Translating Cuba

In this universe of disinformation snippets of news nevertheless filter out that we’d  go out and look for if there were more resources. These essential resources are demonized on national television. And what happens to us — the disgrace and misery a family suffers, that many families suffer — waits on the State which is sunk in silence. This post needs to come out quickly, despite some gaps in it.

The Lima Cruz family is in disgrace, their voices are silenced. A heart can break on this Island and there are too many deaf people in the world and the natives don’t have sufficient means to fight it, without violence, injustice. Unwanted violence, but even so condemned to failure and the worst reprisals. A Saturnian energy seems to run through the body of the Island. It’s imperative that someone more influential than I respond with pity to the lonely, the abused: the Lima Cruz family has two sons in prison, resisters, which in Cuba means hell. This morning we received a message from a friend who has knowledge of it that the Lima Cruz couple, the father and mother of the two sons in prison, have also been arrested by the political police.

The cause alleged by the prosecutor for incarcerating the two young men last year, according to what I understand, was “insult to patriotic symbols.” Does anyone remember that Cuban flag signed by the Maximum Leader that Núñez Jiménez hung at the North Pole? Is there a greater outrage to a national symbol than to stamp a signature on a Cuban flag? What is the difference between these young men and that proud signer?

It’s too bad I don’t have time to find that picture which, years ago, perhaps in my childhood, was published in the newspaper Granma or Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) and that no one stopped to think was an outrage to the flag with the solitary star.

I don’t know the details of the Lima Cruz couple but to suffer their sons, two young men, being in prison subjected to cruel treatment, degrading to their human condition, fed up because we know what happens in Cuban prisons today without anyone stopping it, it’s too much for the parents. Does anyone doubt that?

However, the families of the five officers of the Ministry of Interior, colleagues of those who persecute and imprison these people for disagreeing with the regime that we suffer by force, prisoners in the United States, have sufficient financial resources to undertake an international campaign; and as citizens of this country we have no right to judge if the money spent and the cause they defend in fact may be shared by Cubans on the island and we have to watch helplessly as they teach it to our children in the schools without asking even the parents’ permission and asking them if they agree with their children learning the litany of names.

It’s as if tomorrow the schoolchildren had to repeat the names — which aren’t even names but pseudonyms of spies and enemies of the people — of “Volodia,” a huge black man trained to break the homes of every opponent known. Octavio, Alejandro: All ready to kill for the leader, to abuse the rights of the people, at least of a decided part of the people.

Could there be a difference between these agents and the “Cuban Five” across the sea? Aren’t they from the same school? Don’t they defend the same cause? How much do they pay the American attorney who doesn’t decide to first visit the political prisoners and find out who the resisters are in Cuba?

Didn’t they station the colleagues of the Five outside the house of Antonio Rodiles last Friday, where those stationed there the same colleagues of the agent “Volodia,” a kind of “King Kong,” who threatens unarmed men knowing that he is covered by an army and a legal system absolutely full of traps and arbitrariness where they manufacture evidence and false testimonies, where they arrest a person and keep him in prison as long as they want?

The supporters of the Cuban Revolution should come to suffer this, otherwise before supporting the Calvary and the cross of this people, they should go to seek the truth or admit to being worse than our captors.

Remember the Lima Cruz family and do something for it.

August 14 2012

I am going to continue believing when people lose hope.
I am going to continue loving, although others sow hatred.
I am going to continue building, when others destroy.
I am going to continue speaking of peace, although in the midst of war.
I am going to continue illuminating, although in the midst of darkness.
I am going to continue sowing, although others step on the shoots.
I am going to continue screaming, when others remain silent.
I will draw smiles, on faces with tears.
I will spread cheer, when I see pain
and offer reasons for happiness where there is only sadness.
I will invite those who stay put to walk with me
and raise the arms of those who have given up.
Because in the middle of the desolation, there will always be a child
we will look at, hopeful, waiting for something from us, and still in
the midst of a storm, somewhere the sun will come out and in the midst
of the desert a plant will grow.
There will always be a bird who sings to us, a child who makes us smile,
and a butterfly who brings us her beauty.
But… if some day you see that I no longer smile or call, just
come closer and give me a kiss, a hug, the gift of a smile,
that will be enough.
Surely life will have slapped me
and surprised me for a second.
Just your gesture will set me back on my path.
Don’t ever forget.

Gabriela Mistral

Pseudonym of Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, daughter of a rural professor, poet and Chilean diplomat. She was a distinguished teacher. In Mexico she worked on educational reform with José Vasconcelos, another important educator, philosopher and Mexican politician.

In 1945 the distinguished Chilean teacher became the first Latin American writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her literary pseudonym showed her admiration of the European poets Gabriele D’Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral.

August 14 2012

The young man is the dissident Marcelino Abreu and the location is Obispo Street, one of the main tourist streets in Old Havana. In video he can be heard shoulding “Abajo Fidel!” (Down with Fidel!), “Vivan los Derechos Humanos!” (Long live human rights!). His arrest can be seen at the end of the video. His whereabouts are unknown.

(Video shot on Fidel Castro’s birthday, 13 August 2012)

One day my grandchildren will ask me,
“What was his name… Grandma, what was his name?
Gastro…? Mastro…?” And I’ll be annoyed with them
for their forgetfulness, for their flippancy…
but when I turn my back I’ll laugh, relieved, compensated.

With her long plastic nails she deals the cards on a Havana street corner, to read the fate of whoever pays her one convertible peso for the consultation. They ask about almost everything, about houses, love, foreign travel, and problems with the law. But over the last week her clients on several occasions have repeated the same question. Is Fidel Castro alive?

She was surprised because for months no one wondered about the Absent-in-Chief. Then she remembered that it was August and the birthday of the former president was approaching and she begin to understand why the great curiosity. The first who tried to find out was a grey-haired gentleman chewing snuff, and she was then approached by a woman married to a foreign business man, and later a beardless boy who looked like a rocker.

The decks are elusive and no self-respecting fortune-teller jumps to predictions without heeding her intuition. “Symbolically he’s gone, but he’s still breathing,” was a phrase that came to her lips as if she were dictating from another dimension.

At midnight that same day they interrupted the television programming to air a tribute to Fidel Castro’s 86^th birthday. It was just images from the archives, testimonies about his best moments when he governed a whole island through the windshield of his jeep. It was all accompanied by syrupy music notes and sharp voices, which some interpreted as a “Lord have mercy.”

Throughout the day he didn’t appear live and direct in front of the TV cameras, nor did he send a message to his followers. The lady of the water glass and decks of cards breathed a sigh of relief. Her prophecy had not been wrong. The man lives, but everything he symbolizes is fading.

It would be difficult to find in contemporary history someone who has been rumored to have been killed more times than Fidel Castro. One of the reasons for this obsession with extermination is the excessive weight he’s had in our last half century in Cuba, the disproportionate preeminence of the personal will of the Maximum Leader in every single one of the events that have occurred, whether momentous or trivial.

An apologetic poem of 1959 that mimicked the “Triumphal March” by Ruben Dario, held the young bearded absolute and indisputable authority responsible for all the achievements of the triumphant Revolution, those already established and those to come. Throughout this time official propaganda was charged with maintaining the illusion that everything was due to the “great leadership of the invincible Commander in Chief.”

I remember that in the second half of the 1990s, when several vegetarian restaurants opened in Havana, a National News reporter on TV said we now enjoyed this new option thanks to an idea suggested by Fidel Castro, A friend, who had the habit of thinking the inverse of what the government thought, posed this suggestive question: “So then the Commander is to blame for our 40 years without vegetarian restaurants?”

On July 31, 2006, health played a trick on the historic leader and he was forced to transfer power to his brother Raul Castro. “Fidelism” then began to fade, but very slowly. This was because the features that described the singularity of the Cuban Revolutionary process were not the result of the collective analysis of a Party, nor even devised in strict compliance with Marxist-Leninist doctrine; they were essentially the whims of one man who managed to concentrate absolute power in his own person.

And his whims covered every facet of our national life: livestock, the sugar industry, education, public health, culture, defense, tourism, religion. In every one of these he left his imprint, intrusively and aggressively, knife in hand determined to mark every tree in the forest, every single log, regardless of its thickness or size.

Now the symbol is fading, with no fuss, rather with relief from the many of us who had to endure his moments of greatest vitality. Perhaps he will breathe for a few more years, who knows. But we do know that the curiosity about whether or not his stubborn heart is still beating, is also already fading.

14 August 2012

The 2012 London Olympic Games of the XXX Olympiad have come to an end. Athletes from 204 countries competed to win in a spirit of brotherhood amid a festive atmosphere. Whether they won a medal or not, everyone, men and women, deserve respect for the emotional moments they provided us as they competed under the flag of the country where they were born, or under that of the country where they decided to pursue their life’s dreams.

In the case of Cuba, it would all have been great had we not stuck to the old, absurd attitudes in which everything is characterized as battles and combat, or becomes an exaltation of patriotism anda display of jingo-istic nationalism. Rather than earning us respect, it makes us a laughing stock.

No sooner had the team’s flag bearer appeared than the political and ideological positions were taken. There was talk of the nefarious influence of capital, athletes who are treated as merchandise, ideological subversion by the enemy, incitements to desertion, de-ideologizing of our athletes so that they would break with the people, the revolutionary, humanistic and formative focus on sport in direct confrontation with a defiling and selfish ideal promoted by the world’s sports merchandisers, etc.

And so it continued with our sportscasters and commentators, some of whom were reminiscent of impassioned political commisars in the process of ideologizing the masses. During the opening ceremonies they displayed a lack of knowledge about the history of Great Britain (which they could have researched), which prevented them from commenting on what was taking place. Had we not been able to call upon some previous knowledge of that nation, we would not have understood the references to the English countryside, the Industrial Revolution, the health care system (a source of British pride and considered one of the best in the world), modern life, and celebrities from the arts and sciences.

At the beginning of and during the various sporting events they disproportionately focused attention and praise on the Cubans while ignoring the other athletes, even though they were more important and achieved greater results than those from here. During the competitions the Cubans had “hearts too big for their chests.” They were “men and women of steel,” they “ran on burning limbs,” they “climbed Mt. Everest without equipment,” and other such nonsense.

Their bronze medals shone like gold, the silver medals were bigger, and the gold were the most important and historic. Placing fifth, sixth, tenth, etc. were great achievements and deserved applause. In some cases our athletes had competed while sick, without being able to train adequately and without the necessary international trials. The list of excuses could have gone on forever.

Our sportscasters and commentators are not only examples of the ongoing idiocy in our media, but of intolerance run rampant. In an era of globalization, to not understand that athletes compete for the countries where they reside and of which they are citizens, and not for the countries where they were born, shows an attachment to out-of-date and absurd attitudes from the past. It is hardly surprising that a country that thinks this way should be so politically, economically and socially backward.

In the end Cuba was fifteenth in the medal count and, as the official media commentators point out, first among Latin American countries. This should not be surprising to a country that commits large resources to its most promising athletes in the hope of winning propaganda victories.

We Cubans would prefer to be first in other areas, such as agricultural and livestock production, transport services, health and education, respect for citizens’ rights, social co-existence, access to decent housing, and so on.

August 13 2012

 

On Friday, August 10, the journalist Anneris Ivette Leyva published an article in the newspaper Granma where she urges citizens to voice their critical opinions about the wrongdoings. She goes on to say that the consequences of mistakes not criticized in time “weigh heavily on everyone’s shoulders.”

At the height of the tenth paragraph, and indirectly quoting the General-President, she clarifies that “compañero Raul has stressed the need to exchange views, to bring out the best ideas of a dialog between diverse interlocutors with a common purpose.”

So as to maintain the old rules of the game: If someone doesn’t have the same purpose as that which guides the Communist Party, they will not be recognized as a valid interlocutor, nor will they have the right to dialog, nor will they be able to point out or discuss civilly the worst of the mistakes committed: the introduction of an economic, social and political system discarded by history.

To use a model example, one may criticize the quality of the bread, but there is no desire to hear a proposal to allow a private bakery to be run as a small family business.

What our Granma colleague doesn’t quite understand is that as long as there is not a sufficient degree of freedom of expression that allows proposals, without fear of reprisals, the opening of a small or medium sized private business will continue to be a source of fear, as will denouncing the corrupt practices of a State bakery. The boundaries of dissent cannot be limited to the path that leads to the same end. We need to discuss different possible paths and in particular the various destinations where we want to go.

Dear Anneris: 25 years ago now I published, in the newspaper Juventude Rebelde (Rebel Youth) a piece similar to yours. It was titled, “The Optimism of the Discontented.” For writing articles of this nature I was stripped of the right to practice my profession in the Cuban media. I wish you the luck I had and may you some day throw off the heavy weight of censorship. Here are three paragraphs from that article. Tell me if you would not subscribe to them.

I think that Revolutionary optimism translates into the assurance that everything can still be improved, and paradoxically this is what I want to say, more or less, that nothing we have done is yet perfect; that the work undertaken is always susceptible to being submitted to the most severe analysis with the objective of enriching it.

This is why someone who, in an assembly, expresses his critical opinions about the progress of his workplace or school should be considered an authentic optimist, because he has confidence that his opinions are going to help correct the errors and because he has faith that what he says will be heard, that his participation will be decisive.

However, he who is thinking the same thing, and who doesn’t dare to make his disagreement public and knows to say only that to him it seems that everything is going very well, it is because he believes — pessimistically — that in fact it is not possible to improve the situation, or that it’s not worth it to try, or perhaps it can be too costly to oppose the wrongdoing.

13 August 2012

 

On Saturday, August 11, a strong rain caused floods in the capital’s Central Havana neighborhood. It rained non-stop for three hours and as a results of the garbage in the streets and the blocking of the sewers, the neighborhood of La Victoria remained under water for several hours.

The residents ran around getting their furniture and appliances to safe places to protect them from the water. Those who didn’t have time to safely store their belongings had no alternative but to watch their things destroyed.

The contents of the dumpsters on the corners which are always overflowing were swimming in the water and the trash was floating in the streets. After taking several pictures and when the water started to go down I went out to talk to several people and the discontent was widespread.

More photos at: http://flickr.com/cubacid

Published by: http://www.cubacid.org Cuba Independiente y Democratica CUBA CID

August 13 2012

A teenager writes — with his index finger — the words “Wash me” in the dust on the window of the bus. A mother asks her son what the school bathroom is like and he confirms that “it stinks so much you can’t go in there.” A dentist eats a french fry in front of her patient and with unwashed hands proceeds to extract a tooth. A passerby lets his pizza — just out of the oven — drip cheese over the sidewalk, where it accumulates in a pool of fat. A waitress cleans the tables at Coppelia Ice Cream with a smelly rag, and puts out glasses sticky with successive layers of badly scrubbed milk. A spellbound tourist drinks a mojito in which several ice cubes made from tap water are floating. A sewer overflows a few yards from the kitchen of a recreation center for kids and teens. A cockroach quickly darts along the clinic wall while the doctor listens to a patient’s chest.

All this and more I could enumerate, but I prefer to summarize what I’ve seen with my own eyes. The hygiene of this city shows an alarming decline and creates a scenario for the spread of disease. The cholera outbreak in the east of the country is a sad warning of what could also happen in the capital. The lack of health education from the earliest years of life lead us to accept filth as the natural environment in which we move. The material shortages also raise the epidemiological risk. Many mothers reuse disposable diapers several times, stuffing them with cotton or gauze. The plastic bottles collected in the trash serve as containers for homemade yogurt or for milk sold on the black market. The inadequate water supply in many neighborhoods reduces hand washing and even the number of baths per week. The high prices and shortages of cleaning products further complicate the situation. It is very difficult now to find stores selling mops to clean the floor and detergent is also scarce. Keeping clean is expensive and complicated.

Last week the media announced a new health code for food handling, an undoubtedly welcome measure. But the serious hygiene problems plaguing Havana will not be resolved based on decrees and resolution. Educating about cleanliness, extolling the need for cleaning from an early age, will be a critical step to achieve real results. Schools must be a model of neatness, not a place where students have to hold their noses to use the toilet. The teachers must transmit standards of cleanliness, just as they teach speech and mathematical formulas. It should also be cheaper to maintain a supply of products to wash our bodies, our clothes and our homes. This is essential and imperative in our current situation. We need urgent measures that don’t simply remain on paper but that touch the conscience, shake this acceptance of the dirt surrounding us, and return to us a clean and cared for city.

13 August 2012

We are not talking about the “cuadros” or canvases done by Cuban painters. This has nothing to do with art. This is about someone who is a combination office manager and sleazy ideologue. Someone who often veers between being a bored bureaucrat and a white collar criminal. In the peculiar jargon of the party such a person has come to be known as a “cuadro”* — a guy who is half Creole rogue, half state functionary. Out of convenience they parrot the official party line like clowns.

Given the chance, they become informants for the police or the special services. Many ordinary Cubans view them as true degenerates; others simply consider them to be opportunists.

One thing is clear. If anyone has been able to take full advantage of the system designed by the Castro brothers, it is the administrative “cuadros.” Take the case of two such “compañeros” who work for the bulging governmental bureaucracy.

Let’s call them Roberto and Fermín. They do not know each other, but they behave like twin souls. They both carry black suitcases, each containing a stack of papers with official letterheads. By the time they head for home, these are packed with goods and cash obtained over the course of a normal work day.

Within the “cuadro” caste system there is a low, medium and high class. The closer one is to the pinnacle of power, the greater the cash and benefits one receives. Robert and Fermín belong to the middle class, the one that does not call too much attention to itself.

Robert is the manager of a nightclub. When summer comes, he begins his “dance for the millions.” He is a member of the Communist party and leader of a squad that, in the event of disturbances, heads to the barricades to beat up dissidents. Like most Cuban men he has spent time in the military, and is ready to do his part in a hypothetical war against the American marines.

One day a week he meets with his party cell. In his suitcase Roberto carries three bottles of premium rum. After a tedious meeting, he and his pals drink the rum. A little while later he suggests they kick back a little. From his mobile phone he calls a quartet of statuesque, bisexual girls, and in a house near the beach they engage in a boisterous orgy.

Roberto refers to such squandering of financial resources as “the cost of doing business.” It is a way of keeping high-level political bosses on his side. From time to time he “soaks” them with money, letting them in for free to his discotheque, where their tabs are on the house.

A clever “cuadro” weaves a web of influential friendships. Among Roberto’s friends are members of the military and state security. The Havana resident knows, however, that, in the event he one day he finds himself behind bars, they will be of little use to him.

More than 250 teachers and educators involved at all levels of teaching from the provinces of Mayabecque and Havana exchanged and updated their educational experiences by participating in the 12th Summer School for Teachers. On this occasion it was held from 30 July to 3 August at the Queen Mary Institute headquarters in the capital.

The organizing team, made up mostly of members of the National Catholic Education Commission, promotes these activities in other provinces. Matanzas and Cienfuegos had their own school this year.

The annual event organizes workshops and lectures by local and foreign teachers, who are called facilitators for the role they play as instructors and counselors in each workshop.

The daily work sessions are intense, from 8:00 AM until 4:00 PM. They also last several days, which correspond to the vacation period for teachers. However, the effort and enthusiasm among participants is supported by a high academic rigor and relevance of the topics covered.

In order to improve the work with toddlers, since June the Cuban Association for the Development of Childhood Education (ACDEI) registered five educators from private nurseries to attend the event.

Four people attended, including ACDEI coordinator. Day by day they were surprised by the interest awakened the association’s proposal. Surrounded by teaching professionals they learned:

1. The knowledge gained during a year is relevant when compared to other nurseries in the city.
2. The constant inquiries from attendees about the project show surprise and interest in implementing the objectives of the Cuban program “Educate Your Child” in private nurseries.
3. Children in the day care centers with pedagogical training this year will begin school assessed with various tests used by educators with the assistance of a psychologist. The results show that these little ones, thanks to work undertaken together with their parents, are ready to begin their school life.
4. From now on ACDEI members and educators face new challenges. One of the most important is lifelong learning about teaching methods appropriate to the learner’s developmental history, family situation and home.

In short, we will continue fueling the dreams and self-esteem of the young children and their families with love, knowledge and the inseparable daily work.

August 7 2012

One cold evening with a persistent drizzle, the poet and journalist Raul Rivero in his apartment in the Havana neighborhood of La Victoria, told me that the worst thing in prison was when it came time to sleep.

Every night, while sleeping in his damp prison cell in Canaleta, Ciego de Avila, he was a free man. In those late nights he would fantasize jumping the wall and quietly drawing back the Chinese bolts.

Then he drank coffee with friends, and suddenly relaxed and happy moments shared with his mother, wife and daughters returned

All the charm was broken when the bell went off and the passage of military boots hitting the floor or announcing a search deep into the cell. For Rivero sleep was the hardest.

To the 75 prisoners from the Black Spring of 2003, those years in prison seemed like centuries. They were not criminals. Or terrorists. They had not broken any law that would endanger national security.

In summary trials they fabricated a string of nonsense useful to the government of Fidel Castro. Their weapons were the pen and the word. The incriminating evidence presented to the prosecution were books, typewriters and laptops.

Oscar Elias Biscet, slept many years in a dreadful punishment cell. Upon release, the independent journalist Jorge Olivera looked to be twenty years older and carried a string of illnesses. Orlando Zapata died in prison as a result of a prolonged hunger strike. Ariel Sigler crossed the threshold of his cell turned into a human wreck.

When a straight and honest man knows who has committed no crime and the truth is on his side, it is very difficult to break him. And usually he is not bent by questioning in the style of the KGB, with threats, humiliation and corporal punishment.

In the prisons where they served their sentences, the dissidents never failed to report the brutalities that occurred within the prisons. I remember Pablo Pacheco, from his galley in Canaleta and with the help of friends, started a blog where he told stories had seemed taken from a book of horror.

The history of political imprisonment in Cuba is terribly painful. Someday, an important day, we will hold a minute of silence for the political prisoners who died in prison on the island.

If jail is rigorous for the opponents, what about the abuses common criminals receive. Yoilán, 26, has suffered from the severity of the Cuban penal system since age 14.

Yoilán does not consider himself to be innocent. He was a thief. He was stealing money or items of value to tourists. Being a teenager he was in a juvenile rehabilitation center.

“The prison guards, for any discipline, handcuffed you to the fence and kicked and beat you with batons. Sometimes using high-voltage electrical appliances. No matter that we were barely children,” recalls Yoilán.

In adult prisons, beatings and abuse are almost a norm. One would like to know the number of common prisoners killed as a result of beatings by the prison guards.

Prisons are not hotels. But corporal punishment and verbal abuse by those who care for the punished should be prohibited. It is enough that these men and women who committed crimes serve their punishment behind the bars of a cell.

If we speak of activists like Sonia Garro, Ramón A. Muñoz or Niurka Luque, imprisoned since mid-March, then the injustice is twofold. Their only ’crime’ was to claim a handful of rights in peaceful street protests.

Fortunately, in most nations of the planet you cannot go to prison for being a political opponent. China, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam, Burma and some African country or other as well as Cuba. It’s a shame.

August 12 2012