“The Colossus” from the Roof of my House / Luis Felipe Rojas

I owe this vignette to my friends Agnes and Cecile, in Toulouse. They came to San German a couple of years ago, right when Hurricane Ike had ravaged a good part of the north-eastern geography of Cuba. The strong winds had left the entire area on end, all over the place. They climbed up on the roof and stared at the scenery. Today it’s no better, but the chimneys of the sugar production factory had been threatened with completely vanishing. Around that time they were conjectures and today, amid the other disaster (the economic one), there are only three towers left to expel the smoke.

In the past sugar production period, the prognostics of the national economy assured that it would be a historic sugar harvest because of its results (we did not know if they were negative or positive) while the workers complained about the lack of attention, low salaries, and long labor days, in addition to the unreachable quotas, where they would obtain a handful of convertible pesos as a bonus on top of their salaries (the majority weren’t paid this time because they allege that the company did not comply with the plan).

They are even talking about a possible foreign investment (China, Belarus, or Venezuela, perhaps) but the four towers will never identify the town as it formerly did: “The Sugar-Bowl Colossus”. However, the national media said that the sugar harvest from 2011- 2012 reached “modest” and “insufficient” results after a campaign full of deficiencies and non-compliance, ending in April with only 94 percent of what was expected.

This photo is also for “Rosi-de-Cuba” and Mario Jacas, who are very attentive with the San German natives who go to Miami; and for “La Piñareña” and for Lori, who both pay attention to every detail that could be known for those of us within the cordon.

It is also for the San German Club on Facebook (perhaps this is not an idyllic photo, but I owe it to those who asked me for it). This is the photo for Norman Trento and O.E, who with their professionalism ask me, nearly demand me, that I write about my nearest surroundings. For them, this kind of journalism is worth as much as the Other. For everyone, a photo, a couple of words, and good luck!

Translated by Raul G.

13 July 2012

Counter-Development: A Disoriented Work Force / Luis Felipe Rojas

Recently, certain news from Guantanamo managed to stun me once more, because of its cruelty and because of the dark future stains which it presents for its actors. The note was signed by the Human Rights activist Yordis Garcia Fournier and it assures that more than twenty youths from that area were officially warned and cast aside by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) due to their labor detachment or that their conducts are classified as improper by uniformed officials.

During the last few months of 2008, as supported by an investigative report carried out by Jorge Corrales Ceballos, I informed through this blog about the pressures exercised in that same center against more than 80 youths for the same causes. On that occasion, a number of them ended up in prison under charges of Pre-Criminal Social Dangerousness. Human Rights Watch mentioned the incident in its reports and I was arrested various times, my phone was blocked for a couple of days, and the political police of Guantanamo directly threatened me because, according to them, I had been “talking about things which did not pertain to my neighborhood”. However, the violations against youths, not only from there, but from all over the nation, continued.

Now, as they are lashing out against these beardless southeastern Cubans, it would be good to return the ball to the court of the governmental culprits. When, in a matter of less than 5 years, the possibilities of access for graduates into Superior Education has diminished, what can we expect for that floating citizenship? The overpopulation in the registration lists for the Polytechnic Majors had shown us a qualified work force which would have boosted the economy of the country, but now our leaders have appeared with a “work force reduction” which they euphemistically refer to as “re-structuring of the labor force” or the politics of availability.

Back to the subject of the threatened youths, it’s worth asking: If they are available, then why threaten them? How can a young lathe operator, who has been condemned to fill up matches or to sell unnecessary products in state dependencies, be socially dangerous? The official statistics of youths who are unemployed due to lack of real work placement will never be published. Because of this, having such information in one’s hands to carry out a logical analysis is not very likely.

Right now, the educational politics is to graduate more “medical technicians” all the way from the secondary level and to return to the educational plan of four years, but where can thousands of qualified graduates of various professions who sleep on the eternal floor be employed?

More than half a hundred polytechnic institutes throughout the country graduated youths who majored in specialties such as Construction and Sugar Production, but those who assumed their professions for a while have been forced to dedicate themselves more to cultivating and cleaning the grass than to actually building, without detailing the depression of the sugar sector within the last decade. There is a skilled labor force which is qualified and which exceeds the possibilities of employment. After this, if they do not desire to work in sectors which are unrelated to their studies, then why classify them as social misfits or as prone to crime?

The logic of the polytechnic and technological enrollments in Cuba have been historically as follows: the students with little possibilities of entering universities opted for an average education. With the worsening of the economic crisis in the ’90s, the balance inclined towards commodity and calm: studying for half a day and a semi-internship for students, which translated into less effort for parents as the direct responsible ones. When the enrollments for urban and rural pre-university students were reduced, the amount of middle-technicians and qualified workers increased. A floating population, which is now difficult to chain down when they decide not to live off their parents anymore, goes out to fight with life and does not always win, but they dodge now, and hold it in tomorrow. And that’s how they mortgage the future- to whom? One day we’ll know. For a crook — another one — some would say.

Translated by Raul G.

8 July 2012

Two Griefs, Two Citizens, Two Countries / Luis Felipe Rojas

From time to time, in the middle of conversations between Cubans, a couple of unanswered questions spring up: when did we become two countries, two citizens, two forms of enjoying ourselves, of suffering or of living, simply? There are those who say that it happened around 1989, when the utopias and the innocence vainly fell to the ground from a wall which stopped existing a long time before.

In Cuba, the neighborhood know-it-alls assured that it happened around 1992. The discussions begin and, with them, so do the adapted maps in which individual calamity comes together with collective calamity without any visible seams. If there really was a Special Period…what was the previous one called?

Two ways of doing tourism: the beaches prohibited to Cubans and a couple of stick huts within the “popular camping” scene for the socialist and proletariat vanguard; a bunch of channels on the satellite television service of luxury hotels and that televisual insult, adapted to four missiles which repeat the same thing every day and which no one can stand; comfortable and safe airplanes, cars, and buses against vehicles which are re-built and re-nailed onto the nostalgia of the 40′s; two kinds of diets: the one which every human being should consume, which no one should ever prostitute themselves for, and the other, the one they sold us wrapped in the most criminal of collective rations (a smelly oil to lubricate our stomachs, some grains and a bit of brownish-gray sugar) and which we accepted as an act of state subordination without any historical antecedents. A parliament, a Single Party which aims to govern, which dreams of popular respect and acknowledgement and which drowns in the anonymous massacre which bleeds us dry through the worst style of corruption, while the citizen-ants lift the foundations of a civil society which, more sooner than later, will impose itself…if it manages to escape the beatings, imprisonments, and the public scandals.

Two ways of clapping: accepting everything with resignation, tightening our teeth and closing our eyes and ears before the puppets, saying yes, but no, saying no, but saying yes. We scream loudly in the plaza, at the top of our lungs, up to the point that we skin our hands of hating and envying our neighbors so much, and yet we mumble our failure on the oven, in silence, so that we do not lose our last rations of respiration, like he whose life is full of pain, like he who is to blame.

Translated by Raul G.

3 July 2012

Juani, the Marvels of Having a Blog / Luis Felipe Rojas

More than 10 years must have passed since I met Juan Antonio Garcia Borrero. During those years, I participated in the cinema critique sessions which, along with Luciano Castillo, would take place in his native Camaguey. A swarm of youths would move from diverse universities throughout the country to see some good cinema and to presume that they spoke better or worse than a critic. The working days were just excuses to make ourselves believe that there was a second cinematographic chance, beyond the Havana hustle and bustle and its Film Festival each December.

But one good day, Juani — as his friends call him — opened the blog “The Insomniac Pupil” (absolutely nothing to do with the fundamentalist blog of the former regent of the Cuban Book Institute, Iroel Sanchez), and his followers from national newspapers and other spaces would delight ourselves down paths which were less worn than those which some specialists of the dark camera have us accustomed to.

A few days ago, I was at the presentation of a new entry, an edition of Cuban Letters for the disconnected (which are the majority) of his posts from “The Insomniac Pupil…”. It was in the city of Holguin, in the 10th edition of the Documentary Festival, “For the First Time”, there were only ten exhibits for those who were sitting and another set which were taken down immediately, without explanations. There will eventually be an opportunity to take it all in with less heat and prohibitions in the book stores, after all, any book sold for twenty Cuban pesos is condemned to eternal sleep on a bookshelf.

The best part of the gathering occurred during the presentation and debate which was carried out by the words and provocations of Gustavo Arcos when he challenged Garcia Borrero to share what were his scarce possibilities of connectivity as a member of the UNEAC, or honorable member of the AHS from Camaguey, respectively. Tell them, said Acros, how much and who pays you to write your blog.

The interesting thing is that from the intelligence which accompanied him, as well as his prowl amongst state circles which have tolerated or authorized his “bloggeries”, Juani suffers from the same technological orphanhood as any independent blogger. Although he mostly writes about film, he also takes on aspects of everyday life which bombard any writer. For me, in particular, I really enjoy this fragment of “Surgeons and Forensics”: “I haven’t written in so many days that now my words are heavy, as if they were sacks of concrete, or perhaps it’s that the tiredness of the previous week has started to kick in”.

“In the end, lots of pulp for the urgent forgetfulness, due to the lack of having an independent voice”.

But the mistake enjoys lots of popularity, so much so that one can have the luxury of continuing to demand to be called “writer”, without it having to imply an abuse of confidence towards our friends. On “This day”, a reflection about a television space by the same name, Juani says: “On today’s Cuban television there are nightly brief sections where we remember the most important happenings of the day. It has always awoken curiosity in me to know exactly what are the parameters taken into consideration to determine the importance of these events. Who decides what deserves to rank among the most important books of history? Based on which elements do we establish this valuation?”

I always am assaulted by similar doubts — who decides who is a blogger and who is not? Citizen, intellectual, Cuban, without being weighed down by such useless epithets and out of style like deserters, mercenaries, or sell-outs?

A writer at last, Juan Antonio Garcia Borrero is an intellectual who thinks and lightens our minds up with incomparable effectiveness, with a tendency for tolerance which makes you want to embrace him. Something which many autocrats must see as a crystalline map of the Cuba which most of us dream of.

Translated by Raul G.

29 June 2012

Citizen Insomnia / Luis Felipe Rojas

As I write this post, the “#FestivalCLIC” (or ‘Click Festival’) is underway in Havana–a citizen undertaking to try and channel information between Cubans in the island. May Cuba connect to the world, and the world connect to Cuba, or as the graffiti-artist El Sexto says: “Gimme Cable”, alluding to the lack of connectivity.

I was not able to attend this event in Havana due to transportation inefficiency and other atmospheric pressures. I would have liked to comment about alternative publications which I have felt very close to within the past couple of years.

For some weeks now, a restless cyber-activist has been drowning our phones with messages which contain news and reports about the most current happenings in regards to Cuba. His name is Alfredo Viso, and he is a former Cuban political prisoner who now resides in New Jersey.

Through an option provided by Cubacel (somewhat similar to ‘SMS to Cuba’), Viso created an account with which he communicates with us, and at the same time, we can respond to him through an SMS for the price of 0.9 cents CUC. We could not do it any other way. Another very interesting resource is a service which allows you to leave a voice message in a mailbox. It’s free and you can talk for 1 minute. From Cuba, one can call the number: 11914388003514, after the signal we identify ourselves, we leave a message, and if necessary, we dial again, identify ourselves again, and continue our denouncement. From there, numerous friends take on the task of distributing it throughout the internet.

What happens is that, even with his hyper-activity, Alfredo Viso cannot do it all. He needs other hands to join him in solidarity to send us all news about Cuba. That’s what he is asking, that the solidarity multiply itself towards the inside. “May the initiatives rain down”, he told me the other night through a message of 140 characters.

The mentioned “Click Festival” has already been accused of being an antecedent of an invasion of the island: the same old resentments, the same arguments. A few days ago, they had prohibited Viso the possibility of continuing to send message from his cell phone to Cuba, so he was doing it from his computer.

The same machinery of censorship, the same mower of new ideas, the same nineteenth-century argument of feeling that we are going to be invaded, used to leave citizens out of place and later sentence them with the accustomed impunity.

Translated by Raul G.

24 June 2012

Classifieds / Luis Felipe Rojas

Original post sent as jpg image by Luis Felipe Rojas through his cell phone

It’s a real jewel of journalism, worthy of being stored in any historical archive. It appeared on the “Personal Issues” section of the classified ads of the weekly Ahora newspaper, published in the province of Holguin. Out of the three ads which appeared last Saturday, June 2nd, these two caught my attention:

“The Clinical-Surgical Lucia Iniguez Hospital offers positions of Security Agents and protection. Prequisites: have a mid-superior level or have passed twelfth grade, having had taken rehabilitation courses and having adequate experience, must be physically and mentally fit, have political, moral, and social conduct in accordance with the revolutionary process. Salary: 283 pesos and additional salary payment of up to $84.90. Visit the Department of Human Resources and speak with Santiago Dominguez Fajardo”

“The Meat Company of Holguin seeks a Chief of Quality Control. Salary: $425.00 plus additional payment of $200.00. Prerequisites: graduate from related superior level with specialty in Industrial Engineering, Chemical Engineering, of possessing License of Dietary Sciences. The company follows the system of payment for the completion of the job in a certain time, and 4 kilos of bones and a set of personal hygiene products are given monthly, work clothes annually, in addition to personal transportation. Call 42-2705, extensions 121 and 118.″

The first outlined phrase refers to the political apartheid which thousands of Cubans who have no communist affiliation suffer…but for such plentiful earnings! In that sense, anyone can keep a moral conduct “in accordance with the revolutionary principles”. The second bold phrase is quite frightening. With so much hunger in certain African countries and we still use a surplus of food to as an incentive for Security Agents! There is no such case. There is no doubt that the suggestions are unique, there surely will be better ones, but these could not have gone by unmentioned and I wanted to share it with you all. The section is in charge of someone who is said to be called Graciela Guerra B and her email is chela@ahora.cu.

Note:I have published this through my phone, I send it to a friend (as an image) who has internet access, he sends it through email to another friend outside of Cuba who receives it, converts it to a Word document, and later publishes it on my blog with the photos I have also sent from my cell phone.

Today, I asked those who help me to do so in this way. So that those who follow and read me know that on this side, from within the barbed wires, connecting to the internet continues to be a fantasy, regardless if there is a cable or not.

That’s why I spend many days without publishing anything and I can never directly respond to messages sent to me, to those emails which saturate my electronic mailbox, and the hundreds of friend requests I have on Facebook which a friend of mine updates once a month. This is yet another way of accessing the internet, without internet.

Translated by Raul G.

11 June 2012

Who Wrote to the Commander? / Luis Felipe Rojas

In a prison just outside of Moscow, the passing hours were shattering the head of the Soviet dissident Alexander Bukosky. The white walls. The cold. The flies on the roof. The prisoners came and went with thousands of complaints and denouncements of violations which the guards were subjecting them to, and he could not last much longer by himself. One day, it occurred to him to recommend two prisoners to write to the district committee, and if they did not respond, to write two, four, or ten more times per week until they paid attention. One morning, one of the superiors nearly begged him to not recommend them to write any more letters because they had no way of processing so many complaints. I am bringing up this story, so luxuriously described in the ‘Wind Blows Again’, in relation to what appeared this past Sunday, May 27th in the “Acknowledgment of Receipt” section of the “Rebel Youth” newspaper.

‘Acknowledgement of Receipt ’ has become a species of social catharsis in our country and Jose Alejandro Rodriguez knows this, as do the bureaucrats and the indolent, as well as the population. Many times the complaints do not go any further than just being published there, but the myth has began to move forward and nothing can stop it. People know that if they appear there is a responsibility which arises. Eliecer Palma Pupo, a worker from the Transportation Base of the Urbano Noris Central, of San German, believed in that, wrote to them, and on December 17th 2011, his complaint appeared on the newspaper. He and various other drivers had not been paid the bonus of the previous period and he was already working during a new season and they were not paying him what they owed. He told Rodriguez, the journalist, of the situation in which he had to drive back and forth, here and there, and all the other tasks he had to complete numerous times. A few months later they paid him his due, but a few days ago, one of the chiefs of the sugar production group AZCUBA mailed justifications and evasive answers to the “Receipt” section of the paper…

Jose Alejandro has once again responded to them and taken up the case, apparently annoyed by the dryness of the technocrat who did not assure that the event, with reprimands and supposed propositions of disciplinary measures against three supposed culprits, will not happen again. I have wanted to point out the opinion he expressed in one of the paragraphs: “The response of an institution to a public complaint made by a group of workers during one period should never stay below the expectations which are created by the denouncement. What is essential is the analysis derived from the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of the offense. If we had all of these elements, and the organizational measures which are taken, then we could say that an error like this will not be repeated“.

Every day, thousands of letters from desperate Cubans fill the post offices of the island. Apparently, the sender’s pretensions are to have them published in order to solve injustices which human misery has plunged them into, and later, if they are not resolved, so that at least the army of useless functionaries will not go unpunished. Now, it does not matter if we write to the Commander- instead, it matters who does, because sooner or later they will all respond to a *Fuenteovejuna, sir!

*Translator’s note: Fuenteovejuna– is a Spanish play from 1619, based on the events which took place in the village of Fuenteovejuna, Spain, in 1476, when a commander mistreated numerous villagers. In response, the peasants’ came together and killed that commander. When the king’s men rode into the village to ask who had committed the murder, the villagers responded by saying: “Fuenteovejuna did it”.

Translated by Raul G.

3 June 2012

Words VS. Actions / Luis Felipe Rojas

“Down with Domestic Violence”- Art by El Sexto

Violence against women within different levels of society has taken an uncommon appearance. Amid campaigns and promotions to end this epidemic, the physical violence continues through untarnished machismo and a vulgar scorn for feminine dignity. Even without counting the official statistics of women who are killed or beaten, every day we hear oral stories of such lamentable cases in contemporary Cuba.

We do not have a realistic or objective press which analyzes and presents these cases in a critical manner. The social poll remains without hands nor feet. Regardless, these appalling testimonies remain in the collective memory and in the social imagination. During the last three months, a small provincial town such as San German has found itself caught up in four cases of murder of women (which I am not citing by name out of respect for the families), and all for motives of passion. Physical blows on the face and on the breasts, stabbings, attacks with machetes, and psychological wounds which will never fully heal.

Currently, the physical aggressions against women range from a shove to a punch while in the loneliness of a house or out in public, as well as cases with guns or sharp objects like knives. The motives of passion are nearly always because of supposed cheating, demands to have more accompaniment, and, only in rare cases, there has been a reverse response. Each passing day there are less women who fight back their oppressors, as was common during past decades through the use of poisoning, death by fire, or wounds with sharp objects.

Behind the pretty words spoken on Radio and TV, we are in need of an urgent action, and we need that action to bear true intentions of healing. The Cuban woman has been exposed to a verbal atmosphere of violence like never before. Their conditioned leadership in the most recent martial conflicts, as well as their participation in the inflamed battles of insults against those who are different have made them different: but also excluded. Years of coexistence in agricultural fields or in construction sites, of living side by side men under the notion that they have the same chores and rights, far from making them “equal” have made them different, but in a negative light. When words are not enough, we must know that campaigns aren’t either. From the coldness of the discourses we should pass into the heat of the facts.

Dawns of the sweetest love, their kindness could possibly be in extinction very soon, and it will be us, the impassive ones, who will be the only ones to blame.

Translated by Raul G.

28 May 2012

End of the Championships, End of the Soap Opera / Luis Felipe Rojas

It is May twenty-ninth, the dawn creeps up and brings the end of baseball season with a new champion: Ciego de Avila. Amid the euphoria which caused this tight closing against the giants of the Industriales, the deficiencies of the national pastime were brought to light.

Cuban baseball has been suffering for some time now from an ill which needs a complete cure, so that the passion which can be seen in the provincial stadiums and during international events could crystallize.

Out in the field, during the last few days of the season, when the eight best teams are playing, we can still witness running and batting mistakes, technical-tactical errors, players who do not know how to bunt the ball, and many other aspects which should have been learned during young ages. Clearly, these factors demonstrate the low level of competitiveness which this sport finds itself in.

What is not learned in the base…

Nearly all athletes, specialists, and fans agree in that their are economic difficulties and lack of attention for the social sport in Cuba. “It seems”, says Jorge during an illustrious Sports Debate in the city of Holguin, “that we have returned to the ‘championship-ism’ of the 1980′s”. Like him, others believe that without strong institutional support for the infant-juvenile leagues, there will not be good baseball for a while.

“It’s not enough”, adds Jorge, “to give it all to the established finalists, considering that this has been lacking from the moment the sport was begun”.

The municipal stadiums seem to be in post-war conditions, or like territories which have been ransacked by a plague. In various municipalities of the Eastern provinces, the baseball parks are home to the provincial season games without the frontal net which protects spectators, as well as lack of a roof in the bleachers and deficient illumination (or none).

What can INDER offer? Very little. The horrid diet and the deplorable fields go against the preparation and development of the performances. If the minimal resources are kept for the national championship, what can the baseball players of grade school levels or residents of far municipalities expect?

In provinces such as Las Tunas and Holguin, various teams play the provincial championship with players who end up returning to their homes through their own means afterward. The transportation provided by INDER is a group of trucks in which people must board or get off in order to leave or return. But since the conditions of lodging are horrible, many players prefer, after all, to sleep under their own roofs.

Lost Time

On occasions, the TV and Radio programs dedicated to baseball echo the fact that many people have shifted towards soccer. Every weekend, the TV broadcasts the best of that sport: the European league in all its versions.

Baseball, a captive of an ideology, has not been able to surpass the international obstacles in which the national sport faces. The day is still very far when they exhibit, as a final option, the League of the Caribbean, or its similar games in Venezuela or Mexico. Meanwhile, out in the bleachers and in the homes, the public asks for blood, literally.

The official guide to baseball (2009-2010), even while compiling the statistics starting on 1959 with the euphemistic name of “Revolutionary Baseball” (alluding to the rise of power of Fidel Castro), has maintained the names of those who have decided to leave the country or stay in their foreign excursions and are now stars or once shined as professional athletes. Jose Ariel Contreras, Alexei Ramirez, Aroldis Chapman, Livan and “El Duke” Hernandez, among others, make up the statistics: but they would not dare show their faces on TV.

Internet, the programs stolen through parabolic antennas, or those brought by Cuban-American tourists fill up some of that space. Under names such as “The Best Plays” or “The Best of the Best”, people record the bravery of Yunel Escobar or Kendrys Morales (or information on one of the latest deserters, Yoenis Cespedes) on CDs or USB drives. The ghost of Major League Baseball travels under the table and finds a way to sneak into Cuban homes.

Meanwhile, the Ideological Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party seals off the floodgates so that no more baseball players can explain or commit what Marxist denomination classifies to be “ideological distractions”. But the deep country continues the passion, and very few ever remember to refer to baseball as revolutionary.

This article was written by Luis Felipe Rojas and published on Diario de Cuba on May 29th, 2012. To read the original publication click here

Translated by Raul G.

The Continuity of the Island / Luis Felipe Rojas

Cuba is a country which has been narrated to the maximum. The poems, the essays, and the narratives have rummaged down to the core to bring out the best and worst of a nation, which in the process of trying to see itself has tried to be the belly of the world. Javier Negrin, a thirty year old who now lives in Isle of Pines has just awarded us with one of those rare jewels, a proposition so we do not lose ourselves. It is a book with five short stories, narrated at the velocity in which the youth lives, without make-up and without pretensions.

Even more, however, it is a book which is full of crude realism, the adoptive child of Charles Bukovsky and Pedro Juan Gutierrez. It is admired as a fiction, armed such as this one, which does not intend to go beyond its literary ancestors. YOTUEL, as a semantic game in the desperation of individuality, takes a chance on a documentary. It is the imagination which is seen as part of sub-world by any adolescent with a scholarship for second level grade school in any part of Cuba.

The five stories are threaded together through the incentive of some students who are careless, and abandoned by their parents in the midst of a socialist inferno which is the reality of the rural scholarships, where each individual, under the supposed Marti-idea of complementing Study-Work, cease being innocent when they discover a world of gangs, sexual and physical abuse, and psychological pressure in which they must establish themselves as people. But I swear that neither Negrin nor his characters say any of this.

This only appears in my grateful reader mind. A violation, or nearly- a group of hungry people- Tom Sawyer style or very near the story of “No Rest During That Summer” by Jose Manuel Prieto, who were surprised when they were stealing food which the granters of the scholarships were hiding from them. A fictional incest between the overprotective brother and his sister, an accident under the appearance of negligence, a love story- because if a book does not have a good love story then “it is crap”, as The Intellectual says about life, one of the characters of that book which has only 500 copies printed, which will get lost in the run down libraries of the province, despite the efforts of Ancoras Editions, or of the “Saiz Brothers” Association in Isle of Pines.

Attending the presentation of YOTUEL was one of the best things that happened to me during the past Festivities of May. To relive the scholarships without the mandate of the literary generation of the 80′s, which the functionary-writer Abel Prieto is part of, as is the star-writer Senel Paz or the writer’s-writer Abilio Estevez, under the hand of the Placetas native Javier Negrin Ruiz, is quite a luck. This is a book which is very similar to the Testimony, that orphaned son of Cuban literature. The subject of scholarships in Cuba, which swarmed in areas like Jaguey Grande, Isle of Pines, and Zola, Matanzas, as well as Camaguey or San Andres in Holguin is something which History, Testimony, or Journalism should owe us for the future, when we become an adult nation. The children who traveled from Guantanamo to pick up their grapefruits in Gerona, or to prune oranges in the center of the country, were not better or worse. They were the youths who went off to kill and die in Africa, who left their bodies down in the Florida Straits or that awoke one day without the Berlin Wall. More than an idyllic encounter between little pioneers who loved their country, the “rural schools” were one of those infernos which many try to bury, and YOTUEL by Nergrin Ruiz revives it in halves, and that’s something to be grateful for. Everyone is invited to read.

Translator: Raul G.

14 May 2012

Celebration or Condemnation? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo taken from the internet

One can already hear the beating drum of the proletariat. Just a few work days away from the International Day of the Worker, the red machine of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) has spent various weeks moving around its chains.

This time, the confirmation came from the voice and presence of Salvador Valdes Mesa, as the czar of the one and only official Union. The first vice president — Estaban Lazo — has accompanied him in his adventures through factories and institutions. But, who and what will they celebrate?

The indication of this year is that the State recruits and those who have wandered into the private sector will march “in a tight and uniformed block”. The support that the latter will give to the economic model of the island confirms that the wave of lay-offs, which the State decided to interrupt at the last minute, was worth it. In the blocks, we will see the unemployed, those who are nearly at that point, and those who see them like a mirror of what their lives could be in just a few months if the sacred economic guidelines go through.

The leading elite and the followers which will be in charge of carrying the country on their shoulders have received high level reprimands, under accusations of sparking re-unionism, idleness, and administrative corruption as an ill that is worse than even that of “counterrevolution”. At the same time, they are blamed for the economic inefficiency which Cuba suffers from, they are accused of not being at the high level of the working people. And that’s to everyone: victims and offenders. The slipping of the frontiers between the culprits has been and continues being the axis of revolutionary rhetoric — saying a lot without saying anything.

Ever since Monday, April 23rd, when the convocation occurred, the same actors as always have popped up throughout Cuban television screens: secretaries from the nucleus of the single Party in the national corporations, undaunted unionists, exemplary workers, and the general public which indestructibly supports the massive parade in unconditional solidarity with the Marxist-Leninst postulates.

What has been left out of this performance act — pronouncements and promotions aside — has been the authors of the thousands of complaints which are being sent every single week to newspapers, radio stations, and other public spaces. It is difficult to believe (a show, after all) that Cuban workers march “in solidarity with millions of workers and citizens of countless countries who also march today demanding their fundamental rights to life and work with dignity”, without even blinking before the violations committed against them.

What is true is that no-one is awaiting spontaneous reactions against the rulers, but the operation of the restructuring of the labor force, the expulsions of those who have been deemed ‘non-suitable’, and the hundreds of workers from the tourism sector who have seen their months of labor being reduced due to the international economic crisis, among others, without a doubt conforms a good breeding ground.

Popular non-conformity towards the high taxes on the self-employment sector, the disorder of clients amid the elevated prices of agricultural products and other fundamental services, as well as the complaints of the incessant bustle of inspectors and bureaucrats in search of commissions or with absurd refusals amid any single process are all significant evaluators that May 1st will be a sincere and cynical act consisting of parts that are still unknown.

If, in reality, the thousands of unionists from the non-state sector, convoked now by the State, march in support of those who have closed the doors on them during half a century, they would be forging a new elite similar to that which sustains the Nomenklatura and it would be yet another act of apartheid against the attempts of independent unions — that black hole when it comes to citizen participation in contemporary Cuba.

Translated by Raul G.

30 April 2012

We, The Others / Luis Felipe Rojas

Dissidents have taken these measures to protect their families from acts of repudiation and from State Security

It was Spring of 2005 when I read “The Others: Challenges of Reconciliation“, written by Juan Antonio Blanco. I remember having experimented with the sensation of having relocated myself once more. I felt that I was once again setting off my prow in regards to the hate and fears of the Cuba in which I live.

Seven years later, I am “the other one” in my neighborhood, in my local sugar-producing area, in this Eastern region.

I am looked upon as someone who wants to open the door to a Miami, who wants to take everything away from Cubans. To “them”, I am helping to hand the country over to the Americans (schools, homes, children’s day cares, etc). That is how the propaganda machine of the ideological department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba paints us — yesterday under the direction of the ousted Carlos Aldana and today under former colonel Rolando Alfonso Borges. Under the most complicit of silences, “they” have seen how they apply the Pre-Criminal Social Dangerousness Law, how they beat us, arbitrarily arrest us, surround our homes for several days and how we have to deal with rations of hate such as the “acts of repudiation”, public mockery, and absolute scorn for being “different”.

But “they” also suffer from the lack of information. They subject themselves to the abusive and humiliating migratory process known as the Exit Permit to be able to leave the country (or to be able to come in). They suffer hunger, lack of resources to live a “normal” life, and they have also lost hope. They have hit rock bottom just like “us”.

However, among “them” there are those who support us in silence. They print out copies of clandestine magazines for us, they lend us internet service, they bring us messages from the exterior and they risk their safety by keeping us in their homes…until they blow the whistle on them. “They” wait until tomorrow, “to see if this changes. It can’t be like this forever, brother…

The most common arguments are that among “us” there is no leader, or that we are under the wing of Washington (Miami) and not of Moscow, Peking, or Caracas. To “them” we are few, we do not have the support of the majority of the population, and our goals, in addition to being unfeasible, are annexationist, a sacrilegious voice in the centennial history of our coarse nationalism.

Without even noticing that we are like “them”, they accuse us of being less intelligent, and “we” are the ones that have ideological (or political) problems and we are the ones that are crazy.

One question comes up in my mind often: Who has suffered more from fear of repression — “them” or “us”? However, it is not the monosyllable for an answer what is most enriching, but instead: What did each and every one of us do after the first 10 seconds of terror?

My conclusion is that not even under magic spells would I prefer returning to be like “them”, to lower my head, to seal my lips, to remain silent, lower my hands, stop walking, and sell my future to “them”.

PS: Thanks to Particia, from Berlis, for her questions, tantrums and arguments about a week ago inspired me to write this post.

Translated by Raul G.

My Festivities / Luis Felipe Rojas

Festivities of May in Holguin, 2012 / Photos: Luis Felipe Rojas

More than five years ago, the Festivities of May stopped being my festivities. A political accident excluded me from a celebration which I ingeniously believed to be mine. Today I once again was able to take a peek at that gift which is to look at Cuba, and nearly touch her, with the lens.

Translated by Raul G.

Charo: The Snitch / Luis Felipe Rojas

Through a method of stupidity and propaganda, Cuban television usually goes beyond us. What to do about it, though? We are not perfect. However, this past Saturday April 21st, during the morning cartoons, many of us were shocked at what we saw. It was a short cartoon for kids, with the same title as this post, and it’s origin was unknown (most likely Mexican or Spanish).

Since they did not put the initial nor the ending credits on the screen, it left it up to us to investigate where the cartoon was coming from and how it was made. The synopsis is as follows: a little girl, who speaks her mind without anyone asking her to, is the headache of the family. In fact, whenever she does something which she considers could cause problems, she blames it on others.

Anything that goes missing at home. What has been said or done in front of her, the mischievousness of her fellow students, and a rosary of denunciations which, if they do not imply any sort of penal punishment for its accusations, then they advance its precociousness as a gossip-monger snitch.

What is surprising is that the armies of former colonel Rolando Alfonso Borges, under the ideological executive of the Community Party of Cuba, missed the error. In Cuba, any citizen can suffer a beating, an arrest, a fine, or can even be penalized for the crime of “disobedience of authority” for using the word “snitch” when referring to an informer, in other words, a civilian whose purpose is to make the job of the police and other officials from the repressive Ministry of the Interior easy. In its different variations, snitches, informants, confidants and informers are scattered all over the place: in the factories, schools, neighborhoods, the market, the baseball stadium. What do they denounce? Anything. The information which they provide ranges from what is being sold to who is selling it in which neighborhood, with whom the young neighbors meet up, what is the subject spoken about during the line to buy bread, from where does the flour used to make clandestine pizza come from, which citizens do not live according to what their work should provide, and so on, and so on.

During the Republican era in Cuba, in the first half of the XX century, that is how one referred to people who denounced the actions against the two consecutive dictatorships: that of Machado and Batista. But what popular language institutes cannot be abolished by any decree. After the rise to power of FC (I swear that I do not even want to type his name), those who assumed the dishonorable work of informing about the steps of their compatriots were still referred to as Snitches. And even when police coercion has had countless victims, the term grew popular among people, and today it is one of the worst offenses that can ever be said to a Cuban. The behavioral neighborhood code (even when it is homophobic) dictates to men from the moment they are just children: “neither a snitch, nor a coward.”

The popular denomination has set various meanings: drunkard, rat, trumpet, ‘guari-guari’, goat, and much more. On the other hand, the graphic, radio, and television (in other words, institutionalized) media is not even brushed by the petal of a joke, due to severe censorship as well as through similar methods under self-censorship.

Ever since the 70′s of the past century, the cartoon image of an elderly lady — the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution — sneaked into our homes. Her name is Chuncha and, in reality, just as much as because of her design than by her meaning for each Cuban who feels as if they are being watched, this character is one of the most repulsive ones ever seen on national television.

Even then, the popular orchestra — Dan Den — dedicated a song with which time has passed through without shame or glory (it’s already known: there is always a route for a stranger), while on the other hand the native troubadour Frank Delgado composed a ‘guaracha’ which served as the base for the short fiction video made by Eduardo del Llano — “Monte Rouge”. The chorus and one of the lines goes like this: “Turn off the microphone and quit being mysterious…despite how much you struggle, you are not the Ministry. You are an assemblage, an amateur, and mediocre snitch. Turn off the microphone and quit being mysterious”.

Translated by Raul G.

25 April 2012