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

Two Griefs, Two Citizens, Two Countries / Luis Felipe Rojas

From time to time, in the middle of conversations between Cubans, a couple of unanswered questions spring up: when did we become two countries, two citizens, two forms of enjoying ourselves, of suffering or of living, simply? There are those who say that it happened around 1989, when the utopias and the innocence vainly fell to the ground from a wall which stopped existing a long time before.

In Cuba, the neighborhood know-it-alls assured that it happened around 1992. The discussions begin and, with them, so do the adapted maps in which individual calamity comes together with collective calamity without any visible seams. If there really was a Special Period…what was the previous one called?

Two ways of doing tourism: the beaches prohibited to Cubans and a couple of stick huts within the “popular camping” scene for the socialist and proletariat vanguard; a bunch of channels on the satellite television service of luxury hotels and that televisual insult, adapted to four missiles which repeat the same thing every day and which no one can stand; comfortable and safe airplanes, cars, and buses against vehicles which are re-built and re-nailed onto the nostalgia of the 40′s; two kinds of diets: the one which every human being should consume, which no one should ever prostitute themselves for, and the other, the one they sold us wrapped in the most criminal of collective rations (a smelly oil to lubricate our stomachs, some grains and a bit of brownish-gray sugar) and which we accepted as an act of state subordination without any historical antecedents. A parliament, a Single Party which aims to govern, which dreams of popular respect and acknowledgement and which drowns in the anonymous massacre which bleeds us dry through the worst style of corruption, while the citizen-ants lift the foundations of a civil society which, more sooner than later, will impose itself…if it manages to escape the beatings, imprisonments, and the public scandals.

Two ways of clapping: accepting everything with resignation, tightening our teeth and closing our eyes and ears before the puppets, saying yes, but no, saying no, but saying yes. We scream loudly in the plaza, at the top of our lungs, up to the point that we skin our hands of hating and envying our neighbors so much, and yet we mumble our failure on the oven, in silence, so that we do not lose our last rations of respiration, like he whose life is full of pain, like he who is to blame.

Translated by Raul G.

3 July 2012

Absurdities / Cuban Law Association, Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

By Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

One fine day the decision was made to sell cell phones to ordinary, everyday Cubans.

To many of us, who had never been “authorized” to have a landline in our house, they are now selling phones … cellulars.

But, like so many other things that are hard to understand in this country, cell phones proved to be one of those insoluble contradictions, because before their appearance in society, it was possible to keep many “awkward” events hushed up. Now thousands of people walk down the street with them and it is not so easy to maintain the “secrecy” of some events.

So, if there is an altercation in a baseball stadium, “alternative” telephones are there to quickly let everyone know what happened, and occasionally include an on-scene video.

If a person is arrested on a public street (ordinarily without an arrest warrant) as usually happens to those on their way to journalism courses, there is always someone to take snapshots of what occurred, or to make a “live” report from their location giving details and identifying the patrolmen involved and even the license plate numbers of the police cars.

But as every action is followed by a reaction (at least that’s what we learned in physics), the police tactic has been to remove the license plate whenever there is danger of it being filmed in some way. So many citizens have been able to verify this “act” on repeated occasions.

To be fair, we have also seen law enforcement officers who do not hide their plates in these circumstances, and officers willing to fully identify themselves; but the truth is that these are in the minority.

Another reaction has been to prevent the taking of pictures. Thus, in a recent building collapse caused by rain on Monte Street in central Havana, just a few days ago, a person taking pictures of the place was about to be arrested by the police because (this is what that they argued) “you cannot take pictures of building collapses or fires.”

Nothing was said, however, about those responsible for the fall of the building.

In even more extreme cases, the approach has been to forcibly seize the person’s camera or phone (or both) — items that in many cases those deprived have never seen again … without explanations of criminal proceedings of any kind.

The latest thing I’ve heard on this subject was told to me by a friend from Pinar del Río last week. A police dog was checking for drugs in some luggage. My friend liked the dog and took a picture … and ended up in a jail cell where he had to go on a hunger strike before they finally released him some days later, because “police dogs cannot be portrayed while they work.”

It is possible that readers from other countries will see in these words an exaggeration or an intention to discredit. Neither is true, it is just that – for our tragedy – Cuba is today, as much as it hurts us, a country of ABSURDITIES.

July 6 2012

CITIZEN PETITION / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

 

Havana, June 26, 2012

TO THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE POPULAR POWER OF THE REPUBLIC OF CUBA:

The Constitution of the Republic of Cuba in its article 63, states

All citizens have the right to direct complaints and petitions to the authorities and to receive the attention or pertinent responses in an adequate time-frame, according to the law.

And according to its letter and spirit, we the undersigned are directing ourselves to that maximum authority of the government of the nation with the following.

CITIZEN PETITION

According to postulates reflected in the Preamble of Principles of Jakarta about the application of international legislation of human rights in relation to sexual orientation and gender identity and which establishes that:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, and every person has the right to the enjoyment of human rights, without any distinction as to race, color, sex, language, religion, opinion –political or of any other nature– national or social origin, economic status, birth or any other condition.

In all regions of the world people suffer violence, harassment, discrimination, exclusion, stigmatization and prejudices due to their sexual orientation or gender identity…

International human rights legislation imposes an absolute prohibition of discrimination in regard to the full enjoyment of all human rights…; that the respect of sexual rights, sexual orientation and gender identity are essential for the achievement of equality between men and women and that States should adopt all appropriate measures to eliminate prejudices and tactics based on the idea of the inferiority or superiority of either of the sexes…

Considering that in our country such ideas are still very far from being carried out in the bosom of Cuban society and are not duly reflected in current legislation, we believe it appropriate to SOLICIT:

The official acceptance and carrying out of the Jakarta Agreements.

That the national authorities carry out an ample investigation in all that is related to that negative event of our history named “Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción” (UMAP: Military Units for Assistance to Production) and that their results be published in the national mass media.

That those responsible for those dreadful occurrences be subjected to judicial action for the repeated and massive violation of the human rights of countless numbers of Cuban citizens.

That the arbitrary use and application of the concept “dangerous state” of the current Penal Code against persons for the sole “crime” of their sexual orientation be explained publicly.

That the forced exile that numerous homosexual citizens were subjected to be opened to public debate.

That the violent deaths of some homosexuals on the streets or other locations be made clear.

Wendy Iriepa Diaz and Ignacio Estrada Cepero.

Translated by: Maria Montoto

July 2 2012

Raúl Castro Goes to Vietnam to Ensure Rice on Cuban Plates / Yoani Sánchez

“Moors and Christians” — a staple on Cuban tables. From: stickygooeycreamychewy.com
When someone shows up in the same place over and over again, in Cuba we say “he’s like white rice.” It’s a very popular way to refer to someone whose presence is excessive, be it in a determined sphere, activity, or process. The metaphor obviously comes from the starring role this grain has in the daily diet of the island.

Many compatriots will maintain they haven’t eaten until they have a portion of this cereal on their plate. From the time we’re tiny our grandmothers fill our bottles with a “a little rice water” if our mother’s milk isn’t enough, and as we grow up cooking “Moors and Christians” — beans and rice — becomes our culinary litmus tests. We are inseparable from constant, even boring rice. But there it is to get us out of a fix and fill our stomachs on days when other flavors are scarce.

According to official statistics rice consumption in recent years has skyrocketed in Cuba, to about 155 pounds per person a year. Which means we need about 750,000 tons, of which only about 225,000 is produced in the country. A figure that was reached last January representing about 16,000 tons more than was produced in the ‘80s, with the machinery and resources provided by the Soviet subsidy of that time. For that reason, the importation of this project becomes a vital, strategic, topic.

Hence the importance of Raúl Castro’s current visit to Vietnam, the main importer of rice to Cuba. This Asian country has become our granary, even supplying us small donations of the precious grain. We now find the General President beginning his four-day stay in country of this important trading partner. A nation which has shown surprising signs of recovery after a devastating war, and one that still calls itself socialist, although its economy responds to market forces. Some claim that the visit of the Cuban leader points to an on-the-ground investigation of Vietnamese reforms that might be applied in the largest of the Antilles. But the evidence points in another direction.

The relaxations that Raul Castro has introduced in agriculture and self-employment have not generated the results that the country urgently needs. Compared to the expectations placed on him in February 2008, when he inherited power due to the illness of his brother, it’s as if a bucket of cold water has been dumped on the stubborn reality. The effects of his changes on productivity don’t even come close to what was expected by a population eager to emerge from a material crisis, as chronic as the lack of civil rights.

Thus, the urgency of this visit to China and Vietnam, especially when in a few days the National Assembly will meet and will be anxious to have positive figures to show. Guaranteeing, at the very least, the rice supply for 2013, becomes an important tool of political control. If people know that their rice ration will not be affected, if they can be assured that this whitest of grains will be on their plates every day, it will offer a respite to the powers-that-be. Because the national history of the last two decades can almost be narrated through the ups and downs suffered by the supply and price of rice.

In August 1994 when thousands of people took to the streets in the uprising known as the Maleconazo, a pound of this food had come to consume about a fourth of the average wage. What’s more, if there is anything that has stopped Raúl’s regime from doing away with rationing, it has been the fear generated in people by the very thought that they will not receive “their” six pounds of rice each month at subsidized prices.

So through this trip to Vietnam, Raúl Castro is guaranteeing something extremely important and decisive for his next years in power. In a scenario where the situation in Venezuela has a “guarded prognosis,” the General must try to at least maintain the imported food supply.

If the health of Hugo Chavez is ultimately bankrupt, or were he to lose the upcoming October 7 election, the economic hit to Cuba would be catastrophic. The better part of the flow of oil to the island would most likely be cut. At the household level our lightbulbs would once again go dark for 8 to 10 hours a day, and in the absence of fuel we would take to the streets of our country on bikes. But the rice — just like the family birdseed — must continue to appear in our cages… excuse me, on our plates.

7 July 2012

A President Safe from His Citizens / Cuban Law Association, Enrique García Mieres

If the feeling of oppression in totalitarian countries is in general much less acute than most people in liberal countries imagine, this is because the totalitarian governments succeed to a high degree in making people think as they want them to.
The Road to Serfdom
F.A. Hayek.

Cuba’s parliament: Everyone votes yes. Photo: AP

By Enrique García Mieres

How can citizens change the president? It seems a truism deserving of a trivial answer: electing someone else for the job. But if we rephrase the question directed at Cuban citizens, then the answer acquires an unusual aspect: they can’t.

Not only because it’s a dictatorship that in the end is used to cheating on the results of elections to perpetuate itself, provoking a fatalistic impotence in the citizenry, but because Cubans simply have no such attribution: they cannot change the president.

In a parliamentary system, as the Cuban pretends to be, the head of the government is elected indirectly by the citizens who vote for the deputies to the parliament, and they in turn choose the president.

In Cuba there is a variant of this process that makes it even more indirect: the parliament names a Council of State — an elite parliament — and they in turn select the head of State. Seen like this there seems to be no grave impediments to the popular will finally coming to pass, it’s more or less a given.

The problem starts when we assume that the system always addresses this “popular will,” the desire for a political program that the citizens, and the person who should lead it, want. In other words, that the elected deputies are the bearers of the will of their constituents.

But in Cuba it doesn’t happen this way, the parliamentary candidates cannot run on some program, nor can the citizens choose between private or partisan political proposals. They choose among candidates based on their biographies and professional credentials to occupy a seat in parliament, and fulfill the function and role reserved for the lower house (in Cuba there is no Senate), that is a functionary (the deputy on taking possession of his seat becomes a cadre of the State) lacks any real job. This results in a parliament that does not serve civil society through its representatives, and they neither resolve differences nor choose between similarities.

Against this background what would be the sense of having deputies for or against anything, they look for a common denominator with the electoral programs — in Cuba political parties are not permitted and they must come together around a common project — establishing political alliances that culminate in the majority necessary to govern.

It makes no sense, and so the parliament raises its hands unanimously in a predestined way. Nor do they try to pass any motion of censure, because what options would the deputies add or subtract when there are no program options in parliament.

The only possibility, radical and surreal, for the citizens to change the current president of government is to try to prevent his taking a seat in the parliament, that is to convince the voters of the remote little village from which he always runs not to vote for him, renouncing their folklore and their pride in being those who choose this eminent representative. Setting aside the popular will, the local government of this village could recall the deputy (Article 6, Law 89), but this is too reckless.

Are Cuban citizens aware that they cannot change their president? It’s like asking the degree of conscience in inertia. Inertia that comes from the seventeen years prior to the current Communist Constitution, during which period the Cuban people were never consulted about the political system nor the head of the government, a fatalistic routine that has done nothing more than institutionalize itself.

http://uncuentoviejo.blogspot.com

July 3 2012

CUBA, Talit’ cum – I speak to you / Ricardo Medina

Zuleydi Lizbeth Pérez Velázquez

Talitá, cum, is a phrase in Aramaic, a language spoken in Palestine in Jesus’ time, meaning “I speak to you”, and it belongs to the gospel of Mark 5, 21-43, and the church has set it has aside for us to meditate this week.

This gospel tells us the story of a woman, who, for twelve years, had been suffering from hemorrhages caused by some anomaly in her menstrual cycle, and in the middle of a crowd, she came up to Jesus from behind and touched his hand seeking health. She had already used up of all her resources going to different doctors, and none of them had been able to find out about her condition, especially since in those times women were excluded in society.

Coincidentally, since 4:00 pm on Saturday, June 30, Zuleydi Lizbeth Pérez Velázquez, a well-known activist of the Independent and Democratic Cuba Party (CID) and of the Laura Pollán Ladies in White Movement, in Holguín, had been facing harassment from the political police and its repressive agents, who seek to ingratiate themselves and to gain perks, so that they can act as deliberately as they please, protected by the shield of the insecurity of the State, spent 20 hours monitoring Lizbeth to stop her from participating in her demand for freedom for all the political prisoners, along with the Ladies in White. A group of activists from CID did not hesitate in offering their support and converged on her modest dwelling showing their support. During the act of coercion from the political police and the state security agents, Lizbeth and her family were not alone; Hoguín’s CID supported them.

Jesus’ answer was: “Daughter, your faith has cured you. Go now in peace and health“. There was no scolding from his side as the poor woman may have thought, as she walked fearfully towards him. Jesus asked: “Who has touched my cloak?” The story tells that at that precise moment Jairus, the chief of the synagogue, arrived to ask for a prayer for his very ill daughter, who had been reported dead. “Don’t be afraid; it’s enough to have faith,” was Jesus’ answer.

After Jesus said Talitá, cum, the girl began to talk and walk, and became healthy.

San Pedro, summarizes the healings and resurrections carried out by Christ throughout his life, saying: “He went doing good“. This is, then, a call for health and faith, to which we are all invited to continue healing and removing prejudices toward political and social affiliations, and creeds.

We have to keep in mind that the Creator saw good in everything, as he spread encouragement for life in the universe; the man (his image), second to God in the Creation, has the responsibility to continue filling the world with good and life. We cannot stop making this call, as long as men and women remain imprisoned for claiming their rights. Rights also for those have bags full of food, and the people next to them suffer from hunger and needs.

We are the ones who have to keep the balance, and the harmony among all.

Pope Paul VI said in his homilies:Christ is the center of history and of all things; he got to know us and he loves us; he is companion and friend of our lives, a man of pain and hopes, and eventually our judge; and according to our level of trust, He is also our fulfillment and our bliss.

Christ is the beginning and the end, the Alpha and Omega, the king of the new world, the hidden and supreme reason of human history and of our future fate.

Jesus would say today, Talitá, cum – I speak to you Cuba; You, man, women, elderly, Cuban, wherever you are, must assume your Christian responsibility, acquired by you or by your parents on the day of your baptism; do not stain with blood or hatred your soul for those who erroneously have imposed on you a rule of life, for more than half a century, which the world already recognizes does not work, and its imposer publicly recognized it as wrong.

CUBA, Talitá, cum – I speak to you.

Published on Cuba CID

Translated by Chabeli

July 2 2012

Urgently In Need of a New Lifeline, Raúl Castro Visits China and Vietnam / Yoani Sánchez

Raúl Castro arrived in China this week as part of a four day trip and today, Saturday, he will visit Vietnam. This is the first official visit to both nations since the younger Castro officially assumed the presidency of the Island in February 2008. After meeting in Beijing with Chinese President Hu Jintao, both leaders signed a total of eight documents, including accords and memoranda of understanding.

Significant among these are a loan from the China Development Bank focused on improving medical facilities in Cuba, and an agreement on agricultural cooperation. The details have not been made public and we do not know the amount nor the terms of the loan that was signed by Juliana Maritza Martínez director of the National Bank of Cuba and Chen Yuan, president of the Development Bank of China.

For their part, Cuban Vice President Ricardo Cabrisas and Chinese Commerce Minister Chen Deming endorsed two agreements of economic and technical cooperation, which include interest-free loans and grants. The amounts of these agreements also have not been made public. Also notable among the documents signed was a memorandum on customs cooperation which will be in effect from 2013 to 2015. According to the Chinese president himself, this official visit of President Raul Castro “will be a great boost to exchanges and cooperation between the two countries to take these bonds of friendship to higher levels.”

The Cuban president’s trip has been surrounded by speculation about the urgency of attracting investment from China and Vietnam. This is happening at the exact moment when the situation of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela has caused Havana to rethink its dependence on Caracas. Since taking power, Fidel Castro’s younger brother has pushed through a series of openings focused on the economy. Among the main pillars of the so-called “Raul reforms” is the development of the small private business, known euphemistically in the largest of the Antilles as “self-employment.”

The former Minister of the Armed Forces has said on several occasions that he wants to implement a copy of the Chinese model in Cuba, one that combines flexibility in the productive sphere with strong political control. Thus, his journey through these Asian countries is one way to see with his own eyes the scope and limits of such a system. Analysts agree that strong financial imperatives are weighing on the inhabitant of the Plaza of the Revolution, and have compelled him to undertake this journey.

Raúl Castro met Friday with Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping. This meeting could have been intended to establish links with the future leaders of China, as Xi will be promoted in October to General Secretary of the Communist Party. In March 2013, he will also assume the presidency of the Asian giant, replacing Hu Jintao in both positions. Highlights of the tour have also included talks between the Cuban president and Wen Jiabao, Chinese Prime Minister and Vice Premier Li Kegiang. During the exchange Li himself said that “China attaches great importance to developing Sino-Cuban relations and always addressed them from a strategic and long term point of view.”

On Thursday night Caribbean visitors were entertained with a banquet at the Great Hall of the People, near Tiananmen Square. At dinner Raul Castro sang a song in praise of Mao Zedong called “The East is Red,” in Chinese. The Cuban leader justified this vocal effort that left him hoarse by saying that he had “at least the satisfaction that it was done with a noble purpose.” Today, Saturday, he leaves for Vietnam, Cuba’s main supplier of rice. His visit to that nation is also expected to entail the signing of several trade and economic agreements.

7 July 2012

BURNT BY THE SUN / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

TO DIE IN JUNE WITH YOUR TONGUE HANGING OUT

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The solar radiation at the Esquina de Tejas can kill an adult in just over an hour. Or leave him with irreversible chromosomal effects. It can scorch a child in much less time. Minutes. That is what’s left to us of life before one of those midday spontaneous combustions. Cuba’s time is up. We don’t have time to recover from the vertiginous agony of the Revolution. History plugged us into a helium oven called the 21st Century. We are going to die as Martí wanted in the19th; we will fall as was sung by the fascism that the Apostle plagiarized in the Metropolis of the 20th: facing the sun…

Acronyms, centuries, stealth. Is it never going to snow in Havana?

One misses those reports of European travelers who saw frost on the Jurassic limestone hills of Viñales, hundreds of years ago, in the archeological lie of our still deforested island. One would wish that Cuba had never emerged from the Caribbean Sea, that it was a continental crust, a handful of wet sponges, an underwater river of lava, an octopus’s garden where politics was just a dream of a god that had passed his sell-by date.

I said. What do I say? Will I now be affected by the cosmic photons that no terrestrial atmosphere could de-accelerate?

As a child I remember the threadbare winter coats in winter (the English words “corduroy” and “impermeable”), the gray mood of this city with every change of date, a certain First World gathering that made the working inelegance of real socialism tolerable. The light was oblique. The noonday sun didn’t bounce off the criminal concrete, not even in August; the month when the sun shone most strongly on the beaches. As teenagers we went to the Cuban sea almost every day and in September we entered the classroom toasted and healthy. We were a poor people, but full of JulioIglesias skin. At night, the moon was abysmal and madness undressed us with no more sweat than that necessary to love another.

Cafeterias, buses, lines, corners, rooftop parties. The proximity of the neighbors seemed tolerable then. Today, in the final days of the world, the limited light blinds and separates us. Nobody wants to be scrutinized in such detail under decrepitly blue post-patria skies. We crackle. Only the leaders in their air-conditioning remain intact. Like mummies of the Revolutionary Era.

What did the Aztecs say about 2012? Because they were Aztecs, right? Who knows how to read a little sanity in the materialist dizziness of those circular calendars? Because they were circular, right? I hope to witness the prime time punishment of that we have been earning here, in the proletarian paradise. I will not die without seeing the castanets of the shells collapse like an editing effect. Facades, colonnades, arcades, immemorial blocks sublimated by the terminal temperature that will shortly cannibalize us.

Today I touched the curb at Monte and San Joaquin, territory devastated by the mixed looks of its un-inhabitants. I swear it was boiling. I swear I didn’t move my hand. I let it burn. And now I type with the sharp pain of the scar in living skin. Suppurating a colorless pus. I’ve lost a good part of the fingertips on my right hand. I swear they are absolutely unnecessary. No one will come to identify me on the fragile border between the municipalities of Diez de Octubre, Cerro and Centro Habana.

It’s my suppuration, my stupor. Burning. I hurts only me. I am euphoric. I lick. I love it. I’ve seen in present precarious time how the inferno infiltrates us in any landscape. I have gone all out practicing words. I have not fled before the pyromaniacal debacle of a solarized war. My incinerated biography in Cuba will remain intact in you for all the embers in the world. Isn’t it perfect? Don’t break this equilibrium of cooked corpses. What could be lacking then for you to violently drink from my tissues and at last as a duo shut up?

July 3 2012