Yaíma gets off an Iberia airplane twice a year and sets foot on the Eastern part of the island. She is young and she aims to eat up the world in one bite. She does not flee the current crisis, she says, because to her the real crisis is a glass of sugar water during any given night of the 90′s, or the hours of walking by foot in order to arrive to a rural school where she used to study. She left Cuba during the height of her career as a speech therapist. In other words, when she had the opportunity to learn more. But in Spain, she learned without difficulties and she now steps out of that airplane twice a year, takes a breath, and enters the deep country to spread her sadness or to say that she is not happy, although she may seem to be, she says.
Yonniel won the “new lottery” twice, that lottery for non-conformist Cubans. He traveled to Venezuela as a collaborator of a sports mission (First lottery) and trained adolescents in the Venezuelan state of Barinas to become successful weight lifters, so much so that they offered to extend his contract for two more years (Second lottery). He has returned to Cuba for vacation twice with some articles for the house, Brazilian sandals, a gold watch, the necessary dollars to not stress himself (for a while) and a few extra pounds on him. He seems to be a happy man as he fixes his new Venezuelan life, without children and with a new woman.
They are two different exiles that are, yet, the same. Two ways of leaving Cuba to return for different reasons. They are Cubans who, right now, have taken the country with them in a book bag and have planted it over there, where they think about it from far away. They are two Cubans of the current times, those who do away with the chains in whichever way they can and try to breath some air far way from the daily vigilance, although they live different oppressions. Two methods of seeking a position in the list of success. Two Cubans of Post-Castro life?
Images like these show what can be seen on our walks along various Cuban streets.
The photos for today were taken in the capital, Havana, in different places near the Capitol Building. They show the state in which we find the immense majority of all Cuban buildings.
These edifices are those that are falling down daily and leaving innumerable families homeless. They fall in and leave us mourning in our homes, they are the collapses that in many cases are still inhabited by people who have no place to go.
This is the art harvested by this ill-fated Revolution during more than half a century of dictatorship. This is what makes the need for housing one of Cubans’ most urgent problems or our times.
We pray to God that these images don’t flourish more in our lens and that this art of making ruins on the part of those who are sunk in misery ends soon.
We pray to God also to invoke the Great Architect of the Universe that he is, that he deigns, with his T-square and compass to be the architect of the resurgence of this nation.
These photos, taken in the Cafeteria La Marina, show three snapshots where a couple of tourists appear in the foreground, judging by their skin color they are Europeans sitting at a table ordering something to be enjoyed at that moment.
In the background you can see some children in shirts and shorts looking at the same snack bar looking at the list of ice creams offered in a currency that is not the same money in which their parents are paid. Their look shows their delight at the idea of tasting one of these, but apparently they don’t have enough money.
Sunday afternoon was becoming warm and the children were still glued to the bar in the cafeteria, after a long time they all decided to gather some money and buy a bottle of natural water to relieve the heat and suffocation of playing. The most beautiful thing for me is the fact that they shared the water bottle, sip by sip, and none of them left without drinking.
The children went out to play in the street again and the tourists began to enjoy what the children had perhaps wanted but could not have.
A military construction company has attacked the building of the condominiums pictured on the photo above. The ones on the left that are already painted belong to the S.A Cuban Aviation Company (ECASA), a dependency of Civil Aeronautics. The ones on the right are property of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT).
A while ago, there was a promotional billboard at the entrance which explained the efforts and the details of the project. Right at the moment of the worst housing situation, and amid the moment in which they have named General Rodiles as the head of the Physical Planning, these brand-new 4 story buildings have been erected. Once again, the officials of Military Counter-Intelligence, the Heads of Penitentiary Establishments, and the Provincial Delegation of the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) are the ones that benefit from the facilities which have been given to them, at the expense of the nation.
Neighborhoods such as “El Piti” and “La Fornet” on the outskirts of the Alcides Pino Cigar Factory, and “La Colora”, are the ones which harbor the worst face of Holguin, the so-called City of Parks.
Four years ago, a wave of unemployment shook these marginal neighborhoods, also known as “Give and Takes”. At the forefront of these repressive actions was the current Minister of Education, Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, who is also the First Secretary of the Communist Party in the province. The evictions, after all the legal challenges and official propaganda, were held back thanks to the organization of the affected — a celebrated march along with their children through the center of the city, as well as the support and solidarity of various human rights activists who have often suffered beatings, detentions, and confiscations of cameras and voice recorders during that time.
OUTSIDE the sun is blindingly hot, and in the immigration office 100 people are sweating profusely. But no one complains. A critical word, a demanding attitude, could end in punishment. So we all wait silently for a “white card,” authorization to travel outside Cuba.
The white card is a piece of the migratory absurdities that prevent Cubans from freely leaving and entering their own country. It is our own Berlin Wall without the concrete, the land-mining of our borders without explosives. A wall made of paperwork and stamps, overseen by the grim stares of soldiers. This capricious exit permit costs over $200, a year’s salary for the average Cuban. But money is not enough. Nor is a valid passport. We must also meet other, unwritten requirements, ideological and political conditions that make us eligible, or not, to board a plane.
With so many obstacles, receiving a “yes” is like hearing the screech of the bolts pulled back on a cell door. But for many, like me, the answer is always “no.” Thousands of Cubans have been condemned to immobility on this island, though no court has issued such a verdict. Our “crime” is thinking critically of the government, being a member of an opposition group or subscribing to a platform in defense of human rights.
In my case, I can flaunt the sad record of having received 19 denials since 2008 of my applications for a white card. I left an empty chair at every conference, every award ceremony, every presentation of my books. I never received any explanation, only the laconic phrase “For now, you are not authorized to leave the country.”
But it is not only dissidents or critics who suffer these mobility restrictions. Hundreds of doctors, nurses and health professionals whom the government values too much to risk losing know that choosing those professions means they will save lives but will be unlikely to see other latitudes. They have seen their families separated, their children go into exile, while they wait for the authorities’ approval to leave. Some wait three years, five years, a decade, forever.
The blacklist of those who cannot cross the sea is long, and though the information is never published, we all know how the system works. And so we don masks of conformity before the watchful eyes of the state, hoping to achieve the cherished dream of crossing national boundaries. The exit permit thus becomes a method of ideological control.
A few days ago Ricardo Alarcón, president of the Cuban Parliament, told a foreign interviewer that the government is studying a radical reform of emigration. But we all know how the Cuban government utilizes the euphemism “we are studying” to buy time in what could become a wait of decades.
In reality, these same authorities are unwilling to give up this rich industry that brings them millions of dollars a year in fees for entering and leaving the country. The rumors fly but the locks never open.
A year ago, for example, as I was applying for permission to attend an event in Spain, the news “broke” that Cubans would soon travel freely. When I asked the official handling my request if it was true, she sneered at me, “Go to the airport and see if they let you leave without a white card.”
That same afternoon, as I was issued one more denial, my cellphone rang insistently in my pocket. A broken voice related to me the last moments in the life of Juan Wilfredo Soto, a dissident who died several days after being handcuffed and beaten by the police in a public park. I sat down to steady myself, my ears ringing, my face flush.
I went home and looked at my passport, full of visas to enter a dozen countries but lacking any authorization to leave my own. Next to its blue cover my husband placed a report of the details of Juan Wilfredo Soto’s death. Looking from his face in the photograph to the national seal on my passport, I could only conclude that in Cuba, nothing has changed. We remain in the grip of the same limitations, caught between the high walls of ideological sectarianism and the tight shackles of travel restrictions.
Yoani Sanchez is the author of “Havana Real: One Woman Fights to Tell the Truth About Cuba Today.” This article was translated by Mary Jo Porter from the Spanish.
Members of the Alternative Cuban Blogosphere and friends, walking in Havana
Translator’s note: This article by Regina is from the blog of Ernesto Hernandez Busto,, Penultimos Dias. It is a response to a commentary by Ernesto, “The Gap,” which appears below in translation.
The gap exists; but it also existed in the GDR the day before the wall fell, and in Romania, just as they started to boo Ceaucescu, and in the USSR and the rest of the disappeared countries of European socialist, except, perhaps, Poland. This allows me to be a little more optimistic with respect the moment of closing the gap.I love the ethics of the day after, precisely for something Dagoberto Valdes has called “the anthropological damage.” It is no coincidence that the enemies of the government have always been reduced to the human condition, a strategy means to depreciate the individual to the masses: it’s easy to crush a worm, eliminate the scum; in so many years of vulgar nationalist discourse, annexationism is the anti-Christ and the word “mercenary” has economic evocations that try to demonstrate profit at the expense of the country’s difficulties.
The postures toward a radical change are many, one commentator aptly notes that many very well informed will not lift a finger to support the change or to show solidarity with the opposition. I also see a paradox, because it’s said that those who live better would not bet on change. Within this small segment of the population that has grown rich, there are those who live not only according to capitalist standards, but who want more capitalism than can be found in today’s Cuba. They will not involve themselves in the change, but when it is secured, they would not oppose to it.
The moral gap is joined to another: What is the program of the dissidence? Pointing out the aberrant dysfunctionality of the government turns out to be much easier than developing a proposal to overcome the present moment. Parties, groups, points of view, in which everyone wants unity — but unity around their own idea — is a repeat of the political scheme they are trying to combat. I talk with or read — without prejudice — the opponents from across the spectrum. Eventually, I wouldn’t vote for them, but now they are fellow travelers whom I would not attack in public, doing the job of the political police. If I, who am a step beyond dissent, don’t feel myself represented, what can we expect from those who are unaware and/or waiting?
It’s hard to know what ordinary Cubans think. Those who interest themselves in being informed, seek out the information. Most are not interested but they can’t avoid it: changing the dial to hear their favorite program, waiting for the ball game or the soap opera, leafing through Bohemia magazine for the crossword puzzle, on the advertisements — from a poster in the pharmacy to the huge ones in the shopping centers… So I had the experience with two people situated among the discontented who didn’t dare do anything, of convincing them that the essence of the Ladies in White is not walking for money. Their arguments uncritically echoed what they’d seen or heard on Cuban mass media.
Are those who dance and shout in front of Laura Pollan’s house evil? They are university students, many think they’re doing the right thing, and undoubtedly consider themselves good people. Anthropological damage, because if you aren’t taught it at home, or don’t have the influence of a religious or fraternal organization, the difficulty is that it’s in the schools where kids today find their ethical compass. I also had a terrible experience with a friend of my son, young and intelligent, who expressed no qualms about participating in a repudiation rally.
The gap in favor of the government takes place within that immanence called time, against which our aged rulers can do nothing. And if the heterogeneity among the dissidence is notable, so should be that great “unity around me” — between secrets and whispers — of the officials and soldiers of the government. Another thing will be if it is for or against democracy.
Regina Coyula
Havana
21 April 2012
Young people “delivered” by the Young Communist Union dancing outside Laura Pollan’s house during one of the repudiation rallies against the Ladies in White.
The Gap
by Ernesto Hernandez Busto, 17 April 2012
After five years of “aggregating” Cuban news from many sources and making visible to others what does not usually appear in the mainstream media, I think I’m in a position to notice a symptom — in my view a disturbing one — that I find in a good part of the discourse of our cyberdissidence: namely, the belief that to the extent that they fill the vacuum produced by the lack of information, the People will turn to the Good side, let’s say, as the veil that has prevented individuals from recognizing the definitive political Truth falls from their eyes. There is no suggestion, not even a suspicion, that this People already knows — or at least intuits — the Truth, and has chosen, instead, to stand on the side of its immediate interests rather than to openly align itself with civic activism and the defense of democracy.
The consensus of the Cuban opposition is undeniable: we can see it in the evolution of the discourse of Yoani Sánchez, Eliécer Ávila or the organizers of Estado de SATS, who have been critical of specific aspects of Cuban society (the press, transportation, housing, the state of the economy…), and in a political “consciousness” (to use a term from Marxist jargon) that calls into question the entire discourse of the legitimizers of the Castro regime. It is encouraging also to see how new faces have joined a growing youthful rebellion which is no longer a rare or isolated phenomenon.
But the essence of the problem remains, I believe, in a division that almost no one wants to talk about. This is the deep gap between Cubans with different interests as they face the prospect of a radical change, and of the inevitable price that this implies.
Cuban society today, like it or not, is more pluralistic than five years ago, especially in its pretexts to keep looking askance at the opposition, to not claim the rights of political representation or to keep oneself within a circle of silence and indifference, faced with the dissident ferment. Before, people did not protest out of fear, or because of the nationalistic carryover of “not giving arms to the enemy.” Now, in addition, many Cubans remain silent or don’t get involved because they prefer to defend their incipient economic interests (still at the margin of the State), their properties recently acquired legally, their professions, their subsidized and prestigious lives in the arts, their permissions to travel and all the perks power permits, for example, to artists or classes who consider the status quo less risky than the hypothetical scenario of a “New Cuba,” freer than today.
The difference between those who assume the risks of joining the opposition and those who remain on the sidelines is increasingly, I suspect, of an ethical nature. Deciding to join an act of repudiation is an ethical decision, as well as an immoral one. How does one come to be a “dissident” in Cuba today? And how is it that someone can support beating another person in public for thinking differently? Is it information or an idea about what is right or wrong? Who can force a person to dance, as if at a witches’ sabbath, outside a house under siege? These are the questions we have been asking, over and over again for far too long, without wanting to hear the most obvious and painful answer.
One of the few commentators who have focused on this question is the blogger Lilianne Ruiz, whose religious perspective makes her notably sensitive to the shamelessness of the new Revolutionary philistinism. These new Cuban Philistines, obsessed with the ordinary material goods that the Cuban State now allows them to pursue, feel the contradictory desire to do what everyone else does, and at the same time a febrile ambition to belong to a distinguished circle, in some form or another. It is doubtful they will choose to align themselves with the “radioactives.” Information doesn’t interest them; they are disenchanted with the Castro regime’s ideological propaganda and, at the same time, fascinated by commercial advertising. And the opposition lacks any marketing to offer them.
The fundamental problem facing Cuban activists and dissidents today is not just State Security. It is also this gap — social, ethical and even generational — that the Castro regime has managed to widen to their advantage.
Information in Cuba is hopeless. To give you an idea, with regards to Syria they speak of armed mercenaries from Turkey, but they never say anything about the repression of the El-Assad government. It’s striking that the ETA has never been labeled as a terrorist organization, rather they refer to is the “Basque separatist organization.”
In my press, we Cubans never learn about the link between the Colombian guerrillas and narcotrafficking; instead they devote headlines to the 8% increase in the price of food in Chile! It’s like a friend says, the turkey calls the vulture bald, because here,someone who wasn’t an economist but who took on the subject, determined that goods sold in freely convertible currency were taxed at 240% — yes, that’s not a mistake.
This leader was ousted for trying to suck the honey of power, but the 240 remains, though occasionally we encounter surprises, for example when a liter of vegetable oil went from 1.90 to 2.40. This theme is a sandwich to which I invite you to add other unique approaches to the news in Cuba. I invite you, also, to reflect on how this peculiar approach determines the thinking of those who have no alternative information.
It never leads to protests; not even those journalists, so attentive to the evils of the world, hint at a complaint, or even a mild criticism; they don’t engage their investigative capacity and decide to ask to interview the responsible officials. I remember when someone threw a shoe at Bush, the scene was repeated in all the national and provincial news; but most of the country doesn’t know that a Cuban had his one second of freedom in front of the world during the Pope’s visit. And with these thunderclaps there are still those who believe that independent journalists are paid by the Empire. Information of the greatest interest to the citizenry often remains untouched. To improve the press is one of the issues of the Party Congress: they’ve never fulfilled their agreements.
I began by saying that information is hopeless. But it can be helped.
Some years ago, disenchanted with the neglect of the place and the precarious state of health of the animals, I stopped visiting this formerly wonderful zoo. Opened in 1939 and later expanded, it ranked among the best in Latin America in the 1950s. It provided a pleasant source of recreation and culture for children, teenagers and adults, as well as easy access, located, as it is, in the heart of the city.
A wonderful group of sculptures, created by the artist Rita Longa and located at the park’s entrance, proclaim a priori the beauty that awaits visitors within. The numerous entrances(closed now for many years)from the streets surrounding the park are shuttered by iron gates, which have been eaten away by rust and neglect, but which are miraculously still standing. These once made entry and exit to the site easier on days when attendance was high, such as Saturdays and Sundays.
When speaking to its then director, my friend, more than two decades ago, she told me how upset she was to realize that she lacked the necessary funds or an adequate number of staff to support the animals and maintain the facility. She observed with astonishment, unable do anything about it, how breeding eggs would disappear daily, and how animals would suffer an unbelievable number of accidents, requiring them to be put down. She told me with obvious sorrow that these unfortunate animals were mistreated by the workers themselves in the hope that, once out of circulation, they could be relegated to the “soup kettle.” After several meetings with employees she had to therefore come to an almost conspiratorial agreement with them. They would collect all the birds’ eggs and turn them over to her, whereupon she would decide which ones could be used for a park worker’s breakfast, and which would be set aside for reproductive purposes. As a veterinarian she had to very carefully evaluate the health of each “accidentally injured” specimen in order to determine if and when there was no option other than sacrifice. The most striking case was that of the flamingos, who frequently turned up with broken feet.
The park, then as now, is under the inadequate supervision of Áreas Verdes (Green Spaces), an organization that does not even have the resources to maintain these parts of the city, much less a zoo. Today it has become a separate entity within the National Assembly of People’s Power, which regrettably has no power, and is not as people oriented as its name implies. Unfortunately, this organization also lacks adequate funds for the maintenance and preservation of the facility.
While reading an article on this subject published in the international press today explicitly criticizing the sad state in which the park finds itself, I remembered that sad day when my friend, Maria, took her granddaughter on a stroll through the park, and left it traumatized after seeing baby chicks being thrown to the monkeys for food. (This was at the time when incubated chicks were distributed through ration books. You were supposed to raise them, fattening them up, in order to later slaughter and eat them.) She grabbed one which had escaped the clutches of a startled simian, and took it home where she ended up raising it as a pet for her granddaughter. It at least had the good fortune to live to an old age and die of natural causes.
Though I live in close proximity to the park, it has been years since I have heard the roar of the lions in the afternoon. Nor can chipmunks be seen roaming through the neighborhood gardens. I have a friend and neighbor, Humberto, who adopted an emaciated and sad looking chipmunk who appeared one day in the tree of his patio. He began feeding it, trying little by little to gain its confidence, until it began to approach him, motivated by a loss of fear and a need to eat. Now it is almost always pinned to his chest, like a decoration. Together they stroll the neighborhood to the astonishment and curiosity of all who cross their path.
Mustering all my courage, I decided to go back to the park. The entry fee was only one measly peso (a ridiculous situation today). The entire main entrance, through which the public normally flows, was cordoned off by makeshift bars. The only access was along an adjoining sidewalk.
I was shocked to see how widespread deterioration and neglect are throughout the facility. The cages of the few remaining animals are rusted and very deteriorated. (Quite possibly they are the same ones from fifty years ago.) The famous island of monkeys is deserted, and the waters surrounding it are fetid. In one cage I could see only a pair of resting lions, indifferent to the few people trying to rouse them with screams and gestures. It is worth noting that people visit the facility not out of love for the animals but for the cookies, candies and sweets sold in the cafe, and priced in the inaptly named Cuban peso.
During my tour I spoke with two young veterinarians, who provide services on site, and they commented to me how much they suffered, seeing the public itself mistreating the animals they come to visit. They saw with sadness how a pelican had apparently been killed by thrown stones. They say that this happens often under the indifferent eyes of the adults accompanying children. Added, in response to another question, they said that the peacocks, which used to walk around loose among the visitors, have had to be locked up because they are stolen or killed.
When I asked them why most of the cages didn’t have signs with the names of the animals, they told me something similar: “They tear them off and take them or they throw them.”
This is the sad situation at the Zoo in Havana. I would like this story to serve to call the attention of both the authorities and the citizens, to save this important recreation, educational and cultural facility, that in earlier times filled us with pride.
The defense of the environment, of its flora and fauna, must begin at home!
Whenever I’m bored I try so hard to get out of that state that I think of a new hobby. It seems that boredom makes us aware of the routine, like becoming fully aware of something that is repeated over and over again. So our perception, desperately thirsty for something interesting, goes hunting. I for one think that I sometimes find something to quench the thirst of my attention, but many others, I’m not very aware of it.
I say this because the other day I happened to read a poem by Borges, The Golem. Borges says that the rose being a flower with thorns, leaves, green and red colors, etc. and is reduced to “rose” … and the whole length of the Nile is in the word “Nile.”
I wondered if I could, like a computer program, compiling a lump of things and reduce them to a few non-repeating expressions. To what point could I reduce almost everything to just a symbol or sound?
So it occurred to me to reduce all the speeches of Fidel, of Raul, their crimes, the collapses in the city, the country, the dead, the unpunished abuse of the Ladies in White, all the injustices, the lack of expression, the relentless aging of the rulers, their politics, the real and practical sense of communism, all the hunger and the 53 years of senseless repetition until they become rather boring, all those things in the word, and are just as comical and grotesque onomatopoeia like the sounds of vomiting. Buag: I think that sound could describe it.
Two weeks have passed since I ended my hunger strike, thanks to the wise decision of the Minister of Public Health, Dr. Roberto Morales Ojeda, to reinstate Dr. Rodolfo Martinez and I to the exercise of our profession. Now, with my mind clearer, the memories come in droves, still fresh, of people who coming from different positions, with the most varied intentions and almost always in good faith, tried to dissuade me from continuing my strike.
They did it, I believe, because they care for me and felt that this was not going to lead anywhere. But something caught my attention and alarmed me to the point of sharing this reflection with those of you who follow me here, and that is the argument put forth by the majority: “… stop this because you are going to die, because nothing matters to these people, they are… those who don’t care if you die…” This, along with other imprecations unrepeatable here, is what they said to me.
Briefly, in essence, the idea that most of these people shared with me was: they are deeply convinced that we are facing an absolute and immovable power, uncaring faced with human pain, merciless and capable of letting me die even though faced with the most absolute evidence that what I was demanding was just.
This counsel did not draw them as people in government jobs to serve their people, but as monsters capable of stepping over even a human life in order to wield their power, stopping at nothing, even lying and killing in order to maintain it.
But now comes a different certainty, at least in our case: when they decided to resolve the matter they left nothing to half measures, but fixed everything at one blow including reinstating us both, returning us to our original jobs, full compensation for 66 months of lost wages, the recognition of this time in our work records, and authorization for me to finish my Specialty in Internal Medicine starting from the third year.
That is, it seems we went back to April 2006, and although our personal suffering is unrecoverable and more than one guilty party remains unpunished, I must recognize that this time, finally, they delivered a substantial share of justice for the good of everyone.
So now, if everything was nothing more than an inevitable release of the pressure of this case in its particular context — which of course is not completely foreign to me — and it everything is summed up as a tactic, or if it was a truly ethical solution based on the ultimate conviction that there had been a real injustice; if it was a question of mere political pragmatism or if it were a determination to do what was humanly right, this is something known only to those people who collaborated on the issue, and although I, personally, would love to think that it was the latter possibility, this is something now in the realm of speculation.
Mind you, I close these lines with an invitation to our leaders to meditate deeply on these words that are not mine; the above I transcribe from the mouths of ordinary people, who reflect all the secular fear of their authorities which should call for a profound introspection to explain why a significant share of the people have such a sinister concept of their leadership or the lengths to which it will go to remain in power.
Hopefully this interior exercise will bring out the best and most humane of each person. It will be better, this way, to remain consistent and, for now, with the faith we must have in human betterment.
Allow me to share with you this beautiful poem by Pablo Neruda, which I found on one of the walls near San Francisco square in the historic heart of our dear Old Havana.
Someone was reading it when I found it. Wendy and I situated ourselves behind this person to see what they were reading. To my surprise, it was a poem by Neruda: one of those poems that makes us breathless when we read or recite it.
I did not hesitate an instant to share with my wife, in my own voice, the same poem that on that wall gave its letters to us; I know that when I recited it, I did so in my best voice. When I ended, we both looked at each other with the same conspiratorial, loving look we have shared since we first met.
The person that was in front of us, listening as I recited to my wife this poem that I share with you today, smiled at us.
It Is Forbidden
It is forbidden to cry without learning,
getting up one day without knowing what to do,
being afraid of your memories…
It is forbidden to not smile at your problems,
to not fight for what you want,
Abandoning everything to fear,
not converting your dreams into reality…
It is forbidden to not try to understand people,
to think that their lives are worth less than yours,
to not know that everyone has their own path and happiness…
It is forbidden to not create your history,
to not have a moment for people in need,
to not understand that what life gives you,
it can also take away…
It is forbidden to not look for happiness,
to not live your life with a positive attitude,
to not think that we can be better,
to not feel that without you, this world would not be the same…
The prison guards had a radio on. It was a small transistor radio – an obsolete thing like everything else in the Police Station of La Regla, a town across the Havana bay.
The interrogation offices were decorated in an antiquated style typical for Soviet-like political propaganda: Pictures of the assault on the Moncada Barracks, of the Granma yacht landing, of Che Guevara’s bandaged arm, of the wide-brimmed hat of the disappeared Comandante Camilo… all the icons of the beginning of the Revolution, and all of them bearing Fidel Castro’s quotes.
The walls of the prison glowed with a fresh coat of paint. In a way, it seemed as if they painted the prison in my honour, which filled me with horror. Down in the barred basement, behind the giant padlocks, I got an inconsolable feeling of loneliness. I had no criminal record and this was the first time I was put to jail. In fact, they caught me like a wild animal in a hunt. I was arrested in the street but there no criminal charges were made against me. The task force that took me in did not identify themselves, they didn’t inform my family or friends, they had no legal authorization to detain me and keep me in prison for two days – the two days that Pope Benedict XVI spent on a visit to Havana – a bizarre event of beatitude and barbarism mixed together. Or, if you like, downright Kafkaesque reality on the shores of the Caribbean Sea.
On Tuesday morning, March 29, the day of the Pope’s mass in the Plaza de la Revolucion, the Cuban capital woke up to a nightmare: The whole city was under control of agents and officers, both uniformed and in civilian clothes. They caused traffic jam. They intimidated and arbitrarily detained countless independent journalists, human rights activists, political opponents, as well as beggars and vendors without licenses. And they did all of this before the very eyes of international press correspondents, who were concentrating all their attention on the figure of Joseph Ratzinger, standing in front of his altar, and on facial expressions that the President Raul Castro made at each word of subtle meaning in the Pope’s homily.
Days before that, state telephone companies, ETECSA and CUBACEL, participated in the operation, which was unofficially called “Vote of Silence”, by blocking thousands of telephone lines – without any technical reason, without prior notice and with no right to compensation. Even the highly limited internet services, which are available in Cuba only to two privileged groups – foreigners and elite officials, were cut.
From the very beginning of my imprisonment, I stopped eating and drinking water. I also tried not to pay much attention to the provocation of a State Security attorney, who reminded me of a character from Minority Report. To fill up the time before the Pope takes off to Vatican, he accused me of an alleged “subversive activity” and “public scandal”, for which he didn’t need any proof. H. G. Wells’s time machine kept by the Cuban counter-intelligence organization in the Museum of the Cold War has apparently retained all its functions intact. I wonder why they don’t rename the organization to “Cuban counter-citizen forces”.
Thus, only the small battery-operated radio from the socialist times kept me in touch with the rest of the world beyond the bars of the modern catacombs in which I was imprisoned. Radio broadcasting was the only way I could learn about the passing of time during my imprisonment, which turned to something like the longest dawn in my life. I already started to feel weakness in the muscles and lack of glucose in the brain, when I finally heard the liturgical songs sung during the only hijacked Mass in the history of Catholicism.
It was a sad scene. The Mass was attended by atheist workers, Marxist-Leninist or rather Stalinist labour unionists, not to mention State Security members disguised as Red Cross staff or, who knows, maybe even altar boys. The parishes were denied the right to freely decide which parishioners would go to the Mass as there were “black lists” of people and if anybody’s name was on this list, the person would be instantly dropped off the official bus – the only means of accessing the Plaza de la Revolucion, where the Mass was celebrated. The famous square, whose podium has so many times in history turned to a tribunal of blind masses led by their supreme leader (whom the Catholic Church excommunicated dozens of years ago), hysterically chanting “Death to traitors.”
The Mass served by Benedict XVI seemed endless. By instinct, I knelt and prayed. It was my first time in prison and I didn’t pray to God, but to Joseph Ratzinger himself. I implored him to make his speech shorter, to skip the formalities of the Eucharistic liturgy, I begged that he wouldn’t extend the meeting between the Catholic Church and the Communist Party prescribed by the diplomatic protocol, I prayed that he wouldn’t return the victimizing smiles of the Cardinal de Cuba, I wished that the Pope-mobile could speed him off directly from the altar to the Havana international airport and, if it’s not heresy, I also prayed that the Holy Father would never again accept an invitation that would lead to suppression of poor people in this or any other country-prison.
Note: This article was translated by and originally published in Cubalog.EU.
The government representing the military regime has denied Cubans the universal right to travel freely for more than half a century and still denies this right without any clear prospects towards change. With the greatest cruelty, it has torn millions of Cuban families apart and it still does. Government spokesmen have speculated for months about possible immigration changes and some, as President of the National Assembly Ricardo Alarcon, justify the state of imprisonment in which they keep Cuban, saying they cannot lose the “human capital”. This expression, characteristic of slave masters, reflects the views of those who hold power in Cuba and on Cubans, whom they consider their capital, their property and do not treat them as people with dignity and rights. For the regime the people of Cuba are not citizens but servants.
If it is true that the Government will make changes to immigration policies, why don’t they inform the people which changes will take place and when? They despise the people to the extent that they don’t even respect their right to know. Or is it that the proposed changes are not the rights that we demand in The Heredia Project?
The Heredia Project or National Reunification Law for the end of discrimination against Cubans in Cuba is a citizen proposal based on the Constitution that aims, through a legal, clear and transparent platform, to ensure:
The right for all Cubans, professionals and nonprofessionals, to freely enter and leave their country, without an entry or exit permit, for as long as the person decides, without taxes, or forfeitures, or offal of property, without paying the government for each month they live abroad, paying all procedures in national currency and eliminating forever the punishment that is the “final departure” status assigned by the regime, which means banishment and exile for those choose to live outside of Cuba. We propose an end to humiliating “letters of release” as a condition to travel to doctors and other professionals.
The restoration of full citizenship rights to the Cuban Diaspora and their children as they are full Cubans, no exclusions and all restrictions and requirements to obtain permits must end, so that Cubans living outside Cuba can enter their country whenever they want and for as long as they want and live at home if they choose.
We demand an end to the humiliation, internal deportations and mistreatment of Cubans that in our own country try to escape poverty and lack of opportunities, by moving among provinces.
We demand an end to all inequalities, access limitations, and exclusions for political and ideological reasons and removal of all privations and hardships such as the right to the Internet.
While talking of possible immigration reform, the regime pursues with its full repressive forces activists who collect signatures for The Heredia Project. Some make it easier for those in power when they make echo of this deception against the people. They play along their despotism through statements, publications, conferences and spreading doctrines which call for a vote of confidence in favor of the government of Raul Castro in place of a vote of trust in favor of the people and their rights.
The conference “A Dialogue between Cubans” that begins today in the Priests House of Havana, is organized and led by those in Cuba, who not only despise internal peaceful opposition, but also deny its existence, explicitly, in their publications; they advance more and more in the tunnel of alignment with the lies of the regime and the proposed continuation of totalitarianism, the doctrine that those in power are infatuated with and defend. They are encouraging the oligarchy to continue to deny Cubans their rights. Thus, those who are privileged to have a voice and enjoy of protected spaces to associate, conspire against the true reconciliation and peace that can only be achieved if it satisfies all the rights of all Cubans, their freedom of expression and association and the right to free elections. We would continue claiming these rights even if we were along facing these maneuvers and conspiracies against popular sovereignty.
These “organizers” speak the following words: “the prospects for a relationship between Cuban immigrants and their country of origin, referencing the process of economic reforms or upgrades that have began in Cuba.” We denounce these are the same terms used by the regime to deny the full status of Cubans to those who have left our country in search of the freedom that does not exist in Cuba and to those that the regime keeps treating as banished, exactly as it treats those who currently leave Cuba under the category of “final departure/”. This category of “final departure” is used even in the latest Housing Law, issued a few months ago. What is the outlook then?
The Christian Liberation Movement in a statement issued last March 30th states: The Diaspora is Diaspora because they are Cuban exiles to whom the regime has denied their rights as much as it denies them to all Cubans. The Diaspora must not participate in this oppressive view, which is part of a fraudulent change.
Only in the context of a culture of fear and repression which the government uses to silence the people they are able to implement the painful maneuver that includes some who take political positions from the church, others from their intellectuals windows, others with economic interests and even from the Diaspora, they contribute and participate in this fraudulent change that is the project that the government clearly describes in the phrase: “changes towards more socialism.” Totalitarianism has been constant for over fifty years, but it has not destroyed the hearts of the Cubans, a regime without freedom cannot fabricate people, nor can it fabricate a church or a Diaspora in the frame of their powers and doctrines. No more despotism, doctrines, exclusive and conditioned conferences, enough deceiving maneuvers to justify and consolidate a fraudulent change, which is change without rights, which leaves most of the poor getting poorer and leaves all Cubans without freedom. Cubans in the Diaspora and those of us who live in Cuba, are one people, victims of the same oppressive regime and we have the same hope and the same claim to freedom.
What can I say if I forget everything. Nothing, not even that and not the word nothing. So I carry a load of recordings of the past, what was learned. As if every atom in me, unknowingly or unwittingly, has a file in the autopilot.
Everything I see or I suffer first hand I project into the future as an equation of time. So that the present must exist in the past and the future, and vice versa. All three are very close together. There are some codes of my own personality in all this: a) I am somewhat mystical or metaphysical, on the spiritual side; b) I have always above the other charge, the communist, having been raised when the political context was the most important, or almost the only context.
We know well that it is the rulers who manage literature, education and of course the history that will be diligently read by children and students. Still, knowing it makes it difficult to get away from this fucking inheritance to be as free as I feel or even to try to be.
I logically deduce that my lightweight philosophy has an interesting social mix and a varied content in intelligences and historical realities, which from school — and brought into the subconscious later in American movies, especially those of a certain capitalist didacticism, which we have seen the whole time since we were young — have developed in a progressive way: like a thought comes from another inferior to turn itself into a superior, Cuban youth, the not-so-young dissidence and the independent groups of artists, have become a bit of philosophers as well.
All these people try every day to oppose a force majeure (currently the dictatorship) and not only are making the immediate future possible for all of us — not now for our grandchildren — but little by little this handful of rebel minstrels is flowing, and influencing, in this interesting present of the Island. One could say, then, that they are, from the underground, the most legitimate of society, they are the truth in Cuba.
These representatives of authentic Cuba have been Los Aldeanos, working with portable recorders and singing out on homemade equipment. Porno Para Ricardo, with its playful and yet gritty punk rock. OMNI, those performance artists, all of them poets, singers, special as only they are in their Zonafranca. Yoani Sanchez from technology, shining in independent journalism. And the Ladies in White, as a non-governmental social group who for the first time took the streets of Havana in their strong systematic way. All these people describe a true rebellious before and after of social activity in Cuba, up to the newer projects like Estado de Sats.
Countless young people, and those no longer so young, with their perseverance and respect for the work they do, never disappeared nor will they disappear: they are part of the NOW of our reality of technological devices, not State TV, of the most diverse digital media that allowed their immortality, so that no one will forget it.
Members of the Rastafarian culture on our island are discriminated against by society and by the authorities. They are often linked to crime and deprivation. The Rasta Hector Riscart Mustelier, was arrested at dawn on November 16, 2011, as he left the National Cabaret, across from Central Park, after a performance of the musical group “Herencia” which he directs. The reason: an alleged crime of drug trafficking and resisting arrest. Possible punishment: 10 years in prison.
“The guards wanted to search me front of everyone. I asked them to handcuff and take me to the station. I am an artist and that is a violation of my honor,” said Hector, better known as ‘El Ñaño’. “A policeman was upset, he hit me and handcuffed me on the ground. My turban had fallen to the ground,” he said.
Law enforcement officers in Old Havana, participating in the arrest, acknowledged that the suspect that offered his identity card and then “in order to prevent the operation, he wriggled away, jerking his body. His turban covering his ‘dreadlocks’ (as Rastas wear their hair) came off, revealing two wrappers with 65 grams of marijuana,” according to the provisional findings of the Prosecutor, dated January 30, 2012.
The accusation relied on the statements of the policemen; according to them they had an undercover cop in the cabaret. However, Riscart said there were other interests that led to his arrest: “An officer of the National Drug Task Force identified as Yoandris, proposed that I work with him, I refused and he warned me that I was going to be sorry.”
Other “evidence” for the prosecution, is the detainee’s urine sample, the result confirms the consumption of marijuana — not punishable under Cuban law — but nothing proves the crime he’s charged with.
El Ñaño said his statement can be corroborated by the security cameras where he was arrested. “I demand the presentation of the film, which should be at the service of the citizens,” he said. But it is rumored that, coincidentally, the security cameras did not work that night. El Ñaño also reported that his lawyer was afraid to challenge the authorities.
The prosecution says the accused “was marketing the addictive substance inside the cabaret” but no money has been seized as a result of the apparent business. Neither did they find any drugs in a raid on his home. The prosecutor also said that the accused meets many drug traffickers, but omitted their names and as well as why these so-called “capos” are not in prison.
Yaremis Flores
The trial, held behind closed doors despite being a criminal offense not classified as closed to the public, was concluded on Friday April 13 at the Diez de Octobre Municipal Court rather than the Provincial Court of Havana, although this offense is its jurisdiction. It is expected that there is no new arbitrariness in the application of the law.
