Yesterday, Sunday the 22nd of July, through a telephone call from a friend, I learned of the tragic death of the leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas in a traffic accident that occurred in Granma province.
The versions about what happened are dissimilar and will surely vary. What will not change is the loss of one of the most consistent, best known and most honored Cuban opposition figures, author of the project with the greatest impact, the Varela Project.
Payá, regardless of any differences with his project or personal leadership, will occupy a place in Cuban history for his work of more than two decades, his persistence, for his remaining in Cuba and many other things.
The greatest tribute is to continue his work, that is the fight for the democratization of our country.
A couple of weeks ago a friend told me he was surprised to find “my collaboration” in the digital newsletter Socialismo Participativo y Democrático (SPD) (Participatory and Democratic Socialism). Since he likes to play tricks, I thought it was another one of his pranks, but he swore over and over that he was telling the truth. In addition, he said that there was even a note specifying that I had authorized its publication. Since this was a strange lie, I decided to investigate the matter when I had sufficient internet connection time for it, which became possible a week ago.
Indeed, my friend was right: in this SPD newsletter number 100, dated June 1st, 2012, an article “And Yet, What Would Be” appears, claiming I was its author, that I wrote it for Diario de Cuba in May, the site where it had been published. Shortly after that, I reproduced the article in my blog (Sin EVAsión), where apparently it was taken from by the publishers of the SPD Bulletin, who did not bother to cite the source, though I was careful to specify in my blog that the work had been published originally in Diario de Cuba, where I often collaborate.
Now I must pause. I am not opposed at all to any site that deems it appropriate to quote from any article published in the web or other media, and this includes the SPD Bulletin, but it would make elementary ethical sense to cite the original source where it’s been taken from. In fact, I feel honored when someone cites my work. However, since this time it’s about a website whose ideology I don’t agree with, and since I’m not ready to keep silent in the presence of lies concerning me, I feel it’s my duty to clarify this issue. I’ve never been a contributor to the SPD Bulletin, its directors never asked me to publish my work, and I am not moved by the Bolshevik militancy of the site, where one often finds criticism of private ownership, capital and prosperity, elements which, on the other hand, I advocate.
I consider the final note particularly disrespectful. It states “This article appears in the SPD, with the consent of the author”. Both the comma and the untrue note are unnecessary: No one asked my authorization, nor did I consent, directly or indirectly. Therefore, the managers of the SPD Bulletin are lying, unless there is a strange misunderstanding among them, since this writer was not consulted about this matter. Even worse, as a consequence of this “oversight”, in occasional informal conversations the fallacy is being circulated that “Miriam Celaya is collaborating with the SPD web”. I sternly deny it. Is it a socialist trait to arbitrarily make use of that which does not belong to them? In any case, at this point, lying should not be an option for a group composed primarily of highly experienced former government officials, with old curricula and a long history. It is not prudent, and it does not serve their cause.
Lastly, if I feel compelled to challenge the statement in the SPD Bulletin, it’s not because of hostility, but because of a strict observance of the truth. I refuse to lie and to encourage, through my silence, the lies of others; on the other hand, would be disloyal to the administrators of another very serious and responsible site, Diario de Cuba, who honor me by the publication of original articles I send them from time to time, or when they are courteous enough to cite the source when they reproduce some part of my blog. I suppose the subtle difference between the two must be apparent. Finally, I would be grateful to the militants of the SPD Bulletin if they would retract the final note that smeared with a lie not only my humble article –which, to tell the truth, is not a journalistic gem- but their own bulletin. By the way, they might clarify that it was originally published in Diario de Cuba. If this request seems wrong to them, there is always the option of retracting the old web article, which, when all is said and done, adds nothing to the socialism which its theoretical publishers (and not this disloyal and irreverent blogger) are trying to recycle. And everyone in peace.
No one should die before reaching their dreams of freedom. With the death of Oswaldo Payá (1952 – 2012), Cuba has suffered a dramatic loss for its present and an irreplaceable loss for its future. It was not just an exemplary man, a loving father and a fervent Catholic who stop breathing yesterday, Sunday, but also an irreplaceable citizen for our nation. His tenacity shone forth since I was a teenager, when he chose not to hide the scapulars — as so many others did — and instead publicly acknowledged his faith. In 1988 his civic responsibility was forged in the founding of the Christian Liberation Movement, and years later in the initiative known as the Varela Project.
I remember — as if it were yesterday — the image of Payá outside the National Assembly of People’s Power on that March 10, 2002. The boxes filled with over 10,000 signatures in his arms, while he delivered them to the infamous Cuban parliament. The official answer would be a legal reform, a pathetic “constitutional mummification” that would tie us “irrevocably” to the current system. But the dissident of a thousand and one battles was not dissuaded and two years later he and another group of activists presented 14,000 more signatures. With them they demanded that a referendum be called to allow freedom of association, expression, and the press, economic guarantees, and an amnesty that would free the political prisoners. With the disproportion that characterized it, Fidel Castro’s government answered with the imprisonments of the Black Spring of 2003. Over 40 members of the Christian Liberation Movement were sentenced in that fateful March.
Although he was not arrested at that time, for years Payá suffered the constant surveillance of his home, arbitrary arrests, repudiation rallies and threats. He ever missed a chance to denounce the prison conditions of some dissident, or another wrongful conviction. I never saw him break down, or yell, or insult his political opponents. The great lesson he left us is his equanimity, pacifism, putting ethics above differences, the conviction that through civic action and through legal action, an inclusive Cuba is closer to us. Rest in peace, or better still, rest released.
Oswaldo Paya, head of the Christian Liberation Movement in Cuba
At five in the afternoon on July 22, the death of opposition leader and founder of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) Oswaldo Payá was confirmed. The news started as a rumor that spread during the early hours of Sunday afternoon.
Known nationally and internationally for organizing and carrying out the Varela Project, his death at the age of 60 is a hard blow to the pro-democracy forces in Cuba. Social networks quickly did their utmost to spread the news and the hashtag #OswaldoPaya trended globally. The renowned dissident lost his life in a car accident — the facts of which are still unclear — which occurred around 1:50 pm local time.
The incident took place a few miles from the city of Bayamo in the eastern province of Granma, which is about 500 miles from Havana. Near the small town of La Gabina the car left the road and rolled until it hit a tree. It remains to be confirmed if, before the impact, it was hit by another vehicle, as claimed by several sources, or if the driver lost control, as claimed in the official version.
Payá was in the car with the dissident activist Harold Cepero who also died some hours after the accident. The two Cubans were traveling accompanied by two foreigners, the Spaniard Angel Carromero, 27, and the Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig, 27. Carromero is a lawyer and advisor to the City of Madrid, and secretary of the New Generations of the People’s Party in the Spanish capital. Modig chairs the Christian Democrat Youth League.
All were taken to the Professor Carlos Manuel Clinical Surgery Hospital in Bayamo, where hospital officials said that Oswaldo Payá was already dead when he arrived. After hours of incomplete reports, his wife Ofelia Acevedo was notified of his death through a Catholic Church source.
The two injured have been hospitalized in the same facility and, according to confirmations from El Pais newspaper, only suffered minor injuries. The entire hospital is surrounded by a heavy police operation, and it is impossible to communicate by telephone with the room where both Angel Carromero and Jens Aron Modig are being treated.
Rosa María Payá, the daughter of the deceased dissident, told several media that “they wanted to hurt” her father, “and ended up killing him.” Similar suspicions are growing among opposition figures as well, but will have to wait for the testimony of the two survivors and for the results of police investigations.
The Varela Project
In 2002 Oswaldo Payá received the European Parliament’s Sakharov prize, which was specially awarded for his work on the Varela Project. This initiative proposed a constitutional amendment under a process supported by legislation then in force on the Island. Through the Varela Project, he proposed the holding of a national referendum to allow free association, freedom of expression and of the press, called for free elections, promoted freedom to engage in business, and called for an amnesty for political prisoners.
Together with other members of the Christian Liberation Movement and activists of the banned opposition, Payá managed to present the National Assembly of People’s Power some 11,000 signatures on March 10, 2002. Two years later another 14,000 signatures were added, but the Cuban government rejected the demand for a popular referendum.
Instead, the official response was to declare the socialist character of the country’s prevailing system irrevocable, in a gesture that was popularly called the “constitutional mummification.” Surveillance and repression around Payá increased from that date, including arrests, threats and repudiation rallies in front of his house.
In March 2003, when the Black Spring occurred, about 40 members of the MLC were among the 75 defendants. Their sentences ranged from 6 to 28 years in prison on charges of violating national sovereignty. The vast majority of them had to wait to be released until 2010, when an unprecedented dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Cuban government ended with the freeing of these dissidents. Although Payá was not arrested or prosecuted, during all this time he did not cease to denounce the situation of the convicted activists.
Secularism and civility
Born in 1952 and raised in a family with a strong Catholic tradition, Oswaldo Payá had a religious upbringing. He attended a Marist Brothers school until 1961, at which time it was taken over by Fidel Castro’s government. When he was just 16 he did his military service and during that stage of his life was punished for refusing to transport a group of political prisoners. That refusal caused him to be sent to serve three years hard labor on the Isle of Pines.
On finishing this sentence he joined a parish youth group in his neighborhood of Cerro. Indeed his outstanding labor as a layperson led him to work on the process of Cuban Ecclesiastic Reflection (REC) and he served as delegate to the Cuban National Ecclesiastic Meeting (ENEC) in 1986. In parallel to his opposition activities he continued to work as a specialist in electrical equipment for a State agency. He had graduated as a telecommunications engineer.
In 1988 Payá founded the Christian Liberation Movement that quickly became one of the most important organizations of the nascent Cuban civil society. He also participated in drafting the Transitional Program to promote political change in the largest of the Antilles. From his status as a prominent leader he signed the Todos Unidos [Altogether] manifesto and served as coordinator for its rapporteur commission.
In 2009 he developed a Call for the National Dialogue and at the time of his death was championing an initiative to allow Cubans to freely enter and leave their own country. But his breakthrough as an opponent had come with the creation and dissemination of the Varela Project, an initiative that began to be developed by the MCL in 1998.
For his work he was awarded the W. Averell Harriman Prize, awarded annually by the National Democratic Institute in Washington and the Homo Homini Award of the Czech foundation People in Need. New York’s Columbia University named him an honorary Doctor of Laws and he was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He was received in Rome by Pope John Paul II during the same trip that took him to the European parliament ceremony for the Sakharov Prize.
On his death he left three children, Oswaldo José, Rosa María, and Reinaldo Isaías, and also his widow Ofelia Acevedo.
With the death of Oswaldo Payá the Cuban opposition loses one of its most outstanding figures in both the national and international arenas. Gone, physically, is a politician of great importance for the political transition in the island, a prominent layman in the Catholic Church, and a man who was a bridge between the Cuban diaspora and the nation.
The body of Oswaldo Payá will be transferred to Havana where there will be a wake in the parish of Cerro, the neighborhood where he lived.
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas. Cuban counterrevolutionary, linked to the United States. Leader of the counterrevolutionary organization The Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) and the leading advocate of the so-called Varela Project, financed from the exterior, with the active participation of the United States Interest Section in Havana (USIS).
As a part of the propaganda support from abroad he received the Andrei Sakharov Human Rights Prize from the European Parliament in 2002.
He frequently attended meetings at USIS, where he received guidance and financing for his activities. He died in an automobile accident on July 22, 2012.
Once again, I must turn to the only possible method I have from San German, Holguin to publish my post. Like so many other times, I send my post from my cellphone to someone’s email, who later re-sends it to my friends, who then publish it on my blog, which is not called “Crossing the Barbed Wires” for no reason:
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Gabriel as “Mongo Sierra”, together with one of the actresses from the show “Let me Tell You”
Harassed Humorist
Censorship and fear of freedom has once again knocked on the door of Cuban art. The logic of governmental repression aims its weapons at those who, in an either restrained or open manner, use their artistic manifestations to criticize and shed light upon the things which those in power try to hide from eyes of citizens. Now, it’s the turn of the university professor and comedian Gabriel Dario Guerra Gonzalez, who claimed to feel harassed and bothered by the national police in the municipality of Pilon, in Granma province. Guerra Gonzalez assured to “Crossing the Barbed Wires” that during the months of January and July he has had two searches of his home without any charges against him, and he added that on July 12th, after the latest search, the officials forced him to sign an Official Warning Notice, after telling him that the objective of the search was to see if he had clandestinely obtained beef in his home.
“On the first occasion”, he pointed out, “my son’s laptop was searched and taken to a technology expert, supposedly because of using it to falsify money. They returned it and apologized, but the damage to my personal image is already done”. Dario Guerra is also a specialist in recreation in the “Marea de Portillo” Tourist Spot, located in the mentioned mountainous locality of the Cuban East. In addition to being an Assistant Professor of Cuban Theater, he also has a work contract with the Provincial Music Center of Bayamo. He has written scripts for Cuban television and he has participated in the comedy show “Let me Tell You”, where he has interpreted both feminine and masculine characters such as the peasant, Mongo Sierra. His uni-personal works deal with themes as incandescent as the economic situation of the country and the bravery of Cubans who manage to surpass everyday obstacles, said some sources who were interviewed, and that could very well be the origin of the current issues being placed before him by the authorities. Two other humorists interviewed, who have asked to not be named, assured that Gabriel Guerra fills up all the local venues where he presents himself with his comedy and ideas, under the rural Mongo Sierra character and that he had never been bothered before.
Gabriel Guerra Gonzalez has a book of rhymes published under “Bayamo Editions”, he is author of various stories, and is a renowned writer of poems and children’s books.
I remember that beginning in the 90s the authorities began to tax people who rented to foreigners. In Guanabo many landlords were upset because while entire families, in the dire straits of the Special Period, crammed into a single room encouraged by the hard currency taxes that in an already dollarized economy would generate overcrowding, the town didn’t even have a sewage system or a hydraulic water system delivering drinkable water. The piped water is salty and those who drink it buy it from the few owners of private wells — which over the years of exploitation and high demand has become more salty — or the wealthy minority, from the state stores that sell it (much more dearly) in convertible money.
I wonder if when the authorities boast of their health indexes, to they include in these records the patients with intestinal parasites or other illnesses associated with poor hygiene and inadequate prophylactic measures.
To avoid questioning and popular unrest, they put in the mouths of their local party spokesmen the argument that the excessive tax rates would revert to the comfort and betterment of the local community.
Twenty years have passed and many streets, with the pavement worn away through indolence, have become causeways. Due to the lack of sewers and the rising population, the pestilence overflows the ditches and smells in stretches and the residents keep on cleaning, cooking, and bathing with salty water.
When the power goes out the taps dry up, because the liquid is pumped from the state wells — also contaminated with salty water — and if the motor fails they have to wait hours, or sometimes days, for the responsible public entity to deal with it, because they have no replacement parts, no plans for these contingencies. The mineral water trucks are gone from almost the whole capital, from San Juan to Ramos they visit this suburban coastal area and the residents and their families drink the salty vital liquid daily.
I know that the governments of all countries tax the citizens, but many of them see their taxes come back to them in works of different magnitudes, variety and quantity that are, as it should be, for the common good, not the State’s.
But despite the many accusations and proposals from alternative civil society for years to raise our standard of living and the common good in general, the authorities continue their profitable policy to consolidate their elitism and the permanence of the States. After all, they do not lack nor will they lack anything, so they can once again, as so often do, wash their hands.
After the hunger strike I went on last March, which led to our being reinstated to practice medicine, I once again began to practice my profession in Guanajay on May 7. Now, more than two months after starting work, there are still a couple loose ends: if it is true that they paid us the entire salary from those 66 months and allowed me to begin from the third year of my specialty in Internal Medicine starting in September, it’s also very true that there is still no evidence in our work files that they paid us that sum and that it derives from those five and a half years being regarded as work years, which is what they told us they would do and what was legally stipulated in Decree Law 268-2009 (amending the labor regime) in its Chapter V.
Also this Decree Law states that if an unjust administrative penalty is revoked, the worker who suffered such prejudice must be publicly vindicated before the assembly of partners in their workplace and this is, in our case, a meeting convened by the administration, the party and the union, as public as those that were held in 2006 to gratuitously vilify us, where they set out why it was a mistake that they punished us why they decided to overturn that ruling now.
This meeting, still not convened — which does not have to result in anyone’s hara kiri because, in particular, I do not need it — would find me more mature than then and also, I hope, a little wiser. So no one should expect that this mouth would speak a single word of hatred and resentment, but I believe this exercise would be very healthy for everyone and would speak more opening about the real position of the political entities in this case.
A meeting of this kind, conducted with colleagues in an atmosphere of quiet respect, would say a lot about the tolerance our government publicly advocates today, because the lack of humility in recognizing its errors has been one of the great scourges and this would open the door for stories like ours which are repeated over and over again at any time and place on this little island of ours. This would be an act to vindicate us all. Meanwhile, Citizen Zero now patiently waits.
“A doctor implanted them during his guard duty,” she told me, while proudly feeling her breasts through her blouse. Then she points to her rear end and pouts, “This didn’t go so well for me, because the surgeon didn’t have much practice.” When I asked her where she got the silicone prostheses so obvious in her body, she told me she would only use “brand name” ones so she asked her Italian boyfriend to bring them to her. “The other part was easy, you know, you pay a doctor to do the operation.” I confess that I am not very familiar with the matter; surgeons scare me and for years now I’ve gotten used to the awkward figure I see reflected in my mirror. But still I ask her for the details and she confirms what I’d sensed, the existence of an illegal network of plastic surgeons who practice in the same hospitals where they offer free care.
The practice took off in the late nineties and initially the main clients were hookers whose foreign boyfriends absorbed the costs. But now it’s been extended to people of both sexes who have the resources to achieve the body of their dreams. Normally they go into the hospital with a false clinical history for some illness they don’t actually suffer from, and within a few hours of coming out of the operating room they are sent home to recuperate. These surgical interventions aren’t logged into the hospital records and a good share of the resources used are bought on the black market by the medical personnel themselves. Nothing should go wrong, because a complaint would expose the network involved. Discretion is fundamental and the patient is rarely followed up to see if there were adverse reactions. “We are all adults, so everyone is responsible for what happens,” warned my friend’s doctor before the anesthetic took effect.
At a price ranging between 750 and 900 Cuban convertible pesos (CUCs), breast implants are the most popular among the wide range of inserts implanted and of the clandestine operations performed. On sites like Revolico.com you can find a wide variety of sizes, with the most popular brands being Mentor and Femme. But you have to add “labor” to this price, which runs from 500 to 700 CUCs for a recognized specialist in these fields. Some beginners will also do it, for a little less, but the results leave much to be desired. For a Cuban surgeon whose salary barely reaches 30 CUCs a month, performing one of these operations is extremely tempting. However, they know the danger of being found out and that the risk of losing the right to practice medicine is very high. So they protect themselves in networks that almost always extend throughout the administration and leadership of the hospitals. These involve everyone from orderlies and aestheticians to nurses and public health officials. The worst thing that can happen is someone dying on the operating table; then they will have to invent some chronic disease to justify the casualty.
A few weeks ago the blogger Rebeca Monzó exposed one of these scandals of illegal surgery in a Tweet*. The scenario in this case was Calixto Garcia Hospital, but it could have been any other operating theater in the city. Without specifying the details of what happened, there was talk of an entire clandestine room dedicated to foreign patients and Cubans who could pay for the operations. Popular rumor has it that it was all discovered when a tourist who had just been operated on hemorrhaged at the airport on her departure from Cuba, but this could be a complete myth. It is true, however, that like the rest of our reality, medicine exists on two planes, in two very different dimensions. One is that of patients who have no resources to offer gifts or payment to doctors, and the other is of those who can pay for the surgery on the spot, in cash. Material resources can shorten the time and increase the quality of any treatment, making sutures, x-rays and chemotherapy all appear on time.
It all starts with a gift of soap to the dentist who fills our cavities, and goes all the way up to a sterilized room where a foreigner can get an abortion, or a Cuban can receive a pair of breast implants.
*Translator’s note: The Tweet says, “Yesterday, Dr. Fonseca, the director of Calixto Garcia hospital, was led out of it handcuffed to the astonishment of all the personnel present.” Dr. Fonseca and others at the hospital were arrested for illegally performing private plastic surgeries.
La Coubre — the name that comes from a ship involved in a tragic eventthat killed many Cubans — is now a symbol of contemporary sadness: The National Railway Terminal, baptized with the same name.
Its back patio consists of a large roofed space divided into several offices in the form of ships, which serve as the Last Minute Ticket Office. The main part is dedicated to interprovincial buses.
The fact is that in Cuba it is almost impossible to buy a bus ticket at the time you need it, particularly for unplanned travel, causes thousands of people to converge on this site to be added to the infinite waiting lists for every possible destination.
Which is how I ended up there on a Friday afternoon, accompanied by a friend and legendary companion of difficult journeys. Climbing the outside stairs and crossing the wide doorways, a bad smell welcomes us.
Once inside it’s hard to walk. A crowd was standing there, forming wide lines to get on the lists. Others waited sitting down or lying down in some corner, always clutching their luggage which could disappear at the slightest inattention. (As happened to some very young Russian girls who lost their enormous suitcases as they were entertaining themselves taking pictures, and later the police didn’t understand why they were crying.
It was hard to even move in the middle of it all. Finally, after exploring the whole site, we found a little corner temporarily abandoned and made our camp there. We agreed to take turns guarding the suitcases and standing in line.
After three and a half hours standing, I managed to get the window I needed, but the clerk said I could only get on the waiting lists for two destinations. I chose Las Tunas and Puerto Padre. I asked how many there were ahead of me, and the lady whispered, looking down, “In one there are 411 ahead of you and in the other 280, so you can be sure you’re not going today.”
“And to Holguin,” I tried to ask, as other started to push me and the lady had ended the conversation. So I had no choice but to get out of the way.
The whole situation makes you feel like you’re asking, or rather begging, someone to do you a huge favor. As if the price you pay for one of those tickets wasn’t heavy enough: 138 pesos for Puerto Padre-Havana (that is half the average monthly salary in Cuba, and if you need to make a round trip you need more than one’s month’s pay to do it).
Those who designed the public windows must have been military engineers. Because rather than windows they are walls, and to make sure they can hear you and you can hear them, you have to stoops so your face is at the level of the slit for passing documents back and forth.
With the tsunami of noises and the bodies behind you, the glass looks like the screen of a silent movie, but if you ask them to repeat some explanation, they ask you if you’re deaf or they talk to you through the microphone to embarrass you like you’re a scatterbrained Palestinian* and deserve it.
On communicating the bad news passed through the window to my friend, he uttered what just about all Cubans say in these cases, involving blameless mothers and even God. Then he went through the same process to choose the routes to Holguin and Granma, while I guarded the corner for another four hours.
Dozens of men and women wandered around or slept after staying there several days, increasingly filthy, pest infested, tangled hair and eyes like zombies. This raised the tension and produced different types of stress, but the main feeling of that desperate environment was one of deep pity. Where does that old man live? What is he eating? Will he have any money or shelter? Those were the questions I couldn’t get out of my mind.
After so much time and with the increasing desperation, there had to be some action and there was; a sudden disturbance cleared the center of the room. The jealous husband of a dirty disheveled woman with a neck full of hickeys, had a knife in his hand and threatened to kill her and himself, if she was going away with someone else, who was crying more than she was and hiding, using her as a shield.
Three policemen, who were apparently stationed on the second floor there, surrounded the attacker, threw him to the floor and took his weapon. Already handcuffed, they took him outside and a squad car took him away, quickly ending the rampage.
Not even a quarter of an hour had passes when a new scene caught everyone’s attention: two women pulled each other’s hair with an aggressiveness I’d never seen in my life. Like crazy people they frantically rolled on the floor, while a skinny black guy with gold teeth was yelling at one of them, “F…ing let go of her head, you c…”
This time the police came later, I think they were having a snack break, because they came out of the snack bar. It was never clear what started this brawl, at least to us spectators.
It was already after midnight and without hopes until another day, my friend and I got ready to go eat something — very cheap because we were just about to run out of money. We managed to trade the clerk at the snack bar a new bottle of shampoo for four potato sandwiches, which was our only dinner.
With the late night chill the activity was dying down and we started to hear snores, whispers, people coughing like they had tuberculosis… I wondered of the ideologues and the maximum leaders of this country have ever spent a night in La Coubre.
At this point we understood very well how things worked there. It was all very simple: if you wanted to go you had to pay the employees something extra. If you didn’t have this money you would have to work so hard you’d never forget it.
The extra fee to go to Oriente was 10 CUCs. The way it worked was to pass the money through low profile employees who serve as intermediaries, like the cleaners or simply someone you know who plays the role every day like a professional.
These individuals have a very peculiar aspect. Once you get into the dynamic of continuous travel you learn to recognize them, and you see them all the time, hanging around the waiting rooms, starting conversations, looking at everyone, attentive to any potential client they can scare with “how bad this is,” and advising them to go for the fast track even though you’re going to have to part with something.
You come on like a fighting cock and say, “Ten?! Hell, I’d rather wait,” but they know our psychology, they know nothing is more destructive than one hour following another, and they have all the patience in the world. Our strength, however, is not infinite.
At dawn the body is bruised. The brain has gotten no rest, constantly on the alert, and the stomach is beginning to complain. Again, I run the risk of poor response, and ask at the ticket office about the possibilities. They tell me that if there are any, it will be after 5:00 pm. My lion’s strength begins to fade and the intermediary looks at me, nods.
A cop enters the offices where no words are heard with a jar filled with coffee. Everyone drinks, laughing, and they invite others who are outside to join them for a hot sip that, with its aroma, has everyone drooling. You see they are all very friendly with each other. Those who work in these places are very united, all cooperating in the work with the same objective.
And my friend and I don’t talk, we only gesture. We don’t know what smells worse, our mouths, feet or underarms. And the truth is, we can’t get used to it, like others we observe, who don’t seem to have a problem with any of this nonsense…
A new day advances and with the sun at its critical point a door opens unexpectedly. A fat man in a hat announces with a certain discretion that there’s a heavy truck parked a few blocks away going to Santiago and charging 120 pesos per person. It just takes a minute to decide: Let’s go! Surely if we stayed we would spend another night like the last and a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
Soon we would pay dearly for our imprudence. Traveling 400 miles lying in a steel truck bed, under sun, rain and calm, intermediate breaks, delayed by the driver’s lovers, and two near accidents that left us waiting for hours, I will describe on another occasion.
The motorboats that used to cross the bay from Havana to Casablanca and Regla, and vice versa, always reminded me more of streetcars than buses. Perhaps it was their yellow and white colors and the profusion of polished wood in the ceilings, benches and window frames Then there was the water, clean and transparent, in which you could dip your hands and, if it was a hot day, splash your face, infusing it with the smell of saltpetre.
The rhythmic purr of the motor was unique, as were the old automobile tires hung along the sides of the bow and stern which facilitated docking and undocking. On the rear deck the conductor, who collected the tickets but did not drive the boat, guided it in as it approached the pier, attaching it firmly and assuring the safe boarding and off-boarding of passengers on its continuous round trip voyages.
Making the crossing in these boats was one of the real adventures of childhood. The bay seemed immense, its tranquil swell becoming choppy in winter as though the sea had been churned up by Sandokan and his pirates.
Casablanca and Regla were two little towns near the city yet were completely different from it. They were villages of fishing boats and sailors’ customs, marked by the language of the sea. To stroll through them, even in their limited physical confines, was to be in a very different place. It was one of steep and tortuous streets, modest dwellings, and two churches—one inland on high ground and the other next to the sea.
From the shore one could see the city, with its jetties, buildings, docks and ships of different sizes—some docked in port and others making their way up the inner canal—giving it life. The bay, once filled with wooden hulls and later defended by stone fortresses, became a meeting point for ships packed with treasures making their way from the Indies to Spain. It was an important shipyard where magnificent galleons were built. During the era of the Republic it was the country’s principal point of entry for both travellers and merchandise, always bustling with activity.
Later it was lined with ships carrying petroleum and Soviet merchandise, and the vesselsRossía and Gruzia, which transported students. In time it succumbed to the generalized decay affecting the country and even became polluted. In its long history it witnessed two tragic events: the explosion and sinking of the Maine at the end of the 19th century and the sinking of the tugboat March 13th* at the end of another century, this time the 20th.
My bay is the bay of the ferry to Cayo Hueso, with is daily round-trip voyages. It is the bay of the Catalina airplanes that take off and land on water, leaving long trails of water and producing great waves. It is the bay of the all manner of ships, constantly coming and going. It is also the bay of tour boats for rent and the bay of yachts moored in the International Club’s terminal.
With development came the portable cranes of the coal mines and the smokestacks of the big ships as well as the figure of Christ, sculpted by Gilda Madera, rising from the heights of LaCabaña, from which he watches over all its joys and sorrows.
Pelicans, seagulls, martins, other marine birds and even fishabandoned the contaminated bay, which gave off a nauseating odor and whose waters turned black and gelatinous. Little by little, though altogether too slowly, it has begun to recover its former appearance.
A few birds come to visit, fish have appeared and the water is starting to become clean and transparent. Now, after a fifty years absence, a small ship, the Ana Cecilia, carries humanitarian aid and shipments from families living in the United States. A combination of tourist, ecological, humanitarian, economic and even political interests seems to have worked a miracle. We await an agreement that will bring a fix. But something is always better than nothing.
*Translator’s note: the 13 de Marzo was a tugboat commandeered by a group of Cubans trying to escape to the United States. The boat was sunk on July 13, 1994 by Cuban authorities, which led to the drowning of 41 of its 72 passengers. 10 of the dead were children.
Many years ago, under the impression of the tragic circus known as Operation Tribute, I wrote a story called Makeup which appears in the page links on this blog. I was writing for myself although later with a secret vanity I released it, but when things happen like this letter, I feel it made sense:
Dear Regina:
My name is ________ and my wife is Cuban, although she doesn’t want her name to appear out of fear, a fear she can’t manage to exorcise and that only those who live under a regime can understand.
I am just trying to better understand the reality of your country, as a way to be able to better understand my Cuban family, I have found your blog through some friends and for some months have always read it, in complete anonymity (I am a fairly timid person and my behavior on the Internet is consistent with the way I am), enjoying the use you make of words, your intelligence, and your willingness to share, with whomever desires, your daily life.
But only today, July 17, have I gone to your menu bar under “Makeup” and opened it with curiosity. On reading, what initially seemed to be a story, my heart started to pound. I called my wife and we have read your story. You have written, with the magical capacity with which one writes on a rose petal, the most heartbreaking and sad moment in the life of my sister-in-law.
My wife’s older sister, who lost her partner and the father of her son in a battle of the war in Angola. She is an excellent person, marvelous and I cherish having her as family, but a terrible sadness lives in her heart. The sadness of a woman who can never again kiss the lips of her beloved. The sadness of a mother who cannot put her son in the arms of his father.
I thank you, humbly and with all my heart, for such a beautiful tribute.
Thank you for all you do.
I hope and desire that Cuba can be a democratic and peaceful nation.
This 5th of July, the State Council invited Cubans to participate in the elections of municipal and provincial council members and national MPs. This convocation inaugurates the general election, taking place every 5 years, to renew the positions in the Popular Assemblies and the State Council.
Now in 2012, 16-year-old Cubans will have the right to vote and to hold office. The Island’s population rises to 11,242,628 inhabitants, according to data from the National Office of Statistics (ONE). Of them, approximately 2,118,156, are minors.
Denied the right to vote are those legally declared mentally retarded, the imprisoned, those on house arrest, and those placed on work camps (open farm). Those who are on probation cannot participate in elections. According to the data offered by the ONE, the number of people prohibited or unable to vote is estimated at 562,202 people.
To exercise the right to vote, Cuban voters must be registered by the Head of the ID office and by the Interior Ministry’s Population Register (MININT). In the last election, there were 8,562,270 voters registered and 95.9% of those registered participated, according to the ONE.
In one of the first moments of the elections, voters will elect the municipal delegates, who are proposed, nominated and elected directly by the citizens. In 2007, 15,236 representatives were elected in the country’s 169 municipalities, according to the ONE.
The date for the election of the national deputies will be arranged later, according to a note published in the newspaper Granma. In 2008, 1201 provincial representatives and 614 national representatives were elected, according to the ONE.
Candidates are proposed by nomination committees composed of members of the Center for Cuban Workers (CTC), the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution(CDR), the Federation of Cuban Woman (FMC), the National Association of Small Farmers (ANAP), the University Students’ Federation (FEU), and the students’ federation (FEEM).
The Communist Party of Cuba does not participate in elections. However, most of the nominees belong to the only political organization in the country. Its top leaders are elected to occupy the most important positions in the State and the Government.
They are nominated by the 169 Municipal Assemblies that will be constituted once the municipal delegates are elected October 21, in the first round, according to the Official organ of the Communist Party. The second election will be held on the 28th, for those nominated who do not obtain more than 50% of the votes.
Elections continue to be the only predictable phenomenon within the Cuban system. The same number of candidates that are proposed and nominated, will be elected. And there is no need for electoral campaigns either. We all know that the First secretary of the Party, Raúl Castro Ruz, will be reelected President of the State Council and the Ministers, leader of the state.July 20 2012
Havana – In recent days, the health authorities on the Island reported the presence of a cholera outbreak in the town of Manzanillo in the western province of Granma. Starting from that same day, July 2nd, the rumors have created fear and distrust about something that seems like it will become, yet again, another one of the many state secrets.
Since the appearance of this illness in Cuba, only the health body has drafted two very succinct notes that appeared in the official Granma daily newspaper and on TV. They mention that the outbreak is under strict control, but it is apparently not so, since they have detected new cases in other provinces in recent days.
What most catches my attention is the way in which the government tries to sidestep reality by making a call to intensify hygienic measures and water chlorination or treatment. As is expected, the response is immediate for each Cuban who hopes to not contract this sickness.
It would be reasonable to ask all the competent authorities on the Island if the call to sanitizing extends just to the private sector while the State continues without due control. To judge by the images, they continue selling refreshments in the streets from poorly cleaned movable tanks, offering consumers a very low-quality product.
The images show some of these tanks that remain at the park in La Ceiba, a suburb of Playa: the people crowd around and collect the liquid in bottles, these many times taken from the streets. The tap on these tanks is very close to the ground and so it is rare that a bottle is not placed on the ground prior to filling.
Who can guarantee that this refreshment, in most cases baptized with water from Lord knows where, is not also one of the means of infection? If we are really called to maximize the sanitary means on the Island, we will do it no matter whose business it is. Let us keep in mind that what is first is the preservation of the human species.
We speak sincerely and we do not leave the responsibility for our health only in our hands or those of our families; we call for every institution, organization, or ministry to take on the responsibility of hygiene in each local area. There is no potable water, chlorine, or detergent in many of them. Are they not also responsible then? If the situation returned to the same way described before, it would be worthwhile to ask the Health Ministry in Cuba and the competent authorities, “What hygiene are we talking about?”
Image:”elblogdelconsumidor.blogspot.com”
