Category: Translator: JT

Right now Wednesday, the 28th of September is coming to my mind, when I spoke to her daughter to coordinate an interview with Laura. She was feeling badly already, her daughter told me that she’d taken a little lime and was laying down for a while in bed. Some days later, her state of health got a lot worse. The news left me astonished.

Without doubt, the effects of the verbal violence and the blows of the 24th of September were just a few of the causes.

Bad times are approaching for Raúl Castro. It pains me to think that the enemy hordes who, that day, were already shouting “to the machete, they are small” or “ready, aim, fire,” comforted them. What a sad role! I wonder if from this moment forward their consciences will remain calm.

Laura Pollán was a third age woman who stuck her neck out along with her integrity to demonstrate her truths.

If Orlando Zapata was a motor that pushed the opposition to protest shirtless, Laura had a great convincing power. Her doubtless merit was going out in the street and yelling for the freedom for herself and her people. May God bless her!

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Translated by: JT

October 16 2011

Genovevo, age 58, has been imprisoned twice and on three occasions has been arrested for criminal dangerousness. He is a ‘house agent’, as they call those who — under the table — dedicate themselves to transmit trades, purchases, or sales of houses in Cuba. A business where there isn’t anyone to tell the tale.

“The acquisition or sale of houses was something prohibited by national law. People with money on the island or foreigners married to Cubans do whatever is possible to buy themselves a house. That’s when I appear. I have good contacts in the Housing Institute — the most corrupt of the agencies — and I manage all the legal paperwork. Besides, I’m a guy you can trust”, says Genovevo.

The housing problem in Cuba is as old as the revolution. And as complex. Until June, state enterprises had only finished 8,831 of the 23,394 houses they had promised to build in 2011. Private builders had finished 3,206 of the 19,606 (houses) forecast for this year. To that we add that of the construction materials destined for the populace to repair or extend their homes, in the first semester only 15.6% had been sold.

It’s true that 85% of the citizens are owners of their homes. But the State prohibits them from selling them. And in the case of a legal exit from the country, if a relative isn’t named who lived with them for many years under the same roof on the ownership title, the government seals the property and keeps the abode.

So it has been going until now. General Raul Castro has promised that things are going to change. In the 6th Congress of the Communist Party, which took place in April 2011, the buying and selling of houses was authorized. In the same manner, they’re thinking about abolishing a series of bureaucratic forms regarding swaps.

But in Cuba everything moves at a tortoise’s pace. And, although many citizens want to sell or buy a house, the functionaries say that they haven’t been given the green light yet.

Luisa, age 34, married to an Italian already has everything arranged to acquire a residence. She is awaiting the permit from the government. “They told me July, when the parliamentary sessions take place, they will ratify the means to do so. Meanwhile, you can’t buy nor sell houses”, she indicates in the vicinity of the Housing Institute.

But guys like Genovevo don’t stop for government prohibitions. “Now is when I have more work. The usual housing market is very active. People know that when sales are legalized, the prices will double. If today an apartment is worth 15,000 dollars, the following day it will cost 30 thousand. A mansion the same way: if now it costs 40 thousand, I don’t doubt it will reach 80 or 90 thousand dollars”, he assures.

Automobiles aren’t staying behind. In this time, in Havana a 60-year-old car in a well-preserved state can cost more than an apartment. According to the house ‘agents’, this tendency is going to revert.

“I believe that in no place in the world would a car be worth more than a house. But Cuba is a strange country, where the abnormal is normal and vice-versa. Those who want to buy houses are desperate. They know that properties are going to appreciate, the same as land”, Susana — an expert ‘agent’ clarifies.

Trading is also complicated on the island. Owing to a group of absurd regulations, the owner has to testify or justify why, for example, he wants to trade a 3-room apartment for a house with a garage and 5 rooms. The state functionaries, first-rate scoundrels, smell money under the table and begin to block or obstruct the trade, in search of a cut off the top.

“In Cuba, when a family trades its house for a better one, with more square footage, there is always money in between. If they don’t “square up” with the Housing Institute inspectors, the swap doesn’t take place. I tell you as someone who’s made enough money in this business”, says Esther, ex-functionary, who thanks to her job could make sufficient dollars to get a good residence and a good car.

The ‘agents’ of trades and houses are accustomed to collecting 10% of the money that moves in a transaction. Sometimes more. Genovevo, an ace of the deal, has closed deals with earnings up to 10 thousand dollars. And although they have caught him twice infringing laws and have put him behind bars, the money and his influence have been valuable in being placed in conditional freedom before a year has gone by.

Today he lives on a well-furnished floor, with an enormous 52 inch plasma television in the living room. He has gotten good houses for his three children. He has money for certain luxuries. “Nothing from the other world. To eat seafood in the Chinese neighborhood and occasionally lay down with a whore. That which I like most is going out to fish on the weekends. And the only way to get money is being a ‘house agent’, a job where I feel fulfilled”, he underlines while he drinks mango juice.

And if in the deal Genoveno isn’t going to earn a minimum of 2 or 3 thousand dollars, please don’t bother him.

Photo: Ketari. A section of the Paseo del Prado, in the heart of Havana, has turned into a meeting point for ‘house agents’ and for people who want to trade their home. Since no legal office exists for these exchanges, the people do it themselves, rustically, using notebooks with handwritten notation or tacking sheets with proposed exchanges on the trees, as you see in the photo.

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Translated by: JT

August 5 2011

In 52 years of Revolution, Cubans have become used to attending parades and events. Not always spontaneously. The members of rapid response brigades — paramilitary shock troops — are called to hold repudiation rallies and verbal lynchings against opponents, in particular against the Ladies in White.

Two weeks after the military parade in the Plaza de la Revolución on 16 April, Havaneros were called into mobilization again. This time at 7:30 in the morning, for International Workers’ Day, which has been observed for more than a century throughout the world, Cuba included.

Before 1959, the parades were combative and proper symbols of the anniversary were hung, or perhaps workers’ and unions’ demands. Now, since only one central workers’ union exists and other unions have been converted into administrative appendices and nuclei of the Communist Party — the only one permitted — the celebration of May Day has a clear and defined political tone.

It might be enough to read the official convocation: “The workers’ parade will be the expression of the unity of all the people and of its will to contribute to develop the implementation of the Cuban economic model through the strategies in accordance with the 6th Party Congress, and to establish the compromise of supporting and actively participating conscientiously in the transformation that this process demands to guarantee the continuity of socialism and the preservation of our independence and our national sovereignty”.

The cost of living has risen ferociously in the country, but those who parade in Havana and the rest of the provinces won’t be able to complain. Neither will they be able to shout or raise signs demanding raises in their salaries or claiming a series of measures in favor of self-employment. No. Among other political signs, some will certainly demand the liberation of the five Cuban spies condemned to long US prison sentences, and that Washington end its commercial embargo, in effect since 1962.

Despite the closeness to the World Press Freedom Day, on 3 May, to think that on the First of May it should occur to someone on the island to demand free traffic of information or internet for everyone.

In Cuba, one can march. Always and when one keeps to the time and date called by the government, the Party, or the Ministry of the Interior. Under this heading private initiatives are forbidden*.

Photo: Iván Castro, Flickr

(*) Recently, the police detained Darsi Ferrer, his wife and three more dissidents, who, outside the Coppelia Ice Cream shop, on the corner of L and 23 in Havana, were stopped while carrying signs demanding they be granted permits to travel overseas.

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Translated by: JT

May 1 2011

When some days ago the Venezuelan chancellor Nicolás Maduro read a plain official note, announcing that President Hugo Chávez Frías, aged 54, would be undergoing surgery in the lower abdomen, few in Cuba paid attention.

Maduro’s message was issued in Havana, during a bilateral meeting as part of the strategic alliance signed by Cuba and Venezuela — members of the ALBA, a mercantile, financial and political alliance in which Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua participate.

The information about Chávez’s surgery has been manipulated with tweezers by the State media, almost as if it were a State secret; a matter of national security.

Lacking a free and transparent press, the rumors ran from one extreme to the other. All were fables and whispers. Politicians and local impresarios must be pulling their hair with the bad news about the colonel from Barinas. To the average Cuban his health doesn’t matter too much. What worries them are the consequences that a fatal end would bring.

When Benito, age 49, factory worker, learned that Chávez would be operated on, he gave it no importance. “By his age and because he seemed like a healthy man. But it seems that the man is fucked. I know because of the news I heard on Radio Martí and from people who illegally watch television from Miami by the ‘antenna’ (satellite connection). If he disappears from the ‘air’ (he dies), he’d bring us a million internal problems, from oil right down to the money that resolves the thousands of Cuban co-ops in Venezuela”, he expressed, alarmed.

From there come the shots of the common citizens. It is calculated that more than 30,000 Cubans lend their services in Venezuela, like doctors, sports trainers, engineers, coaches, and military men. In practice, this collaboration has turned into an ‘industry’ that permits the government to invest petrodollars – a deal that fattens the national GDP. And on the good health of Chávez depends all those thousands of Cubans in Venezuela continuing to bring home dollars and merchandise.

For every doctor who works in Venezuela, his family in Cuba receives around 60 dollars monthly. A pittance. But with that monthly payment, four people can eat hot meals once a day. And when the doctor returns after two years of service, they load him or her up with garbage for their families and to nourish the little clothing stalls staffed by the self-employed throughout the country.

Besides, the ‘internationalists’, as those who cooperate are called, can choose their houses. A true privilege: in 75% of the housing in Cuba three different generations reside under the same roof and 63% of the housing is in fair or poor shape.

For all these advantages, for simple Cubans the death of the strong man from Caracas would strip even more from the worthless national economy. They aren’t walking far from the truth. In the last 52 years, Cuba has lived on its belly, maintained by other nations and brushing half the world’s teeth. Doubtlessly, a change of government in Venezuela would be a catastrophe with dramatic overtones.

Raúl Castro knows it, too. The loquacious Venezuelan President won his power by votes. And those same elections could send him back to Barinas. Because of this, Castro II intends to make his slow and methodical reforms, which would permit him to tone down the consequences in case of something unforeseen in Venezuela.

The governors of Cuba aren’t waiting for the cart to get in the way. Precisely now, when the olive green impresarios tried to make the economy move on its own, with new investments and elevated consumption of petroleum. It would be to return to the most critical stage of the “special period”. Like getting in the time machine, but going backwards.

That the horse should sink halfway through the puddle wasn’t in the contingency plans of the meticulous wise men of the regime, dedicated to plan variances and political strategies. But if changes occur in Venezuela, Cuba would be left adrift.

To the Havaneros, who generally aren’t used to being interested in political events, the news coming from the south has them sitting up and paying attention. Ernesto, aged 54, a shaman, doesn’t even want to think about it. “Two of my sons are working in Venezuela, and I have eleven ‘adoptees’ (from santería) there. The future of my children depends on the dollars they can bring home”, he says. And adds: “No religious brother has been able to confirm what’s been said, that Chávez was coming to Cuba to make himself a saint (‘un Ifá’)”.

The first rumors were reassuring about health problems. Chávez should make himself a saint. “I hope that’s the motive. If it were true that he has a terminal cancer, then we won’t see blacks”, says Oscar, age 35, a party militant.

More drastic is René, age 69, palero (practitioner of the Palo or Rules of the Congo). “I always knew that Fidel was going to pull Chávez through his disgrace. Castro has very strong protectors. And those he usually holds up, or who die first, or fall into disgrace”.

For now, Fidel Castro has company in the hospital.

Photo: AP. Chávez’s supporters in Caracas.

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Translated by: JT

June 27 2011

Like two boxers who stare each other in the eye, before beginning their attack, came TwittHab, the first encounter between official and alternative ‘twitterers’. If the proposition was to fraternize and build bridges, this first exploratory round between virtual gladiators who’ve made blogs, Facebook and Twitter a tool for spreading their ideas, was below expectations.

The cause wasn’t the attendance at the debate of heavyweights. The star blogger of the alternatives, Yoani Sánchez, was mute. Also absent were Claudia Cadelo, Reinaldo Escobar, Dimas Castellanos, and Miriam Celaya — bloggers of an indubitable level.

For the band of those supporting Fidel Castro’s brand of socialism neither the excellent bloggers Sandra Álvarez, nor Elaine Díaz, nor the ghost-like Yohandry Fontana appeared. But it wasn’t bad. It is always welcome to build bridges.

And of course, the dialog, the presentations and the interchange of e-mails between cybernauts who sometimes trade acidic disqualifications on the net are preferable to physical violence practiced by the piece by certain groups loyal to the regime.

Four in the afternoon of Friday 1 July passed in an aseptic cubicle in the Cuba Pavillion, in La Rampa, in the heart of Havana, a chat was started between ‘twitterers’ accepted by the government and the others, those who want profound changes in the matter of political and economic freedoms.

The pro-government ones played with a 5:1 advantage. Of the more than thirty attendees, there were only six independent bloggers and ‘twitterers’. Leunam Rodriguez, a young twenty-something who seven months ago opened a Twitter account, played moderator. The exchange started cold, with scorched looks and the logical suspicion between persons who reside in a nation where debate of opposite opinions is a rare bird.

Of course, respect got priority, although there were threats of uprisings. One of them happened when the blogger Henry Constantín, after noting gratitude for the diplomatic and polite climate, said “Some days ago, when I was expelled from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) for political motives, I was beaten and received threats from State Security, now in this room I see that I can state my opinions without receiving a sudden volley of blows”.

The response of the official bloggers and twitterers was that in this encounter there would be no blows. Leunam defended the right of each one to freely express his views, as much on the net as in any other way. He declared himself a part of the revolutionary project and paraphrasing the troubadour Silvio Rodriguez, noted that “revolution is evolution”.

And so, when an alternative blogger identified as Agustín López gave a speech with clear political bias, the journalist, blogger and editor of the magazine The Middle Way, Enrique Ubieta, jumped like a spring.

“Please, we are here to fraternize, not to make political allegations”, said Ubieta. A difficult result in a meeting between individuals with different ways of thinking, politics doesn’t rise to the fore.

It is precisely the political arguments that make citizens different. If they had talked about sports, stamp collecting, fashion, or cinema, perhaps everyone would have ended up drinking some beers in a bar.

But if they share political differences, Cuban bloggers from one or another group, we’ll have more things that unite us than divide us. We all suffer chaotic public transport, the poor state of the streets and housing, and how expensive it is to bring food home to the family table, among other material difficulties.

Talking is always healthy. To reason and respect the discrepancies of others. Softening jealousies will cost enough. Something is more than nothing. And at least in this first encounter, ‘twitterers’ of both groups could look face to face and even exchange greetings.

It would have been better if there had been some principle players in this virtual “battle of ideas”. We missed Elaine and Sandra, Yoani and Claudia. And those present remained without knowing who, in reality, is Yohandry Fontana — he will keep being an ethereal guy, a question mark.

Perhaps these debates with uncovered faces will be a test balloon on the part of the government of Raúl Castro. Or they might not be. We’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Photo: Iván is the mulatto whom we see in the last row, on the left.

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Translated by: JT

July 3 2011

I have received an unexpected gift: a ship’s log with my name on it. Marco A. Pérez López and Liu Santiesteban, administrators of Tania Quintero’s blog, opened it for me.

The blog of Iván García and his friends, is in no way affecting Desde La Habana, founded 28 January 2009 and since January of 2010 administered by Carlos Moriera, a Portuguese friend in whose debt I shall be forever.

It will be a new space in the creole blogosphere. Now animated enough, with alternative blogs and officials from the island and also with those produced by Cubans overseas.

I take this moment to wish a happy summer to all readers.

Iván García

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Translated by: JT

July 3 2011

Nicolas, aged 46, has a special nose for a good deal. Big goals are always planned. In those moments, in his well-kept house in the Reparto Sevillano, he meticulously examines various catches and pieces of gold.

Nicolas goes about separating them in little piles according to their qualities. “Here I have no less than 8,000 dollars”, he says and his eyes open measurably. Jewelers like Nicolas track down gold frenetically these days.

The golden metal has always been a big deal in the Havana underground. But today he’s snagged an unusual value. Look here, gold used to go for between 15 and 20 dollars per gram of 10, 14, 18, and 22 carats a year ago, the price has shot up to 30 and 35 dollars.

And it has turned into a true gold fever. The deal leaves a sweet commission. Jewelers are used to having good contacts overseas who come through Havana who pay for the better gold at almost twice the amount invested.

Richard, a circumspect Canadian with the air of an important guy, comes to Cuba regularly. Besides diving in the calm, blue waters of Varadero or playing golf on an 18-hole course, he buys all the gold he can.

He knows every detail of how the black market works on the Island. During a time, he worked for a Canadian company which has a mining business in Cuba. “I pay 52 dollars a gram of gold, and I have friends who, on my arrival, already have bought a lot for me,” signals Richard. The form in which he takes it out of the country he prefers not to state.

According to Mayra, an airport worker, it’s very easy to take gold out in articles of clothing or worked into little sheets. “By showing three 100 dollar bills, they’ll look the other way in Customs and you can take off of the island as much as an elephant”, she says, smiling.

The laws in effect in this country provide for sanctions of 5 years’ imprisonment for illegal trafficking in jewels and precious metals. They will also impose fines between 500 and 1,500 dollars.

Two decades ago, state jewelers bought gold at ridiculous prices. Demitrio, a resident in Vedado, used to offer goldware and porcelain vases. “Not any more. In the street, private jewelers will pay you a lot better. With the gold I sold to the regime at the end of the 80s, they gave me some certificates that only allowed me to buy a washer, a television, and a music set. It was a ripoff”.

In that era, despite the fact that holding dollars was illegal, the government bought and traded for electronic junk or Russian cars, important quantities of gold, silver, fine porcelain, and works of art. But in this summer of 2011, people don’t deal with the State when it’s time to sell gold. There is an army of private jewelers and people who invest their money in gold, ready to pay prices they consider more fair.

Almost all habaneros who owned family relics sold them to the State. Overwhelming necessities to repair their homes and have food in their refrigerator obliged them to unload valuable costume jewelry. With the rise of gold on the international market, fever for the golden metal has also come to Cuba. And jewelers — or people who work for them — have thrown themselves into the street, on the hunt for gold.

“There are still families who have objects made of gold. Besides, we buy teeth and even old Russian Poljot clocks in 22 carat gold plate”, says Ramon, jeweler in Center Havana.

While people poke through their closet or in their memory trunk in search of gold works, the jewelers in the capital take out their calculators.

“This deal will leave me with a good bill. What bothers me is the speed with which gold prices are rising. By December, an 18 carat gram in Cuba could reach 40 or 45 dollars. By that date, I will start to sell acquired gold to contacts I have in Miami”, says Nicolas. He has always had a special nose for good deals.

Note from Tania Quintero:

Photo: Havana, 1950s. The Cuervo Sobrinos Jewelers was the most famous there was on the Island. Maybe some think the photo and the information about this jewelers has no relation to the theme dealt with by Ivan in this post, but as I was born in 1942, I am a witness that for the Cubans, gold was always the most used metal. And not just for the rich people, also for modest families. I recall in this post in 2008, published in my blog. Among the many internet sites you can find dedicated to the gold market, you can find this one.

Translated by: JT

June 29 2011