Havana, Cuba. Today I’d love to invite you for a stroll with my wife and I down Avenue 42 of the beach from 41 to 34. A spacious avenue with wide sidewalks and lawns with dense vegetation.
Imagine with us that it’s one of those afternoons in which we say our goodnights to the sun when, before finishing our short walk, we come upon a salmon-colored house. A dwelling decorated by its proprietors with the purpose of opening up its front porch and taking advantage of the space in its garden for a snack bar, a business they had been cooking up for a good long time.
The brand-new trade has had had several names but the one that’s made the owners most enthusiastic is “Today As Yesterday”, recalling the need to create commercial products with the quality that our grandparents once enjoyed.
What’s certain is that according to one of the owners, when he went to register the business with the authorities of the National Tax Administration Office (ONAT), the name was changed, because the authorities did not like the one he’d submit. After a long debate amongst the family members, they decided on the new name “Enter”.
I’d like to reflect on what’s wrong with calling a snack bar “Today As Yesterday”. Although the Cuban government permits the creation of private businesses, it maintains a control over them, control that apparently could even question the name that we give them.
I’d like to share with you the reason the owners of the new business initially decided to call it “Today As Yesterday”, a name that gives tribute to a time of economic prosperity.
The images we include in this story are some of the pieces that were used to decorate this snack bar, the same ones that remind people of their grandparents…who can separate these signs from our national identity? Who can demonstrate to me how these signs harm anyone? The danger can only be perceived by the minds of those who try to deprive new generations from knowing the splendor of times prior to the processes that took place in 1959.
I wish I dared to stand before this new business and shout in my loudest voice that if things could really be “Today As Yesterday”, it would be a whole new day in Cuba.
It is right and necessary to fight against urban planning and other crimes, and to try to create a bit of order in society after so many years of barbarities. It seems as if the attention is focused on citizens who built precarious garages in the common areas of multifamily buildings, closed open spaces making them private, put bars in front of the elevator doors on each floor of tall buildings, added water tanks to each apartment, erected barriers to transit sites in shopping streets, transformed facades in their own bad taste, added absurd buildings, converted terraces and porches into rooms, etc. All of this is reprehensible and unacceptable, even if it was done in response to vital needs (e.g. lack of space in the home of a growing family, lack of access to other roomier ones, not being provided garages in new building, impunity of the criminals), or the lack of government solutions (all private ownership was prohibited), rather than for being irresponsible.
However, it is noted that it was precisely the constituted authorities, and some of their closest collaborators, who started these illegal practices, raising high walls (some up to four meters) in their new assigned homes (sometimes even with surveillance cameras) and shutting down streets and gardens around them; occupying entire buildings and even the surrounding homes, including streets, gardens and other spaces; pharaonic buildings constructed without respecting the existence of streets; fencing and enclosing the gardens and parking of government buildings in Civic Square, closing doors and original entrances, hampering, or even not allowing citizens’ free access to them. This epidemic spread like the invasive marabou weed, and involved agencies, institutions and companies, which were turned into veritable fortresses, with barriers and prohibitions and, sometimes, even with loopholes. Maybe someone alleges that it was all for protection against the eternal enemy, but as always, we went too far, far surpassing the sense of limits.
Given this reality, which is easily checked by visiting our cities and towns, the civic psyche reacts naturally: if the authorities do not respect the urban planning regulations, why should the people respect them? In this battle against urban planning crimes, are the officials’ crimes also taken into account or will the affected only be ordinary citizens? If the chain, as has happened many times, is broken by the weakest links and doesn’t touch the strongest, the battle is lost from the start. To succeed, we must lead by example. Besides, it is good to combat wrongdoing, but we must create the material conditions to prevent these crimes from being repeated: If the solutions to citizens’ real problems are not created (living space, new housing, protection of property and other), it will be like plowing the sea.
General Report of the Cuban League Against AIDS on Human Rights violations to the community of Lesbians, Gays,Bisexuals and Transgenders.
It has been five decades from that fatal triumph led by people wearing olive green clothes coming down from the mountains, and proclaiming a society of equality for all, without discrimination by race, religion, political and sexual orientations.
Not many years went on before the first exclusions of all Cubans who had a sexual behavior — defined by the emerging government as embarrassing and as a way of life that endangered the socialist morality of the Cuban nation — started to be seen in workplaces, educational and state institutions.
Our people lived through years of confinement, forced labor camps, repudiation acts, and as if that was not enough, in many cases, some were stoned and forced to go into exile, separating them from their families and friends.
Cuban history contains the anecdotes and the suffering of Reinaldo Arena, Virgilio P., Lezama, and those others whose names remain forgotten and whose bodies are found in the waters between the Florida straits and the Cuban shores.
Fifty years later history repeats itself, and the violations of human rights continue targeting the LGBT community in Cuba. The rulers have been changing the ways in which they commit these violations, but when you start analyzing the situation that the LGBT community faces, you see that it is the same.
The lack of public spaces, freedom of expression, freedom of association, the right to have a relationship and marry in equality of rights, and the right to decide the appropriate moment to tell their families about their sexual orientation are some of the violations that the LGBT community in Cuba is constantly facing.
While the State institutions like the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX) run by Mrs. Mariela Castro Espín, daughter of the current ruler of the nation, speak to the world about the certain openings that guarantee human rights for the LGBT community, the reality of the island is completely different; one that she would not hesitate to silence because of her fear of losing the large amounts of money collected for ghost projects that only respond to the interests of the Cuban State and not to those of the LGBT Cuban community.
There are daily reports on the island of the arrests of LGBT people, accompanied by heavy fines, deportations for homosexuals that are not from Havana, extortion and blackmailing by the police authorities or the law enforcement officers who want to benefit from the suffering of those who fall into their hands. There are also beatings, temporary detentions, searches in public places, among other actions of arbitrary nature.
There is evidence, from 2010, of layoffs based on the employee’s sexual orientation, layoffs of members of the LGBT community because they are following the government’s political ideology or simply because they are friends with someone who was a LGBT rights activist.
Violence caused the death of six homosexuals who died under an unknown situation. The death of a young transvestite from negligence and inattention in a police station was denounced, as well as the layoff of a transsexual woman, Wendy Iriepa Díaz, for marrying a human rights activist, and the arrests of homosexuals in public places and the removal of homosexual from the streets for supposedly harassing tourists.
We must continue denouncing the unjust prison sentences, from two to four years and the forced labor fields, for homosexuals because they are wandering around at night in the streets of Cuba, or drinking alcohol, or have decided no to work for the Cuba State because their families support them from abroad.
“Cuba is a country where the authorities are not prepared to confront radical changes like same sex marriage, adoption, and coexistence.” While the government gives this explanations, we Cubans wonder: how did they come up with this criteria? When we go out into the street, people smile at us and compliment us, not because of our sexual orientation, but because of what we stand for.
The true guilty people for the constant violations that the Cuban LGBT community faces are the State and its institutions, the real homophobic and discriminatory weapons. There is no power or people more discriminatory in this nation than its rulers.
The rise of male prostitution, within the community of men who have sex with other men, has resulted in 8 out of 10 of those infected with HIV being men, which is the largest number ever reached in the history of this community.
Despite totalitarianism, despite the fierce power of the State, the Cuban LGBT community now rises and emerges from the ashes, like a phoenix, showing a beautiful plumage and the colors of our unique flag demanding and recovering all the places usurped by the State power and the lies.
Today we demand our rights, we want to walk as a nation, as an independent community, as a community that advocates for the rights of all and not the rights of the minority in power.
The reason for our existence is to fight for the civil, political, economic and cultural rights of the LGBT community in Cuba. Our voice today demands to be heard and we want shout out that we exist and we are working to find a solution and looking forward to the future.
Ignacio Estrada Cepero
Executive Director
Cuban League Against AIDS
Much is publicized, even by the United Nations, about Cuba being one of the countries where less violence exists. It is true that we do not have wars or drug trafficking. But what is undeniable, in spite of the fact that the national press does not speak of it, is the domestic violence, like other kinds of violence carried out, due to many reasons.
Recently there occurred a lamentably bloody event, among members of a sector that is supposed to be cultured and refined. The media have not reported anything about it, but now it is popular knowledge, the crime perpetrated by one of the most outstanding musicians of the Philharmonic Orchestra, a young cellist,ranked among the best in the country.
Rumor has it that she had been a victim, like so many other musicians of the despotism with which the Director General of the Amadeo Roldan Complex,Mr. Chorens used to treat them. It seems that the straw that broke the camel’s back was the denial of a trip abroad,highly anticipated by this virtuoso of strings. Expressing her indignation on learning of the refusal, she made public among his companions, the vengeance that he was going to perpetrate: I am going to hurt him where it hurts most, she said.
She went to the house of the Director, knowing that the director’s mother would be there alone, and finished her off with a blade, repeatedly stabbing her until she died.
This is only one example of the many acts of violence that are practiced daily in our country, and about which the media never report.
There is a lot of contained hatred and frustration, any incident can be the trigger to make them explode with the same fury as a volcano expelling the lava contained in its interior. No one talks about it. The worst is that like everything kept hidden, no one is careful, especially not foreigners, who are sold the line about the safest tourist destination.
As long as the press is not free and transparent, we are going to be believe that we are living in a true paradise. I do not like the “police blotter,” but I also do not agree with hiding the news, that one way or another affects us all. Nor am I going to become a spokesman for the same, but this event has upset the artistic sector and still nothing has been published about it.
Omar Laffita: First, greetings. I have seen your programs and I want to say that the interview with El Sexto has been one of the most enjoyable. So, what type of status, be it political or migration, do you have, to be able to develop all these events marked by controversial and pro-democratic context in the very heart of the dictatorship? You must know that simple for meeting in a Central Havana site for the “literary tea,” the government released waves of oppression against the Ladies in White, by paramilitary mobs who insulted, abused and hurt the women meeting there, and which on some occasions have ended with detentions and warnings. Have some of your events been repressed in such a brutal way? Congratulations on Estado de SATS!
Thank you, Laffita, for your question and the follow-up. It’s clear that State Security has established a form of selective action where it decides how to attack each individual or project according to its profile. In our case, the pressure has been great, but using strategies other than violent repression. Estado de SATS is not the only one on this list, there are other projects that have not been attacked with the violence suffered by the Ladies in White. I want to mention the monthly issuance, for more than a year now, of the magazine “Voices,” a project coordinated by Yoani Sanchez and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, or the periodic guidance offered by the Cuban Law Association, directed by the attorney Wilfredo Vallin. Nor is the work undertaken by the Human Rights Commission, under the direction of Elizardo Sanchez, attacked with the same violence, to cite some examples. I think that State Security itself tries to manage this selectively to generate conflicts between the different actors, an objective in which, so far, they have not succeeded.
After the second meeting held in 2011, I was cited by State Security, using as a pretext my migration status. My position was very clear, we are going to continue doing Estado de SATS, and the only way to stop me would be with my detention. This has been my position and I will not change it. We are simply exercising a very basic right that we will not renounce voluntarily.
State Security has tried to stop us using multiple methods. In a list published in DIARIO DE CUBA last year, we listed the acts of intimidation and the threats to the working team, participants, and public who attend. In front my house, which is the space where we hold the meetings, they have permanently installed two video cameras, and one or two police cars park at the corner or in front of my house every day. Next door are the offices of the National Aquarium, which has been practically converted into an operations and surveillance post for State Security, and in the midst of all this we continue doing our work. Lately, given the visibility of the project, State Security has tried to create distrust towards us. Oddly, this work of sowing distrust is undertaken primarily from outside the Island, taking advantage of the characteristics of some individuals. Within the Island, the effort is barely perceptible. The transparency of the debates and the diversity of the guests and the public will end up frustrating this new attempt.
With respect to my legal situation, as I explained earlier, after various citations and threats they withdrew my permit to reside abroad, currently I do not possess an identity card or any identification document, but I refuse to submit any kind of paperwork in support of this arbitrary act committed in order to pressure and blackmail me.
Saavedra: Hi Rodiles, thanks for continuing to challenge the winds and tides with Estado de SATS, a truly plural project for which I feel a profound sympathy and respect. I would like to ask you if you have invited or considered inviting members of the government and its multiple official mechanisms to participate in the different debates held. In any case, who have you invited? What have been the justifications offered for not attending? It would be very good to publish this data to make citizens more aware of how little interest the members of this nearly eternal (mis)government have in subjecting their policies and decisions to debate with civil society. A second question: Do you believe that the different groups that form the current Cuban opposition act with sufficient unity in successfully confronting the fierce government machinery? What do you think is lacking to form a common front? Thank you for your time. My salutations.
Thank you very much Saavedra. Yes, we have invited people from within the official institutions. We prefer to be discreet and not publish names because we feel we should respect the individual decisions of each person and also protect them. In totalitarian Cuba, the fact alone of sitting down to talk to us is a problem, and so discretion is a fundamental element of our work. However, this fear is waning every day, we see it in the new faces that are beginning to come to the meetings, which is, undoubtedly, a great step forward.
I think from the opposition, dissidence, or activism, we don’t work to find more common spaces. We live in a critical time and we have to have a clear voice with respect to our fundamental demands as civil society. I think this time is not far off. To try to join forces would be very immature, but to achieve a certain level of consensus on different points would have a major impact within and outside the Island. There is a great consistency between the demands that come from the activists and from society in general.
Rodrigo Kunag: Rodiles, I congratulate you for the success of a project that is fostering thinking, inclusion, and depth in the new Cuba. I have several concerns that perhaps can’t be condensed into a single question, but I will try not to go on too long. One of them is that you talk about the reasons for inviting Charles Barclay to debate, while knowing that this could be the ideal subterfuge that some Taliban blogger could take advantage of to accuse you of being annexationists and receiving money from the United States. On the other hand, do you believe that the Estado de SATS sessions have resonated with the Cuban population beyond a minority with access to computers? If so do you know of intellectuals or artists who avoid getting involved with you out of fear, even though they share your line of thinking?
The invitation was motivated by the topic under discussion. Previous to this meeting we had prepared a poetry reading with the participation of the Cuban poet Juan Carlos Flores, the American poet Hank Lazer, and the American saxophonist Raffo Dewar. To these last two it was “suggested” [by State Security] the night before, that they not come to the meeting. This was the reason we organized a debate about Cuba-USA cultural and academic exchanges. For this meeting we invited a Cuban academic knowledgable on the topic and currently inside the official institutions, who turned down the invitation, as well as Charles Barclay from the United States Interest Section [the quasi-embassy in Havana], Miriam Celaya, Julio Aleago and Alexis Jardines, all well informed on the topic of the sessions, having been previously associated professionally with universities and cultural institutions. The idea was to discuss with the greatest clarity and transparency, a topic that currently generates considerable debate.
An important aspect of our project is that we don’t adjust our thinking to the dogmas and constantly break with the visions imposed by the government; we think that as free individuals we must generate our own dynamic, our own budgets, that confront the archaic discourses that have been used for so long, and one of them is the common chorus that everyone who has anything to do with the officials of the U.S. Interest Section is a mercenary in service to a foreign country. Estado de SATS reserves the right to interact with everyone and is open to everyone.
And yes, of course, there are many people within the institutions, with whom we have had long conversations and who have shown us their desire to participate, but at the same time they prefer not to expose themselves. This situation will change, we are sure, but we have to keep working seriously to be able to tear down the barrier of fear. I am confident we will manage it, no one can hold back a society’s desire for freedom.
Luis Manuel González Viltres: Hi Rodiles, I have seen a lot of your programs and really like them and have learned some things that I now see more clearly, except there is one program where I don’t share your idea and that is compensation for those Cubans whose properties were nationalized with the triumph of the Revolution. My question is: Doesn’t it seem that it would be better to start back at zero without rancor and a new democracy? We know that from this side not everything has gone well, for example the bombs Luis Posada Carriles ordered placed in Havana hotels. Thank you in advance.
Thank you Luis Manuel. I think that a process of reconstruction like that needed in our country is very complex. The fundamental point is to achieve it with the greatest possible justice. The issue of property rights and compensation has been managed successfully in many transitions and I’m confident that we can also manage it.
I don’t believe the legitimate rights of some owners — who did not obtain their property through corruption or theft — to claim compensation should be mixed with justice for those who have committed violent acts.
The legal responsibility of all those implicated in bloody events, has ended up becoming one of the principal dilemmas in many transitions. Events such as the bombing of Cubana flight 455 in 1976 and the sinking of the tugboat “13 de Marzo” are pending issues that need total clarification and assigning of legal responsibility. The crimes and violations of human beings are not appropriate and we all must be very clear that human life is sacred and the laws must be applied with total rigor to those who violate this principle.
Ariel Perez: Rodiles, forgive my frankness but I have noted a descent from the initially high academic level of your project, where you talked about Cuban problems from a universal perspective, let’s say from globalization. Aren’t you afraid that Estado de SATS is becoming simply one cathartic space among others that the dissidence has had instead of a true “think tank” as is was conceived from the start? What do you think are the strengths and weaknesses of your project?
Thank you Ariel. I don’t share your view with respect to the decline from the initial level. I think we have discussed many issues and each one has had a distinct focus. There are topics that should be more ‘grounded’ than others and this is natural. We try through all the available media to find more universal visions, but at the same time to be rooted in our context.
It’s important to mention that we have never been recognized as a traditional “think tank” based in a democratic society, in our case we live in a dictatorship and our work has a unique character. Our interest runs to being a channel of thinking and democratic action, not just a space for analysis and proposals. We are an active part of the transition, not just observers.
The principal strengths of our project are transparency and plurality. Another, our desire to live in a distinct, modern, free country. This firm desire has allowed us to grow and sustain ourselves.
The weaknesses of the project: Our difficulty in communicating freely with the exterior, free access to fast internet, the economic and technological problems, the inertia and fear that still exist in Cuba.
AnonyGY: Antonio, I would like to know your email, in case we would like to be in contact. If you don’t want to publish it, I understand. How is a program of SATS organized and prepared? I want to congratulate you on the work you and your team do, I am envious that I can’t be there with you and attend these meetings. We follow them on your videos. You are my hope for change.
Thank you. The email is estadodesats@gmail.com. Our working group is made up of a small nucleus of friends. However each meeting relies on the participation of many people who come as volunteers to help the organization and its workings. Something that is important to highlight is the level of synchronicity that exists within the most active sectors of Cuban society. Every meeting we hold has been a magnificent occasion to see how people enjoy being a part of the new spaces of freedom.
The preparation is arduous and involves many aspects that come from multiple visits to the possible guests, the script, promotion, production, to finding and installing the technical media. Right now we see a very interesting process of collaboration among distinct independent projects which helps ease the great effort required to create a space like this, however the resources continue to be key to achieving a quality outcome. This collaboration with other projects helps us overcome our fierce limitations.
Ernesto Lopez: An immense and overwhelming majority of Cubans inside and outside the Island are in harmony with the same thought, which is nothing other than the rejection of the regime. But we act like our hands are tied. In your opinion, what can bring together the conscience, the thinking and the will to action of the Cuban citizen against the status quo? Perhaps communication, free information, free expression, association, political culture… Thank you.
Thank you Ernesto. It is difficult to define… I think the main thing that has to happen is that as Cubans we feel a profound necessity to live in freedom. I feel that this awakening is already happening, you go out in the street and you see that people are losing their fear of talking and the immense majority are beginning to openly express their discontent with the system. For a long time in Cuba there has been a hypnosis that we are beginning to emerge from, there are external factors strongly affecting this and one of them as been the outbreak, still small but very effective, of the new technologies.
J. Pereira: I send you an affectionate greeting from Europe, I would like to tell you that I greatly value the work you are developing in Cuba and I wish for it to be very fruitful in changing the role of civil society on the Island. Now the questions, from my point of view (so no one need feel offended), you are in a real monster; could you explain to us how it’s possible to develop your project in this hostile environment? Is it because we really are living in a transition on the Island? How does information about the activities promoted by Estado de SATS reach ordinary Cubans? Forgive me if these are questions you’ve already answered in other places. I believe that Estado de SATS has marked a point of inflection. A big hug.
As I explained earlier, I believe that State Security has decided to use different strategies for different groups. They use this discretional character also to create conflicts, facing a reality which is less docile every day.
In our case, from the beginning we have used new technologies as a method of diffusion and at the same time protection. We don’t just put the meetings on YouTube, but we also share them on DVDs and these circulate throughout the country. We are often surprised to receive emails from different areas of the Island from people who have seen at least one or two Estado de SATS meetings and who ask about the project, how they can get more information. The visibility is greater every day, and this clearly comes at a major political cost to the repression. The new technologies are vital tools for the work of civil society.
The Free Laplander: Dear Rodiles, first of all I want to thank you and your working team for this wonderful space you have created. Why are you being so critical of the system that has not intervened with force at the meeting site? When you go out in the street, do you feel popular support, even if just in the form of a complicit smile? Have you stopped to think about how far the limits of your daring go? Do you not believe that inviting so many people and the dissidence in general to your programs could allow the infiltration of spies? In a free and democratic Cuba what profession would you like to practice? Have you considered how many changes in the Eastern European countries have gone badly so that these mistakes won’t be repeated in Cuba? Many thanks for offering me some of your valuable and limited time.
To break into a home where public debates, exhibitions, and film screenings are held and where there is not incitement to violence nor resort to personal attacks, would have a high political cost. Violence against intellectuals, artists and an public interested in these topics would be an action condemned by many. But we have never ruled out a possible action of this type, we are prepared for it, I have already responded to another question that every meeting is held under the deployment of a State Security operation in the offices of the Aquarium next door to the house, and many attendees have suffered pressure on leaving the meetings from police posted nearby. To all this is added the surveillance cameras, listening devices, and tapped fixed line and mobile phones. We hope no one decides to intervene violently because the consequences would undoubtedly be unpredictable. We know there are always “masked” State Security agents within our space, some of them very bad actors, they come, take a lot of photos, show interest and ask apparently ingenuous questions, but this doesn’t bother us. The space is open to everyone and everyone wishing to participate can do so while respecting the rules of debate. There is nothing to hide and that gives us peace of mind.
On many occasions I’ve been agreeably surprised to be recognized by people on the street in the most unlikely places, a tire repair, a farmers market, the airport, people have come up to me and with a certain complicity asked me, in whispers, aren’t you from the SATS program” And they always compliment it, offer their points of view or topics to address and ask how to get the “programs,” as they call them. These have been very nice experiences, very good, that give us feedback, satisfaction and encouragement and confirm that the expansion of our work is happening, even though, of course, we have higher expectations.
Our purpose is very clear, to be part of the process of democratization of our country and to focus our efforts on that end. To constantly reinvent ourselves is one of our premises, as is maintaining a steady pace in what we produce.
We would love to expand SATS over the the whole Island, to help create spaces that promote democratic thinking from different perspectives. Something that fascinates me about modern societies is how broad they are, showing an incredible level of complexity. At some point I found it difficult to visualize this, but once I understood it it became a guide for our work.
Politics has always interested me, since I was a child I felt attracted to these issues and as I am a lover or controversy, I felt like a fish in water. My stays in Mexico and the United States greatly expanded my perspective on the world we live in, both countries are very different and there are important lessons to learn from each of them.
Sadly, in our country the possibility of engaging in politics has been erased. However, it’s clear that a new era is opening up and politics will be a new part of our society. I am one of those who think that politicians should serve for limited periods. Societies are very dynamic now and we need time to study them in order to understand them, the exercise of politics is something that envelops us and perhaps we don’t grasp certain changes in their entire magnitude.
The way to avoid the mistakes already committed in other transitions is to study them. Every country has its characteristics and ours is behaving somewhat differently than expected.
Who would have expected that the Church hierarchy would have become an ally of the government?
The principal of a transition, as a far-reaching process, is to include a great number of actors and citizens, and only in this way can it be successful. The chances of failure are many, particularly if we start from a situation as disastrous as the one in which we are living.
But if we ground ourselves in already proven knowledge, the results won’t be long in coming. Everything will depend on how we focus and in whose hands power ends up. If the governing elite and their heirs fail to transmute, the result will be disastrous.
Ernesto Gutiérrez Tamargo: Antonio, first of all I congratulate you because within Cuba you opened a space of freedom for civil society. Questions: Do you rely on any official or quasi-official to broadcast, edit or produce Estado de SATS? What does “Estado de SATS” mean? Do you define yourself as a dissident, an opponent or anti-establishment? Do you have some political economic project to develop Cuba in the present and future? Thanks.
Your question surprises me, to support our project would undoubtedly imply an act of self-destruction. The powers-that-be will never support spaces like ours, where freedom of thought, diversity, and transition to another system are the principal proposals.
Our objective is the democratization of our country and we work on it full time devoting all of our abilities to it.
From the beginning of SATS the support has been total. The first meeting in the summer of 2010 would have been impossible without the help of Omni Zona Franca and a group of intellectuals and artists who put all their efforts into the organization. And so it will continue, the support that we rely on is that of our many friends always ready to collaborate.
I define myself as a free man who lives in a dictatorship. In this context one becomes a dissident, opponent, or whatever qualifier is implied by the rejection of an imposed and arbitrary power.
I want to participate in the reconstruction of my country, bringing my knowledge and my work. In several Analysis Forum programs I commented on my vision of a future cuba. I would like to emphasize that I see Cuba as a country of democratic institutions. I have to confess that I am an enemy of messianism and I conceive of them as part of past that urgently needs to be buried. Messianism affects societies not only at the global level but also individuals, provoking a lack of autonomy that ends up destroying individual creativity and enterprise, basic elements of any mature society.
The work to change Cuba must begin to mobilize this variety of beings and characters who feel themselves a part of this nation and understand the urgency of establishing ourselves in a globalized context. A process of reinvention that must be driven from many angles.
Waldo: What are the links between your father Antonio Rodiles and your uncle, Division General Samuel Rodiles Planas, and Estado de SATS?
My father is Manuel G. Rodiles Planes. His connection with this project is that of spectator. At all the meetings he is seated in the front row, listening with great attention to the debates and discussions.
It is obvious that Samuel Rodiles Planas has absolutely no connection with our work, nor do we maintain any personal contact.
It is no secret to anyone that the so-called Cuban Revolution has been a process marked by family divisions because of differences in thinking and political activity. My family has been no exception. The unconditional politics of a demented caudillo has been the source of unimaginably huge damage to the Cuban family and to the entire society. So many painful conflicts, so many separations and estrangements to get to the disaster we are now living, it is a great sorrow.
Ricardo Palma: Stretching generalizations — such as “we would first have to meet everyone and get to know each other well,” or “we need a consensus” — to the extent possible, I would greatly appreciate your opinion about who would be the most suitable (or better yet, the most needed) to carry out the transformations of the Cuban political system, and why. Many thanks in advance.
Thanks Ricardo. That’s a very broad question. I think that the change has to be undertaken from civil society, ensuring the widest possible participation. It would be very helpful to create many spaces that foster an open dialog about the country we want. Cubans who live outside the Island will be critical. To insert yourself into an unknown world where you have to create your life, your relationships, where you must understand a distinct dynamic, are experiences of great utility and impossible not to take advantage of.
Ana Maria: In Cuba we see a situation of intellectual debate about our reality, such as you promote, we hear a critical discourse and an analysis without rhetoric about the culture and the political life from distinct groups and representatives of society, including elements from the official intelligentsia. But they are small groups that barely fill some classrooms. And yet Cubans in general behave primitively, seem reluctant to take seriously the reality that crushes us, are more given to not taking things seriously and nonsense, than to reflection and analysis of their existential condition. They prefer to practice the double standard than to face the truth, prefer to resolve their needs in the web of corruption and theft that defy the depressing system that forces them to be criminals. They prefer to participate in the repression, rat out others, join in repudiation rallies, and display moral turpitude rather than show respect and dignity for others.
My question, then, is: Can we count on such an insensitive mass, without civic and ethical principals, to undertake some logical and rational project that must recover the values that the people don’t possess? Do you think, in the short term, as Cubans undertake a social and political transformation, it would be possible to instill ethical values, to change the herd mentality, dismantle the negative inheritance of the Castro regime, the immorality, the simulation, and promote a new social psychology, a new mentality of civic and constructive ideas? Many thanks, I admire enormously the work you do for the country and the future.
Thank you Ana. When I listen to those who support a transition led by the government elite, I wonder if they are full of demented ingenuity or an obscene cynicism.
Here is my fear of our heading toward a transition agreed to by the powers-that-be, a corrupt and rather mediocre power. If this happened we would end up in a terrible scenario in the worst third-world style.
As you argue, the major damage has been to the individual. Cuba has bled and it is very sad. However, I think there is still very valuable human capital within the Island. On the other hand, many Cubans who have escaped this nightmare are willing to collaborate in rebuilding the country, which guarantees not only the possibility of investments, but also practical knowledge.
The work we do in the development of society will depend on the recovery of ethical values lost in this long process. Post-totalitarian Cuba is an enigma for everyone, but I confess my complete optimism, especially if we move along the path of a true democracy.
I want to thank everyone who sent their questions and the friends of Diario de Cuba.
Taken from Paintings and Drawings of Famous Writers; The UNESCO Courier: a window open on the world; Vol.: X, August; 1957 pg.11
By Berta Gaster
Hans Cristian Andersen had the ability to do surprising things with a pair of scissors. The strange skill of his enormous hands was partly why his mother decided to make a tailor of him in his adolescence.
The immortal Danish author of The Ugly Duckling and other unforgettable fairy tales is remembered in the autobiographical pages of The True Story of my Life:
‘I spent my time in my puppet theatre, and my happiness consisted in collecting scraps of fabric which I cut and sewed. My mother considered this good practice for my future profession as a tailor.’
Years later, in Copenhagen and in other places, Cristian Andersen delighted children cutting out fantastic paper figures of ballerinas, swans, storks and castles for them with the same speed with which he narrated his stories.
One nightfall during the summer, Cristian was sitting in a rustic Swedish hostel, wrapped in the brightness of Lake Siljan, according to his biographer Signe Toksvig, when the small granddaughter of the hostel manager entered nervously to curiously examine his colourful tartan traveller’s bag and the red satin lining of his little trunk. The artist quickly took a scrap of paper and cut out a Turkish mosque with minarets and ajimeces. The girl took it in astonishment and ran out.
Soon enough, Andersen saw a crowd of men and women in the courtyard, gathered around the old hostel manager who hels the mosque above her head, out of the reach of the girl. Minutes later, the grandmother entered Andersen’s chambers with a plate of gingerbread in different shapes.
‘I make the best gingerbread in Delarne’, said the woman, ‘but the shapes are old. Sir knows how to cut out such beautiful things…Could he cut out some new molds for us?’
Swayed by her tone and the use of third person, in the Swedish way, Andersen remained almost all of the northern summer night occupied with inventing new shapes for the gingerbread: nutcrackers with long boots, windmills with their miller, men with slippers and a door in the stomach, ballerinas with a leg in the air…The old lady hostel owner was brimming with her contentment ‘They’re truly new shapes’ she said in her singsong language, ‘but difficult to make!’
Hans Andersen also liked to draw and he did it well, although with a certain inscrutability. He left some albums full of little drawings, brief verses and notes about the ‘muses and poetry’. He always considered himself a poet even after having gained fame with his children’s stories. Many of those drawings were done during his trips to Elsinor, to Florence, Rome and other places in Italy and some contain his memories of trips to Turkey and Germany.
The illustrations on this page are three fairy tales or ‘cutout fantasies’ cut out of paper by Andersen and currently conserved by the Andersen Museum of Odense, Denmark where the great storyteller who has delighted generations of children and adults was born.
Last Thursday the call went out for an event on new technologies and social networks that will be held in Havana on June 21-23, 2012. Under the name CLICK Festival, we want to meet to discuss new trends in Web 2.0 and also to address the challenges that lie ahead in the use of these tools for dissemination and communication. We are particularly interested in the future projection of Cuba as a country immersed in modern technology and also want to respond to the question of what we can do to accelerate the time when each citizen in this country will have full access to cyberspace.
The event is being promoted by various organizations, groups and individuals from civil society, but is not bounded by the particular interests of any of them. Its character is technological, not ideological or political. It is not intended to be a forum for complaints about what happens to us, but rather a constructive space to plan for tomorrow. Which does not imply, in any way, that we give up our right to raise our voices against the harsh reality of a country with the lowest Internet connectivity in the hemisphere. We do not want to engage in any type of political segregation nor use any kind of ideological screen to choose the participants, much less fall into the exclusions that have characterized previous meetings of Cuban bloggers and twitterers.
The CLICK Festival will not have a final declaration insulting anyone or engaging in character assassination, much less will it consider the web to be a battlefield against any other group, event or tendency. As at the table of the poet Walt Whitman, everyone is invited to this event, without exception. In the coming days invitations will be sent out by email and in person, but everyone who reads this text can consider themselves invited. The foundations of the Click Festival are the energy, talent and labor of many people. The resources that will be employed during the three days will come from the organizers themselves and the participants. NO party, government or institution has funded the event, participated in the design of the program, or influenced the initial idea of holding it. Of course, we have received words of encouragement and emotional support from hundreds of Internauts, ordinary citizens, voluntary translators and other friends. Also of note is the solidarity and dissemination provided by Event Blog Spain (EBE) that has had a hand in creating the website and inspired us with its example of plurality and debate.
We have before us two weeks decisive for the quality of the CLICK Festival. So on behalf of the various organizers I would like to ask all the readers, to share with us any ideas that come to mind. Your contributions can range from sending a presentation to be distributed electronically to the participants or included in the discussion, to helping us advertise the event. A post in a blog, a brief tweet with the hashtag #festivalclic, or a simple message of encouragement would be most appreciated. We would be delighted to let every citizen interested in this topic know what is going to happen during the three days of the festival. If you are a foreign tourist visiting the Island and want to join us, the doors of the CLICK Festival will be open to you. This visibility and transparency will be the greatest protection we could count on.
I have the feeling that technology and knowledge are going to win.
CLICK Festival from 21 to 23 June
1st Street # 4606 between 46 and 60, Playa
Havana http://festivalclic.com
@FestivalCLIC
#FestivalCLIC
I come from everywhere and I go everywhere... / Self Portrait. (Eduardo Sarmiento, 2007)
I recently heard an older person say, “To those who say things aren’t changing, look how at you can criticize now, even on TV.”
The history of criticism in Cuba, especially political criticism (direct or indirect) is older than I am, so I won’t venture to give details from times gone by which I only know about from reading. I leave that task to others. I can speak about what I have lived, from the time I was a “pioneer” as a child, until today.
Self-criticism was the first kind I knew; it was obligatory to stand in front of the group at whatever level in elementary school and engage in a “self-criticism” to appear modest and sincere before the sharp eyes of the teacher and whomever was visiting the evaluation meeting. In this trance I saw children cry and tremble, unable to construct sufficiently strong phrases against themselves.
Criticism of one’s classmate, meanwhile, was a part of being a good “revolutionary,” along with being “critical and self-critical.” Similarly, this was the style of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and the Union of Young Communists (UJC), a method that never failed to destroy human relations, especially every friendship.
“Friendship ends where duty begins,” the ideological posters repeated. As if friendship were not a sacred duty. It was enough for someone not to like a person to ruin an evaluation or spoil a significant opportunity by dragging out their dirty laundry. Envy, hypocrisy and other vices grew comfortable in these environments.
My entire generation grew up under these rules that governed the only authorized, and indeed encouraged, forms of criticism. Until recently, the message was clear. Everything that is going badly, or isn’t completed, or isn’t finished, or doesn’t work, is someone’s fault. That someone could be anyone, but it is never the system or its principle leaders.
Criticism as a norm. And then what?
This has not changed much. But lately, and for many reasons, including the economic failure of the country that cannot be hidden and access to information through various channels (satellite TC, Internet, CDs, etc…), as well as the attitude adopted by some of the “nuts” who, from within the country, have exposed and challenged the management of the State, the government as been forced to allow some kinds of criticism that in some ways threaten it.
At some point, difficult to pinpoint, criticism began to be common. To the extent that almost everything created today in the world of art, movies, television or radio, is tinged with criticism.
This is a particularly new context for the government and its ideological control authorities, not adapted to living in a society the criticizes and questions. To the point where it has almost completely eliminated direct contacts with the common people. We no longer hear about meetings with university students. Nor do we see, or even reported, press conferences or presentations in public spaces.
What’s more, the Cuban president doesn’t speak, and barely travels, unless to another sanctuary created in advance by the intelligence services to ensure there are no surprises.
And they have already shown that they cannot confront ideas. Which they may never have done.
Lacking arguments with which to debate in good faith and without possible solutions to almost any of the problems suffered by the people, the authorities have opted for something more macabre to block the criticism: they have imposed “criticism as a norm.” That is something we can understand as, “If they want to criticize, let them, in the end we are not going to change and we are not going to leave.”
Today we are stuck on this point. Criticism bombards us, every day we all criticize. But in fact, the fundamental questions seem immovable. And there are those who, already bored and fed up, surrender.
But there are others who realize that criticism alone will not solve much of anything. And it’s not worth the trouble to waste every day explaining what needs no explanation, except to the slowest minds.
Those who have already noticed, among whom I include myself, think that it is time to establish clear points politically unacceptable for these times, and for civil society to begin to demand concrete answers.
We know that the government is putting its last bet on not allowing people to communicate, connect and organize. And this implies taking the necessary measures to maintain its credibility among the population.
This is the challenge now: in these conditions we must make the leap and manage to compete politically. From the condition of the weakest, the most vulnerable, but with heads as hard as a rock, to be able to resist without giving up thinking, with enthusiasm and above all with responsibility.
Different alternatives to the current government have every right to exist in Cuba. The people have the right and the duty to listen to other voices and to decide their own destiny.
Enough of playing with the chain. From this point forward, the fight must be directly with the monkey.*
*Translator’s note: From an expression with obvious meaning: “You can play with the chain, but don’t touch the monkey.”
The Cuban Catholic Church’s press media have tried in recent days various efforts to clean up a bit the image of one who has already come to be known as The Cardinal of Ignominy or The Cardinal of Indignity.
It isn’t that I want to take up against the purple and much less against the Cuban clergy and the body of the Church founded by Peter. But the fact that the Church and its media want to excuse Cardinal Jaime Lucas Ortega Alamino in front of the world is something embarrassing and we should denounce it in front of as many media as are at the service of what we call a press without a gag and without ties.
For those of us who in one way or another have been tied to the Cuban Church and who feel ourselves to be faithful believers in her doctrine, it is difficult to imagine in the midst of the 21st century the image of a church complicit with those who stripped her of her belongings and made her feel sterile until the beginning of the 1980’s when they allowed her to make the journey of the Pilgrim Cross.
The words of no press media of the Church can, nor will ever be able, to erase the message of the Cardinal when he visited in the United States: a speech paraphrased from some leader of a fruitless revolution. A presentation in which the words that were on his lips were charged with hate and lies against thirteen Cubans who, days before the visit of His Holiness (Pope Benedict XVI) to Cuba, occupied the Church of La Caridad (Virgin of Charity) in Central Havana. I repeat again, and would not tire of testifying, that the speech given was taken from the desk of the ideological head of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba.
The press media at the service of the Church, instead of being occupied with so much collaboration and servitude to a man who hides even his own background as does Jaime Lucas Ortega Alamino, should give explanations as to why, in the last few years, the entry of foreign priests and nuns has been limited on behalf of the Cuban authorities, should give an accounting of how many temples in Cuba are in bad physical shape, and what is the exact number of new religious buildings constructed after the year 1959.
These are things of which we can talk, and not about an ill-achieved civil society set up by religious leaders full of rumors, and who fill their stomachs at tables as if they were those of presidents, forgetting the reality and the famine of thousands of Cuban homes.
If the Cuban Church wishes to defend itself from possible conspiracies, that could only exist in the minds of persons incapable of assuming the responsibility of their actions and words, it is best that it buy itself a dog that barks, bites, and scares away others.
Cardinal, I am one of those people who doesn’t hide my expression of what I feel, I love my Virgin of Charity, I love the Faith, but it would be impossible for me to love you as a person and much less to follow your teachings. On various occasions I have written about the Cuban Church and, in many of these texts, I have not doubted in saying what to me are truths that many do not know.
The moment in which we are living is a moment of radical changes; now let us not speak of dialogue, let us speak of changing all of that which must be changed. Perhaps now the Church would like to speak of dialogue, after sitting at the table of dictators and having received some crumbs. We as a people and a nation do not want any dialogue with the Church, and much less with the authorities in power. We want that each and every one carry on their shoulders what, during five decades, they have caused to each Cuban; we want that each one be seated in the bench of the accused, whomever they may be and whatever rank they may have.
Civil Society in Cuba is all of us and not just a few. Civil Society is that which walks and rises today in the resurgence of a new nation that approaches to contemplate a new dawn already near.
The Cuban Church would be different if it gave way to new voices charged with juvenile energy, or people who are willing to revolutionize a church subject to the bribes of a corrupt and stagnant government. Let us recall that the abuse of children on behalf of clergy and the religious jumps to the forefront in any commentary and shakes the foundation of the Church the whole world over and Cuba is not the rule of the exception.
Has anyone asked themselves: Why haven’t similar cases been published in Cuba? Perchance the Cuban clergy doesn’t have the same weaknesses as those of other priests and religious persons? There is much to continue talking about and many topics that tarnish the role of the Church and its leaders and implicate it in a dark plot with a government that is a detractor of Christian faith. One should go on to ask: Might this not be one of the reasons for which the Cuban Church is subject to comply with what the Cuban government wants? There are many more questions to ask and, in reference to this last, I urge others to write and uncover these hidden truths.
As far as a possible conspiracy to destroy the Cardinal, I am convinced that it doesn’t exist, what I can assure you is that very soon we will erase that smile from the face of the Porcelain Doll: the name by which the Cuban Cardinal is known in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community who also form part of the body of the Cuban Church.
It is impossible for the press media of the Church to speak about these things so openly, but whosoever of us has the power of the word, let us do so from our podiums each time that it is possible.
According to the latest official figures, the 2011-2012 sugar harvest (still unfinished) will amount to only 1.4 million tons, similar to that of the year 1895 in the 19th century, when the War of Independence against Spanish rule began. It doesn’t seem like 117 years have passed! In other economic lines the failures, like the sorrows of the popular song, also crowd in: in the production of milk, beef, pork, vegetables, fruit, etc. It’s better not even to mention fish — we apparently live in a landlocked territory and not in an archipelago.
Much of the unproductive land of the state farms is full of maribou weed, and continues to be unproductive and full of marabou weed in hope of some decision from on high that will require it to be turned over to the campesinos, even if it is only for their exclusive use and not ownership (beggars can’t be choosers!). And the stockpile (also state-owned) of agricultural products continued from bad to worse. The sale of building materials to the populace, to repair their homes, cannot keep up with demand, and is also a breeding ground for lawlessness and corruption, which prevails in many areas of society, despite the unleashed persecution and repression, because they do not attack the root causes — low wages in national currency, which do not meet the minimum needs for survival.
In the so-called hard-currency stores the shortage of basic commodities is striking, revealed by shelves either completely empty or with just a few exotic items, which nobody buys because of their high prices. To tighten the citizens’ belts even further, the new customs regulations that will be implemented soon (the date is constantly changing) eliminate the exemption for food products that they enjoyed in recent years. Now they are included in the maximum weight that will be allowed to enter. In the often repeated words of that sage Bobo de Batabanó: “We were few and Catana gave birth!”
The few measures taken, authorizing with limitations what should never have been prohibited (buying and selling homes and vehicles, small private businesses, some self-employed trades, etc.), have no direct impact on the causes of the national economic crisis, as they relate mainly to the area of services and not to production.
Despite the speeches, official statements, articles in the press, and the triumphalism of the news, both television and radio, this truly serious situation is very difficult to conceal from the eyes of the population, who have to suffer daily.
Because of this, it is noteworthy that they dedicate so much time and space to criticizing the little that the President of the United States (our eternal enemy) has done in his nearly four years in office, without saying anything about our four. Four years is equivalent, in most of the democratic countries, to a full presidential term. So far no visible, real, or stable results have appeared anywhere, nor can the beginning of any solution to our long crisis be felt. While updating “the model” and repeating each of the “guidelines,” chapter and verse, until boredom sets in, we are moving backwards, like the crab. Perhaps that is the new way forward in the socialism of the 21st century, and I am showing my economic illiteracy! Anyway, the tunnel is as dark as before, without any light visible, and time passes inexorably.
A journalist from abroad asked me about the content and the implementation of something known in Law as Right of Appeal, which in Cuba turns out to be problematic.
In our case, the first problem is that our multi-awarded compatriot Yoani Sanchez brought this action against the Minister of Interior, General Abelardo Colome Ibarra.
The reason why Yoani did such a thing is that she has been invited, on nearly twenty occasions, to receive her awards abroad, but has never been given a “White card” — the permission to leave the country — so she can receive her awards in person.
The second problem is that in the XXI century the world has evolved enough, so that in any country its citizens are the most important thing. And that means we must treat these people with the human dignity that José Martí claimed for the Cubans and that is now found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The third problem is that “according to the law” the actions of the government and the state must have legal foundations and legal procedures that are clearly established, known, and within reach of citizens, enabling them to defend their rights in any given situation.
The fourth problem is that when we act ignoring the laws and legal procedures that exist, we fall in the arbitrariness of the authorities, something not very well regarded in these times.
The fifth problem is that the people will never tolerate this arbitrariness indefinitely, and they will begin, as the well-known blogger has, to use the resources that the national law gives… to the protesters.
The sixth problem is that the problem now created (and forgive the redundancy) could have been avoided by respecting Article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic:
Every citizen has the right to make complaints and petitions to the authorities and to receive the attention or the appropriate responses on time, according to the law.
Perhaps we can find a moral in all this: Problems can be avoided … when rights are respected.
Dressed like a gypsy. Wide skirt, brightly colored scarf. As she casts the cards for her customers, she smokes a mop of cheap tobacco. Her name is Luisa, and although she claims to be 52, her sad eyes, wrinkled face, and decayed teeth give her the appearance of an old woman who has already reached one hundred.
She is one of the many fortune tellers who make their living in Havana by foretelling the future through Spanish cards or by peering at the lines in the hands of their customers.
In five minutes, in a calm voice she tells you what will happen with your life in the next decade. She foretells misfortune, foreign travel, money, or marital infidelity.
At times, when the deck of cards sends a message, she sheds a tear. Luisa is an artist in her work. If “death” is whispered in the ear of the one whose future she is currently consulting, she changes her voice like a ventriloquist.
This genuine Havanan was born one rainy night in 1959 in the poor neighborhood of Carraguao, in the municipality of Cerro. Before discovering her ability to diagnose cancer or a stroke of luck by simply looking at a person’s eyes, she worked in a textile factory on the outskirts of Havana.
Her life would make a bitter and realistic novel. Like those of Pedro Juan Gutierrez. She was a laborer and a militia member. And also a prostitute. She always searched out the money that would allow her to feed her children.
In the special period — that economic, material, and values crisis that has now lasted 22 years — her eldest daughter, knowing her mother’s abilities to “see things,” proposed that she seriously take up palmistry and fortune telling.
She read ten or twelve old books on those subjects. By means of the illegal cable antenna, she observed the modus operandi of Walter Mercado, the king of astral horoscopes and predictions in the southern United States.
A friend who practiced Santeria taught her to throw santera snail shells and various tricks for extracting information from people. When she was ready, she began to prophesy the fate of bystanders in various city streets. In Cuba, where the future is tomorrow and the most immediate plans are those made for the weekend, people like her, able to foresee the future, will always have success guaranteed.
Some days she works ten hours. After listening to the predictions, some end up laughing, others crying. But Luisa always returns to her room in a dilapidated tenement, with the pockets of her wide skirt full of five-peso notes, the price charged for each streetside consultation.
“Every day I look for between 100 and 200 pesos (5 to 10 dollars). I return home very tired. I fall into bed like a stone. People to whom I have predicted a trip abroad, and it happens, locate me and then give me money or clothes, telling me, “Madam, you were right, I am now living in that country. I am grateful to you,” says Luisa.
Since February 2011, she has had a license as a self-employed worker. She pays 65 pesos a month. She claims her forte is predicting death.
“Out of ten cases that I prophesy it, nine die. Sometimes out of pity I don’t tell them.” Two months ago, she told a neighbor that he would die in two weeks. “A few days later, he came to me: ’Luisa, you were wrong, I’m still alive.’ I looked into his eyes and knew he had but a few hours left, I preferred to keep quiet. The next morning he died of a heart attack. The trouble is that a fortuneteller cannot predict her own future.”
Photo: One of the fortune tellers who casts cards for tourists in Old Havana, although she is shown here with one of the many girls who dress as folklore characters for their 15th-birthday photos.
“There exists the phenomenon of whitening, and if you being black do not proclaim yourself to be so, you are in a demagogic position, of little ethic. In Cuban culture it is fundamental to achieve that people assume and be what they are. The defiance lies in forming a conscience, in which there will be no racial prejudice, stereotype and racism.”
Dr Esteban Morales, Cuban political scientist and essayist
“Cuban Color”, Trabajadores (Workers) periodical, December 14, 2009, p. 7. Printed Edition.
The question came up by coincidence, while we were showing the nursery children the book “Barbie Anfitriona” –Barbie Hostess– (Mattel Inc., Megaediciones, 2003). Naturally, each girl wanted to be a Barbie. On the page offering recipes for a surprise lunch for the birthday of the best friend, there is a pretty photo with the three Barbies. Then a discussion began between two little ones whereby the one with very dark skin argues with her friend over the right to be the light-skinned Barbie with red hair. An incident without importance were it not for the glaring fact that the girl insisted and even cried because she was not black, but “mulata” (mestiza).
The results of the survey are not conclusive but have much in common with the experiences of North American lawyer Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993), who together with the Legal Defense Fund of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), put together a panel of experts covering the fields of history, the economy, the political sciences and psychology. Of particular significance was a study in which psychologists Kenneth and Mamie Clark tried to determine how segregation affected the self-esteem and mental well-being of Afro North Americans. Among other impressive determinations, it was found that children between three and seven years of age preferred white dolls over black ones, all other things being equal.
Out of curiosity we made a superficial visit to the best-stocked toy stores in the Cuban capital and the observations made demonstrated that there are for sale no black dolls, or mestizas, although the offerings improve in stores specializing in handicrafts, in terms of those dolls dedicated to religious rituals, generally crafted of cloth and dressed in traditional garb. However it is relatively easy to buy at various prices, white dolls, be they Barbie or not, with straight hair in different colors, dressed with modern and elegant clothes.
It is absurd to evaluate racial and identity problems as something foreign to Cuban childhood. It is like attempting to cover the sun with one finger. Dr. Morales has demonstrated publicly the cultural insufficiencies in Cuban grade-school books in reference to African themes. It is known that “studies of gender and the feminist vision gave way in investigations and social analyses to other dimensions of inequality, such as racial, territorial, economic and of class” (http://www.amecopress.net/ January 27, 2012).
The sociological studies carried out by governmental organizations like the Centro de Investigaciones Psicológicas y Sociales (CIPS: Center for Psychological and Social Research) among others, demonstrate that since the decade of the 90’s of the 20th century, when the Cuban government introduced the economic reforms that accompanied the circulation of a double currency, “the losers” are women, the black and mestizo population, the migrant and elderly, sectors that have been able to take less advantage of the opportunities opened up by the reform.
It is not easy to find current Cuban studies about racism and its dismal influence over childhood. Due to the rapid growth of boys and girls, we do not have the power to change from one day to the next the low self-esteem of Afro-descendant children, but it is within the reach of ACDEI (ASOCIACIÓN CUBANA PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LA EDUCACIÓN INFANTIL– Cuban Association for the Development of Childhood Education) to stimulate the self-esteem and confidence in themselves of those we educate. We gave away photos of 2010’s Miss Universe to white girls with a simple dedication:
Mom, dad and family:
Your daughter __________ is very pretty and if she studies a lot, learns to defend herself and practices sports, come tomorrow she can be as beautiful as Miss Universe 2010.
We did the same with the Afro-descendant little girls. The only difference was in the photos of different moments of Angolan Leila Lopes, Miss Universe 2011, which were distributed among the little girls with the note written over the main photo, where the recently crowned queen smiles beside Miss Universe 2010.
We do not know if, as the children of the daycare grow, they will accept their ethnic background, but at least we assume as a duty to invite their families to reflect with optimism on the subject.
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”. These are words of Eleanor Roosevelt, president of the commission that drew up the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the United Nations. ACDEI works to successfully deliver a message to children, their families and educators. Cuba is a multiracial nation, therefore the absent dolls with other features and colors of skin are necessary toys in toy stores. Besides, the dolls that are already on sale are going to be very happy with their company. Dolls are not racist!
Holy Emmanuel I Selassie I JAH RASTAFARI, Light of This World and Creator of the Universe, May the Peace be in InI and his holy spirit illuminate us and protect everyone. Let it be so!
Blessings, my adored family. After the passing of the tense moment, I ask you, my love: how did you see everything? To me it seemed like craziness, above all because the policeman who was in the cabaret, a so-called Ernesto (Martinez Ramirez), simply didn’t appear at the trial.
You saw, Ne, this was bad from the start. Look, before leaving the prison I had several run-ins with the Babilon, because they made me take off my white shirt. They didn’t want me to take the patchouli, incense, nor the turban I had on so that the judges wouldn’t see them. Then I told them a few things without loosing my temper, all in good judgement, Ne, any which way I got tense.
When I go down, they handcuff me and put me in the car. They take me to the chief officials outside, close to where you guys come through when you come in here. There they took me down and, Ne, waiting there was a man named Pacheco and a higher-up from the DNA (Dirección Nacional Anti-Droga, that is, the National Anti-Drug Administration). He said he was the Chief here in prison. He spoke with me, telling me to be careful what I said at the trial, that he had learned about me, and everything was positive, but this has taken on a new path and I was going to calmly cooperate with his help in prison. That my family had written, and that what will come to pass will be determined in the Vista Oral.
Then they put me in the car, and they followed us in their white Lada to the courthouse. When we arrived, I was placed in a cell. Well, Ne, I don’t know what you think, nor how everything will turn out, not even what it is we are expecting. Supposedly that justice be served, but there were subjects that were not even touched upon in the trial, and many details needing clarification. For a moment I thought they would end the session in order to continue the next day, since two important policemen were missing: the one who assaulted me during the arrest (plate 45717), and none other than the accuser (Ernesto Martinez Ramirez).
But when the judges decided that the absent witnesses were not necessary, Ne, my heart sank. I believe they have decided on sentencing without clearing up the facts. But I quickly turn around, my queen, and I think positive, because we cannot, no matter how unjust they are, be anticipating, nor putting negative thoughts which, like I told you, my Ne, that only brings bad things: to the body, mind, and soul. And you know I wish for the family to remain in perfect harmony and good health.
Ne, tell mom to present a letter at the Prosecutors’ explaining well everything that was missing, and the importance of those two witnesses who irresponsibly didn’t attend trial. The importance of the closed circuit cameras which are the ones who can say what really happened, those which we know have been used in some cases to incriminate persons who have committed crimes. The manipulation of my file from the station on Picota street: because, Ne, the agent from DNA who declared at the trial isn’t Yoandrys Solón Hidalgo: the one who went there I don’t even know, Ne, I’ve never even met him, and he wasn’t the one listed on the list of witnesses cited by the Prosecution in the Provisional Conclusions.
You saw what little seriousness there was in his declaration, he didn’t even know the address to my house. Ne, this is too much, I hope the judges have taken note of everything, or if not the fire of the Highest is going to burn all of them, because Jahovia surely does not allow tricks.
I, Ne, am a bit anxious, I barely sleep. I awaken at four in the morning thinking, my queen, when will all this anguish end. I think of the children who are so beautiful, Ne. You saw how Amani talked to me on the telephone? And Jahseh, how big he’s grown! There I write him a little letter, for I don’t want this situation to estrange us bit by bit and that communication be lost.
Ne, we can’t cease praying, demanding divine justice, my love, and without fearing what Man can do to us, always increasing our faith that everything is going to go well, with the help of the ABSOLUTE ALL-POWERFUL OMNIPRESENT CREATOR.
Ne, don’t go through difficulties. If it’s necessary, we’ll sell the instruments little by little, but for(the three of you. Don’t worry about me for now. They are giving a bit of potato, and the brethren here always give me their’s, because they know how our (vegetarian) diet is and so I am surviving.
I would desire some fruits to heal my stomach, which burns a lot. Try going to 15 and K, to see if they will authorize you to bring them to prison. And also garlic or scented clove for the molar, which gives me such pains, and the care of a dentist is bad or, better said: there isn’t any. They fix things with pills and you know InI doesn’t take those. Garlic is a natural antibiotic.
Ne, I also need, if you can, a sheet lighter in color: there are many mosquitoes and I think the green one attracts them. Aloe vera, paper clips to organize my papers and pamphlets, a toothbrush. If you can get pencil or pens, because this one is running out. If you can, some natural oils: pachouli, jasmine, whichever, Ne, because there is a lot of stench and humidity.
Also bring your beautiful smile and the boys. Ne, don’t feel stifled, flow: if you can’t bring anything, that doesn’t matter. Ne, have faith and patience, nothing of sadness that soon we will be together again, my adored queen. Take very good care of the boys, I know this is needless to say. And take a lot of care of yourself. I don’t want you to destroy yourself thinking nor suffering.
Tell mom to come and see me. Greetings to all the brothers who are close to you, who accompany you, give you support, and help you. Give them my blessings. Remember the Sabbath, Ne, to rest. Don’t allow the good customs at home to be lost. It is good for the health and you know it, nothing should change because the law of Jahovia is immutable.
I love you very much, my sweet maiden.
BLESSINGS.
STRENGTH.
RESISTANCE.
I dedicate these lines to Prince JAHSEH MAKONNEN from his dad TINGO FARI.
Jahseh, my son, I hope that in spite of this distance you find yourself in good health mentally and very fundamentally spiritually. Nene, I am going through some difficult moments, but at the same time I am very calm, because I know that all of you back home, desire me to be there, and that is the energy that soon will take me there.
I don’t know how long it will be, son. I can’t make any promises to you in that regard, since it doesn’t depend on me, but you have to be prepared because the time is JAH. I only ask you, my son, as major head of all the males present in the household, that you take good care of mom for me, behaving well and taking on all of the responsibilities as if you were me. You are already big and you can understand things better. You should help mom a lot, so that she doesn’t get worn out, mainly harmonizing a lot with little Amani, teach him sweetly, guide him as the youth that he is in everything, and have a lot of tolerance for his immaturity, remembering that he is innocent, and love him, giving him a lot of affection, that he not be absent in any work when you refer to him.
You should always be head of the family and keep watch that peace cover the home. This you accomplish behaving exemplary in school. You should be attentive to your studies and also your circus school. Concentrate your mind on what you must do so that come tomorrow you give happiness and prosperity. Have your hand always at the ready to cooperate at home and that the last thing be playing. You will have time to play, but first you must help your mom in all daily chores. I know this will be difficult for you, but think of the responsibility your father has given you, and sacrifice yourself so that good may govern at home and there won’t be sadness.
You can’t be a transmitter, yourself, of any energy that leads your mom to feel bad. Be jealous with the house and careful with everything, learning always, my prince. You should become accustomed to praying with mom and with your little brother Amani. Even at bedtime, sing psalms and invoke JAH, so your wishes will be fulfilled. Do not doubt it, dedicate your space to father Jahovia and he will give you reward.
I desire very soon to see you all, but first finish your classes. I need that gift from you: that you pass everything with good grades, that way we will be like always a happy family.
Havana, Cuba. Today I’d love to invite you for a stroll with my wife and I down Avenue 42 of the beach from 41 to 34. A spacious avenue with wide sidewalks and lawns with dense vegetation.
I’d like to reflect on what’s wrong with calling a snack bar “Today As Yesterday”. Although the Cuban government permits the creation of private businesses, it maintains a control over them, control that apparently could even question the name that we give them.
