Category: Translator: Regina Anavy

When Roman, a tall, skinny guantanamero, who has spent three years living clandestinely in Havana, feels a burning sexual desire, he plans his binge.

After working 12 hours selling trashy textiles and pirated tennis shoes in a street fair on Galiano, which brings him daily earnings between 20 and 30 dollars, he goes to the small room he keeps rented for 40 dollars a month in the San Isidro shantytown. He bathes and shaves. He puts on a bright pair of jeans and pours a strong, cheap cologne over his whole body.

To accelerate his libido, he takes half a capsule of Viagra, sold on the black market for a dollar each. Earlier, in a cafe near the Casa de la Música in Central Havana, he calmly drank five or six ice-cold bottles of Bucanero beer.

After a bit, the whores start to congregate. There are two ways to deal with the hookers in local currency. Either wait for them shamelessly to come to you to make their offers, or by that universal body language of prostitutes, you see what vibe they’re presenting.

It’s all easy. Sex-hungry men like Roman already know the pimps for many prostitutes. There is something for everyone. And prices. You can have a quickie for two dollars in the bathroom of the cafe where you’re drinking beer, or in a dark corner of the many dilapidated buildings in Havana, they will suck you till you finish. Always with a condom in place.

If you want something different, you have the option of hookers a la carte. Black, white or mulatta. Equally, you can have two on your arm, to make a picture of lesbian love. If you pay extra, you can take them home. In that case, the pimp asks you “please don’t abuse them or give them drugs.”

At any time of day in that kilometer of Havana geography that includes Chinatown from Zanja Street up to Central Park, a legion of kids have a trained eye to spot the guys who are looking for hookers.

Osvaldo, a young mulatto who spends several hours in the gym every day, is one of those who lives off his women. He has six working for him. “I live by my pinga (penis). That’s what God gave me. A good cock and the power of seduction. I was once arrested for pimping. But this is a business that lets you make money without getting your hands dirty. Now the police are less strict. And I work without much pressure. The ideal thing is to hook up yumas (foreigners) with my girls. But there are now many Cubans with money, and they are more generous than foreigners,” he says while scanning the scene.

There are also independent hookers, like Julianna. She doesn’t have a pimp. “All the money I make is for me. I have to take care of my sick mother, who suffers from nerves, and a 5-year-old son. After 8 pm I pay a woman to take care of them both and I go into the ‘fire’ (the street). I do well,” she says. The only thing she asks is that the guy be good looking and bathe before having sex. “Oh, and to not be stingy.”

Dedicated to the “meat market” (prostitution), several houses in Central Havana are for rent. Some are comfortable and air-conditioned homes, which typically charge five dollars an hour. Others are true joints. Hot, humid rooms that look more like the cache of a terrorist than a place to fornicate.

These shacks charge a dollar an hour. They are preferred by Cubans with few resources. Roman, who turns over money every month to his mother and three children in Guantanamo, would rather pay for a cheap room.

All the hookers carry condoms. Some even keep in their bag in a sharp awl or a Swiss army knife recently sharpened. “It’s that sometimes the guys get nasty or will not pay or try to give us a beating,” says Tatiana, one of the hookers swarming around Monte Street.

By nightfall, the prostitutes have multiplied. The pimps drink rum in the bars and parks nearby, while their women are “working” outside. Specialized police in their black uniforms with their German shepherds don’t even see them. There are so many prostitutes it’s frightening.

Photo: Cover of the book, The Night Gave Birth to a Hooker (2006, publisher Manati, Dominican Republic), by Olga Consuegra, writer and screenwriter based in Santo Domingo. In the book, 22 Cuban prostitutes in the Dominican Republic recount how they started hooking in Cuba. Today they are known by Dominicans as “imported hookers”. The only man interviewed is the owner of a brothel.

In a review published in the Journal of the Americas in December 2006, journalist Luis de la Paz wrote: “Many have college degrees (veterinary, engineering), [and are] professionals in different fields. All left Cuba for a better life and in most cases continued in the ancient craft. So they were not led into prostitution by their status as migrants, but were brought to this task by the tyranny that rules Cuba, that has made prostitution into a way to survive, something which, unfortunately, is not deeply discussed in the book.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

May 26 2011

The habaneros were screaming for it. After 9 months of a fierce drought, where water-laden clouds kept moving around the city, and the dams and reservoirs had gone to code red, the rain appeared.

Now, when the month of May leaves us, the longed-for spring showers made themselves present. Children and teens in shorts, barefoot and shirtless enjoyed the first serious rain of the season

Some adults also joined the party. And worried. Water reserves in Havana reach only 18%. And added to that, more than 60% is lost every night because of leaks in the whole capital. The alarming shortage made the water authorities give a new turn of the screw in the distribution of the precious liquid in the capital.

In most neighborhoods of Havana, on alternate days, usually after 8 pm at night, potable water is distributed to the population. In the old part of town there are places where running water has never reached the tap.

There are houses with pipes thick with magnesium and garbage. Nemesio, a resident of Laguna Street in the marginal and largely black suburb of San Leopoldo, has forgotten the last time he took a shower.

In these places, the birthplace of prostitutes and swindlers, the “pipers”, as they call those who handle the “pipes” or tank trucks, often make a lot of money. A family in a three-story tenement, with some resemblance to a U.S. prison from the mid-20th century, pays up to $20 for the “piper” to fill their water tanks.

In these parts, water has its price. Types who came from the east of the country who live underground in Havana, charge 4 dollars to fill up a 55-gallon tank. And believe me, there’s enough work. With the first rains of May, people breathed a sigh of relief.

“We now need it to rain every day for two months, in order to take the bad away,” says a santera. Like her, there are many people afraid of the vagaries of time. The news from the north and south is frightening. Murderous tornadoes in the U.S. and endless rain in South America. As if to show that the world is upside down.

In Arroyo Arenas, municipality of La Lisa, west of the capital, there was an intense local storm, which dropped hail the size of lemons. The rains of May also brought thunderous lightning, and because of deficiencies in drains and sewers, the streets were flooded.

But that’s not important. Habaneros were clamoring for rain, so the dams and the water table are overflowing. We’ll see if these showers alleviate the African heat.

The showers of May have returned a smile to residents and authorities. Let the water continue. Let Havana become Macondo.*

Translator’s note: Macondo is a fictional town created by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It suffered a four-year rainfall.

Translated by Regina Anavy

May 28 2011

In the year 2000, in a long, narrow cubicle of the National Capitol, the present seat of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment, an Internet service at 5 dollars per hour was authorized. At that time 5 dollars was a little more than half the minimum wage in Cuba. The service was agonizingly slow. Its main use was for email. If you were lucky, you could get some world news.

Sending photos was a real pain. Beginning in 2008, all Cuban citizens could log onto the Internet from Havana hotels for a fee ranging from 6 convertible pesos (CUC), about 8 dollars, to 10 CUC (12 dollars) for one hour of navigation.

The connection is still slow but better than that of the Capitol building. Now, with the arrival in February 2011 of the famous underwater cable linking Cuba with Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, in a bizarre digital entente that people in the street called Alba.net, the speed of data transmission has improved qualitatively.

But it’s nothing to write home about. In an hour you can transfer photos and some small video that does not exceed 40 megabytes. Anyway, before you upload photos and videos, you must compress them on your computer at home because you run the risk of using up your hour of connection time without being able to upload the material.

That is, by paying in hard currency you can get on the information highway. That’s the good news. Let’s look at the bad. Virtually speaking, Cuba is an island split in two. Outside Havana, Cubans are not allowed to connect to the Internet in tourist facilities that have that service.

You have to show your passport. Just ask the troop of hard-working independent journalists from the central and eastern provinces about the difficulties they have in posting their stories and articles. In Santiago de Cuba, you can get into the Hotel Santiago, although at times the hotel security makes it impossible. People who live in Havana are “privileged.”

The other major problem is the high cost, which makes it practically impossible for most reporters and bloggers without an office. Not all independent reporters earn money for their writings in Cuba. And those who do receive between 25 and 100 convertible pesos per month, barely enough to let them survive.

Most connect to the Internet once a week in one of the two places provided in the United States Interests Section (USIS), next to the Havana seawall. A service that not only is offered to dissidents: intellectuals sympathetic to the regime also connect from there. Other dissidents do so in western embassies like the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland or the Czech Republic, which offer two hours a week free.

Connecting to the Internet is the biggest problem with alternative reporting in Cuba. And from what I can see, it’s going to get worse. The picture doesn’t look good.

According to reliable information, a crippled Internet service is being designed, scheduled for commercialization in late 2011. A kind of Intranet, where users can access only local sites and others that the government considers not harmful to its interests. This one would have access to international mail like Yahoo or Gmail.

There is talk that the installation of a DSL line by ETECSA would cost 150 convertible pesos (170 dollars), and the transmission rate would be more than 120 kilobytes, nearly double the current one. The amount would be paid monthly, according to the number of hours. It’s a feasibility study.

We’ll see what the leaders decide. The tide of events in north Africa keeps them on tenterhooks. The Castros recognize the mobilizing force of the Internet and the social networks. And they fear it. It would not be unrealistic to think that when the Internet – or the Intranet – is commercialized on the island, the virtual police will come later, in the style of China. The same or worse.

The other issue of concern, big concern, is an information law that the ideological Talibans have kept in the drawer. If implemented, it would be an appendix to Law 88, the gag law, the same that led to the imprisonment of 75 dissidents in the spring of 2003. It has been leaked that said law will regulate and penalize the use of the Internet. Tools like Facebook or Twitter, or any use that the Castro government does not consider appropriate, could lead to a criminal penalty. Let’s hope they won’t lower the boom.

The fears of the regime and the restrictions, in addition to restricting a handful of civil and political liberties, are dynamiting the future of a generation that also was born in Cuba under the domination of the @.

Some hotels and prices

In the Hotel Saratoga an hour costs 10 CUC (12 dollars). For two hours you pay 15 CUC, more advantageous. You have Wi-Fi for 24 hours. Three PCs offer service from 8 am to 5 pm. If you go with your laptop and a card previously purchased from the hotel, you can connect at any time.

In the Central Park Hotel one hour costs 8 CUC (10 dollars). Five hours cost 35 CU (40 dollars), which comes out to 7 CUC an hour. The connection is between 60 and 80 kilobytes.

The fastest connection is in the Melia Cohiba. The speed can reach 120 kilobytes. One hour costs 10 CUC if you use the terminal in the hotel. If you want Wi-Fi, you have to pay 12 CUC (15 dollars).

In almost all the hotels in Havana the price fluctuates between 8 and 10 CUC per hour for the Internet. The speed has improved. But not enough to upload large files or videos.

In Old Havana there are hotels where cards cost 6 CUC an hour, but the connection is very bad. They also use a software called Avila, which is rumored to be a spyware program that copies your email account or the password for your blog.

Translated by Regina Anavy

May 9 2011

After preparing a very cold tamarind juice, she sits on the sofa. “Go play, I want to talk about things a little girl shouldn’t hear,” she tells her 11-year-old daughter.

An enormous cat, old and almost blind, by instinct, with one jump makes itself comfortable on its owner’s lap. While she strokes the feline, Yolanda, 46, begins to tell her story about being a hardened whore.

“In the mid-’80’s, after quitting school after an abortion for an unwanted pregnancy, I went with a group of friends to hang out on the malecón. We used to bring a bottle of rum, and several of us decided to get dollars from the tourists.”

It was precisely in that epoch that the term “jinetero” (“jockey”, literally) was born. The first “jineteros” of Fidel Castro’s revolution were young people in search of the dollar, then prohibited by Cuban law.

“Our business was to get fulas (dollars). Later, Africans who were studying in Cuba got us a lot of stuff. Jeans, tennis shoes and shorts, that we sold on the black market. A good business. Earnings tripled, but it was risky. If the police caught you, you could spend four years behind bars.”

At that time, she was a curvy mulatta who could stop traffic. “When I walked by, all the men would turn their heads and foreigners would proposition me. I just wanted to have fun, dance and eat in restaurants forbidden to Cubans. Having hard currency was prohibited by law, the same as staying in or hanging around tourist hotels,” remembers Yolanda.

“The first time I went to bed with a gringo (foreigner) I was 21. He asked me how much it would cost for the night and I told him to give me whatever he wanted. After making love we went to the hotel shop, and the man, a Canadian tourist, bought me clothes, cosmetics and electrical appliances.”

The Canadian put two 100-dollar bills between her breasts. After that night, Yolanda was determined to make money from her well-shaped body. “I liked to fuck (screw), and besides, at the end of the day I made good money. It was worth the trouble to take up prostitution.”

In a worn book she has listed the names of all the foreigners with whom she had sexual relations. “There are more than 100 men and some 50 women. Those were the days, parties, drugs and loads of sex,” she recalls as she strokes the old cat.

Her advantage, she explains, was in hooking for herself. Never in a group. Nor did she work for any pimp. “I invested the money in buying a house and helping my mother. I was married twice. The first time to a Mexican, the second to a Belgian. But I never got used to being away from my people. I missed them a lot. From the malecón to the flirtatious comments in the streets.”

She always returned to Havana. When the men no longer turned their heads at her passing, she knew she had to hang up her shingle. And she got together with a harmless, affectionate master baker who treats her like a queen.

Of that period only memories remain. “In those times of need, given the number of women in search of money, girls of 12 and 13 years were induced to go to bed with guys who could have been their grandfathers, for 20 or 30 dollars. Previously, a high-class hooker would not fuck for less than 100 dollars.”

The cat, bored and hungry, jumps from her lap and goes off to a corner of the patio. Yolanda follows it with her eyes and sums up her existence.

“I had a good time. I went places I never could have gone if I had been a simple worker. I traveled to different countries. I tried good cocaine and shopped in expensive stores. I have three daughters, but I don’t want them to be hookers. I want them to study and be good professionals,” she says, and she gets up to prepare the family dinner. She has no regrets. “I was a party girl. And life took away the party.”
Translated by Regina Anavy

April 30 2011

Yuliesky, a high school student, doesn’t have the slightest concern about examination week. Certainly his scholarly learning is zero. Swinging nights at discotheques and hot parties are a substitute for studying.

But at zero hour, his parents give money discretely to certain teachers, and they let him blow off the exams. Either way, Yuliesky has an extensive bag of tricks to pass the exams.

“It’s true that you can’t bribe all the teachers with a 20-CUC bill (=19 dollars). So I use other tricks. I record the possible answers in an Mp3 file and copy them onto a cellphone. Another technique is that a colleague who finishes first sends me the exam answers by SMS. Only I have to be careful that the teacher doesn’t see me. And I’m an expert at that,” brags Yuliesky.

If in high school and university there are frequent, shocking cases of academic fraud, imagine what happens in night schools, where those who work or have left school try to get into 9th or 12th grade.

If you have money, you’re assured of passing all the exams. It’s easy. You pay 5 “chavitos” (4 dollars), and the teacher will pass you on the exam,” pointed out Eddy, a second-semester student at a school located in Lawton, on the outskirts of Havana.

Fraud in Cuban schools is a deep evil, almost endemic. And on a greater or lesser scale it’s been happening since 1970. The massive fraud scandal involving teachers from the René O. Reiné college-prep school in the Havana neighborhood of La Vibora still lives on in memory.

In primary and secondary schools, students don’t have to be looking for a teacher’s inattention to copy the exam from their desk-mate. “Several times a teacher would enter the classroom and whisper the answer to you,” remembers Fernando.

According to Anselmo, a professor who is now a hotel porter, “There was enormous pressure on teachers to meet the parameters dictated by the Ministry of Education. If you had many students who repeated a grade it was not seen well. Teacher quality was measured by the percent of students who passed the grade and by high scores. These were the foundations of what came later. We lived the motto of having the best education in the world. And for the sake of everyone having a high educational level, fraud was not combated. On the contrary.”

For 40 years, academic fraud has been a virus that exists throughout the island, even in the universities. “But to a lesser extent. There is more rigor and better teachers. I remember that a teacher caught me copying and said, ‘What does it solve? You will have a title, but you will be a mediocre professional all your life. It was a lesson,” remembers David, an architect.

In general, students who systematically cheat or bribe their teachers to pass exams don’t reach the university. And if they do, they drop out.

Like Rosa, who left a career in philosophy in her second year. Used to copying and paying for exams, the difficulty of a university degree was too much for her. Nor was she able to retain the new information. Now, while she waits outside the Habana Libre for a Canadian tourist who will pay her 50 dollars for sex, she regrets it.

Translated by Regina Anavy

April 2 2011

The contractor Alan Gross, 61, remains in jail. Raúl Castro’s government definitively sentenced him to 15 years. The Gross case was shrouded in mystery and uncertainty. And it brought back the Cold War era.

After 15 months in a cell and in legal limbo, the judge handed down the sentence. Something similar happens to other foreign prisoners in Cuba, like the Spanish businessman Sebastián Martínez. In Cuba, it’s “normal” to come before a court one year after the day of your detention. Or more.

Some analysts thought that the criminal penalty of the American Jew, accused of creating parallel computer networks without the regime’s authorization, would be a few years. Many even bet that he could be on a Boeing headed home.

But the Castro brothers have a large collection of tricks up their sleeve. They are unpredictable. And they usually always do just the opposite of what logic dictates. Anyway, the case of the gringo contractor can be read in different ways.

The good news for the Gross family is that there’s no need to panic. Cuban prosecutors can easily condemn you to a torrent of years, but then, from international pressure, rationality and political negotiations behind the scenes, you can return to your country a few months after being condemned.

Alan Gross is a useful piece in this new game of political chess with the United States. He always has been. The anti-Castro fighters who fought in the Bay of Pigs and the CIA’s spies were exchangeable products.

In 1961, after the 72-hour victory at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro exchanged most of the captured enemy combatants for baby food and powdered mashed potatoes.

Something similar happened with certain spies of the U.S. special services. Even the mortal remains of the U-2 pilot shot down during the tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 were a war trophy to be traded for political gain.

The Castros are more interested in imposing fear on local opponents and condemning them for many years than in outside adversaries. Yet, in the case of internal dissidence. they will haggle with Western powers if they see political gains in return.

Gross will be behind bars until a good proposal appears from the White House. The brothers are always open to listening to offers. Let’s make some.

A major political carrot would be to exchange Gross for the five spies from the 11 members of the Wasp network who were captured in 1998, considered “national heroes” by the regime. It has been a public pledge that Fidel Castro has failed to accomplish. Now time passes, and death subtly lurks around the comandante.

Gross was like an angel fallen from heaven. If Obama and Clinton have a real interest in the contractor, they could consent to exchange him for the 5 spies; this is more or less the logic of Castro I. You can also negotiate with new measures of economic flexibility for Cuba. And since the elder Castro often plays hardball, why not exchange him for their star spy, Ana Belén Montes, who infiltrated the CIA and was sentenced to 25 years?

The U.S. government, equally adept at business and political trade-offs, considers its options. The ball is in the White House’s court. It’s up to Obama to move it.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 16 2011

The saga of espionage used by the government of Cuba against U.S. contractor Alan Gross, 61, could end in the coming days when the prosecutor announces the final penalty.

Gross’s trial, with the prosecution asking for 20 years in prison, was adjourned pending sentencing on Saturday, March 5, at the 10th of October Court of Justice, situated in Havana’s most populous municipality.

The official press released a simple statement which reported that “U.S. citizen Alan Gross acknowledged that he had brought into the country computer equipment and satellite dishes to form parallel networks, which are not authorized by the government. ”

It said that Gross was provided all the legal safeguards stated in the Cuban Constitution and that he admitted having been deceived by the company he works for, Development Alternatives, contracted by the State Department, and by the Department of State itself.

According to the report released by the Cuban state media, the contractor complained of economic losses and family hardship during his 15 months of imprisonment on the island.

In parallel with the case of the Jewish contractor, State television announced on Monday, March 7, a new chapter of denunciations of actions by the U.S. against Cuba, and that on this occasion it will stress the satellite communications, precisely what happened to Gross, and will provide “hard evidence” of Washington’s interference.

Anyway, despite the regime’s gibberish about the Gross case, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the penalty could be waived or greatly reduced from the 20 years requested by the prosecutor.

While the fate of a gringo, old and sick, and according to him, deceived, depends on the good will of the government of Raúl Castro, in the back room a new wave of spies is being cooked up. In addition to submitting photos and videos of the American’s activities in Cuba, they will take the opportunity to try to discredit to the utmost the opposition, independent journalists and the local blogosphere.

A threatened and even more discredited dissidence would make it nonviable as a catalyst for future popular unrest.

The real enemy of the Castros is not Gross. The American is nothing more than a good currency of exchange. It’s not bad for negotiating with the Yankees. Or as a political show. Little more.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 8 2011