With Clitoris and With Rights / Yoani Sánchez

mujer_cubanaAt times with good intentions – other times with not so good – someone tries to silence my complaints about the machismo in my country, telling me, “Cuban women don’t have it so badly… those in some African nations, where they are subjected to ablation, are worse off.” As an argument it’s a low blow, it hurts me in the groin, connects me to the cry of a defenseless teenager, mutilated, subjected to that ordeal by her own family. But the rights of women should not be reduced only to the power to maintain their physical integrity and to defend their biological capacity to experience pleasure. The clitoris is not the only thing we can lose, there is a long list of social, economic and political possibilities, which are also snatched from us.

As I live in a country where the paths of civic protest have been severed and demonized, I dare to offer in this blog a list of the violations that still persist against women.

  • They do not allow us to establish our own women’s organizations, where we can unite and represent ourselves. Groups that are not channels of transmission from the government to the citizens, as sadly happens with the Federation of Cuban Women.
  • When they speak of women in the political class, it’s clear that they don’t have any real power but are there to fulfill quotas or assignments by gender.
  • The icon of the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC) – the only organization of this kind permitted by law – shows a figure with a rifle on her shoulder in clear allusion to the mother as soldier, to the female as a piece of the warring conflict cooked up from above.
  • The absence in the national press of reporting about domestic violence does not eliminate its real presence. Silence does not stop the aggressor from hitting. In the pages of our newspapers there should also be these stories of abuse, because otherwise we are not going to understand that we have a serious problem of assaults, silenced within the walls of so many homes.
  • Where can a wife go when she is beaten by her husband? Why are there no shelters or why doesn’t the media publicize the locations of these refuges for battered women?
  • Buying disposable diapers is almost a luxury in this society. Most new mothers still have to spend a good part of their time washing baby clothes by hand. Every emancipation needs a material infrastructure of freedom, otherwise it will remain so only in slogans and mottoes.
  • The high prices of all the products needed for motherhood and pregnancy are also a factor that influences the low birth rate. A crib with mattress costs the equivalent of $90 U.S. in a country where the average monthly salary doesn’t exceed $20.
  • The child support that a father must provide for his children after a divorce – as stipulated by law – doesn’t exceed, in many cases, the equivalent of $3 monthly, which leaves a woman economically powerless to raise her children.
  • The extremely high prices of food relative to wages keep Cuban women chained to the stove while performing economic pirouettes to put a plate of food on the table. It is the women and not the political-economic system that performs a daily miracle so that Cuban families eat, more or less well or more or less badly.
  • After so many slogans about emancipation and equality, we Cuban women are left with a double workday and dozens of cumbersome bureaucratic tasks. It’s enough to go outside to see the effects of this excess load: most women over forty have bitter faces, make no plans for the future, do not go out with their women friends to a bar, and have no escape from their family and the tedium.
  • When a woman decides to criticize the government, she is immediately reminded who wears the skirt; they accuse her of immorality, infidelity to her husband, being manipulated by some male mind, and call her “prostitute,” “cocky,” “hooker,” as many discriminating cutting insults as they can imagine.
  • You can’t try to liberate a specific social group in a society gripped by the lack of rights. To be a woman in the Cuba of today is to suffer these lacks twice.

In short, we want to have a clitoris and rights, to feel pleasure and to speak our opinions, to be known for our skirts, but especially for our ideas.

8 March 2012

Brave and Opportune Decision / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

Jonniel Rodríguez Riverol, in the orange T-Shirt

A group of Santería practitioners from Placetas, as a sign of will, independence and a liberating spirit, have decided to shortly appoint a group independent of state control, which so far they have agreed to call the Independent Yoruba Association.

It will be headed by the priest of that African religion Jonniel Rodríguez Riveról, initiated in the Ollá orisha worship called Ollálarde.

The commissars of the political police are doubly alarmed by this situation. In the first place because it extends independent civil society in ways that group them beyond their ethnicity, and especially because most of this group are open political opponents of the regime and many have participated and engaged in acts of protest and civil disobedience.

They are said to have lost their fear of tyranny and its repressive methods. Rodriguez Riverol will very soon have a twitter account called @yorubalibre which will be accessible to colleagues anywhere in the world to exchange information, experiences and especially experiences from here, where freedom of thought, expression and religion is massively violated.

Congratulations to these Free Yorubas whose vice president will be Loreto Hernández García. Great success in your noble enterprise.

February 15 2012

"Occupy" in Havana / Yaremis Flores

Yaremis Flores.

On the periphery of Havana, in the Alamar district,cases of illegal squatters inunoccupied buildingsare proliferating. The Government and the Municipal Housing Division (DMV), the entities in charge of solving the problem, are simply targets for the numerous complaints and pleas of the population.

“You’re not on the list of priority cases, there are people worse off, and they haven’t committed an offense like you,” said Rita, president of the Alamar Government, to Iris, on Thursday Feb. 9, in an interview, togetherwith the DMV Legal Subdirector.

Iris Ruiz, the wife of the OMNI-ZONAFRANCA coordinator, and her 6 small children, occupied the apartment 4 months ago, Number 1 of the Building E-83, Zone 9 Alamar, where they currently live without water or electricity. Her family was declared an illegal occupant by Resolution 1608/2011, which establishes that “in 2004 the house was confiscated, after the definitive exit of the owner, who went to the U.S.”

“It’s uncertain that the house was confiscated,” said Iris. “The Director of the DMV told me that the apartment is not included in the housing stock. After 2004, two people lived there. One of them is still on the records of Betty, the president of the CDR, even though they abandoned the country more than 5 years ago.”

“They left this apartment ruined, while other people needed it,” Iris added. Neighbors say a DMV inspector visited the site several times with apparent illegal buyers for the property.

“Rosaura, a neighbor of this building, has a son who had a heart operation, and she lives together with 10 people; Estela, a neighbor at Building E-79, has a paraplegic daughter and needs to live on the ground floor. These are two of the parties who tried to get the unoccupied apartment. The Government’s response was negative, because “the apartment is already taken.”

Who gets priority? Iris wonders.

According to the President of the Government of Alamar, at the municipal level no institution has the power to assign housing. Since 2006, this functionhas been the responsibility of the Provincial Government. “Only from me can you get an apartment, since our mission is to combat illegal behavior,” Rita warned Iris, after showing her the extensive list of squatters, waiting for eviction by the authorities.

Yaneisy, known as “the Twin,”already has lived through the experience of an eviction. She’s had a social-work case-file in the Alamar DMV for 16 years. Some time ago, she illegally occupied an apartment. “Theyevicted me with my 2 young children and put all my belongings on the street. They told me I should go back to my place of origin: a 2-room apartment, where 12 people were living together,” she said.

The housing shortage is a sad reality that increasingly affects a larger number of Cubans. Those scattered around by the usual shortage can’t afford to pay monthly rent for housing, let alone buy a house, whose prices don’t invite optimism.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 6 2012

What is “Estado de Sats” / Translating Cuba

This interview with Antonio G. Rodiles in Havana Times, explains the Estado de Sats project in English, including the meaning of the name.  To add one more element to that: the word “sats” is Norwegian and means “velocity.”

In Antonio’s words from the interview:

Antonio Rodiles: The Estado de SATS name stems from an idea by actress Esther Cardoso, whom Jorge Calaforra, Evelyn Quesada and I went to visit when looking to see if she could provide us space at her Casa Gaia, where we held out first event in July 2010.

We were thinking about a name for the project, and I since I’m a physicist I was leaning toward something that had to do with resonance, something that accumulates that state in which everything begins to look and think in a similar direction.

Then Esther told us about “Estado de SATS” [state of sats], a term used to describe the theater prior to the time when the actor appears on stage.  It’s the moment when all energy is concentrated to explode on stage… finally realizing what has been prepared for a long time.

Cultural Exchanges and a Democratic Transition / Estado de Sats, Antonio G. Rodiles

On Saturday March 3 we had a meeting at Estado de SATS regarding cultural and academic exchanges between Cuba and the United States. The panel consisted of the philosopher Alexis Jardines who participated by video-recording, political analysts Julio Aleaga Pesant and Miriam Celaya, and Charles Barclay deputy head of the United States Interests Section in Havana. Over the two hours that we debated this issue, fraught with multiple twists and turns, we generated an intense and respectful dialogue that we hope will soon proliferate in our country.

The reaction of State Security was swift: an organized police operation in the surrounding streets to intimidate the participants as they departed once the meeting ended, and the almost simultaneous publication of several comments on the internet full of lies and false conclusions.

Why the rejection and fear around Cubans discussing our reality, and particularly on such an important topic?

The answer is undoubtedly in the nature of the system itself, in the difficult context is it facing, and in the absence of resources to maneuver given that the country is totally ruined. Every day it becomes clearer that the cosmetic changes initiated by Raul Castro can do little to revive an economy that needs an injection of billions of dollars, or to revitalize a governing party that has no roots or legitimacy among the population. The fatal illness of Hugo Chavez, his principal ally, becomes an extremely inopportune element faced with an unpredictable electoral process, which puts in danger the more than 100,000 barrels of oil Cuba receives daily, without no sign of a possible replacement. With values exceeding $100 per barrel, the Cuban government once again finds itself on the edge of the abyss.

On the other hand, the investments from other countries, such as Brazil and China, are clearly directed at bettering future relations between the island and the United States, which remain at a complete standstill due to, among other things, the refusal to release the contractor Alan Gross and the inability to take concrete steps in the direction of political reform.

This difficult scenario forces the Cuban government to restart an offensive to convince that neighboring country to ease its trade sanctions, or at least to ease restrictions on travel by American tourists. To accomplish this will require persuading the many who distrust the ability of the current government to carry out major economic and political changes. Within this strategy of “soft power,” academic and cultural diplomacy play a major role. By the same logic, the radius of influence for political actors who support the transition to a democratic system, both within and outside the island, must be reduced to a minimum. Time is running out and the elite needs to consolidate its corroded power as quickly at possible, in order to reshape itself to maintain its position, regardless of future changes.

Academic and cultural exchanges are extremely important to call on all the human capital that has escaped our country in a stampede, and to permit the free flow of information and knowledge that characterizes today’s world. But they cannot become a tool to legitimize a government that has destroyed our nation. These cultural exchanges could be called upon to become an indispensable ingredient in the transition to democracy, but this will only happen if Cuban civil society and the diaspora intersect, this must be the fundamental challenge.

Cuban civil society is in a period of resurgence that obliges us not only to exercise our rights, but also to do so with the greatest possible rigor.

Civil society’s demand to play the role genuinely belonging to it, greatly irritates the powers-that-be, especially considering that for 53 years the same group of individuals has assumed absolute monopoly over words, faces, and logic and, above all, counts on the power of force to prevent, at any price, Cubans from demanding another choice of government. The absurd accusations that seek to personally discredit everyone who dissents, the use of cynicism and deceit as irreplaceable tools, are demonstrations of the primitive and senile vision of this group clinging to the past, clinging to totalitarianism, refusing to accept that time is relentless.

The highest representative of this policy has been and is Fidel Castro, an individual whose hand has never trembled when he has imposed it, be it even to crush the life out of a human being (examples abound). I do not know the individuals employed in these media campaigns of rage and hysteria, but what is left is to invite them to understand that Cuba will inevitably change; it is just a question of time and circumstances until this so long-awaited rearrangement occurs, and I remind them that each human being is responsible for his own actions, a reality that should not be forgotten.

From our activism, we have no option other than to continue working on the transition to a democratic society, where the power of a few is never again imposed by force on the rights of an entire nation.

Note: I just read about Abel Prieto’s new assignment as an adviser to Raul Castro. Events will tell whether this move is consistent with the strategy set out above.

6 March 2012

Cultural Exchange / Rebeca Monzo

Last Saturday* in Estado de Sats the theme was cultural interchange between the island and the rest of the world, and specifically with the United States.

The panel was composed of: Miriam Celaya, Julio Ariaga, Charles Barclay, assistant chief of the United States Interest Section, and as moderator, Antonio Rodiles. Alexis Jardines was unable to attend but sent a video from abroad, that was screened before starting the debate.

As is usual in these convocations, the house had a good audience.

The most contentious issue was precisely why the cultural exchange produces so much more from our side over there, then from them to us. Especially if you consider that those who come through these exchanges are, in the vast majority, American intellectuals or artists, not Cuban-Americans as we would hope, because those are the ones who can tell us first hand about their experiences in exile.

Why can Silvio go to sing in the U.S. and Willy Chirino can’t come here and do it in the land of his birth. This topic was discussed very well by Alexis Jardines, who also expressed very sharply, “Without money you can’t be an (official) revolutionary or an opponent.

Notable among the comments from the public present was that of Dr. Jeovany Jimenez, a doctor from Artemisa and author of the blog Citizen Zero, whom the government barred from the practice of medicine, for being an opponent. Right now he is on a hunger strike in Guanajay Park, demanding they return to him the right to practice medicine. Also notable was the absence of “official people”– who were invited.

The cool morning passed peacefully, despite the refreshment that the host would have liked to give the people present was apparently “sabotaged” because the empanadas that he sent for to be enjoyed with the now classic tea, were acquired by “someone” who arrived to pick them up ahead of time [supposedly on behalf of Estado de Sats], and who even paid $100 more than their total cost to the lady that makes them.

At the end of the event, on leaving the residence, some of those attending were intercepted by security agents, who were prowling around the place, right there in the street, but there were no arrests.

*Translator’s note: Rebeca’s text says Friday, but in fact the event was on Saturday.

March 7 2012

The Pot-Banging Protest of January 2012 / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

Wilman Villar Mendoza, killed by the Castro dictatorship January 19, 2012.

In January, the first month of 2012, the Cuban internal resistance was the scene of two major events which, for their impact and significance, are milestones and mark the Cuban nation. On January 19, 2012 the death of political prisoner Wilman Villar Mendoza was announced, a young Christian Baptist who had spent more than fifty days dying on hunger strike, in which he demanded fair and transparent criminal proceedings, with promise of an adequate his defense.

Villar Mendoza had been arrested, along with other members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, when they carried out a resounding and peaceful protest in Santiago municipality of Boatswain. The political police, true to their cruel and false nature, planned a future attempt to prosecute him for alleged crimes of which he had already been legally exonerated, and Wilman Villar met his cruel death after a painful agony where the silence, indifference, complicity and torture put paid to his young, dignified existence.

But days later his brothers in the internal resistance from one end of the country to the other, united in an unprecedented move. In hundreds and hundreds of Cuban homes, thousands and thousands of compatriots joined in a national cacerolazo — a pounding on pots and pans — to condemn the crime and the crude smear campaign launched by a cowardly government’s press releases against the memory of this young man who had much more courage than his executioners, to meet the challenges from a position of strength, against those who led him to prison unjustly.

The regime and its enforcers of its flamboyant military deployment, arrests, and persecutions could do nothing to avoid the pot-banging, women, adolescents and almost children, men and women and all the people of the village who do not belong to the opposition as such, joined the cacerolazo. The cacerolazo this Jan. 24, Day of Resistance, its connotation and national and international impact tells us how much progress has been made by Cuba’s opposition, far-reaching in will and consensus, as is embodied in the spirit of unity in action and we announced that this could represent the year that has just begun in the fight for the freedom of the motherland. These are the facts, the rest is up to us.

January 26 2012

Man Convicted in Bayamo Child Prostitution Ring is on Hunger Strike / Ernesto Morales Licea

One of those sentenced to prison following the prostitution scandal revealed in Bayamo, Cuba, in May 2010, after the death of a 12-year-old girl, has declared a hunger strike and as of today and has gone 16 days without eating.

Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez owned a rental house for foreigners in Bayamo, and was arrested on August 4, 2010, allegedly involved in a child prostitution ring discovered after the death of the child Lilian Ramirez Sanchez, whose body was found in May 2010 on the outskirts of the city.

Alvarez Sanchez, 51, was sentenced in October 2011 to 14 years imprisonment for the crime of “complicity in the corruption of minors.” As part of the sentence, Alvarez Sanchez’s property was confiscated, including his home with his belongings, and the car inherited by his family.

According to Alvarez Sanchez’s daughters, Rosa Nelvia Alvarez and Maria Isabel Alvarez, he needed to be hospitalized last December 17 in the provincial prison “Las Mangas” due to low blood pressure problems after two weeks without food.

Both of Ramon Enrique Alvarez’s daughters say that he had been transferred to an isolation cell in the days before his hospitalization, to force him to eat.

Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez y su nieta recién nacida
Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez and his newborn granddaughter

 

The fundamental demand of Alvarez Sanchez is to have his case reviewed by Havana military prosecutors, as, according to him “this case has unacceptable irregularities, lies and manipulations” on which investigators/prosecutors in Granma province relied for their reports.

In a “manifesto” sent by Alvarez Sanchez from Las Mangas Provincial Prison in Granma, a central point of his complaint that the girls questioned after the death of Lilian Ramirez claimed to have participated in sexual orgies in a rented room on the second floor of his house, when the rooms available for rental were all in the first floor.

On the second floor of his house, he said, his daughter Maria Isabel Alvarez lives with her husband and young daughter.

In addition, Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez reports that another of those involved in the case, Yaina Cosett Pardo Munoz (condemned to 22 years for murder and corruption of minors) testified against him under pressure and psychological torture, as he himself admitted publicly during the trial.

In his “Manifesto”, Ramon Enrique Alvarez alleges torture, beatings, being put in cold rooms, isolation cells, and other methods to force him and others involved to confess to crimes he did commit.

In his account, Alvarez Sanchez states that another man convicted in the case, Leonel Gamboa Milan, aka “Spike” (sentenced to 25 years for murder and corruption of minors) was put in the same cell with an alleged inmate who assaulted him with a sharp object, and told him to confess or he would kill him himself because he was the uncle of the dead child. According to Alvarez Sanchez, Milan Gamboa needed to be hospitalized for a kick in the testicles given to him by the interrogators.

Jeep seized from Alvarez Sanchez

Another of Ramon Enrique Álvarez’s demands is that they return all assets to his family, especially the Jeep, for which, according to him, there is nothing to justify their seizure.

The trial of the nine involved in the case (three Italians and six Cubans), was held behind closed doors between 26 and 30 September this year at the Manuel Muñoz Cedeño Professional School of Arts, located on the outskirts of the City of Bayamo.

The decomposing body of 12-year-old Lilian Ramirez Espinosa, was found on May 19, 2010 in a rural area on the outskirts of Bayamo. The death of the child in a sexual orgy with foreigners and Cubans caused a local and international scandal. Many arrests followed as part of an investigative process that has been denounced for numerous irregularities and inconsistencies.

All those arrested in the case were found guilty, sentenced to terms of between 10 and 30 years in prison, and their homes and belongings were confiscated immediately.

Following is the unabridged manifesto of Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez.

Unabridged Manifesto of Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez

Bayamo, November 10, 2011

Name: Ramón Enrique Álvarez Sánchez

Date of Birth: 29 / March / 1961

Case Number: 364/11

Alleged Crime: Accomplice to Corruption of Minors

On August 4, 2010 I was arrested and taken to the Granma Criminal Investigation Unit by the Official Instructor Luis Medina.

In a raid on my house they seized a computer, external hard drive, a flash memory and mobile phone, all clean, with nothing of child pornography, or anything relevant. continue reading

In the search they took Willys’ car, but the instructor sent it back that same August 4, 2010, saying the car was not linked in the case at all, that it had not been used in anything illegal and was inherited by the family, and under this reasoning it was returned to my family.

That day Officer Instructor Luis Medina took my statement, he asked if I know Gallego’s wife, Yaina Cosett Pardo.

My answer was that only knew her by seeing her with Gallego.

Then he continued questioning me about on other people to which I replied:
– Yoker (Yoel Rafael Sanchez Ramirez) by sight because his grandmother was massaging my daughters.
– Pincho (Leonel Milán Gamboa) no, I didn’t know who he was talking about.
– Nano (Vicel Ramos Cedeño), only by sight.
– Iliana Muños (Iliana Victoria Muñoz Yero) yes, as we studied in the same school, but since high school we haven’t been friends.

They took me down and put me in cell # 11. That afternoon they took us out to get some sun, we were 3 in that cell.

On the 5th day they took me to a line up where there were 4 men next to me saying that Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Varela Luna had brought them there.

I wore a blue shirt, shorts and sandals, all the others wore long pants, pullovers and shirts, on the four occasions. I was placed the center (I think intentionally) and then I moved to the left first and then right. They never changed my clothes, even the phosphorescent blue shirt that I was wearing in the cell.

On day 5 or 6 I heard from the cell the line up of Rebeca Esther Gómez Paneque (Milka) and that of Dolores Rita Marsán Sosa (Lolita), in which he said several times: “Raise your hand and say your name .. !” And I heard: “Dolores Rita Marsán Sosa!” At the end she told the court: Oh, I thought they had brought me for a more serious problem! Without knowing what they were doing was line up.

Afterward the Instructor/Investigator Frank Solano Ramirez pulled me out, and made me sign where the children said they had been in my house in a room high in a 2nd floor, and that they called me Melo or Memo. He said he was clear with me. That just meant they had done these line-ups. I, realizing that in fact there was no room my house up above, after a few hours of thinking, in their company, and then only in a cold room and for about 4 or 5 hours, I decided to sign them, as every half hour he said, “just sign boy, that’s not going to hurt anything.”

At 2 days lager I was taken out in the morning, about 20 minutes after breakfast (I think at 7 am), leading me to a cold room. At about 11 am Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez and The 1st Lt. Instructor Lesther Leyva Vega took me to a man, thin and very nervous like he had had a shock, as his head moved far to the right and then left, and he kept shrugging his shoulders.

This man supposedly Italian, (according to the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez), barely looking at me, eyes glued to the floor, told me, he went to Central Park and that Yoker was at the corner of the park, he’s been invited to a party, and they took him to my house, and went upstairs to a room, that I had opened the front door, he and Yoker had gone up to that room where they had a sex party.

I tried to attack the lies he was saying, he had never been to my house and his own statement as evidence, but the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez would not let me do anything, then 1st Lieutenant Instructor Lesther Leyva Vega, who was at the typewriter behind the desk, stepped in too.

Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez asked the date and the supposed foreigner said it was April. They took him out immediately and when the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez gave it to me to sign cleverly he had not put the date (April). The 1st Lieutenant Instructor Lesther Leyva Vega told me it was not important and I told them I was not going to sign, after a while they gave in and put the date was April and I signed, but I was sure they would release me because it was all a lie, I was sure when they investigated they would release me, as that gentleman didn’t know my house because there are no upstairs bedrooms. It was all in invention.

After half an hour of being alone in the cold room they took me to Gallego’s wife, I didn’t know her name but I had seen her with him and I knew she was from the Munoz family. This young woman (Yaina Cosett Pardo Munoz) when she began to say she knew me, I turned on her in fury and said and said “shameless” and immediately Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez violently threatened me and I calmed down.

She said she was waiting with a group of women in the Policlinic, in the banks and waiting for them to send her a sign and she went up to 2nd floor room in my house. Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez was the questioner. She said they had sex there and she was filming it with a video camera and gesturing with her hands as if she was holding a camera.

In those moments when I confided in those instructors, I was thinking inside, I thought it would be best for me and I told the instructor Frank Solano Ramirez that if he would just take me to my house, we could go this afternoon, and he could see that it was all lies. He said no, he had to have lunch and that when I left he didn’t want me to be weak from hunger, that we had to continue in the afternoon with others, I did not know who the people were.

There was no more confrontation, no more anything.

They changed my cell and I could see my family on day 11 and my lawyer (Leonor de los Dolores Estrada Jimenez), when she questioned me I told her what I have narrated in this paper, afraid, because through signs she told me they had cameras and microphones. I told her that in my house there was no room upstairs, much less sex among so many people, they were crazy. This is what I whispered, not wanting them to learn that I had no room upstairs.

But I noticed that when making the search, on August 4, when they went up the stairs, the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez and a very disgruntled prosecutor dropped the clothesline of clothing that is on the top floor of my house. And something important was that, on the concrete stairs, specifically this, not iron, I told the photographer to photograph and look carefully.

Something else also important was that the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez, before sending me to prison, took me out and told me to sign a statement that “yes Gallego’s wife and the foreigner and other people had been in my house…” but that “… Nothing would happen to me, because I didn’t know what they were doing in the bedroom, that supposedly it was a party among friends, and in the confrontation they said before me that I didnt’ participate in nor charge anything for the bedroom for the party.” Which I refused to sign because my house was controlled by the DSE, Emigration and Housing, and they didn’t even allow family parties in my house.

My lawyer as a precautionary measure requested bail, but I was denied and they gave me detention.

Later that afternoon of August 11, 2010 they brought me to the Granma Provincial Prison.

Here I met Yoker and Pincho, a young man who I had never seen and who had very bad nerves, very disturbed.

A few days later took me to the “Instruction Point” and 6 am the next day they took me to my house to take some goods that were in the rented room.

The Instructor Luis Medina put the things that were in the room on a cart. Later he presented it to the prosecutor Aliuska and said before all the neighbors, who were crying in front of the house, along with my lawyer who was there, “We had to take everything, even the clothes, to not leave hardly anything!”

Instructor Luis Medina told him that the car had no involvement in the crime nor did the other things in a different part of the house. She told him, “Isaid ALL.” This shows that clearly that she contradicted the Instructor Luis Medina and young prosecutor (I can not remember his name), she was the one who had come from Instruction intending to pick up things from the rental room.

The InstructorLuis Medina and the Young Prosecutor, very disappointed, were sent to load everything, even the bed of my daughter and husband; and under protest from us they left the cradle of my grandson and 2 personal little cots, forcing my daughter to sleep separately from her husband. When they took the Jeep out of the garage I had to take it out and the Instructor Luis Medina authorized me to take from if the mechanic’s tools; at this point I told him that this was too much, what the prosecutorAliuska had ordered and that the car had nothing to do with the crime, they were heirlooms, they only had to take the things out of the rental room.

I said to them, and my children also declared, that everything they were taking was in the inheritance from my grandmother.

My oldest daughter asked the Instructor Luis Medina and Young Prosecutor if that was confiscated, they said that was only being seized under investigation, my daughter told me that they felt embarrassed and worried about what was happening there, obviously they were uncertain that any crime had been committed in my house.

The next day they took me to the Provincial Prison.

In September they took me to “Instruction” for at least 17 days, to Pincho and Gallego’s wife, the latter, in a whispered aside told me that she would tell the truth, that she’d never been in my house, which I knew very well, that they had pressures and forced her to convince her to tell a complete lie.

Lt. Col. Felipe Ordonez Valdivieso, like the 5 days in the hospital, and Lieutenant. Colonel Damian Artiles Pulido (who at the trial proved to be only a Lieutenant) put me in the cold room and asked me, very politely, to narrate the events. And I told him everything that I have narrated here.

In the end, Lt. Colonel Felipe told me that even though the girls said my house was in Guisa and in fact my house is in Bayamo, the prosecutor was going to sentence me, that is, in my judgment, the sentence was already dictated.

Then Lt. Damian asked me about the young Pincho, about what he’d told me about the process of “Instruction” and the treatment given there.

I told him everything: that they’d put me in a cell with a Rafael, an alleged offender, who brought a stick in the form of a sharp punch, this, says Pincho, he was poked with a sitck and said that he was the godfather of the dead girl and Pincho had to say he killed her.

Also that some guy called Lugo had beat him and kicked him the nuts (testicles).

I also told them that in prison I had seen a guy named Wilfredo Benitez, this man was put in the cell with Pincho and he (Wilfredo Benitez) said he spoke by phone with Mercedes, Pincho’s mother who was a friend of Gallego’s wife (Yaina), by this date I knew her name, I found it out there in prison.

And this Wilfredo told him to cooperate in the reconstruction of events that the police would certainly ask him to do and if they didn’t ask him he should volunteer it, so the police would realize he didn’t know anything about events and would let him go.

Wilfredo Benitez (Agent Cellda) told me that at the line-up, the day before they took me out in the sun so the girls could look at me through the window overlooking the patio. And he told me how Pincho worked with him and with Yaina to persuade them to cooperate with everything they asked for in Instruction.

Lt.. Damian got quite worked up when I expressed all this and he said: “Pincho was gay, the doctor of criminology of Havana had drafted a statement that boy’s ass was torn up…” those were his words, obviously using obscenities I would not want to capture in this document. I told him that was not my problem, I just knew and was quite sure that none of them had been either in my home or in the “Ghost Room” or anywhere in the house. That was the first interview that neither Felipe nor anyone made a record of.

The 14 or September 15, 2010 I had the last interview with Felipe alone, where I said: “I was fucked, that the prosecution would take everything.” He didn’t question me. I just asked him to: “Where were the videos of the party in my house? Where was the upstairs room they talked about?” That all this was like a farce.

He told me to go to the cell, that there were no videos, there were photos that would be revealed or published abroad after paying me for the room. I was confident that with the lack of arguments, and the logic of I said, the courts and the Prosecutor would not swallow such nonsense and so convinced of my innocence I was brought to detention.

I emphasize that the Instructor Felipe never took notes of my statements.

Here in the Provincial Prison in Granma applied Order 22 to me, which is said to be for murderers and terrorists.

I was not allowed to use the telephone, only every so often could not communicate with the family, while the other inmates could make calls every other day.

For 6 months I was struggling because I stopped studying (because I just started and they took me out of school). Until after much struggle, and raising complaints and protests, the prison director and authorized me to study so I am finishing as best I can my twelfth grade class. A Certificate of Recognition can be seen attached to that letter for my good attitude and academic performance. Although I am still under the Order 22 and I’m still searched and controlled as any other inmate, and even more when the bosses are present.

Also, I was denied medical attention as well as any other special attention given by the Central Penitenciary, even more so when my dissatisfaction had been brought to the attention of the Prison Chief in Granma. However, they diagnosed me with a prostate lump due to a urinary incontinence and involuntary expulsion of urine that I suffered, it was necessary to resort to the police Instructors who were on the case to beg for a physical exam, with the uncertainty that for lack of emergency medical treatment it could trigger a carcinogenic terminal illness.

My wife after several complaints and grievances was summoned to Granma Provincial government and Lt. Colonel Rutinier, who saw her, explained that the Jeep would be returned, because it was an inheritance and had nothing to do with the case.

My lawyer from the beginning, Leonor, on learning of some statements which they’d confronted me with, presented evidence that Video and photos that, incredibly, were accepted by the Instructor Frank Solano Ramirez Solano and in 3 or 4 days and he said the delivery and accepting it was a violation.

These pictures and videos were copied and girls were tutored to say that in March 2011 after a year of the supposed events, these girls (who are listed by psychoanalysts, teachers and lawyers in this specialty as “Manipulators,” “Liars,” “Incoherent,”…”Telling lies without thinking of the consequences…” according to the words of the experts in File No. 69/10, Volume II, Page 82 and 93).

These girls incredibly changed a year later and said that “the 3 had been wrong” that they went to a room below, the other defendants emphasized in room upstairs. No one, not minors or defendants gave a correct description of my house, nor of me, they did not speak of significant elements in view of any person such as the safe in the room, walls covered in plastic that is not common in other houses, a large mirror and 2 beds, I had noticeable objects in the room of my house, like the windows of the room indicated by the prosecutors are Miami windows facing to the street, which means that everything that happens in this room is heard by passersby. These elements distinguish one place from another, even a retarded person would call attention to and remember some of this.

It was a year after my arrest when my lawyer had access to the case file, and they only give a month of preparation for my defense, because before she knew almost nothing of the alleged facts or the evidence we would face, because the case was in a closed investigative phase.

When we learned that the date on which the events allegedly happened I felt that things would begin to unravel more smoothly because I could show that I was not at home that day during the hours of the accusation because since late February 2010 in order to build a trailer for my family, I began work in the mechanical workshop belonging to Alexis Robles located in the Jesus Menendez neighborhood, a work in which I was directly involved and where I arrived in the very early hours of the morning and stayed until after 8:00 pm, that I did every day of the week, including some Sundays, keeping this trailer at the home of the neighbor Mrs. Josefa Antonia Peña Ayala, taking care of these tasks throughout the month of March to May when it was concluded. (Folio 80 Volume XVI of the cause).

March 6, 2010 is the date to which I attribute this criminal act which did not occur in my house, because in addition, in Pio Rosado # 22 (my home) my wife, Margarita Tamayo Chelala, was recovering from a fibroid, in an absolute state of rest from March 4, 2010.

The trial was conducted from between September 26-30 2011 at the Provincial School of Art behind closed doors and only 3 of my relatives could attend the trial. My innocence was clearly demonstrated with statements such that of Angelo Malavasi (Italian who first told me his name was Luigi), of Yaina Cosett Pardo Munoz and all other defendants and especially film evidence, where minors in the center help girls and boys from Santiago de Cuba (File No. 69/10, folio 62 Volume II, specifically the back of folio 64), they say they went to a house by the Bayamo Polyclinic, with a blue door without bars, a floor of Shopping (a CUC Store), red furniture and the owner of the house was dark and of medium height, in a ROOM UPSTAIRS, it was declared for the 3rd time on July 30, 2010 in Santiago de Cuba and in the case on 23 and 26 June 2010.

I think the penalty to which I sentenced, (14 years in prison and forfeiture of all my property) is totally excessive and unfair, with which I would lose the rest of my life.

Yaina Cosett and Angelo Malavasi in the act of oral trial agreed to forgo the benefits of Article 52ch and declare the truth, that they were never in my house, they pressured, intimidated and coerced them into telling lies about the location and presence in my house, which he explains in his statements, supposedly lawful, where they say they went to a room on the second level, which does not exist.

Also in the case of Angelo Malavasi he says explicitly how he was taken to my house, the schedules indicated that he allegedly committed the crimes in my home and how Lieutenant Colonel Rafael Varela Luna and the other actors were not in agreement on deciding by which of the two doors to my house they had gone in, Angelo Malavasi said how he filmed this statement and they erased it several times in the camera while they changed the script like he was a movie star, until he made a statement that was supposedly consistent with these Law Enforcement Officers.

This can be corroborated in the videos of the oral proceedings and for more accuracy and depth by Angelo Malvasi himself, who could give details of this theater, as well as how he was indoctrinated into how to behave in the line-up.

The same thing happened to Yaina Cosett, who can attest to all her false statements and confrontations under pressure exerted by Instructors.

I don’t consider the line-ups (Identification of Persons) that they conducted with me legitimate, first because I am innocent and no one can truthfully identify me as participating in the crimes they accuse me of, and second because, as I related, Mr. Wilfredo Benetiz (Agent Celda) told me that for these line ups I was taken to Soleador the afternoon before, and on the top floor there they found the minors (involved in the case), who were there to see me and at the time of the line up they remembered me, physically, well.

For making clear my dissent and opposition to such line-ups, which were totally faked and organized maliciously, the participants on my side were dressed completely differently from me and had an aspect totally differently from mine, I was totally scruffy, bearded, in shorts, sandals and a blue fluorescent shirt, that I never changed. The other participants in the line up were brought in from the street, nicely dressed, hair combed, long pants, etc.

In short:

They have unjustly sentenced me — I am almost 51 and have various illnesses — to 14 years in prison.

They seized the home I inherited from my family, where I was born, for me one of the most prized material possessions for a human being and for me personally a possession with great sentimental value.

They seized the car I inherited from my family, which I bought and sold 3 times in response to the economic conditions in my country.

It prompts me to think that the judicial system of my country has lashed out against me with immense cruelty, without giving me the opportunity to tell my truth, the truth, punishing me for a crime of which I am innocent.

December 21 2011

We Ask for a Home for Newborn Twins Mario Alejandro and Maria Alajandra Lara Alfonso / Jorge Luis García Pérez Antunez

As with the campaigns, “Return Yili to his Father”, “Save Ariel”, “Do Not Let Mario Alberto Perez Aguilera Die”, “For Dignified and Decent Housing for all Cubans”, “Do Not Let Orlando Zapata Die”; again, the Rosa Parks Movement as a part of the Central Opposition Coalition, and the Front sensitized to the pain and suffering of others, has launched a new campaign to pressure the Castro regime into providing the young mother, Lara Yaima Alfonso, and her newborns with a roof over their heads and a living commensurate with their situation and needs. Presently, the 28 year old Yaima, is living in the maternal room of the Placetas General Hospital, where just a few hours after giving birth to these innocent creatures, the mother refuses to leave until they have a place to live, but she may be thrown into the street at any time.

The suffering of this Cuban mother strengthened to the harsh reality of not having a crib, diapers, bottles nor basket; and the cruel rejection of his parents due to his homosexual condition, another achievement of the Castro revolution fragmenting families over differences in political, sexual (orientation) of whatever type.

Yesterday, several of his relatives certainly did not see much as they arrived at the hospital with a fan and a succulent lunch, in exchange for staying away from “Human Rights people.”

“If you don’t turn away from them we’ll take everything and not come any more”

“Fine, that take it now, because I’m not going to turn away from these people, not now and not when my problem is resolved, because they are the only ones who really helped me.” Such was the brave and honourable response to a family sent and manipulated by the political police.

And indeed they returned with the lunch that they had taken to her, as they also removed the fan that the patient needed, but thank God and the women of Rosa Parks, Yaima is having lunch every day and enjoying a fan.

As we see again the human insensitivity of the political police, far from solving the problem of the needy, they respond with harassment and threats such as brandishing the name of Idel Morfi Gonzalez*, also known as “Railroad Nail”: “If you are still dealing with those people of human rights, you are not getting a home and may go to prison from here.”

The case of Yaima and her little innocent creatures are the reflex of the mentality of hatred of a regime which must be called a reflection to you, dear reader, wherever you go raise your voice as a form to put pressure on the Castro dictatorship so that he gives a home to Yaima and her children.

Translated by: Hank Hardisty

February 16 2012

Owners of What? / Cuban Law Association

By Lic. Yanelis Ramírez Cruz

The right to private property is pending matter in Cuban society.

The means of production are State owned, so there is no initiative for individual productivity. Productive activity is in the hands of the State, which establishes the working conditions, remuneration or any issue related to the employment relationship, as independent trade unions or any similar associations are banned.

The State’s monopoly of productive activity is a very strong tool, and every citizen who opposes this could lose their livelihood, and even political opposition can be used as an argument that you are working for a foreign power, which may imply some criminal penalty.

Economic freedom, the possibility of undertaking productive enterprises or businesses, to obtain and dispose of the fruits of your labor, is one of the most effective ways to achieve independence and individual prosperity.

Totalitarian regimes know that this independence becomes incompatible with absolute power. Hence the obsession with maintaining strict control of the economy, and the contempt for that sector of society that is striving for improvement and advancement.

Black Eyed Peas Fan Annoys GECAL Executives / Dora Leonor Mesa

Recently a gentleman visited me, concerned by the wording of my posts (!?). The official said he belonged to the Ministry of Justice. Among his “friendly” criticisms, adorned with details of my personal life and my family, he advised me to be careful with the legal representative of the Business Group GECAL (Havana Construction Business Group).

“She has a ’bad character’” he said.

At the end of the conversation I have doubts about his visit. Was it a threat or a comfort? The chagrin of the GECAL executives relates to the fact of making public the name of the director, Mr. Nelson Cordova Pita and the legal representative of the company. It’s actually a crude ploy, because in the post I mention only the principal and exclude the lawyer, the person they want me to see as a “bad character”.

It is no secret to anyone that government repression against the opposition and civil society activists has intensified strongly. The rain of harassment and retaliation are permanent; although to be fair, dissent and civil society activists get the best part. The Cuban population suffers more, much more.

Like what happened with the murder of a 14-year-old, Alain Izquierdo Medina, killed for climbing a mamoncillos tree with two other children who miraculously escaped injury. The already judged guilty, Mr. Amado Interian, retired from the police forces, had time to hide and sought to evade justice.

Mr. Amado Interian is known in the community where he lives for his “bad character”. Sources who prefer to remain anonymous claim that his anger has killed on other occasions. The value shown by Alain Izquierdo’s mother, Mrs. Raisa Medina, the intervention of the attorney Laritza Diversent and other efforts made, including the complaint to the Committee of Experts of UNICEF, managed land him to jail, although the sentence is less than for killing a cow.

On April 16, 2011 a woman in uniform, citing security reasons because of the military parade, took away the bottles of water from elementary school students in Vedado, forcing youngsters to go thirsty for 5 hours. The controversial incident prompted another investigation I requested from the Expert Committee for UNICEF.

It could signal different situations where I have acted against the “evil genius” harmful to girls and Cuban girls. I have tried to help a bit and I will continue doing so. I make the Cuban government responsible for the harm it can do to me and my family. Meanwhile, from time to time, I imagine in Cuba finding the time to listen to and personally enjoy the Black Eyed Peas:

I gotta feeling…

March 6 2012

Conversation on a Sandbar / Lilianne Ruíz

My neighbor Elisa says she is convinced that the Revolution is immutable. One reason is because of the number of youth who are in the Revolutionary Armed Forces — doing their military service — who, according to her, would give their lives before “handing over the country.” I hastened to tell her, perhaps reassuringly, that the sovereignty of Cuba has never been in danger.

I put to her the example of the Venezuelans, who have taken the long view to not to give absolute political power to the leader there. Then, in the next elections, the country will not surrender, God willing, when they vote for the opposition candidate, if that is what they want. It is a question of “Elections,” to which still they are entitled.

We no longer have the right to choose. Every time the seals applauded “Elections? What for.” And now those of us who are not supporters of the policies of my neighbor Elisa’s Party, have no one to choose from. Of course, the also doesn’t know that the Army of a country should never represent a Party, because a Party represents only one faction of Society.

We no longer have the right to choose. Every time the seals applauded “Elections? What for.” And now those of us who are not supporters of the policies of my neighbor Elisa’s Party, have no one to choose from. Of course, the also doesn’t know that the Army of a country should never represent a Party, because a Party represents only one faction of Society.

The main damage this process causes in people is the bigotry and ignorance of having sown the ideology of a single author. The worship of the leader excites the mob to violence against any manifestation of the opposition. The mobs themselves are organized and even transported to the homes of the opposition who protest only with their voices. Something as arbitrary as a leader and an exclusionary State can not bear these voices because they fear them and so try to crush them. These voices that have burned their ships rarely give up.

There is no return after believing in the human right to freedom. All these phenomena of the State trying to discredit the opposition have been practiced by other totalitarians before this one. All these totalitarians have fallen when human beings preserver for their freedom. Only God knows the keys to our Destiny.

Most disconcerting is that my neighbor Elisa thinks that the violence is justified and that the Ministry she works for is doing the right thing, seems a human being. She had always seen it as such, once I dyed her hair because she did me a favor. How treacherous our condition can be, she represents the power that crushes us with no respect, that has deprived us of our rights.

I knew she was wearing a uniform, but we also talked on other occasions, about family issues. The worst thing is to discover that we can sympathize with our enemies. I don’t call those who think differently enemies, but those who exert direct or covert violence against other Cubans.

Also, she reminded me of someone whose name I don’t remember, to defend her thesis of the importance of defending sovereignty against democracy (which is the most bizarre reasoning, like an autoimmune disease) she asked me to show her the opposition documents that weren’t testimonies. Documents versus testimonies, this is a film I’ve seen before, I think that this is something of the devil, not just human powers.
If the opposition in Cuban had the space that rightfully belongs to the, if they could visit the Cuban prisons, denounce the abuses with documentary images and not only with the value of a witness that only a totalitarian policeman would dare to underestimate. She also has told me that it is “the people” themselves alone who organize the pograms or acts of repudiation, without the intervention of the Ministry of the Interior. National Socialism in Hitler’s Germany also used supposed civilians to attack the Jews before their violence was unmasked.

Since the end of the USSR, the Castro government of the Island of Cuba has not been able to completely ignore international condemnation, so I was alarmed that they could strengthen themselves with Venezuela, Iran, Syria like in the times of the Cold War, because, like Hitler did after the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviets, they constructed extermination camps against human beings, who would be annihilated by the “New Man,” the Aryan ideology, without weaknesses. Didn’t they do it before with the UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production — Cuba’s internal concentration camps)?

In democracies they lack the weapons to fight dictatorships, because the dictatorships, formed by weak beings, compensate with a terrible decision. If there are documentary images of the pograms, it doesn’t matter if they’re disguised as civilians, or try to be, State Security uses other civilians with whom they maintain constant communication to make it appear, before the world, that it is not the State facing off against civilians.

The fanaticism shown my the mobs, the loudspeakers, the buses that brought them, and the permit that at some point the mob has been given to unleash their violence, by those supposedly responsible for public order, the use of batons and tear gas, arresting people if they give in to the temptation to resist not only passively, and to return some of the punches, reveal that the policy is ordered from the highest levels to not yield one iota of their insecure position in the face of genuine popular aspirations.

So they cannot accept human beings as they are and need to convert them ideologies. It is not patriotism that swells the throat of my neighbor, but the tacit complicity with a dictatorship that is among the worst and most treacherous ever seen on earth.

There is a video of the invasion of the Leon Fonseca family home carried out by the mercenaries of the State. The family of Sara Marta Fonseca represents the voice of Cubans whom they have thrown into the cauldron of totalitarian violence.

Totalitarian regimes have pretended to stand as advocates for the poor because they need to confuse the masses, it is a complex mechanism.

When a society falls into it is difficult to escape, but not impossible. Once I said, quoting a prayer of Lezama’s: It’s true because it is impossible, the impossible generating infinite possibility, but there is much risk on the road.

Not everyone has faith to take such risks, like the family of Sara Marta Fonseca. God protect us.

Spanish post
March 7 2012

IN THE DEEPEST MARROW OF DEATH* / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

LOOK AT ME, DEATH, AND FOR YOUR LOVE’S SAKE, DON’T CRY

It’s been ten years ago already, in the purple-blue evening of Centro Habana, in an independent literary workshop that had the Ministry of Culture(made flesh in the person of the vociferous agent Fernando Rojas) dying of fear and envy, we had invited an activist from the Cuban independent press. What audacity for some intellectuals! (Today it looks like an unimportant novice’s mistake.)

It was shortly before the Black Spring that imprisoned (and even asked for the death penalty, although without officially validating it) dozens of our opponents of a more or less peaceful and digital nature. So we were all a bit frightened, in truth, including that author who did not show too much fighting spirit and in fact, a suspicious humility that we, beginning writers, not unreasonably confused with a lamentable lack of talent.

There did not shine in him that huge ego of those chosen to impact with a unique style (read me, for example). Our dissident certainly was a good guy of his home, but precisely because of this, was a lump of dough. None of us could imitate the author. Too little incendiary, too conservative in his little anti-establishment speech, too commonplace in the anti-dictatorial demagoguery that nobody in Cuba would dare to criticize, too much political peace in times of war uncivil to death.

At the end of his soullesstalk , it occurred to me to ask why the opposition was not threatening with at least a word of the violent kind. Nothing of terrorism, of course. Just a clean war with bullets or the gun that both sides will choose to exterminate themselves. After all, let’s not pretend to have been cheated.The Cuban Revolution will be only a truce of cadavers hidden with the stamp of Legal Medicine. Before and after that, we will murder ourselves again democratically in the middle of the street (and in the headlines). Long live the freedom of exhumation.

The good man turned pale to the level of 2003 (if they manage to arrest in March, he dies of a heart attack). Stu..stut..stutter..ter..tering… I had not the quality of a character narrator, obviously. I was not ready to survive a live debate before the cameras and microphones of the future. And then I did what the 99.99% of Cubans would do ( the exceptional hundredth continues to be me): he felt attacked and offended me in his own defense and in that of his party, I suppose, one of those matches where in barely four words, the words “Cuba” and “National” are set in front of the leg that makes them trip. I’m almost branded a collaborator of State Security (Everyone in Cuba is indirectly that still because no one has yet signed its dissolution) as well as a provocateur (of course I try not to have a dialogue with anyone without provoking them beforehand, without forcing them to be like they would be honestly in private).

Now I think maybe he himself was and he reported me to the authorities, who knows if looking for an impossible legitimacy for his illegal activity. Our system of block chieftains makes us protagonists just like in an act of repudiation** as in an already tiresome intellectual blindness. We don’t know how to read. We ignore all irony. And being a pacifist in the two thousands or zero years in Cuba, one is paid the going price (and life is not far from the highest), is a sort of totalitarian common denominator, a collective correctiveout of which we are guilty apriori, a hypocrisy to deceive foreign NGOs but of course not the local G2.***

Today I ask forgiveness of my poor opponent for the panic that I set into his soul that unspeakable night, for stoking his paranoia and laying bare his verbal violence (if he had had a gun, certainly he would have shot at me, at me yes; at the government; no ). Reason was not on his side, but he had suffered and was an aged creature in himself and in that other greater cage that is the Archicementerio of Cuba. Simply put, he was no longer a public figure, but appeared as such. He was, shall we say in scientific terms, an angel (an author in his Adamic phase, the most dangerous by naivete: it’s known that nothing is more genocidal than an angel).

Once in a while, as a creator of fictions that cause fractions, I go back to feeling out my question of 2003: when did violence lose its crazy glory in our lands ? I speculate severalsuicidal solutions in my narrative that is more outrageous than unprecedented. But the only answer that I love, even though I don’t know how to set it up in writing, is a class of conspiracy theory: only when the Cuban state will be useful, will manipulate like a puppeteer their good men for and against, until they set them to fight each other as a mechanism of governance.

Then it will not be worth columns nor “Gandhi-loquent”martyrologies like those of our hunger strikers cruelly posed (and disposed) to fail. Then it will be the crude bodies of the Cubans that will recover their most vile voice. And then only if we will be free to massacre ourselves mutually in peace.

For the moment, war is too unambiguous, too scripted so that it is guessed in advance, too bored by its lopsided scoreboard.

Translator’s notes:
*The original title is:”En la masmedula de la muerte.” “Masmedula” is a word invented by the poet Argentinio Oliverio Girondo
**”actos de repudio” or acts of repudiation and disowning is a tactic used by the government to harass and intimidate dissidents. It typically involves the creation of a mob of “indignant citizens” outside the home of an opponent of the government to shout slogans favorable to the government and threaten anyone entering or leaving that home.
***G2 is the Cuban government internal police force in charge of intelligence gathering on Cuban citizens.

Translated by: William Fitzhugh

January 20 2012