Translating Cuba

In Cuba, the news aired by international agencies, is not directly disclosed to the public in its original form, but passed through a, ideological sterilization process, where it is stripped of everything that the authorities consider harmful or counterproductive. They don’t think of what they do as limiting information, but rather as caring for the mental health of the population. Remember, at least officially, we are a medical power.

In the end, through a so called international writing, in their approved version, they are released to the national media. As ordinary citizens we are forbidden to think for ourselves, the always paternalistic government, is charged with constructing this political and ideological mush, much easier to digest without making any mental effort.

Thus, according to international editing, at the time the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, Saddam Hussein, Mullah Omar and Gaddafi were all winning. Years before, it was the Soviets who were winning. Time proved that the international editing and reality were somewhat distant from each other.

In recent weeks, the issue of Syria has been on the table. We all agree that is a complex problem requiring a high dose of responsibility by the parties in conflict, and that reason will prevail. Over here, the international editing presents the Syrian opposition as criminals, mercenaries, traitors and murderers. It also rejects the provision of economic and military resources by other countries who sympathize with them. It is assumed that the system of El-Assad, inherited from his father, despite more than twenty years in power, is legal and constitutional and should be respected.

First things first, two steps back and one step forward. First, no dictatorial regime extended over time can claim legality. So, it is normal that it is opposed by those who disagree with it.

Second, no opposition movement has prevailed without foreign military and economic aid. Our wars of independence would have been impossible without resources and weaponry sent from abroad. Multiple shipments were arriving in the country in those years, carrying men and arms: from Narciso Lopez to Jose Marti this was a constant.

More recently, the yacht Granma arrived from Mexico laden with men and weapons, as did other successive expeditions, in addition to the weapons to be brought on airplanes.

Third, to the authorities, those who oppose them, either peacefully or violently, will always be criminals, mercenaries, traitors and murderers. Over here they don’t seem to remember that before taking power, the present rulers were also called these names. With the glories memories are forgotten!

Instead of such media manipulation, it would be healthy to show a little more respect for citizens and to value their intelligence. In short, in the street, the most and least, have learned in fifty years to read between the lines and extract the truth from so much political trash. As much as they stress, and even put pundits with their puffed-up voices in front of the cameras and microphones, or feature their pens in the newspapers, the majority recognize them as fakers in the pay of the government, and while they can’t fire them at least that can turn off the TV and radio and stop reading the press.

Better to watch an interesting movie, to hear good music, or to read a novel. Anything before being blasted with international editing!

April 11 2012

We animal lovers are not prepared for trips to the Veterinary Clinic. I have had to go every day since last Thursday when my dog was attacked by a pit bull who left her, poor thing, full of wounds that have to be treated there daily to avoid infection, and has to be injected with a third generation antibiotic I got on my own, because the vet called me aside and assured me that penicillin would not heal her. Tari is already out of danger of death, but the danger of infection has not disappeared. That was the reason for my silence of these recent days.

The animal clinic is a dirty and horrible place where there are frightening fleas and even treecreeper ticks. In contract, the veterinarians and technicians perform stoic work, without the conditions, proper medications, with the clinic always crowded, to save the pets that usually arrive in extremis. I have seen everything from a bright collie arrive in a gorgeous car with an ornate kennel, to the humble mutt carried in a bag by an old retired man, and have seen those specialists working with equal interest in each case. If I were not so “shocked” I would have taken photos the very nice or awful, as the case may be, animals and owners.

On Monday, Tari should get her stitches out; after that, I hope to get away from that place with a mixture of gratitude and disgust.

April 13 2012

The Trail Begins in a Few Minutes, Demanding a Ten Year Sentence.

Ñaño has witnesses that can prove his innocence.

There are around 15 people at the corner of Carmen Morua and Juan Delgado in Santos Suarez.

It seems that William, Cotorro photographer, has been detained before getting here.

Danilo doesn’t answer his phone and still hasn’t arrived.

13 April 2012

To whom it may concern:

I, Hector Riscart Mustelier, declare in writing what really happened on Wednesday, November 16, 2011.

We left the “National Cabaret” where we were working — the Herencia group — a reggae band of which I am the director. We were Adrian (props), Daniel (drummer), Zenén (sound engineer) and myself; we crossed the corner of Prado and San Jose, when we were stopped by an officer with badge number 44777 who asked for our ID cards.

We went along Planta, where they told us we couldn’t continue, but Zenén didn’t have his ID, and then we began to explain that we are musicians, we were coming out of la Peña, we worked there every Tuesday, and then comes another officer called Duruti stopping us from behind. As I was carrying a bag with a DVD, the officer 44777 asked to search us, and went through everything, the bag, pockets, everything.

He tells us that we can continue. We are preparing to leave when another comes along, # 45717, and he wants to see our IDs and search us again. We explained that the other officer had searched us and everything else, but he was a little aggressive. He said to put our hands open on our heads.

I started to tell him that the public was still coming out of this show and we didn’t want them to pass us on the street, and he put me in handcuffs and took me to the station, what was a violation, they can’t search you on the street of the person detained doesn’t agree to it, the Constitution doesn’t say they can do that, and he, violating everyone, assaulted me, taking me by the neck and hitting me from behind, he ripped my shirt and, as I was lying on the ground he put on the handcuffs.

And my white turban was on the ground, it fell off in the struggle. He lifts me up and at that moment the patrol car came. I was very insulted, like my colleagues, who would not allow such abuse and also scuffled with police and that is why they also put Zenén in the car. While in the patrol car, I see Duruti and 44777 speaking separately. Then 44777 comes to the car and says something to the driver which I could not hear because we were still talking to 45717.

When we got to the Dragones Station, they tool my bag and soon three officers came who were talking softly with the Duty Officer. We were sitting on the bench.

Seeing the delay I thought it was a problem with the DVD, but when we paid attention, we heard the Duty Officer telling 45717, “You accuse them, you’re in the Party, and no one will doubt you.” So they were plotting right in everyone’s face.

Suddenly, they begin to accuse us of having drugs, and we began to argue with them about them seeing they were lying, and it begin with the story they told of my hair. It’s a lie, but a very big lie, because the whole world say when my turban fell of and there was nothing in it, and they approached it and didn’t pick up anything, not on the floor, not on my head, there are witnesses to that, by God …!

They didn’t even pick up the turban, there was a brother and witness who picked it up and gave it to me in the patrol car, and this must be clearly seen in the security cameras that were filming the place. I demand that these films, that should serve the security of citizens, appear. There can be no confusion, all my clothes were white, easy to see at night, every movement must be recorded.

To continue, they continued with their offenses and there was an official with no badge with black skin showing a lump of something wrapped in nylon and he said it was drugs, accusing me and making all officers believe that it was mine.

Soon came the experts and they took me up, I was very upset to see the trap and the injustice. I knew things were happening in this country, but I had never lived something like this. I did not speak another word. I knew I needed a lawyer from this point, they kept laughing at me and accusing me to make it a reality.

After a while, an official of the rank of Major woke up, dressed in dark green and he starts to accuse me of the same, even says that the proof is that the drugs were in the group’s papers, and that’s when I realize that bag they had, that they had asked me for, had some promotional invitations of the group’s DVD, which they obviously manipulated (this must have been down in the folder, before the arrival of the experts) and they continued to accuse me, but I kept quiet, I just said I wanted to testify in the presence of an attorney.

Every minute that passed the plot grew. Soon, the official from DNA came, we talked and he left. Later the man from the San Miguel del Padron DNA comes, with whom I had a discussion. Before, years ago, he worked in Central Havana and wanted me to work for him, and he even gave me his phone number. I gave him some pamphlets to learn about our way of life and philosophy and African cultural philosophy, clarifying that our idea is the unification of our race, spiritual prosperity, peace and love in everything and for all, but the police and government vision is that we are only blacks, difficult and drug addicts, and we are always persecuted and repressed by the police elements of this country.

To this official called (I think) Yoandris, it became clear that I would never work for him, he told me that in 2005 one day I would regret it and he would retaliate, but I didn’t pay attention to his threats and I never saw him again. Now he comes angry, and saying, as if it’s a joke (I quote), “So you took drugs. There’s a shitload of money in drugs…!”

What kind of thing is that for the chief of the national anti-drug department to say?! He said, “Surely you have every luxury at home.” The whole world knows how we live, my mother and my wife in the same house. He was accusing me and provoking me. I just opened my mouth to say, “Liar, you’re saying that because I wouldn’t work for you guys.”

Then they took me to the Picota Station where I was assigned an official named Yordanis as an investigator/interrogator. He urged me for days to testify, trying to fool me by saying he was going to investigate the matter carefully. I told him I had evidence to disprove the police, and that when I stated this in my own hand.

Today we know, from all that is in the file 826/11, that they have set a trap: they used my statement to accommodate the police, all well-organized lies, and today, for having made a statement, it cost me the only visual evidence I had in my favor.

Now the file has returned to the Station with the sole vision of arranging pretty much everything, that is, pointing out details that don’t fit to make it all perfect. They used my Mom to sign a receipt for the DVD that was never looked at, because they were so preoccupied in Dragones organizing their lies, they didn’t have any idea of looking at the DVD. They falsified the investigations with the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR). We have letters from the compañeros of the CDR where they say they didn’t verify anything, neither there in Cerro nor in Central Havana. They are also willing to testify in court.

Just because of the type of people we are, in the false investigation they say the worst things that can be said about a person. I know hardly anyone with cars or motorbikes, only a few and visit us very little. The motorbikes that come to visit my hallway come to see the two police investigators who are our neighbors.

The compañero who appears now states, after the P4 that the prosecutor (called Ernesto) sent, suddenly he says that someone says I was selling at the Nacional, but in his initial declaration he said he had seen me “smoking.” They have perfected everything to incriminate me unfairly with the crime of trafficking, which I did not do, they are committing illegalities that not even the lawyer is brave enough to denounce.

Back in 2003 they made me serve an unjust sentence for trafficking that was reported, but nothing happened about it. Now it turns out that I am running a grow op and we are all asking: Where is it? What’s happening? Why? Is it happening here in Cuba? Or are they going to deny inventing everything? Or is it better, before being fair and truthful, they are going to judge someone who has not committed any crime, who didn’t have any help but was still injured, because it is not for this that the security of the country is enabled. Of if they do, then there is injustice in Cuba, illegalities, corruption, manipulation, deceit, violation of human rights, abuse of power, discrimination and racism.

That’s all for now.

Rastafari.

April 2 2012

The wife and son of Hector Riscart, El Ñaño from Fresa Chocolate on Vimeo.

ZURAIMA’s Cell phone (Hector’s wife): 52519247

The trial is tomorrow, April 13th; we beg the international media to be there and document this political crusade against the Rastafarian movement in Cuba. Please don’t let Hector’s children grow up without him.

The political crusade against the Cuban Rastafarian movement will reach a climax on Friday April 13th, when the leader of the Herencia reggae band, Hector Riscart Mustelier (El Ñaño), priest Bobo Shanti priest of 40 years, is brought to trial for the crime of “production, sale, demand, trafficking, distribution and possession of drugs, psychotropic substances and other similar effects.”

The grandiosity of the charge does not justify that the hearing be behind closed doors in a room where they will air the charges against national security. Especially since, in the office of Citizens Support in the Ministry of Interior, they notified Zuraima Janero Damaso, his wife and mother of two, that it was a criminal offense of no interest to state security. In short, the evidence against Riscart, who denies his guilt from the start, only depends on the testimony of those law enforcement officers who captured him the morning of November 16, 2011, upon leaving his place of work as a musician at the Havana National Cabaret Center.

In his favor, Riscart is counting on the testimony of the Herencia performers, present during an arrest that became violent for no reason. In his favor, he has not been cited for years for “following” or “re-education” by the National Anti-Drug Agency (DNA), though the Prosecutor insists that he is being “controlled” by the DNA. In his favor, is the lousy job of the expert, who didn’t document incontrovertibly that there was incriminating evidence found at the public scene. In his favor, is the search of his house at Subirana 471 apt. 2, between Manglar and Santa Martha (Centro Habana), where there were no traces of “drugs, psychotropic substances or other similar effects,” that is, there was no property was acquired in the lucrative “production, sale, demand, trafficking, distribution or possession of illegal substances.”

Against him, paradoxically, is that Hector Riscart has rudely claimed he is innocent — being a Cuban Rastafarian, a rebellious culture of lion kings and sacred cannabis — and having been convicted two years ago during Operation Shell for a similar offense. Against him, they want to make an example of him so they are now asking for ten years in prison, with no right for a reduced sentence, and an additional year for “resisting,” that legal wildcard against any claim of rights by citizens: Riscart demanded to be taken to the Police Station to avoid the humiliation of a search before his public and the managers who contract with Herencia, but was thrown to the pavement and the band has since been unemployed, as the authorities appeared at the National Cabaret and lied about the existence of cocaine and other extreme drugs.

The Provisional Conclusions (January 30, 2012) in this case are a monument to the legal helplessness that survives on the island, bureaucratic barbarism that mocks the fate of the Cubans in a lottery of legal overtones. Under the title of the Provincial Prosecutor of Old Havana, no legible name appears, it is signed only with the initials of Mr. ARR. The wording of the facts has a childish bias, among other insulting or perhaps disabling errors, the text concludes confusing the defendant with one “Ángel Laguen,” about whom (if this document retains any legal force) they should question the witnesses on this coming Friday the 13th, and not about Héctor Riscart, as his name disappears in the final third of those conclusions, thus rendering the curious case of a man judged with the identity of another person.

Hired as defense team, a lawyer of a law collective, who will be on vacation for her birthday until after the plea, that she would take the case in favor of overtime pay — perhaps because of the meager fee of 415 national pesos (about $15 U.S.) — (the family and friends of Hector and Zuraima could not meet the high fees in convertible pesos (CUCs) which are the tricks of this trade today in Cuba). Like many law graduates, she recognizes that, when the National Revolutionary Police charge someone with a subject as taboo as “drugs,” any winning strategy to dismantle the alleged evidence and alleged improper procedures of the Prosecutor is bound to fail.

Héctor Riscart, a prisoner in Combinado del Este, after an intense interrogation, which his family branded not only as manipulative but full of lies, was deprived of the sacrament of his dreadlocks even without having been convicted. To make matters worse, he has effectively gone on an unintentional hunger strike because he is a vegetarian for religious reasons, which the prison authorities do not consider a spiritual matter, but a luxury or, worse, an eccentricity of rebellion in the inmate.

Héctor Riscart asks his wife Zuraima and his brothers in God to pray for him, perhaps in one of those ritual retreats in the mountains of Pinar del Río or Baracoa, where police quickly detained them (sometimes under threat of confiscation of private farms ) and imposed on them warnings of “pre-criminality” for practicing Rastafarianism in this country. Riscart can not conceive of any possibility of a divine mistake in the absurdity that he has inhabited for months, but continues to hope that the helping hand of a supreme truth will the minds of judges and cleanse the fallacies the voices of the agents declare against him.

Alarmingly, one of them, Ernesto Martinez Ramirez, of the Special Police headquarters in Cuba y Chacon (Havana Vieja), at a table at the National Cabaret minutes before the arrest in November 2011, wearing civilian clothing, tried to get members of Herencia to sell him prohibited cigarettes. Despite the negative response, and although he was not acting as a policeman, he denounced them to the guard and patrol services in the area (Maikel Atiet Creagh, Wilbert Durruthy Favier, David Rousseaux Columbié: all traceable also to Cuba y Chacon). The initial statement in Martinez Ramirez at a point in the process was changed for no apparent reason, to become less impressionistic and more incisive against Hector Riscart.

”]Although it all happened under police cameras on the corner of Prado and San Jose, the recordings could not be included as legal evidence, as his wife claimed on behalf of the defendant, because the officers in charge (coincidentally of the station of Cuba y Chacon) argued that these records disappear in a few days due to lack of personnel to process them. In this regard, there is still only the word of the police about the “resistance” of the Rastafarian, and the “discovery” in situ of a nylon bag cannabis on the street, which no witness testified to, and that was foisted exclusively on Hector Riscart, when he was already handcuffed in the Dragones Street Station (Old Havana).

It is significant that they did not seek incriminating fingerprints against Riscart, even if illegal substances were ratified as such by the Central Laboratory of Criminality, documented only by so-called photo-tables and then burned by the Division of Criminal Investigation of 100 y Aldabó. Nor did they attempt to document chemical traces or odors evident in his long hair and in the turban that covered: a white cloth that was never seized, despite being mentioned in the provisional findings as key to associate the findings with the person of the accused. The investigator of the Picota Station refused to convene an explanatory confrontation between witnesses, because apparently the versions of the policemen did not quite agree with each other regarding the musicians of Herencia—Adrián Obregón Janero (props), Germán Daniel Rivera Díaz (percussion), Zenén Mario Abreu Peña (soundman)—and Hector Riscart himself (director).

As a pharmacological colophon, what’s left is a positive urine sample, that could relate to the private consumption of hemp in the days before the actual facts concerning the cause (“consumption” is, strictly speaking, outside the Cuban Penal Code): an event, in any case not related to that crime which is trafficking in and profiting from harmful substances.

Beyond the anti-modern local legislation on the responsible use of psychoactive natural products, beyond clinical and industrial advantages of Cannabis (demonized by the Criminal Code, which blesses the profitable export of brand-name alcohol, for example, or the marketing of coca by the governments allied with Havana); far beyond the counter-culture that bids for for freedom from the whole oppressive establishment (be it market, communist or both); beyond the hyper-sensory cult incarnated by carambola in a Caribbean rhythm and the mummy of an African dictator; beyond the other Cuban Rastafarians who have been sentenced to and served prison terms without daring to assert their worldview castrated by communism; beyond the fear to exercising the law here, ranging from the mediocre to the petty (who pays more wins) and the petty to the death of our society (those nearest to power pay the most); beyond this tragedy will now leave bereft a man of a poor family, decapitating his spiritual and economic axis for a decade, all because of half a minute of human misery in the mute eyes of the world and its Babylons of the 21st century.

I fear that this Friday, April 13, one of the few eminent priests of the Bobo Shanti order in Cuba, popularly esteemed as Ñaño, a man of immutable inner peace, will have his faith in love and in the universal light put to the text by a Cuba plotting against him, where solidarity is still an uncivil dream that is running out of gods other than hatred and despotism.

Originally published in Diario de Cuba.

10 April 2012

The balustrades are shaped like naked women and the wrought iron gate is topped with stone slabs. The garden barely has room for a couple of feet of grass from which a diminutive Pekinese barks all day. From the front door you can see the line of the bar that divides the living room from the kitchen, with bottles filled with colored liquids. A plastic tank overlooks the roof, storing enough water for days of scarcity. The iron and glass windows reveal the figures moving within the house and at night also reflect the brightness of the TV. The entire lowercase “mansion” has been painted the vermillion color that today is a sign of prosperity. With this tone preferred by those who make their way economically despite privations and bureaucratic absurdities.

Even on unpaved streets, these homes stand out, retouched by their own efforts and convertible pesos. Minuscule palaces with pretensions of grandeur suddenly popping into view. They leave us caught between surprise and optimism, on encountering them amid the twists and turns of La Platanito, La Timbre, Zamora, el Romerillo, and other rundown neighborhoods. Hard up against overflowing dumpsters or sewer ditches the ooze down the road, but within themselves these “doll houses” are like bubbles of well-being. They have these pretensions expressed in fanciful details such as columns shaped like tree branches, or plaster dwarfs guarding the gates. Extravagantly decorated tons of times, architecturally ridiculous many others, these imitation castles speak of a strong desire to live in a beautiful, personalized space. They are like the baroque walls of some mausoleum in a Havana cemetery, but this time for the enjoyment of life.

I love to stumble across these facades and see their occupants looking out from the small balconies. There is something in them, in the paint chosen to cover the walls and in the bell hanging over the door that gives me hope. I am comforted to know that the desire to progress materially was not erased by so many years of false egalitarianism and faked modesty. Some eagerness for prosperity remains within us and now this greed has a color, vermillion, that is impossible to hide.

12 April 2012

Sign the petition to release Andrés Carrión, a Cuban who shouted at the Papal Mass against the Castro Communist regime

It was during the nineties and a Chilean woman known to my niece, who had come to Havana as a guest of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), to participate in their conference, contacted me.

At the end of the conference, this young woman also named Camila, but different from the one named Vallejo, showed her interest in knowing the real Cuba. She added that one of the things she most noted in her recent experience here, was the unanimity on all matters submitted to a vote during the event.

“That’s impossible,” she confessed to me. “Neither in my country, nor in any other self-respecting country, is there a unanimity of opinion.” I suggested to her that if you want to know the whole country, it’s impossible, but at least I could show her the real Havana.

“Tomorrow leave the protocol house, forget the car with official plates, put on some comfortable shoes and I’ll pick you up early.”

Camila was really motivated to see the city, especially the known haunts of Hemingway. We went through it walking all over Vedado, along the Malecon, and to the Prado. There we went in search of La Floridita restaurant. “You have to pay for the drinks,” I told her, “because they’re priced in dollars and as a Cuban I am not allowed to possess this currency, at the risk of arrest. You know it’s penalized.”

“Yes, I know,” she answered, “your niece clued me in.”

Then we went to La Bodeguita del Medio, very decadent, and repeated the scene. “We still have to see La Terraza de Cojimar,” I said, “but it’s a bit far, we’ll have to take a tourist taxi. You pay for the transport and I’ll buy the snack, it’s a deal. That is, when we’re in the place and eating, don’t reach for your bag, leave it to me.”

We arrived and there were two lines: one to pay in Cuban pesos, with squalid food, and another a little better, but in dollars. We got into that one. We were served right away because there were only three or four tourists. We sat down at a wobbly table. I pointed it out immediately to the staff who did nothing to fix it.

When I finally asked for the check, it came in the usual little tray covered with a red napkin. I picked it up, checked the prices, and the total was $10 U.S. so I left a nice brand new 50 Cuban peso bill. When the waitress saw what I had put down she told me, “I can’t take this money.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I asked.

“This money isn’t valid here.”

“Tell the manager I would like to see him,” I asked.

The manager came out accompanied by a security guard (a comrade from State Security).

The first, turning to me, said, “Madam, that money is not valid in this establishment.”

“Are you telling me that the money I am paid by my workplace is invalid?” I answered.

“No, no, Madam, it’s not that, it’s that it has no value here.”

After debating this for several minutes, drawing the attention of those present, I showed the bill in question to the administrator and suggested:

“Read what it says here, on the bottom of what is printed. “

He began to read, “This bill is valid to pay any debt contracted in the entire territory,” and began to swallow hard, and turning to the waitress said, in a loud voice, “Look, charge the lady.”

“In what money?” she asked.

“In Cuban pesos!” he replied angrily.

A few seconds after this scene, the waitress reappears, carrying the aforementioned small tray with 40.00 Cuban pesos on it. At that moment, I got up, extended the palm of my hand to her, and in a characteristic gesture said, “Leave it, keep the change, all this money is worthless!”

Before the astonished looks of everyone, Camila and I left heads held high. When we got to the bus stop she took a deep breath and told me, “I didn’t know how much moxie you had!” I took it as a compliment. It cost me a little dearly to show it, and we continued our stroll, a couple of citizens on foot, talking and sharing with different people, whom we came across on our tour.

When we parted Camila said, “Thanks, friend, for showing me the real city!”

April 11 2012

@OLPL On Friday,13 April, they are asking for a 10 year prison sentence for Ñaño. The trial will be closed door at the Tribunal Carmen y Morua Delgado, Santos Suarez, 9 am. Ñaño’s attorney is ON VACATION!!!!  Nano is INNOCENT.  Let’s go!!!!

11 April 2012

Saturday morning. In the ration market butcher’s, a girl asked, almost begged, for the butcher to exchange the broken eggs he’d given out.

“The eggs broke on the way, and then they try to get me to exchange them for sound ones,” the seller said in an arrogant tone.

“Please, this too.”

Actually to supply the broken eggs is part of the extra revenue of the local butchers where they sell rationed products. The sale of chicken, fish, or ground beef reports other substantial gains in the black market.

The customer leaves and another arrives. The butcher notes on the ration card the ten eggs per person. She brought a large plastic container into which the butcher is putting the eggs. Suddenly the woman exclaims:

“Not that one, it’s very dirty. It’s dangerous to my health.”

“Madam, I have no toilet paper to clean the eggs. If it doesn’t suit you, go to the company and complain there. I only have to remove the broken ones. The clean eggs are the American ones, these have to be taken like this.”

“I don’t have to go anywhere, that’s your responsibility,” the woman answered, and after paying, in a rapid movement, she broke an egg on the sidewalk.

“I will die of hunger, but I won’t put dirty eggs in my kitchen, much less blood-stained ones,” she added calmly, while leaving the place.

The bewildered man flew into a rage.

“Did you see what she did? She broke an egg!”

Those present looked astonished. Among them, a middle-aged woman, very nicely dressed, began to defend the butcher and explained loudly,

“She can’t break an egg. She has to buy them like that. One can only demand at the ’Shopping’ paying in hard currency.”

“You’re wrong, the woman can break whatever eggs she likes, because she paid for them,” commented a young woman who had been silent. “People are paid in Cuban pesos. The “Shopping” are not the markets for the people, our market is this one and we have to demand our rights. Perhaps they would respects us a little more.”

Clarifying notes:

Shopping: This is what Cubans call stores that sell in hard currency. A CUC, Cuban convertible pesos, is worth 25 Cuban pesos. The products on the ration book are paid for in Cuban pesos.

Egg consumption is an important part of the daily diet of the Cuban population; among the available protein goods, it is one of the cheapest. Usually eggs are sold at different prices, the most economical are acquires in Cuban pesos, although it’s true that many times in the people’s markets they are sold stained, dirty, and sometimes the boxes they come in have insects.

April 10 2012