ETEC, On Line with Neglect / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

From Ecopolis.org

Some months ago, I read on the Internet that the Cuban government had bought from Italy its portion of shares in Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, S.A.*, better known by its acronym ETECSA. If it is now totally national, the abbreviation for “anonymous society” (S.A.) is superfluous. That purchase may be interpreted as a convenient “financial exclusion” of a foreign investor, whose economic injections in Cuba were fundamental to Cuban telephony. It is like a blockade in reverse, whereby the only beneficiary is the all-powerful state, which obtained the capital that it needed for that branch without having to cede too much to the liberating capitalist demands of its commercial associate.

I learned some days ago through the Cuban press, that they have facilitated the change of titled ownership for fixed landline phones: a fundamental step forward — some believe — toward the debureaucratization of that entity. I believe that it was a logical step after having legalized the purchase/sale of housing, because as is natural, some real estate properties include telephone service and it was ridiculous from a legal standpoint that it would be easier to be the owner of a house than of a phone.

Last May, the Ministry of Informatics and Communications approved Resolution No. 82, which makes possible the change of ownership title. Before, only transfers in cases of divorce, death, definitive emigration, or permutas** were allowed, in a country where only the minority of the population has access to that constant means of communication.

I don’t know if the procedure will be prompt or as slow and ineffective as state services tend to be for Cubans. We gain “the dignity” of recuperating “sovereignty” in our only telephone company in exchange for mistreatment, indolence and inefficiency for all of us Cubans who live on the archipelago.

This past 2nd of June my telephone line “passed away” and although we reported it on various occasions (several of our friends also did), we are still in mourning for the lack of communication.

What to do? Where to seek help? It appears that when there is financing from “foreign exploiters” mixed in with a government enterprise, we are better tended and paid, and less exploited than in one that is solely Cuban; and that “damned capitalism” is better than the capitalism of a ruling state, which ignores us, violates our rights and denies us services and attention.

When ETECSA was an anonymous society and a client reported a break in service, it would take two or three days to fix. Now that only a few months have passed since the state once again assumed control over the telephone enterprise as sole proprietor, it is as if there were no one tending to its given function. It is preferable that they charge us a diligent smile, rather than constantly advertising apparent and biliary benefits for the average Cuban, which are only in the minds of the highest political and bureaucratic class — generally demonstrating indolence and ineptitude.

The slogan “ETECSA: on line with the world” reflects the institutional frankness — aligned with the government — that they are fundamentally interested in the part of the orb which provides them with juicy dividends in the coin of the capitalist “enemy”, whom they criticize so much, and not in the other one — within our borders — without capital and exploited, to whom they imposed a line of silence and a devalued money that they disrespect and reject.

Note: My telephone service was reestablished two weeks after this text, which was delayed due to the impossibility of accessing the internet for a month.

Translator’s notes:
*Enterprise of Telecommunications of Cuba, Annonymous Society.
**Permutes are a legalized form of exchanges of living quarters.

Translated by: Maria Montoto

June 30 2012

Cholera / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

CóleraThe outbreak of cholera in Cuba is increasing, and the capital could have 10 cases. Still, the official media have not commented about it.

A source from the Capri polyclinic says there was a meeting in his workplace to learn that in the province — Ciudad Habana — there are 10 cases of cholera in the Covadonga hospital, located in the Havana municipality of Cerro.

The outbreak started in Granma province in the municipality of Manzanillo. The government quickly suspended trips to Granma, the affected province, and didn’t publicize the news until the death of three elderly people, justifying their death by the deterioration of health they had due to their advanced age.

Because of the delayed public alert by the mass media, citizens from Havana traveled to Granma province. Suspending the trips on the part of the government was not sufficient, because not all Cubans going to the eastern provinces always use that type of transport. Some neighbor or family member with their own transport can go see their family in the country and save money that way. Also, the crisis in the water supply to homes could have provoked the outbreak now that the water tends to go bad since it’s stagnant for several days.

If the official press were more immediate, the lack of knowledge on the part of citizens would have been avoided, and thus fatalities would occur with less frequency.

Translated by Regina Anavy

July 9 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Should the U.S. raise a fist or offer a hand to Cuba? / Yoani Sánchez

Nobel prize nominee Yoani Sanchez
Nobel prize nominee Yoani Sanchez

Havana, Cuba (CNN) — In the ’90s a certain joke became very popular in the streets and homes of Cuba. It began with Pepito — the mischievous boy of our national humor — and told how his teacher, brandishing a photo of the U.S. president, launches into a harsh diatribe against him.

“The man you see here is the cause of all our problems, he has plunged this island into shortages and destroyed our productivity, he is responsible for the lack of food and the collapse of public transport,” the teacher says.
After these fierce accusations the teacher points to the face in the photo and asks her most wayward student, “Do you know who this is?” Smiling, Pepito replies, “Oh yes, … I know him, it’s just that without his beard I didn’t recognize him.”

From CNN

The joke reflects, to a large measure, the polarization of national opinion with regard to our economic difficulties and the restrictions on citizens’ rights that characterize the current Cuban system. While the official discourse points to the United States as the source of our greatest problems, many others see the Plaza of the Revolution itself as the root of all the failures of the last 53 years.

True or not, the reality is that each one of the 11 administrations that have passed through the White House since 1959 has influenced the course of this island, sometimes directly, other times as a pillar of support for the ideological propaganda of Fidel Castro’s government (and now that of his younger brother Raúl).

From CNN

Hence the growing expectations that circulate through the largest of the Antilles every time elections come around to decide who will sit in the Oval Office. Cuban politics depends so greatly on what happens in the ballot boxes on the other side of the Florida Straits — and some share the view that we have never been so dependent on our neighbor to the north.

Cuban diplomacy seems more comfortable contradicting America than seeking to solve the problems between the nations, which is why many analysts agree it would be easier for Raúl Castro to cope with an aggressive policy from Uncle Sam than with the more pragmatic approach of Barack Obama.

From CNN

Obama’s easing of the rules on family remittances, reestablishing academic travel, and increasing cultural exchanges add up to an unwieldy formula difficult for the Castro regime’s rhetoric to manage. But the regime has also tried to wring economic and political advantages from these gestures from Washington.

The real question in this dispute is which approach would more greatly affect democratization in Cuba — to display a fist? Or to offer a hand? To recognize the legitimacy of the government on the island? Or to continue to treat it as a kidnapper holding power over 11 million hostages?

From CNN

When the Democratic party, led by Barack Obama, came to the White House in January 2009, our official press was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand the newly elected president’s youth and his African descent made him immediately popular with Cubans, and it was not uncommon to find people walking the streets wearing a shirt or hat displaying the face of the former senator from Illinois. It was the first time in decades that some compatriots dared to publicly wear a picture of the “enemy” (the U.S. president) himself.

For a population that saw the top leaders of our own government approaching or passing 80, the image of a cheerful, limber, smiling Obama was more consistent with the myth of the Revolutionary than were the old men in olive green standing behind the national microphones.

Obama’s magnetism also captivated many here as well, and disappointed, of course, those who hoped for a heavier hand toward the gerontocracy in Havana.

Farewell socialism … hello to pragmatism

Beyond the political issues, the measures undertaken by the Obama administration were felt quickly in many Cuban families, particularly in their economy and relations with their exiled relatives in America.

From CNN

With the increased cash from remittances, the small businesses that emerged from Raul Castro’s reforms were able to use the money coming from the north for start-up capital and to position themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of Cuban-Americans arrived at José Martí airport every week loaded with packages, medicine and clothes to support their relatives on the island.

Those who see the Cuban situation as a pressure cooker that needs just a little more heat to explode feel defrauded by these “concessions” to Havana from the Democratic government. They are the same people who suggest that a hard line — belligerence on the diplomatic scene and economic suffocation — would deliver better results.

Sadly, however, the guinea pigs required to test the efficacy of such an experiment would be Cubans on the island, physically and socially wasting away until some point at which our civic consciousness would supposedly “wake up.” As if there are not enough historical examples to show that totalitarian regimes become stronger as their economic crises deepen and international opinion turns against them.

From CNN

No wonder Mitt Romney is a much talked about figure in the official Cuban press. His strong confrontational positions feed the anti-imperialism discourse like fuel to a fire. The Republican candidate has been the focus of numerous articles in the official organ of the Communist Party, the newspaper Granma. His photos and caricatures appear in this same daily that was stymied when trying to physically mock Obama. Given the high rate of mixed marriages among Cubans, it’s quite sensitive to enlarge the ears and fatten the lips of the U.S. president without it reading as racist ridicule.

If, in the eighties, the media’s political humor was honed in the wrinkled face of Ronald Reagan, and later the media had a field day with the physique of George W. Bush, for four years it has been cautious with the current resident of the White House. All this graphic moderation will go by the wayside if Mitt Romney is elected as the next president of the United States. There are those who are already laughing over the possible jokes to come.

From CNN

But whoever scores the electoral victory will find Cuba in a state of change. The reforms carried out by Raúl Castro lack the speed and depth most people desire, but are heading in the irreversible direction of economic opening. Havana is full of private cafés and restaurants, we can now buy and sell homes, and Cubans are even managing to sell the cars given to them during the era of Soviet subsidies in exchange for political loyalty. The timid changes driven by the General President are threatening to damage the fundamental pillars of Fidel Castro’s command. Volunteerism at any cost, coarse egalitarianism, active adventures abroad, and a country kept in a state of constant tension by the latest economic or political campaign appear to be gradually fading into things of the past.

Alan Gross and his wife in Jerusalem, before his arrest in Cuba. From CNN

On the other hand, citizens themselves have begun to experience the most definitive of transformations, that which occurs within. Public criticism is on the rise, although it has not yet found ways to be heard in all its diversity, but every day the fear of police reprisals diminishes.

The official media have unquestionably lost a monopoly on the flow of information and thanks to illegal satellite dishes Florida television now comes to Cuba. Alternative news networks circulate documentaries, films, and articles from independent journalists and bloggers. It’s as if the enormous ocean liner of Revolutionary censorship was taking on water through every porthole.

Young people are finally pushing to have Internet access, while the retired complain about their miserable pensions and almost everyone disagrees with the travel restrictions that prevent our leaving and returning to our own country. In short, the illusion of unanimity has fallen to pieces in Raúl Castro’s hands.

To this internal scenario, the result of the American elections could be a catalyst or obstacle for changes, but it is no longer the most important factor to consider. Although the billboards lining the streets continue to paint the United States as Goliath wanting to crush little David who represents our island, for an increasing number of people the metaphor doesn’t play out that way. They know that in our case the abusive giant is a government that tries to control the smallest aspects of our national life, while his opponent is a people who, bit by bit, is becoming more conscious of its real stature.

CNN Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of dispatches exploring how the U.S. election is seen in cities around the world. Yoani Sánchez is the Havana-based author of the blog Generation Y, which is translated by volunteers into 20 languages, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. This article was translated by Mary Jo Porter.

10 July 2012

The Two Wings of a Bird / Fernando Dámaso

Archive Photo

From time to time, when a Puerto Rican pro-independent visits Cuba, they will bring up in the corresponding discourses, that image by the Puerto Rican poetess Lola Rodriguez the two wings of a bird and the approach of Jose Marti, the first fight for the independence of Cuba and later for that of Puerto Rico, valid in the 19th century when both territories were Spanish colonies, but subsequently obsolete with the development of historical events, where Cuba obtained its independence and Puerto Rico became an “Associated Free State” of the United States (or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, its official name in English).

In the 19th century, apart from its solidarity content, the Martian approach also had an eminently practical objective: to get the Puerto Rican residents in the Union, principally en Key West and Tampa (who were numerous) to help the Cuban cause economically with the commitment of doing the same for them once Cuban independence was achieved. Since then it has rained here a lot.

Today this approach, if one tried to put it into practice, would be considered an interference in internal matters by another state and would receive little support from international agencies. It is logical, no one has the right to decide about a foreign country.

According to the information I have (here these data are not published), Puerto Ricans mostly are in agreement with their status with the United States: in the last referendum held on the topic, some 48% (close to three thousand pro-independents, who voted at the last minute to prevent the country from becoming part of the United States as its 52nd state) were in agreement with keeping the current status of Associated Free State, 48% voted to join the US as a state and only 4% voted for independence. To summarize: 96% agree with the status (in one form or another) and only 4% do not. When they have taken later surveys among the population, 90% are in agreement with the current status and only 10% are not.

The reasons are understandable: the country has never had dictators, nor fratricidal fights, having enjoyed for decades a tranquil social climate and economic development. Besides keeping its flag, anthem and language (Spanish is mostly spoken but also English), its customs, culture, etc., and sharing also those of North America, they possess the same rights as North Americans because they have had US nationality since 1917, including the passport; they can live on the island or in any state of the Union, enjoying a first class health and education system, as well as Social Security.

That’s why, when some clueless person presents in the United Nations the topic of the decolonization of Puerto Rico, many look surprised and ask: How to decolonize someone who does not want to be decolonized, because they do not feel that way? Absurdities of some countries’ foreign policy, where ideology prevails instead of reason. Puerto Ricans of all political stripes have demonstrated that, respecting each other,people can live in peace and successfully develop a country achieving well-being for the majority without social upheavals or violent acts. They make a good example to follow. In November this year they will realize a new referendum to determine democratically what political relationship with the United States their inhabitants wish. Let’s await the results!

Translated by mlk

July 8 2012

Do You Remember the Revolutionary Offensive of 1968? / Haroldo Dilla Alfonso

A former privately-owned store in Havana now under State ownership and management. The sign over the clothing racks states that the clothes are: “Recycled but of Quality”

On March 13, 1968, Fidel Castro, in one of his miles-long speeches, announced to the Cuban people what he called “the Revolutionary Offensive*.” In reality, it had nothing revolutionary about it, on the contrary, it was an essentially counterrevolutionary measure intended to eliminate the urban petty bourgeoisie. And with it to eliminate one of the few areas of social autonomy remaining in the country after the brutal nationalization of everything that moved. After this step, the only thing left outside the State sector was a limited area of small farm cooperatives of differing forms, that owned 30 percent of the land and supplied something like 70 percent of the agricultural food to the Cuban population.

The Revolutionary Offensive was one more step in the sociopolitical control of the population and in the construction of a Thermidorian regime with totalitarian aspirations that finally consolidated itself on the base of Soviet subsidies. It was also another step in the repression of everyone who seemed estranged from a new morality more similar to the plebeian asceticism of the medieval peasant movements than the Marxist proposal.

And it was a particularly damaging outburst of the anti-urban sentiment, in the same way that cities were considered as nurseries of amoral manifestations and the rural world as an idyllic place to cultivate the new revolutionary virtues. If anyone doubts this, read this short paragraph from a speech as homophobic as it is anti-urban, uttered by FC in March of 1963:

“Many of those bums… have taken the extreme liberty of attempting to go to some of the places of public attendance to organize their faggoty shows… our society cannot make room for these degenerates. The socialist society cannot permit that kind of degeneration. There are many theories, I am not a scientist, I am not an expert in this matter, but I have always observed one thing: the countryside does not yield this inferior product. I have always observed this, and I always bear it very much in mind.”

And from here, obviously, they derived practices such as the agricultural mobilizations that battered us for decades, the schools in the countryside, and in the countryside they terrorized the families until very recently, and the fatal UMAP** (Military Units in Aid of Production) that destroyed the lives and dreams of thousands of Cubans. All in an attempt to subjugate a Caribbean population to a stoical and monastic lifestyle that, logically, the new political class escaped by reserving for themselves intimate recreational sites within and outside the country.

Recently I returned to the speech announcing the Revolutionary Offensive. I hadn’t gone back to it since that day I heard it, when I was a teenager, stuck in the crowd filling San Lázaro Street. And reading it served to reaffirm my conviction in the value of democracy, of public debate, and of the independent press. Because the report presented by Fidel Castro (FC) against small urban businesses — in the midst of a several hour tirade that included observations about the drought, the fight against imperialism and the victory of the 10 million ton sugar harvest — constituted a gross manipulation of public opinions that could only be carried out from uncontested power.

FC’s report was based on a study applied to 6,452 private businesses — including snack stands — and 955 bars, never making it clear if they were included in the previous figure or were an additional number. It was undertaken by Communist Party militants from each municipality with the support of the surveillance entities, the CDRs — Committees for the Defense of the Revolution — which obviously were determined to construct the results to agree with the conclusions they wanted to reach, to legitimize the operation. And in particular, those conclusions fed into the political passions of the moment.

So the study presents frankly childish data such as specifying that 66 percent of the clients of the bars and 72 percent of the proprietors were “anti-social and amoral” deviants from the revolutionary purposes. Claims difficult to prove, but sufficient to identify the happy drinkers as zigzagging enemies of the Revolution.

On the other hand, in his speech FC grossly distorted the statistics. Let’s say, for example, that when only 28 percent of the businesses were not legally registered, this was presented as “almost a third”; or when he had to explain that 51 percent of the business had good hygiene conditions, 40 percent had average conditions, and 9 percent bad, he presented this data as almost half “did not have good” hygiene conditions. And so on, making the reading an invitation to laughter if it weren’t that through it he was hiding a wave of expropriations against workers, against the “people” whom FC himself defined in his legal plea of 1953***, and against the few remaining spaces of social autonomy.

I say expressly workers, because there is something that neither the endeavors of the investigators, nor the manipulation of the orator can hide: of these 6,542 small businesses analyzed in Havana, 72 percent were registered and paid their taxes on time, 88 percent of the owners worked in their businesses and relied on family labor, and only 31 percent of them had other employees. And 73 percent of the owner families had no other income, with the overwhelming majority having daily gross revenues of less than one hundred pesos.

Curiously, only 6 percent of the business owners had requested to leave the country.

In a country where at that time the only way to express discontent was with your feet.

Translator’s notes:
*The 1968 Revolutionary Offensive, according to Granma, the Communist Party newspaper, was intended to fight selfishness and individualism and eradicate parasitism. The government confiscated 55,636 small, private businesses.
**UMAP — Concentration camps for religious believers, homosexuals and other “counterrevolutionaries.”
***Subsequently edited and published as “History will absolve me,” this refers to his statement at his trial for the attack on the Moncada Barracks on 26 July 1953, generally taken as the start date of the Revolution.

From Cubaencuentro

9 July 2012

The Lions of the Capital / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

I’m not referring to the bronze lions that guard the Paseo del Prado in Havana, but rather to the team insignia of the Cuban baseball team, the Industriales, who in May won the title of sub-champion of the 51st National Series. The Tigers of Ciego de Avila were the champions. The Industriales, which have won the most championships in Cuban baseball history since 1959, unleashed a rivalry in Cuba comparable only to that which exists in the Major League in the U.S. against the New York Yankees, or perhaps worse. Because the options for recreation here are more limited than in other countries, there’s a great social frustration from 53 years of totalitarianism — that manifests itself with tension among the citizens, encapsulated by militarization — and the enthusiasm for this pastime is so ingrained that an impassioned and divided multitude masses dangerously in the stadiums.

The hubbub of fanatics present in the stadium, the seat of the inhabitants of the capital, transcends the walls and is heard in the distance, since the stadium sometimes teems with 60,000 people. It’s common that the temperature is elevated among the competitors, because Havana is the most cosmopolitan of the Cuban provinces. It doesn’t matter if Santiago de Cuba is playing against the Industriales, or if an aficionado is sitting beside someone from Villa Clara, Cienfuegos or Sancti Spiritus and lives in Havana and wants Santiago to win as well. If he’s from the eastern provinces, he will want it and will reveal it with more earnestness and bombast. They want to crush the city that welcomes all of them.

This country, under a dictatorship for 70 years by Easterners — we can count almost 7 years of Batista (1952-1959), who also was one — favored to a great extent the inhabitants of that region, with a certain partiality and arrogance that with time has been extended to other provinces of Cuba.

In the stadium of the Blue Lions, the Lationamericana, we see how the natives of the interior of the country who reside here and who visit us have been given “permission” to crush those habaneros governed by origins of other demarcations as if we were their colony. The height of the authorities’ complicit passivity and citizen incivility is at the point that they have changed the genre of the athletes of the blue team. They yell “Roar, Lions” when the Industriales are losing, not only when they compete in the interior but also on their own territory. They only need to sing “Pass us the jug” in our own house.

They even sing the song in Ciego de Avila with the same words and transmit it on national television. Up to what point and how far will they go with this sick sentiment? What will happen if the followers of the Lions in the stadium give them an eye for an eye and replicate the insults they receive about our team, the only one attacked right now?

If the baseball fans of the capital pay them back with the same contrary fanaticism and start to jeer their teams with humiliating and profane jokes – the Tigers of Ciego de Avila with the expression, “Meow, Tigers”; the Wasps of Santiago de Cuba with “Buzz, Little Bee;” the Roosters of Sancti Spiritus with “Cluck, Chicken”; or the Sorrels of Granma with “Whinny, Mare”; and so on with the rest of the national conglomerates symbolized by animals — will the authorities then take charge and call for tolerant and respectful sanity and formal education to avoid a massive altercation, something that is always a worry?

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 30 2012

First International Congress for Public Law Firms will be held in Cuba / Yaremis Flores. / Laritza Diversent

ImagenBy Yaremis Flores

The National Organization of Legal Collectives (ONBC) announced this past Tuesday,June 5th, on the official radio its first international congress: Advocacy 2012. The event will take place from the 19th to the 21st of September at the Conventions Palace, in Havana.

Co-sponsored by the National Union of Jurists of Cuba and the School of Law of the University of Havana, the event will host all legal operators and law students. However, the organization did not communicate to the public the registration fees:

Delegates:$240USD (approx.)

Presenter and students: $180 USD (approx.)

Guests: $80 USD (approx.)

According to the ONBC’s website, registration will be open to the last day of the month. Fifty papers, from throughout the nation,have been pre-selected to present. Ariel Mantecón, President of the National Executive Board of the ONBC, highlighted that the theme of the event will be “Management and Solutions for Legal Disputes.”

“The event will empower the commercial contracts sphere through the exchange with professional of Latin America, North America, and Europe”, said Mantecón. The procedural protection laws in agrarian-legal relations, the efficiency of the economic processes, and the new technologies in the notarial field are among the main topics for debate.

Nonetheless, after discussion with several attorneys not affiliated with State sector, they all agree that legal practices in Cuba demand immediate attention towards other issues. The delayed intervention of lawyers in the criminal process and the free exercise of law are among them. In Cuba only those who belong to the ONBC are legally recognized as lawyers.

Translated by Chabeli

July 9 2012

Now I feel more free in my conscience: Interview with the writer Ángel Santiesteban / Ángel Santiesteban

Ángel Santiesteban

by Ernesto Santana Zaldívar

HAVANA, Cuba, June, www.cubanet.org – In the ’90s, the generation of the Novísimos (the Newest) brought to Cuban literature themes and narrative forms that marked a certain rupture with the previous generations. Angel Santiesteban, born in 1966, became one of the most emblematic creators of this time, not only for the prizes he won, but also for the acceptance he achieved with readers. The son of a businessman and a nurse in Cienfuegos, Santiesteban studied in the “Camilitos” when he decided to begin a career as Commander of Tactical Troops.

But, according to the story, “God took me violently from this path sending me to prison for having accompanied my brothers to the coast in 1984, when they left the country. I was in prison for 14 months in La Cabaña, accused of conspiracy, although I was absolved at the trial because this crime doesn’t exist among brothers. But I know that God sent me there for a reason, and I thank Him, because it made me grow up and understand the pain of people. It was there that I discovered I wanted to be a writer, that it was through writing that I could give a voice to those who suffered.”

He then started going to night school at the Faculty of Letters, but, needing money for his family, he went to work as an assistant director at ICRT (Cuban Radio and Television Institute), at the time he was completing his studies as a film director at ICAIC (Cuban Institute on Cinematographic Arts and Industry). However, the urge to write imposed itself, and he abandoned his work to dedicate himself to writing.

To his surprise, in 1989 he received an honorable mention with his third short story in the French Juan Rulfo contest. In 1990 he won the national literary workshop prize with his story, “South: Latitude 3″ and later, in 1992, he sent a book with the same title to the Casa de Las Americas contest, which he won, but immediately the political police prohibited the jury from awarding him the prize.

“In 1995,” Santiesteban said, “I submitted the same book under another title, “Dream of a Summer Day,” which, in spite of winning the UNEAC (The Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) prize, came out three years later with the condition that I take out five stories.” In 2001 he won the Alejo Carpentier short story prize with “The Children Nobody Wanted,” and in 2006, the Casa de Las Americas prize with “Blessed are Those Who Mourn.”

CUBANET: From your first publications it was evident that your subject matter was raw, modern and controversial, and besides the reader could think that you were relating personal experiences. Why did you choose these themes?

ANGEL SANTIESTEBAN: I experienced a raw reality and my writing started to be raw. For example, the theme of Angola. As I came from a military world and aspired to be a soldier, I discovered that many feelings of the internationalist soldier coincided with those of the prisoners I knew in La Cabaña: They were far from home, their family and their environment; they were under pressure; they had profound sexual desires; they committed acts of indiscipline; they were given orders by the Army; they had to keep rigorous schedules. So behind this internationalist soldier that I describe is my experience as a prisoner.

Occasionally some veteran of these wars asks me if I was in Angola, but I tell them that I was a prisoner and that I know these feelings. In addition, I have a brother who lived that experience. Before going he was the most rational person in the family, and he always gave good advice. When he returned he was the crazy person in the family.

I never planned to write this kind of story, but it emerged from my experience. It never occurred to me to write against the system. One time a writer I respected told me my writing was unfair. In that moment I understood he was right, that it was unfair that I expose the ugly side of those men who had sacrificed so much. But later another writer told me something that helped me a lot: “Literature is not fair or unfair. It’s true or false. That’s what you should worry about.”

CN: Where do you feel most comfortable: in the short story, the novel, in your blog?

AS: I feel most comfortable with short stories. Although it seems weird to say, the truth is that when I feel like writing, a short story comes out. Then I only have to fix some words. I’m short-winded. Writing a novel requires tremendous work. I suffer a lot, I procrastinate, I don’t want to continue. Furthermore, I can’t sit still, and a novel requires me to be more stable, more concentrated, and I’m very unconcentrated. As for the blog, I’m afraid of losing the discipline because it’s like a more refined journalistic chronicle. I’m not a journalist; I’m a writer, but sometimes life takes you to unexpected places. All in all, I started to write to give a voice to those who don’t know how or can’t do it.

CN: Do you have favorite writers? Which ones have influenced your writing?

AS: I constantly read and re-read Hemingway, Rulfo, Isaac Babel, Dostoyevsky. They are the ones I follow and the ones who from the beginning brought me the most. Although I should also note that Kafka always was there, sleeping (of course, I’m preparing a book of short stories about the absurd). From Cuba, I should mention Eduardo Heras León, who was the closest thing to a maestro writer I had. And, well, the writing of Virgilio Piñera has always been fundamental for me.

CN: There’s no doubt that you were one of the most famous members of the Novísimos (the Newest). How do you see yourself with respect to your generation and, in general, with respect to present-day Cuban literature?

AS: I believe that the Novísimos were a kind of family. I don’t know if it was so important as a literary movement, but as a movement of brotherhood, yes, it was. We all took a lot of care of one another. Now we’re dispersed, which is like a puzzle that you can’t put back together. Inside Cuban literature I feel alone, separated, in internal exile. And from the time I started my blog, I was no longer tolerable. They chewed up my writing, but they didn’t swallow it, and with my blog they spat out everything I was thinking inside.

Iroel Sánchez, who was then the President of the Cuban Institute of the Book, was the Taliban who “executed” me, who ordered me to be taken out of any anthology, any presentation. And he had me by the balls. He had been in the war in Angola, and his buddies asked him how it was possible that he would agree to publish “The Children Nobody Wanted.” Also, the Association of Combatants sent him a letter complaining about the book. He told me things like, “Angel, aren’t you aware that you’re serving the enemy? Don’t you see that without wanting to you’re putting yourself in the service of the Yankees?”

CN: Do you think Cuban intellectuals are obligated ethically to be critical of the Regime?

AS: I believe they are obligated above all to follow their conscience. If you believe that you should defend Fidel Castro, defend him. If you have to defend the Revolution, defend it with your teeth. I don’t criticize that. What happens is that there is an amazing opportunism. In private there are those who are more against the Regime than I am. Extreme right. I have ended up feeling like a Leftist with these people. And later they do whatever they can to get a trip abroad. Their banner is opportunism, cynicism. They’re capable of saying in public that Cuba is the best, and later, in private and under their breath, they tell you that Fidel Castro should hurry up and die.

CN: You have lived through almost unbelievable experiences — detentions, beatings, a shooting, very grave accusations, harassment, persecution, surveillance, without, properly speaking, being a dissident or an active opponent. To what do you attribute this obstinacy on the part of the political police?

AS: I don’t even know how many political parties there are in Cuba. I don’t belong to any. I don’t go to any political meetings. I fight for the dreams of Cubans who want to live with dignity, in a democracy. This country cannot endure any more caudillismo.

CN: You reported that once an old man asked you if you thought civilization existed outside this island and then confessed to you that he was tired of throwing bottles into the sea. Do you think that once you could have said the same thing?

AS: I think Cubans who leave are the first to ignore these bottles. A large number of Cubans leave and begin buying and living what they couldn’t have before, disentangling themselves from the reality they left behind. Many say they are economic immigrants as if this didn’t make them political immigrants.

If you leave for economic reasons it’s because your country has a bad economic administration. Furthermore, it’s terrible to know that you don’t have a way back. Sometimes I wonder how many bottles have to be launched and if they will continue being thrown into the water if many of the Cubans who leave don’t even look at them. However, Facebook is for me a tremendous thing, something that almost surpasses a blog, because it’s more alive, quicker.

CN: This year is the official celebration of the centennial of the birth of Virgilio Piñera. What do you think is being done to honor him?

AS: Virgilio Piñera merits a major homage. That a man like him has passed through this island should be for us a reason for perpetual pride. The terrible thing is that those who killed his spirit, who condemned him to fear, who did him so much harm, pretend now that they didn’t have any responsibility, that they acted without wanting to. His crime was being gay without being a revolutionary, and furthermore being a great writer. I’m happy that they published the most possible of his work. He deserves it, and Cubans deserve it also, especially the generations that don’t know him. But you can’t forget all the suffering they caused him. There is nothing that can erase that.

CN: How do you see the present situation in Cuba?

AS: There’s an impasse. The rhythm we had has slowed down. I think that’s the result of the Pope’s visit. I feel that nothing is happening, that we’re lost. I don’t see an immediate way out of our situation.

CN: Why did you run in the last marathon in Havana with the image of Laura Pollán on your chest?

AS: I ran several years in the Marabana, but this time I felt very hurt by her death, for having lost her as a leader. I thought that Laura was going to be the person who would topple the government, because of her vigor, her vitality, her courage that few are capable of. Perhaps she was God. Others say that they took her out. In any event we Cubans owe her for everything she did for us, and the least I could do was to wear her image on my chest so that people who don’t know her would ask who she was. It was my way of demonstrating to her, in Heaven or wherever she is, my gratitude for what she did, and to tell her that her sacrifice was not in vain.

CN: Why do you continue living in this country when you probably could have a quieter life outside?

AS: Someone once commented in my blog that surely I was one of those who has enough pull to go to the United States. However, I’ve traveled to the United States several times and never stayed. Precisely, they have not let me leave the country since I started the blog. I’ve had to post a bond for three years because of the stupid denouncements against me.

On the other hand, leaving would be like surrendering. I believe that where you contribute, the more you are there. You can also contribute from abroad, but here you can contribute more directly. What I fear is to wear myself out in vain, now that I have sacrificed my writing. It’s been eight months without writing and that hurts me in my soul, because that’s the only justification I have for living.

CN: How would you describe your life in this precise moment?

AS: Right now I don’t know what’s going to happen with me or what I have to do. I don’t represent anything in the cultural world, which makes me feel very proud. I don’t want to interfere with them in anything, although I can’t return to publishing in Cuba.

Luckily, this month an anthology of my stories is coming out in France. I also have published another anthology in Spain, Italy and Miami. There are professors and foreign academics who contact me because my writing interests them.

As for the accusations against me, everything continues being very murky. I was with my lawyer at the public prosecutor’s office, and they told us that the file had been sent to the State District Attorney’s office. We went there, and they didn’t have it either, and finally they told us that a lieutenant colonel of Villa Marista had taken it. When we went there, they informed us that it wasn’t there either, that they didn’t know anything about it. Finally, we couldn’t learn where we could find the file.

At least they had seen that they couldn’t shut me up. Since the time I began my blog, my life has changed completely, but I can tell you that If I had known from the beginning everything that I would go through, I would have done the same thing anyway, because now I feel freer in my conscience. When my last moment arrives, I’m going to feel happy because I did it. To have renounced the pleasures that they offered me to satisfy my conscience, for assuming my civic life, it was something I had to do. To not do it would have sickened me with disgust for myself, and then it would be better to be dead.

Translated by Regina Anavy

July 4 2012

Decalaration of a Co-defendent / Cuban Law Association, Miguel Iturria Medina

By Lic. Miguel Iturria Medina

The presumption of innocence is a legal assumption in most modern legal systems where a person accused of a crime is considered innocent until they are convicted.

The individual enjoys the so-called State of Innocence that should be destroyed by the one who bears the burden of proof, the prosecutor, in a process that respects due process. The offender must be convicted in a trial. This principle has a second accession which is that it is mandatory to prove the facts independent of the statements of the accused, their spouse and close relatives.

With this principle, the defendant’s confession is no longer the Regina Probatio (Queen of the proofs) and the inquisitorial trial system, where in order to achieve this they resorted to coercive methods including torture, as a method of proof subject to later confirmation.

Currently, at least in theory, is not sufficient for the incrimination from one accused person to convict another implicated in the same case.

In the content of our Law of Criminal Procedure these assumptions are guaranteed. Article 1 establishes the principle alluded to as we discussed, and in Article 161 gives the accused the choice to give evidence or not, and in Article 163 is imposed on the officials concerned the obligation to conduct any investigation to verify the events leading the accused.

These assumptions are in effect not only with regards to self-incriminating statements from the accused, but also statements of an accused involving other people. The so-called co-defendants.

The declaration of a co-defendant, by its nature, does not have the rigor and quality of other personal proofs and requires further confirmation in other methods of proof; because the accused, unlike the witness is not obliged by law to tell the truth and is not responsible for any legal if failure to do so; in addition, in his condition as a part of the process he will always have particular interest in the outcome.

It is seen as a means of defense or incomplete evidence. The Act imposes the existence of other elements to form a conviction.

In short, no one can be sentences based only on their own testimony or that of another person implicated as an accused in the same penal process.

So much for the theory and the strict content of the law. Unfortunately, judicial practice does not always coincide with those arguments. Convictions contrary to the law occur relatively frequently.

Its foundation is based mainly on the alleged absence of motive for one defendant to want to unfairly prejudice another. For example: if their relations were good or there is no earlier situation of conflict between them, then it is estimated that for the most part the incriminator is being truthful and it is taken as evidence. Is that perhaps what is regulated in the law?

May 25 2012

Counter-Development: A Disoriented Work Force / Luis Felipe Rojas

Recently, certain news from Guantanamo managed to stun me once more, because of its cruelty and because of the dark future stains which it presents for its actors. The note was signed by the Human Rights activist Yordis Garcia Fournier and it assures that more than twenty youths from that area were officially warned and cast aside by the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) due to their labor detachment or that their conducts are classified as improper by uniformed officials.

During the last few months of 2008, as supported by an investigative report carried out by Jorge Corrales Ceballos, I informed through this blog about the pressures exercised in that same center against more than 80 youths for the same causes. On that occasion, a number of them ended up in prison under charges of Pre-Criminal Social Dangerousness. Human Rights Watch mentioned the incident in its reports and I was arrested various times, my phone was blocked for a couple of days, and the political police of Guantanamo directly threatened me because, according to them, I had been “talking about things which did not pertain to my neighborhood”. However, the violations against youths, not only from there, but from all over the nation, continued.

Now, as they are lashing out against these beardless southeastern Cubans, it would be good to return the ball to the court of the governmental culprits. When, in a matter of less than 5 years, the possibilities of access for graduates into Superior Education has diminished, what can we expect for that floating citizenship? The overpopulation in the registration lists for the Polytechnic Majors had shown us a qualified work force which would have boosted the economy of the country, but now our leaders have appeared with a “work force reduction” which they euphemistically refer to as “re-structuring of the labor force” or the politics of availability.

Back to the subject of the threatened youths, it’s worth asking: If they are available, then why threaten them? How can a young lathe operator, who has been condemned to fill up matches or to sell unnecessary products in state dependencies, be socially dangerous? The official statistics of youths who are unemployed due to lack of real work placement will never be published. Because of this, having such information in one’s hands to carry out a logical analysis is not very likely.

Right now, the educational politics is to graduate more “medical technicians” all the way from the secondary level and to return to the educational plan of four years, but where can thousands of qualified graduates of various professions who sleep on the eternal floor be employed?

More than half a hundred polytechnic institutes throughout the country graduated youths who majored in specialties such as Construction and Sugar Production, but those who assumed their professions for a while have been forced to dedicate themselves more to cultivating and cleaning the grass than to actually building, without detailing the depression of the sugar sector within the last decade. There is a skilled labor force which is qualified and which exceeds the possibilities of employment. After this, if they do not desire to work in sectors which are unrelated to their studies, then why classify them as social misfits or as prone to crime?

The logic of the polytechnic and technological enrollments in Cuba have been historically as follows: the students with little possibilities of entering universities opted for an average education. With the worsening of the economic crisis in the ’90s, the balance inclined towards commodity and calm: studying for half a day and a semi-internship for students, which translated into less effort for parents as the direct responsible ones. When the enrollments for urban and rural pre-university students were reduced, the amount of middle-technicians and qualified workers increased. A floating population, which is now difficult to chain down when they decide not to live off their parents anymore, goes out to fight with life and does not always win, but they dodge now, and hold it in tomorrow. And that’s how they mortgage the future- to whom? One day we’ll know. For a crook — another one — some would say.

Translated by Raul G.

8 July 2012

Liberties in Cuba? / Yoaxis Marcheco Suárez

Baptist, Methodist and Pentacostal pastors in a UMAP forced labor camp. Source: religionrevolution.blogspot.com

By: Yoaxis Marcheco Suárez

I don’t know what is happening with some people and institutions in the world, I think that they suffer from some sort of lethargy that doesn’t allow them to perceive Cuban reality, or they are simply content with what the antidemocratic government of the country informs and draws for them. The Cuban heartland is something else, very distant from the reports and statistics that the un-government offers to international opinion. The mere fact of seeing the nation submerged in bankruptcy and disequilibrium caused by more than 50 years under the same system, with leaders whose extreme self-sufficiency has led them to believe that they are immortal gods, almighty and non-substitutable, is already sufficient for the free world to understand that on the tiny Antilles island, democracy and freedom went out to the countryside one day and apparently cannot find their way back home.

I also can’t seem to explain the reason why the Cuban nation doesn’t take over the reins and liberate itself once and for all from everything that overwhelms it. We can clearly see, one only needs to have a bit of good vision, that the country will succumb, that its inhabitants are discontent with daily living, although, lamentably, the answer to this unhappiness is the high number of emigrants, suicides, alcoholics, delinquency, the low birth rate (which has resulted in an aging population), alienation and silence.

To speak of freedom in Cuba is almost painful, the most recurrent monosyllable is “No”. No freedom of expression. No freedom of the press. No freedom of political or party affiliation (in a one-party system). No freedom of ideas. No freedom of information. No freedom of meetings or membership. And there is a so-called “religious freedom” where the separation of Church and state only applies to the Church, because the state is constantly exerting its meddling dominion over the various denominations, associations, etc.: manipulating the ecclesiastic leadership, forever threatening, blackmailing, with airs of superiority. I truly do not know what they call separation of Church and state, when the former is supervised in every aspect by the latter: every step that is taken, every decision that is made.

The questions posed by Benedict XVI on his recent visit to the country continue to be unanswered. When will properties that were confiscated from the Churches in the early years of the Revolution be returned in their entirety? When will it be possible to build new church-affiliated educational institutions so that present and future generations of the faithful may be educated, not under the doctrines of Marxist-Leninism, but under the teachings of the Bible? When will religious institutions be allowed to have their own radio and television time-slots, have their periodical publications, presses, editorial houses and bookstores? Could it be that denying all this to the Church is not, in some good measure, the same as wounding its freedom?

Furthermore, it is important to point out that all of the elements that deny believers in Cuba of their genuine freedom should, if restored, be for everyone without distinction including, as Percy Francisco Alvarado Godoy would say in his post: “Another lie of Radio Marti…” to the “tiny and irrelevant congregations delegated to the Western Baptist Convention, as well as the Apostolic Movement,” the latter not legalized by the censoring filter of the Central Committee Register of Associations.

The great fallacy is (and, believe me, this is already more than “a quagmire of lies”) in stating that in Cuba its un-government (and I cite the aforementioned author): “has never tortured or persecuted religious pastors for their beliefs, independent of the size of their denominations, their isolation, or lack of a support group on a national or international level.” I believe the term “never” is too broad. Although, of course, the author to whom I am referring is following the steps of his maximum guide, the now historical leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, who had the shamelessness to declare in the interview “Fidel and Religion,” that in Cuba no place of worship had ever been shut down.

In the not too distant past –just barely the decade of the ’60s of the past century)– the dictators (by then staunch enemies of religion) created the UMAP* concentration camps, where hundreds of pastors and Church leaders were sent. Many places of worship were literally shut down, among them the Baptist Church Ebenezer of Taguayabón, of which I am a member.

The faithful were not worthy to attend the universities of the country, many would lose their jobs if they decided to remain steadfast to their faith. Places of worship were emptied giving way to the era of Communist ideology, with its atheist and materialistic nature, that in Fidel Castro’s version takes on the appearance of exterminator of the spirituality of a believing people, by their nature.

The current, much-trumpeted Cuban Constitution –all the while manipulated by the owners of everything within the island– claims in its article 8, to acknowledge and respect freedom of conscience and religion. They should, if they were honest, include a clause in this article: only if whoever professes these is a Revolutionary, practices “Fidelism” and has learned to abide by whatever is mandated to them on behalf of governmental entities.

The clause is implied, even when the article goes on to state that religious institutions are separate from the state. Article 55 states: that the state recognizes, respects and guarantees freedom of conscience and religion. It would be repetitive to explain this great lie: a country where whoever thinks differently –in ideology and politics– is incarcerated, arbitrarily detained, threatened, repudiated and always under the same defamatory pretext: that they are either paid by the empire or are mercenaries. In the atrocious egocentrism of the Castros and their “revolutionary” followers, differing minds do not fit. They fear plurality, like the fear that the tyrants have of those of true faith and firm convictions.

In any case and without understanding what happens to those who proclaim themselves free in the world, and with the Cuban nation so lacking its most basic rights, I carry on here within this stifled Cuba and in this “tiny and irrelevant Baptist Convention of Western Cuba”, for my fill of beautiful traditions and a deep history of more than one hundred years, with champions of the faith like Alberto J. Diaz, who was very close to José Martí and who collaborated in the pro-independence struggles against the Spanish colony; Luis Manuel Gonzalez Peña, who in the darkest hours of the faithful in Cuba told a civil servant, who predicted the end of the Churches in the country, that there would be Churches to last a while, and others. Believing in a Jesus, who does not commune with the powerful egocentrics of this world but with those below them –with “the immense minorities”– and who in the end was followed by many, to be abandoned later by the greater part of them, including His disciples, and who was also crucified by many and accepted by few.

*Unidades Militarias de Ayuda a la Producción: Military Units for Assistance to Production

Translated by: Maria Montoto

July 6 2012