Translating Cuba

It seems that the guillotine of civil rights and liberties and the populist group hinge on the Venezuelan Constitution and in the political process that exists there to legitimate them. Hugo Chavez’s victory this October 7 took almost no one by surprise, despite the fact that the margin was not as wide as the newly elected president-candidate had announced.

I think that the inhabitants of the former Socialist republics of Eastern Europe, just like we Cubans, know that the caudillos do not understand the ceding of their place to anyone: what they call democracy and the transfer of powers, for them is a sign of weakness. They make a patriotic act of “detaching themselves from their position” only when health prevents them from continuing, death comes for them “to illuminate with such notable personalities the path to purgatory,” or because they have so ruined their countries, economically politically and socially, they have exhausted the alternatives.

I imagine that the historic Cuban leaders were very aware of the development of the lessons-elections in Venezuela, because the ability of the senior leadership and the stability and survival of Cuba depend on those votes (guaranteed). I don’t doubt that numerous resources in strategists, consultants, trainers, and logistics have taken the plane to Caracas along with the right-handed ballot boxes in the certain success of the lefties of continuism. No wonder, since the Venezuelan leader rose to power, he calls the former number one Cuban “my father.”

The victory of Chavez in Venezuela in February 1999 was made possible by the historic Cuban leaders, their military intelligence corps and their traditional propaganda team, trained first and specialized later, in electioneering mechanisms of the new Latin American so-called socialist democracies. They play chess ’in situ’ with human pieces and even have the luxury of invited foreigners and observers who authenticate the process. They will not run the risks again, as happened with the defeat of Daniel Ortega in 1990. But regardless of their overwhelming specialization in democratic constitutional perpetuity, the Cuban specialist apparently despise their compatriots so much, that they will not risk a procedure analogous to the strongman models of Latin America that help them to articulate and consolidate legally and internationally.

The government of our country continues with the single-party system and the same political and dictatorial structure, intolerant and discriminatory, that has allowed them to “give it time,” like the pony in the Venezuelan song. They have so abused this society that they fear that if they “loosened the reins” it would run wild in logical demands for justice and democracy. So they test election strategies in the distant lands, just in case… After all, they’ve exceeded their “threescore and ten” leading the largest of the Antillies, and it seems it doesn’t matter too much to them what happens when they’re gone.

Ergo, the “old horse” of totalitarian experience can meet with “a chestnut filly” of democracy, and as long as the Venezuelan people’s barrels of petroleum keep flowing like black gold, with which Chavez pays for his security and for remaining in power, there will be no mistakes and the “beloved” Latin American caudillos of the day will continue, mocking their people and the world.

October 16 2012

The media coverage (the nonsense of international reporters excitedly applauding on my cellphone until its batteries nearly ran out) is overwhelming: everyone is convinced that Raul’s reforms deepen and expand (metastasis of Marxist materialism?), because Cubans can finally buy and sell expensive stuff like houses and cars, and even the travel/immigration promise was kept earlier rather than later (abolishing one of the most feudal laws of Fidel, Law No. 989 of December 5, 1961); in short, that the Post-Communist Transition, compañeros, is now just around the corner…

Insisting on the little digital whines of the Cuban dissidence is now, relative to democratic journalist standards, practically an indulgence of spoiled children. The world’s not going so well, honey… to our paternalized people, of course, the lack of information (for that is paradise: a stockade that keeps out the crap and evil, Biblical-totalitarian kitsch). If we only knew… Europe is in free fall, for example, and the United States is being Latin Americanized. There will be a holy nuclear war in the uncaricaturizable name of Allah. The ex-Socialist republics are mafia (and don’t even mention Miami, please). As insular people, we non-conformist Cubans should shut up for a while. We must be humble and survive without those rights that were commonplace in December 1958 (ah, the putrid Republic), and even without many that existed from colonial times (independence encountered a great deal of legal work done by other less homicidal tendencies).

But, you already know, the Revolution justifies the means (including the mass media). And the fears.

I read and reread the travel/immigration prophecies for 13 January 2012 (13-1-13, the date could be reordered as 3-3-3 with a certain apoCUBAlyptical fervor). I am not a lawyer (as I quickly remind the experts of the political police every time they kindfully kidnap me), so perhaps that’s why I don’t understand anything. I live in Braille or in a guttural language of the mute. We must have faith, including fossil faith. That they read from Power. We must wait for the future. Wait for futility.

A detail very clear to me. We have lost the last documented evidence of the barbarity: our passport, which was supposed to be a State obligation to us. From next year, we will return to that ridiculous status of the citizens with only an identity card (a little plastic thing with digital fingerprints and organ donations, but with no value on the rest of the planet). Now no one will get a visa to any “enemy” country if the Government doesn’t want them to. No more incriminating shows about the violation of a human right key to our real liberation. The exile will be left in an extremely Cuban house of shit, while the “insile” will consists of legitimate citizens and citizens who are traitors to their class for the State. Raulpolitik caste. With a little luck, even the aeronautical nightmare of the paleo-revolutionary Ricardo Alarcon will come to pass.*

For my part, before it becomes an illegal object (who knows if incriminating), I will keep my poor little first passport under lock and key (next to the dry innocence of my umbilical cord and milk teeth), for my grandchildren or my biographers, as a reminder of when the Cuban crisis shattered the Sugar Curtain.

*Translator’s note: Ricardo Alarcon, president of the National Assembly, responded to Eliecer Avila — who was asking questions on behalf of computer science students at a large assembly — that among the reasons Cubans could not travel freely was that so many would want to do it the planes would hit each other in the sky.

From Diario de Cuba

October 17 2012

Regulars and new friends, collaborators and visitors.

Again I hit a pothole in the frequency of my entering the web, and that caused me to be out of phase with some writings. However, as I spent my time in writing them, and especially because I want to be on record with my views on some issues, I decided to post them anyway.

I hope that someday they government recognizes our rights to use the internet in our homes, and we Cubans can keep our blogs updated regularly. Thanks for being there, participating with your comments, and supporting my work with your opinions.

A hug from Cuba for everyone, Rosa Maria

October 16 2012

Tomorrow, October 16, will mark 59 years since Fidel Castro was tried for Cause Number 37 related to the assault on the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Some of his biographers say that at the trial he delivered his plea of self-defense known as “History Will Absolve Me,” others say that what he said was much shorter and less substantive and that it was later, in the serenity of the fecund prison that he wrote what his memory dictated. In the backyard of my house in Camaguey there should still be a copy of that first edition in a glass jar that my father — for fear of a search — buried in a site we could never find.

In that text, where his political platform is foreshadowed, we can appreciate the thought of a man of the center-left who mentions the theme of exploitation of the workers but does not announce the dictatorship of the proletariat, who denounces the excesses of the United Fruit Company but does not condemn imperialism by its name. Already in the decade of the 60s, conforming to the triumphalist spirit of the official media, the fulfillment of the Moncada program was proclaimed. Those days the author of the submission confessed that he was already, at the time, a Marxist-Leninist.

We were far from imagining that that anti-tyrannical young man would get his hands on, for a half century, absolute power over the fates of Cubans. No one should be judged twice for the same act, neither by the courts nor by history. On that occasion Fidel Castro was sentenced to 15 years in prison, of which he only served less than 20 months, because the bloody and ruthless dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, hearing the popular outcry, decreed an amnesty for political prisoners. It was an amnesty, not parole.

The history subsequently written not only absolved but congratulated the authors of the assault. I am speaking of the history books that my son studies in school and all the history books that have been allowed to be published in Cuba. With regards to what happened (let the reader choose the facts) no court had ever ruled.

Tomorrow will be another day.

15 October 2012

This summer has been marked not only by a disquieting heat, which has extended uncharacteristically into these first days of October, but also by shortages in the market in general, and grocery and other stores in particular.

At the same time instability has been gradually increasing, fed by the prolonged silence on the health of the country’s former leader and the excessive caution and slow implementation of the well-publicized reforms announced by the current president.

Ever increasing desertions of professionals are occurring in health caremissions in some ALBA countries.* The same is happening among athletes who compete overseas. The endless lines—made up of people of all ages, most of whom are young—to be found at the embassy gates of Spain, Mexico and the United States, to name but a few countries, are an eloquent testimony to the current situation in the country.

All of a sudden we awoke today to the news that, after January 13, 2013, a new emigration law will take effect that will do away with the required letter of invitation and the well-known exit visa (known as the “white card”). Aside from the fact that the law will require not eventhree months to take effect, it is significant that this has already been announced by the newspaper Granma.

Will this end up being a smokescreen, created to serve as a distraction from all the previously mentioned issues, or is it perhaps intended relieve a little of the pressure building up in the political kettle, which seems to be near the bursting point?

Based on how it is moving forward, this crippled emigration measure will not be the same for all citizens. There will be exceptions. In fact it already presents some problems. Even so, it has raised hopes and expectations in the entire population, including those who have no dreams of being able to travel someday.

It is like a poor hen, who has been plucked in the middle of winter, being offered a few feathers by the very people who plucked her.

Translator’s note: ALBA is the Spanish acronym for Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America,an international organization made up of socialist and social democratic countries of Latin America including Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Venezuela.

October 16 2012

There is a new wave of public health workers whose job is to visit homes looking for infestations of the aedes aegyptimosquito. Almost all of them are older and retired. In many cases they have backgrounds in the communist party or armed forces, and seem to have taken their task very seriously. These people can show up at any time from morning to evening, and get especially upset if someone cannot or will not let them in for any particular reason. They then ring the doorbell obsessively, pound on the door frenetically, and even make threats in a loud voice so that everyone else hears them and takes note.

These scenes are repeatedly continually in any given neighborhood. Besides being useless exercises, they amount to an unacceptable form of persecution. The authorities do not realize that illnesses such as dengue, which used not to exist in our country but which have now been uncontrollable for three decades, are a result of an unhealthy environment, urban decay, the accumulation of trash and debris everywhere, and inadequate or almost non-existent garbage collection, especially in neighborhoods where there are no trash cans and people hang their bags of waste from the trees or simply toss them into corners. Furthermore, since the situation is impacted by the lack of products to combat epidemics, the inadequate and almost non-existent control of stray animals, the clogging of sewers and drains, the lack of cleanliness on city buses and in parks, cafes, farmers markets, and which steadily worsens all the time.

The state should set an example before being allowed to make demands on the population. Before persecuting and threatening people with fines, it should create conditions which promote good hygiene and insure the health of all the citizenry. Rather than sanctioning and harassing, it should educate by example and provide the necessary products and means at reasonable pricescommensuratewith people’s salaries. Only in this way will we be freed from this relentless persecution.

October 15 2012

Without having been able to go and join the Ladies in White, I didn’t feel like publishing anything today. Until I found out that my experience also needed to be told: Why, if the Cuban opposition is peaceful and I haven’t seen any Ladies expressing themselves in a way not suitable for the ears of children, couldn’t I go with my small daughter to the headquarters, or to the Santa Rita Church, on the anniversary of the death of Laura Pollan?

We all know the answer: The opposition in Cuba, which is peaceful, confronts the repressive apparatus of the State dictatorship which is violent, which is outside or above the Law, an immense Corporation to intimidate and harm, with the ideological alibi that all this is done to get “all justice.” No wonder the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a gap on the shelves of the Revolutionary bibliography, because it is the text where you can most clearly understand why prejudice against humanity is the policy of the current government and, of course, the government itself, which alone can lift to our sight, like a wall, its manipulative campaign, its ideological alibi, that strangles our freedom because it does not reflect who we are, what we think, what our true feelings are.

Thirty-one Ladies in White were arrested. From Friday October 12 they mounted a police operation with State Security agents, who literally besieged the headquarters, blocking off the surrounding streets, until the end of the day on the 14th.

In addition to blocking many of the women from leaving their provinces, they kidnapped some for 24 hours to prevent their attending church. I think that when a person is detained arbitrarily and without recognition of their rights, not even being allowed to phone their families, it is kidnapping. If the kidnappers are government agents that turns the goverment into a kidnapper.

I also know, from the report of Berta Soler, leader of the “Laura Pollan” Ladies in White Movement, that the agents “Samper” and “Alejandro” presented themselves at the headquarters at approximately 9:00 in the morning on Sunday to communicate to the Ladies that they “would concede” a range of movement and series of restrictions, under threat; to which the Ladies answered “no concessions” and demanded the immediate release of the women arrested and the breaking of the cordon at 3rd and 26th that State Security had also mounted to prevent their getting to the church.

The first anniversary of Laura’s death is over. I continue to recommend that everyone see Pier Antonio Maria Micciarelli’s movie “I Am the Other Cuba,” where you can clearly see how a car in which Laura is being interviewed is hit by another vehicle on a Cuba highway.

A few months later Laura would die in the Intensive Care ward of the Calixto Garcia Hospital of a mysterious “dengue fever” acquired after having been bitten and injured by some sharp instrument among the Act of Repudiation mob of the last Day of the Virgin of Mercy she would attend on this earth. There was no investigation into her death and while it was still being denounced it was followed by the death of Oswaldo Paya.

October 16 2012

My suitcase has worn out its wheels in five years of rolling around the house, from one corner to the other. The underwear stored in the little thing has lost its elasticity and its color has faded. The airline tickets I never used are gone, after postponing them over and over they ended up in the trash. My friends have said goodbye to me so many times and so many times I didn’t go, that the farewell has become routine. The cat adopted as his own that handbag I never managed to take on a plane, and the dog chewed on the shoes meant for a trip I could not take. Nor did the picture my friend gave me of the “Virgin of Good Travel” resist the test of time and even the shine in her eyes has gone out.

After five years of demanding my right to travel outside the country, today I woke up to the news of travel and immigration reform. My first impression was to shout “Hurrah!” mid-morning, but as the day advanced I considered the shortcomings of the new law. Finally the objectionable Permit to Leave has been eradicated, as well as the annoying Letter of Invitation that we needed to leave our own country. However, now in the issuance and validation of passports they will define those who can cross the national frontiers and those who cannot. Although the costs of the paperwork will be less and I imagine the time required shortened, this is not the new travel and immigration law we were waiting for. Too limited, too narrow. But at least it has put in writing a legality as a starting point from which we can now demand, protest, denounce.

In my case I am going to believe – until January 14, 2013 – that I am not on any “black list” and that the ideological filters to leave have come to an end. I will fill out the application for a new passport, and wait with that dose of ingenuousness necessary to survive, to not become apathetic. I will be there when they open the doors to decide which Cubans can board a plane and which will continue under the “insular imprisonment.” And my suitcase will be at my side, with worn out underwear, unworn shoes, and a pale picture of Mary who no longer knows if she’s leaving or returning, if there are reasons to be happy or to be satisfied.

16 October 2012

I have accumulated twenty negatives in just five years to my requests to travel. Twenty times I have tried to leave my country and just received a “no” as a response from the Cuban authorities. Although it is hard to accustom oneself to such an absurdity, the truth is that I have learned to live on my island prison. I have consoled myself by saying that all the raw material of my writing was on this Island, in its reality and that it would also be very hard for me to be separated from my family for even a few weeks.

But these were phrases of relief that I repeated to myself from frustration and anger at my inability to travel, so as not to suffer emotional hurt. It was a way of maintaining mental hygiene amid a feeling of seclusion.

This week a new travel and migration law has been approved that will be effective on 13 January 2013. As reflected in its multiple clauses, from that date Cubans will not need permission to travel outside our country, nor will we need a letter of invitation from a stranger or relative who emigrated. Long-awaited news that has been greeted with joy by millions of Cubans within and outside the Island.

In any event, although still lacking a test of the reality of the limits and scope of the new provisions, there are some suggestions that the government will maintain a filter for professionals and critics of the system.

For now, I’m packing my suitcase. I have started to tell myself that it is possible, that they will let me go, that I will board the plane in January. But maybe it’s just one more optimistic phrase that I repeat to myself. In a few months I will have my proof.

Angel Carromero has been sentenced to four years in prison for the traffic accident that killed two opponents of the regime, Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero. The Granma Provincial Court issued the sentence Monday, October 15, after the public trial which took place on October 5. According to the official website Cubadebate, the leader of New Generations of Spain’s ruling Popular Party is considered “guilty of the crime of murder while driving a vehicle on the public right-of-way.”

This case which has kept Cuban and Spanish public opinion guessing, now enters the appeal phase after the court ruling. Both the defense and the prosecutor can challenge the decision before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court. It is expected that once confirmed or reduced, the Havana government will proceed to apply the treaty on serving of sentences signed by both countries. In which case, Angel Carromero could serve his sentence in some Spanish prison.

This young man of 27 has been judged according to article 177 of the existing Criminal Code, in which it is established that “the driver of a vehicle who, violating traffic laws or regulations, causes the death of a person, incurs the sentence of privation of liberty of from one to ten years.” Initially the prosecutor demanded a sentence of seven years, which has been reduced by three in the sentence dictated by the court. However, the family of the Oswaldo Paya, the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, demanded an independent investigation of the facts of that Sunday in July near the city of Bayamo.

Of the four involved in that unfortunate event two died and the Swede Jens Aron Modig returned to his country without any charges being presented against him. Angel Carromero was involved in a police investigation that has had wide repercussions, including in the official Cuban press. Many denounced that the case has been used by the Island’s government against the internal opposition, and has even served as a mechanism to pressure Spain’s Popular Party administration. As of today, a new scenario opens for all parties.

According to the official version of events, Carromero was driving at an excessive speed and lost control of the car on a road under repair. With improper use of the brakes, the car left the highway and crashed into a tree. The official note released this Monday asserted that the trial had analyzed “wide material evidence” and had complied with “the established legal safeguards, in accordance with the seriousness of the facts.” However, at that trial held over a week ago, Oswaldo Paya’s children along with dozens of activists who tried to reach the court, were not allowed access. Arrests, home detentions and threats marked the day during which the trial was held, which Granma newspaper itself had previously announced would be “oral and public.”
The Spanish government, for its part, on hearing the sentence, has reaffirmed that its main motivation continues to be that Angel Carromero “return as soon as possible” to his homeland. “Right now there is a process of analysis and study (of the sentence), with the objective that he will return here as soon as possible,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs affirmed to the AFP press agency. For its part, the Cuban Consulate welcomed “with relative satisfaction” the “sensible reduction” of the sentence the prosecutor had asked for against the young man. The Consul General on the Island, Tomas Rodriguez-Pantoja, explained that by not exceeding five years the sentence left a “range of options” to implement the bilateral convention on the serving of sentences.

However, for both the defense and for many Cuban dissidents, the sentence is excessive. Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, expressed himself opposed. “I expected absolution due to the extenuating circumstances that were present in this case. Among them the bad conditions of the highway and the worse road signage,” the activist said. For their part, many official voices — many of which are anonymous or using pseudonyms — commented on Cubadebate and other websites that the sentence seemed “too short.”

Along with the extenuating circumstances raised by Human Rights activists on the Island, is added that fact that the families of those killed in the accident did not themselves file charges against Angel Carromero. An element which has led many to believe that the sentence imposed on Angel Carromero would be minimal and symbolic. Thus, the announcement this Monday has unpleasantly surprised those who supported the idea of a possible acquittal.

Once the sentence was announced, Ofelia Acevedo, Oswaldo Paya’s widow, confirmed her opinion that Carromero “should have been at home a long time ago. Perhaps he will not have to serve the sentence in Cuba and will be expelled from the country.”

16 October 2012

The sign is small, peeking out with a certain timidity over the balcony wall several yards above ground. A simple “For Sale” that would go unnoticed if it weren’t that in the apartment next door you can read the same phrase painted on a window. Two floors higher, the neighbors on the 6th floor have been more creative and have hung a piece of acrylic where they include the square feet available, to motivate possible buyers. But the sellers won’t have it easy. The building is ugly, grey, one of those built in the eighties under the “microbrigade” system. Many who read the classified on websites — such as Revolico.com and Cubisima.com — on arriving at the building don’t even knock on the door, because they can see it is one of those behemoths of concrete and bad architectural taste that were constructed during the years of Soviet subsidies.

The variety and quantity of homes for sale seems to exceed the real capabilities of Cuban wallets right now. Many homes have quickly come on the housing market that was banned for decades and, despite the need for housing, lacks the main prerequisite: money to buy them. It’s amazing to see properties for sale for a quarter or a half million convertible pesos, in a country where the average salary doesn’t exceed 20 convertible pesos a month. Hence, the greatest movement in buying-and-selling is taking place in the cheapest homes, which are, therefore, smaller, in worse locations, and in poor repair. Meanwhile, in the luxury residence sector everything goes more slowly, down, at the level of a room in a tenement or an apartment without windows the movement is quite noticeable, especially for all those people in the interior of the country who are taking advantage of the opportunity to get themselves a home, even if it’s just a few square feet, in Havana.

What is also interesting is the stark and pragmatic assessment that is made of each home for sale. The ads have become sophisticated, accompanied by photos and favorable descriptions of the house’s “good water supply,” its magnificent location in a quiet neighborhood, or the possibilities to enlarge it and build on the roof. But there is one qualifier that no one neglects to add if their housing warrants it, and that is “capitalist construction,” if it was built before 1959. There is a clear parting of the waters and implacable divide between that built before the Revolution and that which has risen during it. If the apartment building is from the decades of the 40s or 50s the price soars, while those apartments built by the microbrigades*, who raised their prefabricated towers during the years of Sovietization, are relegated to an inferior level of offerings. The housing market brings out — with all its toughness — a scale of values that is far from the official discourse and that reassigns a new amount to everything, an objective yardstick for measuring quality.

*Translator’s note: Microbrigades: “Self-help housing” through assigning groups of people from each workplace to build large apartment houses. Yoani, her husband Reinaldo Escobar, and son Teo live in a microbrigade building erected by Reinaldo and others from his workplace.

15 October 2012

There were no surprises. Chavez’s victory in the recent Venezuelan elections, though not at all “strong” or “overwhelming”, as the leader would have liked and as the official Cuban media insists on calling it, was the most likely forecast. However, the Capriles’s undeniable summoning power and his achieving 44% at the polls, the highest in the whole process of the “Bolivarian” revolution, shows that the opposition is a consolidated force to be reckoned with in that nation. Henrique Capriles remains, after the presidential election, the candidate of hope, the promise of a possible future.

I, of course, wished Capriles his victory. Not only to turn another irksome page of Cuba’s begging and dependency under the setting of the Castro totalitarianism, but to enjoy the end of another threat to democracy in this hemisphere rolled into the person of the arrogant Venezuelan president. I’m of the thinking that prolonging Chavez’s stay in the presidential armchair will not save the Cuban regime’s from its defeat, and that the solution to the Cuban problem must come from the hands of Cubans on all shores and not from external junctures, though they can apply their influence for or against the speed of the decomposition of the dictatorship. Chavez, after all, is an annoying accident that will leave the stage eventually. Maybe nature will complete what the opposition could not accomplish this time.

Without trying to lay down guidelines, I believe, nonetheless, that democratic Venezuelans should not be discouraged by the results of these elections. Rather, they should understand how much they have achieved and advanced. It would be wrong to leave the country and allow the would-be dictator to continue squeezing it at will; it would be a shame to solve it by taking flight or feeling defeated. Some Venezuelan friends have written to me with deep regret, announcing that now they would leave the country. Please don’t. Let good Venezuelans look through Cuba’s mirror: stampedes are a relief for dictatorships and only succeed in extending their time in power. Don’t become, like us, a country of migrating mourners, and don’t allow them to wrench from you, as the Castros did to Cubans, what is rightfully yours.

Yesterday, around midnight, I got a message from my friend Antonio Rodiles on my cell phone. It read: “I thought Venezuela would turn into a democracy first, but it seems that we will be the ones…” It was an encouraging message that reminded me of the importance of keeping the faith and fighting for what we want. Democracy continues to be the dream that Venezuelans and Cubans pursue. I would tell free Venezuelans today: Don’t dismay, only you can prevent the triumph of authoritarianism… the polls spoke loud and clear about you. May it be so.

October 8 2012

Thanks to a hundred dollars from some relatives in Miami, the Calderón family knew they could eat well for four days. And Oneida, the seventy-one year old homemaker in charge of feeding the seven members of her family—five adults and two kids—could take a little break from the long lines and having to go to the farmers’ markets at closing time when things go on sale.

Let’s take a look as the Calderon’s menu for those four days. On Thursdays there was white rice, black beans and one hamburger per person. For salad, a slice of avocado. Only the children had dessert—a little scoop of ice cream purchased at a small privately-owned cafe.

Friday’s meal was not bad. There was a tenderloin filet, delicately thin, which she got on the black market for fifty pesos* per pound. White rice and chickpeas, purchased at the mall, with artisanal ham and chorizo from private farmers’ markets. Cucumber salad and, for the children, an ice cream popsicle covered in chocolate, which are sold by street vendors on bicycles for five pesos a popsicle.

The winning streak continued on Saturday.Congrí,braised beef, yucca with garlic sauce and fresh guava juice. For dessert the children had a surprise—pastel oriental, prepared by freelance cooks.

Traditionally in Cuba the biggest meal of the week is usually prepared on Sunday. That afternoon the Calderón’s dined on two chicken drumsticks per person – purchased for 2.40 convertible pesos* a kilogram—rice with black beans and green bean salad. There was dessert for everyone that day—guava jam with homemade cream cheese.

With their bellies full, the men of the house passed the hat and went out to buy a liter of Havana Club white rum for 3.85 CUC*. They drank it while watching a pre-recorded broadcast of English league soccer. The women chatted, waiting for the soccer game to end so they could watch rented videos of the final episodes of Pablo Escobar, Boss of Evil, a mini-series that half the island is hooked on.

Once the three hours of her day-off had ended, Oneida went back to worrying. For those three meals—including cooking oil, seasonings and condiments—she had spent 56 CUC. The next day, with the 136 pesos and 9 CUC remaining, she had to plan the menu for the upcoming week.

The Calderón family lives in a three-bedroom house in a Havana suburb. In Castro’s Cuba they could be considered “middle class.” Except for Oneida and the two children, everyone in the family is a professional. If their monthly salaries, paid in non-convertible pesos, are combined and hard currency remittances are included, they bring in a total of 3,258 pesos a month—much higher than the average Cuban family’s income.

The Calderon’s spend 95% of this on food. And they only have one meal a day. For breakfast they eat bread with homemade mayonnaise and coffee. For lunch there is omelette or croquette and juice or a soft drink. When an overseas relative sends them $100, things get better. They can buy good fish, chicken from the hard currency store, a leg of pork, cured meats and even beef. But not everyone has relatives in the United States or Europe who can regularly send dollars or euros. For them the issue of food becomes real headache.

It’s always good to remember that journalism is reiteration. A year ago a list of food prices, in hard currency and in pesos, was published inEn La Habana, which showedyou can eat well if you have enough money. The price of powdered milk had risen substantially, from 5.25 to 5.80 CUC for a one kilo box in the malls. On the black market a two-pound bag was going for 60 to 80 pesos. Keep in mind that the average monthly salary in Cuba is 450 pesos, the equivalent of $18.

Oneida buys and reads the papers. So, when on September 13 she read in Granma that “approximately 19% of Americans have trouble buying food,” she could not help but smile. “At least there the figures are released and are known. And only two out of ten people are in this situation. I can assure you that here it’s everybody. Except those in charge, of course,” she said sarcastically.

Eating has been and continues to be a big problem for Cuba. Eating well is a subject for another chapter.

Photo: Roast pork, a typical Cuban dish.

Translator’s note: Cuba has two official currencies: the moneda nacional or peso, in which salaries are paid and is not convertible, and the CUC or convertible peso, which is pegged at 1.10 to the dollar.

October 14 2012