Category: Translator: Regina Anavy

The Spanish businessman Sebastián Martínez Ferraté, charged with corruption of minors, pimping and illegal economic activities, will be judged on Monday July 18 at the Provincial Court of Havana, whose official seat is located on Prado, Teniente and Rey. However, trials in the presence of diplomats and the media are usually held in the 10th of October Municipal Court, on Carmen and Juan Delgado.

On a ward of La Condesa, a special prison for foreigners on the outskirts of the capital. Martinez Ferraté has been waiting for a year for a trial whose verdict is known beforehand.

The prosecution requested 15 years’ imprisonment, maybe reduced to 10 or 5. But it is clear that they will have him pay the bill for having made, or contributing to making, in 2008, a documentary showing the full extent of prostitution, including child prostitution.

It also exposed the corruption existing around prostitution on the island. The documentary was shown on Tele Cinco, a private TV channel in Spain. It was a blockbuster.

And a blow to the Cuban authorities. So they began plotting their revenge. It is known that every year the US State Department places Cuba on the list of countries where child prostitution is practiced. Something that bothers the government a lot. And the Sebastián case served to send a message to the insolent foreign visitors who might dare to show the ugly face of the country.

The documentary might be new for those who support the Castros in Spain. But for a Cuban independent journalist it is more of the same.

What the audio-visual documents continues to happen in Cuba. Each day the prostitutes are younger and almost an industry of prostitution has been erected. I’m not saying the police stand around with their arms crossed, but for every prostitute, pimp or child molester put behind bars, four more appear.

Prostitution is a social phenomenon. Dragged down by poverty, lack of opportunity and the desire to emigrate, a legion of women sell themselves to tourists for two 20-dollar bills.

The government has never offered an estimate of the number of people enrolled in prostitution. But there are thousands. The public knows about the increase in prostitution and pimping, and they mention it under their breath.

What bothers the authorities is that the subject is being put on display by the mainstream media. And with child prostitution being a sensitive issue, the director of a hotel chain in Mallorca prepared a trap for Ferraté Martinez.

According to the writer Ángel Santiesteban in his blog, The Children that Nobody Wanted, through a Cuban “friend” related to Martinez, in July 2010, they had ​​him come to Cuba believing that he would be making a documentary about the hotel business. No sooner did he arrive in Havana then he was arrested and put into jail.

The Spaniard sinned by naiveté. The Cuban government does not forgive certain “offenses.” They punish them. Harshly. Sebastian Martinez joined the list of guinea pigs that serve the Castro regime for negotiating future deals.

He will become a currency of exchange. Like the American Alan Gross or local dissidents. There are a range of options for exchanging Martinez. From a line of credit, asking the Spanish politicians to raise support for the unique position of the EU, up to silence and complicity with the regime in Havana.Or anything else. You can figure it out.

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Translated by Regina Anavy

July 18 2011

Coppelia, the most famous ice-cream parlor in Havana and in Cuba, turned 45 on June 4. Located on the corner of Calle 23 at L on the central avenue La Rampa, its architecture is one of the most beautiful and best-designed since the olive-green revolution led by Fidel Castro.

The design, by Mario Girona (1924-2008), one of the most important Cuban architects of the 20th century, was done with the collaboration of planners Rita Maria Grau and Candelario Ajuria. The structural calculation was carried out by engineers Maximiliano Isoba and Gonzalo Paz.

Girona formerly completed a successful project baptized with the indigenous name Guamá, established in 1962 in the Zapata Swamp, Bay of Pigs, Matanzas, about 140 kilometers southeast of the capital. Those 10 wooden huts in a circular motion in the manner of a Taino village (aboriginal), on the edge of a lagoon infested with crocodiles, remain one of the favorite places for tourists.

When they entrusted Mario Girona to design the gigantic ice-cream parlor, he was somewhat taken aback. In an interview done a few years ago, he emphasized, “There were no global benchmarks for such an immense ice-cream parlor.” In record time, the architect Girona and his team drew the rough sketch of Coppelia, strongly influenced by the style of the tourist complex of the Zapata Swamp. In this respect he stated: “Guamá was the starting point for the new work. To give some privacy, we designed five small spaces, a large court divided into three sections and a floor on top. We provided ample parking and lush natural vegetation, which would not intrude.”

The hospital Reina Mercedes, built in 1886, formerly was situated on this spot. The land had cost 3,000 pesos. When it was demolished in 1954, the land was worth 250,000 pesos. The idea was to erect a 50-story skyscraper, even taller than the Focsa, the tallest building on the island, with 36 floors.

But the project didn’t materialize because of the arrival of the bearded ones. Before, a recreation center called “Nocturnal” and a tourist pavilion had functioned in the ample space. In 1966, during the celebration of an international congress in the Hotel Habana Libre, situated on the opposite corner, Fidel Castro, a great lover of ice cream, decided to erect Coppelia, whose name and image – the legs of a ballerina – pay homage to one of the great performances of the National Ballet of Cuba.

When, on June 4, 1966, the Coppelia ice-cream parlor opened, it offered a menu with 26 flavors and 24 combinations. A scoop of coconut with almonds or cream cost 50 cents, a Copa Melba (vanilla ice cream with a slice of mango, strawberry syrup and marshmallow), one peso. That day they sold more than 3,000 tubs of ice cream, and during the 12 hours it was open, the line was several blocks long.

Ice cream is one of the favorite treats for Cubans of all ages and eras. The first ice-cream shop was installed in 1807. Due to a climate that averages around 30 degrees (Celsius) annually, people like to cool off with ice cream, alone or with cake, cookies and syrup. Or a milk-shake with ice.

Before the comandante took power, there were several prestigious brands of ice cream in Havana: Hatuey, Guarina, San Bernardo and El Gallito. They were sold in ice-cream parlors and cafes or in vehicles located in crowded spots in the city. “I preferred waiting for the seller ringing a bell in a cart with wheels or pulled by horses. For a peseta (20 cents) you could buy an iced coconut,” remembers Humberto, a retired man of 82 years.

Those ice creams, produced with milk in factories, competed with the artisanal fruit ones, produced by the Chinese without milk. According to Josephine, a housewife, 70, “I have never tasted ice cream as rich as the ones made by the Chinese.”

After Castro they continued to make good ice cream. The Coppelia brand was sold in the ice-cream parlor of the same name. It was very creamy and came in 20 different flavors.

With the arrival of the “Special Period,” an economic crisis that has lasted 22 years, ice cream became a luxury. And its quality diminished tremendously. In those hard years, the ice-cream parlor was open two hours a day. There were only two or three flavors, and because of a lack of milk, the ice cream was watery and tasteless.

Ice-cream resellers bought tubs of ice cream from Coppelia. And in their homes or the vicinity of hospitals and playgrounds, they sold a plastic cup of ice cream for 10 pesos. This was one of the many illegal business that existed in Havana.

With the legalization of the dollar, imported ice cream with the brand-names Word or Nestlé arrived. One Nestlé Extreme was worth 2.50 cuc (3 dollars), the 4-day salary of a worker. For hard currency you could also buy first-rate Cuban brands, like Flamingo.

Forty-five years after its opening, the ice-cream parlor Coppelia is only the shadow of its former self. Sunday, May 22, there were only three flavors: vanilla, orange-pineapple and mint. Although ice cream is not expensive, at one peso a scoop (5 cents), its quality leaves much to be desired. Of course, the long lines continue. Once, going to the “Cathedral of Ice Cream” constituted the main week-end outing for many Havana families.

Today, weary travelers, students, workers, prostitutes, pingueros, gays, transvestites and lesbians, among others swarming around the clock by the central ice-cream parlor, form a line by sheer force of habit. There are almost never the flavors you want. Like almond or moscatel. Strawberry or chocolate.

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 4 2011

Although they say abroad that the government of General Raúl Castro is urgently calling for a different period – one that is critical, controversial, appealing and lively – in practice the official reporters are not rushing to drop the burden of language loaded with slogans and pieces from speeches by Fidel Castro.

Journalists working in the state media are thinking twice before producing a hot story containing the reality of the street, which they see in their neighborhoods filled with prostitutes and guys cautiously selling powdered milk, vegetable oil or jeans stolen from some store.

We shouldn’t expect that this bold crowd of “revolutionary journalists,” who look more like scribes or ordinary letter-writers, will decide to write about political aspirations or publicly request the stopping of the acts of repudiation against the Ladies in White and the beatings of those who think differently. It would be asking too much.

The polemical reflections are from a handful of bureaucrats, who, from an office in the Palace of the Revolution, dictate what should be news. For now, it’s possible to transmit these things only on the Web, after passing them through a sieve that shows the editor the authors identify with socialism and are loyal to the Castro brothers. Without that confession of faith, writing for yourself is equivalent to having them open a file on you in the Department of State Security.

There is an open space of criticism and discussion for journalists and intellectuals accepted by the regime, but only on the Internet. They consider it unhealthy or undesirable for Cubans, those who drink breakfast coffee mixed with peas and eat bread without mayonnaise, to be able to read opinions that differ from the official discourse, which is tiresome and repeatedly published by the national newspapers.

The government’s interest is that these talented and fresh writers be read only abroad. So that those who romanticize the Revolution from a distance, and the Latin American and European Left, believe that something on the island is changing.

These inconvenient journalists, who Cubans on the island would like to read in the newspaper, are assigned to publish on personal blogs or websites. Then the guy deep in the Cuban countryside can’t read Elaine Diaz, Sandra Alvarez, Boris Leonardo Caro or gay Paquito, unless he has access to the Intranet.

For people in the real Cuba, lunching on pizzas in self-run cafeterias, after spending two hours at the P-7 bus stop to get home to the Alberro neighborhood, they have no choice but to spend a peso for an 8-page tabloid trying to be a newspaper and usually more useful for wrapping garbage or as a substitute for expensive toilet paper.

Controversy is served up….but exclusively for an elite.

It’s not just Raul Castro’s government that has inconvenient journalists. A sector of the internal opposition also has them. If you’re a foreign correspondent or freelancer and you don’t cover or write a few pages praising some of the events, conferences or projects that the local dissidents invent by the bushel, then they put you on a blacklist.

The least they accuse you of is being a Castro supporter. And in their frequent gatherings in the rooms of their houses, where vulgar dissidents gossip without factual information, you are labeled as an agent of G-2 (State Security).

Doing unfettered journalism in Cuba is like walking a tightrope. It will always awaken the capacity for intrigue and mistrust on both sides. But I prefer it that way. Or I wouldn’t be a journalist.

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 7 2011

Havana is a sort of forbidden city for people from deep inside Cuba. By Decree 217, effective April 22, 1997, residing in the country’s capital is a complicated pattern of bureaucratic procedures and hours of queues at central administration. You have to meet a lot of requirements to be approved to move to the city. It’s a mess.

Unless you’re from Guantánamo, Camaguey or Santiago, and you have some responsibility in a state enterprise or within the Communist Party. Then they open the gates of Havana. And the generous resources of the State or the Party will assure you a dwelling from its vast network of housing for those situations.

If your visit to the capital is temporary, they will put you in a three-star hotel with an open bar, to eat and drink in your spare time. Without spending a cent from your own pocket.

Companies that handle foreign currency such as tourism, civil aviation and telecommunications have homes available to house specialists, engineers or administrative staff from other provinces. Or quality hotel rooms that must be paid in hard currency. It is the only legal way to settle in Havana with the permission of the authorities.

The other is to stay a few days with relatives in the capital, visit the Zoo on Avenue 26, take photos across from the Capitol and visit Chinatown or the beaches of the East. And get the ticket back to the country.

Otherwise, they will open a file on you as an illegal. In pursuit of stopping the growing exodus of Cubans from the country’s interior, desperate because of the acute economic situation and lack of a future. For fourteen years there have been controls and regulations that prevent settling in Havana to those born outside its territory.

They are foreigners in their own homeland. With Decree 217, State institutions pretend to provide a solution to overcrowding in a city that already exceeds two and a half million inhabitants, with a fourth-world infrastructure and a cruel shortage of housing, water and public transport.

There was the paradox that while they tried to stop the terrifying wave, particularly of young people in the eastern regions, who fled their villages to try to live better, they built huts with pitched roofs of asbestos cement, where they housed the builders and the police candidates.

And habaneros don’t want to be cops. Nor do they want to work hard in the construction trades, with low pay and poor working conditions. Thus the government had no choice but to hire labor in the eastern provinces for a period of two to five years.

But the provincial people find a way to leave the plow and the land behind and show up in Havana. There are several reasons. The main one is that in spite of the severe economic crisis affecting Cuba for 22 years, it’s in the capital where money flows, and products and services cost more.

It’s also a good place for girls to take the train from Bayamo or Manatí and prostitute themselves in the streets and bars of the city. There are abundant domestic customers and tourists on the hunt for fresh meat that makes sex pay a good price.

Of course, the hookers from the east of the island are frowned upon by their counterparts in Havana. The prostitutes born in the city consider that the easterners or “Palestinians” as they say, have devalued the longstanding profession, by the low prices they charge. And they hate them.

The easterners who arrive in Havana illegally do everything. From pedaling a bicycle-taxi for 12 hours, to collecting scraps of aluminum or cardboard, selling shoddy textiles, pirated discs, detergents and perfumes on Monte Street.

Those who come to work hard are worthy of admiration and respect. Others, violent scoundrels, want to make money on the fast track. And they become Creole marijuana dealers. Or pimps who get off at the railway terminal with a harem of hookers, disoriented with the lights, and put them to work in dilapidated rooms, screwing for 5 dollars a half-hour.

From El Cobre or Manzanillo, gays and lesbians are also packing their bags, coming from villages where they are frowned upon and kept in the closet. Once in the capital, they quickly adjust to the dissipated nightlife. With high heels, transvestites attend the gay or lesbian parties, without the disapproving gaze of family and friends.

It often happens that sometimes the police are from the same province, but this does not affect them. They hunt and then ride the train back in the morning. In vain. Because the illegals, marginalized by their sexual orientation, manage to evade the police cordon and controls. And they return to Havana. It’s a matter of survival.

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 14 2011

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