The Color of Humanity / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

For many, black is a color, in spite of the definition that contends that it is the absence of visible light energy, that absorbs the light and that’s precisely why it isn’t it. Whether from the light emitting groups or the pigments, black has been linked historically and obscurely with the negative, perhaps because of it likeness to the night, that is a dangerous space, that has been the time chosen by many writers to tell tenebrous stories about outlaws and animals that hide in the darkness. Othersalso relateit with what is filthy and dirty.

The astronomers call the extremely dense celestial body that absorbs whatever matter and energy located in its gravitational fielda black hole. For the geographers and people of some countries — in addition to the phenotypic difference — black is a name of rivers, streams, and similar places, of a hill, a volcano or a road; it’s also a sea in Eurasia and in the plural, a Philippine island.But in this writing, I want to highlight superficially the voices that have survived the times, and about the topic on which they record human words and phrases.

Black theater is a cinematic genre developed in the United States, in 1940 and whose plot developed in a violent and criminal environment. Likewise, black friday was a day of financial panic in the United States and also Black Monday in 1987, also related to the prices of stocks. Black Thursday is a day that the fall of the stock market in New York began and signaled the beginning of the great depression in 1929.

The so-called black plague (or bubonic plague), was a devastating pandemic that devastated Europe in the 14th century and that considerably decimated the European and world population; the yellow fever was a devastating epidemic in the 14th century, that was also known as black vomit; lista negra is a translation of English word blacklist to give a name to people or institutions that should be discriminated against.When used in a positive sense, they are given the name “whitelist.”

To distinguish underground or illegal business one adopts the phrase black market; the black catis related to superstition or bad luck, and equally a black vultureis a bird of prey or feeds on dead animals — a bird that doesn’t bode well — to which a bad omen is attributed to; in the same way that black magic is a superstitious witch practice, in that they invoke the presence of a demon and the malignant power to cause damage, the “white” kind is the complete opposite. The expression, “had a black day” is an allegory on unhappiness or bad luck. A black authoris a person who, like an intellectual slave, writes to order and anonymously,

The European colonial powers kidnapped and tore from their communities, families, culture and land from millions of Africans and carried them to America to work as slaves. Furthermore, in order to perpetuate the system of slavery, they imposed a distorted image of black people. Historical and shamefully, the classification of people into one race or another has been used and is used to support keeping groups of humans in a state of subjection, in living conditions of oppression, ignorance and dependence.

I prefer to think of the human race and that stage will come, when we eradicate prejudice and discrimination against people based on racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, ideological, social class or of any kind. I’m sure that one day there will be no need to legislate or circumscribe a moral code of respectful behavior that should be taken as natural behavior of living together and not leave room for racist acts or reprehensible.

Translated by: BW

January 17 2012

Politics or Humanity? / Juan Juan Almeida

It seems that an important part of the Cuban Jewish community, from fear or pressure, have turned their backs on the U.S. contractor,Alan Phillip Gross, age 62. I venture to predict he would not finish his sentence, nor even a couple of years of it, if his family and the lawyers tied to the case publicized the statement, using the vulnerability of the vulnerable, seeking understanding and support from certain members of the international Jewish community.

Of course I’m not referring to the unquestionable help a campaign would be, preceded by an open letter demanding release, signed by important people. I’m talking of a meeting, also in support, the good deeds of well-known Jews like my good friend Enrique Rotenberg, the enigmatic entrepreneur and Mossad retiree Rafael (Rafi) Eitan, or the charismatic French sugar producer Serge Versano, whose words carry weight and are heard in Cuba.

The Internet connection on the island is regulated and controlled, why dwell on that subject; but there is no legal prohibition. And according to the penal code, you can not punish what is not penalized.

The trifling “accessories” whom some blow out of proportion as an info-communications system, although they deny knowing the imprisoned American citizen, are merely descendents of the Ashkenazi and/or Sephardi eager for information. It’s not forbidden, and there is no social danger. The only contravention of the man condemned to 15 years has been to violate the customs regulations specific to a country, not the security of a State.

His accomplices are not dissidents nor opponents, but inexperienced or corrupt customs officials. And although there is talk of a subversive project of the United States government against Cuba, the only obvious motive is to discourage a miniscule group that is part of a marginalized community in a marginalized society.

Politics has no place; and espionage here, it’s too much. Even so, the Court for Crimes Against the Security of the State of the People’s Supreme Court, the highest organ of justice in Cuba, issued an order rejecting the challenges or other legal recourse. The government needs a piece to use as pressure, Alan Gross is its move. Now they sit back and wait, and as the bribe-able guardian fighting to complete their plan, the glorification of their testicular hypertrophy, they hide the pardon under the table in order to negotiate.

March 1 2012

The Change is Immutable / Lilianne Ruíz

It seems to me, every time I hear a nice song, I avoid it, where there is nothing more real than the anger, the tears to call on God, so I want to keep the memory of iron compared to everything happy and nice that I still encounter.

Do not let anyone fool with the graduation of doctors because it is part of the dark condition to serve their purposes just like “The Lord of the Flies” and his entourage. They cease to respect people at the moment they rise up. And in reality they don’t respect anyone, not even their servants.

The history of Cuba has proved it, but God sees in secret, and no murder, no abuse, will go unpunished. Here people go mad for the return of a little boy rafter, but no one thinks about Wilman Villar’s little girls, Zapata’s mother, and so many people I don’t know who have suffered before I woke from my lethargy. I don’t want to sleep any more. The Revolutionary rhetoric was always so low, so manipulative. What happened to us? What happened to my grandparents? What was their price? Why did they surrender?

March 3 2012

The Color of Humanity

For many, black is a color, in spite of the definition that contends that it is the absence of visible light energy, that absorbs the light and that’s precisely why it isn’t it.  Whether from the light emitting groups or the pigments, black has been linked historically and obscurely with the negative, perhaps because of it likeness to the night, that is a dangerous space, that has been the time chosen by many writers to tell tenebrous stories about outlaws and animals that hide in the darkness.  Others also relate it with what is filthy and dirty.

The astronomers call the extremely dense celestial body that absorbs whatever matter and energy located in its gravitational field a black hole.  For the geographers and people of some countries — in addition to the phenotypic difference — black is a name of rivers, streams, and similar places, of a hill, a volcano or a road; it’s also a sea in Eurasia and in the plural, a Philippine island.  But in this writing, I want to highlight superficially the voices that have survived the times, and about the topic on which they record human words and phrases.

Black theater is a cinematic genre developed in the United States, in 1940 and whose plot developed in a violent and criminal environment.  Likewise, black friday  was a day of financial panic in the United States and also Black Monday in 1987, also related to the prices of stocks.  Black Thursday is a day that the fall of the stock market in New York began and signaled the beginning of the great depression in 1929.

The so-called black plague (or bubonic plague), was a devastating pandemic that devastated Europe in the 14th century and that considerably decimated the European and world population;  the yellow fever was a devastating epidemic in the 14th century, that was also known as black vomit; lista negra is a translation of English word blacklist to give a name to people or institutions that should be discriminated against.  When used in a positive sense, they are given the name “whitelist.”

To distinguish underground or illegal business one adopts the phrase black market; the black cat is related to superstition or bad luck, and equally a black vulture is a bird of prey or feeds on dead animals — a bird that doesn’t bode well — to which a bad omen is attributed to; in the same way that black magic is a superstitious witch practice, in that they invoke the presence of a demon and the malignant power to cause damage, the “white” kind is the complete opposite.  The expression, “had a black day” is an allegory on unhappiness or bad luck.  A black author is a person who, like an intellectual slave, writes to order and anonymously,

The European colonial powers kidnapped and tore from their communities, families, culture and land from millions of Africans and carried them to America to work as slaves. Furthermore, in order to perpetuate the system of slavery, they imposed a distorted image of black people. Historical and shamefully, the classification of people into one race or another has been used and is used to support keeping groups of humans in a state of subjection, in living conditions of oppression, ignorance and dependence.

I prefer to think of the human race and that stage will come, when we eradicate prejudice and discrimination against people based on racial, ethnic, sexual, religious, ideological, social class or of any kind. I’m sure that one day there will be no need to legislate or circumscribe a moral code of respectful behavior that should be taken as natural behavior of living together and not leave room for racist acts or reprehensible.

Translated by: BW

January 17 2012

The High Court predicts an increase in competition from the Municipal Courts / Yaremis Flores

Yaremis Flores

The Supreme Popular Court foresees an increase in competition from the Municipal Courts during this current year 2012. This reform was predicted in the setting of meetings between professional judges and involves the integration of crimes with penalties ranging from three to eight years, to the understanding of municipal authorities

According to current legislation, the Municipal Courts are capable and fit to know sanctionable deeds with the deprivation of liberty or incarceration up to three years. With this new change, they would be able to punish someone selling beefsteak or a bearer of a firearm, among others

This transformation, aimed at alleviating the backlog of work in the Provincial Court, nevertheless requires fundamental changes. Some of those provide a high level of improvement and adequate protection of judges.

With respect to this, a professional judge of the municipal court of the Capital affirmed that:”I fear for my security. The penalties are more severe and unlike those who work at the High Court, we don’t even get worker’s transportation. I have even ended up with the accused or their family members, in public transportation after having conducted their trial!”

The neglect of the circumstances of the lives of judges is alarming. It contributes to demotivation and in the worst of cases, to an increase in corruption and impunity. The only incentive received by functionaries of the courts is a bonus of 60 pesos in national currency* to buy clothes and footwear in a shop whose prices are not favorable. And this after a rigorous selection process that prevents enjoyment of the prize to those who apply for certificates ofmedical leave, leave without salary or workers on maternity leave even and when appropriate dress is demanded of workers in the judicial system.

December 27 passed as a commemoration to Day of the Courts — December 23 — an event was held at the Social Circle, located in the Capital. Nevertheless the budget of the High Court did not even factor in a defraying of expenses for the refreshments of the guests of honor who paid for their own appetizers at the same price offered to the public.

However, Rubén Remigio Ferro, president of the highest judicial authority, said at the close of the year in his disclosure of the rendering of accounts to the National Assembly that: “noteworthy steps have been consolidated in advance in the improvement of the conditions of work and attention given to the necessities of judges and other functionaries of the system.”

*Translator’s note: Cuba has two currencies. One, the CUC is tied directly to the U.S dollar but the other “moneda nacional” is worth less. The bonus amounts to about $2.50 US.

Translated by: William Fitzhugh

February 29 2012

Non-Violence in Cuba: A Particular Case? / Luis Felipe Rojas

I was recently debating with some friends about the methods used by opposition movements around the world which have been successful in tearing down authoritarian regimes. Some examples were the Serbians who toppled Milosevic, the South Africans who forced the segregationist government to sit alongside Mandela, and the Chileans which put an end to Pinochet by saying NO. 20 years later, we see all of this as something mystical, mythical, and magical. They attack me for being a dreamer, affirming that we are not the same, and I respond with equally challenging questions: And why are we not the same? Is it because we don’t share similarities?

Based on the testimonies offered by the leaders of the Serbian youth movement known as Optor and the people in general, we know that the citizens of the Balkans did not have any less fear of General Tito and Milosevic than Cubans have of the Castro brothers over here. As far as I know, for decades, the democratic world ignored the atrocities of the apartheid regime, the Soviet political prisoners, and the assassinations in Romania…the same thing that has happened with Cuba until very recently.

A humble shoemaker from Kraków refused to collaborate with the Solidarity movement due to fear of losing his only source of income, and that is why he was incapable of “abandoning his life of lies”, according to Vaclav Havel in La Seguritate in Bucharest. People would become paralyzed just by seeing an ID card. ”Three armed policemen” closed down a street of Santiago and any Chilean would freeze with terror. However, one day they all said Enough. And the abuses came to an end. As far as we have witnessed, the gravest horror has lasted 73 years. So then, how is it that we are not similar?

In Cuba, a document which was put together and translated by Omar Lopez Montenegro has been going from hand to hand. It is titled “10 Easy Steps Towards Non-Violence” and it was successfully developed by Optor. I would like to turn on the fire of this blog’s comment section and I’d like to start intentionally by step number 7 which suggests “inducing desertion in the forces of Security”. The Cuban regime and the skeptics of non-violence allude to the fidelity of Cuban troops with the dictatorship, and their subjection to the perks which one offers to the other, as well as the character of total control which the government of Havana has sold to all its supporters for more than 50 years.

For some of those who took part in the discussion in Santiago de Cuba about a week ago, I remind them that:

A) In either dictatorial governments of Gerardo Machado or Fulgencio Batista, there was not a prison in each province for undisciplined, corrupt, and deserter soldiers as exist today within the Armed Revolutionary Forces (FAR).

B) In 58 years of a Republic, including crimes and excesses, there was never a need for Prevention units to retain and capture fugitive soldiers, as occurs right now with the 16 year old recruits which have just barely stepped out of adolescence and are just joining the General Military Service (mandatory). Does anyone have the exact statistics of Cuban soldiers and reservists which, in the Castro-organized wars in Africa, deserted or wandered off in those countries and later ended up in the United States or Europe?

Many ask themselves if Cuban soldiers would really use tanks against the civil population. What about the police agents who today turn their faces to not be photographed by citizens- what are they hiding? What do they fear? What indirect message are they sending us?

29 February 2012

Declaration of Principles / Miriam Celaya

Repudiation rally against the Ladies in White. Photo taken from Bitacoras website.

Yesterday, February 23, 2012, for a second time, Cuban TV has honored me by exposing my image — along with those of several other independent journalists and dissidents — in the national news. The previous occasion occurred months ago, during an unfortunate program televised through the famously dull Roundtable, regarding an alleged cyberwar that the everlasting CIA was orchestrating (who?), serving the interests of (the same villain!) the U.S. government, which is always called “the North American government” as if Mexico and Canada were just simply northern provinces.

I’m not going to wear myself out with accusations of defamation, misrepresentation and misuse of my image to a government that has never had the decency to acknowledge their responsibility for crimes far superior to these. The executions, the senseless Cuban deaths due to adventures of war in other countries when Soviet subsidies allowed the feeding of the egomania and megalomania of the interventionist F. Castro, the torture and deaths of political prisoners throughout the so-called “Revolution”, the events* at the Psychiatric Hospital of Havana in January 2010, more than five decades of systematic destruction of a nation as a whole, the separation of tens of thousands of families by permanent exodus, the debt irresponsibly imposed on present and future generations, and many other sin whose list is endless, sins that dwarf any official insults to a few people. If there were not the possibility of some dark maneuver of the well-known style of repression that consists of demonizing citizens just before launching the blog that throws them into prisons, perhaps I should be flattered.

However, since this is about the disproportionate onslaught of the longest dictatorship in this hemisphere, owner of the media, of the repressive forces, of the army and of all the power, against just a handful of citizens who have the audacity to feel themselves to be free, allow me on my personal and absolutely individual account and not representing anyone else, to once again refute the official discourse, that by repetition, demagoguery, and mendacity, has not ceased to be unhealthy. And given that, in their proverbial cowardice the authorities can’t even permit the luxury of awarding me the right to reply in their own media — for obvious reasons — I launch my dart from this blog that, obviously, has been making a dartboard for them for four years.

On the morning of February 22, I attended the video conference “Press Freedom and Expression”, organized by the Office of Public Affairs of the United States Interest Section, with the participation of Luis Botello, the International Center for Journalists, Dr. Sallie Hughes, professor of Journalism and Latin American Studies, University of Miami, and Zita Arocha, Cuban-American journalist and professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Texas at El Paso. Among the topics of the conference were also social networks and the Internet, and the importance of the digital age for freedom of the press. A whole meal for those who use such means as the only space to express themselves. Just as I might have attended a similar event had it been organized by the embassies of Iran, Syria or Venezuela, or if it had been held at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana; but this falls in the plane of pure fiction: we know that to discuss certain topics requires democratic spaces.

What first drew my attention on arriving at the site where the conference was going to be held, was the excessive display of “official paparazzi” who were excitedly rushing around with their cameras every time some participant arrived. The number of “journalists” who were government employees almost exceeded us. That, not counting the vehicle deployment occupying the adjacent areas, for a moment made me suspect that they were organizing one of their classic rallies of repudiation.

I emerged from a taxi and immediately was the focus of Cuban TV cameras and other official media, which at the moment made me feel like a Hollywood star or, perhaps more suited to the environment, like a postmodern Mata Hari, such that I had to walk to the corner of 7th and 24th, Miramar, where other colleagues were waiting, to get in bright sun, take off my glasses and wave my hand at the cameras. I am a caring person, gentlemen, if I want to film me, do it well.. Nor did I have the least intention of hiding myself, given that I was not enrolled in a conspiracy in the style of the Vi Congress or the National Conference of the Cuban Communist Party.

The town criers of Sauron, however, despite all the time they spent taking pictures of us front and profile, chose a bad picture to display on national TV. One in which the we conference attendees were in front of a table where they were checking the names of the guests and giving us printed materials relating to the topics and details of the speakers, such that, by necessity, we were offering our backs to the cameras. This encourages the false impression that we were shying away from the photographers. We were the “mercenaries” caught red-handed at the moment when we were rushing to “hide” in the shelter of the “masters” of the Empire. We had gone, according to the mediocre Castro media, “to receive instructions from the North American government,” and even, I was told, a rabid official blogger declared that in that moment they were giving us “tickets for the snack.”

You can see how people project their own existential misery over whatever space. No, buddy, we were not at the Conference Center, and so we didn’t need tickets to have a soft drink or a cup of coffee. The servants of the Cuban government have a sick fixation on credentials, tickets, snacks, imaginary “goodie bags” with gifts and currency supposedly offered by the functionaries of the United States and certain European countries as rewards to the dissidents. It is a reflection of their own reality. However, the most favored of this incredibly miserable caste have no modesty whatsoever when it comes to exhibiting their private cars, with which the government awards the official journalism’s most bitter liars.

The U.S. Interests Section (USIS), meanwhile, has been accused of interference and other similar epithets, which makes me reflect on other events taking place in that country, without the participants being harassed by hostile cameras and a phony press. I refer, for example, to the performance of the children of Cuba’s La Colmenita, in the public space in front of the White House in Washington D.C.; or to the street rallies in favor of the release of five Cuban spies that State Security freely orchestrates in the U.S. and in other countries sympathetic to this dictatorship.

The leaders do not seem to care much that the Cuban government is promoting their revolution beyond the borders of the island. But it would not occur to me that he USIS, another embassy or simply ordinary Cubans, could meet to debate, whether it be press freedom or the survivability of insects, in any public place in this country. Sometimes it is not possible even in private spaces, as the Ladies in White can testify to; on Thursday, February 23, they were the targets of long hours of hatred and fury from the “repudiators” who, with complete impunity, convened by the powers-to-be, harassed them while they paid homage the memory of Orlando Zapata Tamayo on the second anniversary of his assassination; a blundering police and paramilitary deployment which closed off Neptune street, in the capital, to traffic and maintained a disturbance of the public peace, in what is officially a tribute to the martyr and a recognition of dissent.

But there’s no point in crying over spilt milk. A government that feels it must harass dissidents so openly must be afraid. After this new media attack I just have to reaffirm publicly my position in a declaration of principles: in my capacity as a free citizen I claim the right to attend the events I myself decide of my own free will, without asking permission of the government; I do not receive financing or a salary from any government, including Cuba’s, and I refuse to abandon these principles under any circumstances; I am the absolute owner of my actions and my ideas and I am willing to vouch for them; I also publish and will publish my work and my ideas wherever I see fit. The gentlemen farmers should come to understand that not all Cubans are slaves on their endowment. Number 59100900595, my official inscription number in this island prison, was freed years ago by my own will and conviction. I would rather die than return to the irons.

Translator’s note:
*The events at the psychiatric hospital were the deaths 26 mental patients due to starvation and cold.

February 24 2012

The Public Sphere In Cuba, Without the Public / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

[Title]Would this be the T-shirt that could resolve the problem? [T-Shirt text”] Police and National Guard: I do not support AT ALL these T-Shirts that say that THIS REVOLUTION IS SHIT, and what’s more, I think they’re horrible, OK?”

ARTURO, THE BRIGHTEST STAR

At the launch of the magazine Criterios number 37, on February 28 at 3pm at ICAIC, according to what the authorized tongues tell us, the narrator Arturo Arango read “The sense of the public sphere in Cuba”, a text now circulating because of the reality of the damned Internet, which is everywhere.

I can not say anything about it. State Security — screaming and gesticulating violently — threw me out of the lobby of that institution, minutes before Desiderio Navarro himself rudely hung up the phone on me when I called to let him know what was happening nine floors before his very nose, as the plain clothes officials laughed at me, saying Desiderio Navarro authorized them to choose his audience.

The line didn’t even flinch. They were forced to march in single file to the elevator, as in a workers’ cafeteria. Most were white boys, cute, young, unknowns; there were a few black guys left outside, plus an ugly bearded guy with a tint of dissidence and signs of terrorist friends (OLPL); they would not jeopardize their ownership of the public sphere in Cuba. Hopefully they will now accuse me of racism.

I won’t get into the theoretical shit. The last issue of Criterios I have was smuggled through Customs itself, who seized it to get its director wound up a bit, just to put it in context. Obviously, being an agent of the enemy brings not a few advantages in terms of reading and liquidity.

So I went there more to expose the inquisitorial intolerance in Cuban that continues just like in 1971, when I was born. Simply the Decomposing State (including biological decomposition) now has fewer positions to “parametricize*” the army of excluded. Hence, we no longer have to bow our heads Arrufatically** until a MINIT official (in charge of the vice ministry of culture) decides to thaw our cases. Now the dead you slew are more media savvy than ever. Sorry.

I went there, by the way, to evaluate the response of critical observers assumed to be the hegemonic protagonist network, without their believing in it themselves. I went to capture the patriotic pulse of our time among hedonistic Havanans, beyond any historic compromise that doesn’t pass through a “Permission to Leave” stamp in their passports.

I went to demonstrate factually to the authorized bloggers who blog with no shred of autonomy, that they are not the interlocutors of any future. And I went, above all, to remain silent, which is what I do every time I manage to sneak myself into one of these complicit conclaves which are often news thanks to me (with my little video camera). I was bored with the repetition of the little whines and poses of the indoor intelligentsia. This tedium exhausts my adrenaline.

Arango now regales me with some delicacies: on Tuesday he personally criticized me, not in solidarity with the open doorway to his talk, which should have been suspended if he hoped for even an ounce of credibility.

Arango waxes eloquent on the critical thinking of the left and leaves aside the rest of the Cuban mental spectrum: capitalism, where we have lived for decades without too much fuss, having no reason to be for the centuries that have come to this famous little island. It’s a kind of migraine, I suppose (though the sense of the word escapes me because it calls forth the memory of a Russian novel).

There will be no diversity beyond the Revolution, the rest is rubble and aftertaste. The suicidal slogan — “Within the Revolution everything, outside the Revolution, nothing” — of 1961, today and tomorrow, will continue to stand, like Radio Reloj, an anachronistic mediocrity.

Arango lumps us all in the sack of a “new opposition that considers itself to be liberal democratic, with international visibility and the support of governments and other foreign sources who oppose the Cuban political process,” the wolf in the children’s tale, because he lacks the courage and the permission of his controllers to name us in public. To Arango the word “right” serves as a stigma to legitimize the non-dialog, when only Stalinist Cuba has been atrocious (from the time of the Republic, of course, because since then you can no longer speak of “isms” but only of another kind of Fidelity).

Arango questions the happiness the instant the internet puts a wedge between Cuba’s creators of today (an internet, by the way, forbidden to citizens who are forced to make many illegal connections). Paradoxically, in this debate about the sense of the public sphere, there are words that turn out to be unpronounceable. I would even say unthinkable. And I applaud. Literally, it seems perfect to me this way.

It’s hard to believe that revolutionary thinking is left to grab at the word “dissent.” Enough of victimizing the victims with Makarenkoesque generalizations or Krupskaya-like relativisms about what is good or bad for the poor little Cuban people, who never quite taught themselves to read. Please. Revolutionary thinking requires spitting venomous words, like “dissent,” so as not to disappear. That is the style of our governance.

For Cubans, the impossibility of dialogue is between the radical left and the nonexistent right. Cuba is a unipolar cloister in perpetuity. A monologue, with zero walk-on parts in the public legal space. A putrid space that, I’m sorry for the ephemeral officials, has been dysfunctional for a while (“within the institution, nothing”?), and there is no role to play at all in the resurrection of the Cuban soul that will reforest a country more drinkable than this one. And hopefully I’ll be branded as an e-vangelist as the colophon.

The internal enemy is an invention of the political police to depoliticize the country. Right now, as I type this narrative piece, more than one known writer friend shows me his Official Summons to appear before military counterintelligence, accused in secret of publishing in independent digital magazines like Voices (a thousand times the left has been invited and their NO is deafening) and in information portals such as Diario de Cuba.

I will leave it here. I want to write a column about, for example, popular pornography and drugs in democracy (on these points the Counterrevolution and the Council of State quizzically coincide) and to publish it in my blog without thinking twice. My blog, mine. I want to be intolerable, un-instrumentalizable (un-tool-erable). I also would like to write one on Oxyuridae*** and oxymorons, such as “Democratic Socialism.” I’m addicted to the improbable violence of freedom. I’ve already lost a couple of hours this week with the batty barbarism of apartheid for the 40th anniversary of Criterios.

Oh, and if I die in the blogosphere: don’t put flowers…

Don’t give me an F…

Don’t give me an L…

Don’t give me an O…

Don’t give me a W…

Don’t give me an E…

Don’t give me an R…

Translator’s notes:
*“Parametrizar” (the verb) or “parametración” was a process — from the so-called “Five Grey years” — that imposed strict guidelines on cultural figures and educators with regards to their sexual preferences, religious beliefs, connections with people abroad and other aspects of their personal lives. This policy was confirmed after the 1971 National Congress on Education and Culture. 1971-1976 later came to be called “The Five Gray Years”: Homosexual artists were ostracized, cultural influences from capitalist countries were banned, and cultural ties to Cubans living in exile were severed. (“Bad elements,” including homosexuals and others, were also interned in concentration camps known as “UMAP” — Military Units in Aid of Production.) The return, on Cuban television in 2007, of those figures responsible for these policies was a key event that eventually led to the reaction that sparked the beginning of the independent blogosphere of which OLPL is a part. See “The Intellectual Debate” for more background in English.

**Anton Arrufat: Cuban writer whose 1968 play “Seven Against Thebes” won a major prize from the Cuban Writers and Artists Union, and simultaneously resulted in his being condemned to 14 years of silence, unable to publish in Cuba.

*** The scientific name for “pinworms” which is also very close to the common Spanish word for the same. The reader is free to draw any conclusions he or she likes regarding this choice of topics and the penchant of the Cuban regime to label their detractors “worms.”

March 2 2012

POOR LITTLE DESIDERIO, HELD HOSTAGE IN A CHRISTMARX TOWER / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Translator’s note: This article appeared in the Havana Times two days ago in Spanish and has not yet appeared in its English edition. Following is an English translation prepared on HemosOido.com, which will certainly differ in some respects — as all translations do — from the one ultimately posted in the Havana Times.

UPDATE — The text below is now from Havana Times, as translated by that site.

The Hidden Sphere Versus the Public Sphere in Cuba.

From the HAVANA TIMES, March 1, 2012
by Isbel Díaz Torres

Desiderio Navarro presents the latest issue of the journal Criterios.

HAVANA TIMES, March 1 – The “concealed sphere” irremissibly determines the public sphere in Cuba. This was corroborated by the recent barring of several individuals from the presentation of the latest edition of “Criterios” magazine at its office-center by agents of Cuban State Security.

Run by Desiderio Navarro, this important magazine is marking its fortieth year. To celebrate that occasion, a panel discussion was organized at its headquarters, located in the building of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Arts and Industry (ICAIC), at 23rd and 12th streets in the Vedado district of Havana.

Having overcome bureaucratic obstacles that had prevented the copies of the most recent edition of the magazine from passing through customs at the Havana airport, the prestigious translator and essayist invited renowned intellectuals to give presentations on their writings that appeared in that edition.

The central topic of the various presentations was “the public sphere in Cuba,” to which everyone interested in that subject was also invited to attend.

However, the invitation was perhaps not as open as Desiderio had thought and intended. At the entrance of the imposing ICAIC building, a large group of plain-clothes political police was there to determine — “live and direct” — who was worthy or participating in this “public sphere” of Criterios.

Consequently, at the very moment I entered the building, I found out that they had barred two members of the “Comite de Integracion Racial” (CIR). These are people who I don’t know intimately but to whom I’ve listened to with interest at meetings of the “Cofradia de la Negritud” (the Negritude Brotherhood), where they have regularly attended and cordially contributed their views.

Such arbitrariness bothered me greatly. I immediately thought of getting to Desiderio and inform him once I got to the ninth floor (where the center’s located), and try to address the nonsense in the occurring in the lobby.

I of course suspected that the highly critical blogger Orlando Luis Pardo (who had been just two or three people behind me), and Antonio Rodiles (the coordinator of the equally critical Estado de Sats website), would also be prevented from entering the building.

Photo: Introducing the panel.

Seeing that these individuals never made it to the room, I informed Desiderio, who was already aware of what was happening. Still, there was no solution. Desiderio explained that the building belonged to ICAIC, and therefore he couldn’t determine what people could enter.

I could once again see how lacking in autonomy how fragile our public sphere is here. There exist public “custodians” who can so significantly skew debate, in this case by preventing access by important actors in the topic in question.

A good part of those there were very young people and the place was filled to capacity. What was significantly suspicious though was that as soon as the program began, many of them got up and left. Were they interested in the panel or not?

I listened attentively to the presentations by the panelists: novelist Leonardo Padura, University of Havana professor Jorge Luis Acanda, Temas magazine editor Rafael Hernandez, feminist Yasmin S. Portales; the editor of the Catholic publication Espacio Laical, Roberto Veiga; writer and former Casa de las Americas director Arturo Arango; and activist Mario Castillo. Except for Rafael Hernandez, all of them spoke in one way or another about the variable “concealed sphere” as a weighty ballast that anchors the necessary public required in Cuba.

They didn’t refer to it as “concealed sphere,” of course. For example, Yasmin referred to manipulation and arbitrary classifications made of Cuban participants in the blogosphere, while Leonardo Padura mentioned the systematic violation of his private correspondence.

Mario Castillo was the last panelist to enter the room, which we knew was related to what was happening at the building’s entrance. This allowed him to denounce that fact in a dignified fashion during his turn to speak.

One younger guy in audience who called himself an “opposition member” also spoke from the microphone — vehemently but politely — about the shameful situation of censorship that we are experiencing. The youth was vigorously applauded by the majority.

Buying Criterios magazine.

However, I must confess that I left before the function ended. I didn’t even buy the magazine that interested me so much. I felt like I was being suffocated in there where — unwittingly — many of us were taking part in a process that was carefully designed by the “concealed sphere.”

It’s conceivable that the ultimate goal of the barring was aimed at preventing “dissident” thoughts from entering and “contaminating” us. Nevertheless, these managed to get out (and hopefully it will become increasingly difficult to stop them). What I truly think those “concealed” forces were seeking was to prevent horizontal discussion, in this instance the debate offered by Criterios.

Their method of closing institutions has changed (or has been “updated,” to use the term currently in vogue). Now they prefer to gut all meaning, to restrict these individuals so that what remains are only “performances” by their former selves. It seems the authorities are the ones who dictate cultural policy on the island.

It’s more useful for this “concealed sphere” to cancel prestigious meetings such as those of Criterios. By introducing censorship and inducing self-censorship, they can discredit the magazine and prevent it from continuing to expand its avocation of pluralistic thought, where there is fertile ground for a libertarian spirit.

They’ve already done that to Temas, eviscerating the magazine that once suggested an awakening of minds. Now they’re going after Criterios.

March 1 2012

It’s Never Too Late… / Rebeca Monzo

Photo from CaféFuerte

I was touched by the news in the foreign press, recently, commenting on the welcome under the American Cuban Adjustment Act of the slugger Agustín Marquetti* who, already in his old age, chose the wisest decision: “What I have left to live for will be smiling,” like the lyrics of a famous bolero.

Marquetti, a glory of Cuban baseball, became almost anonymous after his retirement. To earn a living, because his retirement was barely enough to survive, he started to operate as a taxi (under the table) the Lada car he earned with his bat. He told me that on many occasions, when he was stopped by the police who intended to fine him, they would ask for his license and identity card. He would see the shame on the faces of the cops and, apologetically, they would ask for his autograph for son.

Sometimes he would work as a driver for a beloved priest from Santiago when he came to the capital, who would stay in a home. Those were the days before the visit of Pope John Paul II. Marquetti came every day very early to pick him up, to take him where he needed to go. Leaning out the balcony, I asked the former player to come up to share coffee with us. When he saw our breakfast table, laid with coffee and bread with butter (because of the special visit), could not contain his wonder and ask the following comment: “Noooo! I can’t remember when I last saw butter.”

This moved me, because that someone who was the glory of our sport would make that comment was really to feel shame. Then the poet Guillen came to mind and I said to myself: “The master should be ashamed!”

So when I saw the news on the net, I could not but feel happy for him, his children, who finally are at his side, for a reunion with all his former teammates from the Industriales, and because our great baseball player was finally to lead a worthy life, enjoying the honors he deserves, the comfort and opportunities that were denied to him here. Congratulations friend, and success in your new venture! It is never too late if the happiness is good!

*Translator’s note: Marquetti, now 65, went to Florida to visit his son in 2010 and recently decided to stay there. Under the Cuban Adjustment Act he was allowed to establish permanent residence. He has opened the Miami Sharks baseball academy for children in Miami.

March 2 2012

They say, and the lies aren’t mine / Rodrigo Chavez Rodriguez, Cuban Law Association

Photo: Marcelo López

Rodrigo Chavez Rodriguez, Attorney

Ask an ordinary citizen for their rights, it would be like asking how far Mars is from Earth, it would be impossible to get a precise answer, clear and consistent, but if you asked for a list of what is prohibited, they could spend a long time reciting a list.

It seems that every agricultural enterprise more than met its production plan, but when we go to the markets and see what products are available, at first we’re stunned and have to be brought back to reality, the prices of these products are so stunning and unchanging.

“Everything it guaranteed for the start of the school year,” they say, and before the end of the first quarter there aren’t enough supplies for the students. There are shortages of books, pencils, rules, gas to cook the food, and fuel to transport the personal, there is a lack of teachers, etc.

“We built a bakery with modern equipment that will guarantee the production and quality of the bread,” but soon there is neither one, because “our daily bread” is permanently in the sights of all the customers, a constant target in their complaints.

“We built a bakery, with modern equipment, which will ensure the production and quality of bread”, soon neither one nor the other, for “our daily bread” is constantly targeted by all white consumers and constant complaints from the population.

“Students who graduate from this course are guaranteed placement in a job.” How stark is the reality, when they make the laws ordering a restructuring of the workforce, which is why hundreds of workers have been declared “available.” What’s the difference between “available” and “unemployed”?

“The state has spent or invested significant resources to stabilize public transportation,” but even so there are no spare parts, supplies, fuel.

So then, did you know that the national coffee production plan has not been met? And how, then, is it possible that the plan to export coffee has been met?

Many of us have heard the disrespectful phrase “do more with less.” Aware that, when there are no resources, it’s possible to have the information and knowledge needed to act, but every day we are farther from thinking and acting freely and from their respecting our human and constitutional rights. For them to defend action, it must be doing more with more and not with less; and every day more, with less outrage, less injustice, less violations.

Ravenous Dunces / Regina Coyula

Translator’s note: This post plays off the term for “beef” in Spanish, “la carne de res” — “the meat of cattle” and the similarity of the three words “Rene” “Rusa (Russia)” and “res (cattle)”. While it’s generally true that if you have to explain a joke, it isn’t funny… this post is still funny (and poignant).

“Are you guys familiar with The Meat of Rene?”

“No, I was born in 1990 and there wasn’t any meat from Russia.”

“Didn’t you mean to say ’the meat of res’?” [beef]

“What dunces! It’s the name of a NOVEL, you idiots!”

“Oh! But I’ve heard that beef is really delicious!”

They were three girls in line for ice cream at Coppelia. Courtesy of a friend who captured “the moment.” My friend didn’t know I would write it in a blog. Well, my friend doesn’t know what a blog is.

March 2 2012