Translating Cuba – Page 1073 – English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island

The Anti-Gospel According to Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

¹ I, that had no motherland, have lost my motherland.

² The motherland is, of course, the place where your neighbor will mourn over your dead body. ³ And, I never wanted this.⁴ I resisted from the time I opened my eyes and saw. ⁵ Everything was so ugly, so false, so Cuban around me. ⁶ That I never wanted to give them the only thing that made me good and real. ⁷ My body.

⁸In the silent night of childhood. ⁹ In the fading light of adolescence. ¹⁰ In the early mornings being nude on stairwells and neighborhood alleys. ¹¹ In the youth devastated by the nightmare of the 1990s. ¹² In the two thousand-nothings when all who were to die had died and love still had not shown up. ¹³ Now. ¹⁴ When I want the least to be mourned in my country or to have a street named after me in democracy.

¹⁵ I do not want to be mourned. ¹⁶ Seriously. ¹⁷ But I want a country. ¹⁸ Please.

¹⁹ Life is too much of life for it to be humiliated by death. ²⁰ If life ends in a wake, then it was not worth living it. ²¹ Life opens to life or it will never be life at all. ²² I wish to live.

²³ I am going to repeat it slowly because these are two verbs that we Cubans did not know how to execute from that arrogance of beings living in freedom: to wish, to live. ²⁴ We Cubans, who massacre each other in that mystic rapture called Motherland to achieve our most heroic state of slavery.

²⁵ Neither wish. ²⁶ Nor live.

²⁷ Cuban politics is the organ (what a creepy word: organ) in charge of diplomatically avoiding these two vital verbs, to have them forgotten through pure patriotism and terror, to manipulate them in its image and convenience to cheat us out of our time and humanity. ²⁸ That is why the people does not exist. ²⁹ Because it has no body, just mass. ³⁰ Because we fuse as a whole, as a something, as a living organism. ³¹ Because we are that: scattered organs. ³² Decrepit ³³ Lifeless viscera.

³⁴ That is why the Revolution and Castroism will have no day after. ³⁵ It is impossible to resuscitate what has not even died, but continues to live in perpetuity. ³⁶ An unlivable life.

³⁷ The lyrics of the National Anthem are foreboding in that sense. ³⁸ A macabre song, of incarnation of Evil in men and women who were already departing and in those who were yet to come. ³⁹ Demoniacal march, just like the sight of its author on a horse in the outskirts of a city that should have been capital and ended up being holocaust. ⁴⁰ Mortuary music composed precisely on a Horse*, apocalyptic beast that in less than a century will implement that same anthem to its last poetic consequences.

⁴¹ Poetry, and not Cuban politics, has been the main genocidal compulsion in what was on the verge of being my country. ⁴² Cuba, scaffold.

⁴³ The word “motherland” is not better than the word “impiety.” ⁴⁴ Someone had to state it for you, Cubans. ⁴⁵ The word “hope” is not sterile, but breeds sterility exclusively.

⁴⁶ On the claustrophobic line of the horizon ⁴⁷ In the planetary twilight of the one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine exiles. ⁴⁸ In the bodies abandoned in the stampede. ⁴⁹ In the love promptly betrayed. ⁵⁰ In the invisible beauty. ⁵¹ In the family that vanished. ⁵² In the weightless home. ⁵³ In the Cuban body constantly constrained to the cadaver that is going to inhabit it.

⁵⁴ Men and women of my country, I have loved you from the distance of the most intimidating inner space. ⁵⁵ From these trachea and intestines I have seen things that you, Cubans, would never believe.

⁵⁶ Mercy is not enough. ⁵⁷ You, that never had a motherland, will never lose the motherland. ⁵⁸ And that pain is unspeakable.

⁵⁹ May you remain, then, in the posthumous peace of my words.

*Translator’s note: From Spanish “El Caballo,” “the Horse,” one of Fidel Castro’s many nicknames among Cubans. It denotes masculinity and vigor, and it is deeply rooted in that Cuban tragicomic “machismo.”

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

19 August 2013

Edmundo and Robertico : The Opportunist and the Opportune / Miriam Celaya

HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – Edmundo Garcia, ardent defender and offshore soldier of the Cuban dictatorship, hosts in Miami — in Miami no less! — a radio program that constitutes an extension of the Roundtable TV talk show in Havana. His insults against imperialism and against “anti-Cuban counter-revolutionaries,” like his praises rendered to the Castro regime, are the most convincing demonstrations that the ineffable Edmundo enjoys the opportunity that freedom of expression permits in a democratic country, which the peaceful opposition does not enjoy in Cuba because the regime that he defends denies it to us.

Edmundo rants publicly against the critics of the Castro regime, visits the Island to relax in restaurants and tourist resorts where the majority of his “compatriots” have no chance to even poke their noses, as cool as a cucumber, he walks through those northern and these southern streets without being arrested or harassed, which — let me say — seems great to me.

Many Cubans wonder what reasons pushed Señor Garcia to leave his native land, which — to judge by his own statements — he rates as the fairest system in the world with a government that any democratic nation would envy, to settle in the most hellish and imperfect nation on the planet where, to be precise, terrorists run rampant and the worst enemies of Humanity and Cuba govern. But this seems to be a mystery that only the bilious member of the claque himself can reveal, or — of course — the Cuban government. Meanwhile, Edmundo continues to preach in his underwear, because he is the living embodiment of the opportunist.

He projects this on others and he described as “unfortunate,” “opportunistic” and “disrespectful” the performance by the artist Robertico Carcassés at the recently held gala for the release of the Cuban spies who are serving long sentences in the United States. In the improvisation, Carcassés declared his desires for free access to information, the end of the blockade and the internal-blockade, the power to elect the president directly (“and not by other means”) and asked for “freedom for the Five and also for Maria,” and also launched a phrase that is highly radioactive in Cuba: “Neither militants, nor dissidents, all Cubans with the same rights.”

The audacity of the artist consists not only in the fact of having expressed publicly the desires of an immense majority of Cubans, without his suggesting he belongs to the opposition sector or is committing a legal transgression — all a flagrant challenge to the authorities on the Island — but in having done it precisely at the Protestdrome, in front of the United States Interest Section, the Castro-anti-imperialist scenario par excellence, and as part of an “activity” called with great fanfare by the official media, at which supposedly the entire cast should respond with absolute fidelity to the directives of the ruling elite.

And of course, for Robertico Carcassés it wasn’t opportunistic. Quite the contrary, it was marvelously opportune. So much so that — regardless of whether at some future mediated by the figureheads of the regime, making use of their usual resources of ideological conviction, they get him to publicly take back his (our) truths — as great as temples; and they were said. What’s more, it’s the first time that so much contained hope and so many desires shared by millions of Cubans were spoken live and so clearly on an official stage. And this is the most dangerous for the owners of Edmundo Garcia. If the opposition had had the microphone, it could not have done better.

Because, and here is what should be a lesson to us all, nothing is as powerful and effective as simply and plainly expressing the hopes of an entire nation, not from fiery patriotic discourse or from sectors of the opposition — as demonized and feared by the government as they are little known by society — without infringing upon the rights of those attending, but rather from the courage and shame of an individual not subject to ideological compromises. That is honesty, the exact opposite of opportunism. We need many Robertico Carcassés in Cuba, with or without microphones.

For a few brief minutes, this artist demonstrated, perhaps unintentionally, that the streets, the plazas, the platforms and the microphones do not belong to the “Revolutionaries,” but to all Cubans. For that alone his audacity had value, it was really worth it. Blessed be his way to taking advantage of the opportunity! For the gift of those moments of public freedom practiced from the official media we should thank the young Carcasses, with all our hearts.

From Cubanet

24 September 2013

Freedom / Luzbely Escobar

What Robertico Carcasses did at the Anti-Imperialistic Bandstand was an act of freedom and so can’t be looked at from a moral point of view. Some say that the cause for which the concert was called is “sacred” and consider his act one of “stupidity” but I believe that in Cuba there is not one cause more sacred than other. What Robertico said is a feeling shared by many Cubans and that is what this is not a contradiction with the initial cause.

It’s certain that for this act of freedom, by definition he had to make decisions ahead of time because this type of demonstration is always preceded by prior break from self-censorship, a leap over the invisible obstacles that normally obstruct our most sincere expression but once this frontier is crossed the most absolute freedom is what guides us. In other places, where there is no need to cross those obstacles, this freedom doesn’t take place and the person is simply starring in a reality absent obstacles to his expression.

In Cuban a good does of courage is always needed for these types of actions. That’s why Robertico later earned the respect of many on his Facebook page. Those who want to manipulate what happened that day — an authentic and happy improvisation by Robertico’s group, Interactive — are victims of the obstacles to free expression, they are forming a part of the fence against the freedom inherent in man, at every artistic event.

20 September 2013

Alejandro Armengol Remembers Oscar Espinosa Chepe

Two qualities, among others, were always prominent in the articles by Chepe that appeared regularly both in Cubaencuentro as well as other publications like El Nuevo Herald.

One of them is that he could achieve the delicate balance that allowed him to present a balanced article or analysis while making clear his point of view. To this end he would always base his writing on data and reflections free of bombastic criteria, the usual demagoguery and opportunism.

The other quality was the use of data supplied by the Cuban government itself, supported by other from international organizations, to support his analyses. That way he never conceded to the convenient argument that all information from the island is false; an argument that may have some truth to it, but that also brings an easy and complacent negativism among certain groups of exiles. It is not that Chepe believed all that the regime said, on the contrary, he knew what to question and how. In that sense, he and professor Mesa Lago have set the precedent, and have valuable information where others refused to look.

Personally, and during the time in which I had the pleasure of editing his works for Cubaencuentro, aside from an honor, it was always a pleasure to have such a precise intellectual, both in the numbers he offered as well as his composition and spelling, all of this done with absolute humility. He was what be said easily, but that is almost impossible to find: an example.

Alejandro Armengol. Journalist. Editor in Chief for Cubaencuentro.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

From Cubaencuentro

24 September 2013

The Fault Always Lies With the People, or the United States / Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

LA HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org — A new program recently started on television at the end of the newscast at 8 pm. It is named “Cuba says” and is listed as an investigative journalism program. There have been four broadcasts, Tuesdays and Fridays, with the objective of “criticizing” bad deeds.

On two of the broadcasts they addressed problems relating to construction, and the others talked about health care and transport. But even if they approach social and economic problems, which show the existing apathy and corruption, in short, the blame always likes with the people, for their lack of discipline; or the United States for the “blockade”; or with some other entity other than the regime with its inefficiencies.

The functionaries who have to respond to the journalists, look insecure. Evidently they are under the pressure of those who at any cost don’t want to leave the viewers with the impression that the problems are the fault of the government. One example: the Director of Transportation explained that the problem of lack of buses was centered on the broken equipment and the scarcity of spare parts, while the journalist Thalía González pressed him to say there were also organizational problems.

In the end, the public saw the problems they already know reflected on the screen, but without knowing how or when they would be solved.

The last program dealt with housing construction. They reported that up to 2019, they need to build 29,400 units in Santiago de Cuba, since there are 73 slum neighborhoods and more than 10,500 houses in difficult conditions, as well as unhealthy settlements. However, despite the resources they say have been allocated, after Hurricane Sandy (October 2012), they’ve only built 1,542 housing units, and by the end of the year expect to have completed 1,900. At this rate, they won’t build even half of those planned.

On other occasions we have already heard criticisms of this type, and answers that then fade into nothingness. However, we have to recognize that the regime has seen the need to admit that the country is in a sorry state, from all points of view.

Recently, we’ve sensed a tendency to look for help in the self-employed, trying to minimize al he problems brought on the country by centralization and the unified command. However, society, which is eager to solve its problems of economic stagnation, has taken these small apertures very seriously, and currently is swelling the numbers of different types of businesses, so that the regime is grasping at straws, reversing more than a few of their permissions.

In Pinar del Rio they withdrew the right of private sale of clothes, because this market has been strong competition for the State, whose prices are higher and whose customer service is greatly inferior, along with the well-known scams where the customer is the victim.

They could show hundreds of TV programs with critiques and suggestions from the people, but the reality is that none of the issues that they raise are going to be solved until there is an end to the main problem, which generates all the other problems, which is the same regime, which has plunged the country into an acute economic, political and social problem.

By Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello

From Cubanet

September 24, 2013

Oscar Espinosa Chepe Interviewed by Tracey Eaton: Video

From Tracey Eaton on Along the Malecon

Date of Interview: July 13, 2010

Haroldo Dilla Remembers Oscar Espinosa Chepe

Despite living for so long on an island so small, I never met Oscar Espinosa Chepe in person. It would have been an honor and an opportunity for me, mostly after discovering him in one of his incisive articles for the late magazine Encuentro during a night of insomnia on a plane in route to Madrid.

Since then, I have read him faithfully. And every time, the acumen of the analyst and the consistency of the democrat, but most of all the integrity of the intellectual, have gratified me. Despite spending several years in prison for doing nothing other than thinking well and differently, Chepe never allowed his emotions to overcome his professionalism. And, this makes him one of those intellectual figures called to be enduring. And for that, we will continue reading him for a long time for the good of the prosperous, equitable and democratic that he advocated.

Dr. Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, Sociologist and Historian

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

From Cubaencuentro

Carmelo Mesa-Lago Remembers Oscar Espinosa Chepe

Oscar Espinosa Chepe was one of the best informed and courageous Cuban economists. Despite the difficulties to access the internet, he was always up to date on the regional and local [Economics] organizations’ publications; and his works were always well documented and objective.

His criticism was based on publications and official figures, but he also criticized the US embargo as an instrument that had failed to end the [political] system while being used as a scapegoat for all its economic failures.

To me, Chepe was always a source of inspiration, his articles are abundantly quoted in my own publications, and I had the honor of writing the foreword for two of his books.

When he came out of prison in Cuba, due to the bad state of his health’s, I was able to get two dozen prestigious economists from around the world to sign a letter to the Head of Government of Spain requesting his exit [from Cuba], but in the end he decided to continue writing in Cuba. He offered his life and his health for Cuba.

We met in person in Havana in 2010, and the tiny and modest apartment that he and Miriam inhabited surprised me; filled with books, magazines and papers, almost leaving no space for daily living.

He was a humble man, frugal and amiable, who loved his fatherland very much. I was able to see him in Madrid this past June and he was staying with Miriam in a tiny room of a hostel. Although already very sick, he attended the presentation of my book at Casa de América and I publicly paid him my last homage. We are going to miss him very much.

Carmelo Mesa-Lago, Professor Emeritus of Economics and Latin American Studies, University of Pittsburgh.

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

From Cubaencuentro

24 September 2013

The Morality of the Survivor / Dimas Castellanos

At an extended meeting of the Council of Ministers held last Friday, May 13, the head of Foreign Commerce and Overseas Investments reported finding irregularities in business operations involving foreign capital and international contracts. Likewise, the minister of Finance and Planning spoke of irregularities and evidence of criminal activity related to fuel sales. Meanwhile, the Comptroller General of the Republic acknowledged that, though recent audits have shown the situation is improving, serious problems and vulnerabilities persist.

Any objective analysis of this issue must begin by banishing euphemisms that just serve to sugarcoat reality. It is not an issue of irregularities but of marked ethical deterioration, of corruption, that while it did not begin in 1959, it was only after that date that it moved from the arena of political administration to all aspects of society, becoming not only part of the culture but an impediment to the government’s own efforts. This phenomenon which began with the economy and later seeped into Cubans’ spiritual consciousness is one of the factors pointing to the structural nature of the current crisis and the failure of attempts to overcome it through limited changes to the economy.

Among the factors contributing to this situation were the disappearance of tens of thousands of business owners and their replacement by “bosses,”[1] making absolute the “property of all the people,” and inadequate salaries and pensions, a combination of noxious factors that has led to theft, bribes and deceit in order to survive. It happens this way because morality is an amalgam of socially accepted standards of conduct which evolve in response to changes in goals, interests and social conditions; therefore, survival has become part of our morality stemming from the profound structural crisis in which we find ourselves.

The changes being implemented in Cuba under the title of Political, Economic and Social Guidelines of the Communist Party are stymied by the worst decline in moral conduct ever seen in our history. The struggle to survive, which stems from multiple frustrations, has led to apathy, hopelessness and escapism as reflected in a morality that employs various forms of patriotic vocabulary. The struggle now is not about abolishing slavery, achieving independence or overthrowing tyranny; it is simply about surviving. Nor is it a matter of “Freedom or Death” or “Fatherland or Death” but rather “Life or Death,” the slogan of the survivor.

The explanation for all this is that the primary moral and human imperative is the preservation of life. When social conditions preclude any hope of fulfillment, people are left with only two options: to renounce life or to survive. This is why Cubans, faced with inadequate salaries, turned to illegal activities; faced with the impossibility of being entrepreneurs, to the “Estaticular[2]” way, in other words, expenses for the State and dividends for the individual[3]; faced with shortages, to theft from the State whose property actually belongs to “all the people.” To the absence of opportunity, they respond by escaping into exile. To ideological entreaties, they respond with apathy. Certain verbs — to escape, to struggle, to resolve — have come to mean acquiring that vital “something extra,” in other words, to survive.

Faced with this obstinate reality, the State’s only option is repression: more police, more surveillance, more restrictions, and inspectors — actions which only address the symptoms without taking into account their causes, among which was the turn toward totalitarianism, that erased the citizen from the Cuban political scene. But what is most striking, as we can see from the examples below, is the stubborn focus on effects and the disregard for causality.

On May 22, 2001 the newspaper Juventud Rebelde published an article, “The Hunter of Deceptions” about a popular inspector in charge of rooting out instances of fraud in the quality, weight, price and sale of unauthorized goods in State stores. According to this inspector, when a violator was presented with evidence of his crime, customers became upset and actually came to the the man’s defense. In other words the victims stood up for their victimizer, demonstrable proof that the morality of the survivor enjoys popular acceptance.

On Saturday, November 28, 2003 Granma published “Price Violations and the Never-Ending Battle.” In it an official with the Ministry of Finance’s Office of Price Supervision reported that in the first eight months of this year there were irregularities found in 36% of the establishments inspected. In the case of farmers’ markets, festivals, outdoor food stalls and other points of sale for produce, the figure was 47%. In the food-service sector it was over 50%.

Granma reported that on Saturday, December 24, 2005, in an address to the National Assembly of People’s Power, Pedro Ross — then Secretary General of the Workers’ Central Union of Cuba (CTC) — said, “There are workers who respond but there are others who don’t and who continue to justify theft and other wrongful conduct.”

On February 16, 2007 Granma reported in the article “Cannibals on the Towers” on the theft of the metal braces that support the transmission towers for high voltage electricity. In 2004, 1,648 pieces of bracing disappeared from a 220,000 volt power grid and 545 from a 100,000 volt grid. In 2005, 532 and 544, respectively, were stolen from these two power grids. In 2006 — after stepping up surveillance, applying technical solutions and imposing sanctions — 267 and 1827 disappeared. There was a decrease in thefts from the 200,000 volt network only because screws and bracing up to a six-meter height were welded together, but the tenacious “fighters” climbed higher. Similarly, electrical transmission cables were stolen from the power grid for their aluminum and copper.

On Friday, October 26, 2010, Granma published an article called “The Price of Indolence” which reported that in the Villa Clara’s municipality of Corralillo 300 homes were built using stolen materials and resources. Some 9,631 meters of roadway material had been used in 240 of the inspected homes; 82% of them had train tracks taken from the Ministry of Sugar, disrupting 25 kilometers of rail lines; and 59 pieces of steel bracing from high-voltage electrical towers were used.

Even more recently, February 19 and 26, 2012, Juventud Rebelde, published an article containing an interview of the Comptroller of the Republic where she said: “According to our findings, the causes of corruption range from the fact of not having contracts overseen because the person who was supposed to do it didn’t do it, and the person that had to ensure they had reviewed it didn’t review it, or didn’t review it properly.

To that you have to add the constant pocketing of resources, the endless legal processes even to to the level of high ranking officials.

What the newspapers (i.e. Granma, Juventud Rebelde) have failed to show from the journalistic point of view, is the relationship that exists between, on the one side, corruption, and on the other the absolute State ownership of resources, the low salaries and the impossibility to be entrepreneurs. If they had addressed this, they would have shown the uselessness of repression if is not accompanied by measures that tackle the causes, because the police, the informers, the simple inspectors, integral inspectors or the inspector of the inspectors are all Cubans with the same needs as the rest of the population and thus they practice the same prevailing morality.

To change the course of the events, the economic changes will have to be extended to the rest of the social spheres, even if quite late; which means that they will have to look again to the civil liberties without which the formation and predominance of the civil morality required by the present and the future of Cuba will be impossible.

[1] That is, administrators, managers, directors.

[2] This is a play on words: It combines the words Estado (State) and particular (private individual in this context).

[3] Through theft of State property

Farewell to the Cienfuegan in Love / Aleaga Pesant

HAVANA, Cuba , September 2013, www.cubanet.org.- He was the most in love Cienfuegan I knew. He was called Oscar Manual Espinosa Chepe, although to most of the people who knew him he was simply “Chepe.” His Dulcinea, Miriam Leiva, was at his side over the last thirty years with a loyalty tested in the harsh conditions imposed by the Cuban dictatorship. Both were driven from their important positions, and later Chepe was condemned to twenty years in prison during the Black Spring.

I met him when he was in his sixties. He was already an accomplished economist. Friend of the truth, he had a small space on Radio Martí to talk about the island’s economy. He was published in Cubanet, Cartes de Cuba, Disidente and CubaEncuentro. He had written a couple of books, and his opinions and judgments were listened to by all analysts of the Antillean situation.

Soft-spoken, like an asthmatic, and unstoppable. Each one of his words and reflections vallued in gold. He never interrupted conversations and loved to tell stories of his trip to Yugoslavia as economic attaché to the Cuban embassy in Belgrade.

Born in an educated cradle in the Pearl of the South, his parents, Oscar and Clara, were degreed professionals and had a pharmacy frequented by the “good” people, who knew the quality and reliability of the service, and popular among the common people, because they knew they would find solidarity and help.

With these virtues in the home, he grew up knowing the potential of republican democracy and took advantage of it. Full of courage and patriotic enthusiasm, he joined the 26th of July Movement. For his actions, he was tried in Santa Clara and absolved by this “cordial republic,” that saw no danger in his ungovernability, and by the good offices of the then attorney and Commodore of the Cienfuegos Yacht Club, Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado, who later would become President of the Revolutionary Government.

The “Revolutionary dawn” found him immersed in the tasks of the “process.” Although he had visited Havana from a young age, he decided to settle in the great city due to a proposal from a fellow countryman to work in the recently created Ministry of Foreign Trade (MINCEX, 1961), an entity supposedly created to meet the needs of the Cuban state to assume the management and control of imports and exports. His knowledge and daring made him stand out, but at the same time they reprimanded him and sent him from his work at the Infanta and 23rd building to rough and complicated places, where he was meant to reform himself. It was in one of those places where he contracted an intestinal illness which marked his entire life.

On returning to his offices, after being “Revolutionarily re-educated,” Chepe revised his scale of values. He continued his economic studies and concentrated still more, and from his own perspective and vision, on the analysis of the national economy. For these efforts he was expelled from MINCEX in 1984, as stated in the act of the trial of the 75, and gradually he became a member of the pro-democratic groups and participated in the independent press as an economic analyst who was a reference point for everyone.

Chepe has died in Madrid, far from his beloved homeland. The generation that knew him will remember him forever. Rest in peace.

By Aleaga Pesant – aleagapesant@yahoo.es

From Cubanet

23 September 2013

Chepe / Luis Cino Alvarez

Oscar Espinosa Chepe in Madrid. Photo courtesy of ABC, Spain

HAVANA, Cuba, September, www.cubanet.org – I met Oscar Espinosa Chepe in 2002, at the home of the poet and independent journalist Ricardo González Alfonso, an ideal place to establish good and lasting friendships.

Between dreams and fears, we worked on the magazine De Cuba. I remember the first collaboration Chepe sent to us for the magazine was titled “The splendor and decline of sugar in Cuba.” A few months later, Chepe was one of 75 prisoners of the crackdown in the spring of 2003.

In contrast to his articles on economics, which I always thought it was a rather dry and difficult subject, talking to Chepe was very enjoyable. Even when talking about economics. You were never left with any doubts about issue that would be discussed, however complex and how many figures were involved.

Chepe used to refer to episodes from when he was very young, in his hometown of Cienfuegos, when he enlisted in the fight against the Batista dictatorship; or when he dared to contradict the anti-economics nonsense of the Maximum Leader (Fidel), the punishment imposed was to collect bat guano in a cave, where he contracted an infection that almost cost him his life.

It was there that his disenchantments with the Revolution began, a Revolution for which he had once been willing to lay down his life. But Chepe spoke of his disappointments without rancor. Not even prison could change the character of this noble and generous man. As the poet said, “In the best sense of the word, good.”

But the best was when Chepe told anecdotes about his travels through the socialist countries of Eastern Europe. Especially Yugoslavia. Thanks to Chepe and his wife Miriam Leiva, deeply knowledgeable on the subject, I was able to understand, beyond the self-interested manipulations in the newspaper Granma, the intricacies of the conflicts between Serbs, Bosnians, Croats and Kosovars and the disintegration of that prison of nations artificially created by Marshal Tito.

It gives me pleasure to evoke Chepe, friendly, a good conversationalist, lover of dogs and the music of Sinatra, in the room crowded with books in his tiny apartment in Playa. I’ll always remember him like that.

By Luis Cino Alvarez, luicino2012@gmail.com

From Cubanet

23 September 2013

The Great Chronicler of the Cuban Economic Disaster / Ernesto Santana Zaldivar

HAVANA, Cuba , September www.cubanet.org – I don’t remember the first time I heard or read his name, but it must have been in the mid-90s on Radio Marti, which at that time, despite the strong obstruction of its signal, I could still listen to. I do know that by the end of that decade his name was one of the most recognizable to me among the journalist who were dedicated to disclosing, from within Cuba, the reality we were living in the country, while offering his ideas and opinions that helped to better understand not only what happened, but also why it happened and what could be done to stop it from happening.

For many years Radio Martí was, for me, as it was for many Cubans, the only source of alternative information, and listening to Oscar Espinosa Chepe I learned and understood, from my ignorance in this respect, the value of many of those small and innumerable elements that shaped the economy of the nation.

In fact, I had a more concrete idea of concepts such as methods of production, which always seemed to me like entelechies of Marxist economic doctrine. In general, over the years — also reading his frequent articles published in different media — I discovered the integral thesis of Espinosa Chepe, although I fear this term is reductive; it was that almost all the elements that constituted the entire machinery of the Cuban economy didn’t work or worked badly because, simply, the economic conception that ruled the gears didn’t function in practice, but in a fictional world composed of ideological and authoritarian dogmas, an absurd world divorced from human reality.

Others said this as well, of course, but it was Espinosa Chepe who demonstrated it without stridency or getting lost in the numbers, but with balanced studies on specific topics where the data and analysis formed a convincing and irrefutable body, with what Miriam Celaya, talking about one of the economist’s books, called “the particular accent of documentation.”

In his articles, the variety of themes is so vast that his investigations could hardly fail to be important in the economic field of the country. And in the end, the conclusion this social scientist showed us described the process of how, simply, the Revolution was turned into Involution.

But what Oscar Espinosa Chepe communicated to us with a simplicity and remarkable wisdom, came not only from his research and diving into a thousand books and countless theories, but also, and perhaps above all, his own experience of life itself, although he never speaks of that in his writings.

For this man, committed to the pursuit of a better future for his country, was not imprisoned for the first time in the sinister spring of 2003; he had already been in prison in 1957, as a teenager, for opposing the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. After 1959, he was among the millions who participated in what they believed to be the building of a dream; he worked in the Central Planning Board, as an economic adviser in the diplomatic service, and finally in the National Bank of Cuba.

The events that began to shake Eastern Europe from the mid-80s showed him the necessity for profound changes in economic and social thinking and, accused of being counterrevolutionary, he had no option but to enter the political opposition, even if it meant passing through Villa Marista prison and the worst prisons in the country, which ended up aggravating his health, by then already deteriorating.

But neither prison nor illness convinced him that he should cease his work, let alone leave his country permanently. He devoted himself to his mission with diligence and conviction of a Jesuit, he felt obliged to give evidence as an expert working in the events. The titles of the books he has published (“Chronicle of a disaster,” “Cuba: Revolution or involution”) illustrate what has been his reason for living: to shed light on the details of a long and gloomy national event that is inscribed in a socio-economic system that he called “the most colossal scam known to history.”

Deep in the eye of the hurricane, Oscar Espinosa Chepe has always been an honest person courageously committed to the progress of Cuba which, dedicating to us with the great generosity of his years and his intelligence without a hint of complaint, never allowing himself to sacrifice professional ethics. This is perhaps the best part of his lucid and illuminating example.

By Ernesto Santana Zaldivar

From Cubanet

23 September 2013

Farewell, My Friend / Jorge Olivera Castillo

Oscar Espinosa Chepe and his wife, Miriam Leyva

HAVANA, Cuba , September, www.cubanet.org – Independent economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, according to the latest information received, has just died in Madrid.

A former liver disease was the trigger for his vital signs to irreversibly decline.

The trip to the Spanish capital in search of better medical care would not alter the outcome marked by fate. There, far from his homeland and in the company of his wife he has had to say goodbye to an increasingly unsettled world.

Points of views critical of the government that he expressed in hundreds of articles and pithy economic analyses, earned him harassment, smear campaigns, detentions, acts of repudiation and a stint in jail as part of the Group of 75.

Together we remember Cuba’s Guantanamo prison* in late April 2003 after being sentenced to long prison terms for our activities in favor of democracy. He had been sentenced to two decades in prison, and I to 18 years.

From the moment that, handcuffed and under heavy guard, we boarded the bus heading to Guantanamo, more than 900 kilometers east of the capital, His serious health problems were visible. Several times during the trip he required medical assistance. So much so that on arrival at the prison he had to be admitted to hospital ward for provincial inmates.

In the passageway we were barely able to exchange a few words. The Interior Ministry agents forbade us from speaking, but the difficulties in communicating with Chepe were notorious. His ill health made me think that he might come to a fatal ending before reaching the destination fixed by our executioners.

In the solitude of the isolation cell I was able to learn of his transfer to a hospital in the city of Santiago de Cuba a few days of arriving in Guantanamo. I learned later that, because of the severity of his ill health, the political police had decided to take him to a prison in the capital.

Even so,before they granted him parole for health reasons, he had to endure nearly 19 months in prison.

His recovery after returning home was short-lived. The serious impact of his incarceration left traces that contributed over time to accelerate his decline.

Unexpectedly I was also released for health reasons weeks after he left the hospital in Combinado del Este, Cuba ‘s largest prison located on the outskirts of Havana.

Remaining in my memory are sporadic conversations we had on various issues of our national reality.

I was privileged to enjoy his qualities as a host, I can also attest to his ability to take on, with responsibility and integrity, the challenges imposed by the circumstances, and his unwavering virtue in making no concession in what he believed was best for the future the country.

Among his best political qualities I should mention his moderation, his support for gradual changes, and his clarity in dismantling the fallacies of the regime which continues to articulate false statistics and empty rhetoric.

I do not want to fix in my neurons that he will return to Cuba as ashes. The image I have chosen to remember that that of the whole man who did not shy away from debate and who never waned in his convictions, those of that languid but undaunted old man who accompanied me on the bus that distributed us among various prisons in the Spring of 2003.

By Jorge Olivera Castillo — oliverajorge75@yahoo.com

*Translator’s note: Olivera Castillo is referring to the Cuban prison in Guantanamo province, not the one run by the United States.

From Cubanet, 23 September 2013

The Privatization of Education in Cuba: Kissing the Right Frog / Haroldo Dilla Alfonso (Posted on Dora Leonor Mesa’s blog)

By Haroldo Dilla Alfonso, Dominican Republic, July 26, 2013, Originally posted on Cubaencuentro. Translation originally on Havana Times.

HAVANA TIMES — An ad for a private day care center in Havana has been posted on the Internet (including Cuba’s classifieds page, Revolico) for some days now. The owner, Zulema Rosales, is reportedly the daughter of General Rosales del Toro.

Since I don’t know this person, or the general’s family, or the general, for that matter, I can’t really confirm this claim. I don’t know whether they are good or bad people, if they are hard-working or lazy, honest or not. As such, none of this stems from a personal judgment of these individuals.

Read the rest of this post in English here, at the Havana Times

16 September 2013

No Respect for the Teacher / Victor Manuel Dominguez (Posted on Dora Leonor Mesa’s Blog)

By Víctor Manuel Domínguez

Havana, Cuba, 2.7.2013 http://www.cubanet.org

Another academic year with more pain than glory comes to its end (2012/2013). Another mess-up. Never mind that the information media go on about the advances in the pedagogical methodology, the implementation of the plan, the improvement in the basics of study, the improvement in the learning of the student body, and exemplary discipline.

The parents, teachers, education sector managers and the students know it isn’t so.

The promises of better courses for the students are erased like words written in chalk. The fraud, corruption and the lack of interest in teaching or learning are common in the schools.

The reasons why, course after course, things go from bad to worse, are there. The frustration of many professional parents who hardly have enough to live on, the low salary of the educators who can’t survive to the end of the month, the corruption of many directors, and the lack of prospects on the part of the pupils, are more than enough to ensure things don’t get any better.

Obdulia Camacho (not her real name), librarian, ethnologist and professor of literature and Spanish for more than six decades, says that the education sector is one of the worst and most complex in the country, because of its influence on the formation of the people from infancy.

“Before, without learning, you couldn’t advance,” she said.

At the age of 80, she still works in the sector on a contract basis. Although, as she points out, because of her low pay (about 350 pesos in national money, $16 USD) she has had to work as an attendant in a hospital and receptionist in a primary school, as well as washing and ironing for anybody who wants it, looking after people who are ill, among other work she does to make up her salary, because she has a daughter and a grandchild to support.

In accordance with her authoritative opinion, indiscipline in the sector is general. The study plans leave much to be desired. Most education centers are in bad condition in regard to basic needs, sanitary fittings, but above all education is miserable because of lack of values and corruption.

“Last week,” she said, “the mother of a student in a school located at 20 de Mayo and Ayestarán in El Cerro, turned up very upset in the center’s management office and shouted that her daughter had to pass the physics exam, since she had paid $20 in order that she wouldn’t have any problem with the grade.”

In another school in Central Havana, a student taking an exam stood up in the middle of the class and, in a disrespectful and threatening manner, went up to a female teacher, who had been in the sector for more than 40 years, and shouted at her:” Hey you, cross-eyes, if I don’t come out well in this test, you will see what happens to you.”

The teacher started crying.

According to Obdulia, although such things can happen in any country, the causes are distinctly different in Cuba, whose educational system is permeated by a disproportionate control, coercion and indoctrination of the student body to the detriment of a free and universal education.

“It’s embarrassing”, she said, “that with so many basic problems, like indiscipline, the frustration on choosing a course which offers hardly any benefit, the sale of exams – recently recognised by the official press [1] – the favoritism and a thousand things more that demand radical change in the national educational system, they still talk as if nothing was wrong and they hold up the Cuban educational system as an example which the world should follow.

Another academic year with more pain than glory, comes to its end. The teachers dream that in the following year their pay will go up and their working conditions will improve. The parents pray because the vacations are coming up soon. And the students enjoy themselves away from a classroom which gives them more nightmares than dreams.

[1] Recognised recently in the official press.

http://www.cubanet.org/articulos/granma-destapa-%C2%A1ahora-fraude-docente/

Translated by GH

16 September 2013