Translating Cuba

Crowded hallways, blinds that let the heat in but barely allow a breeze to pass through. It’s ten in the morning in any office, in any place that serves the public, with a waiting list, the length and breadth of this Island. A functionary calls the names and surnames of those who wait, reviews their papers, takes them into a little cubicle with cardboard walls. Around noon, an impeccably dressed and shod lady crosses the room and the director himself prioritizes her above all others, and even sees her in his office. When she leaves, someone whispers about her, “That’s the daughter of General So-and-So… so she doesn’t have to wait.”

In the Nuevo Vedado neighborhood ugly concrete buildings alternate with mansions set among spacious gardens behind high fences. “And whose is that?” asks the curious child walking down the street for the first time. The parents snicker, raise their eyebrows, and finally tell him, “It was given to the mother of one of the commanders who came down from the Sierra Maestra, but now her grandchildren live there.” And just as they pass the other corner, an old man is talking with his next door neighbor. As the inquisitive little boy nears he hears him say, “I’m going to see if my nephew, the police chief, will give him a scare, so he’ll turn the loud music down.” When the curious family is crossing Tulipan Street a car fails to give way at the corner. At the wheel, another big-headed “blue blood” who knows he will never be fined for ignoring the stop sign.

Ancestry, the family tree, sharing genes with another is, in the Cuba of today, an important safe-conduct for almost everything. Nepotism is manifested not only the work structure, or in the rising to certain political positions. To be “family of…” streamlines procedures, erases criminal histories, positions you higher on the ladder to purchase a house or a car, gets you into the best hospitals without waiting, guarantees enrollment in the most exclusive schools, and even ensures rapid cremation when someone close to you dies. Your parentage could be the trump card, or the losing one, the element for which many colleges will condone in one student what would never be tolerated in another. Because who would want to embarrass the powerful dad? Why make things complicated for yourself by saying “no” to the whims of the general’s sister? Who would dare to delay a service to the grandson of a senior leader? Everyone knows that anger, when it comes from Mt. Olympus in the form of a lightening bold, of thunder, can get people fired from their jobs, get them in trouble, and ruin promising careers.

12 September 2012

The architects of the quagmire that is the Cuban economy now claim that the country will not be in a position to raise workers’ salaries until there is first a convincing increase in the level of worker productivity. At first glance this would seem reasonable. Anyone unaware of the island’s economic twists and turns would think, “Well, of course!” But ask any Cuban who has witnessed the decades-long economic chaos, or the erratic political path followed in the management of the country–a marathon course subject to the changing whims of its leaders–and you will undoubtedly hear some enlightening responses.

It is up to academics to figure out what are the causes and what are the consequences, whether the chicken came first or the egg. There is one thing about this issue, however, that is crystal clear. The Cuban workforce has shown a stubborn tendency towards little or no productivity, specifically because of excessive centralized control mechanisms that have been kept in place for fifty years–in spite of their proven ineffectiveness–by those same long-term leaders who now ask why we Cubans here below are so irresponsible and lazy. One might answer by raising the classic example of crops rotting in the field because transport from the state trucking company did not arrive on time since the state – in its war against the middleman – has a monopoly on this activity. And this is happening at this very minute even after thousands of discussions, conferences and congresses.

They say that it is impossible to raise salaries, but I would suggest that, at the moment, this is not necessary. Since I am not an economist, but rather one more mourner at this funeral, I would like to humbly suggest to authorities that their attempt to raise the dead begin by diametrically changing focus with respect to the lucrative pricing policies set by the Ministry of Finance and Prices for all retail commerce, especially in the chain of hard-currency stores (TRD’s), whose prices are denominated in convertible pesos (CUC’s)–a currency twenty-five times the exchange rate of the peso in which my ostensible salary is paid*.

Since there has been absolutely no discussion of monetary unification — that is doing away with the system of two currencies — our government must assume a more responsible attitude with respect to the outlandish prices with which it punitively taxes the lives of the people by implementing this pitiless policy of pricing even food and essential consumer goods at 500% to 1,000% of their cost of production. This has caused the Cuban GDP to grow at a 10% annual rate for the last decade–not as a result of an increase in the production of goods and services, but rather through an exorbitant and extortionate rise in prices.

So here is my proposal: lowering prices to a sensible level would be a good first step towards the desired recovery and would give the government the moral authority, which it does not now have, to require the same of the private sector, which is killing us in the private farmers’ markets as well. So far we have only seen the official press repeatedly attack independent producers while never questioning the other speculative slaughter taking place behind the shop windows of the TRD’s.

If I were in charge–please allow me this mental exercise–I would first gradually cut all the prices set by the state in half. This would occur progressively over a period of three to five years to a level more in line with salaries which, in light of current conditions, have lost all relationship to common sense. This would provide indisputable initiative for increasing worker productivity, and would bring some common sense to salary levels and a greater sense of humanity to people’s lives. All this would be in line with Raul Castro’s policy of not raising anyone’s salary by as much as one centavo, which, if this strategy were adopted, would be unnecessary.

But I am not the one who makes these decisions. That would be the slackers who care nothing about the well-being of the people, the ones who charge 10 pesos for a soft drink that only costs 30 centavos to produce. All indications are that this situation will persist as long as those who set these prices are not the mourners at the funeral, the ones getting screwed.

*Translator’s note: There are two currencies in Cuba: Cuban pesos, also called National Money; and Cuban Convertible Pesos (CUCs). Wages are paid in Cuban pesos, but many items can only be bought in hard currency stores where they are priced in CUCs.

September 10 2012

 

Eighteen of the 21 articles that make up the contents of the 16th edition of the digital magazine Cuban Voices, presented on Friday, September 7, at the site of the Cuban Blogger Academy, evoke the loss of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas, leader and founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, an emblematic figure of the peaceful opposition in Cuba.

The other articles are two poems from the East, by Daniel H. Palao; Chapters 0 and 1 of the book Memoirs of 100 and Aldabo, by the exiled writer Andy P. Villa; and the critical review Exit Under the Earth, by Jorge E. Lage, who approaches readers with one of the stories of Region, an Anthology of Latin American Politics.

With the funeral on the cover and thirty images inside, accentuate the poignant farewell of the great fighter for human rights on the island, Voices 16 offers a mixture of writings that range from the intimate and poignant evocations from his daughter and his wife, the chronicle of some friends attending the funeral, reflections on the legacy of Paya Sardinas, two discussions about the Swede, Aron Modig, and another on the Spaniard, Angel Carromero, who accompanied the civic leader on his last tour of Cuba, plus the document “The Space of the People,” signed by O. Paya and the Christian Liberation Movement last June.

Emotional, deep and poetic are the offerings by Rosa Maria Paya Acevedo Paya, “In the Last Days, and “Love will not pass and Today makes a month,” by Ofelia Acevedo, the daughter and wife of Paya; followed by the story, “My encounter with Paya,” by the Baptist minister Mario F. Lleonart; “The Nights of St. John Lateran,” by Jorge I. Domínguez; and the testimonial chronology, “The solution is in Cuba and among Cubans,” by the American Tracey Eaton.

Of great analytical quality and equal expository value are brief essays by Yoani Sánchez (Oswaldo Paya and the eternal widowhood Cuba), Rafael Rojas (When an opponent dies), Manuel Cuesta Morua (Reasonable certainty), Mikhail Bonito (The predictable chance) Dagoberto Valdés (Oswaldo Paya: example and legacy), Miriam Celaya (Lights and Shadows from a death), Carlos M. Stephanie (Modig: a “subversive” servant of totalitarianism), Enrique del Risco (Another silent Swede) and Armando de Armas (Notes on the death of Oswaldo Paya Sardinas).

From the narrator Orlando L. Pardo, editor of Voices, is the bittersweet Praise on Carromero, of enormous lucidity, allegorical meaning and scriptural beauty.

The issue of Voices dedicated to the opposition leader partially offsets the disinformation campaign denigrating woven by the Cuban press and other media of the international Left, clinging to the discourse of violence and the exclusionary narrative of the Castro regime. Distributed in PDF format and posted on http://vocescuba.com/, the Journal Voices has been published for two years with newspaper articles, essays, poems, stories, book reviews, interviews and reports. Its pages host thematic reports, tributes and controversies, as well as graphic images with new meaning and at times playful.

September 11 2012

In the blink of an eye the voltage at the symmetrical hour of the prime time news, 8:08 on a Sunday evening, as boring as slitting your wrists, or walking naked in the street with a pacifist placard, or some other symptom of insanity. A blink of an eye and then black silence, deathly. The light goes out, as usual, as if in perverse nostalgia for the ‘90s. A Time Machine, but this time without Fidel.

So paranoid, the mind begins to plot. The cell phones ring. There is no light anywhere in Havana. Sabotage. A bombing. A coup d’etat, the Army against State Security. A trick to transport the Great One’s Casket to the Obelisk and hold the news until early Monday morning. Eternity was, indeed, a Monday. The death of Oswaldo Payá, as his executioners promised in life, announces the fall of the regime. Perhaps a military tactic so the Yankee spy planes won’t detect the troop movements or perhaps the trucks with nuclear missiles camouflaged with sugar cane or moringa leaves or the invasive marabou weed (as happened in the fall of 1962). Soon they will knock on my door and take me, under arrest, to the National Stadium, a concentration camp for the duration of the State of Emergency. The Final Solution of the Fucked. A curfew for the construction of State capitalism. Raúlpolitik. Tihavanamin Square.

The cellphones continue to ring. The batteries run out in the first hour of stars and candles. There is no light anywhere in Cuba. It’s the terror. Rául Castro has fled the country, leaving behind the chaos of an island in its feudal dawn. We are alone. We will be invaded. The sound of an airplane in the abyss of heavens sends us to our knees and my mother starts to pray.

Then come the details by text message. Santiago de Cuba, inhospitable and horrible, has electricity. Also that bottled mess of Camaguey. In Ciego de Avila it went out but came back quickly, village by village and neighborhood by neighborhood. The satellite photos should show a Cuba divided. An Island in high-contrast black and white, extreme expressionism. The liberal and internet-loving West will be punished. The anachronistic East will survive the repression. Black September. I call my loved ones and say goodbye without their noticing. In the midst of the dark ink of the blackout, I realize that I have loved. That I went blind. That I won’t live with them in a future of freedom. That it’s the end of of the Revolution according to Saramago, topped off with a hashtag: #Apagonazo. Number-sign-blackout.

The light of hope is that the cellphones are still working. I am not cut off, although other activists are, like @HablamosPress, and they even received threats from their secret agents not to Tweet even one more character. According to secret colleagues, the www dial-up service isn’t cut either. Some neighbors mobilized to transport fuel to the hospitals, it seems to be a long crisis, but not in the terminal phase. Are there wholesale wounded? At the beginning there was no TV or radio signal, but after a while the Chinese battery-powered receptors picked up it. At worse it was a fake recording from Venezuela, who knows. Or Chavez moved here in a panic with his ALBA treasure to co-govern from here. The truth is they put on transition music, instrumental blinds, debates about the Five Heroes with electricity in their U.S. prison cells, like an overdose, and the most suspicious: Radio Reloj — Clock Radio — doesn’t even mention the blackout, at midnight they are broadcasting recipes and curious “World Knowledge” tidbits, it’s obvious that on Day F their announcers will be forced to talk at gunpoint, like in the incipient spring of 1957. History is a cycle. A circus.

Then it was a part of the War of the Ministry of Basic Industries: just a simple 220,000 volt accident on the central region’s prairies. A relief. I went to bed. Naked. The windows open to a godless cosmos. I composed myself. Stopped typing. Remembered an out-of-phase thermoelectric motor and then an ex-presidential broken kneecap, countless summers ago, in the pre-history of the years zero or two thousand. I breathe. I am perfectly healthy, as Nietzsche said after decades of decadent disease. It passes and with a little luck they forgot about me. At worst it passes and I also survived. Please, don’t wake me up until it’s all over. No one deserves to die more than once.

11 September 2012

 

We are now celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Youth Computer Club (JCC). The initiative itself is positive, because it allows everyone from a housewife to a grandpa to learn about a discipline essential to everyday life.

Beyond these good intentions, the JCC hasn’t escaped the deterioration and corruption that characterizes the country. All the buildings constructed for this purposes are falling into a state of neglect: lack of paint, broken toilets, leaks, neglected gardens and surroundings. They are frequently closed because the air conditioning is broken. The essence of these centers, the computers, for the most part are out of service without replacements, having been “cannibalized” as doubtful but certain alternatives to improve the salaries of the computer teachers. The stoic computers that still work, are blocked or they frequently break.

In theory, at a JCC you can choose a basic computer course, courses in Photoshop, or specialized courses about Microsoft programs; they are still committed, there, to Bill Gates’s programs. Despite having announced two years ago that they were migrating to Nova-Linux, at the JCC where I asked, they didn’t have any courses on Linux nor did they use it as their operating system, nor did any of the young people, much less the young people working there, care about it, not even as additional knowledge.

Reluctantly, you can surf EcuRed, a version of Wikipedia controlled by the government. With all my heart I hope Cubans continue using the portable Wiki which covers everything, and not that monster that confuses and lies. You can also ask for an antivirus and with a little money under the table you can get an only slightly outdated version of Kaspersky anti-virus software.

The internet connection slows down the machines, and for that reason only one (the teacher’s) has access to it. Internet? No, I’m not exaggerating.

September 10 2012

To get freedom we must escape from what oppresses us.

To leave the ranks, dissent, desert what we haven’t even been consulted on. What we have been forced into by necessity. The first reaction is to accept, to resolve, to wait. Until one day you discover that no one is going to do it for you, and you die as a person.

The great conflict of totalitarianism is with the individual. The desire of the system to dissolve you, and the personal decision is not allowed.

The government clan is disposed to make some concession to continue dominating souls which is the ultimate meaning of this class of politics.

Some steal, others have a good job where they can travel abroad and keep their mouths shut and sing hymns to Socialism before the world’s Leftists who should move over here.

There is definitely a gap between those who abhor their freedom and those who know the happiness, light, creation, prosperity, that comes not from any entity outside ourselves and that we must be free and not stand as before a master with police, jails, soldiers and disgusting discourse: ideology. Abiding by the system that demoralizes you, annuls you as a person.

I’m going to give you an example of what happened to me yesterday walking along a street in the neighborhood. There was an old woman sitting in the doorway to the platform of the Tulipan train station. The lady is very old and she sells avocados. If she didn’t need to she wouldn’t be sitting there all day with a box of avocados. She looks like what we Cubans call a “diver” (as in “dumpster diver), or in Europe a “tramp.” Even if she doesn’t collect garbage, the reality is she’s very dirty and poor. Two inspectors pass in front of me and warn her that this is the fourth time today they’ve told her she has to leave and they’re going to fine her 1200 pesos for selling without a license.

The old lady started to cry, she doesn’t have anything to eat and she starts to rant, saying that a subject whose name I don’t want to remember and who is part of the government of this Island had given her permission. The inspectors look at me embarrassed when I tell them just don’t look at the phenomenon they have before them. They can’t invoke the issue of selling unhygienic goods, because avocados come in a package naturally sealed by mother nature.

The inspectors begin to explain to me what it would mean for them to lose their jobs and the bonus of 135 Cuban pesos (about $5 U.S.) more than their miserable salaries. They are afraid of the other inspectors who pass by on motorbikes and take photos of all the “trash” that they have failed to sweep up. They say they’re not happy with their work and because of that, understanding the sensitivity of the case, they’re not going to fine the old lady.

You have to abandon the ranks, explore other fields, dissent. All of us in Cuba have this incredibly serious conflict that reveals the nature of submission. There are limits that must be tested. Not the existential limits, those that mean never renouncing your own self. Jose Lezama Lima said something along the lines of we have to remain in our own night, in the very shadow of our inner self that many times we barter for various forms of dependence.

I’m definitely left with the possibility, as far as work and subsistence are concerned, of knocking on a door that seems to lead to the abyss and in reality it could be the door to freedom. I heard of the case of a person who was interrogated by investigators of the Secret Police at Villa Marista and one of the questions was: How do you live?

Well they know that leaving the ranks also means losing your job and that keeping a job in Cuban inevitably means losing your freedom, taking part, not dissenting, not being an exception.

I am out of work and it’s also demoralizing. In a totalitarian State the individual must renounce being a person and become part of the mass, a sheep, who eats and defecates and grows old watching how evil and unhappiness occupy the space of the light that lives in every person.

Man does not live by bread alone although he lives on bread.

September 10 2012

Information is, without a doubt, one of the primary necessities in the world, especially at this time, when one can find out almost instantaneously what is happening anywhere in the world. When nearly six million people are affected by a cut in the flow of electricity in the middle of the night, the first thing they need is an explanation, so as not to panic.

The “information black out” we suffered in Cuba from Ciego de Avila to Pinar del Rio, left us doubly in the dark, evidence of the enormous fragility of our society. To the extent that people learned of the enormous proportions of the phenomenon and faced with the growing absence of information, rumors ran riot. “What’s happening?” many asked and what a Cuban is left wondering, the first thing that occurs to them is to think that the government is falling, or that someone died and the bombardment is about to begin.

This is what we have come to. The secrecy, lack of transparency, that is the weapon of totalitarianism, can become a boomerang. Who knows if one fine day a blackout will be the sign that there is going to be more light.

10 September 2012

In a country where power cuts have been an inseparable part of our lives, we should not be surprised when the lights go out. But yesterday, at 8:08 pm, something happened that raised the alarms. First we lost our television signal, during the very first minutes of the prime time news. Then, Havana blacked out entirely, to an extent and over an area we can’t remember happening, even during the worst of the hurricanes. Reports then started to come in from the various provinces confirming that from Pinar del Rio (90 miles to the west of us) to Camaguey (300 miles to the east of us) the Island was in darkness. More than five million Cubans in the shadows, wondering what was happening.

Five hours later the electricity began to flow again in the neighborhood where I live. I ventured to scribble on paper some of the peculiarities of what happened. I transcribe them here:

• The electrical blackout was accompanied by an information blackout. Over the more than four hours, the official media said nothing about what was happening. With our battery radios, many of us turned the dial in search of an explanation, but the national broadcasters maintained silence. Radio Reloj (Clock Radio), which should have been giving us up-to-the-minute details of national and international events, talked about everything but the most important thing. So we heard a recipe for fish medallions, the benefits of having a mammogram, beautiful Brazilian legends about water… and the discovery of “prehistoric shoes” at archeological sites. Everything, except what we wanted to know: What has happened that half the country can’t see their hands in front of their faces?
• People began to despair. The police patrol cars ran their sirens in the streets and now and then we heard a fire engine pass by. Trucks with their “state of siege” lights patrolled the area along the Malecon. This increased people’s fear, and together with the news blackout generated apprehension and a great deal of speculation.
• The incident demonstrated the lack of foresight on the part of the Electric Company with regards to situations like this. A few places managed to run their generators and in outlying neighborhoods they asked their own neighbors if they had any oil reserves they could have to jump start these electric plants.
• That this blackout happened on a windless day caused particular concern; there was no cyclone deluging us with rain, no solar storm particularly focused on the largest of the Antilles. What then was the cause of a failure of such proportions?
• The Twitter social network again proved its informational effectiveness. An hour after the darkness descended, the Internet was already offering alternative reports on its geographic dimensions. It was not long before we had a hashtag for the situation: #Apagonazo. While the official media made it clear that they can only inform to the extent they are authorized to do so, the alternative news networks demonstrated their importance, not only when it comes time to denounce an outrage or an arrest, but also during natural disasters, weather hazards, and accidents of any kind.
• The much-trumpeted Energy Revolution, among whose “conquests” was to prevent this kind of monumental blackout, demonstrated its failure once again. Even the emblematic Morro Castle in Havana Bay lost its lighthouse lamp, which some associate ironically with the joke: “Will the last person leaving Cuba please turn off el Morro…”
• More than half of those who called me in alarm during the time of darkness associated the event with some government problem. Phrases in the style of, “it’s broken…” were repeated from all sides. The media disinformation strengthened this impression. Which is a sign of the political and social fragility of a nation, when a several hour blackout can lead its citizen to think that the whole system has imploded. Significant, right?
• Someone commented to me that the General-President “was demanding the blood” of the directors of the Ministry of Basic Industry… I limited myself to responding better he should ask for electricity, because it’s very easy to demand that others be held accountable when we all know who makes the nation’s major decisions about energy.
• After a long silence, at midnight a brief note was read on TV, so cryptic that it generated still more speculations. They attributed the incident to a break in the 220,000 volt line near Ciego de Avila. So far they haven’t added any details.
• Gradually, over the course of the night, electricity was restored in the capital and in most other affected areas. There are no reports of any damages caused, although surely there must be many.
• In the end we are left with the conviction that the country is in such a precarious material state that an incident like this could happen again. And, what’s worse, that the national media will maintain its habitual secrecy.

Translator’s note: “Apagone” is the word for blackout, and the suffix “azo” means, more or less, “a blow or a strike.” Protests are often named using the suffix “azo”; so the 1994 riots on the Malecon were dubbed the “Maleconazo,” while Gorki Aguila called his protest against surveillance cameras, carried out on his balcony, a “balconazo.”

10 September 2012

The Rosa Parks Women’s Movement for Civil Rights announces that on Thursday it held its second weekly march in honor of the fallen despite the brutal arrests the members were subject to during the first march on 30 August; so we put out a wake-up call to national and international public opinion urging them to closely follow our march and that we fear for our lives.

These marches, which are called the weekly Rosa Parks Movement Marches to Honor the Fallen replace the earlier marches that were held by the women on the first of each month and will begin at the national headquarters of this movement which is located on Seventh Street South, No. 5, between Paseo Marti and Primera del Este in the municipality of Villa Clara, Placetas. The path of the march will be from Paseo to Primera del Norte, where it will turn left, returning to Park Cazayas to the Catholic church of St. Athanasius at this location.

These marches will be extended to the length and breadth of the island as above. The activists of the Movement chose Thursdays unanimously to hold the march, as the Day of the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front and Civil Disobedience to which we are affiliated, and our dress will remain our usual black clothes of mourning, as we reflect on those who fell defending the homeland, praying the Our Father for each arrest caused by the repressive forces.

St. Athanasius Catholic Church, where the women of the Rosa Parks attend Mass every Thursday, is located on West Second Street and the corner of North First Street in the municipality Placetas, Villa Clara province.

Submitted in Placetas on September 5, 2012.

September 5 2012