Translator: Mary Lou Keel – Page 17

Cuba: A Land Without Messages From the Afterlife / Luis Felipe Rojas

The title came from Ramón Tirso, one of the most hardened and prolific lecturers that I know on the whole Island. Tirso has spent time in three Cuban universities, studying the most disparate careers among them. From physics to art education, with a stop in pedagogy of the English language (today he speaks four languages), my friend from Camagüey complains about the lack of connection between our country and the rest of the world.

Precisely now that international borders are being erased thanks to the information highway, the country is locked up tight as a drum. Every day Cuban writers (those eternal ambassadors) communicate less and less with the living centers of international literature. The entrenchment of the so-called engaged intellectuals, owing to their affiliations with the ideological apparatus of Havana, has rendered them truly unknown among their peers beyond the seas.

Let’s take for example Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Cuba’s “most successful representative today.” Translated into 18 languages, Padura’s novels are displayed on the shelves of the libraries of prestigious universities, the author is received by important academies of letters but he is unable to be an interlocutor to bring a message to his followers there in the island.

The novels of the author of The Man Who Loved Dogs are sold in our country at a rate of a few hundred copies in the increasingly unattractive Havana Book Fair… and “if I’ve seen you, I don’t remember”, according to the refrain (in other words, I don’t want to remember). The numerous literary prizes (including the National Literature Prize), decorations or even privileged appearances in the only three national newspapers, do not give him a million readers. The only million copies distributed in Cuba are those on the “ration card.”

With an emissary like this, we are perfect strangers.

Warming the arm

Each people needs to stretch its tongue, run it along through the world’s trails so that they know how their village speaks, and in their village they may know what paths their thinkers retrace. How can they live decades without the interviews, the fears and descriptions of the creative processes of a Borges, Phillip Roth or the best of journalism that marinates Europe or the Middle East?

The fictions of Guillermo Cabrera Infante and Reinaldo Arenas were known from their own saddles in England and the United States, respectively. If their works are known today within Cuba, it is not due to editorial policy but to the animosity of its rulers.

The painstaking work of some good Cubans and their friends made issues of Havana for a Dead Infant and The Color of Summer pass among the complicit in order to travel what should have been a common path. But those fictions of which I speak found, more than a thirsty reader, a tired citizen.

A battlefield, a devastated grassland

Making of Havana a fermenting center of the intellectual and combative left in past decades generated one of the most abominable literature that you might find, readers corrupted by the slogans of the barricades and the appellation of being perfect, idiots and Latin Americans, names which are going to take us a century to live down.

A simple practical exercise suffices in order to know how we are doing in terms of literary consumption. I invite anyone to try to get a permit to access the archives of the Jose Marti National Library, without passing through the tribulations of a hellish bureaucracy or a string of negatives that lead him to desist.

And what, today, is the arsenal of the provincial libraries? When do they ever update their stacks with books that don’t come from the political publishers, Olive Green, the Social Sciences, or those already common bricks that praise comandante Chavez?

From a nearly monthly update as we had in the ’80s, we’ve gone to a laughable annual Havana book fair to see an interesting book from another country. At this rate, in addition to leaving us with no memory of the world, without messages, we are left without readers.

Translated by: Scott Miatech and mlk

27 May 2014

Answer To Those Who Don’t Accept the Embargo / Angel Santiesteban

A public letter addressed to President Obama with the intention of lifting the embargo or, at least, lessening it, has been signed by figures who demonstrate that Human Rights on the Island do not matter to them at all.

For some, shame means a check with several zeros. I cannot hide that it fills me with consternation that there exist people in this world who defend the dictatorship although I suspect that those who do it do not think of anything more than economic gain, perks or future payments for political “lobbying” services. One way or another, it means the same thing for ethics and humanity. Their shameless acts rival each other for the championship of the most cynical.

No one with honor can raise his voice to strengthen the tyranny of the Castro brothers, which — for more than a half a century — has sunk our country into misery. They cannot hide behind the apparent good intention of “helping the Cuban people” when we know that absolutely nothing will improve in our reality; to the contrary, as the totalitarian regime is strengthened, the same will occur with the iron yoke that they exert over the people, repression and assassinations of dissident leaders will increase. That is the only thing that they will achieve if they raise or lessen the embargo on the Castro family.

To those to whom it does not matter then, sign and protect the Cuban dictatorship.

Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. May 2014

Follow the link to sign the petition for Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience.

Translated by: Michaela Klicnikova and mlk.

29 May 2014

Turn Off The News / Juan Juan Almeida

When last week, the official gazette announced special admission permits for those foreigners who buy or rent dwellings in Cuba, several news media outlets, seemingly not very well informed, put together a whole hornet’s nest.

Wow, what a way to let yourself be manipulated. It’s hard to believe that so many know-it-alls don’t know that since the end of the ’90’s, when the island’s real estate boom became fashionable, the Cuban government already gave the gringos who bought (or rented), temporary residence, renewable annually, and the right to import a car. Before reporting, take a refresher.

Translated by mlk.
28 May 2014

The Best Option, A Meeting / Juan Juan Almeida

For the seventh time jurists and professionals associated with the administration of justice from 16 countries are meeting in Cuba. This isn’t some low level meeting, having been convened by the People’s Supreme Tribunal (TSP).

In his opening words, the president of the TSP, Ruben Remigio Ferro, who is not the father of my writer friend Dania Ferro, highlighted the importance that the event presents because the exchange of experiences — in his judgment — will contribute to the employment of good practices within the Cuban judicial system, which is being adjusted at the same time as the updating of the economic model. And he put special emphasis on the achievements reached in the process of renovating the law and the activity of the courts, and in the confidence of Cubans in their institutions of justice.

This latter is not believed even by the mother who gave birth to him, with apologies to the lady. Trust in the institutions of justice? That for Cubans on the island is science fiction.

Whatever, have a happy weekend.

Translated by mlk.

23 May 2014

The True Liberation of the Cuban Woman / Rebeca Monzo

University students of the ’30’s.

Much is said and published through the media in our country about the “achievements” obtained for the Cuban woman after the Revolution. But never is a word said about the social, political, and economic advantages achieved by our feminine population before the year 1959 in the last century.

For that we are going to refer to some very revealing information from the “1953 Population and Electoral Census,” the last one carried out during the Republic, published and edited by P. Fernández y Cía. These censuses were carried out approximately every ten years. continue reading

Total population of the country: 5,829,029 (2,985,156 males and 2,843,874 females).

School attendance between ages 5 and 24: (428,334 males and 411,861 females).

Last grade passed: Baccalaureate (High School) 88,562 (54,121 males and 34,441 females). University 53,464 (35,967 males and 17,497 females). There was an average of 3.8 universities per 1,000 residents. Cuba occupied first place in Latin America along with Argentina, Mexico and Uruguay.

As interesting information we can say that in the year 1940 everyone who involved in the teaching profession was certified, a unique condition among all the countries of Latin America.

Our country then had one of the lowest levels of illiteracy in our continent: 23.6% (41.7% rural and 11.8% urban).

In addition, we can point out that Cuba in 1918 became the first country in Latin America to recognize the right of couples in conflict to divorce. We must also add that in the Constitution of 1940 is recognized, for the first time in Latin America, a woman’s right to vote, equality of the sexes, the right of a woman to work, the right to open a bank account, and to get a passport, besides granting her authority over her children.

Of the economically active population in 1953, 22% were female, in addition to a work force in professional fields where 16% were women and 3% men.

As can clearly be seen in these statistics, women’s participation was increasingly present.

For this it is good to note that in the same way that the participation of the “weaker sex” was becoming more active in the life of the country, they were implementing home courier services such as the delivery of milk, bread, mineral water, food, pharmaceutical products, dry cleaning, laundry, etc., which relieved the woman extraordinarily in her domestic work, enabling her to dedicate more time to the attention of the home and the education of her children.

I believe, without fear of equivocation, that we can assure that already the Cuban woman had become liberated in the Republican era, and her equality of civil, social, political and employment rights was on the rise.

Translated by mlk.

27 May 2014

Thinking of a Homage to Jose Marti / Juan Juan Almeida

Many times I have asked myself why we, those who want change in Cuba, lend ourselves to coloring the past of an island that, however idyllic, perhaps never existed, why we work so hard not to look to the future, or why we don’t throw ourselves whole-heartedly into solutions where we can all co-exist.

Of course the past matters; without it we wouldn’t know where we came from or possibly where we are going; but holding onto yesterday is like a living death. It is time to raise anchors and throw aside the culture of confrontation, hatred and frustration. continue reading

On accepting and digesting that much of what I learned in school, and by repetition at home, punished and threatened the rights of my people, I changed. And believe me, it was not simple. I am part of the so-called “New Man” that so many people criticize for not being virtuous or moral; but he has fewer vices, because tired of partisanship he looks with equal apathy at Raul Castro’s government and the “nation savers,” those who go hollow at the mere mention of the word democracy.

And it is that both barkers, those from one corner or the other, united unfortunately by their lack of ability and their love for mirrors, are simply politicians who speak with the same despotism about the actions of the people, as if “the people” was an amorphous mass and not a set of wise people.

Trying to exclude passions, and without much effort, we could see that in Cuba conditions are created for transformation. The old structures no longer can support the growing economic, ethical, political and even legal needs.

We see it in the news, and Raul Castro himself has recognized it. But we don’t see change, and we excuse ourselves blaming such inactivity on fear of our fellow citizens.

It may be, in fact I know from experience, that fear only stimulates the imagination to develop defense; but I do not believe that today in Cuba there exists such a dose of fear; I believe that on analyzing we must be more serious. The Revolution is falling, yes, of that I have no doubt; but it’s going to fall on us if we don’t take a moment to review what we are doing. And before falling into the grave danger of judging blindly, why not accept that we lack the capacity to strike and that we must adapt ourselves to more real conditions?

We cannot attract and much less convince if we are not inclusive. There is a suggestive and catchy sentence that appears on some cereal boxes that says: “Publicity is based on selling happiness.” Let’s adopt it as our own, let’s forget the catastrophic language and even come to understand that a plural society is built by eliminating the words enemy, trench, violence and battle.

I am a follower of Marti and I could not overlook that a day like today, May 19, but in 1895, Jose Marti fell in Dos Rios. The greatest of all Cubans. It would be a perfect homage if from both sides of the Florida Strait we try to begin to reunify our fragmented and divided country, quoting the man we call our “apostle,” who said, “With all and for the good of all.”

Translated by mlk.

20 May 2014

Fraud, It’s Olive Green / Juan Juan Almeida

On May 6 in Cuba the entrance exams for Higher Education began. That day the mathematics test was held. After the conclusion of the test, information was received, through several avenues, about the leakage and knowledge of its contents for students from several high schools in the capital.

The curious thing is that now, after several days, the newspaper Granma says that it has been able to determine that unscrupulous people stole the exams and gave it to the students who obtained it through lucrative offers. So far there are three high school teachers involved.

Why do they do it? I don’t know; but I learned years ago that the child (generic) does more what he sees done, than what they tell him to do.

Translated by mlk.

22 May 2014

A Light on My Path / Angel Santiesteban

I Raise My Glass to Freedom Day

I must confess that when they seized Raul Rivero in the Black Spring, and he was part of “The Group of 75″ that was seeking political change in Cuba, at that time I had no political conscience, or maybe I did not want to have one. My thinking protected me and I needed to believe my literary teachers who insisted that the work was primary and that from writing we should fight for change, that books were our rifles and words our bullets.

I do not doubt that is true, but there was a moment in which it was not enough for me, and so I have recognized on many occasions, and when I ripped off the mask that covered my face — stuck there since my birth, weathered and clinging to my skin throughout the time of my education — then I felt for the first time the cool, clean air caressing my skin. continue reading

My shame obliged me to start the blog. I felt that I had a double debt: to all the national readership — where I perceived the need for the fight — and to my contemporaries, in particular and especially to the great Cuban poet Raul Rivero, who abandoned the life of a passive writer with which he collected great achievements in order to become one of the fiercest critics of totalitarianism. There was an instant where it all began, and his face, poetry and attitude towards life were made present, and I wanted to continue in his footsteps. The bar is very high, like his poetry.

Maybe you will not believe it, but at this moment, while I write this post, I was interrupted by Officer Abat — one of the many bosses of this prison — and he tried to assert his authority over me, he wanted me to notice that he was prohibiting my family from coming to see me.

When I ignored him, he asserted that he was going to win — I suppose he was referring to a dose of suffering for me — then I assured him that he would never beat me because for me a cell was a badge of honor, but that I recognized that he could do it as a henchman, abuser, weak in manhood, and several other things that — in the heat of the moment — occurred to me.

He screamed at me to shut up, and I told him that they would never achieve it, certainly not on a day like today. Finally, he left threatening, surely looking for help in the headquarters to make me pay for my rebelliousness.

Today is Free Press Day, and this is the best way I have to honor it. And it is also the best day to express my gratitude to the great Raul Rivero, who lights the free path with his lantern of poetry, who in his turn inherited from the master of all, Jose Marti.

Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. May 2014.

To sign the petition for Amnesty International to declare Cuban dissident Angel Santiesteban a prisoner of conscience follow this link.

Translated by mlk.

15 May 2014

First Place in Stupidity / Juan Juan Almeida

In an interview given last week to the daily Juventud Rebelde, the minister Maria Esther Reus launched the very–in capital letters–absurd thesis that “the deficiencies in legal education are a problem now because there was never a need keep people informed about the laws that govern them.”

Truly, nothing can better illustrate for us the legal ineffectiveness of a system than the words of this minister of justice. Or is it injustice? And she said it without the least trace of shame.

Translated by mlk

20 May 2014

Total Abandonment / Juan Juan Almeida

Theodor Friedrich, the Cuban representative of the United Nations Organization for Food and Agriculture (FAO) who is participating these recent days in the second International Conference on Animal Health Surveillance which is being held in Havana, asserted to Prensa Latina that animal epidemiological surveillance is a topic that transcends the borders of isolated countries and congratulated Cuban authorities for their leading work in this area.

How nice, altruistic and caring that 116 delegates from 39 countries of the world meet in Havana to talk about animal health; but before arriving at the unreasonable conclusion, they should go out to the streets, immerse themselves among the people and enhance their view strolling through the city that has the most stray dogs in all of Latin America. So, rather than health, they will talk about the absolute abandonment of animals.

Translated by mlk

9 May 2014

What Happened to the Cuban Cigar? / Juan Juan Almeida

The story goes that Cuban natives consumed tobacco long before the Genovese admiral Christopher Colombus landed on the island.

The studies and evidence show that our natives used it as a medicine, narcotic, aphrodisiac, and in religious rituals and celebrations. They smoked it, breathing through the nose and even drank it in concoctions.

Rodriguo de Jerez was one of the sailors who arrived in the Americas with Colombus and returned to old Europe with the habit of smoking. The Inquisition, after alleging that only the devil could concede to a man the power of taking smoking through the mouth, sentenced him to seven years in prison.

Nevertheless, the vice prevailed; tobacco became an industry, and although studies make clear that the plant has its origin in the Andean region between Peru and Ecuador, Cuban tobacco rapidly achieved the qualifier of “the best in the world.” And the term Havana appeared to conceptualize all the cigars where 100% of the product is cultivated and manufactured in Cuba after multiple and severe controls both at the level of agriculture and at the drying and twisting process. continue reading

It was 1800 and by then tobacco, like sugar, had fused with the history of our country; but the characteristics of the market and the pleasure of the smokers made the Havana, distinguished now by its provenance, start to be classified by the zone of the crop. So emerged prestigious brands like Partagas, H Upmann, La Corona, Por Larranaga, El Figaro, and others until 1966 when Fidel Castro created Cohiba, the leading brand of Cuba, which carries his name thanks the suggestion of his then chief bodyguard, Chicho.

Cohiba not only is the name of the tobacco of the highest prestige in the world, it is also a commercial brand that moves political influences, traffics in power and manages millions of dollars. It is sold at astronomical prices and is consumed in every corner of this planet. The Rolls-Royce of tobaccos is a golden bubble where pleasure finds a select group of people who only have money and power in common.

Throughout all its history the leaves used to handmake the bast cigar in the world have been jealously chosen, and marketing specifies that they come from the five best meadows from the region of Vuelta Abajo, Pinar del Rio.

Inclement weather, the Special Period, lack of fertilizers, financial liquidity, the fight against smoking and other series of factors made Cuban tobacco production decline. As hard as they tried they could not meet the commitments or the claims of a market that demanded greater quantity and quality from our leading product. The Commander in Chief himself, who by then was also a microbiologist, ordered the use of an in vitro production technique that would guarantee massive quantities of tobacco plant starts with the same high levels of excellence; but obviously, the plan did not bear fruit. And so we arrive, as always, at deception.

“The country of tobacco” clandestinely bought selections of leaves in Nicaragua and small quantities in Ecuador, countries where it is known that the tobacco plantations pass through a strict quality control with international standards. The quasi-contraband leaves were used for the manufacture of tobacco that was sold, and which was given to influential leaders. A real joke, “the best Havana in the world” without guarantee of origin.

Just the Cuban part of the joint venture Habanos S.A. can answer if this government scam persists. One more.

Translated by mlk.

13 May 2014

Napoleon and El Comandante, A Dangerous Fusion / Juan Juan Almeida

Latin Press reported that this coming July the XII International Congress of the Napoleonic Society will meet in our country. So far delegates from several countries have confirmed their attendance.

The director of the Cuban Napoleonic Museum and organizer of the event, Dr. Sadys Sanchez, let loose her tongue, and after comparing Fidel with Napoleon, announced that the central theme of said event, “the Napoleonic revolutions around the world,” will prove how close we are to the ruler who sat down to eat with his troops; and will demonstrate that his conquests transcended geographic, military and political levels in order to surface in our culture.

Maybe I am a bit paranoid but this makes me think that this Napoleonic fair has a second purpose. Luckily the newspaper also serves to clean the windows.

Translated by mlk.

16 May 2014

Passports, They Can’t Or They Don’t Want To? / Juan Juan Almeida

Raonel Valdes Valhuerdis, the Cuban accused of carrying out the greatest gold theft in the history of Florida, arrived in the United States this Wednesday under extradition. Detained in Belize when he tried to cross the border on his way to Mexico.

What is striking is his name being on the lists of the most wanted criminals and although the Revolutionary government asserts it does not encourage criminals, at the time of his arrest, the bandit was carrying a Cuban passport in his name issued December 28, 2012 by the Office of Cuban Interests in Washington, two months after the fugitive committed the armed robbery in Miami.

It all seems to indicate, and the facts speak for themselves, that the Cuban consulate in Washington hinders the consular processing of normal citizens but readily accepts common criminals.

Translated by mlk.
8 May 2014

A New Festival in Santiago de Cuba / Juan Juan Almeida

May, the month of flowers. In order to be in tune, and to pretend that everything runs smoothly and without bumps, cultivators and florists from Havana, Granma, Guantanamo and Santiago de Cuba participated this past weekend in the Festival of Flowers. According to what the press says, the objective of the event is to exchange experiences about the marketing and manufacture of flower arrangements. The newspaper report insists that the recently unveiled Festival of Flowers serves to show a new image of florists and to develop the culture of the use of flowers in society.

I don’t understand; for years they repeatedly nagged us that the culture of flowers was a bourgeois leftover and, to the contrary, flowers of yore are imported, beautiful for sure, but the price besides being prohibitive is in CUC. Do not let yourselves be confused, such a Festival is to please someone. Palace whim.

Translated by mlk.

6 May 2014

I Am Not Afraid / Angel Santiesteban

Even though more than half a decade has transpired since that confession: “I know that I am afraid, very afraid,” that the great writer Virgilio Piñera — one of the greatest artists born in the archipelago — pronounced in the National Library, in the same place and at the same time that Fidel Castro prattled his “Words to Intellectuals,” I could never stop imagining the inner mockery that the young comandante must have hidden on hearing the sentence; and then, the abundant and grotesque laughter of the rest of the bearded men. . . and the times that they would have repeated “fucking fag,” without any of them imagining — unhappy souls — that the poet would outlive them in dignity and would come to form part of the history of the country as one of its great men, thanks to his literary legacy, while Fidel Castro and the rest of his unworthy “revolutionary” team just leave us an immense wake of blood and pain. continue reading

Virgilio Piñera

The bravest and most honest among those present at that meeting was Piñera, who with his declarations got ahead of what would fall over the country, in particular over the cultural sector. Thanks to those premonitory words, worthy of an enlightened one, today we know the cost of what has been ignored by the rest of the intellectuals.

Maybe — if in that moment they had united — then they would have been respected, so preventing all the suffering that Virgilio, Reinaldo Arenas and Heberto Padilla suffered so much; possibly also they would have avoided all that abusive theater that surrounded us during the fatal period of the 1970’s decade, when because of their critical, human work, because of their ideology and their sexuality, they were persecuted, marginalized, expelled from their jobs and study centers and brought to bleed their original sin of being artists.

Fidel Castro always knew that he had to watch them closely and keep them under his boot, given that in spite the fact that he was dealing with “the soft sector of society,” they were dangerous, harmful to his ideals about keeping himself in power.

Now, since my incarceration due to the opening of my blog “The Children Nobody Wanted,” I can attest, paraphrasing the brilliant Virgilio, that “I am not afraid, not at all,” and paraphrasing the dictator, “Within art, everything; against art, nothing.”

Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. April 2014.

Translated by mlk.

5 May 2014