Laying the fiber optic cable from Venezuela to Cuba. Source: tvcamaguey.co.cu
The Longest Cable in the World
About eight years ago now, several friends and I, who were starting our studies at the University of Computer Science in Havana (UCI), were amazed to discover the vast range of possibilities that the Internet could offer to the inhabitants of this planet. We immediately retrieved data on worldwide connections and could see that Cuba was behind almost all countries, including those as poor as Haiti.
We immediately began to review this issue at every opportunity presented to us, and then shared the answers we managed to get. It was always the same: “The Yankees will not let us connect.” Even as young militants we couldn’t complete swallow this idea.
One day, apparently to calm the anxiety of everyone concerned with the issue, a deputy minister gave a lecture at the newly opened Chinese Teaching Theater. After presenting a slide show of several futuristic projects, the visitor finally addressed the issue and “declassified” the idea of the famous cable to Venezuela, an agreement within the framework of the multiple ALBA agreements regarding integration.
The senior official explained that with this cable every Cuban would have greater bandwidth than the whole country had at that time. And there were not political obstacles on the part of the State blocking Cubans from accessing this service, which had been normal for years for much of the world.
“The enemy says that Cuba doesn’t have broad access to the Internet because we are afraid of freedom of information, but it’s obvious that that is nothing more than a lie. On the contrary, with this platform every Cuban will be able to bring the truth to the world, and help to combat the constant anti-Cuban campaigns being promoted,” offered on cadre, present at the meeting.
That night we all slept better. And even make plans for the arrival of the day of opening to the world. Which, according to those involved in the matter, “would be, at the latest, by early 2011.”
Sometime later the then Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque called on a select group of outstanding students to give lectures about U.S. Blockade of Cuba at various schools and workplaces in the capital. And one of the ideas which, with a healthy childish enthusiasm, we always used to win over the people (who almost never listened of their own free will) we that idea of future high quality Internet for everyone.
Time passed and, as usual, the Cuban press (demonstrating its total lack of principles or real autonomy) never said anything about it again.
The year 2012 arrived and the cable is a total mystery.
As always, the lack of information was accompanied by some rumors which, in my opinion, are put into circulation by the government itself to gain time, divert attention and even give temporary solutions to problems they do not want to face.
One of those rumors I heard in Santiago de Cuba from the mouth of someone closely related to the agreement. “It has been a tremendous problem, because it turns out that the officials involved in the purchase of the cable have siphoned off much of the money and bought one of poor quality that does not meet the anticipated parameters, and there are a pile of people in jail for that,” the gentleman told me directly.
In Havana, later, I heard worse, “They say the cable doesn’t work because it was chewed up by sharks.” I almost laughed in the face of my interlocutor, but as his expression was serious, I assumed he was not playing and just told him that was a real shame.
Recently, I came across an old friend who has access to the Central Committee, and this person finally shed some light that sounded both real and heartbreaking at the same time. “Son, the cable is ok. They are already using it in senior Government, in the armed forces (FAR), and in the Ministry of the Interior (MINIT). It’s a highway but, to be honest, I don’t think it’s going to get to the people. A You-Know-Who doesn’t want that, and that’s how things are thing.”
This meeting really hurt me. It made me remember how, years ago I used to lie to the people, and I felt like I was trash.
But I draw comfort from the fact that for some time now I haven’t been involved in playing the game that keeps Cubans in the limbo of misinformation. Now they use other university students, whom I don’t attack or condemn because I was once in their shoes. I leave the task of opening their eyes to time and events.
Returning to the cable, the rumors have taken on a concrete reality. Days ago, a Venezuelan minister said that, “The cable is operational and it is the sovereign decision of Cuba to determine its use.” In other words, there is no excuse.
We are now in a position to demand that the Government sell all Cubans Internet accounts at affordable prices. (Although reasonable prices have not yet been applied, not with Internet and not with cell phones.)
What we can not allow under any circumstances is that they apply the number one rumor of the “unofficial post-cable.” This rumor came out of a leader of the Youth Club system: “People are going to get Internet for 6 Cuban convertible pesos (CUCs) an hour for international access, and 2 CUCs an hour for email through a telephone line.” [This in a country where the average monthly wage is less than 20 CUCs; that is three hours of “international access” would cost many people their entire month’s salary, or more.]
This really would be a huge joke to everyone in this country. And I won’t wear myself out explaining why. Any Cuban with a minimal intelligence knows what that represents. It would be resolving an issue of rights at an immoral price given the salaries they pay, as they have done with other things.
Starting tomorrow, from June 21 to 23, the Havana CLICK Festival will be held, an event to discuss the Internet, technologies and Cuba 2.0. During those days, all of us who are fighting for the right to information and communications in Cuba have the opportunity to unite our voices to demand (through Twitter, social networks, radio, TV or, better yet, by participating directly in the activities taking place at #4606 1st Street, between 46th and 60th, Playa) that they tear down the fences that enclose digital minds of our people, keeping us from seeing the world and seeing ourselves.
To: Office of Immigration and Alien Affairs, Ministry of the Interior
Re: Reply request
Miguel Iturria Savón, Cuban citizen, legal adult, married, university graduate, unemployed, permanent identity number 53092900308, residing at 222 Street, #9529, between 101 and 1st, Cruz Verde, Cotorro, Havana, Cuba,of my own volition hereby state to this office the following:
That I am submitting via this letter in accordance with the stipulations of article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba, in relation to article 78 of Decree-Law No. 67 of 1983, exactly as it was modified by Decree-Law No. 147 of April 21, 1994, to solicit that in strict observance of the constitutional mandate stated, the reason or motive be made known to me whereby I am not permitted to travel to Spain to reunite with my wife, with regards to which I state the following:
Facts:
Firstly, that on March 11, 2012 I submitted to the immigration authorities in Mañana, Guanabacoa, Havana the application Permission for Overseas Travel in order to be reunited with my wife, Ángela A. F., a Spanish citizen, to whom I was married on July 22, 2011 in a civil ceremony in Miramar by the Cuban Ministry of Justice.
Secondly, that as the above-mentioned permission was delayed two or three days, I have visited the above-mentioned office four times between March 13 and June 12, 2012, and have not received the White Card nor an explanation of the basis for its denial.
Thirdly, that since I have incurred no prior criminal charges, have no unpaid debts to the state, and am not involved in any ongoing legal proceedings, I consider this injustice to be a violation of my right to freedom of movement as defined in articles 13.1 and 13.2 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as stated below:
“13.1 Each person has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.”
“13.2 Each person has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.”
Therefore:
In light of this denial or delay, and given the stipulations outlined in article 63 of the Republic of Cuba that “every citizen has the right to submit complaints and petitions to the authorities, and to receive attention and appropriate replies within a reasonable time as defined by law,” I, the undersigned, demand to be granted an Exit Permit or, in its absence, that this application, the submission of which is protected by constitutional right,be accepted and processed.
I am not including with this letter the previously mentioned Application for Exit Permit, the Certificate of Matrimony, or the passport and visa issued by the Spanish Consulate in Havana as these documents have already been submitted to the National Office of Immigration and Alien Affairs in Guanabacoa, Cuba.
Havana, June 12, 2012
Miguel Iturria Savón
Applicant
cc:Office of Legal Affairs,Office of Immigration and Alien Affairs
Cuban Commission of Human Rights
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland
Thanks for sending me the three letters. I am completely in agreement with Desiderio and Arturo. Really, I had already begun to worry some months ago when I read the incoherent letter from Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera on the subject of “The Bridge,” which, because of the pathetic quality of some fragments, could be looked upon with scorn, and in fact I did.
In this letter he tried to justify some harmful actions of those low years, effectively, the previously mentioned “owed obedience.” And Guillermo said, darkly and someone shamefully, that one had to navigate in “these waters.” Many didn’t surrender their ethical principals nor did they agree to “navigate,” and it cost them dearly. Some of them cannot be with us (not even to feel nauseated as happened to me) like Ezequiel Vieta, for example. Yes, I think this nefarious, opportunistic and repressive thinking is still with us, and looking for every opportunity to appear.
So many shovelfuls of lime, and much was lost under them, the grains of sand still feel isolated, but they gladden the heart. Let us keep hoping that the pleasant will cover all the wounds of the unpleasant. And we will manage to live to celebrate.
Things are heating up… really, I believe one should not stay silent under things like these. I applaud from my heart Desiderio Navarro and all of those people who write their name when they are giving their word.
I didn’t live in the television era nor do I remember “El quinquenio gris” — the five grey years — but what I’ve been told will suffice: so many smart voices cannot be wrong about the same subject, at the same time.
As you know, the most utilized argument for any Cuban public or private cultural debate divides the pulse of all different criteria in two essential currents, left or right, terms which—in the long run, and in my view—circumscribe the discussion to specifically intellectual criteria on an issue that has a lot to do with the nature itself of the revolutionary elite in power, which has not been the same in fifty years.
We know too little of the ideological debates faced by the different members of the elite, and even less about their internal political alliances. The understandable fear of fragmentation of that elite, on one hand, has given place to the “compartmentalization”—in which we have remained submerged during all these years—of a debate that young people today talk about with a lot of curiosity, confused about authorized history books, pamphlets, appointments, photos and biographies, blandly written and reviewed like all other approved books during the “pavonato” (Pavón’s years in command).
Among this entanglement of political interests, insurrectionist or not insurrectionist, and some from before Batista’s fall—Pavón’s embryos are there, or those like him who served as perpetrators. Nothing justifies them. There is no reason whatsoever for such arbitrary and immoral behavior, but they counted on—and still do—the authorization and delegation of power. These were not isolated policies and they are easily identified in those initial debates after the triumph of the Revolution.
What has gone on for a long time in television—and worse things will occur—I am sure expresses more than one tendency, the enormous ignorance that today runs the show at ICRT (Cuban Radio and Television Institute), although I think that, in moments of crisis, making a tribute to perpetrators is also a way to leave them out of the debate and thus preventing that through them larger fissures become evident.
I won’t write a rosary of arguments regarding this last idea, which would make most participants of the debate fade and a good fragment of them retire out of fear, misinformation or ignorance. I have spent the last three years of my life gathering testimonies, not only from the victims, but also the victimizers, to articulate a verbal body to give to my daughter, who is only 5, for that time when she is old enough to make a judgement on the events that took place. I aspire to her taking interest in things that upset her own time, but few tools are being handed down by the institutions, and least of all you the survivors.
Whenever you want to, and in the circumstances of your choice, in the way you choose that is in benefit of love, my motherland, the best of the revolution and of sense, count on me for the debate.
But, Rey, you know very well they will never invite me.
“I do not agree with giving mercenaries the same rights as intellectuals,” claimed the writer Miguel Barnet, president of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and member of the Communist Party Central Committee, at the 30th Conference of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) held in San Francisco, California, this May.
Barnet’s aggressiveness was in response to a statement from sociologist Ted Henken, professor at Baruch College, University of New York (CUNY), who demanded the same rights for all Cubans to participate in the event of LASA, citing the cases of blogger Yoani Sanchez and Oscar Espinosa Chepe, to whom the Cuban government has denied their participation in previous conferences held by LASA.
This happened during the meeting of the Cuba Session of LASA, which focused on creating a resolution condemning the U.S. government for denying visas to 10 academics and intellectuals from Cuba, ignoring the fact that 65 of the participants received visas, including Dr. Mariela Castro Espin (Raul Castro’s daughter) and Eusebio Leal, Historian of Havana.
Professor Henken had stated: “If we, as an organization that exists to promote scientific and cultural exchanges between the U.S. and Cuba, have taken a public stand in favor of these bilateral academic exchanges and against the political manipulation of these programs, then this must be applied for both sides and for all the people.”
It is extravagant that Mr. Barnet accused peaceful people of being “mercenaries,” people who, throughout the years, have been committed to analyzing — despite the repression — the situation on the island at the national level and with strong arguments, based on information and official statistics, people who have warned us and demonstrated that Cuba has been dragged to “the edge of the abyss,” as President Raul Castro himself has recognized.
But, what can you expect from a person who, on April 19, 2003, signed a message directed to world figures which legitimized the brutal repression carried out in March of that year against 75 peaceful Cuban dissidents and human right activists, who were then sentenced to up to 28 years in prison, as well as the execution of three young men who mistakenly tried to hijack a boat to flee the island, without causing bloodshed?
The writer, as well as all of those who signed that message, will never be freed of the thoughts of the injustices committed, the assassinations, and the suffering of all the families. This document received responses from well-known intellectuals and artists with “Dear friends (from within and outside of Cuba)”, on April 28, highlighting the evilness and hypocrisy of the Cuban government’s henchmen, with a scathing definition: “Stop using as shield the atrocities of the enemy to commit your own in impunity. The injustices and the crimes against humanity will be denounced by all citizens, without regard to where the perpetrators come from or who they are.”
Throughout many years, we have supported a system that seemed to have brought hope to the Cuban people. But with the same determination, after we understood that road had taken a wrong turn and turned Cuba into a living hell, we have been making an effort to help forge a path of opportunities for all Cubans and prosperity for our country. We have always defended its independence and sovereignty, and rejected any foreign intervention.
Barnet, and unfortunately, other Cuban intellectuals and artists, became servants of a repressive regime headed by people exclusively interested in remaining in power, under any consequences and at all costs, under the fake banner of an apocryphal socialism. Barnet is of the same nature as the servants of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Batista, who rose to their positions through flattery, being submissive, and selling their talents to those in power, ignoring the suffering of their people.
We all know how totalitarianism pays for these “valuable services.” These unpatriotic behaviors are rewarded with a special status, they suffer none of the scarcities, they have cars, privileges and trips abroad, while the Cuban people are being deprived of their fundamental rights and continue to sink deeper in misery.
When for workers the equivalent of $ 18.00 US dollars is the average of monthly salary and those who are retired don’t even get $ 12.00 US dollars, and, on top of that, they are paid in a currency that the State does not accept in most of its stores, this is a scenario where the economic, political, social, environmental, demographic and spiritual situations are increasingly becoming more chaotic and threatening the foundations of the nation.
Of course, the President of the UNEAC does not write or talk about these basic issues. He is only interested in maintaining his privileges, protecting his framework, at a time of persecution of the true artistic and intellectual glories of Cuba. So then, who is the mercenary?
Fidel Castro’s latest “Reflections” columns, published in the Cuban press, have left many readers inside and outside the Island in a mild state of shock. Without exceeding a hundred words, the ex-president’s most recent texts seem to be infected with the brief style of the Twitter social network. An undoubtedly great contrast, if we compare this conciseness with the extensive writings that have been published since he began his convalescence, after surgery in July 2006.
The man who was characterized by his habit of speaking for hours from the podium in the Plaza of the Revolution and in front of television cameras in the studio, now appears to be opting for minimalism. But that is not the only change operating in the commentaries coming out under his signature, his attention has also shifted from global to domestic affairs.
For six years the most recurring themes in the “Reflections of Comrade Fidel” had been the world crisis of capitalism, environmental problems, reproaches directed to the government of the United States, and the portent of a nuclear explosion. He has especially emphasized criticisms of Barack Obama’s administration and the presence of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, since the beginning of June his allusions to our own national events have occupied his brief lines, always appearing on the front page of the newspaper Granma. A timely obituary on the death of the boxer Teofilo Stevenson; his proposal to appoint former runner Alberto Juantorena as president of the Cuban Olympic Committee; these are some of the issues addressed lately.
Not only do we have the unaccustomed terseness in the former head of state, but some have even interpreted his writings as actual riddles and metaphors. Hunting for certainties, Cubans search among his phrases, looking in each letter for a key that will help them unravel what happens at the highest echelons of power. Lacking transparency of information, a simple syllable could constitute a clue.
Such was the case with the note where the Comandante en Jefe expressed his profound solidarity with Erich Honecker, whom he called “the most revolutionary German” he’d ever known. Many readers quickly established a parallel between Honecker who “bitterly paid the debt contracted by someone who sold his soul to the devil for a few sips of vodka,” and Fidel Castro whose political ascendancy is shrinking with advancing age and the reforms drive by Raúl Castro.
Moringa tree. From hendrycreekhideaway.com
It is, however, one of the latest reflections in this minimalist series that has provoked the most comments. In it he addressed the possibility of “massive” plantings in Cuba of “Moringa Oleífera and Mulberry,” two types of trees. The first of these plants, native to India, has great nutritional value and, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, contains a high percentage of proteins and vitamins. Meanwhile mulberry leaves are the natural food of silkworms.
According to Fidel Castro, both trees are “inexhaustible sources of meat, eggs and milk” and their production could “provide work and shade, regardless of age or sex.” His words have generated a certain unease among the inhabitants of a country where agriculture has suffered successive defeats after previous bets on intensive plantings of some miracle product.
So Monday morning, at the newsstand in a central Havana neighborhood, an old man looked with surprise at the box with 57 words, counting the title “Reflections.” When asked why he was so surprised, the distressed gentleman could only come up with “he must be ill to have written so little.” A lady was looking at the inside pages of the newspaper for the rest of the text, unable to accept that the box on the front page contained its entirety. After confirming that was the case, she mused in a whisper, “surely he’s taking a break and will soon return with his more long-winded texts.”
The truth is that in parallel to the distress caused in some by Fidel Castro’s change in style, popular jokesters have had a field day with the already famous “moringa and mulberry.” Cubans laugh as they express their fears that voluntarism will return and the Comandante en Jefe’s plans will replace the pragmatism that — bit by bit — has been spreading through Cuban agriculture.
Antonio Rodiles at an Estado de Sats eventAlexis Jardines
While it is considered a construction of State Security by some extreme anti-Castro types, and a creature of the CIA by the Cuban government’s cyber-Talibans, the independent Estado de Satsproject successfully works for the promotion of civil society and the transition to democracy.
Presumably the reasons that motivate both diametrically opposed interpretations of the Estado de Sats project have a common origin, not at all related to the “syndrome of suspicion.” I would be inclined to think they are of a narcissistic type. It takes only an average IQ to understand, in seconds, that if it really were an organization linked to espionage and subversion this would not be discovered by the delusional tantrums of an exiled writer in Paris, nor the abandoned neurons of a gray political commissar turned blogger-to-order.
On the other hand, if Estado de Sats were just a few guys with an exclusively digital presence –an argument, oddly, shared by the two extremes of the ideological spectrum: Zoé Valdés and Iroel Sánchez – what are they afraid of? Incidentally, the readers can look at the latest public activity of the project, and the Crocodile Smile show, to check for themselves whether the hundred people present have only a cyber-existence.
Heglian logic – and popular wisdom – teaches that the extremes touch, but also that in none of them is the truth usually found. It would be a shame at this point to resort to such trite and childish arguments, which demoralize those who brandish them, not those they’re directed against. The new game is rather predictable: the revolutionary bloggers are tasked to create opinion statements – false – to justify the intervention of the political police and the subsequent dismantling of the project.
In what head is there room for the ridiculous hypothesis that Estado de Sats is working for an American military intervention in Cuba? I read these things and I can’t stop thinking about the terrifying fear that dominates those who write or speak them. They aren’t even reliable when they try to summarize the facts: “The space Estado de Sats… on March 1st hosted the speech of the deputy head of the United States Interest Section in Cuba.” The part about “the speech” is pure manipulation – it was a panel where the whole world (public included) expressed their opinions. With this information Commissar Iroel moved the meeting forward two days (!) (surely because the loyal copyist confused the date of the meeting with the preparatory-orientation meeting in Villa Marista).
With his latest attack on April 7 – on the official government website Cubadebate.cu – this gray functionary made it clear what kind of person he is. Today the world knows of the so-called “Vote of Silence” operation, associated with the visit of Pope Benedict XVI, through which hundreds of opponents, dissidents, activists, sympathizers and even “potentially dangerous” individuals were kidnapped and incarcerated by State Security. Here is the version of the Commissar: “Trying to justify to their employers their failure to damage the papal visit, some of those present at the meeting of that Saturday [he is referring to the March 3rd event] alleged in front of Monserrate their supposed detention of a few hours.”
Both his deliberate and awkward lies as well as his delusions about military invasions are based on unfounded and irrational inferences that go too far. It’s like wanting to kill a fly with a missile: pure panic. Komrade Sanchez already tossed overboard his most deadly argument, and so he lost the game. What happens now if, thanks to Estado de Sats, the bombs start falling on Cuba? The official blogosphere is running out of ammunition.
All the rubbish he posts against those who commit the “crime” of thinking and acting freely is reduced to two accusations (positioning himself, as usual, as the prosecutor of others): CIA agents or mercenaries (which, for that matter, are the same thing). The lack of imagination and the limited arguments of the Revolutionaries is something even Raul Castro himself has been forced to acknowledge. It is painful to see how they deliberately try to confuse readers, how they try to pass off open-door meetings as conspiratorial acts, meetings which after being filmed on video are posted on YouTube.
As Ailer Gonzalez already made clear, the plot theory doesn’t work with Estado de Sats, which abides by the right to dialog with whomever it believes necessary, for which it neither asks nor needs permission from State Security. What the Cuban government jealously hides is the accelerated and irreversible loss of support among the people. The trained bloggers, maintained and equipped by the (only) Party can hardly help that. They don’t get readers either inside – for obvious reasons – nor outside of Cuba. There is nothing that makes sense left for them to say, nothing they have to defend. Lying and fabricating suspicions is their only recourse, which they engage in to the point of insanity, while hiding this nauseating amalgam – with no ability to change – that just spins and spins viscously and viciously around itself and that some continue to call “Revolution.”
The strategy to discredit opponents through slander and accusations of being enemy agents bore fruit all these years. Estado de Sats, supported by an open-minded and unprejudiced mentality, flatly rejects this appeal to intimidations and proposes to change the rules of the game.
Before addressing the favorite and almost exclusive argument of the Castro regime’s ideological battery, I am going to offer a little history, so the reader will know what exactly Estado de Sats is.
One day in 2010 Antonio G. Rodiles came to my house, presented himself and put forward an idea that, in addition to being utopian, fascinated me: a scientific-cultural event produced by ourselves, an idea that already had a name. As everyone does, the first thing I asked was the significance of that phrase, as cryptic as it was seductive. There is no deceitfulness in this as it is intended to show the sick mentality of the “cyberwar.” What the term means – related to the moment when the actor is about to go on stage – has been explained more than once. Nor was it cooked up at the University of Florida, another of the inventions of the official bloggers. The name was a happy suggestion of Esther Cardoso to Evelyn Quesada, Antonio G. Rodiles and Jorge Calaforra (ex co-director and co-founder of what at that time was just an outline).
The Gaia House event in Old Havana, already under the surveillance of State Security, was a complete success and, at the same time, constituted the founding act of an independent Project. I had the distinct feeling of having participated in something unprecedented and, when it was all over I went up to Antonio and said, “Well, it’s over. My part is done here.” To this he answered, “Listen, it starts now. Next year we’ll do another and so we won’t be inactive all that time, we can plan smaller meetings every 21 days.”
We were all happy with the encouraging results we’d gotten, but what for me was the closing ceremony of a unique scientific-cultural event, for Antonio G. Rodiles and Jorge Calaforra was something else: Estado de Sats had been born. These two people, whose courage, humanity and intelligence are beyond all doubt, had not only coordinated that complex and monumental program with the group OMNI Zona Franca and their production team – which is now also the team of Estado de Sats – but covered all their expenses with money from their own pockets. At least I have no knowledge that anyone else is providing financial support.
That’s why they accuse the project of receiving funding from foreign powers, following the worn out script of the political police, they need to receive a definitive lesson: considering that we aren’t conspiring, but rather exercising our legitimate right in an open and transparent way, and knowing that these trite accusations are nothing more than tools of manipulation, demonization and destruction of whatever falls “outside the Revolution,” we invite all independent projects and opposition groups, to manage openly, before the eyes of the world, economic support and invitations to travel from as many academic or cultural institutions, foundations, NGOs, as they can contact. What’s more, we maintain that each one of these non-institutional non-governmental spaces should have a representative or manager of promotion and fund raising.
It’s simple. “Whoever doesn’t want soup, give them three cups,” or if you prefer the original of the ancient wisdom: “Like cures like.”
Historically, the regime has threatened, stigmatized and humiliated dissent with these sordid allegations. The Cuban people, ordinary Cubans, should know that this is the way State institutions function: with money and budgets, through exchanges with the exterior and collaborations, donations, etc. It turns out that if the State receives help is it all about the “solidarity of friendly countries, governments or institutions,” but if a group of people receives help, however small it might be, that doesn’t respond to the interests of the government and operates outside institutions, the donation is turned into an issue of national security in the manner of “financing by a foreign power.”
Note that this perverse approach admits the possibility of non-foreign nations (Venezuela?). Such nonsense arises because it is not a logical argument, but a biased construction aimed at sowing a sort of phobia of the United States in the minds of the people. Nobody remembers any more that, indeed, a foreign power like the USSR financed the Cuban government for 30 uninterrupted years.
With Estado de Sats the stigma is over. We call on all Cubans to engage in, as a legitimate right, their own independent project of thinking, activism and free creation, seeking help from the entire civilized world and from Cuban exiles themselves, who should not be allies of the government but rather of those who fight within the Island by holding their heads high. There is no reason for Cubans to be ashamed – nor to ask permission – when it comes to freedom and Human Rights. As long as the money doesn’t belong to spy agencies or narco-traffickers, it doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as the path is legal and the destination honorable. Cubans must know that there are other more worthy ways to act – and also to effect change – than hustling and betrayal, the only things on offer from the Cuban government today.
Given that institutions overwhelm the individual and that, in particular, those of an academic and cultural bent exclude young recent graduates, besides being a source of corruption and the primary immediate obstacle for the development of civil society in Cuba, Estado de Sats aspires to be an alternative space, where all the excluded who want to express themselves converge.
The case of Abel Prieto, the former Minister of Culture, supports two equally plausible interpretations. He could have been promoted, as his new post is closer to president Raul Castro; but he could have been dismissed; a minister amasses resources, but an advisor only advice. The bureaucracy concentrates power (money). When you head up a State institution, you manage a part of the State’s budget, which also means that those individuals with a certain share of power will make every effort to manage the lion’s share not to the detriment of the ruling class but of those who depend on the way they themselves redistribute this money in the institutions (including the ministries, of course).
Very simply, this is where corruption is generated. And not only because the bureaucracy blocks those resources from reaching their objective and the money from making it into the pockets of those below, but because the elite itself tolerates the bureaucracy because they know that not all the money that should filter down does so. In short, I steal because you steal and you let me steal to be able to steal as well.
In the dynamics of corruption the injured party, as always, is the worker, the simple individual whom ideology has turned into a zombie – or, what amounts to the same thing, a “Revolutionary” – whose purpose is to justify and defend the status quo, that is, his own oppression. Corruption comes to the Cuban government by two paths: cultural and political. I don’t believe there is a single Latin American country where corruption can be considered a second-order phenomenon. Likewise, all the Eastern European socialist countries generated a pattern of corruption similar to Cuba’s.
In Cuba, both cultural and academic institutions are in a process of deterioration and not only materially. The level of students and teachers is plummeting, and of particular concern is the degradation in higher education with the colonization it’s been subjected to by the hordes from the “Enrique José Varona” Higher Pedagogical Institute. These types of schools of education – modeled on the Soviet system – never were, properly speaking, universities. In the former USSR the difference was very clear.
Strictly speaking, a graduate in Education, with a B.A. degree in that subject, is not prepared either for research or for teaching at a higher level, but only for teaching at secondary level (senior and junior high schools). By a decree designed only to give more power to Miguel Díaz-Canel – one of Raúl Castro’s protégés who has risen meteorically to the highest positions – they converted the “Centers” into “Institutes” and the institutes, in turn, into “Universities.” The old – and not so old – professors of the Havana Pedagogical Institute, with their inherent mediocrity that prioritizes the political-ideological over academics, dominate higher education in Cuba (both with regards to management and to teaching) and spread like a plague over the research institutes.
From the beginning, at my suggestion, Estado de Sats conceived the possibility of developing at least a multidisciplinary group that could undertake science beyond the reach of the (only) party and without any ideological compromise. I’d talked beforehand with Antonio and it was recorded in the final paragraph of my presentation at Estado de Sats in Casa Gaia:
Recommendations: Due to the special situation that exists in the county, take steps through the creation of sui generis Think Tanks structured not as institutions but as small NGOs of advanced studies, to fill the vacuum in thinking through the production (and publication on the Web) of original ideas and policies, initially educational, which can form the basis for the recovery of Cuban universities and their competitive spirit.
It is, undoubtedly, an ambitious plan with innumerable difficulties facing its development. For now, it remains dormant within the well-known analysis space, FORA.
The famous Plato discovered the reality of some entities that have two notable characteristics: being general and immaterial. If the philosopher was asked about sensitive things (at the level of the individual) he responded: they only exist by virtue of participating in the general abstract idea. So, we recognize a flower to the extent that it incarnates the general idea of “flower” and the first will be more beautiful and perfect the more it approaches the second, that is, its eidos or archetype.
So far so good, but the problem starts when we try to transfer this reasoning to the human being. Man does not fit, nor can he ever dissolve himself ―according the Castro’s totalitarian experiments― in the Revolution; only a Revolutionary fits within it. Therefore, the reduction of the total diversity of the real human being into only one of his accidents, is an anthropological injury (mutilating and lacerating). The same can be extended to the notions of Homeland and Nation. Many Cubans on the Island – including the critical left – are still living their lives dominated by these abstract ideas.
Until last year (2011) I lived in Cuba. Those who know me know that I did so as if I was a “citizen of the world”; and so I also wrote my texts, not from Havana, but situating myself mentally in the Swiss Alps. And although I paid some price for it, obviously, I never censored myself and I wandered through the city – and through the University itself – as a free soul. I think Emilio Ichikawa has already emphasized this feature of my personality: I learned to live freely in the most stifling oppression. The immediate impression I had on meeting Antonio G. Rodiles was of a person exactly like what I just described. We agreed on a rarely shared point, and on that basis, I enrolled in the project.
Estado de Sats is situated beyond everything that can be considered a limit to the full development of human individuality (personality): beyond the flags, the causes, the crowds, the revolutions, the patriotic and doctrinaire ideas. All these abstractions embraced, in one form or another, by the Communists, Fascists, Marxists and patriots of every stripe, we trade for the uniqueness of one life.
We understand that the nation is made for man, and not man for the nation. Consequently, we are not interested in “the ground our feet tread upon” – as José Martí said – nor in hatred, resentment, nor in some concept of “Humanity,” but in the comfort of those footsteps on the wiry grass (with a lower-case g or capital G) which illuminates and kills. Individuals will exist, even if Cuba no longer exists as a nation – that is whether or not they are “Cubans” – and what demands our attention is not the word that defines a place of origin, but the human condition to be free, or to not be at all.
In fact, one of the present barriers to freedom is nationalism, a preferred tool of domination that has spawned the modern dictator. Of course we are profoundly moved by patriotic matters, but we acknowledge that they are ancestral impulses. In another perspective, “my country is where my children eat,” according to the succinct definition of a mother (singer-songwriter Joan Manuel Serrat) which demolishes half the edifice of modern political science.
The individual cannot be free under the paradigm of sovereignty, which relates solely to nations. A sovereign individual can only be the king, but the king is not strictly an individual, he is a monarch. Nor is a sovereign people a guarantee of individual freedom; freedom is individual or it does not exist. Hence our renunciation of nationalism. Just as they once emerged, nation-states are now beginning to blur within the new reorganization of the world order.
Poor are those who construct their thinking within nationalist strategies, which today is like returning to feudalism. Particularly with regards to the theme of reconciliation among Cubans, Estado de Sats evades the polarization of nationalism/anti-nationalism and places its bets on the post-national. Cubans must end the primitive worship of symbols if we don’t want to continue living in the past. At the end of the day, it only adds fuel to the Castro regime’s fire where they forge the darts of “plattismo” – that is, calling forth the boogeyman of the Platt Amendment – annexationism, and other ridiculous memories dedicated to the destruction of the other.
Anyone advocating the post-national cannot be an annexationist, it would be a contradiction in terms. Rather the question is: by what right can a government that excludes its own nationals (inside and outside the country) from economic and political affairs, while it opens its doors – with the logic of a hooker – to foreign investment, accuse anyone of “plattismo”? What kind of nationalism is it that, on behalf of the foreigner, has deprived Cubans of their most elemental rights to the point of destroying their self-esteem?
The new concept of resistance
The reality is quite different from the cynical and crazy idea about the supposed CIA funding put forward by pro-government bloggers. The Estado de Sats project is faced with a difficult economic situation, but it does not stop. With all its limitations, Estado de Sats has managed a scope and internal visibility never before recorded in the dissent. We are connected in Cuba with intellectuals, artists, academics, activists, dissidents, independent and alternative projects, bloggers, etc. Today we can say that SATS is the window of Cuban civil society.
A hundred people regularly attend its meetings and then disseminate the videos copied onto CDs and flash drives throughout the country. Its outreach is channeled through blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, TV Marti and Radio Marti, as well as in digital versions of well-known European and American newspapers. Our work’s media edge has been taken advantage of by some of the “enlightened” on the outside who have assigned themselves the task of teaching, through their computer keyboards, how to fight against the Cuban regime.
The fundamental mistake shared by not a few authors of these “rightist” and extremist posts who seek to guide the internal dissidence from exile, is that they have an outdated image of the dynamic opposition and lack direct ties with the resistance on the Island, the only ones capable of lending some credibility to what they write. In the best case, such gaps are supplemented with unnecessary rhetoric, loaded with false profundity, long and drawn out citations, displays of historic erudition and conceptual diversions that can only make us laugh; in the worst case they are filled with authentic videogame proposals which must be executed by real actors to overthrow the current government. For the real dissidents, on the other hand, it is becoming clear that situated at the point of confluence of art, thinking, and ordinary Cubans, Estado de Sats has opened a true breach in the armor plating that separates the people from the active opposition.
Who, ultimately, is behind Estado de Sats?
Only our dear friends Transparency and Freedom, whom the Cuban repressors are determined to ignore. So, our next guest could be the chief of State Security, or the U.S. Senator Marco Rubio. The whole world will be a witness should the first decline the invitation and the government refuse a visa to the second. This is why, to my way of thinking, they repress us but they tolerate us. So our detractors will have to pull together the intelligence to understand, at least: 1) on the other side of the video screen there is real opposition activity in a physical space; 2) if they continue to tie us to State Security the only reason is because the truth doesn’t interest them, nor are those from the ruling party interested in finding out our relationship to the CIA.
The doors of Estado de Sats are open; visit us, this will be the best way to come to know us.
In the city of Trinidad in central Cuba, in a beautiful colonial house, carefully renovated, located on Royal Street (renamed by someone “Jesús Menéndez”), there is a true safe-deposit box of the national cultural heritage. The spacious house, built in a U-shape, with a central courtyard bounded at the end by a high stone wall and flanked on both sides by numerous rooms, shelters furniture and brass beds from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but more interesting still are the dozens of religious images of all shapes, sizes, styles, and materials–properly restored or in process–that it holds.
Its owner, a Cuban concerned about losing them to predation by nationals and foreigners who would turn them into ready cash, was given the noble task of rescuing them from private homes caught in the societal whirlpool, and from churches destroyed or abandoned in the territory, by arranging to buy them (often paying more than what had been offered by prospective buyers) from those who owned or kept them, for the sole purpose of preventing them from being taken out of the country, legally or illegally, so that Cuba would not lose this precious treasure. To achieve this, he has used some of the proceeds from the sale of his works of art, since we are talking about an internationally renowned painter, who lives outside the country, and who, quietly, as advocated by José Martí, has done and does more for the national culture than many who appear daily in the mass media touting their defense of the national identity.
Take the house back in time to the colonial period and you will find rooms full of pictures, placed in the most diverse spaces, both at floor level on the walls or hanging from the ceiling, as well as finding them anywhere (living room, dining room, bathroom, hallways), many life-size, forming part of the family of the artist who resides there, giving them protection and maintenance.
This cultural wealth — accumulated over the years, restored, maintained with dedication and care, and saved from destruction — waits for the coming days of the re-founding of the nation, to return to the old churches then rebuilt, or to new ones, or to become part of the foundation of a religious museum or institution.
These are the forces that keep us alive: dignity, freedom, and courage.
– José Martí
I confess that if something causes me pain is to feel helpless, as a black citizen, every time I see the statue of José Miguel Gómez, located in area of El Vedado, in Havana.
The statue is right on the Avenue of the Presidents, a street with a constant flow of citizens and brothers in the struggle.
In a way, I share the opinion of those who see this statue as an insult to black Cubans and mulattoes because José Miguel Gómez, as President, was the main perpetrator of the racist massacre that took place in 1912.
However, pushing for the demolition of this statue goes against its historical truth, and this would create a negative precedent for the nation and for those who aspire to live in a free Cuba someday, with freedom and democracy.
You cannot swim against the current. José Miguel Gómez, like it or not, was the second president of Cuba. He served from 1909 to 1913, immediately after the U.S. intervention, protected by the Platt Amendment, after the riots caused by the fraudulent reelection of Estrada Palma, period in which Charles Magoon served as military governor, from 1906 to 1909.
Removing the statue of José Miguel Gómez would be like erasing him from the annals of History. It is like playing the very same game of the Cuban regime when every time that a well known athlete or a popular artist decide to change course and flee the country, they are removed from all lists, banned on radio and TV, and turned into non people, as if they never had existed.
So, what’s the game being played? I think this opportunity could not be more propitious to get to know, in case that anyone does not know already, the caliber that our leaders are made of, and the degree of responsibility they have for the permanence of racism and the exclusion of blacks and mestizos in Cuban society.
The statue is where it belongs, as is that of José Francisco Martí, the son of the Apostle, who was second in command, under General Monteagudo in the racist massacre of 1912, which was solemnly inaugurated by the Historian of the City, Eusebio Leal, at the Martí Studies Center, but without his saying that José Francisco cut off black’s and mestizo’s heads too.
The historical perspective given by the regime, for blacks and mestizos in Cuba, is distorted with the objective of planting within this part of the population, hatred from the past, doubts, and a terrible fear for what may happen to them when the current system disappears.
You can criticize and question the improper conducts of José Miguel Gómez and José Francisco Martí, but you can never deny their existence.
The History of the nation would be incomplete if they were not included, even though it is painful to us, and we understand it as unjust.
However, keeping the statue of José Miguel Gómez, which I definitely agree with, as well as the statue of José Francisco Martí, without raising a few statues for the men and women of black skin, who, with more than enough merit, must be taken out of the historic insult, clearly shows how this regime, just like all the previous ones, has always denied: its racist nature and the classist commitment to ensuring that Cuban blacks and mestizos remain in the bottom.
These are constant symbols of impudence and fear for blacks, who are not the ones who should be embarrassed. There are titles that must cause embarrassment to those who carry them, as well as to those who create them.
Original post sent as jpg image by Luis Felipe Rojas through his cell phone
It’s a real jewel of journalism, worthy of being stored in any historical archive. It appeared on the “Personal Issues” section of the classified ads of the weekly Ahora newspaper, published in the province of Holguin. Out of the three ads which appeared last Saturday, June 2nd, these two caught my attention:
“The Clinical-Surgical Lucia Iniguez Hospital offers positions of Security Agents and protection. Prequisites: have a mid-superior level or have passed twelfth grade, having had taken rehabilitation courses and having adequate experience, must be physically and mentally fit, have political, moral, and social conduct in accordance with the revolutionary process. Salary: 283 pesos and additional salary payment of up to $84.90. Visit the Department of Human Resources and speak with Santiago Dominguez Fajardo”
“The Meat Company of Holguin seeks a Chief of Quality Control. Salary: $425.00 plus additional payment of $200.00. Prerequisites: graduate from related superior level with specialty in Industrial Engineering, Chemical Engineering, of possessing License of Dietary Sciences. The company follows the system of payment for the completion of the job in a certain time, and 4 kilos of bones and a set of personal hygiene products are given monthly, work clothes annually, in addition to personal transportation. Call 42-2705, extensions 121 and 118.″
The first outlined phrase refers to the political apartheid which thousands of Cubans who have no communist affiliation suffer…but for such plentiful earnings! In that sense, anyone can keep a moral conduct “in accordance with the revolutionary principles”. The second bold phrase is quite frightening. With so much hunger in certain African countries and we still use a surplus of food to as an incentive for Security Agents! There is no such case. There is no doubt that the suggestions are unique, there surely will be better ones, but these could not have gone by unmentioned and I wanted to share it with you all. The section is in charge of someone who is said to be called Graciela Guerra B and her email is chela@ahora.cu.
Note:I have published this through my phone, I send it to a friend (as an image) who has internet access, he sends it through email to another friend outside of Cuba who receives it, converts it to a Word document, and later publishes it on my blog with the photos I have also sent from my cell phone.
Today, I asked those who help me to do so in this way. So that those who follow and read me know that on this side, from within the barbed wires, connecting to the internet continues to be a fantasy, regardless if there is a cable or not.
That’s why I spend many days without publishing anything and I can never directly respond to messages sent to me, to those emails which saturate my electronic mailbox, and the hundreds of friend requests I have on Facebook which a friend of mine updates once a month. This is yet another way of accessing the internet, without internet.
Officially the “Jose Martí Anti-Imperialist Bandstand” — called the “Protestodrome” — in front of the United States Interest Section on the Malecon in Havana. The red letters, barely visible, are the USIS “ticker” reporting news supposedly blocked by the official Cuban media. This particular evening the ticker, put in place by the George W. Bush administration, was informing Cubans that Edmund Hilary had died. The Obama administration dismantled the ticker.An amazing feature of Havana is a waterfront highway with almost no traffic, day or night. The entertainment was free and, this evening at least, sparsely attended for a city of over 2 million people.The Protestodrome seen from above. The flagpoles were installed to hide the “ticker.” They flew 138 black flags, symbolizing Cubans who died in violent acts against Cuba.
In front of me Judgement 162 from May 2011 of the Civil and Administrative Division of the Havana Provincial People’s Court, ratifying the Resolution of Cessation of Cohabitation of the Municipal Housing Department, and recognizing the legitimate owner of the house, an elderly woman almost 80 years old, with no concern for her case: housing from which she had been dispossessed by unscrupulous elements using deception, who now refuse to leave the premises.
I also see the owner referred to in that resolution signed by the People’s Supreme Court, the highest court in the nation, dismissing the appeal against the mentioned judgement of the Provincial People’s Court and declaring its legitimate right to decide who may or may not live in her dwelling.
A sad story of this poor old woman, who as owner has been forced to stay away from her home for fear of mistreatment by the illegal inhabitants of her property, and without any sign of the restitution through the violated law, but equally or more sad is the story of the nation ruled by laziness and disobedience to the decisions of the bodies responsible for judicial protection of its citizens.
This morning, Saturday, June 16, Estado de Sats again hosted an interesting debate regarding a Citizen Demand for Another Cuba, and the United Nations Covenants on Human Rights, printed copies of which were handed out to everyone in attendance.
The panel consisted of Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz, Reinaldo Escobar, Wilfredo Vallín and Manuel Cuesta Morua, with Anthony Rodiles, the usual moderator and host.
The interesting debate was marked by concise and interesting presentations. Using the words of the panelists themselves, with their synthesis and content, I offer for your consideration:
The audience overflowing the room into the garden.
Manual Cuesta Morua: “Citizens are the base of legitimacy for States.”
Elizardo Sánchez: “I hope that this initiative comes to fruition.”
Reinaldo Escobar: “The country is violating every right enunciated in the Constitution.”
Dr. Wilfredo Vallín: “International law prevails over domestic law of a country.”
“There are exceptions to the letter of the pacts, and the State can use such exceptions; however, there cannot be exceptions that fundamentally change the spirit and intentions of such pacts.”
Antonio Rodiles: “Hopefully the covenants are a kind of road map.”
Again, as usual, an ever growing heterogeneous audience filled the large room and the surrounding gardens.
