Category: Translator: Regina Anavy

Either President Raul Castro is deluding himself or he is trying to deceive Cubans. One of the two. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt.

If Castro the Second is pretending to be sincere when he speaks with severe disgust about the artificial unanimity and complacency practiced at all official levels in the country, then he should implement, once and for all, the long-heralded “revolutionary democracy.”

It’s a contradiction. The General shakes with rage before the final vote, which is feigned and compliant, both in the Parliament and the Council of State. But then, when the time comes to raise a hand, everyone, absolutely everyone, votes in favor of the proposals put forth by the government.

I don’t know of any deputy to the National Assembly who has suggested a single project agreed to by the citizens he represents. In no session of the boring and monotonous national parliament does anyone dare to propose economic methods that are different from those offered by the chiefs in olive green.

In Cuba, the opposition departs from the government line. It is the only one qualified to offer and provide solutions. The Communist Party and other social organizations are merely bystanders, a well-tuned chorus.

It’s amazing that the 611 deputies agree on the shape and design with which they intend to revive the depressed national economy. Not one single deputy disagrees or has doubts. At least publicly.

It can’t be said that Cuba is the most democratic country in the world when everyone in the government accepts any law or project with his head down, applauding. The executive branch is the one that curtails discussion of differences, by permitting only “constructive criticism.”

Of course, the deputies and party members are afraid to come out against any proposal that has the approval of the Castro brothers. Non-acceptance of the laws and wishes of the hierarchy can mark them as undesirables. Or worse, as counter-revolutionaries, a sure passage to hell in the revolutionary island paradise.

The only ones who openly criticize and put forth different proposals are the opposition and independent journalists. Some might be unrealistic. But if the government at least would hear or analyze them, you might have more elements on hand when making laws that affect all of society.

It’s easier to disparage the dissident movement. The big problem with Cuba is to break in a real way, not in words, the false unanimity of the state representatives. Discrepancies enrich dialogue, according to Raul Castro.

But in practice, they prefer to listen to the instrumental music, without fanfare and pleasing to their ears, played by their followers in the forums.

If they really want to stir up the system and hear truly critical voices, they will have to acknowledge the dissidence, which exists in spite of everything. And it’s not unanimous within itself; on the contrary. Therein lies a healthy difference.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 10 2011

On the eve of Three Kings Day, Melanie Garcia, 7 years old, feels that the hours take years. At 5 pm she wants to go to bed, to shorten the time. Intensely she lives the hope of getting up before dawn and discovering what new toys the Three Wise Men from the East brought her.

In spite of everything, the tradition has been maintained for centuries. It’s been a dangerous crossing. Families wanting to keep the custom have fought against an atheistic state that decided to bury it five decades ago.

Fidel Castro struck the first blow to the magic world of children in the ’60s, when he distributed three toys per child by state decree. He decided to become the only Wise Man.

He even changed the months. He exchanged January for July, a month where they sold toys by the ration card. Just five days after coming down from the Sierra Maestra, he sent a message round to all segments of society.

From a war plane he dropped thousands of toys to children living on the hillsides of the eastern provinces. The idea wasn’t bad. They were kids who were dirty and full of parasites, whose only toys were chickens and pigs.

But after the altruistic gesture he sent a coded message in red: from now on, the State would appropriate tasks hitherto performed by Catholic and social institutions. Then you know what happened.

January 6 disappeared as a holiday. In his 52-year-long journey through the honey of power, Castro sought to undermine the religiosity of the population. Temples were closed. Some priests were expelled and others disparaged.

In pursuit of building the first communist society in America, many things had to be changed. And Three Kings Day was one of them: they considered it a petty bourgeois backwardness. More important than the toys, U.S. imperialism was to be buried in the dustbin of history.

Boarding schools prepared children and young people to be future soldiers of the country. The theme was “study, work and rifle.” Five decades later, the same government decided to sweep under the carpet part of its original sins.

Long ago, toys were removed from the ration card. Now they sell for hard currency, available only to families that receive remittances. These days, shopping at the Commodore Center, west of Havana, is a madhouse of parents buying toys.

The offers vary, but the prices go through the roof. A game is over $100. A bike, the same. A doll with a battery that says three sentences costs more than $60. Barbies, which you can have for $50, are piled on one part of the counter. The cheapest toy is equivalent to two months’ salary for a worker.

January 6 is just one more date to the Cuban authorities. There are no parades through the streets of the city. But if you wake up early that day, in the neighborhood you will hear the din of the little ones, finding a toy in some corner of the house

There are other happy moments for children on the island. But the Day of the Kings is the icing on the cake. If you have any doubts, just ask Melany Garcia.

Photo: Havana.

From Tania Quintero: “My granddaughter Melany with the toys that the Kings brought her on January 6, 2009. See, on the left, the cradle of wood, there are still carpenters in Cuba who make them, just like 60 years ago, when I was a child. I am glad that this tradition has not been lost in a world of increasingly sophisticated electronic toys.”

Translated by Regina Anavy

Originally posted: January 7 2011

People on the street in Cuba look sideways at the recent reforms designed for the impoverished national economy. Few are counting on these changes put forward by president Raúl Castro. They don’t believe they will make the country function more efficiently.

They know what a group of Cubans think. In a survey of 48 persons of both sexes, with an average educational level of 12th grade, between 18 and 71 years of age, white and black, there was more pessimism than optimism. Many don’t trust the system. So expectations are low.

There were four questions:

1) Do you believe that real reforms will bring satisfactory, short-term changes that will improve your standard of living? 2) What do you think is missing in the government’s new economic proposals? 3) Do you believe that Raúl Castro’s administration can give a boost to our economy? and 4) Do you think the Cuban social system can generate wealth and motivate independent business people so that they will benefit from the government plan?

Thirty-nine (39) of those polled think that the much-vaunted reforms are more of the same. “It’s not the first time that the country has brought up a supposed change to put socialism back on track and make it more efficient. As I remember, it was tried in the ’70s, the middle of the ’80s, and now again. Nothing makes me think that the third time will be the charm,” said a cab driver.

The answers of the other 38 are similar in tone to that of the cab driver. They feel pessimistic about the government’s economic suggestions. They laugh ironically at the thought that changing only the polish would change their lives for the better. They doubt that General Raúl Castro can make the weak local economy function.

Even fewer believe that the present model of a collective society will generate creative and dynamic people who will produce wealth. “That’s the principle of these systems that combine Marxist ideology with authoritarian forms of government: to control man. They come with a dislike of people who make money. They don’t want there to be a class of rich people. It’s a kind of society that’s allergic to capability and individual liberty for its citizens. They are seen as enemies. They are a contradiction,” says one university student.

The 39 people polled do not expect great things from the regime’s economic update. They believe there are interesting matters that are not considered in the plan, which these days is being discussed at work places and CDR meetings in the neighborhoods.

“No one is saying that Cuban Americans can invest in the country. Also, they ought to abolish all the immigration regulations for those born in Cuba, introduce a realistic investment law that will give incentive to foreign businessmen to invest in the island. Eliminate entrance and exit permits. Abolish the high taxes for people who work for themselves. Drop once and for all the role of the State as a prison warden that must control its citizens,” adds an intellectual.

Nine (9) of those polled gave the benefit of the doubt to the government. They are not fully optimistic, but they think that the changes will bring, in the long term, a haphazard version of capitalism to the country.

“No one wants this. Socialism is a system that is purely superior in theory. If it has not shown results it’s because the human factor has failed in the practice. The Cuban revolution has been more political than economic. In order to involve a large section of the population in the changes, we should abolish absurd laws and not look at those who make money as an enemy. The reforms may fail. But there is still the question, asked by an engineer, “What if they work?”

The economic reforms launched by the government have not created a state of favorable opinion in the majority of the population. They think they are subsistence measures. That they can bring a new plate to the table. And perhaps a glass of milk.

But basically the government can’t commit to a profound turnaround, which is necessary for the economy to be efficient, robust and long-lasting. The dream of millions of Cubans. Whoever accomplishes it will be a giant.

Translated by Regina Anavy

It’s been a boomerang. Carlos and Ariel both are 41-years-old. They grew up with the idea that the United States was the worst of all countries. The dogs and white racists, dressed in their white hoods, were waiting around every corner to knife a defenseless Negro.

The prisons were full of Latino immigrants and ethnic minorities. The American dream was a fraud. Any crazy, dangerous and unemployed person could take up an AK-47, bought on sale, and knock off a half-dozen people at a bus stop.

Carlos and Ariel, like many Cubans born with Fidel Castro’s revolution, became adults convinced that the days of capitalism in North America and the world were numbered. Castro, the great statesman, repeated it to us in his apocalyptic speeches. The future belonged entirely to socialism.

As the years turned, the opposite happened. The immortal Party, the one of the Soviet Communists, took on water. The Kremlin changed color. And the totalitarian societies of East Europe said “adíos” to an eccentric ideology that didn’t work.

Now being men, with children and a family to care for, Carlos and Ariel, with one quick glance, noticed that the revolution erected by Castro, brick by brick, was – and continues to be – a stressful society.

Every morning, a new problem. Breakfast, a small cup of coffee. Toothpaste, vile. Rice so dirty that you need a couple of hours to clean it before putting it on the fire.

The buses come when they feel like it. Eating beef or shrimp, a fantasy. Going on line, science fiction. Having a car, a satellite antenna and air conditioning in your house, equivalent to raising suspicions with the police.

Cuba is the native land of Carlos and Ariel. They don’t deny it. But they have had enough. They are tired of the hard speech and the triumphalist propaganda of the opaque and docile national press.

On television they see that agriculture is growing and the figures for the production of pork are increasing. But the prices continue to go sky-high. And to bring four dishes to the dinner table is a labor worthy of Superman.

Differing from many of their compatriots, Carlos and Ariel do not believe that the United States is paradise. No. But if you work hard, you don’t live badly and you can send dollars to the needy family that you leave behind.

They know that in La Yuma (the USA in popular slang) they make good computers and excellent razor blades. It’s a nation capable of the best and the worst. The people are free to say what they want and there are no ration cards. And you can live without the annoying political onslaught of the official Cuban media.

Forty-one years, the same number of years as their age, it has taken Carlos and Ariel to decide to leave their country. Now they prepare a precarious raft. Before the hurricane season arrives, they hope to be able to cross the Straits of Florida. They know the risks. One out of every three persons is a snack for the sharks.

They are going to experience a different culture. Now the speeches of the Castro brothers seem like black humor to them. They are jaded. And they are going to the North. To try their fortunes.

Iván Garcia

Translated by Regina Anavy

It’s the maximum security prison in Cuba. It’s located at Kilometer 13 and a half on the Monumental Highway, some ten kilometers from the center of Havana. At the entrance, a sign in English warns that it is forbidden to take photos. On visiting days, families arrive in droves at the entrance, loaded down with huge bags of food for their imprisoned family members.

“I bring him cigarettes, dark sugar, crackers, toast, powdered soft drinks and preserves, that by prison rules have to fit in plastic containers,” says Elena, 63 years old, who every 45 days makes the trip from the village of Artemisa, some 70 kilometers from the capital, to visit her son and bring him provisions.

In order to enter the prison, you have to pass by two security barriers, where at each one they check your identity card. To visit a prisoner, you first have to include your name on the card where he is authorized to receive up to 5 people at one time, over 18 years of age.

The strictness varies in accord with the “dangerousness” of the prisoner and the number of years he is serving. For those with minor crimes, they can have a visit every 21 days and a conjugal visit with fiançées or spouses every three months. For political prisoners who are in the Combinado del Este prison, like Doctor Oscar Elias Biscet or the independent journalist Ricardo González Alfonso, they are authorized to receive a regulation visit every 45 days and a conjugal visit every six months.

After going through the first line, you arrive at a door of aluminum and glass where electronic equipment scans the packages brought to the prisoners, common or political.

A sign informs you that the prisoners cannot receive eau de cologne, medicine or food in glass or metal containers. Neither is it permitted for women to wear low-cut blouses and shirts, short skirts or provocative clothing.

An official, brown as petroleum and with deficient syntax, joins the family members and explains what can happen if they wear garments that can arouse the fantasies of men who spend years without having sex with a woman.

“Some days ago a prisoner sliced the neck of another because he was looking at his wife in a lascivious way. Those who don’t have family or any one who comes to see them, often go at visiting time to see the women and later, in the solitude of their cells, masturbate. Even in the bathrooms of the visiting room prisoners have been caught beating off,” indicates the official.

And because of that, he adds, the spouses, daughters, sisters and female friends ought to dress modestly and with pants. Very angry, the official says: “Recently, relatives of the prisoners walked off with a piece of the bathroom sink. We have fixed it, but remember that any perforated cutting object is a weapon inside the prison.”

After the scolding, the relatives are invited to form a line, to pass by in order. An electronic arch scans all the visitors. It’s prohibited to bring in cameras, recording equipment and cell phones. Each person has to bring his identity document, which is kept until he leaves.

The visiting room is a long, narrow compound, with tables and cement seats on both sides. When you are inside you can’t leave until the two and a half hours of the visit have been completed. Several officials with a lumbering aspect walk around the room with a heavy step.

The prisoners sit facing the women; the men can sit beside visiting males. In this time they are permitted to eat and drink juices, soft drinks or fruit shakes. The room is painted in a dark tan color, which gives it a gloomy feeling.

From this place you can see the prison hospital. It’s large, painted in white, and, according to the common prisoners, for several weeks the prisoner of conscience, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, was there, wavering between life and death after 86 days on a hunger strike.

At the side of the visitor pavilion, there is an athletic field that surrounds a baseball diamond. At the back you can see three masses of concrete and stone. These are the prison barracks, with a capacity of 10,000 prisoners.

There are three buildings of four floors each. They are known by their numbers, One, Two and Three. In One are the prisoners with the longest sentences: Cuban-Americans accused of human trafficking, foreigners who are completing sentences in Cuba, and several political prisoners from the Black Spring of March 2003.

A common prisoner who is serving 18 years behind bars indicates that the food in general is abysmal, but “now it is better, thanks to the pressure from the human rights people and because they expect the visit of a special envoy from the United Nations.”

When he is asked about the treatment, he looks both ways, asks that his name not be published, and in a low voice says that the abuse from the guards and the beatings are something normal in the Combinado del Este, “above all, of the common prisoners who have committed crimes,” he emphasizes.

Now at the exit, the men have to wait in a walled-off gate until the prisoners that received a visit are brought back to their cells. After the official at the door receives the communication that they have done the recount and all of them are in their respective barracks, he gives back the identity cards to the men over 18 years who visited some relative or friend that day.

When you leave the gigantic prison, and a strong spring sun accompanies you on your return trip to the city, the tension relaxes. And the ambiance of oppression and confinement you suffered for more than three hours goes away.

The sea that surrounds the Monumental Highway and its pygmy palms give me goose flesh, when I think about the almost 9,000 prisoners in the Combinado del Este who for many years cannot enjoy freedom and be together with their families. Some, like Oscar Elías Biscet, Ricardo González Alfonso and Ángel Moya, are completing 20 years of an unjust prison sentence. Only for having a different opinion from the government and writing what they think.

They purge their convictions closed up in buildings of stone and concrete. A few kilometers from a sea of intense blue. And those jagged palm trees that communicated to me peace and freedom.

Iván Garcia

Translated by Regina Anavy

Dania Virgen García is a journalist like Usaín Bolt is a cosmonaut.

Her story is one of an imposter. Before the flood of material and political shortages that Cuba experiences, some citizens, spontaneously, feel deeply that the road of dissent is a good way of changing the state of affairs.

Okay. It’s fair that all have their own point of view and try to share in the pie of transformation that inevitably will happen on the island. But to invent a curriculum for oneself is a stretch. Writing notes or having a blog is not rocket science.

To do journalism on one’s own or have a blog is a kind of personal exorcism. A venting. A cry with all your lungs. A particular prism that permits you to observe and reflect the life of your people and your country. Nothing special.

History is what is narrated. News is that which is worth telling. But on this island of unproductive sugar cane, there are often Cubans who dissent, who believe themselves to be wild cards. Or an octopus.

They are five in one: journalist, blogger, opposition member, human rights activist and independent librarian. It’s not possible to try to write in a way that is the most objective possible if you are the spokesperson for a party, a group or a political tendency. Or if you claim to play several roles at the same time.

The road of opposition or independent journalism generally is taken by people who had a trajectory in Fidel Castro’s revolution. and with courage they distanced themselves and criticized the manner of governing of the lawyer from Birán.

But once in the dissident movement, they are in the habit of burdening themselves with a series of unmistakable phenomena with the single way that Castro used to manage public matters. Consciously or unconsciously, they place on the opposition the same Castro stamp. And they convert themselves into clones dressed as dissidents of the one and only comandante.

Inside some parties and internal opposition groups you find individuals, strong leaders who are corrupt, who practice nepotism and trafficking in favors just like you would drink a glass of water.

When the government throws them into the street and they can no longer earn a living, they join the line of help offered by governmental agencies of the United States. Help, of course, that also has generated an apparatus of opportunists in Miami, under the pretext of “the struggle for liberty and democracy in Cuba.”

From my point of view, it’s lawful to write, and for a web page or a newspaper to publish and pay you. Or to place advertising on blogs. What I don’t think is good is for agencies of the federal government of the United States to send money to the dissidents.

The regime in Havana stays silent, criticizing the interference of the Americans on the island. But if someone cannot speak it this respect it’s this government. during many years not only has it sent money but it also has sent specialists and weapons to parties of the left or guerrilla groups in Latin America.

Just because the Castro brothers are immoral and unscrupulous, the opposition leaders shouldn’t be the same. I think that if the United States didn’t interfere in our internal affairs, there would still be opposition leaders, independent journalists and true bloggers, not ones invented or inflated.

It’s true. In an impudent way in Cuba, the inalienable rights of human beings are transgressed. But in my opinion this doesn’t justify building an opposition more toward the exterior than trying to resolve the acute problems of the country.

If the stagnation of the Castro government lasts, it’s partly the fault of the banana dissidence that we have.

And from Cubans who lack ethics, who elevate the story of a simple woman to a “legend,” with more litigious family members than preparation, who one day decided to write basic news. And from night to morning they announce her as “a big star of independent journalism.”

Perhaps that’s the problem in Cuba. A lot of ego and little talent. Too much protagonism. And believe me, it’s nothing personal. Against no one.

Iván García

Photo: EFE. Provincial Court of Havana, Friday, May 14, 2010. Dania Virgen García and an unidentified opposition member give the victory sign, upon her release with a fine of 300 pesos (13 dollars), after an appellate court judgment on García’s detention, at the end of April, when she was sentenced to 20 months, accused of a crime related to domestic violence.

Translated by Regina Anavy

No one counted on him. He was a person who accommodated the political mandarins. Cardinal Jaime Ortega Alamino, the Archbishop of Havana, had just left the local parish.

In all the years of the acute economic, social and political crisis that Cuba has and continues to live in, Ortega made very few announcements. He simply took a pass. Many practitioners of the Catholic faith left the church feeling disappointed when the Cardinal officiated over the Mass. Because he said nothing.

He never raised his voice in the name of the nonconformists. He didn’t say anything about the death of the dissident Orlando Zapata. He turned his back on the Cuban opposition. His lenses, it seemed, had another calibration. The reality of the island captured his interest with a different prism.

Maybe the time has arrived. Perhaps his last critical reflections on the state of things in the republic marked the beginning of a more active role on the part of the Cuban Catholic church. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s just punching the time clock and saying a few appropriate words, so as not to pass unnoticed and to grab some headlines in the mainstream media.

In my opinion, Jaime Ortega is the representative of the upper hierarchy of Catholicism in Latin America, less committed to the ills afflicting his people. While ecclesiastic figures on the island come out in favor of certain inalienable rights and a change in the politics of the Castro government, Ortega maintains silence.

His work as a mediator for the Ladies in White ought to go beyond fulfilling an express request of the government. Perhaps once and for all he is assuming the role that he has avoided performing: that of an important actor in the social life of his country.

We are in a crucial moment for the future of Cuba. Definitely, the Cardinal should look at Poland in the 1970s and 1980s.

To remember the leadership of an archbishop of Krakow called Karol Wojtyla. To review the role performed by the Catholic church in the Polish transition. Jaime Ortega can and should be a firm point of dialogue between two parties with the tendency toward emotional speech and apocalyptic monologues.

The best sign of acceptance of his recent action in this spring of 2010 was something I heard on the street: “Finally the Cardinal has taken off his toga and put on his pants,” commented a bookseller, not very far from the Archbishopric of Havana, in the old part of the city.

Such an authority should not speak just in the name of God. He should also speak out in the voice of those who don’t have one.

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy

They’re like pirates on the highway. And they act with total impunity. On the stretch between Kilometer 10 and the first ring of the National Autoroute, a road with 8 lanes, dark as a wolf’s mouth and where the poor condition of the pavement makes drivers reduce their speed, it’s the propitious moment for a new breed of delinquents, known as “ninjas,” who use scooters and ski masks, to force open the trunk of a car, and, lickety split, plunder what’s inside.

Later, a car, an accomplice of the Cuban “ninjas,” collects the bags, and they divide the booty somewhere else. Their favorite target is autos rented by tourists. Fermín Escobar, 45 years old, who drives his own taxi, earning his living by charging 15 Cuban convertible pesos (13 dollars) per person, going between the bus terminals from Havana to the city of Santa Clara, some 300 kilometers away, firmly suspects that these highway robbers operate with the complicity of the police.

According to Escobar, on the Autoroute, there are numerous control points and police cars that detain you at each pass to inspect travelers’ luggage, in search of shrimp, beef or cheese, the favorite products of the people who are dedicated to the lucrative business of the black market.

“Then it’s not possible for these delinquents to carry out the robberies in peace. I have friends who are drivers, who have told me that some police alert the “ninjas” by cell phone about the license plates of the tourist cars, which are the ones they prefer. Although they also misappropriate whatever auto they suspect has valuable things in their suitcases. If the driver notes the presence of the “ninjas” and stops the car, there is a big uproar because those thieves can be armed,” reports Fermín, who counsels that the best thing to do is to accelerate as fast as possible and to not stop.

Boarding and ransacking moving cars in the middle of the night is work that carries a high risk. It’s already known that the highway “ninjas” have an impressive dominion of scooters. For which reason the police barely detain them, and it’s a good question for the chief of the national Police. Or police ineffectiveness exists or they are “greased” with hard currency. The drivers who use the National Autoroute every day are waiting for a response.

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy

Clara Fuentes, 39-years-old, was never very bright. She was a headstrong girl, raised in a small house of 15 meters without bathrooms or drinking water. Her father was a zombie-like sign painter; most days he was on strike, trying to scare up some money to raise his two daughters.

The mother was a fat, careless woman of mixed race. They lived like gypsies, off the charity of neighbors and state support. Thanks to God, or Fidel Castro, she was born in a period of the Cuban revolution in which milk was not scarce and the ration book assured them average but vital nourishment.

Later this was not the case. With the arrival of the perennial economic crisis that the nation has lived in for 21 years, known officially as the “Special Period,” Clara’s family saw dark times.

The father began to poke about among the rubbish containers, in search of valuable articles. But there was nothing. It was a time when not even empty bottles were thrown away.

Clara and her sister grew up dirty and unkempt. They were pretty and had good figures. But they dressed in old, recycled clothes that were handed down. In the barrio they were called the “miserable ones.”

To their material poverty was added mental stupidity. Clara gave birth to three sons by a boy who lived in the eastern provinces. Her sister did the same. Clara had her sons between the ages of 16 and 20. And they didn’t have enough food for four, so you can imagine how much they had for eight.

The honorable exit Clara Fuentes found was to enroll in the system. Abandoned by the biological father, and without a cent for her sons, she enlisted as a recruit in the army.

She passed a course to become a sergeant and began to work in a military unit. Although the salary was scarcely enough, her situation improved. But she continued being taken care of by the state.

The three children slept in one bed. She slept on the floor, on a grubby mat among nocturnal cockroaches and lizards. She started to take care of an old woman, who died three years later.

The state granted her the old woman’s house. It was small, with two suffocating rooms and minimal sleeping quarters. For Clara, it was a palace.

She left the army and started working as a custodian for a business. She worked 12 hours a day and rested for two days. She was on duty at sunrise three days in the week. They paid her 300 pesos (12 dollars) and 18 Cuban convertible pesos (20 dollars).

In addition, they gave her an equivalent basket of goods. One-half box of chicken a month, four packages of ground turkey, 24 cans of soft drinks, four liters of cooking oil. With this, Clara was assured of food, administered with a hard hand in the middle of the month. The other half she got from the ration book.

She always lacked money, and her sons grew up without being well-nourished and dressed poorly. Clara is honest. She never stole anything at work, and, although she is critical of the revolution, in an ingenuous way, she believes that the guilty party is “the difficult situation,” and she does not hold Fidel Castro nor his brother responsible.

“They don’t know what is happening,” she asserts. She is contaminated by official propaganda. “We are living badly, but compared to living in a country like Haiti or in an African nation, I prefer our system.” She doesn’t question the lack of political liberties, nor do they matter to her, because “you can’t eat those things.”

At the last meeting in the barrio to elect candidates or delegates to Popular Power, they proposed her as a candidate. In order to end the meeting quickly so they could go home and watch the latest soap opera on television, and because there wasn’t a better option, the neighbors elected her unanimously.

On Sunday, April 25, Clara Fuentes was one of the two candidates running in her district. In this year of 2010, a delegate’s work is barely noticeable in the shanty town. If she has sufficient influence, she can get some construction materials at an average price for the most needy.

In general, for every five complaints that are presented to the delegates, one is resolved. Sometimes none. Not because they don’t want to satisfy their community. No. It happens because the solution is out of their hands.

The powerful state bureaucracy and material scarcity dilute any good intention. And although Clara Fuentes does not have the intelligence to solve the innumerable problems of her barrio, beginning with her own, she thinks about trying. She has confidence in her management ability. She asks those who know her to vote for her.

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy

For Yamil Domínguez Ramos, 37 years old, October 13, 2007 was an unlucky day.

Yamil, a Cuban man who emigrated in 2000 to the United States and who has been a U.S. citizen since 2003, is serving a sentence of 10 years in a maximum security prison in Cuba, the Combinado del Este, accused of “human trafficking.”

But the case is contaminated. I will tell you his story. On October 12, 2007, with a tourist map, Yamil left from a marina in Florida to go to Cancún, México, in a 26-foot boat, a Róbalo fast boat, with two outboard motors and a GPS system.

According to Yamil’s story, “I was thinking of spending a couple of days in Cancún and then taking a boat to Havana.” Bad weather obliged him to change his course toward the Hemingway Marina, a center of free access for international tourist boats on the outskirts of Havana.

Then began the witch hunt of the Cuban authorities, pressuring him and his family to admit he came for the purpose of human trafficking.

From the time he arrived in the United States in 2000, Yamil had visited the island seven times. To see his mother and other relatives, and because he had begun a sentimental relationship with Marleny González, a neighbor in his family’s building, in the district of Miramar.

He had plans to marry her. Since 2004 he had asked for a visa so his fiancée could leave for Miami. But by the time the United States Consulate in Havana gave him a satisfactory response on October 27, 2009, he was already a prisoner.

So the question floats in the air: “Why would Yamil Domínguez need to leave Cuba illegally, and run the risk of being caught?

Yamil isn’t immaculate. “Several times I thought about getting my fiancée and family members out secretly, but I always gave it up, not wanting to risk my security and theirs.”

As far as I know, no civilized law can condemn someone for thinking about a supposed crime. Yamil is a classic story of a Cuban who triumphed in the United States. On this island he never was part of the opposition. He formed part of that anonymous tide of people who attended, purely by compromise, the government marches or the neighborhood meetings.

His family was what is known in Cuba as “integrated,” or rather, revolutionary. Politically correct. In his fatherland he worked in tourism and rented out his car illegally to gain a fistful of pesos that would make his life more bearable. The same as thousands of Cubans, he lived on the border of legality.

But Yamil wanted something else. A society where to prosper and have ambition wasn’t seen as a crime. And thus he left. In a legal and orderly way, after having won the lottery. In the month of Christmas, he arrived in Miami, with an extravagance of lights and consumption that surprised him.

He started as an apprentice bricklayer, and thanks to the level of education he received in Cuba, a path was opened to him. In 2007, Yamil became a licensed contractor. He generated a business worth several million dollars, and this same year he hoped to earn an annual salary of one million dollars.

Life for Yamil was beautiful. He came to Cuba every time love and homesickness touched his heart. That was his weakness. Nostalgia. That feeling that after time becomes a thief that robs us of our strength. He commuted between Havana and Miami. His unlucky day was October 13.

“Every day I ask myself if what happened is just a nightmare. I spent two months in a cell of two square meters that was 105 degrees Fahrenheit in Villa Marista (seat of the political police). I was sentenced to 10 years, in hard prison conditions, where they applied different types of humiliation and torture to me. I saw my family every 45 days. At times when I wake up, I open my eyes slowly, thinking that I’m going to find myself in my home in Florida,” Yamil recounts with a sad voice on one of his family visiting days in prison.

His life changed into a Calvary. For non-payment, the bank foreclosed on his house in Florida. He lost his business. And lawyers fees came to more than five thousand dollars. It happens that by Cuban law, when it comes time to pay, Yamil is a North American citizen.

According to the Constitution of the Republic, Cuban citizenship is lost when you gain citizenship in another country. And the government of the United States, which is capable of unleashing a war on behalf of any United States citizen, in the case of many Cuban Americans, has a very weak position. Yamil Domínguez is in no man’s land.

According to a law firm of independent lawyers that Wilfredo Vallín directs, who have studied in detail the transcript of the case brought against Yamil Domínguez by the prosecutor, there’s a procedural error in the instructions in the case.

As is usual in the islands’ legal system, the accused are guilty from the start and must demonstrate their innocence in the course of the investigation.

In addition, for these independent lawyers, the type of crime is badly applied. “The only thing that can apply is illegal entry into the country. The penalty is two years, and they can’t confiscate your boat,” explains Laritza Diversent, one of the attorneys.

According to Yamil, the trial was a circus. He refused to sign any document that incriminated him, and he does not accept the confiscation of his boat.

An ex-functionary of the Ministry of the Interior, analyzing his case, says, “It could appear subjective, but the key to all this is the boat. Many bigwigs and generals lean over backwards for good boats. If you find out where the boat actually is, you will have your answer. It’s easier to sentence you to 10 years for human trafficking, and you can confiscate the boat, than to give a sentence of two years for illegal entry, a punishment where, after you get out of prison, you can ask for your boat back.”

The United States Consul in Cuba visits him every three months, and Yamil is not satisfied with his treatment. “To save medication they open the pills for me and leave me only a daily dosage. They allege that they don’t want to have a diplomatic conflict because of the Cuban Americans who are prisoners on the island,” Domínguez said.

And they do little. Or nothing. Meanwhile, Yamil does not remain with his arms crossed. He has opened a personal blog, Notorious Injustice, which is updated by his wife and his sister. He writes not only about his drama but also about life in prison, politics, or Orlando Zapata.

After two-and-a-half-years in prison, Yamil Domínguez is convinced that his only crime is having been born in Cuba and having chosen the option of emigrating. He believes that he’s paying for that. No more.

Iván García

Note: Since April 14, Yamil decided to stop eating food and to take only liquids, so that his case will stop being a notorious injustice.

Translated by Regina Anavy

He was black and homosexual. He was not physically attractive and he had a nasal voice. But with a tone as perfect as his hands, which appeared designed to slide across the piano keys of the bar-restaurant, Monseigneur, on 21st and O, in Vedado, where Bola de Nieve (Snow Ball) had his sanctuary.

El Bola (The Ball), as Cubans liked to call him, is one of the three great icons of Cuban music born in the former Villa of Guanabacoa, a village east of Havana, popular for its resistance in the face of the attack of the English in 1762. The other two are the singer and actress Rita Montaner and the pianist and composer Ernesto Lecuona.

Ignacio Jacinto Villa Fernández, his given name, came into the world on September 11, 1911. On October 2, 1971, at the age of 60, he passed away in Mexico City, the city that discovered him before the rest of the world. He wanted to be a teacher, but he ended up as a musician. To the political convulsions in his youth was added his condition of being black and gay.

In the decade of the 1930s, Rita Montaner, who already was a star, helped him to earn some pesos as an accompanist on the piano at the Hotel Sevilla. He himself earned money by playing during the intermissions of silent movies in neighborhood theaters. At that time, he must have had the idea of singing while he played the piano. And that converted him into a unique piano man

The ’40s and the ’50s went by, and Havana was a city with an intense night life. El Chori played percussion in the casinos on the beach in Marianao. In the club La Red and La Lupe, with his histrionic qualities, he imposed a peculiar way of singing. Nearby, Elena Burke, the emotional señora, transformed into Scheherazade in the depths of Focsa, in the cathedral of bolero.

Without leaving Vedado, for very little money, every night in the Gato Tuerto, you could hear César Portillo de la Luz with his compositions, like Tú Mi Delirio (I’m Crazy About You) and Contigo en la Distancia (With You in the Distance). The night owls used to end up on the roof of the Hotel Saint John, in El Pico Blanco, where José Antonio Méndez, with his hoarse voice, interpreted La Gloria eres tú (You are Glorious) and Si me comprendieras (If you Understood Me).

This was before the bearded comandante arrived and ordered “so much partying” to stop. Still in the ’60s, in the Celeste bar, La Freddy, an old maid of elephantine proportions with the voice of a mezzo soprano, shook up Havana. Years later, she would serve as an inspiration for Guillermo Cabrera’s writing. She sang boleros.

In this Havana of bread with beefsteak at 15 cents and Polar beer at 20 cents a bottle, Bola de Nieve sparkled with authenticity.

Now, at the entrance of Monseigneur – inaugurated in 1953, with specialties like filet mignon and butterflied lobster – it’s common to see foreigners taking photos of the mythical spot. Or going out with sculptural mulatas, who don’t even know who Bola de Nieve was. They enjoy the same thing as most young Cubans today: rap and reguetón, with their repetitive, vulgar, or violent lyrics.

I was born in 1965, and I didn’t have the pleasure of enjoying those musical talents live. Much less a Havana often visited by famous people of the stature of Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Lola Flores, Jorge Negrete and Libertad Lamarque.

Bola de Nieve is one of the essentials of Cuban music. Every time I pass the corner of 21st and O, facing the Hotel Nacional, where Monseigneur used to be, I can’t help imagining him, with his black suit and his big teeth, and his way of singing Drume Negrita, No puedo ser feliz, La flor de la canela, La vie en rose, or El manicero (Black Drum, I Can’t be Happy, Cinammon Flower, Life in Rose, or the Peanut Vendor).

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy

Perhaps I’m not the right person to write this chronicle. Or maybe I am. I know colleagues who personally knew Silvio Rodríguez in that first stage of the revolution, ingenuous and difficult, crude and contradictory, where children magically became men.

Further, I’m going to talk about the spell that Silvio provoked in my generation, by many considered “lost.” Anyone under 50 years had a similar experience in the way we listened to his songs.

Perhaps in school, in the subject interpreted by an infantile adventure or in the voice of a friend, I don’t remember now exactly, but when I discovered Silvio it was while he composed songs and had been one of the founders of the Sound Experimentation Group of ICAIC, together with the indispensable Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola and Vicente Feliú, among other, all directed by Leo Brouwer, who already was a maestro.

One year later, in 1973, the Movement of the New Trova had been created, of which Silvio was the main part. The Beatles, with their myth spreading around the world, had disintegrated in 1970, and it was no secret that the geniuses of Liverpool, with their ballad-rock music, had left an incurable vacuum after their dissolution, in spite of the psychosis they gave the Cuban cultural and political authorities.

Then, I think, the strategists of culture saw a vein of gold and thus supported that scruffy group that sang about strange things, because when it came down to it, they were “revolutionaries.”

A truce was declared. The media, little by little, put themselves at the service of Silvio and the New Trova movement. With reserve, of course. At the start, because of disinterest in the trovadors, they were heard only at political events, patriotic commemorations or on days of national mourning.

The official propaganda put emphasis on the known themes of Silvio Rodríguez, like The era is giving birth to a heart, Gun against gun, Song to the chosen and the Chief, songs that with their metaphoric and poetic language demonstrated support for the revolution. Silvio also sang about the everyday and alienation, but from moment to moment, until he didn’t show his complete loyalty, those texts navigated in semi-secrecy.

The singer-songwriter from San Antonio de los Baños was a kind of moon in the last quarter: we could appreciate only one part of his face. Thus, in this way, he came to our generation.

We hummed the lyrics on patriotic anniversaries or in memory of the martyrs. Silvio was growing with us. Upon reaching the decade of the 80s, the tested Cuban composer still was not being censured. It had been a painful and traumatic birth, but here was this Rodríguez, in his rightful place. One of the best Cuban composers of the 20th century.

The lyrics of Summary of the news and Hopefully didn’t raise suspicions. On the contrary, he was a prophet in his own land and also in Latin America and Spain. Many, like I, followed and harassed him from recital to recital. We knew almost his whole repertoire by heart.

Human beings need myths, leaders, chosen people…and for us, Silvio was it. Or, at least, he made a valuable mark on a portion of Cuban youth, although some later became critical of his work and his ideological position. Others say that he stagnated, adapted, and lost his nerve.

My current political position differs a good bit from that of Silvio Rodríguez now that I am 63 years old. Not for that reason am I going to stop admiring his songs: that would be denying and betraying an important part of my life.

Now, Silvio, we see you clearly, without the halo whose light deceived us. And we are grateful to you for having enriched us spiritually and distracted us from superfluous and useless music. Thousands of my generation are far away, in other lands, beneath the sea, or departed forever.

I don’t know about others, but I want to express my thanks to you for having proposed something to us, not imposed it. For having transmitted good values to us, freely. This is more important than any militancy.

Iván García

Translated by Regina Anavy