).

Translated by Jim

For nine days — something unprecedented in the cuntry — we Cubans have been disconnected from the events and sports overseas. A real media blackout.

Mourning, hymns and slogans rining in the ether. Also the mourners and exalted eulogy. In these nine days, Cuba smelled a little bit like North Korea, its ideological partner.

At this point, after 60 years of autocracy, the public applauds, fakes loyalty to the regime and signs whatever the government proposes [during the mourning period Cubans are being asked to sign a loyalty oath]. hallucinatory as it seems. But under the table Cubans continue to live in this stronghold of the real Cuba ignored by state media.

In that Cuba, people speak with fractured words, reinvent themselves every twenty-four hours, and clandestinely buy everything from cocaine to a yacht.

In the terrestrial island, not in the virtual or the delirious one that the Castro regime authorities sells us, after eliciting some tears on Via Blanca with the passing of the caravan with Fidel Castro’s remains, Oneida, on arriving at the shabby filthy room where he resides in the Luyano neighborhood, went to see the list-keeper who collects the money from the illegal lottery known as la bolita, and bet 200 pesos, around ten dollars US, on number 64, which stands for “big death,” according to the list that assigns a meaning to each number.

The funeral rites of the “big death” recalled that stage of the not so distant Soviet Cuba, full of prohibitions and a press worthy of Charlie Chaplin. It seems like a backward Middle East nation.

Now, from 26 November to 4 December, by state decree, there is zero alcohol. Zero films, zero soap operas, not even the news. The olve green mourning prevents Cubans from learning about Stefan Curry or LeBron Hames, paralyzes the insipid national baseball series and the fans missed the game of the year, between Real Madrid and CR7 and the Barcelona team of the flea Messi.

Spanish journalists who covered the funeral figured out where they could watch the game. “I hope in a hotel in Santiago de Cuba I can see the match,” commented a reporter from a Catalan newspaper.

In hotels and bars in Havana, where the fans usually gather with their scarves in the team colors — very hot in this climate — and wearing T-shirts with Leo Messi, Neymar, Luis Suárez, Cristiano Ronaldo or Sergio Ramos, were closed, complying with the official ukase of maximum mourning for the death of Castro I at the age of 90.

But in Cuba, there is always a Plan B. Those who have powerful shortwave radios try to get the signal from Spain’s Radio Exterior. Others, paid for an hour of internet connection, 50 pesos, the equivalent of two-and-a-half days pay, to follow the crucial game on line in the pages of El Pais or El Mundo.

At the end of the game, tied at one, Julian, who had connected in Cordoba Park, located on the border between the Sevillano and La Vibora neighborhoods, some crestfallen Barça were leaving: “33 games without losing, now we’re at eight points, goodbye league for you.” A friend asked him to speak softly: “Pal, keep it down with all this going on, the police are waiting to pounce.”

With the disappearance of Fidel Castro, the last guerrilla of the Third World, has deployed an dense ideological paraphernalia in Cuba, asphyxiating, that has brought back the animal fear among many Cubans.

Those who daily put their elbows on the bar do it in secret, so that the snitches and the intransigent followers of the regime don’t think they celebrating the death of the “great world leader.”

All the music has been shut off, and quinceñeras, weddings and anniversaries are postponed until  further notice. Also cancelled were dances and religious festivals, like the night of 3 December, the eve of the day of Saint Barbara, who is also Changó in the Yoruba religion, one of the most venerated deities for Cubans.

“Fidel Castro owned the farm and the horses. There must be calm until his ashes are deposted in Santiago de Cuba,” said the peanut seller who was once a political prisoner.

The dissidents are also quiet. The Ladies in White didn’t go out into the street to protest on the last two Sundays, as a sign of respect and not to provoke the repressors.

On his way to paradise or hell, according to your viewpoint, Fidel Castro pounded the table with authority to demonstrate that even as dust, he generates absolute respect in the population.

Meanwhile, on the outskirts of Havana, in a big mansion about to fall down, but with an illegal satellite connection, the owner spent the whole game keeping a dozen young people quiet so they could see the match, each one paying 2 Cuban convertible pesos, a little more than two dollars.

“Gentlemen, don’t shout so much, we don’t want to go to jail,” he told the boys. But the joy could barely be controlled when Sergio Ramos, scored in the last minute of the game. Result: one to one.

And when it’s about Fidel Castro, even a football game can be an offense.

Translated by Jim

According to reports from the official press, half the drinking water in Havana is lost through leaks in the pipes. Some 50% of the water and sanitation networks in the city are in fair or poor condition.

State media broadcasts commercials targeting the population, urging people to repair the own leaks. But a simple faucet costs a third of a worker’s monthly salary.

Fermín, an official from the Housing Institute, recognizes that between 40 and 60 percent of the multifamily buildings in Havana have problems in their water and sewer lines.

“From leaks to poor installation in the waste networks. For lack of maintenance, the majority of pipes have leaks. Many of the pumps [which pump the water up to tanks on the roofs] are old and are big users of electricity. The tanks of almost all the buildings in Havana haven’t been cleaned for years, which can cause outbreaks of illnesses. The repairs are on the residents. The state, for lack of money, doesn’t repair the city’s buildings,” says Fermín.

The infrastructure of the Cuban capital is lamentable. The trash collection services are insufficient and people throw out their garbage and even broken toilets on any corner. In the streets where tourists don’t generally walk cleaning is conspicuous by its absence.

Only the electricity networks have been repaired, so there is less loss of electricity and the voltage has improved. The same can’t be said about the telephone lines.

“When ETECSA [the state phone company] was a joint venture business with Italian capital repairs were routinely programmed. But now that the Army owns it, it’s painful to observe the working conditions of our technicians. They have to work tying together old wires and many of them are screaming for repairs to be done,” says Delia, an ETECSA engineer.

On a scale of one to ten, the assessment of public transport is a zero. Getting from one place in the city to another can take two or three hours.

In Havana there is a network of articulated buses designated with the letter P. There are 16 routes that, in theory, run every five to ten minutes during rush hour. But most of the time they don’t run any more often than every fifteen minutes and often it’s every hour. The six existing terminals should have a fleet of 540 buses.

“The ideal is that every one of the 16 routes would have 30 buses. But the terminals are outdated or incomplete. There are terminals like Calvario or Alamar, with three routes each and only 35 buses,” says a drive on the P-6 route.

Also planned was a network of buses circulating through the neighborhoods and secondary streets of the city. But there is also a deficit there. That’s the case with the routes 15 and 67, and now people don’t even wait for them, as it’s usually three or more hours between buses.

Taxi service in Cuban pesos is a calamity. In the ’80s Havana had a fleet of almost 3,000 taxies. Today there are fewer than 200. They have to serve the taxi stands at the hospitals, funeral homes and train terminals. Then, when they meet their quota, they run illegally and are more expensive than the private taxis.

There is a fleet of taxis in hard currency, but they are too expensive for most people on the island. They run modern air-conditioned cars. And the prices are at the discretion of the driver.

For three years the hard currency cars were rented to the drivers by the state. According to Manuel, “even though now I can earn 200 Cuban convertible pesos (roughly $200) a month, we have to work like slaves for fourteen hours a day to pay the fee imposed by the government, 55 convertible pesos a day. That’s why you don’t see any of the taxis using the meter. The people are greatly affected. If, before, the ride from Vedado to La Vibora was 5 CUC, now it’s 10 or 15 CUC.”

The regime turned its heavy guns on the private taxi drivers, capping prices and threatening them with big fines or the confiscation of their licenses for any who violate the state decrees.

But the official media keeps its mouth shut when it’s time to criticize the prohibitive prices of the hard currency taxis. If getting around the city is a nightmare, having to deal with the bureaucratic red tape is worse.

In Cuba, for anything you want to do there is always the bureaucratic red tape. Since a change in direction, getting a passport or paying a phone bill. The lines are hours-long and the officials, with their crabbed faces, treat us like we’re criminals.

Despite a fourth-world infrastructure, some absent-minded Swiss named Havana a “2016 Wonder City.” Of course its promoter lives in Switzerland.

Translated by Jim