Translating Cuba

Recently Rafe, my husband went to renew his identity card. He had to do because it was expired and he needed to renew it for some other paperwork he was immersed in. He went to the office in charge of this function, patiently waited his turn in the fifty-year-old system of lines, handed over the photos, the five peso regulatory seal, and spent several exhausting hours, his feet hurting from the long wait, and was given the information that he should return the following day to pick it up.

When he appeared once again, they told him they could not give it to him because he was in the country illegally, because in their computers it appears that he stayed in Canada during a mission in 2000; he would have to go to the National Directorate of Immigration and Nationality, located at 3rd and 22nd in Miramar, to resolve his situation.

Of course he protested, because he knows it’s a manufactured error giving the authorities a pretext to destabilize him, which resurfaces every time he’s invited to participate in some event abroad and seeks the ignominious “exit permit.” But this is the first time they have refused him the indispensable document of identity.

Naturally, he refused to put himself in the bureaucratic orbit where they want to spin him. “The mistake is yours, you who are representing the authority and therefore you are called to resolve it. If I emigrated in the year 2000,” he argued to the official, “how is it that this same office handed me the card in the 2002?”

Given this obvious slip, the manager promised he would look into it and would call to report the results of these efforts. And he did a few days later. Today my spouse is already documented, but only to stay within the country. What to do? Who to appeal to? This is another of the abuses, against which they are helpless, that the historical elite of Cuba are subjected to by their leaders. It is inconceivable that there are other people who have the same names and surnames, who were born the same day, and whose parents had the same names. No, it is a way to treat an opponent in the old-fashioned and antiquated totalitarian Cuban model.

This is the real face of the authorities who violate the rights of their fellow citizens and behave viciously toward political dissidents in a dictatorship that allows them, with impunity, to sculpt a no one, or to maliciously and “officially” crush and discredit those who oppose the system.

It is not in Rafa’s hands — nor should it be — to amend “the mistake” that appears in the network of the National Directorate of Migration and Alien Affairs of Cuba,that would trap him in the vain, humiliating and exhausting game they subject him to — perhaps interminably — of the “bureaucratic mischief” of the political police. For now we have only the option of denouncing it, in writing, one more time.

March 22 2012

I understand that Western countries, where the government emerges from a multi-party democracy, must have their problems. Here the scriptwriters of any news report broadcast are very pleased when they comment on (because they almost never let you hear the voices of the international reporters) the news about the protests of the Outraged, Spanish students, or Americans.  They try to make Cuban television viewers see that these people are protesting to get something similar to what the Cuban Revolution represents.

I wish I could tell these people that you do well to struggle but don’t be mistaken in your paths. Because you don’t know what a government of the extreme left is. Historically the socialist parties of the left have tried to claim that they want to satisfy the demands of the “poor.” They have lifted up the discontented multitudes, the unsatisfied, and have manipulated them until they manage to establish a dictatorship of the State.

What these States and their Councils shelter are not beings more virtuous than those politicians with capital. They are worse, because capitalist politicians have to respect the Law, a Law that is above political parties.

Here they aired a documentary by Michael Moore — with the evil smiles of those panelists on the Roundtable TV show — where the U.S. filmmaker denounced the occasion on which, in his country, capitalism had conquered democracy. One can see well that Michael Moore hasn’t mutated in the cauldron of any totalitarianism, that fear has not paralyzed him.

In dictatorships of the left a very complex phenomenon is produced which effectively verifies a mutation of human nature. We no longer hear authentic protests because hereafter they are organized by the government. All real dialog between citizens and leaders is suspended, there is only a sea of human automatons, hungry, unhappy, but incapable of protest.

Instead of protesting people turn to theft, fraud, prostitution, doing harm to those closest to them (I have a friend I enjoy who, in 1995, received a hammer blow to the head before his bike was snatched). But in every neighborhood there will be a “CDR” — a Committee for the Defense of the Revolution — which is no longer a real community but simply a form of vigilant coexistence, with political priority, among the same mutants who at times give the impression of… even of harmony.

Because, here also, the immense concentration camp is guarded by the prisoners themselves. It’s a mixture of confusion, fear, submission, simulation and, ultimately, there are also people who get satisfaction from being agents of power, who have to clip the wings of conscience of the whole world, and who, bribed with very little, will spread fear.

Almost always in this model of government a leader appears — my courage does not stretch to citing anyone in particular, it’s too terrible, but I can cite the now inoffensive metaphors of Lenin, Stalin — and the people, dispossessed, forgotten, without access to education or medical care, celebrate a betrothal, a wedding and a honeymoon with that leader.

The first heads that rise are cut off, with impassioned cries and thus, the complicity of the masses. There are not a few heads, they don’t have to be only oligarchs or landlords or capitalists, they can be humble people who in their time supported the Revolution and so they themselves would see up close what was afoot.

Little by little, in exchange for literacy campaigns, urban reforms, expropriations of business owners, and many many subsidies, the people will let the leader consolidate the tyranny of his whims and desires; because it will irresponsibly be confirmed that this leader had been believed in his leftist ego: that only one man could always see the light to know what is good for millions.

That caudillo’s pride not only expropriates others’ wealth, it also robs them of the responsibility with which freedom is achieved. (All this can be proven in each and every one of the totalitarian states, because fortunately social phenomena show the laws of dynamics of strength within them.)

The biggest beneficiary in this social marriage is charged with abolishing the law that would revoke it. In that goodwill of responsibility there is one who emerges with the responsibility for everyone, but he no longer has to answer to anyone because without freedom we cease to exist as persons, so it is even logical that a leader doesn’t see us.

So each day freedom of expression will become more dangerous because we would begin to exist, but he will make people believe that the oligarchs are in collusion with foreign powers and that this is what makes uniformity of thought necessary. That is, he denies that this same people is the author of rebellion, its brain is must be following another.

There will be a campaign, as repetitive as the ideology, that says the dissidents and opponents don’t represent themselves when they protest against the absolute power that oppresses, abuses, impoverishes, denies; and that, they see it well: it would seem that the lack of rights is legitimate for people forced to rebel against tyranny, but as they have demonized any rebellion that is not theirs, the tyrants crush peaceful opponents who only protest with their voices, with their opinions, with their signs, after accusing them before “the people” (who again license the tyranny to do what it wants), of being “mercenaries.”

Here I have to take a break because I must clarify that I also believe that civil and peaceful resistance is the best way not to fall into a Revolution.

But I remember, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in the preamble, the first and third points: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”; “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”…

This might have been, and it was not about rebellion, but about rights under the law, the defense of the 75 arrested in the 2003 Black Spring. But the defenders of socialist Law, the prosecutors and commissioners of “the people,” consider that this artificial paradise of totalitarian positivism that ends up being total negativism, is the maximum that can be achieved and that the “New Man” has renounced the Declaration of Human Rights in those 30 articles. Here we see that those in their Interior Ministry uniforms even seem human and “decent.”

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? The political prisoners and the closed political prisons will appear. Perhaps they will not be tortured a la Batista or Pinochet; they will be tortured a la Stalin with scientific methods, that do not always kill but that annihilate human beings with the intention of making them feel they are dogs without rights and to doubt their reasons for being opponents of the dictatorship of “the workers.”

They will be handed over to the gendarmes, who come from such humble people, turned into fanatics by the leader and having cultivated a deep hatred for the dissidence, and to them they will leave the dirty work of torture in multiple ways every day, because the authors of the nightmare will never again show their faces and the humble people will begin to say, “the caudillo knew nothing of this, if the caudillo knew…”

It is a complex phenomenon, which fortunately has been studied, often by those who suffered it. And it definitely sows terror in the minds of everyone, so we are immobilized and cease to exist. No one knows until we show up, tripling the responsibility and waiting on God for the end of these times.

This is not what we have done, like Guernica; they have done it. And like verse 23 of chapter 18 of the Gospel of John: If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil: but if well, why dost thou smite me?

I would like one of the Outraged to read me so I can tell him that I respect any protest because I know what it means to have no power, even to protest. But never be fooled by any leader nor by any Communist. We must seek happiness but the price can never be freedom.

March 20 2012

Today they are saying I’m heartless, that there was no merit in my past, everything in me was bullshit. They will try to discredit even my shadow, they will say that I am only a little guy who misled his colleagues and they will insist on clinging to the lie castaways cling to a board.

With the accusing finger, as usual, they will point the renegade is now rubbing shoulders with incendiary dissidents and bloggers, but it was precisely they who brought me to meet Yoani and Reinaldo, Orlando Luis, Augustine, Joisy, Laritza, Miriam, Vallin, Dagoberto and others who didn’t even know I existed then, and it was through them that I looked into this world of the irreverent and rebellious who take on all risks of living with their truths in a country that only rewards laziness and lies; the accusers were the ones, and no one else, who brought me to open Citizen Zero.

Words of the judgment that the defense is allowed, and now I just reached into my heart to remind them that it was precisely they who forced me to take the first step. They know that the young man who, in 2005, went to his minister, and had bled for everything I thought since I learned to babble barely the names of the bearded ones.

Now I am the antichrist, but although they conceal it, they know that before that fateful May when Fidel announced publicly that we deserved only a “salary increase” of less than $ 2 a month, the Cuban boy had already left much of his health and the best years of his youth – or, and it’s the same, of his life – a member of the leadership of the Federate Students, the Communist Youth, and then in the Communist Party itself; who was chosen in September 1995 to travel to Paris as part of “World Passport” Project Youth Exchange, sponsored by the municipality of Saint Denis; who only by coincidence was not decorated in those years with the Order Julio Antonio Mella, for which I was a candidate for the same Guanajay where today I languish slowly, where the paraffin to maintain life is silently consumed to keep alive, up to the last moment, the dignity of the flame.

So, when they unleash the pack just ask these questions: who did they bar from practicing medicine 5 years ago: the irreducible Citizen Zero who speaks from Cuban Voices, of the Communist militant who wanted to be consistent and sincere? In this story what was the cause and what the effect? Who threw the first stone? Seeking these answers, I have no doubt, all fingers point toward Havana.

Note: This post was written Monday, March 19, 2012.

March 21 2012

 

Now it was the turn of Eriberto Liranza Romero. Now is he whom we have to discredit, destroy and above all to make his brothers in the struggle to lose confidence in him. The smear campaign to discredit and destroy Liranza, unlike those against other members of the resistance, has a more insidious and serious side. And cowards and opportunists who have been given the unscrupulous task of reaching out to some embassies to deliver reports and gossip against the undisputed leader of the most sensitive and important sector of the Cuban opposition: the youth. Eriberto chairs the Cuban Youth Movement for Democracy.

Eriberto, despite his short time as a civic activist and not being as well-known, has proven to be a natural leader which thus arouses the jealousy of some which is used by the political police attack and discredit him.

I am a faithful witness to the unifying effect of this young Christian and of the repressive arsenal of tyranny that is spent against him unlike some that have been hidden to say “that Eriberto and his constant protests and making noise have put him at the center of things in the neighborhood.”

Yes, if that is what someone says from the opposition and in certain places they give priority to trying to stop him, then he is truly a youth leader. The last straw is that certain little characters attack Eriberto and the Front, people who are astute collaborators with the political police with this novel method of collaboration that consists of joining with our oppressors to report how many activists will participate in this or that meeting or event. And in the worst case, a certain individual in the capital gave the officers who besiege the corners of his home, a list of people who may or may not join in the activity.

I have a friend who on getting out of the prison suffered a bitter disappointment that unfortunately took away from the opposition, when, hours after he was released he went to the capital to visit his brothers of the organization and was arrested at the corner of the site, unable to get home because there was a meeting of opponents and officials intercepted him and will not let him even get close because he was not in the list of participants, to wit approved by the political police.

It is unfortunate that in some places they are closing the doors to men like Eriberto Liranza who doesn’t give way and promotes democracy through acts of civil disobedience, so that his home is under siege, and he is systematically arrested and beaten. However, the odd bourgeois, alarmed because of the protests and acts of Eriberto have perverted the district and will receive promotions to adulterated projects, which are limited to photos, little meetings, in short to these underhanded compromises that some make with the State Security.

A week ago some police officers were given the task of writing letters apparently written by Eriberto Liranza attacking the Ladies in White and other opponents. But the strategy is absurd and no longer has the desired effect of the institution that spawned it.

But what most infuriates and annoys the friends and brothers of Eriberto’s struggle is not the smear campaign orchestrated against him, we are already accustomed to the Communists doing this, but that officials of rank, prestige, and even knowledge and experience are falling into the trap of playing the game to damage the reputation of those who with no intention of notoriety, fame or recognition are at the forefront of the struggle and pro-democracy activism in Cuba. And they know well, our Front will not allow them to continue attacking any of our brothers and to echo the lies. Whoever serves the executioner, let them come…

February 12 2012

Leafing through some foreign media, namely a copy of the Spanish newspaper El Pais that someone lent me, I find a report of international character interesting: according to a report just released by the World Bank, world poverty by 2010 is half what was in 1990 and in all parts of the globe the number of poor decreased. Moreover, between 2005 and 2008, from sub-Saharan Africa to America and from Asia to Eastern Europe, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty (with incomes less than $ 1.25 a day) was reduced.

All this because of the growing economies of emerging countries (China, Brazil, India) and developing countries in Latin America, Asia and Africa. So much so, that the world will soon reach the targets outlined in the Millennium Development Goals, which 193 member countries of the United Nations agreed to in 2000: one of the goals was to reduce extreme poverty by half in 2015 and it was reached in 2010, five years earlier. This does not mean that everything is resolved, but it is somewhat optimistic in times of crisis. So much for the report, more or less summarized. Now, where I go.

How is it that over here, so concerned about poverty in the world (the national is of no interest), newspapers, radio and television (including the Roundtable TV show), have not reported on what is published in this report? Well, is nothing new to hide information that compromises the official discourse and, therefore, not surprising. I want to dwell on the parameter established to measure extreme poverty: $ 1.25 daily or the equivalent of about $38 a month. It turns out that here, the average salary of a professional is equivalent to about $20 a month (66 cents a day), others are smaller, not exceeding $15 (50 cents a day). Does this mean that most Cubans live below the extreme poverty level? Apparently so!

There will be advocates of the model, claiming that the health care and education are free and subsidized food products are offered at low prices. Actually, neither one nor the other are really free: they are over paid, so that citizens no longer receive their wages of misery, besides being of poor service and poor quality. The cases which are used for propaganda, are just that: propaganda. A dove does a flock! The food products are just a fallacy, as they are few and do not cover anyone’s most precarious needs for more than a week, and we have to buy anything else, at prices too high, in the State commercial networks in one of the two currencies.

It is important, from time to time, find other means of learning what is happening in the world!

March 21 2012

Hearing a journalist talking on the shortwave radio about the upcoming Pope’s presence in Cuba, he referred to it using the word “tour”. This gave me much to think about, because the church has taken very good care to emphasize that the visit of Benedict XVI to our country is a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Charity of Cobre. So far so good, but what has bothered the general population, and many believers like me in particular, is the fact that the spokesman for his Holiness has publicly expressed a desire to meet with Fidel Castro.

If he is really coming as a pilgrim to the Virgin, I do not understand what he needs to meet with Fidel Castro, who is no longer the president of this country, and according to what I’ve understood, has been excommunicated by the Catholic Church itself. I understand that the Pope, as the head of the Vatican, would meet with Raul, as they are both heads of state, but why with Fidel and not with the Ladies in White?

If the church is apolitical, as is so much proclaimed, why give a mass for the health and quick recovery of the man who has plunged this people into the most cruel darkness, and they never called for any masses in the church for Zapata Tamayo or Laura Pollan?

This visit seems far from that previous visit by John Paul II, in January 1998, which created so many expectations of hope and spontaneously mobilized the Cuban people, without previous calls in workplaces and schools. To the point where, when the Government realized the great number of people moved by the presence of the Pope, to not be outdone, they then organized public calls at the last minute, for a reception that, in fact, was already spontaneously assured by the population itself.

I remember, at that time, the infectious enthusiasm that moved us. I particularly enjoyed it a great deal, with the presence in our house in those days of Father Jose Conrad, with whom we went on foot and full of enthusiasm to the Plaza, to attend the mass. At that time I put on my balcony for the first time in over forty years, a flag: that of the Vatican, to the astonishment of my neighbors, for whom in spite of their constant “invitations” I had never put a Cuban flag, which I do have and keep with love, to put it back waving from my balcony when my country again is free.

This time, I say with all respect and sincerity, I will see the Mass on television. Not because I consider myself a bad devotee. I am a Catholic at heart, but I’m not blind in my faith. I hate to be manipulated by anyone or anything. I believe in God, I am a devotee of Our Lady of Charity, but a few years ago I stopped going to church. I go only on very specific occasions: a christening, a wedding. I did not like that call to which I referred at the beginning of this paper and therefore I decided to keep my distance. But I think that this visit can leave a positive balance: it all depends now on His Holiness Benedict XVI and the public attitude afterwards.

March 21 2012

They arrived early to “visit me” as a couple — as they generally do, whenever they are ordered to harass an opponent — young people of both sexes who identify themselves as agents from the Ministry of the Interior. The pretext was a survey conducted for the National Housing Directorate, and they wanted to know my opinions about the purchase and sale of houses and used cars.

The first inconsistency that jumped out at me was that they came to me directly, they knew my name and surnames and they didn’t have the forms usual in such cases. However, they said, politely, that my participation was voluntary, but my husband had already invited them in — also politely — and they sat on my living room sofa quite disposed to chat. So despite such a phony pretense, I answered their questions honestly to see what the real motive was of their visit.

I answered questions and thought about the subliminal message I wanted to send to the gendarmes of the political police. But for someone who started in the human rights movement in Guanabo, in 1988, and has long since learned to interpret some behavioral codes of the officers of the Cuban State Security, why not speak out?

I thought — when it was my turn to listen — about the first part of the film The Godfather and the fish received by the ’family’ of Vito Corleone wrapped in the bulletproof vest of his hitman Luca Brasi, to communicate that he had been murdered and lay at the bottom of the bay.

I concluded that they had been sent so I would not forget that “they” are there, paying attention to how much say and do — as exercising my freedom and rights is important to me — and they wanted to try, once again, to coerce me. They then raised the question that I found then — and still do — to be the key to that visit. Who is the owner of this home? I said it was me and they insisted, “And the title of the property is in your name?”

Summoning my husband in 1996 or 1997, the police threatened to take the apartment he had acquired with his father in 1959 and they stripped him of it in 2000; since then I have taken steps; the documentation that names me as the owner is not going to appear in any of the offices where one duly registers deeds.

We Cubans who live in this dictatorship and exercise freedom of conscience, are accustomed to the visible (and invisible) presence of the cops, who as devils of the guard, sent “to guard us and keep us” when they like; they attack us with diatribes and without right of reply, covertly harass us or not, sniff in our private lives and enter it without permission and with impunity. And not just threats, but when it’s convenient, they carry them out.

Days later, friends in the area alerted me to the operation that was surrounding my house, which lasted seventy-two hours. It seems that the personnel graduated from the academies of the Ministry of the Interior must be hardened in the exercise against the peaceful dissident through maneuvers that these days, in practice, are more costly than effective.

Anyway, although they threatened me they did not intimidate me. They only reaffirmed the precedent of using its enormous power, among others, to join the gang against those who disagree with their policies and express it freely and publicly, although his ideas are driven by a commitment to the homeland.

It doesn’t matter how many agents repress us; they are members of the military that responds only to the interests of one party and have the strength and ammunition to try to quell — in vain — the libertarian aspirations of this peaceful and defenseless woman, who like others, only grasps the “weapon” of her words.

March 20 2012

Dear Miss Piggy:

You are a superstar, but your public image may be damaged it you don’t control a little the horrid character and bad behavior of your family in Cuba. Your relatives on the island are very valuable and considerate, but that is not a reason for one of them to hit me on two occasions, while I was waiting for an Internet session at the United States Interest Section in Cuba. The only thing I did was to suggest that I did not think it right to grant a pardon to the five convicted of spying. Putting up with the attacks in silence is most prudent when they try to block a simple citizen like me from using the Internet. It’s accepted, even the threats disguised as a concern for my family, studying on-line at a university in the United States.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that your other family members are doing what they want. They make themselves at home anywhere. The Three Little Pigs have a new home near what was always the backyard of my house.

It’s actually an honor to personally meet the protagonists of children’s stories. However, Miss Piggy, you are famous for your femininity, generosity and good taste. When will you send the pigs perfumes and body wash? The piglets could bathe and so discover the brand of cosmetics you use. It’s never more than a little bit of Caribbean fame. If you choose to be discreet, they will surely accept Cartier, Chanel or another perfume.

Miss Piggy is a great pleasure to know that you will read this letter. Finally, I would like to ask at least for stickers and the discs of the Sesame Street educational series for young children we serve. You have many fans all over the world, so we ask you to include Cuban children. And please, do not forget to talk to their relatives. They are getting carried away.

I hope to have news of you soon (once we realize when the smell — of perfume! — invades the house). Be sure to give our love to Kermit the Frog, in Cuba we call him “la rana Rene.”

A thousand kisses,

Dora L. Mesa

P.S. Please do not ever use regular Cuban mail. Forget the postmark and all those trifles. They steal the parcels. Read the newspaper Granma (The letters to the editor section, March 16, 2012, page 11, printed edition). Also the letters never arrive or they’re left at the nice neighbors’ houses, who deliver them to us several hours later. If there is not a parcel-sending agency, we prefer to stick with the stench of your kin and avoid the gifts for young children.

March 20 2012

Just to let you know that I had some personal problems which, added to the pothole of accessing the internet, let me to interrupt my work on this blog for a month. Thank you for your patients and I hope that this restart the generous practice of your sending me your collaboration and comments will continue. Thanks for visiting the blog and letting me know your opinions.

March 20 2012