Category: Translator: JT

Improper Conduct / Miguel Iturria Savón

There are those who believe that history is written only by those in power, by means of textbooks, testimonials, biographies, means of communication and other supports of dominance that certify the version of the victors. Cuban history of the 20th Century confirms the rule, but in conflict with the story of the main characters who jump the fences of the socio-political angle.

In this parallel history is written the documentary “Improper Conduct“, from the Collection of Cuban Cinema Dador, conceived in the middle of the 1980s for the French channel Antena 2 by Margaret Memegoz and Barbet Schroedr under the direction of Nestor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal, with script by Michel Dumoulin, montage by Michel Pion Mon and Alain Tortevoix, Dominique Merlin behind the cameras and Nicole Flipo as producer.

“Improper Conduct“, based on interviews of exiled Cubans in the cities of Europe and America, offers another view of the country at odds with the official history, recreated through testimonials, images of parades and statements of Fidel Castro about events unleashed by the group who seized power on the island and imposed a reign of terror. The work preserves freshness and a sense of the present, even though it is narrating facts from 1959 to 1980.

The title reuses the expression used by officials to justify the massive dragnets of the 1960s and 70s against hippies, homosexuals, and “those unadaptable to the revolutionary process”, victims of accusations and public ridicule in the neighborhoods, student and labor centers, who were sent to the Military Production Support Units (UMAP), tropical versions of the extermination camps created by the Nazis during the Second World War (1939-1945).

Having become a classic of our cinematography, “Improper Conduct” is a deluxe documentary for its photographic excellence, the montage of images, the panning of faces, the interaction between questions and responses, the self-assurance of the interviewees and unpedantic authenticity of their testimonials; in contrast with that expressed by F. Castro, who masks his intolerance and repression with reasons of state.

Predominant are the testimonies of artists, writers, and ex-functionaries submerged in the atmosphere of an era from the personal story of each. Personalities parade across the screen like Carlos Franqui, founder of Rebel Radio and ex-director of the magazine Revolution, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, creator of the weekly cultural Revolutionary Mondays, the poet Heberto Padilla, the narrator Reinaldo Arenas Fuentes, the theatric René Ariza, the ex-political prisoner Armando Valladares, and intellectuals such as Lorenzo Monreal, Jorge Lazo, José Mario, Rafael De Palet, Héctor Aldao, Mireya Robles, Juan Abreu, Elaine del Castillo, Susan Sontag, Ana María Simo and Martha Frayle, among others who probed that as of yet unexhausted fragment of national horror.

“Improper Conduct” evokes the “Night of the Three Ps” (taken from putas (whores), proxenetas (pimps), and “pájaros” (Johns)), collective humiliations and political and moral trials unleashed against relatives in places like the University of Havana and other teaching centers of the country, blacklists and assemblies of insults that took thousands of innocents to prison. Details about interrogations, absurd suspicions, the claims of hippies, homosexuals, whores, vagrants, and Jehovah’s Witnesses; the places of urban imprisonment; the buses with the blacked-out windows headed to the fields of Camagüey, with fences of electrified spikes, days working in the fields, mistreatment, hunger, and suicides.

Almost nothing escapes the sights of those who carry out this hell on earth. One shows drawings of the barracks, the punishment cells, and the wires. Another evokes the camp’s slogan: “Work makes you men” (Lenin), similar to “Work will set you free” (Hitler), posted at the entrance to Auschwitz.

The film reveals the vicious circle of persecution and persecuted and investigates why there was so much paranoia, especially the preoccupation of Raúl Castro and Ramiro Valdés concerning the gay problem; it recalls Raul’s trip to Bulgaria and Ramiro’s interview with the mayor of Shanghai (China), who told him how they killed them with poles in a traditional feast and threw them in the river as a lesson.

From the images and testimonies of “Improper Conduct” a new prostitution returns with the State as the pimp, tourism at the service of power, the granularity of control at the neighborhood level and the massive exodus from Mariel to Florida (22 April through 16 September 1980), a true plebiscite against governmental despotism.

To see this audiovisual fragment once more about a Cuba buried by repression, censorship and collective laziness, it is incumbent to ask ourselves “what were we doing when those things were going on?” or “What are we doing now with these horror stories? The why is indispensable to recover our memory, cleanse our wounds, and redesign the new nation.

(Translator’s note: This documentary, presented in 12 parts, can be seen on YouTube. It should not be missed.)

Translated by: JT

May 17 2011

Many Cubans Steal to Survive / Laritza Diversent

Miguel, married and with three children, used to work as a cook in a State enterprise. He would get up at three in the morning and undertake a trip of more than 12 kilometers and arrive early to work. He paid union dues and on two occasions was chosen ‘vanguard worker’.

But his salary didn’t reach high enough to meet his economic needs. Sometimes more, sometimes less, Miguel took part of the food from the breakfasts of the other workers to sustain his family. Oil, rice, chicken, fish, eggs, meat, beans … he took what he could.

He had to assure the subsistence of his family. On occasion, very discreetly, he’d sell in his neighborhood some of the things he used to steal. With that extra money he used to cover other expenses. His kids needed clothes and shoes, things that are only sold in hard-currency-only stores; hard currency that he couldn’t earn because his salary was paid in pesos.

Somebody informed on what Miguel was doing. He was fired from the center. And because it was the first time, the court sentenced him to six months’ deprivation of liberty for the crime of larceny. He had to work in a correctional facility in agriculture.

In the sentence they didn’t take into account the motives that led him to commit what is called in good Cuban “robbery”. From his new location, when he’d leave on a pass, he’d continue taking food for his house.

Before 1959, in the Cuban Penal Code existed the character of the “family larceny”; a circumstance which, in some cases, exempted the actor of penal responsibility, and in others, diminished the sentence. It was taken into account when a person — hungry or indigent — took objects necessary for his survival and those people in his care.

“Revolutionary justice” eliminated this character of penal law. The supposition was that the government of the bearded ones attended to the needs of all equally. Supposedly, vagrancy, unemployment, mendacity, and vices and causes of misery had all been eliminated.

Seen in this way, this character was unnecessary in the new Penal Code. For socialist legislation, no citizen in the newly created conditions had any extreme necessity which would compel him to steal. It was assumed that Cuba was a nation in which all its citizens enjoyed opportunity and the right to work.

It is ironic that in actuality it should be precisely the ‘proletarian’ class which finds itself in a state of necessity such that it sees itself obliged to swipe the State’s resources to survive and maintain a family. It is one of the social problems that affects the national economy the most and that the government confronts as a “fight against illegality”.

What’s certain is that the justice applied by socialist society is interested more in punishment to set an example than in forgiving a criminal fact committed out of necessity. Fifty-two years later, experience demonstrates that the revolution has been incapable of attending equally to the needs of the population.

Laziness and destitution have increased and bribery and corruption have gone sky high. It remains proven that full employment, by itself, is insufficient to make misery disappear, and with it, the commission of “family larceny”.

Miguel’s story repeats daily in many Cuban families. You can count on different forms and with other people. But the reality is singular: the critical economic situation that has swept the nation for decades has led the majority of workers with labor ties to the State to convert the “swipe” into a way of life indispensable to survival.

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Translated by: JT

March 10 2011

Builder of Satellite Dishes, Risky Job in Cuba / Iván García

Photo: AP. Satellite disk camouflaged in a Cuban terrace.

Normando, 43, is a hard fighting kind of guy, with a dangerous addiction to risky business. For fourteen years, he’s dedicated himself to building satellite dishes — an illegal job not among the 178 activities authorized by the Cuban government to exercise as self-employment.

A graduate of electronics training, this Habanero might have wished things were some other way. “The reasonable thing is that I would pay taxes and would be authorized to perform my labor legally. But the government doesn’t permit it. So I do it on the sly”.

The house where Normando works at making the dishes is full of drawings of the latest models and books on the subject. On an iron stand, the six most recently finished antennas can be seen, ready to be sold.

The business works; supply exceeds demand. “My parabolics are the best in the underground market in the capital”, he confesses with a twinge of pride. At wholesale, he’s used to selling them for 50 convertible pesos each (60 dollars). Then the buyer resells them at higher prices.

He also does custom work and charges more. The illegal cable television business is one of the most profitable working today in Cuba. In districts like Diez de Octobre, Havana Center, or Old Havana, there are entire blocks hooked up to one illegal antenna, for which each ‘subscriber’ pays 10 convertible pesos a month (some 8 dollars, which may seem little, but in Cuba it’s the equivalent to a monthly employee’s salary).

In Florida, in the United States, live people who want to bring — in a clandestine way — receptor sets and clone cards. Getting dishes by the customs agents in the airports is complicated. Right there is where the “best antenna maker in Havana” appears, according to his particular slogan.

In his spare time, Normando repairs computers and mobile phones, another job that allows him to carry on an unburdened lifestyle, drinking German beer and eating garbanzos with Spanish sausage; all luxuries in 21st Century Cuba — with many risks, of course.

The authorities have busted him a couple of times. “It’s always been by ‘snitching’ (denouncements) from someone envious. They’ve given me fines of 30 thousand pesos (1,500 dollars) which is not a snap, but I’ve been able to pay them”, he tells me, on the terrace of his house.

“I don’t think my job is so dangerous. I don’t sell drugs, nor do I pimp or steal from the government. I think what I do is legal, nobody can prevent anyone from seeing, listening to, or reading what they want. It’s Castro’s big mistake: he wants to sell his version of the news. Perhaps for that I am a public threat,” he points out, convinced.

Normando considers himself a ‘street fighter’. He grew up without parents and always had to look out for his own living. He works hard, but in his own way.

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Translated by: JT

March 2 2011

Of Trios and Duos / Rebeca Monzo

Archive photo

They were a deeply rooted tradition in our country, the groups made up of three members, called Trios or Tercetos, which proliferated in the 40s and 50s.

The country’s development took with it the creation and expansion of multiple recreational venues: cabarets, restaurants, open airs, the movies, and later, television. A country of musical greats and different opportunities to develop and express oneself. This made ever more musical groups appear, above all those of this little format, which served to lighten and make long Cuban nights more cozy. Thus emerged: The Matamoros Trio, Trio La Rosa, Trio Taicuba, The Lake Brothers, The Chancellors, The Ambassadors, Voices of America, The Indomitables, to only mention a few of the endless list.

After ’59, they went around closing those venues mentioned earlier, and around the middle of the seventies a sort of dry law popped up which finally shut them down for good; until television was left as the only option for these musicians. Thus they left little by little, most of them abandoning the country; and those who remained dedicated themselves to surviving at unrelated jobs, losing many good examples of our popular music.

Nonetheless, the picturesque creole has brought a new definition that doesn’t appear in Spanish language dictionaries: a trio is a symphonic Cuban orchestra which goes on tour abroad and returns.

However, on our planet there exists another small format: a duo, which, as its sole option for more than 50 years, is making us dance to the same tired rhythm.

Translated by: JT

February 28 2011

Information Control / Regina Coyula

In recent days I’ve been able to understand perfectly the concern of the Cuban authorities because a breach has been produced in information control. I have been able to try it in these last days in trying to gather news about what’s happening in North Africa, and I’ve been given news that’s stale in a short while, like the confirmation of my suspicion that Muammar el-Qaddafi is a clown. With those poses, with that Praetorian Guard, with the limitless spending of State money, with that megalomania. It’s a news novelty for me, my newspapers always mentioned him as the Libyan leader and a friend of Fidel Castro by dint of his anti-American positions. Again the political allies of the Cuban government make me wonder.

After having compared so much news, they aren’t going to convince me that only the big media manipulate the news to present it according to its interests. Isn’t this the same intention of the Department of Revolutionary Orientation of the Cuban Communist Party? There exists a difference, nonetheless, an essential difference. A citizen of the world (a Spaniard, let’s say) if he doesn’t feel satisfied with the point in a notice in El Nuevo Herald, can consult BBC Mundo, La Jornada, or El Mundo to mention a few; and if he were not satisfied, he could look for more information in Telesur, Prensa Latina, or the selfsame Granma; and would still have the option of complementing those with opinion blogs. My Spaniard of the world could find among so many tendencies his truth to compare, to discern, to discriminate. But in Cuba, the country where we breed the most cultured human in the world, information poverty has brought as a consequence the absence of focus, the loss of blends, we have lost the culture of the dialog, the use of the reply, and its daughter controversy; everything has reduced itself to being with me or against me.

I am of simple expression and strike up dialog with whatever stranger. My commentaries on subjects of the international events don’t find understanding in the street. On the other hand, people show themselves ready to complain about transport, food, but careful, without being able to — or wanting to — identify the cause. This reactionary philosophy of this has no one who will fix it, but neither he who will knock it down, has soaked into many people with whom I interact. Not to mention fear. Someone must have written an essay on the subject, and if not, it’s a debt with our fragmented anthropological vision.

Translated by: JT

February 25 2011

Baire, the Closest / Rebeca Monzo

This February 24th will be commemorated — behind closed doors — one more anniversary of that cry of independence that was given in Baire, a day like today then in the year 1895. This date marked the start of the War of Independence, its most notable authors Martí, Maceo, and Máximo Gómez.

Since 1959, this changed. Now flags only fly on the new homeland dates: Anniversaries on the 26 of July, of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, and even the Comandante’s birthday. No more do they fly for the Cry of Baire, nor that of Yara, the 20th of May, dates on which cities regaled themselves with a profusion of flags that proudly flew in government places and the fronts of Cuban families’ homes.

For the young people of today, those cries of liberty are now long past. Now, unfortunately the closest they hear in their homes are of their mothers and grandmothers, when in the day-to-day they have to face the culinary battles.

Translated by: JT

February 24 2011

Analogy / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

The paralysis of immobility continues marking the pace of the Cuban government, which distracts us with carrots consisting of insipid projects for unconsidered and accumulated needs of our people and which don’t satisfy our voracity for freedom. It is not enough that they grant that which belongs to us by right as if it were a gift which has been forbidden to us for decades.

If the world goes forward and Cuba, owing to the greed for power of the governing group, stays behind due to the denial of the government cadres that we should join the concert of democratic countries and modernity, isn’t this the same as retrogression?

Translated by: JT

February 21 2011

Analogy

The paralysis of immobility continues marking the pace of the Cuban government, which distracts us with carrots consisting of insipid projects for unconsidered and accumulated needs of our people and which don’t satisfy our voracity for freedom. It is not enough that they grant that which belongs to us by right as if it were a gift which has been forbidden to us for decades.

If the world goes forward and Cuba, owing to the greed for power of the governing group, stays behind due to the denial of the government cadres that we should join the concert of democratic countries and modernity, isn’t this the same as retrogression?

Translated by: JT

February 21 2011

News and “News“ / Iván García

Photo: hans hendriksen, Flickr

In Cuba there is no tabloid press following the famous, but many Cubans are up-to-date with gossip about artists, singers, and famous sports figures — national or foreign.

The news comes in by the “antenna”, as they call the illegal connections that permit programs transmitted by Miami channels to be seen. Lacking Internet, their access is fairly limited and expensive, a source can be magazines like “Hola” or others brought by tourists which circulate clandestinely. But the chief method continues to be “radio bemba,” also known as mouth-to-mouth.

When Fidel Castro arrived into power and eliminated newspapers and magazines, the State seized all the means of communication. With the stroke of a pen the police blotter disappeared, which had been very popular on the island. As well, on CMQ, each morning there used to be a radio program titled “The Happenings of the Day” conducted for many years by the musician and composer José Fernández Díaz, better known as Joseíto Fernández (Havana 1928-1979).

Joseíto always improvised on the same tune, the Guantanamo Guajira. Singing, he’d tell tales of blood crimes, romances, and patriotism; he would denounce social injustices, salute politicians, or promote commercial firms. In his peculiar style in 1953, Fernández pled over the radio for a general amnesty for political prisoners, finally conceded by Fulgencio Batista in May 1955, allowing Fidel and Raúl Castro to leave the Modelo Prison, on the Isla de Pinos.

Historically, Cubans enjoy knowing the insides of the artistic world and like being up-to-date with how many robberies, murders, and crimes of passion happen inside the country, including what are now the most gossiped about since before 1959. The explanation could be in the creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution on September 28, 1960. The CDRs emerged to watch neighbors on their blocks and in their neighborhoods. The ‘cederistas‘ — as they are called — are experts in gossiping and snitching.

Every day, long lines form before the press kiosks, mostly retirees, who for 20 cents buy a newspaper and resell them for a peso ($0.05 dollars). But that doesn’t mean that the population is sufficiently informed; at least about certain news.

Like the relations with the opposition, for example. When we find out about them, it’s because State Security and the Communist Party have authorized their publication. Despite the manipulations and the offensive language, until now, it has been the regime charged with “popularizing” dissidence and independent journalism.

The citizenry is used to hearing about the visits of certain personalities to the island. But on occasion it doesn’t matter too much. “I saw in the news that this guy arrived who is in his own country I don’t know who. Sincerely, I’m not interested knowing who came. What I’m worried about right now is that I have to figure out food so my two children can eat lunch and dinner”, says Humberto, 38, bus driver.

Mileidy, 23, is a university student and prostitute in her free time. A good part of the cash she gets bedding tourists she dedicates to surfing the Internet from Havana’s hotels. She has a level of information above that of the media, “but as I am tired of our sufferings, I prefer to read about what’s happening in other countries and to be current about fashion, although I might not be able to buy that clothing.”

A neighbor with a son in prison for a common crime confesses that she only turns on the radio to hear music, “and the television to watch soap operas. The less one knows, the better off one is, above all if one lives with so many needs and problems.” Another neighbor, who also asked for anonymity, was more explicit:

“At times, when my family calls me from Miami, they ask me about a series of dissidents and political prisoners, about those women dressed in white or about those bloggers. And I tell them the truth, that here we barely know about ‘those human rights people’, as they call the government opposition in the street. I can’t complain, because they send me 100 dollars every month, but the immense majority of Cubans will do anything to survive. If the chief cause in your life is to track down a plate of food, a bar of soap to bathe yourself with, or a pair of tennis shoes for your child, that kind of news doesn’t matter.”

The day-to-day lives of Cubans on the island are very distinct from those of the Cubans who live in other nations. For some, the news could be the WikiLeaks cables about Cuba. For others, the news is that the television is broken, and you have to fashion some kind of cart to take it to be repaired.

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Translated by: JT

February 22 2011

More About Egypt and Cuba. Popular Uprising: Between “Papa” and Potatoes / Regina Coyula

Fidelism

Cuba emerged on the international map as a tiny little island threatened and blocked by a powerful neighbor. With an excellent lecture from Sun Tzu and Machiavelli; without forgetting Gustave Le Bon, Fidel convinced the majority that he was speaking for the Fatherland, and the Fatherland was the Revolution and was Socialism. Fidel was young then, he was charismatic, and his revolution of the humble, with the humble, and for the humble was irresistible for the international left and for those Cubans who, in the immense majority, didn’t possess political culture, and followed a leader, not an ideology.

The consolidation of totalitarianism counted on a majority approving. I am talking now of the generation which followed that which staged the Revolution, so permeated with its mystique that it even felt an absurd complex for not having been born earlier. That generation received the education of the New Man, where Morals and Civics — a subject in the formation of values — was abolished from curricula as a backwardness of the past. From that point and continuing today, education has a strong ideological component which displays itself from the earliest reading books.

How does the minority fit in this context? In various forms they are led to exile (… we don’t want them, we don’t need them!). The facts demonstrated that it was safer for those with divergent opinions to leave. There were, nonetheless, some who didn’t accept exile as a solution and decided to oppose. Many of them completed sentences for crimes against the security of the state for reasons that did not generally include violent acts.

The sensation of an omnipotent and omnipresent State was weaving itself into society. The institutions of society were replaced with organizations like the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, to mention the most widespread. We are coming to the moment of the disappearance of the socialist camp, when against all logic, the Cuban government keeps itself going. It is the Special Period in peacetime: we had heard of the fall of the Berlin Wall talked about, and Cuba was going from blackout to blackout to the rhythm of bicycles with a stifling shortage of food. Everything they taught in the schools about philosophy and materialism had become doubtful.

It might have looked like the moment to develop an economic sustainability following the cutoff of Soviet support. The possession of cash was depenalized, and a timid little hole was opened to foreign investment and tourism. Nonetheless, ill will and the lack of perspective metastasize in society. Once more the subliminal feed to search for the solution beyond our borders. In this context on August 5, 1994 the “Maleconazo” happened: a growing group of people met on the Malecón in hopes of a boat to go to the United States, an absolutely spontaneous explosion of people who channeled their frustration down the path of violence. There they shouted “Down with Fidel!”, but they weren’t looking for democracy. If someone yelled “Freedom!”, they meant freedom to leave the country. There were other outbursts, I remember one at the University of Oriente rooted in the rape of a student by the abandonment of university areas, and most recently one in Santa Clara where youths mutinied for not being able to enjoy a football match of the Spanish League, the very same city in which Guillermo Fariñas had carried out his hunger strike just a little earlier.

Constant Repression of Low Intensity

Although I know Cubans who’ve lived repression at its ugliest edge, citizens in general perceive a low-intensity repression which is everywhere in national life. This has been a success of the government, which has brought aspirations of emigration to the immense majority of the discontented, and another good part will try to prosper while wearing a mask. Both groups are convinced that “no, you cannot” against the repressive machine of “Papa” who knows everything.

The control of information is the key to this strategy. The voices of dissent are quickly accused of working for the CIA, and they are held up as enemies of the people when they only aspire to be critical voices or political adversaries. Some examples of the accusations: Orlando Zapata (a common criminal), Elizardo Sánchez (el Camaján — the snake in the grass), Yoani Sánchez (a fabrication of the Americans, child of the Prisa Group — a Spanish commercial media group), and Guillermo Fariñas (a woman-beater).

The Media spend a lot of time showing poverty in other countries and the eternal crisis of capitalism. They appeal to generalizations and half-truths while pretending to convince us that we’re just badly off, but we could be much worse, and for that we should be grateful for what we have. This panorama is dominated by the overblown Embargo which should have disappeared a long time ago and serves the Cuban government as a justification for its deficiencies.

Fidel’s illness opens a parenthesis in the national context. Having stayed away for many months from public life, he reappears talking about climate change and other global subjects, while his disconcerted followers ask themselves when he will give the precise indication, the word that will orient them. His public interventions are very distant from the deteriorating national situation; it’s clear that this is not his subject of interest, to have it be so he would have to start with a self-criticism and by begging pardon for having said so much nonsense. Fidelistas disoriented on the one hand and a president who doesn’t seem to be fully in control of his faculties; the new year brings us the domino effect in North Africa and we Cubans ask ourselves if the moment has come here too from beyond the Atlantic.

In another post on this theme I mentioned three elements that have called my attention to the fall of Mubarak: spontaneity, the role of new technologies, and the Army. After having read something about the subject, I have changed my position. And although I find notable coincidences between Egypt and Cuba, there are also profound differences. Egypt was governed by a dictator, but it was not a totalitarian state; opposition parties and civil society found themselves structured and inside the limits of legality. The officer corps in the Army seems to be professionally trained, many graduated from institutions in the West, and when posed with the dilemma of supporting the government or the people, opted for the second. Islam is another cohesive influence, and Egyptians find themselves familiar with communications technologies, with the so-called Web 2.0, and through it they found themselves structured by affinities beforehand with the call of Wael Ghonim from Facebook.

For The Popular Uprising in Cuba

So is titled the Facebook page that encourages Cubans to imitate that which they’re already doing in Mediterranean Africa and beyond. I presume the good faith of he or they who, from abroad, launched this initiative, but at the risk of receiving more criticisms and accusations, I continue to think that it’s a flawed initiative. Since last Monday, I have approached a considerable group of youths with different interests — some I know. others I don’t, and I have asked them three questions. The first, if they have a Facebook account — that which surprised me, everybody (!) responded yes. The second, if they knew of the initiative launched from abroad or from other internal call for the anniversary of the death of Orlando Zapata, to which everyone answered no. The majority had gone days without being able to log on to their accounts. The others hadn’t received anything (I don’t exclude that some had indeed received it and hadn’t wanted to give themselves away). The third question was if they knew where potatoes were sold. Except for three men and a girl, the rest gave me satisfactory responses. I don’t know about those who read this, but that says something to me.

In this subject of the Facebook call, voices from inside and outside are not in agreement (which is normal and healthy), but from both groups darts have been thrown in the wrong direction. I have read opinions situated in ears opposed to the promoters of For the Uprising … and to those like me who show doubts of its success. Speaking for myself, my sympathies are with the call, although emotion cannot cloud reason. I don’t possess the information that will make others ready with a single click, but nobody can take the pulse on the streets like those who live in Cuba. That gives me a little advantage.

I can’t imagine a youth with a Facebook account in Cuba using his connection time to promote ideological affinities; neither do I visualize that young man from the UCI convincing a group of contemporaries to participate in the event in the Avenida de las Misiones and keeping his registration in said study center. These complications aren’t established at short-range, these complications aren’t established openly and with speed in university centers, youth bulletins but with the Pavlovian reflex of fear.

These are the scenarios: It’s possible that the level ground in front of the Museum of the Revolution might be the site this week for the University Students Federation (FEU) group in an activity organized by the National Committee of the Young Communist League (UJC) whose headquarters is across the street. It could be that the police might be threatening those called to the uprising to abandon the place. A third possibility is that the activity gets out of control, the police might intervene to protect the “small groups” of “indignant people.” It’s possible that the known opposition could be detained to keep them from coming.

What will happen in front of the old Presidential Palace? I haven’t noticed the magic spark, nonetheless I could be wrong about the power of suggestion of the news among youth. They will decide when and where.

Translated by: JT

February 21 2011

The Curtain is Drawn, Matter Concluded / Laritza Diversent

The trial for the deaths at the Psychiatric Hospital seemed like a bad theater set painted by the official press, which tried to adorn that which we all know with legal technicalities: The setback of public health, the weakness of the judicial system, and the hypocrisy of the communications media.

The daily paper, Granma, omitted the numbers of the involved and the deceased, but it gave details on the number of witnesses examined by the tribunal and the specialties of the members of the commission created — a little too late — by the Ministry of Public Health to investigate the cause and conditions that generated the “deaths that occurred”.

Did the judges of the Second Instance of the Penal Court of Havana see the pictures of the dead, which circulated the city surreptitiously? Skin lacerated by blows, evidence of physical maltreatment. The extinguished faces which, in vain, tried to protect themselves from the cold when rigor mortis caught up with them.

Starving bodies that received severe punishment because their mental illness didn’t allow them to perceive abandonment and protest it. Hunger flogged them with the same strength as their nurses and doctors, from whom need and fatigue took their human sensitivity; the same who, for altruism, travel to the most hidden places on the planet to bring health care in the name of Cuba.

Nonetheless, embezzlement weighs more than death of the sick themselves. Human beings abandoned by men and by sanity, a fact that Granma kindly called “insufficiency in patient care”.

“The prosecutor alleged that those involved knew that in the winter period an increase in deaths is produced by respiratory illnesses”, explained the journalist. Nonetheless, “the picture discovered in clinical progress” revealed signs of malnutrition, anemia, and lack of vitamins.

A cold front doesn’t produce these sufferings, they are consequences of lack of food for months, perhaps years. In those physical conditions, death was a question of time. The low temperatures were a catalyst, perhaps desired.

Many questions remain unanswered. Couldn’t this sad end have been avoided? Didn’t any medical analysis reveal these diagnoses beforehand? What did the government cadres or party members responsible for this institution do? Wasn’t there any inspection, did anyone check out the rumors?

In all that time, didn’t anyone go by there in review, a worthy manager? I forgot — that isn’t a strategic goal of the Revolution. Where was José Ramón Balaguer, the then-Minister of Public Health? He slept safe and warm while about thirty mental patients were dying of hypothermia.

Neither an apology nor his resignation, just silence. He was dismissed at the end of last July, like so many other incompetent ministers, but continued his work in the highest spheres of government. One of the untouchables with the right to taste the honey of power for him alone they sacrificed themselves, even the end of their days. Perhaps because of this the tribunal didn’t have permission to investigate him.

The curtain is drawn, matter concluded. Tomorrow nobody will remember the tragic facts, thanks to the press having disguised the human misery of a “sector that is proud and a bastion of Cuba and of many countries of the world”, and justice differentiated between cooks, cadres, and managers.

Translated by: JT

February 21 2011

Bitter Sugar / Iván García

Josefa, 67, retired, never imagined that sugar, always one of the cheapest products there was in Cuba, could reach such high prices. When she went to the market, she saw at the counter the notice of unrationed sale: 8 pesos for a pound of white — or refined — sugar ($0.40 U.S.) and 6 pesos crude — or brown ($0.30 U.S.).

“It is an insult of the government, selling sugar that’s more expensive than on the black market. My pension is 200 pesos (9 dollars). Six months ago the electric rate went up, and every time they sell a product freely, its price multiplies by ten with respect to the same product in the ration booklet”, she says with disgust.

In the underground market, sugar customarily costs between 3 and 5 pesos per pound ($0.15 and $0.25 U.S.). By the ration card, a person gets 5 pounds a month, three refined or white and two raw or brown.

Average Cubans like Josefa are hopping mad. And they’re right. Besides sugar, unrationed sales of rice went up from 3.50 to 5 pesos per pound ($0.15 to $0.20 U.S.).

The measures to make the economy healthy and bring about its takeoff affect the retired and those who live from their salaries the most, those who don’t receive dollars or euros from relatives abroad. Around 35% of Cubans don’t receive hard cash. It takes a miracle to get two daily meals to the table and make the end of the month. These are the people who breakfast on coffee without milk and eat only one meal a day.

The poorest sectors of a country which has socialized misery, they also owe the State considerable sums of money for electric domestic appliances, like refrigerators (iceboxes), televisions and rice cookers, all bestowed by Fidel Castro in exchange for ancient appliances — some from the 1940-50 decade — with high electric energy consumption.

For Ricardo, 78, retired and an illegal seller of peanuts and cigarettes sold at bus stops, the high cost of living and the gradual disappearance of the ration booklet concern him a great deal.

“The government says that social cases and the elderly without resources won’t be unattended. But the truth is that for some time, coffee, cigars, beans, rice, and now sugar have gone up too much and at my house, no social worker has shown up. To top it all off, I owe the bank 12,000 pesos (500 dollars) for the television and the icebox (refrigerator) that they traded out for me six years ago. Of course, I’m not going to pay that debt. I receive a pension of 213 pesos (8 dollars) and I don’t have either children or relatives in Miami”, notes Ricardo.

The high price of sugar in the free market is intolerable. It can’t be justified by the stale excuse of the US embargo. For centuries, Cuba has been one of the largest producers of sugar in the world. When we were a Spanish colony, between 4 and 5 million tons of sugar were produced. We were self-sufficient and the sweet plant was the principal area of export.

Then came Fidel Castro with the discourse of a new nation, justice and equality for all. In his development strategy he thought about diversifying agriculture — the country was a producer of one product only — and creating robust industry. Neither happened. For a decade now, sugar production hasn’t exceeded two and a half million tons. And the internal consumption of 700,000 tons has a notable deficit.

Nobody can understand that on an island with a tropical climate — with huge extensions of land — fruits, vegetables, legumes, and sugar — seals of national identity, should be scarce. The retired Jofesa doesn’t think about paying 8 pesos a pound, “because it’s robbery and an abuse by this government”.

By eliminating the ration card, as the regime wants, Josefa and Cubans like her who depend on their pension, only have the option of sugar in the free market. Or drinking bitter coffee.

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Translated by: JT

February 15 2011

The Havana Book Festival / Iván García

Foto: ajnunez, Flickr

 

Until Sunday, February 20th, the San Carlos de La Cabaña fortress is the initial site of the International Book Fair, held annually in Havana. In the month following, it will travel to other Cuban provinces.

Since its inception in 1992, the public attendance has been spectacular. Every day, an average of 80,000 people visit the enclosure, an old military fortress, and one of the most severe prisons during the first years of the revolution.

Now everything is different. The old cellblocks have been transformed into meeting pavilions, where Latin American and European printers sell books like hot dogs.

When La Cabaña opened its gates on Friday the 10th, an impressive avalanche of people filled the Spanish and Mexican pavilions, among others.

José Ferrero, a representative of a Spanish printing house and attending the Fair for the third time, called attention to the great demand for books about anything, in particular, novels and children’s stories.

“In times of crisis, when book sales have fallen in Europe, it’s healthy to see a poor country, people with an incredible eagerness for reading”, said Ferrero, while observing an extensive queue which was waiting its turn to visit the Spanish stand.

Other publishers couldn’t say the same. The booksellers of Cuban political themes were chatting in a relaxed manner in the cool Havana afternoon breezes. The visitors didn’t seem interested in the volumes recompiled with the thoughts of Fidel Castro or his work about the guerrilla war in the Sierra Maestra.

The pavilions of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Iran were also desolate and their representatives, with appropriate faces, were looking at the public hustle and bustle that popped in — and, on seeing the titles, fled to sites with more attractive offerings.

The books exhibited by the countries of the Boliviarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA), to whom this fair was dedicated, are political bricks with the fragrance of a pamphlet and an unpresentable design. Despite being sold in Cuban pesos, their sales were extremely low.

People in Cuba are weary of books with political content. 52 years of a discourse with a marked ideological tint have forced Cubans to take refuge in more refreshing subjects.

And that’s what happened at the last Fair. Children were the big winners. Together with their parents, they left the compound loaded with issues in vivid colors and appealing illustrations.

The sales of these books are in cash. Expensive for a country where the average salary is 10 dollars a month. Even so, they sold in bulk. Robert, 34, an engineer, was accompanied by his wife and child. “We spent 28 dollars, but it was worth it. The rest of the year, you can’t get such beautiful and high quality children’s books in Havana”.

In Cuba, high book sales are customary. They aren’t expensive. But their quality, variety, and content don’t fulfill the expectations of demanding readers. The government censors authors whom they consider “counterrevolutionary”, such as the laureates Mario Vargas Llosa and Guillermo Cabrera Infante.

Occasionally, some prohibited authors and liberal texts that don’t line up with the ideology of the regime manage to make fun of censorship. People hunt for these ‘mistakes’.

On the back patio of the fortress, where in days gone by Castro’s enemies were shot, children, adolescents and youths read recently bought books, seated on the soft lawn or on the walls alongside ancient cannons.

The biggest prize of the Fair is the extraordinary panorama of the city on the other side of the bay.

Translated by: JT

February 17 2011

The ‘Jabas’ and the Latest Joke About Pepito / Iván García

A fashionable joke in Havana, tells of the teacher asking Pepito, the classic mischievous child of jokes, what makes a Cuban different from a Spaniard and an American. Without thinking about it twice, Pepito responds:

“The Spaniard eats dinner late, eats ham, and likes mulatto women. The American tips well, chews gum, and if you don’t agree with him, will launch a missile at you. And the Cuban spends his time speaking ill of Fidel, thinking about how to steal from his workplace, and in his pocket he always carries a nylon ‘jaba‘ to keep what he stole.”

Without exaggeration, Cuba is one of those countries on the planet that uses those ‘jabas‘ or bags the most; be they made of nylon, paper, or cloth, it’s all the same. It’s difficult to see a Cuban go into the street without said ‘jaba‘.

Any moment can be the right one, you have to anticipate. If you’re going downtown or to the outskirts, your wife will tell you: “Take a ‘jaba‘, in case you find rice or discounted tomatoes”.

Not carrying ‘jabas‘ is synonymous with failing to take advantage of the chance to buy pineapples, oranges, or guavas recently unloaded off of a truck coming from Jagüey Grande. You run the risk of running desperately from one place to another and not finding the usual old people who sell ‘nailitos‘ (little nylons) at a peso ($0.04) each.

Selling ‘jabas‘ is a business to which many dedicate themselves in the city. Remberto, 75, retired, buys 100 jabas for 40 pesos ($1.60) and then sells them by the piece (one peso). In each lot he earns 60 pesos.

Fat business. Although you have to use all five senses, looking if the state inspectors and police aren’t coming. Besides rendering your ‘jabas‘ useless, they’ll fine you 120 pesos (5 dollars), a terrible fate for a retired person.

“The police are a problem. But the most serious is the scarcity of ‘jabas‘, including in the black market. Two months ago, the kind that I sell the most — stolen from a factory they tell me has shut down for lack of raw materiel. I’m selling them on the black market”, says Remberto, seated in a doorway near the destroyed Único Market.

The scarcity of nylon ‘jabas‘ affects illegal vendors, almost all old people who are trying to survive under the difficult conditions of island socialism. But it’s also a headache for buyers. The nylon bags are also scarce in cash stores. The news isn’t very promising.

One of the factories charged with producing ‘jabas‘ in Cuba is called Plinex. In 2010, they only achieved 5% of a plan forecast for 175 million units. And since July 23 the business has been shut down. Their 145 workers are at home, with 60% of their salaries.

Carlos, a Plinex employee, doesn’t see the time when the needed ‘jabas‘ production will start. “I have two small children and I have spent my savings”. In one work shift, Carlos is used to taking out and selling to the highest bidder thousands of ‘jabitas’ which bring him 1,200 pesos (50 dollars) daily.

One of the reasons the business is closed is its insolvency. Its debts exceed 8 million dollars. And the machines are stopped for lack of replacement parts. On the island there are two other nylon bag factories, but their production lags at times.

When one goes shopping in the hard cash markets, you have to bring ‘jabas‘. Except in the Diplomercado at 3rd and 70, Miramar and in the businesses located in hotels and embassy zones. “This situation is affecting sales. Seeing that there aren’t any ‘jabas‘, people decide not to come in”, notes Margot, saleswoman in a store on Obispo Street.

According to Cimex, one of the corporations that administers a good part of the cash markets in the country, in the year 2000 production reached 204 million ‘jabas‘. In 2010 it was at 9.8 million.

In the coming months, there aren’t any signs that nylon ‘jabas‘ production will recover. The average Cuban will have to keep walking with backpacks and cloth bags. Or juggle with articles in his hands.

Cuba is a country full of incredible anecdotes. For Pepito, the mischievous boy, there will always be raw material for his tales.

Foto: Luchi Tomario, Flickr.

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Translated by: JT

February 17 2011

Birthday Clowns, A Serious Business / Iván García

Being 6 years old, Melisa couldn’t understand that Corbatín (“Bow Tie”), her favorite clown, didn’t live in Cuba. She felt disillusioned. It took us a few days to explain to her that many people decide to leave their country. She was a fan of Corbatín. We took her to all his activities in different Havana halls. For her party we contracted another mime and “the girl and her friends took it well,” says Giraldo, Melisa’s father.

Being a clown on the island isn’t a bad business. On the contrary, when you attend city theaters — where on Saturdays and Sundays clowns make the little ones laugh — after the function you will see the parents approach them, to see if they can contract them for the birthday of a child or school activities.

Carlos, an academy clown — as he describes himself — has 25 years experience in the profession. He studied in Moscow when the USSR was a country. Without his odd makeup, he tells how 15 years ago, he dedicated himself to private functions in children’s parties.

“It is going very well for me. The going rate is some 20 dollars per appearance, but I charge 30 dollars for two hours. I can’t cover all the demand. Cuban-Americans living in Florida have wanted to contract me, they say it comes out cheaper for them. I haven’t been able to satisfy them because of paperwork and bureaucracy. If not, I’d even have acted in Miami,” he jokes.

Cuban clowns, puppeteers, magicians, and jugglers are used to printing business cards and at the end of their state functions, after meeting their respective work quota with the Ministry of Culture, they hand them out to those in attendance.

According to Adolfo, a popular mime in Havana, a high-caliber clown gets a salary of 400 pesos (17 dollars) a month. “It’s on birthdays where we make money. If you are good, you earn a lot. Even the mediocre earn more money than the official salary,” Adolfo comments, dressed for a private function in his classic shoes and the round, red nose.

Despite the well-known economic crisis which has hit the country for two decades, normal people arrange to get them to celebrate birthdays or quinceañeras at full speed.

In 2010, Roberto, 45, threw it all out the window. He spent 5,000 dollars on his daughter’s quinceañera, still talked about in the neighborhood. Now, with empty pockets, he’s planning that his younger son’s 10 year (birthday) be remembered, too.

“His mother and I are pulling our hair out. By current economic possibilities, we shouldn’t do it. But to see the face of sadness on our little boy and his dream of celebrating it together with his friends, we’ll borrow money,” says Rogelio, while he waits for a giant cake that a particular baker made for 80 dollars.

In no way should a children’s party be as expensive as a celebration of the fifteenth. But it could well cost between 250 and 300 dollars, depending on the buffet, gifts, guests, and the clown hired; which corresponds to an engineer’s annual salary in Cuba.

The clowns always steal the show. In the theater, you pay a modest entry fee; open-air shows are free. If it’s a private event, after the children’s laughter, the parents call the clown to a corner and discreetly hand over his fee. Until the next birthday.

Photos: Fotoinda. Carmela Núñez and Leovaldo Díaz, two youths from the puppeteer group Teatro Viejo (“Old Theater”) during a show in a Havana neighbood.

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Translated by: JT

February 13 2011