Translating Cuba

Yesterday I decided to go to Neptune Street between Aramburu and Hospital Streets to see about and receive impressions of the site where from 7:35 in the morning on Friday until today, Tuesday, September 25, the repressive organs have established themselves in front of the headquarters of the Ladies in White.

At some point in the afternoon when it came time for me to decide between leaving or staying home I made the second choice. I imagined myself in the situation of a person who avoids plunging into very cold or very hot water, and you just put one foot forward or imagine you can but the body and soul hang back, avoiding the danger.

The news came by word of mouth: the street and house were under siege, it was impossible to reach them. They had ordered the employees and students from the University of Havana to go there to repudiate* them. The Federated University Students (FEU) “extras” and a platform with singers were making noise, while State Security agents were stationed at the door to prevent the Ladies from leaving to go to Church. The extras in Cuba have become somewhat macabre, I always perceive them in slow motion, the government uses them to repudiate while the mob, brought in for the occasion, beats the opponents.

No one imagines that immensely apathetic people who participate in an act of repudiation, under orders sent from the top of the pyramid of power in Cuba, have the least interest in either in changing their destinies or in defending this government from the threat of a group of women who protest in defense of the rights of all Cubans not to go to jail for dissent or for denouncing the regime, and who fight for the release of those who are now prisoners under conditions difficult to imagine, and even to believe on hearing their testimonies.

I remember the legend of the martyrdom of St. John of Patmos at the Latin Gate, and the poem. Surely as part of my quest to continue to protect my shell.

Finally a feeling of frustration invades me. I can’t write about anything else. At night the number of Ladies in White imprisoned was confirmed to be more than 60.

Meanwhile at my daughter’s school they are preparing the children for the Young Pioneers scarf. A picture of the Castro brothers on one of the walls of the classroom and portraits of the five State Security agents (the “Cuban Five”) — colleagues of the abusers besieging the house of the late Laura Pollán — appear in the childish imagination as heroes of the fatherland.

Those are not my values nor the values I want my daughter to learn. I would be difficult with her five years to maintain two meanings for the same symbols; because none of these people are completely real to the child’s perception, fairies are more real. It’s me who’s looking for the morals and hope of all these childhood fables, where being brave and telling the truth don’t leave you completely alone against the forces of evil.

*Translator’s note: The nature of these “repudiation rallies” is clear from the photos in this post. The regime often claims they are “spontaneous uprisings of outraged neighbors” but in fact people are routinely bussed in and the actions are planned in advance. In at least one case, confronting the regime with knowledge of a planned “spontaneous rally” and demanding its cancellation was successful, at least in cancelling that particular action.

September 25 2012

For the second week in a row all institutes devoted to medical education and health technology in Havana have suspended classes.

Students were taken from their classrooms in order to screen people in Havana who are suffering from fevers, and to supervise the control of the Aedes aegypti mosquito in different municipalities. The suspension of classes is in order to strengthen every area of health in the prevention and early detection of new cases of Dengue.

Students are required to spend all the hours of the morning on each of the routes established for the investigation, and this must be completed before they appear for the territorial clinic debriefing and for further analysis from the physicians directing hygiene and epidemiology .

Some of the students participating in this activity do so under threat; those not attending this activity can be expelled from their respective careers. The refusal of many of these students is due to the fact that a number of homes remain closed or in the worst case prefer to close their doors because they do not trust the epidemiological work.

Public Health directors have recently reported continued detection of new cases and the work of investigation and mosquito control will have to be reinforced by the Youth Labor Army (EJT) and young people of Compulsive Military Service age.

September 24 2012

On September 19, the Cuba Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) announced, in the voice of its deputy Roberto Gonzalez, that this coming December it will present a report on the results of the transformations that have been introduced in the Island’s healthcare system in search of “more competition” on the part of the staff working in the sector and greater “efficiency” in the service. Such transformations would be inscribed among the changes of the General-President. According to the deputy minister, under consideration are the modifications discussed and approved at the VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) aimed at “perfecting” the healthcare system while ensuring “quality, savings, resource efficiency and the elimination of unnecessary expenses,” elements that are priorities for the “renewal of socialism” in Cuba.

Also lately there has been circulating on the web a letter-complaint addressed to R. Castro by a group of doctors of General Surgery at the capital’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, which, although not confirmed as to its authenticity, we know that what is raised in the text is scrupulously true and reflects the need for much deeper and more radical changes than those contemplated in the government guidelines.

Meanwhile, ordinary Cubans do not perceive the benefits of such supposed changes: many family doctors offices are not open during their scheduled hours, often they are mobilized by the health director of the area to work on dengue screening (an undeclared epidemic that continues to advance at a rapid pace); in the polyclinics medical equipment is scarce, insufficient, generally obsolete and with frequent imperfections that prevent its effective use; the physical building and hygiene conditions of the installations are defective and sometimes deplorable; and the salaries paid to health personnel are embarrassingly miserable.

So far, the General’s only visible reform has been to shorten the Roundtable TV show by half an hour, although this hasn’t improved the information any. However, we must be grateful that this TV show dedicated the broadcast of Friday, September 21, to an active sector of the dissidence and independent civil society (such as the blogger Yoani Sanchez, the Ladies in White and others). True, the “information” offered was manipulated, taken out of context and falsified. True also that the material prepared by the government’s yeomen was horribly edited, as could be appreciated by the scarce viewers (me included, because someone alerted me to what they were putting on the small screen); but we must be grateful for the dissemination, something unthinkable a few years ago. There is no bad propaganda, friends, only propaganda. The moral is that, beyond their evil intentions, they cannot ignore the existence of these forces that oppose the system and which, with their help, continue to slowly but inexorably spread in Cuba.

September 24 2012

For years Neptune Street in Central Havana, in the capital of the country, has been turned into a stage for the orchestrated Acts of Repudiation against the “Laura Pollán Toledo Ladies in White Movement.”

The present month will not stray far from its dismal history, according to what its own members describe, along with some Human Rights activists close to this women’s movement, created after the well-known Black Spring of 2003.

The street has once again been taken, its usual traffic diverted, and access permitted only to those performing in the repudiation rally organized against these peaceful women. The screams and the help of audio equipment are part of this terrible stage set directed by the Cuban political police.

Insults and obscene words are heard on the lips of the actors who, in many cases, are forced to form a part of the theatrical work, under threats of losing their jobs or their studies, just to cite an example.

Despite these constant acts of unscrupulous people, the Laura Pollán Toledo Ladies in White Movement will not cede under any conditions. Its brave and heroic women stand at the windows and doors and don’t remain silent against the official chorus.

Last September of 2011 was a terrible month for this movement which was attacked in the worst way, with those participating in the act of repudiation physically dragging and attacking the women they found there, united in their desire to pray for the release of all the political prisoners. One of the women assaulted was Laura Pollán Toledo, the leader of this movement, who became mysteriously ill shortly after being scratched by one of the euphoric attackers. A month later in unknown conditions this woman, committed not only to the freedom of her husband but to the freedom of a nation, died.

Today Berta Soler occupies the place left by Laura and in tribute to her has renamed the movement that she created years earlier and which she led all that time.

September month of horrors, led by people who don’t hesitate to block the women who worship the Virgin of Mercy, patroness of captives. Venerated by everyone within and outside our nation.

A single question comes to my mind at these times. How many violent Septembers do we have still to live? I ask God to return Neptune street to normality, for the hatred between Cubans to disappear, and more than this, for the next September to not see an act of repudiation meeting in front of the abode of a woman like Laura, an example of dignity and decorum, but rather than at a future gathering the hands of all will carry gladioli and remembrance and homage to each one of these brave Cuban women.

September 24 2012

I’ve always deplored extremism and fanaticism, from wherever it comes and whoever practices it, because I consider that its roots are found in the primitivism and darkness, both totally alien to reason.

These days, especially in some of the world’s Arab countries, and in others where the same nationals are located the extremist followers of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed, faced with the screening of a short film of no more than fifteen minutes in which, according to them, the figure of the prophet is denigrated, have committed murder, acts of vandalism with fires, destruction of property and mass demonstrations completely out of control, against the United States and the West. It appears that the alleged offense has been well utilized by those who don’t want to lose an opportunity to declare holy wars, promote intolerance, practice terrorism, accuse as infidels those who don’t share their religious beliefs, and ask for their extermination.

Muhammad, being a human being, regardless of mystical attributes ascribed to him, shared the same physical needs of all human beings. In addition, I am sure that he accepted or even practiced, for belonging to the Muslim world, some of the customs belonging to it: discrimination against women, polygamy, inhumane punishments such as physical mutilation, stoning, beheading and others. All this is still practiced in many of these countries.

Others, more advanced, educated, difficulties, misunderstandings and tenacity, have managed to reduce and even eradicate the practice. Shocking, because it shows the human side of the prophet, it should not be cause for so much aggression. When, years ago, Jesus Christ was treated as a human being in the film The Last Temptation of Christ, although the Catholic Church protested, nobody thought to commit murder and acts of vandalism against its creators or their home countries.

These primitive manifestations, rather than uplifting the human being, denigrate and cannot be allowed in the name of any religion. Intolerance of any kind, must be combated firmly. Yielding to it led us to Nazism in the twentieth century and all its consequences. Do not make the same mistake. Everyone can have religious beliefs of any kind they desire and practice them, but there is no right to prevent freedom of expression of every human being, let alone to want to impose respect for one’s beliefs by force, by international threats and blackmail. To firmly oppose these irrational acts, in words and actions, as civilized beings, supports the religion they profess.

September 20 2012

 

 

 

Like every September 24, this Monday Catholics are celebrating the Day of Mercies, one of the invocations of the Virgin Mary. The Virgin of Mercies, or of Mercy, as she is also known, is the patron of the city of Barcelona and is identified with the virtues of forgiveness and benevolence. In the Yoruba pantheon she is syncretized with Obatalá, recognized as the purest of all the deities, owner of everything white, of the head, and of thoughts and dreams.

The Ladies in White, who have taken to the streets to demand the release of their family members incarcerated for political reasons, have taken this date as a very special day. Last year, near the temple dedicated to this virgin in the city of Havana, dozens of Ladies in White were attacked by a mob. The leader of the group, Laura Pollán, was brutally beaten and bitten on her hand. Weeks later she died in a hospital, victim of a sudden illness still not clarified.

Since last Thursday the headquarters of the Ladies in White has been under assault by the police. Neptune Street is blocked off in the block between Hospital and Aramburu streets. There were more than 50 arrests throughout the country, and of these, as of this Monday morning thirty remain unaccounted for, their whereabouts unknown.

These courageous women face not only persecution and violence, but are also victims of a systematic smear campaign of denigration and defamation. Some of them have already seen their family members released, and yet they still accompany those who haven’t yet achieved this objective. They are among the very few Cubans who have found an answer to the question so many of us ask: “What can I do?”

24 September 2012

It was a flying sheet of roofing that cut the nose of the Uruguayan president José Mujica. A piece of metal that fell off just as he was helping a neighbor reinforce the roof of his house. The anecdote traveled through the media and the social networks as an example of the simplicity of a leader known for his austere lifestyle. There he was, like one more farmer, trying to make sure the storm didn’t carry off the roof tiles of a house near the farm where he lived in Montevideo. Undoubtedly, an anecdote full of lessons that should be imitated by many other world leaders.

Pepe Mujica’s story made me reflect about the divorce that exists between the way of life of the leaders and the people in Cuba. The contrast is so marked, so abysmal, that it determines a good part of the mistakes they commit when making decisions. It’s not just that they live in better houses, reside in beautiful residential neighborhoods, or that they drive modern cars. No. The great difference lies in that almost nothing the authorities do has any relationship to the problems that plague our daily lives. They do not know the feeling of waiting for more than an hour at a bus stop, the annoyance of walking streets lacking streetlights or full of potholes. They haven’t the least idea of the smell of stale sweat that fills the inside of a truck where dozens of people are traveling from one village to another, nor of the clatter of horse carts which for many are the only form of transport. They have never spent a night at La Coubre terminal on the waiting list for a train ticket, nor have they had to hand over the equivalent of a monthly salary to a guard who resells the tickets to board a rickety train car.

When has a commander or general of this country entered a hard currency store to see if they are now selling hamburger meat more cheaply, and has had to leave because they don’t have enough money to buy any of the goods on the shelves? When was the last time a minister opened a refrigerator and found it full of water but lacking food? Will the president of the parliament ever sleep on a mattress patched over and over by the family’s grandmother? Will he mend his underwear to be able to continue wearing it, or use vinegar to wash his hair because there is no shampoo? What do the children of these elite know about humid late nights spent heating up the kerosene stove so it will be ready to make coffee in the morning? Have they looked up close into the face of the functionary who says “No” — almost with pleasure — when they are asking about the results of some paperwork? Have any of them had to sell peanuts to survive like so many retired elderly do the length and breadth of this country?

They cannot govern us because they do not know us. They are not able to find solutions because they have never suffered the difficulties we have. They do not represent us because they strayed too long ago into a world of privileges, comforts and luxuries. They have no idea what it means to be a Cuban today.

It was after six in the evening and the lighting of the hall barely did justice to light the apartment of Martha Beatriz Roque. There were still some people there who joined the collective hunger strike — a total of 28 people fasting in Cuba — for the release of Jorge Vázquez Chaviano, who should have been released on September 9th but whom the authorities arbitrarily kept prisoner.

I was disinformed, like every citizen living in a dictatorship — without access to a free press — and I was surprised to find they’d abandoned the demand. Martha, who came out to greet me with the slow and fragile appearance pf the prolonged fast, told me that State Security had talked to Vázquez’s wife that day and an officer informed her that she would soon have a spouse at home. No triumphalism at the outcome shone through the subdued tone of her voice, simply exhaustion for the sacrifice implied in refusing an act vital for human survival, such as food, in order to turn it into a weapon of struggle.

When they curtail liberties with their long list of totalitarian wrongs, they give more reasons to exercise and defend — sometimes even from anonymous illegality — democratic values, despite the threats of imprisonment or exile that hang threateningly over their entire Cuban archipelago.

There are precedents for fellow democrats who have taken the alternative of voluntary starvation in the face of abuse, which is to confront despotism with hunger from the appetite for justice for all Cubans.

I still remember, in recent times, the long strike of Guillermo Fariñas, who contributed to the release of political prisoners in 2010, and those that claimed the lives of Orlando Zapata and Wilmar Villar. It seems that for some leaders, excessive and totalitarian power generates the morbidity in them to want to see their opponents squalid, rather than establishing a democratic state of law, social justice and the common good for all Cubans.

Once again, the physical deterioration and dry lips of the strikers were not signs of weakness but of strength to denounce those who cling to power, and who from the moral point of view increasingly weaken before the world. Once again the cruelty of the authorities ceded before the decorum of a handful of decent Cubans. There are no prisons for freedom and justice, as those who live as prisoners of their hatred would like, to keep all of Cuba locked in a punishment cell and put bars on the rights of an entire people.

September 19 2012

When I repeatedly hear the principal authorities of the country — and also the not so principal, in an echoing chorus — say that the cadres (functionaries), of the State as well of political and mass organizations, should be patriots, and that the workers, professionals, students, peasants and all components of society should be as well, I feel a great concern for the Fatherland: divided among so many patriots, very little of it remains for the common citizen.

One of the great problems of Cuba has, in fact, been its patriots, especially when they accede to any level of power. They consider themselves to be genetic patriots, and understand that those who don’t share their ideas or who question them are unpatriotic, criminals, annexationists, corrupt lackeys, mercenaries, immoral, indecent and a whole litany of insults they seem to have a good supply of. If their power is total, they exercise it as if the nation were their personal fiefdom, doing what they please, without respecting existing laws or accommodating them to their interests. Being patriots seems to be give them a carte blanche before the rest of society.

Some of our patriots, and it is easy to verify historically, in the presidency of the country, generally have become autocrats, suppressing any manifestation of opposition, persecuting and imprisoning its representatives (sometimes liquidating them), and in the best of cases forcing them into exile or, if they decide to stay in the country, converting them into non-persons to society. I prefer a thousand times a president economist, lawyer, scientist, intellectual, doctor, teacher, worker, peasant or another, both man and woman, over a patriot. What the patriots have cost this country is too expensive!

There are, among our patriots, who seem to have cloned the little word and reproduce it by the thousands, using it continuously in their public speeches, to the annoyance and boredom of their forced listeners. The have turned it into a wild card, without which they can not exist. It would have been better to not have so many patriots and to increase the number of responsible citizens able to do their duty and to demand and defend their rights.

Civility has disappeared in many citizens, and it has been replaced by the double standard, which ultimately is just lack of morals to be able to survive under the Patriots. The nation has been dismembered, its identity lost, its values overturned, the culture is flawed and immorality and corruption rampant while no one, despite their speeches, rants and laws, can do anything to curb them. That is our current reality, even though some people prefer to close their eyes so as not to see it. To reverse it could be the most difficult task of our future leaders.

September 23 2012

Note: Wendy and Ignacio are only able to upload their posts periodically and this article refers to the recently ended hunger strike.

A week has passed since Marta Beatriz Roque Cabello’s press conference in Havana, in which she denounced several facts that expose a number of activities on the part of the organs of the Department of State Security intended to undermine Human Rights activists on the island.

Roque Cabello, with a full history as a Human Rights activist and one of the most notable civil society leaders in Cuba, announced at this conference the beginning of a hunger strike which will only come to an end with the reestablishment of Socialist Legality in Cuba, the release of the political prisoner Jorge Cazquez Chaviano whose sentence expired last week and who remains in prison, and the clarification by the State of the looting and robbing at the houses of peaceful opponents, and the destruction of their homes and the loss of their personal belongings.

The strike announced was initiated in the center of the country by former political prisoner Jorge Luis Garcia Perez (Antunez) who also remains steadfast even if this protest will lead to the ultimate consequences.

A week since its beginning this hunger strike is already known as the strike with the most protestors in the island. The number of strikers is growing on the streets and within the prisons.

Although many have expressed their disagreement with the prolonged use of the hunger strike as a way of fighting, the number of people in solidarity increases at every moment and it has recently been learned that the Centrist Democrat International soon take to the Geneva Human Rights Commission the case of the 28 Cubans on hunger strike.

September 17 2012