Translating Cuba

At home, illuminated by the will-o’-the-wisp of a country

September 1 2012

As in many other places, in Cuba in recent years TV series about forensic science and documentaries about criminal investigations have become very popular. Crime reconstructions and programs with police experts have become favorites of many people. Where DVDs are sold, these themes are among the most demanded by buyers. Thus, the lists of offerings from self-employed video sellers never fail to include combos with programs such as CSI, Dr G: Medical Examiner, Criminal Investigation, The FBI Files… among many others. It’s not that we’ve become morbid, or maybe we have, but that the quality of these materials has improved significantly in the last decade. They mix science, police work, a pinch of emotional entanglement and some rather didactic explanations about the workings of the human body. In short, an irresistible compendium to relax after the daily tedium. Beyond their low artistic value, the truth is that they posses an audience that other TV offerings — with an excess of ideology and a creative anemia — envy.

But today I do not want to reflect on the fictional pathologist who exposes the murderer, nor the actor who plays a modern detective in an impeccably clean laboratory. No, those are just a part of a script meant to entertain and you can take it or leave it. My concern, rather, is something else: the constant leaks of forensic material — real and raw — to the alternative information networks, systematically produced from the offices of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior. Autopsy photos, videos of crime reconstructions, photos taken by the police at the crime scene, statements made by the accused in front of the cameras. Hardly a month goes by that we don’t see, circulating on cellphones and flash memories, parts of crime files that should be guarded with discretion and anonymity. And it’s not about photos taken by some intruder who invades the scene, or some paparazzi, but rather evidence contained in police archives. So, one day you lose a relative in some tragic event and — horrors! — the next thing you see is that the moment they cut a “Y” incision on the autopsy table has become an incredibly popular snuff movie.

It’s odd that the Ministry of the Interior, which works with such great secrecy on political issues or espionage, administers its common crime archives with so little zeal. It’s true that due to this negligence we sometimes learn about events that we wouldn’t otherwise know about, such as the deaths of dozens of patients at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital. But in the vast majority of cases, the indiscretion is not tied to a revelation, but rather to a deep intrusion into the life — or death — of an individual. With the consequent additional pain for his family, who are forced to see the viscera of their father or their brother cross the screens of thousands of computers all over the country. It saddens me that someone knocks on my door to show me a body in a morgue on the screen of their Nokia, and I realize the photo was taken by those who should ensure privacy, including that of the dead. I’m frightened by this most recent manifestation our of prolonged disrespect for citizen privacy which our society is suffering. It seems abominable to me that someone from the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution betrays her neighbors, that a teacher reports on the political ideas of his own students, that a doctor speaks on television about a consultation with a patient; and now is added a flippancy with forensics as a final piece of this mechanism of indiscretion.

This is not a fictional series, nor an episode where Grissom caught the murderer after investigating the stomach contents of a larva. This is reality, the concrete pain of the family of the victim, the respect that every human being deserves, even though they’ve stopped breathing. Their nakedness, their wounds, their rigor mortis, their helplessness in the chill of the morgue, no one has the right to leak that. Much less the people who are there to ensure that this terribly sad moment is not converted into a piece of exhibitionism.

10 September 2012

Four days before Oswaldo Payá was killed, I drove past the exact spot where his rented blue Hyundai slammed into a tree.

I didn’t find out about the crash until I was en route to Florida on July 22. I had known Payá for many years and was saddened to hear of his death.
Quiet and determined, Payá was unlike most Cuban dissidents I have met. Most lose their government jobs soon after they declare opposition to the socialist state. Payá kept his as a medical equipment specialist.

Another thing that distinguished Payá is that he tried to change the Cuban government from within rather than tear it apart and start over. He recognized that the Cuban constitution allowed citizens to propose changes as long as they collected 10,000 signatures. So in 1998 he launched the Varela Project, a petition drive aimed at bringing about democratic reforms.

“We reject all violence, offensive language, intolerance, terrorism…” Payá said.

Payá was a spiritual man, a devout Catholic. That much was clear when I met him at his home in Havana in 1998. A portrait of Jesus hung on the wall. Pope John Paul II was scheduled to arrive in the country days later.
Payá, then 45, was president of Christian Liberation Movement, a 300-member civic group. He said all Cubans – including those in the U.S. – should forget their differences and work toward rebuilding Cuba.

“No more hate among Cubans,” he said. “No more blood.”

Some hardline Cuban exiles in Miami opposed Payá’s efforts. They said working within the socialist system was useless, and only a more aggressive approach would dislodge Fidel Castro.

Payá also faced criticism – and persecution – in Cuba. He said state security agents ransacked his home in 1991 and scrawled slogans on his walls:  “Payá – an agent of the CIA” and “Long live Fidel!” And security agents visited his workplace so often “they almost seem like family.”
“We don’t lead a normal life,” he told me in 1998. “I sometimes live in fear. But God gives me the strength to go on.”

During our interview, Payá complained bitterly about the lack of basic freedom in Cuba.

“Right now, the system controls everything: buying, selling, having, expressing yourself. It’s a form of modern slavery.”

He also expressed optimism.

“Cuba has started to change in a fundamental way, in peoples’ hearts.”
After the pope’s visit, some of that optimism seemed to fade.

“Change in Cuba will happen only if Cubans want to make it happen,” Payá told me after John Paul II left. “The mere presence of the pope wasn’t enough.”

The years went by and Payá continued plugging away on the Varela Project.

By May 2002, he and his followers had collected more than 11,000 signatures and turned them over to Cuba’s National Assembly.

Word of the Varela Project spread. Then-President George W. Bush endorsed the initiative, named for Felix Varela, a Roman Catholic priest and Cuban independence hero. And when former President Jimmy Carter visited Cuba, he met with Payá and mentioned his project in a nationally televised address, marking the first time many Cubans had heard of it.

Shortly afterward, Payá spoke to reporters outside the Hotel Santa Isabel. Payá called Carter “a man of dialogue and a man who builds bridges.”
Cuban officials, meantime, hadn’t put any of Payá’s proposals before the National Assembly, despite the signatures.

Instead, they answered with a campaign of their own in June 2002. They held, by their count, 845 marches and 2,330 rallies aimed at showing support for the Cuban government and opposition to U.S. policy.
They said 9 million of the country’s 11 million people took part, including Fidel Castro, then 75, who wore tennis shoes as he marched past the U.S. Interests Section.

“If government leaders have so much support,” Payá said in response, “why not do a referendum on the Varela Project? What are they afraid of?”
Castro supporters weren’t done. They also organized a petition drive to change the constitution, making socialism “untouchable.”

One diplomat I spoke to called it “overkill.”

Payá said, “It’s a technical coup d’état.”

I saw the dissident leader again in February 2003. Then 50, he told reporters that the Varela Project had thousands of supporters.

“It’s a campaign and it’s going to continue,” he said. “Millions of Cubans are demanding their rights. Support that has never been seen before has been awakened.”

He acknowledged that he could be jailed at any time.

“For any dissident, the possibility of prison is always there, every day and every hour,” he said.

By then, Fidel Castro had finally commented on the Varela Project, calling it “foolishness.” But Cuban authorities evidently took it seriously because in March 2003 they arrested 75 dissidents, including more than 40 who worked on the project.

Payá wasn’t arrested. His international acclaim, it seems, saved him. And he continued collecting signatures.

“Hope is reborn,” he said in October 2003, reading from a statement. “Hope is reborn because we have the determination to continue this campaign for the rights of all Cubans… And we know victory will be that of the people.”
In reality, the Varela Project didn’t achieve the changes that Payá had sought. But he never gave up trying to bring about peaceful change in Cuba.

I caught up with Payá again in July 2010 while working on an investigative project that I have been doing with support of the Washington, D.C.-based Pulitzer Center.

Payá and his wife, Ofelia Acevedo, lived in the same house in Havana’s El Cerro neighborhood. I asked Payá how things were going. He complained that state security agents followed him when he traveled. Just a few days earlier, he said they had tried to convince a driver to drop him off in the middle of nowhere while taking him back to Havana from the town of Cienfuegos.

“The driver refused to drop me off,” Payá said.

He didn’t expect the harassment to end anytime soon.

“State security restricts, persecutes, expels many dissidents from work, their family members, too,” he said. “And then many people are scandalized because some in the U.S. and around the world want to send aid to dissidents.”

I asked him about U.S. government financial support for Cuban dissidents.
“That’s not going to dictate change,” Payá said, “but nor should it be an excuse for failing to recognize the essence of the problem. And the essence of the problem is that the Cuban government does not recognize the rights of Cuban citizens in Cuba. And that’s called tyranny, that is oppression and that causes many Cubans to suffer.”

Unfortunately, Payá said, most Cubans are poor, they have few options and “do not have a vision of their future in Cuba.”

“Therefore they want to leave the country. So the problem is in Cuba, and the solution is in Cuba and among Cubans,” he said.

Two years after our interview, I was in Cuba again. This time around, I went to Santiago de Cuba and met with dissidents, among many others.

The next day, while driving toward Havana, I passed the spot where Payá’s car would crash four days later.

The highway at that point quickly deteriorates into a gravel road. I expected Cuba’s main east-west thoroughfare to be bigger and wider, but it’s a narrow, two-lane country road carrying everything from farm equipment and old Russian trucks to semi-trailer tractors and rental cars.

Everyone moves along at dramatically different speeds. I saw decades-old American cars weave around horse carts that were passing bicyclists, filling both lanes of traffic. I even spotted a woman pushing a baby carriage on the highway.

Payá and another activist, Harold Cepero, met their fate along the same stretch of road. May they rest in peace.

Note: This article was written in Spanish and English by Tracey Eaton who blogs at Along the Malecon. It is the first of the articles from Voices Magazine No. 16, published in Havana on Friday, September 7, as a tribute to Oswaldo Paya. Translating Cuba will attempt to bring our readers the entire issue in English.

Faced with a failed economy that is unable to produce exportable goods that might bring hard currency into the country, the Cuban government has instead opted to export services at low cost. For this it makes use of professionals – doctors, teachers, athletic coaches – who receive no more than 30% of the total salary that countries contracting for their services pay to the Cuban government, which retains the remaining70%. It’s a great deal.

Other easy sources of hard currency are the payments that Cuban residents must make to Immigration in order to be able to travel overseas. These cost at least 455 convertible pesos* (CUC) per person and include fees for processing the passport, letter of invitation and exit permit. This does not, however, cover the inflated ticket price, the cost of the visa or the airport tax. To visit the country, Cubans living overseas must pay even more. Another great deal.

On September 3 of this year new customs regulations took effect which raise the tariff duties paid by travelers who are residents of Cuba, whether they be Cuban nationals or foreigners.** They stipulate that personal effects- whether for personal use or not – weighing less than 25 kilograms may be imported duty-free. Miscellaneous items weighing over 5 kilograms will be assessed an import duty at a rate of 10 non-convertible pesos (CUP) per kilogram.In total, up to 30 kilograms may be brought in duty-free.Items valued at less than 50.99 CUC are not subject to customs duties. Additionally, up to 10 kilograms of medicine may be imported duty-free, provided they are carried in separate luggage and are in their original packaging.

A duty will be levied onmiscellaneous items for personal or family useweighing up to 95 kilograms at the rate of 10 CUP per kilogram. The maximum total allowable duty on imported goods is 1,000 CUP, which includes the weight and value of miscellaneous items, the value of domestic electronics and other imported goods. A duty of 100% will be levied on items valued at 51.99 to 500.99 CUP, and a duty of 200% on items valued at 501 to 1,000 CUP. However, anyone assessed the maximum import tariff of 1,000 CUP must pay a total of 1,450 CUP to customs authorities.

These duties are valid for one calendar year, starting January 1 and ending December 31. Duties for the first importation in a calendar year will be payable in non-convertible pesos (CUP). All subsequent importations in a calendar year will be calculated in convertible pesos (CUC) and paid in non-convertible pesos (CUP) at the current rate of exchange. Similarly, Cuban residents living abroad and non-resident foreigners will pay in hard-currency at rates of exchange equivalent to convertible pesos.

Furthermore, levies on all shipments by air, sea, post or courier will be assessed in convertible pesos (CUC) up to a value of 200 CUC, based on a rate of 10 CUC per kilogram, with the first 30 CUC, or 3 kilograms, being duty free. Another great deal.

According to an untrue but tired and often-repeated old slogan, “Under socialism, the human being is what matters.” These days it should be, “Under Cuban Socialism, hard currency is what matters.”Pure dialectic materialism!

Translator’s notes:

*The Cuban Convertible Peso (which is not, in fact, convertible into foreign currencies), is roughly pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar, but with fees added on one CUC is about $1.10 U.S.

**On September 5, 2012 the newspaper Granma published an article outlining the new rules:http://www.granma.cu/ingles/cuba-i/5sept-Aduana.html

September 8 2012

In life to be a truck driver, or to work at a dock or container facility has been a lucrative business in Cuba. Very lucrative, as Eulalio, a 24-year-old driver with experience hauling heavy cargo, knows well.

He comes from a lost village in La Serpa in Sancti Spíritus province, 400 kilometers from Havana. For fifteen years he has lived in a house, built from “things that fell off the truck,” on the outskirts of the capital. The stolen shipments that he carried in his truck have been the principal source of income used to furnish his house and even to buy a Dodge from the 1950s. None of this has come from his salary.

Since the last cyclone four years ago the transport of asbestos cement tiles has been handled by the military. The regime had one thought clearly in mind. If it wanted the tiles to go to those who needed them most, it could not leave the responsibility for their distribution to State agencies. The materials would not have gotten to those affected. In Havana’s poorer neighborhoods, where people build or repair their houses, it is common to see large quantities of cement, sand, gravel, cinder blocks, ceramic tile and other construction materials being calmly unloaded from trucks in the full light of day. All of it done “on the side.”

“What falls off the truck” is retail theft. Yes, it is true that cases of extra-dry rum, clear Cristal beer and jeans imported from China get swiped. But the biggest heists are carried out in container facilities, in the port itself or at subsequent points along the way. The issue was discussed at a meeting of ministers headed by Raúl Castro in September, 2010. According to the state press, statistics were presented that outlined the large-scale looting of containers and the resulting million dollar losses inflicted on the country. Something must be done, said the general, to stop the theft.

That will be difficult. Breaking open containers and robbing cargo from trucks traveling to other provinces is now part of the culture of those who work in this sector. It is the most important link in the black market’s chain. It is also the source of funds that line the pockets of those who hold important management positions. They do not need to break into containers. The wads of bills that fill their wallets are instead generated from illegal sales.

A truck driver like Eulalio can, and does, sell ten bags of powdered milk or steals some boots for sale on the black market. But the theft of hundreds of thousands of convertible pesos, of plasma screen TVs and other electronic devices are carried out by corrupt individuals heading criminal gangs or illicit State clans. They are protected by the immunity afforded them by the desirable positions they hold in the Cuban Nomenklatura.

A lot of stuff falls off trucks. However, a low-level driver or a dock worker at the port takes only what he needs to feed his family or to get a little hard currency. Not much more. The million-dollar losses result from something else. They occur under the umbrella of government ministries and their affiliated businesses. The authorities know this. It is simply easier to open a criminal file on a supermarket worker or the cashier at a hard currency store than on a high-ranking official.

These cases always raise a question for me. If the government says that everything is owned by the people, how is it possible that the people are stealing from themselves? Or is that citizens do not trust the system? Or are they genetically predisposed to be kleptomaniacs?

Photo: Reuters. A truck carrying bananas and other agricultural products destined for sale in Havana’s State-run markets.

September 8 2012

A few days ago a lady who has a seat on the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) knocked on my door. I thought it was a mistake or forgetfulness that brought her to our door, as we haven’t been members of the CDR for nearly a decade. But the thin woman was not, this time, bringing one of those notices with a martial tone calling people to attend a meeting or serve night guard duty. In this case, she came to our door for a completely different reason.

She took from her bag a small blue booklet and announced that on Saturday, September 8, there would be processions and masses for the Virgin of Charity of Cobre in several churches in Havana. I couldn’t help but wonder that the sharp turns life takes. Just a few years ago the lady in question was a fierce atheist who identified religion with the “counterrevolution,” and now she invites us to a Catholic pilgrimage.

I asked her if handing out the flyers was a task assigned by the CDR and to my utter amazement she assured me, “No, this is my idea.” Incredible! The neighbor who from her balcony watched for years everyone who came into the building with a bag or with a new friend, now invokes the initiative of each person as something to respect. Well, in the end the contrast makes me happy. I prefer this new attitude over the previous one, but I can’t stop wondering that happened.

Because in this year of 2012 we are celebrating the 400th anniversary of the appearance of the image of the Virgin of Charity, our patron saint. Cachita, as she is popularly known, is greatly revered throughout the whole Island and has transcended the religious sphere to become an emblem of Cuban identify.

She is also syncretized in Santeria with the deity known as Oshun. She is associated with a number of attributed that come from her Catholic image, such as her golden cloak, the three men in the boat that appear at her feet in her pictures, and the baby boy she cradles in her arms. But she is also linked to elements such as flattery, femininity, love and sensual dances, characteristics that come from her counterpart in the Yoruba religion. On an island that is a spicy stew of cultures… our patron could be nothing less.

At the dawn of the seventeenth century a simple image of the Virgin of Charity was found in the eastern Bay of Nipe. Two man and a teenager all named Juan (the three Jauns) found her floating in its waters. So Cachita, rescued from the waves by those arms, came to become the Mary of a people who centuries later would launch themselves on the Straits of Florida in rafts, doors converted into boats, and trucks made airtight so they would float.

The Mambisa Virgin, as we call her, also stood by those who, at the blade of a machete, demanded independence from Spain, and she now adorns the altars of compatriots scattered across the globe. She has her hermitage in Miami, like her sanctuary in Santiago de Cuba… and even innumerable altars in apartments in Madrid… Cachita was our first rafter, only she didn’t escape, she arrived, she did not want to reach other horizons, rather she wanted to stay here forever.

Her main temple, located in Santiago de Cuba, is known as El Cobre — Copper — for its proximity to the deposits of that mineral. In the entry hall of the busy Church — the Chapel of Miracles — people have deposited every kind of offering: tresses of hair dedicated by girls engaged to be married to some foreigner alternate with the shoes of babies given up for lost by science but who managed to survive. Bracelets of the 26 of July Movement brought there by rebels who once wore scapulars, and later banned them. In one corner a poster recalls the dissidents imprisoned during the Black Spring of 2003. Only under Cachita’s mantle can such plurality coexist.

The Sanctuary of El Cobre is filled everyday, with lifelong believers and those who barely know how to say the Our Father. Many of those who pretended to be anti-religious when it was an ideological sin to have the Sacred Heart of Jesus in your living room, now are confessed Catholics, Santeros, Jehovah’s Witnesses or Seventh Day Adventists.

This Cuban coming out runs a peculiar and surprising course, ranging from agnosticism to faith; traveling from doubt to belief. Crucifixes are no longer hidden under shirts and the altars of the saints are on public view in the living rooms of thousands of houses.

The custom of baptizing children has returned, after several generations that never received this sacrament. Church weddings are back in style and it’s not uncommon in hospitals to see the administration of last rites. Catechism classes are full of children whose parents had to learn in school that “religion is the opiate of the people.” Our national history seems to have come full circle, closing a cycle of rifles to begin another of rosaries.

And not only the religion, but also the Church as an institution has gained ground in our society in recent years. It has achieved, among other gains, the ability to open a new seminary for training priests. Catholic masses are aired on national television on certain ceremonial dates, and the political discourse itself has shed the old anti-religious slogans.

Even my fundamentalist neighbor, Communist Party member and an active member of the CDRs, has returned to the faith. She no longer calls us to perform “voluntary labor” for the Revolution, but rather calls us to Mass. She no longer calls me “comrade” but rather “sister.” And to top it off she has substituted for the picture of a uniformed Fidel she kept in her dining room, an image of Cachita dressed in her golden cloak, and at the feet of the Virgin are three men on a raft, watching the whole time.

7 September 2012

Two smiling young people explain in a TV commercial the advantages of the 2012 Population and Housing Census. They speak of the need to have updated and reliable statistics about our society. To end the brief spot, they chant in chorus a phrase where they claim that, “Between September 15th and 24th we will count everyone.” Which immediately leads the viewer to reflect that it’s not the same for them to count us as to count on us. But beyond the “Freudian slips” that are evident in the official language, concern takes us down another path. Cubans don’t trust inspections, we have a strong suspicion of counts and inquiries within our homes. We divide our existence between the legal — and public — zone, and the other, plagued with illegalities in order to survive. This is the main explanation for why we don’t always greet polls with pleasure.

Under other conditions, a census shouldn’t worry us but rather please us. Because it’s a statistical tool that provides the citizenry with data about itself. The number of houses, how many inhabitants of one gender or the other, the growth rate of the population… and so many other figures that reveal the achievements and shortcomings of a nation. However, in the case of our country, it is very difficult to separate a simple inventory from the consequent State control it generates. Impossible to unlink an inquiry — however ingenuous and anonymous it seems — from its most feared counterpart: surveillance. Especially with regards to all the objects and resources of “doubtful provenance” that underpin our daily existence. Thus, a good share of Cubans will end up lying on various questions posed by the enumerators, and others will refuse to participate in the census altogether. The final results, then, will be a mix of the approximations, omissions and falsehoods offered by many of the respondents to avoid revealing the reality of who they are or what they possess.

After inquiring of several friends and neighbors, I corroborated that people are not disposed to confess everything that the National Office of Statistics wants to know. One friend, who has been able to repair her house from the profits of illegally selling clothes, explained to me, without embarrassment, “I’ll put the flat-screen TV in the bedroom and tell my son to hide his laptop.” She immediately added, “When they ask what we live on, I’ll tell them the 420 Cuban pesos (less than $20 U.S.) my husband earns each month.” And then, “Ahh… and if they inquire about the brand of my refrigerator, I’ll lie to their faces and tell them it’s a Chinese Haier… even though from the living room you can see the South Korean LG logo.” But most complicated for her will be if they ask about her brother, his wife and their little girl, who will try to not be at home when the census takers come because they are living illegally in Havana. When the enumerators leave her house they will surely have a very different idea of the standard of living and way of life of my astute friend. And that is precisely what she wants, that they think black is white, up is down, and today is tomorrow. Because from the time she was a little girl she was taught that to tell the truth is to single yourself out and to give information to the State is self-incrimination.

7 September 2012