Translating Cuba

The sweat of the three women who put me into a police car still sticks to my skin and in my nostrils. Huge, hulking, ruthless, they took me into a windowless room where the broken fan only blew air towards them. One looked at me with particular scorn. Maybe my face reminded her of someone in her past: an adversary in school, a despotic mother, a lost lover. I don’t know. What I do remember is that, on the evening of October 5, her look wanted to destroy me. She was the one who ferreted around under my skirt with great delight, while two other uniformed policewomen grabbed me for the “search.” Rather than seeking out some hidden object, the purpose of this search was to make me feel violated, defenseless, raped.

Every six hours they changed my guards. On the midnight shift they were noticeably less strict, but I locked myself in my silence and never responded to their questions. I evaded myself. I chose to tell myself, “They’ve taken everything, even the clip that holds my hair, but — ridiculous searchers — they have not been able to take from me my inner world.” Thus I decide to take refuge, during the long hours of my illegal confinement, in the only thing I had: my memories. The room wanted to appear neat and clean, but everything had its share of filth or breakage. The granite floor tiles were covered with a good dose of accumulated grime. I stared at the figures made by the little pebbles cast in each tile and the gobs of dirt. After a while faces jumped out of this constellation. Characters flourished in the rough floor of my cell in the police station in Bayamo.

Springing from there was the lanky countenance of Don Quixote, while in that corner I could see the simple profile of Eduardo Abela’s “Bobo” — that wise fool who mocked the Machado dictatorship. Some oblique eyes, shaped by mortar and gravel, looked incredibly like the protagonist in the film Avatar. I laughed and my perennial watchers began to believe that my refusal of food and water was literally frying my brain. I espied, in the irregular granite, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and the slender figure of Gandalf, staff and all. But standing out among all these forms that emerged from the rough paving there was one — the most intense — that seemed to cavort and laugh before my eyes. Perhaps it was the effect of thirst and hunger, the truth is I don’t know. A long-bearded dwarf with a cynical look, slyly mocking.

It was Rumplestiltskin, the star of a children’s story where the queen is forced to guess his complicated name and if she does not she must give the despotic elf her most precious possession: her own son. What was this character doing in the midst of my temporary imprisonment? Why did I see him over so many other visual references I have accumulated in my life? I immediately intuited the answer. “You are Rumplestiltskin,” I said out loud and the gorgons watching me looked worried. “You are Rumplestiltskin,” I repeated, “and I know your name. You are like dictatorships, and once we start calling them by their name, it begins to destroy them.”

6 October 2012

The presidential elections on October 7 may not be the triumphant military parade announced by Hugo Chavez. The Chavez vote has been trending downward. Capriles has gained the advantage. He has come from behind. Now it is a house-to-house campaign for the undecided vote.

This is a concern for more than one person in Cuba. In political roundtables, those discussion programs on Cuban television in which all points of view are aligned, the rhetoric is less optimistic.

Cuban media reported in August that Chávez had a 30% lead over Capriles. Cuban news programs were broadcasting the smiling “Comrade Chávez” in his red beret, shouting that he would trounce his adversary.

The campaign strategy of the strongman of Caracas has left much to be desired. In the background, according to several analysts, is Cuba’s political machinery.

On the subject of democratic elections, Cuba has little to teach its allies in the Americas. The Castros have always governed as they pleased, without a legal opposition and by repressing dissidents.

The use of defamation and scorn in a nation like Venezuela – in spite of past political corruption and criminal violence, the country enjoys a relatively democratic climate – has been a fundamental error by the Chávez team.

Hugo Chávez has not even been willing to have a televised debate with his opponent. Everything has been an insult. This tactic has exposed his intolerance and arrogance.

He should have taken notes of how to run an electoral campaign – by uniting instead of dividing the country – from his Brazilian colleague, Lula da Silva. After fourteen years in power, logic has given way to appalling violence in Venezuela, where 150,000 have been assassinated during this time period.

Deaths in Venezuela are twice the number of murders in Mexico by drug cartels and paramilitary groups. More than a country, it is a slaughterhouse. The poor from Caracas’ hills do not trust Hugo Chávez. Corruption and political cronyism are growing, the prices of staple foods are rising and poverty figures are going through the roof.

The average Venezuelan might have a medical clinic in one corner of his house, but he considers it unacceptable to have to pay an inflated price for it. The poor relation from the Caribbean costs Venezuela billions of dollars annually. Chávez provides 100,000 barrels of oil daily, selling it to the Castro regime at discount prices, in exchange for health care personnel and technical assistance.

In the last trimester, the government in Caracas had to make financial payouts to settle its accounts on the island. In 2000, Chávez and Fidel Castro signed the Accord on Comprehensive Cooperation in which Cuba pledged to send 30,000 doctors and athletic coaches. In exchange PDVSA – the state-owned oil company – was to ship 53,000 barrels of oil a day. According to experts this figure has doubled. Petroleum is essential to the government of Raúl Castro.

Its commitment to a timid series of reforms, including a $900 million investment in infrastructure for the port of Mariel, construction of international tourism facilities and an expansion in the number of self-employed workers, has caused energy consumption to skyrocket.

In a desperate search for energy independence, Castro II has been actively engaged in gas exploration in Cuba’s territorial waters, but so far no petroleum has been found. As a result the October 7 elections are the number one priority for the Castro regime. The fall of Chávez would hit the fragile domestic economy like a tsunami.

Cuba has never been able to get by on its own. When Soviet sponsorship dried up in 1991, the island entered a period of darkness and misery. Power outages lasted sixteen hours a day. Thousands of people suffered from chronic illnesses related to malnutrition. Motorized transport disappeared, replaced by tractors pulled by oxen, horses and donkeys. The comandante único kept in his drawer a plan called Operation Zero in which the army would take charge of distributing food rations in individual neighborhoods.

This phase, which never completely ended, is referred to officially as “the special period.” It has been like a war without bombs. If chaos never erupted, it was because of the rise to power in Venezuela of Hugo Chávez Frías, a true saint on the Castros’ altar. Fourteen years later, Fidel Castro would become delirious, making incendiary rants and suffering from weak health.

His brother Raúl, the hand-picked successor, has not been able to straighten the rickety direction of the Cuban economy. Now more than ever, he needs the financial resources of his twin. Cuba will do all within its power to see that Hugo Chávez remains in office. If not until 2030, as the bolivariano would like, then at least for another six-year term.

In an attempt to keep him in the president’s seat, the regime in Havana offers advice on military matters and sleazy propaganda techniques. If there is one way in which the Creole autocracy differs from its “Venezuelan brother,” it is in his stubborn confidence in the mechanisms of western representative democracy.

At the beginning of the 1990s Fidel Castro whispered some good advice to his Nicaraguan ally, Daniel Ortega: Do not hold elections just to lose. The Castros assume Hugo Chávez has taken note. If not, then they are keeping their fingers crossed, just in case.

Photo: AP, from ABC News.

October 3 2012

We have just been released!! 30 hours under arrest and many anecdotes to relate.

This September 28 they celebrated the fifty-second anniversary of the creation of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDR). In contrast to years past I did not see reports on Cuban television of two or three previously planned nighttime parties,”which customarily are celebrated on the 27thin “anticipation of the big day.” Normally, the national media “casually” attends these festivities in order to have broadcast images of CDR enthusiasm for the event. Instead, there was only one news report and it dealt with a daytime event in which the president of one committee spoke. His audience was a small group of passive and silent participants. There was not the usual interview with an ordinary member, who was “emotional and aroused” by theanniversary.

With the passage of years and the “permanent special period,” to which we Cubans living in this archipelago have been subjected, the festivities that were sponsored by these organizations have been replaced in the city by “a people’s cookout” featuring on an open-air caldosa* on each cuadra – the lineal space between the two corners of a block – and cheap rum for those who like alcohol. On the street where I live,in a cauldron blackened by poverty and evocative of the countryside,there was a pig’s head and two or three kinds of vegetables covered by a lot of water, all placed in the planting area in front of the house of my neighborhood’s CDR president. This time no music was heard during the very few and boring activities that took place, and the mood seemed to be more one of mourning than celebration.

This farcical institution — managed and founded decades ago to send a message of “consensus,” of a revolutionary honeymoon and a happy marriage between the citizenry and the authorities — is out of date. Almost no one expects anything positive from this organization, which has only offered interference in personal lives, surveillance, betrayal, nighttime security patrols — we never found out if they were acting in the role of police or of decoys — a lot of meetings, voluntary work brigades, rallies, marches and permanent blackmail through the use of negative reports if you did not actively participate in the tasks assigned by the organization.

After returning from a fact-finding tour of my neighborhood, I could see from my balcony the depressing sight of the few people willing to be served the “substantial” brew. They carried jugs, metal pitchers and other containers, gathering around the cauldron and, on command from a group of political warlocks with no future, conspire to annually expose their misfortunes.

*Translator’s note:Caldosais traditionally a thick broth or stew.After the Cuban revolution cooking it became a communal event in which neighbors brought whatever ingredients they had at hand. Some say this came about because of food scarcity; others believe that the change had more to do with the collective emphasis of socialism. (Source: cubaentuscon.blogspot.com)

October 2 2012

The figures are disturbing. For over 30 years the Cuban women, on average, have less than one daughter by the end of their reproductive years.An aging population without any replacements.And it is only decreasing. BecauseCuba has begun to subtract inhabitants in absolute terms.

This conclusion came as a report from the National Bureau of Statistics in 2011. Add the ages of the three strongmen of the country, both Castros and Machado Ventura, and it totals 249 years. To add more drama to the aging population, annually more than 20,000 people aged between 10 and 45 years emigrate from Cuba.

One solution the Cuban government has come up with to fight the high ages and shrinking size of the population is to raise the retirement age for women and men to 60 and 65 years respectively.

A retired person earns a salary in Cuba, between 100 and 300 pesos (5 and 16 dollars) and that does not even cover 30% of their needs. For a citizen to have a breakfast and two meals a day requires no less than 2,500 pesos a month (113 dollars).

We also have the grave problem of the living quarters. Some 62% of the houses on the island are in either regular or bad state of repair. Three or four different generations have to live under the same roof.

When space is needed in the living quarters, the displaced are usually the elderly. The best option is for the grandparents to have to sleep with the grandchildren. The worst is that the family decides to put them in some run down State asylum.

There’s no worse lead up to death for an old person than to live in a State hospice. Badly treated, lack of hygiene and poor food. Already last year, more people died in Cuba than were born.

Obviously the haphazard and weak economy is not prepared to guarantee a decent life for the two million people over 60.

If currently the average age in Cuba is 38, in 2025 it will be 44. Almost 26% of the population will be over 60. By 2030, 3.3 million people will be over 60.

Today the group of Cubans older than 60 is 17.8%. It is more than the number of children ages 0 to 14 which is 17.3%. The ideal would be to promote policies to motivate women to have two or more children.

In Europe, the benefactor state usually pays a stipend to mothers with children. But the public coffers in Cuba are just about empty.

Since General Castro inherited power from his brother, the construction and social and leisure facilities for the population has dropped to almost zero. They only invest in projects that return hard currency, like tourism, or strategic projects such as petrochemicals or the transfer of water to the eastern region.

Therefore, one should not expect that at a meeting of the monotone National Parliament they will announce a cash incentive to encourage women to have more than one child. The accelerated aging in Cuba is a phenomenon that will have to be dealt with by a future government. By 2025 the Castro brothers will rest in a mausoleum or be two infirm elderly nearing the century mark.

The next president, in addition to aspiring to spectacular economic growth, will have to try to renegotiate the foreign debt and try to design a coherent society, inclusive and democratic.

All this work should be undertaken with an aging human capital. And the growing segment of women, professional or otherwise, who due to material scarcities put off forming a family.

To convince them that Cuba needs rejuvenation and more daughters would be a commendable task. We’ll see whether in ten years leaving for Florida continues to be the personal quest of many Cubans. Hopefully not.

Photo: Ivan Garcia

September 22 2012

A wave of recently implemented layoffs sent an undetermined number of workers into the streets. Official data on the initial number of people laid off referred to something around a half million; later there would be a second round that would lead to a total figure of about a million jobs lost, to be identified through rigorous State analysis.

If this process had been called by its name — by what the world would call these “readjustments” — it would have been a scandal; even more so when the one to blame for the current situation is the State itself. But as often happens in Cuba, after many long faces and some show of displeasure, people end up accepting the “package” and venting their outrage at home, consoling themselves with tears and stored up hatreds.

Among those affected by the mass layoffs have been experienced and competent professionals. For them, like the rest, the options provided by the State were farm work or “self-employment” in just the few dozen trades allowed. Most people “available” — they invent terms here to avoid universal standards and statistics — have no experience in making land produce, whether it is vacant or overrun by marabou weed and available for leasing in usufruct, so most of them opted for self-employment.

So it was that an army of entrepreneurs (?!) began to take out licenses to try their luck in the uncertain world of business. The most fortunate could count on family or friends abroad to provide resources to invest, or advice and information about the operations of their businesses.

What these excited people didn’t know was that there were already some macabre minds who had planned everything in reverse. The communist gurus in charge of the necessary accounts had designed a system of taxes and controls in which the conditions of the country resulted in armed robbery.

This was explained with absolute clarity on several Roundtable TV shows, but the hopeful and enthusiastic did pay attention. “This is designed in such a way as to avoid the accumulation of wealth on the part of individuals,” was what they said on these programs.

But if business owners don’t accumulate capital, how are they going to invest, acquire technology, widen their opportunities, improve quality and increase production, to be able to lower prices so that people benefit? If they can’t accumulate enough money, how are they going to develop their business and compete?

This means that no matter how much effort and investment they put in, no one is going to turn their business into a success nor prosper much beyond what is allowed by decree for any humble Cuban.

A devastated landscape

The current tax system alone is enough to make you throw in the towel and give up. But things don’t stop there. The brave aspirants find themselves in a country designed from beginning to end to have an anti-business approach. More than fifty years of building this absurd philosophy would not be erased by magic, not even when one of its main promoters said in a speech that a “change of mentality” was needed.

Among other things, the raw materials for food and supplies to provide basic services continued to come from “illegal” sources, and the supplies promised by the government in the vast majority of territories never arrived. Thus, within a few months, the avalanche of tiny businesses and kiosks that initially flourished began to disappear. (Some owners keep their licenses to pay their social contribution and so they won’t appear unemployed, thus dodging the surveillance of the Sector Chief and being able to dedicate themselves to other activities).

Another element that de facto destroys any initiative, especially in small towns and rural areas, is the total lack of economic capacity among potential consumers. Thousands of people who have the need and desire to acquire products are lacking resources. The population is economically dead, consisting mainly of the unemployed, poor farmworkers, wage laborers, etc…

On economic issues, first there must be money in the hands of those who would consume, so that investors are found to take the risks, borrow, look for alternatives: no one will risk anything to sell to skinny phantoms and neutral onlookers. At the same time, it’s curious that journalists in the official media who reflect endlessly on the increase in license applications and the proliferation of small businesses that are supposedly “going full steam ahead,” have not said a word about this.

And the result is always the same: after the failures, exhausted hopes, and with no sign of any more rabbits to be pulled out of the dark hat of the government, people look even more desperately than before for ways to leave the country. Especially the young. The lines at the embassies are ever longer.

It’s a shame that so many prefer to leave rather than to stay and fight to change things. Although in the end it’s understandable: who wouldn’t want to go from being someone who needs help to being someone able to help?

From Diario de Cuba

3 October 2012

What does the voice of Henrique Capriles sound like? A neighbor asked me a few days ago. I didn’t know whether to tell him it was high-pitched or deep, soft or forceful, because the Cuban media is careful not to air it. Instead, we only have the opportunity to hear the agitated shouts of Hugo Chavez, the verbal attacks he throws at his young opponent.

A few days before the Venezuelan elections, our official press has closed ranks around the current occupant of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas. The television commentators assure us that there will be a landslide victory for the Socialist Party and celebrate in advance. But that’s just in front of the cameras; behind the cameras is nervousness, not certainty.

Raul Castro’s government has too much invested in the Venezuelan elections on October 7. Much more than with the dismemberment of the USSR and the conversion of the Eastern European countries. On that occasion, the loss of the Soviet subsidies and the political allies of the socialist bloc submerged the country into a profound material and diplomatic crisis. But within the country the control exercised by Fidel Catro’s regime had the strength — and stubbornness — to withstand the blow.

Today, more than two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, little remains of the fervor, the stubborn will, with which we faced what Fidel Castro called The Special Period, a crises presented to us as a necessary sacrifice, a test of ideological fortitude.

There are so many similarities and yet profound differences. The loss of the economic underpinnings from the Kremlin forced Fidel Castro to allow self-employment, the renting of houses, the development of farmers markets, foreign investment, and opening of the Island to international tourism and dollarization.

However, it was precisely the rise to power of Hugo Chavez in 1999 that was the key element to the walking back of these reforms. With a powerful and nearby partner lavishly giving us oil, why continue to deepen the process of relaxations that resulted in a loss of power.

Raul Castro, years later, would retake the path of economic openings that his brother had retracted. This time he would be supported by the Venezuelan subsidy, which has enabled him to implement the few changes slowly in a lukewarm fashion. Perhaps there was a moment when he believed that offering farmers the ability to lease land in usufruct, or expanding licenses for self-employment, would allow Cuba to take its first steps towards economic independence.

Or maybe he always knew that this type of dependency, once established, ends up becoming a chronic situation. More than a circumstance, the need for external subsidy is the core of the Castro regime, the direct result of its inability to successfully manage the national economy.

If, on Sunday, Venezuelans reelect Hugo Chavez as president, Raul’s regime will get some breathing room. But the great polarization in Simon Bolivar’s fatherland will make it more difficult to publicly sustain the maintenance of Cuba. It will no longer be the same.

On top of that, the obvious physical collapse or the expected death of Fidel Castro is an open secret throughout the whole country. His last brief and delirious “Reflections” column was published in the newspaper on June 19. Some say they are only waiting for the end of the Venezuelan elections to put an announcement date on his obituary.

The government in Havana is approaching complicated months. Venezuela’s will be the first in a cycle of three elections that will influence, to a greater or lesser extent, our national life. The presidential election in the United States follows immediately in the list of electoral processes that lie ahead. Mitt Romney has promised a heavy hand with the Cuban authorities, but Barack Obama can also be very caustic to the Cuban system if he deepens his policy of family, academic and cultural approaches.

The first five-year term of Raul Castro will end in February 2013. Few are betting that he’s thinking of retiring to make way for a younger figure. These elections, the third that await us in the coming months, are also the last in importance and in generating expectations. The process of nominating People’s Power delegates and installing them in the National Assembly has already begun, and this body will approve the nominations to the Council of State.

If the Venezuelan results will decide whether we are granted billions in subsidies, and our relationship with our powerful neighbor to the north is in play in those elections, the Cuban elections smell strongly of a play whose script is already written. We don’t even need surveys or voter polls. There is no possibility of a surprise.

4 October 2012