Translating Cuba

A friend has brought me the Ten Strategies of Media Manipulation, by Noam Chomsky, and in conjunction ?astral? has loaned me “The Guardians of Freedom,” by Chomsky-Herman. I confess that I have read then with the intensity needed for The Way to Paradise by Vargas Llosa, a forced reading of a text that appears to have been written by force. But this is only a comment, not a comparative reading.

I regret not having been more curious about the appearance of Chomsky on Cuban television a few years ago. As much as I try, I can’t visualize this libertarian intellectual in the trench of dogmatism that is the Roundtable television show.

And while the principles of The Guardians of Freedom are designed and written for the mass media and propaganda in the United States, it could be the masthead of the ideologues of my government. With the simple substitution of some proper names and huge mass media corporations; substituting the words communism and rights for their antonyms, we find an outline of the modus operandi of the Cuban media, the form of disinformation and censorship in the daily news of these parts.

This mechanism allows sending a message to great effect and with no chance of being refuted or discussed on equal terms, even to the point of the Orwellian aberration Orwellian of instilling beliefs through arguments that are seemingly solid and widespread, but which are unfounded or contradictory to the truth. Success lies in there being little or no chance of those receiving the message having access alternative information.

In the case of Cuba, this premise, though battered, still stands; because they report what they want and the majority “isn’t for that,” but those who are can inform themselves more and better. And, we must add, more quickly.

I see, moreover, that Noam Chomsky is a valued and highly respected member of the American intelligentsia. Had he been Cuban, he’d be nothing but a “crazy” academic for writing The Guardians of Freedom, a text undoubtedly dictated from an obscure office in Langley.

March 9 2012

Conflicts between countries, between governments rather, have been a constant in human history, since they appeared as such. The motives have also been varied: geographic, economic, political, ethnic, religious, and so on. Today, in the early twenty-first century, many still remain and, at times, even worsen.

Usually the solutions, violent or peaceful, ultimately affect only to those involved that is, the two opposing countries and their governments. Although the contestants attract, towards one or the other and according to the different political and ideological overtones, support from other countries and governments, it is nothing more than a backdrop to where the clash occurs, providing very little to its solution, as formal statements are more diplomatic than real, which usually last for years in world organizations and forums.

Examples abound: Cuba-United States, Argentina-Britain, Israel-Palestine and others. Each of these disputes will only be resolved by agreement between the disputing parties when, tired of being offended and hateful, or because of economic or political expediency, they decide to sit down and talk respectfully and seek mutually advantageous solutions.

The choirs that support one country of government, are nothing more than this, a simple choirs. It is a comfortable and not dangerous way to achieve world prominence at the expense of others, particularly when many of the leaders, while supporting one, try to sell their products to the most powerful, attend to their illnesses in their medical centers, send their children to study at their universities and to enjoy, also there, their vacations.

Because of these realities, I consider the pacts of support to be a waste of time and resources, like a mandatory chorus, they are taken continuously, more from political inertia than by the conviction that they will work something out.

It would be healthier, from a truly neutral position, to try to achieve understanding between countries and governments at war, and let these, when they choose and consider it viable, to resolve their differences without outside interference in what concerns them alone. At least, in this way, we’d get rid of a lot of empty words and bland speeches, repetitive and unoriginal.

March 9 2012

Cuban women were in the vanguard among the first in liberating themselves in Latin America

I was born into a matriarchy: All my family were teachers and pedagogues or, like my grandmother, a court clerk. My mom was very young when she graduated and began working immediately. First in rural schools and after accumulating experience, in the city. She was widowed when my sister and I were still girls. She remarried years later and divorced where her marriage had lost its reason for being. We always did fine thanks to her work and she was a wonderful mother and a very worthy woman.

In Cuba at that time women were working, studying, voting, earning college degrees, driving cars and even smoking. Some, like my aunt, were active in politics. This was never a reason to abandon their husbands and children. Everyone’s lives were governed by schedules that were respected. There were also many facilities that allowed women to work outside the home: food could be ordered, as could products from the drug store, by telephone and delivered to the home. The buses ran on time and frequently, there were laundries, dry cleaners and many other services that eased the chores. That was the normal course of development, which was abruptly interrupted in the year fifty-nine.

Now, we, their heirs, are “liberated” and what we have achieved it to make our lives a mathematical equation: They multiplied our challenges and tasks, they subtracted the pay, and even divided the family.

And so, on March 8 I want to congratulate all the emancipated and liberated women and above all those who, despite verything, have been able to maintain regular and close ties with their families.

March 10 2012

It all started with a phone call. “Did you see the Jaime Bayly program?” a familiar voice kept asking. “I never watch the Jaime Bayly program,” I answered. The voice on the phone shot back, confident, “Then find the interview he just did with Tony Cortez. I need you to see that and give me your opinion.”

The tone was dry. He was upset. My friend did see the Peruvian Bayly often, I think he admired him. I thought, “What has Tony Cortez done.” Twenty minutes later, overwhelmed by the interview I had just seen on the Internet, I chose not to call back. I wanted to avoid having to give an opinion yet.

For about fifteen minutes Jaime Bayly mercilessly thrashed Tony Cortes who arrived on set as host of “On My Steps: Special Edition”, and who had obviously been caught by surprise by the onslaught. He tried to stay calm, to not lose his television mile, while his interviewer was piling on, one by one, words like “communist,” “Castro’s manipulative agent.” He barely allowed him to defend himself.

What was Jaime Bayly’s main accusation? That the films made by Tony Cortés in Cuba for the series “On my steps” would have been possible only with the consent of the State Security. And in this case, the actor and TV presenter would be little more than a transmitter of the Cuban government interests.

For fifteen minutes a gasping Tony Cortes tried to defend himself from the stigma. He failed. Even literally kneeling in front of his interviewer.

That night was August 17, 2011. Less than two months later, on October 12, Leonila (Nila) Hernandez, wife of Tony Cortez and mother of his two children, was locked in a dungeon of Villa Marista, State Security’s prison in Cuba. She had traveled to the island, states the actor, for purely family reasons and a few hours after stepping on Cuban soil the political police confined her to a dungeon.

The repulsive sensation I felt at seeing the interview of Jaime Bayly that night, had its explanation after the fact: I understood the day I learned of the arrest of Nila Hernandez, now case 53 of 2011, on charges of “illicit economic activity” and “dissemination of false news that threatens international peace.”

Following the steps of this family tragedy in reverse led me, inevitably, to a television channel, a night interview, and two journalists, Jaime Bayly and Tony Cortez, who that night played out a scene that is sad to remember.

– Tony, was this the first time you’d been invited to the Jaime Bayly program? Whose idea was this interview?

Mr. Bayly and his team had made couple of previous proposals for me to be the guest of the program at ten at night. We discussed the invitation several times with the team of my program, whether or not it was a good idea, mostly because of the workload I had at that time.

Finally I spoke with the management of Mega TV, and they believed it would be a good idea for me to be interviewed by Bayly, in part because of the considerable attention focused on my series “On my Steps,” which had just been nominated for an Emmy.

I remember the executive producer of my program did not agree that I should grant him that interview to Jaime Bayly, however I saw nothing wrong with that: we were part of a team, the same television, our programs were separated by just an hour, well …

There is even a memo from the SBS corporation that says explicitly that the hosts of both radio and television could not attack each other, on the assumption that we are all part of a working family.

As you can understand, nothing could have made me think of what happened that night.

– Was there some pattern, did they give you a topic with respect to where the interview with Jaime Bayly would be going?

No, not at all. I didn’t even know beforehand that it would be a controversial interview, which would have repercussions, because of the nature of the interviewer, of whom I was always a confessed admirer and whose work I respected very much.

I was thinking about an interview that also had some controversy might be nice, even arriving with a golf club to reinforce that idea. And my surprise was great when the interviewer turned the attack against me, against my work, a direct accusation with something as sensitive as it is to be called a Communist and spy for the Cuban government.

Jaime Bayly not only lacked basic ethics with such accusations, completely unfounded in reality which he is completely unaware of, but apparently did not need my arguments: he would not let me speak. It was the interview where the interviewer does not want to hear the interviewee.

– What happened after you left the program that night? What was your position, that of your interviewer, and the managers of the channel?

Look, at that very moment my wife was with me and she said to Jaime Bayly, “You shouldn’t make a judgment if you haven’t seen the whole series. We can send it to you.” He responded that he would watch it with pleasure. And just then he turned to other people, right in front of us, and said, “Others who stopped being my friends…” Nila turned to him and said, “And others whom we have stopped admiring.”

“That’s your choice,” was the last answer of Jaime Bayly.

We of course were left with a very bad taste from that interview. However, it would be much worse after that day, because with the approval of MegaTV management, Jaime Bayly unleashed a constant, daily campaign, of libel, personal attacks, ridicule against me.

I say with the approval of the management because on several occasions I met with executives Miguel Ferro and Alexis Ardines, I told them they should stop that, that these were no longer jokes but serious accusations, and the only response I got from them was, “First, make a plan to respond with what Bayly did not see your series. And second, you should also begin to attack him.”

I remember them telling me, for example, ideas for these attacks: “If you record in Peru, interview people who will talk about the position of Jaime Bayly relative to Keiko Fujimori and Ollanta Humala. Let’s put out there what people in your country think about it, and it would be good to put it on at eight in the evening.”

And you know what? While I was in Lima recording “The Forgotten of Peru,” I asked some questions, I recorded a few people who had nothing good to say about Jaime Bayly … But at some point I stopped myself. I found it very counterproductive, I thought that was not me, I’m not attacking anyone. In fact there are some e-mails between management and myself with regards to that, where I refused to spend my program on this kind of war with Jaime Bayly.

From there my relationship with Mega TV began to seriously deteriorate. Not only because they did nothing about my complaints about the interview, but because they gave the green light to the rest of allusions about me personally in Jaime Bayly’s program, where I was accused (and even today he continues to accuse me) of being a spy and a Communist.

Even I complained because I felt that was exacerbating the agents of hatred against me, it was inciting any crazy to initiate an attack against me under this principle that I worked for the Cuban regime.

MegaTV allowed this to grow. That joke was growing. And I am convinced that both the interview by Jaime Bayly, such as the absurdities about the alleged “agent Tony Cortez” who could go in and out of Cuba freely, influence the Cuban regime to make a decision to take on my family.

– But the question is valid, Tony. How can you come and go so freely, you can film, and you did that three times under the noses of Cuban security? How do you explain your “luck”?

I do not call it luck, I just think that I was protected by God, for what I believe…

– So you were an elect of God? A superior body allowed you to do in Cuba what is not permitted to the rest, to enter and shoot freely?

No, not so, I’ll tell you something: my first series was not antagonistic. It was just a reunion with a Cuban with his Island. Like so many people have gone and have recorded their return to the beach, their parents, their neighborhood. That was my first series.

And if the State Security followed me, they noticed these were conversations with people in the neighborhood, with my family, dialogues between Cubans living a very complex reality.

The second series I think took the regime by surprise. The cameraman entered in one part of Cuba, and I in another. And this is good to clarify because some are speculating about it too: in “On My Steps” there no was a super-production or anything like that, we were just a cameraman and me.

By this second trip I did have a more extensive review in my luggage. I did carry the camera or the cassettes. They didn’t find anything on my so I had no problems leaving.

In the third and last trip I was able to record very little, I knew they were watching me too much, and the pictures I took I still kept back, they have not been disclosed. It is a series on the hospitals in Cuba. I was detained for 6 hours at the airport when entering and on leaving two hours. Then they cancelled my passport. Endpoint.

So what I want you to understand is that they let me in because it was an opening move, apparently more freedoms, and perhaps they thought I was harmless. When they realized that my films went beyond what suited them, they shut the doors.

– At what point and why were you dismissed by MegaTV?

The cancellation of my program at eight in the evening was disconcerting, and I don’t want to ignore that. For me it’s an antecedent to consider.

MegaTV ended my contract as a host of the show, “On my Steps. Special Edition” after we expanded the series to film in Ecuador, showing how Cubans were living there. This was quite popular among the public.

The exclusive interviews that Sara Marta Fonseca granted me also came out, interviews no other television station had, as did my exclusive interview with Ignacio Estrada and Wendy Iriepa.

I had heard that it was precisely my insistence on the Cuban issue that began to generate a certain heat with the management of the channel, which for some reason it seemed didn’t think this was important.

The last Monday of my program was the opponent Sara Marta Fonseca was released, we did a special program that had excellent ratings. I even have an e-mail congratulation on the part of the same management. And the very next day, the show’s producer told me that on Wednesday they would have a meeting with me.

At that meeting, Mr. José Pérez gave me the letter canceling my contract. Without any arguments.

So you can see to what extent there was an inexplicable urgency, ugly, that I leave MegaTV, the program that I recorded that Wednesday was repeated on Thursday and Friday. I was not allowed even a live farewell, as they did for example with Maria Elvira Salazar.

– Finally: after the imprisonment of your wife on October 12, have you had any contact with the same MegaTV managers, with Jaime Bayly? Have you heard what they have to say about what is happening with your wife?

No, no direct contact. MegaTV in a very suspicious and hasty way published a statement signed by Manuel Ferro, whose purpose was twofold: first to question the veracity of the arrest of my wife, and secondly to say their hands were clean, to claim that this broadcaster had nothing to do with this, since at the time of the arrest I was not part of the channel. For me this is nothing more than a servile and cowardly act.

And Jaime Bayly, always under the leadership of MegaTV, of Albert Rodriguez, Jose Perez, Alexis Ardines and Michael Ferro, he has not only not stopped the attacks and ridicule that is not only a provocation for me, but he strikes at the sensitivity of some children who are suffering the imprisonment of their mother in Cuba.

With the confirmation that Nila was incommunicado in Villa Marista, living God knows what torments, Jaime Bayly said in a program that my wife was vacationing in a very dark place in Havana. Almost daily he used my name to call me a double agent, according to him a spy for both Cuba and the United States.

I can never prove the responsibility of the broadcaster for what is now happening to my family. But I will always argue that the constant incitement by a well-known host, the challenge to state security, public questions about why they didn’t put me in jail, why they let me circumvent Cuban intelligence, all that is very very closely tied to this tragedy that my family lives today and that, fortunately for them, Jaime Bayly nor any of the directors of Mega TV are suffering.

Translator’s note: A couple of weeks after this post was posted, Tony Cortes’s wife Nila was released from prison in Cuba and returned to the United States, after being held in Cuba for approximately 6 weeks.

November 7 2011

It is a shame that those who lend themselves to punish members of the Resistance in Cuba, are maintained by dollars from what they call “Yankee imperialism.” Nereida Ganuza Santos has beaten Idania Yanez Contreras and Jazmín Conlledo Riverón, and has performed with her mother other acts of aggression and hate against peaceful Cuban human rights defenders. Her brother Eloy Santos Ganuza is in Miami and is a producer of programs on Channel 41. Personally I sent a letter to the Misters Romay, owners of that channel, to report these facts and so far I have not received a response. We do not tell anyone not to send help to his family, but at least we ask them not to lend themselves to repression and perpetuating injustice in Cuba.

Now the family of Santos Ganuza lends itself to a new hoax in complicity with State Security they created a scenario to repress the representative of the Ladies in White in Santa Clara, Jazmín Conlledo Riverón, who was attacked in the street by Nereida Ganuza Santos. Jazmín now remains in a cell, with threat of prosecution, and Ganuza Santos walks with a cast on her arm blaming Jazmín.

How long will the defenders of human rights in Cuba be unjustly accused, being the real victims of repression? How long will there be impunity and a double standard in Cuba? How long can we who are fighting sacrificially in Cuba withstand people coming from the free world, coming to our country to feed the front men from the tyranny of the Castro brothers?

Here is the audio of people who, since late December 2011, have denounced this situation.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/12PKLSuB2ho?fs=1&feature=oembed
January 11 2012

By Yoaxis Marcheco Suarez

Many people think I’m talking about some torture method designed by the Chinese to deliberately hurt someone, but it’s far from that, I’m talking about the famous Yutong brand buses made in China, although I am sure there is nothing intentional in their design with the goal of torturing us, but even so they do so with amazing efficiency, especially when the distance traveled is long.

Obviously the Chinese did not make their Yutong buses thinking about the characteristics of Cubans. If they had they would have made the space between the seats a little greater, because we don’t like to ride with someone else hanging over us, especially if people we don’t know are too close to us.

The seats in these buses have caused more altercations between the passengers and if you really want to know what I mean by torture you would ride one of these buses from Villa Clara to Havana and it would be enough to understand, although you would have to be a masochist to take this 14 hour journey from the capital to a point in the eastern part of the country.

Jokes abound among the clients of the nation’s only bus line, the ASTRO, which despite its name loses more luster every day, because the buses are aging and not receiving much maintenance. For example the backs of the narrow seats have mesh bags for a water bottle or some other object that we carry on, but no more. In many of the buses the curtains are cracked, or cannot be snapped shut, so we have to travel under the hot Cuban sun, or in the cold of the moonlit night. Or if the glass is dirty you can’t see out which is very bad for the claustrophobic.

If we add the stink that emerges from the bathroom, added to the monotony of travel because the screens for projecting films don’t work and the music is unserviceable for the whole trip. But the most uncomfortable thing is how little space there is between the seats.

As I said, the joke and conjectures are many: that the Chinese think we Cubans have limbs as short as their, or we’re as skinny or as stiff as they are, that the buses were made to travel short distances, that even if I wore kneepads I’d be poking some guy in the back, that the fat chick next to me almost pushed me to the floor and the last I heard: HEY! This bus is a Chinese torture chamber!

Recently we were visited at home by a group of friends and the anecdotes rained down and in my house I finished the tube of Ben-gay giving my visitors massages, imagining their misery stuck in the seats right in front of the bathroom which don’t even recline.

If anyone still doubts what torture these buses are, if a foreigner comes to the country and doesn’t travel in a rented car or the tourist buses, they should climb into a national Astro, sit themselves down on one of those rigid seats and I’m sure after that experience no one will be able to tell them stories about the true reality that we Cubans live every day.

9 Mar 2012

More than two decades after the postmortem repair of the literary legacy of Virgilio Piñera (Cardenas-Havana, August 4, 1912 – October 18, 1979), most people who speak of the author have barely read his stories, poems, essays, dramas and tragedies. What are they talking about then? His homosexuality and aspects of his personality such as his verbal duels with the critics, his sarcastic answers, and even trivia about the suit he wore, his umbrellas, cigarettes and even his fear or, better yet, his intellectual honesty in front of the Commissioners of Culture of the Cuban military regime.

Except for actors, playwrights, storytellers and those knowledgeable about our literature, Piñera is an echo of echoes, a literary myth, a protean creator, experimental and challenging, who merits a re-acquaintance with his writing and the staging of his dramas, tragedies and comedies.

The year 2012 could be a propitious occasion because it his the centenary of his birth, and there is a program of tributes, complete editions of his works, and presentations of his theatrical pieces, which is appropriate because from 1961 until his death he continued writing which he supported himself as a translator of French, but his plays ceased to be performed, his stories, poems and essays were not published, until his name disappeared from the magazines and newspapers.

Virgilio Piñera represents the antithesis of José Lezama Lima, another famous writer excluded from the literary pantheon for political rather than aesthetic reasons. To the censors, they were both troublesome because of their contempt for the myth of violence and the so-called Socialist Realism. Paradoxically, both would be reinstated after death. Lezama as a symbol of the “writer’s-writer,” that is “unencumbered” or just committed to artistic creation. Virgilio, less baroque and more colloquial, became the paradigm of contemporary Cuban theater.

Like all celebrated creators Virgilio had his black legend: famed for being clownish, intolerant and hypercritical to tradition, not with his disciples, to whom he offered his human profile and the keys to allow us to enter his narrative and theatrical legacy. The playwrights who perceived his mastery and meaning were attracted by the echoes of “his disdain for the official world, his corrosive humor, his position as a sniper, his iconoclastic rebellion and even his dark legend of countless literary duels.”

Virgilio, essentially theatrical, used the scene as a mental exercise, valid to relieve the poverty that marked his family and the provincial insular environment. “I am the one who makes the serious more serious with humor, the absurd and grotesque.” To justify himself he adopted the role of rescued scapegoat and divided the human race into the elected and neglected, settling among the latter.

He lived nearly a decade in Buenos Aires, but his plays are essentially Cuban, a Cuban identity that comes not from the comic or didactic and moralizing theater, but from the handling of Creole issues and circumstances and from dialogues and phrases coined by the populace.

Prior to 1959 published three parts and released four: Garrigó Electra (1948), Jesus (1950), False Alarm (1957) and The Wedding (1958). Later he represented five titles, edited nine books and two periodicals. In 1960 his Complete Theater was released, expanded and reissued later by Rine Leal. Outside the island Garrigó Electra and Two Panicked Old Men were staged, winning in 1968 the Casa de las Americas prize; Cold Air and An Empty Shoe Box.

Anyone wishing to know the work of this author should get the anthologies Virgilio Piñera Complete Stories of Anton Arrufat, published in Havana in 2002 and 2004, Complete Theatre, arranged and introduced by Rine Leal-Cuban Literature Library, 2002 and 2006; volumes that will appear again in the Havana 2012 Book Fair , with collections of his poems, essays and articles, and testimonials written by friends and followers of Piñera, described as a belligerent intellectual, sharp conversationalist, and creator of the theater of the absurd — his Garrigó Electrapredates The Bald Soprano accredited to Ionesco.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth it is nice to return to his dramas, tragedies and comedies, to the incessant throbbing searches and expressive experimentation, as well as to his apparent simplicity, achieved on the basis of Cuban dialogues so sharp, full of tragicomic and absurd situations, sometimes gritty realism, like Cold Air, inspired by his family.

Rine Leal described Piñera as a transitional dramatist who influenced the later playwrights and elevated the Cuban scene to levels reached before in music, poetry, narrative and visual arts. The critic puts the great playwright in the aesthetics of denial and value as he enters the absurd paradoxes, the game of mirrors and the ritual of the masks, in sharp avoidance as a means of resistance to the stresses of his day .

We recall, for example, that Garrigó Electra was considered by Maria Zambrano in 1948 as “the most beautiful work, brave and capable by a Cuban author premiered in Havana … performed with consistency and fairness, and the honesty of that terrible suicide.” In Jesus, Piñera weaves a poignant parody of an allegorical value, where the main character, the barber of 33 years Jesus Garcia, a resident of Havana refuses to work miracles on rumors from neighbors and authorities, to whom he represents a challenge to absurd expectations.

We could continue with notes on the The Philanthropist, False Alarm, Two Panicked Old Men and other memorable works by Virgilio Piñera, but we prefer to let the reader come to him though reading or attending theatrical performances of his legacy on the occasion of his centennial of life.

February 19 2012

I write most of my posts purely from my opinion, I lack the experiences of people who spend more time outside. I have many reasons for not spending more time outside, but the main one is that I have always tended to retire, to stay inside. The day passes quickly for me, waiting, waiting, we Cubans are experts in waiting, in wasting time, in forgetting that we are waiting and we can entertain ourselves with anything.

Odd: The second meaning of politics in the Cervantes dictionary used in Cuban schools is: “activity of citizens to drive the issues that matter to the State,” and I could have sworn that the State and citizens have been exchanged, changing the meaning.

I have found a new addiction to exercise, but I’m not the only, a blogger friend has confessed to me that she does the same. Claudia says that she would go to the gym twice a day. I never imagined myself lying on a bench with my quadriceps lifting 20 pounds, but if I stopped doing it I would feel I was missing something. The strength of my muscles is also an act of rebellion. After struggling against inertia and cookies, I lost myself in a bun with a croquette to kill the hunger.

For a year now I have had a boyfriend who doesn’t leave me, he has cultivated my sensuality  without touching my heart and after 30 it doesn’t bother me. We women learned after 30 to limit the dominion of the body and the dominion of the soul. I do not fall in love by choice. “The Alfre,” as I call him, complains that I don’t let him stay overnight, but I never find a good reason. And the last morning I told him jokingly that he had made it through the night like Scheherazade. He is the perfect companion, however, he will not let me have illusions.

My voice no longer fits inside me, it overflows and I write my post. With hope. I write also to God, because I have a special relationship with each word in the Christian tradition which I consider a foundation of faith that God Himself put in the world and although it distresses me to think how many before me have believed in Christ and have suffered, I continue waiting and waiting and joining my prayers and words to produce a miracle.

March 9 2012

Directors of the Cuban Independent and Democratic Party in Havana, on the afternoon of Thursday 22 December, personally expressed their condolences to Mr. Frantisek Fleisman on the occasion of the passing of the former Czech president Vaclav Havel, in the embassy of the country located in Kohly # 259 Nuevo Vedado, Havana.

Mr. Fleisman, who serves as Political Adviser to the Czech diplomatic mission accredited in Havana, personally received the message of condolence and several copies of the weekly publication of the CID “The New Republic,” after which the representatives signed the condolence book open at the embassy to facilitate the people of Cuba sending messages of condolence to the family and the Czech people for the death of former Czech president Vaclav Havel, information totally ignored by the Cuban media.

Present at the mournful meeting were Abdel Rodriguez Arteaga, National Vice President of CID; Lisbán Hernandez Sanchez and Elizabeth Linda Kawooya Toca, Delegate and Vice Delegate in Central Havana, Aimé Cabrales Aguilar, Attention to Political Prisoners in Havana and Santiago Ricardo Santiago Medina Salabarria, the National Executive Committee of the CID, who highlighted and appreciated the closeness and concern of Václav Havel for the political prisoners, the opposition movement and the democratic destiny of the Cuban people. Fleisman was interested in the work of the party.

Katia Sonia Martín Véliz

December 23 2011

For many years March 8, International Women’s Day, meant for many of us the opportunity to conclude out work duties before the official time and the promise of a little party in the workplace. On leaving home, in the bus, or arriving anywhere, one offered a Congratulations! half formal, half authentic.

I would love to have a Day of Men, among other reasons, so that the idea of equality made more sense. But until someone finds a suitable date for the masculine celebrations, I want to congratulate today all the women and especially the women bloggers. If I had a talent for poetry would take a stab at a “Triumphal March of the Cuban Alternative Bloggers,” but I will not even try.

What would I say, then? I would mention Miriam Celaya, that flagellator of tyrants, with acute ideas and the precise word; Rebecca Monzo, our carnival star with her bittersweet and fun humor; Lía Villares, so playful, so creative, so herself; Regina Coyula, who left “the intelligence” for what an intelligent and good person she is; Esperanza Rodriguez, who always reminds us of our rights and teaches us to defend them; Claudia Cadelo, despite her already long vacation; Ana Luisa Rubio and her moon full of dreams and kindnesses; Laritza Diversent, showered in the law and in architraves; Rosa Maria Rodriguez, for her barefoot roses without thorns; Katia Sonia Martín, bellicose and happy with her twin girls; Wendy Iriepa, who fought so hard to celebrate this blessed day; Liliane Ruiz, recent and ancient, premiering the word in a luminous form; and of course, the skinny one, the multiple-prize-winner, “the worst of them all,” who initiated us into the guts of WordPress, to Yoani Sanchez, whom I had the enormous pleasure of waking up with a kiss this morning.

8 March 2012

Any respected scholar of philosophy, dedicates preferential attention to his ideology, that is, the set of his own ideas. The ideologue is the same, but with absurd and preposterous ideas: therefore, it consists of a set of anti-ideas, which are intended to provide a multipurpose drug for the evils facing the world and, it is affirmed, provide a complete cure.

An ideology needs ideologues to provide a base and make the ideology known to the exploited masses, ensuring its understanding and acceptance, creating a battle flag. The work of ideologues will not be successful without the creation of the ideologized, which constitute the main purpose and goal of their efforts.

This triad (Ideology, Ideologues, Ideologize) — it seems like a tongue twister — is easy to find in Cuban society. The model is ready and has all the elements for its existence and development: control of media, agencies and institutions and political and social organizations formed for this purpose and, most importantly, a population devoid of instruments granted to civility in any moderately democratic system. Thus, we find many examples, past and present, to prove it conclusively.

The failed Ten Million Ton Harvest, Converting Setbacks into Victory, the Battle of Ideas, the Fight to Control the Aedes Aegypti Mosquito and the Liberation of the Five, in addition to their economic, political, social, health, family and other types of reasons, have had and have a high ideological component, both to convince citizens that they could achieve something that was material and objectively impossible, and to maintain the ideologization achieved withsamurai machetes that go, go, go in the first two examples.

In the third, it was about filling with ideas the real vacuum created by the collapse of the socialist camp, and with it, dealing with the economic underpinning of the deteriorating Cuban economy, unable to afford even the minimum necessary to feed its poor population.

In the fourth, which has now lasted for over thirty years without tangible results, with its ineffective measures, applied over and over again, with a stubbornness worthy of psychiatric studies.

In the fifth, it is more of the same, present even in the soup, with the aggravating circumstance including not only the adult population, but even children, something rejected and condemned by UNESCO, but their representatives here have not yet been warned.

These are just some random examples: there are many more. Although ideologization, applied for over fifty years, has affected much of the population, polluting society with the virus and the inertia,and the letting things go, waiting for better times, it has not been the case with all its components.

Today, more and more voices are raised rejecting it and demanding the full exercise of citizenship rights and the necessary changes: the emergence of a civil society in the face of an exhausted discourse and also worn out speakers.

It is true that it is still very weak and has only begun to crawl, but hopefully, by natural law, sooner or later it will stand up and begin to take its first steps. All, without exception of any kind or political intolerance, we must help to walk.

March 6 2012

Once again, State Security uses the old tactic of trying to discredit, given its inability to come to a public debate of arguments and ideas. A debate that would have a long-awaited end, because absolutely nobody can hide the ruin they have brought to the Cuban nation. They razed it and follow by trying to sweep it up. On this occasion the attacks have been directed at the Estado de Sats project and directly at my person.

I feel the need to contextualize this reply because otherwise we would lose the true perspective of what is happening. It is no coincidence that this barrage of distortions and speculations comes from Cuba Debate, the page of Fidel Castro and his employees.

To begin, let me clarify that with regards to my family history (I’m not talking about Division General Samuel Rodiles Planas, I am speaking exclusively of Manuel. G. Rodilas Planas, my father), I have a direct version of our recent history somewhat different from the official one. This is why I can understand perfectly the root of this despicable tactic of personally attacking the dissenter, from which flow the use of lies, manipulation, contempt for the other, as indispensable and essential tools.

The root has a name, Fidel Castro and company.

There are several questions I want to share publicly, and believe me, there are still more. I ask myself:

Who really has defrauded the Cuban people?

Who has despised our rights?

Who are the real traitors?

It’s time to review a little history and to ask Fidel Castro and company directly, although they refuse to answer us, as they always have.

Who deceived that group of pilots and offended ad nauseam a person of the quality of Félix Pena, forcing him to commit suicide?

Who crushed the independence of the judiciary a few days after January of 1959?

Who lied again and again, in the face of a whole people, saying he was not a Communist and that the Revolution was as green as the palm trees?

Who sentenced Huber Matos to 20 years in prison on charges of slandering the Revolution for saying it would impose communism?

Who manipulated the Cuban people saying, “Elections? What for?” in order to remain in power?

Who is responsible for the execution of scores of Cubans?

Who deceived the people into believing that Fidel Castro participated in the combat  on April 19 at the Bay of Pigs, where he was not really present?

Who left the extraordinary young man Pedro Luis Boitel to die on a hunger strike?

Who has subjected thousands of prisoners, political and common, to inhuman conditions and degrading treatment?

Who stripped the fruits of their labor from thousands of Cuban families promising them a prosperity that has never arrived?

Who, to satisfy delusions of grandeur, sent thousands of young Cubans to die in Africa?

Who authorized and encouraged the outrage toward thousands of Cubans wishing to leave the country, stoning their houses and provoking violence and now takes advantage of the remittances sent by their families to support a delusional and inefficient system?

Who has forced a whole people to live in conditions of hardship for so many years?

Who are the principals responsible for the destruction of the entire industry, infrastructure, agriculture, and housing of a nation? Who governs the country based on decisions and whims that show only a great ignorance and arrogance?

Who authorized the sinking of the 13 de Marzo tugboat that killed about forty people, mostly children and women? I still remember the cynicism of Fidel Castro in front of the television cameras, saying it had been an accident.

Who ordered the midair pulverizing of two unarmed civilian planes and unscrupulously ended the lives of four people?

Who is ultimately responsible for the execution, before a firing squad and after a summary trial, of three youths in 2003?

Who ordered the brutal punishment of 75 political dissidents, for the mere fact of being free men?

Who ordered the violent humiliation of a group of defenseless women demanding the release of their husbands and of all Cubans?

Who is responsible for the death of the young man Orlando Zapata Tamayo who asked only that he not be subjected to more beatings?

Who ordered the death of Wilman Villar Mendoza? Who ordered him to be taken to the hospital only when there was no longer any chance of saving him?

Who used violence, terror and death as a form of punishment? A practice that began from the time of the Sierra Maestra and which has always been the face paint in a theater of legality.

How many deaths are on your shoulders, how many?

Who is responsible for the stampede of Cubans seeking to leave behind at all costs a situation that overwhelms them? Who is responsible for the dead in the Straits of Florida? Who is responsible for so many separated families?

Those responsible are themselves the real traitors, are the true anti-Cubans, they are those who panic when there is talk of a Cuba where everyone has a voice. All their arguments are hollow words trying to deflect the finger pointing to the accused, to the principals responsible for our national tragedy.

As for us, we have little left to lose, they have managed, over 53 long years, to ruin our nation, they have managed to impose misery. At least show some embarrassment at the end.

Because however much they hold on they are out of time, Cubans are tired of their excesses. The future, where there will be no room for hatred and slovenliness, is knocking on our doors.

8 March 2011