Translating Cuba

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

Artemisa, 20 February 2012

To His Holiness Benedict XVI:

Like most Cubans, I greatly rejoice in your announced visit to our country, which will undoubtedly be welcome. You come to a country living in the most complex moment in its history. When you come, certainly, our authorities will show, among others, the achievements of our Public Health and will ensure that this is a proof of the Cuban government caring for its people.

So you must know, Your Holiness, that there is a part of the story that will be hidden from You and from the world: the desperate economic situation, bordering on poverty, which forces us to live the artifices of the miracle. But the most degrading facet of the case – still more grave, if you will, than the fact itself – is that our government does not admit questioning and punishes, inexorably, anyone who dares to criticize the poverty in which it forces us to live.

I write you as a Cuban doctor who graduated in 1994, barred from the practice of medicine in my country indefinitely, since October 2006, along with my colleague Dr. Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa. As unlikely it seems, we never put at risk the health or life of any patient, nor did we  violate work discipline and we never failed in our Code of Medical Ethics. To be deprived of the exercise of our profession it was enough that we channeled, to the then Minister Public Health, the opinions of 300 healthcare professionals regarding a disrespectful wage increase realized in mid-2005 under the government of Fidel Castro.

Your Holiness: Although our government assures us that their differences with the Church are of the past, that we live in different times and that they themselves have changed, however, the intolerance they created during the 60’s with the infamous UMAP forced labor camps — in which tens of thousands of believers were also incarcerated — was exactly the same as that which 40 years later disqualified us to speak to that minister, hence we denounce that smile that they will show you today as nothing more than pure simulation.

When our authorities talk about the laudable health indicators, Your Holiness; when they comment on successful organ transplants; when they show advances in genetic engineering and biotechnology applications in medicine and speak about the medical missions supported by the Cuban government in more than 70 countries, they will not say, however, this miracle was achieved thanks to an army of professions who receive the miserable monthly salary of $25.00 U.S., even though the medical services provided in foreign countries — which have become the first line export of this country — generate at least eight billion dollars a year.

Nor will they tell you that healthcare workers are forcibly retained for five years by our ministry if we want to travel abroad and that we are defenseless against the most outrageous abuses, that we do not have a guild nor effective union representation, given that the powers-that-be, in exchange for our admirable work, show us a complete lack of attention.

The proverbial injustice that motivates this letter – reported in my blog “Citizen Zero”, which is found on the portal “Cuban Voices” – was committed with the consent of all the central institutions of our country; this includes the Attorney General of the Republic, the Party Central Committee, the President of the Parliament, the Council of State – including four letters to President Raul Castro and two to Vice President Jose Ramon Machado Ventura – and of course, the Ministry of Public Health, to which we turned 20 times with no response.

About 80 documents sent over five years – including two serious attempts at hunger strike – illustrate the insensitivity of the Cuban authorities to the problems of their people. In addition, Your Holiness, as part of our effort, since October 2010 we went to the Archbishop of Havana,  through documents sent to His Eminence Cardinal Jaime Ortega, where we ask, in virtue of the role played by the Catholic Church as mediator recent political events, it to intercede for our case to the Cuban Government so that this injustice can be amended.

Your Holiness: The government that now receives You, which claims to be respectful of Human Rights and does not hesitate to display doctors as a trophy, is the same one that deliberately keeps is in poverty, while perpetrating a villainy as this. The case that I outline here, transcends mere personal interest and is highly illustrative of how an intolerant government is projected to its people.

This affront to human dignity, which has remained unpunished for more than five years, definitely belies the apertures that the Cuban Government boasts of today. For all this, Holy Father, with all humility, I ask You and thank You in advance to intercede with our authorities to restore to us our profession that was usurped. Today I am writing to you as the head of the Catholic Church and as the man in Jesus Christ in whom we are compelled to feel in our own cheek the outrage committed against the cheek of any man.

With all respect, thank You for Your attention,

Jeovany Gimenez Vega
Calle 54 # 2914. Artemisa.
Provincia Artemisa. Cuba.

March 6 2012

 

At 56, Enrique Babastro Batista, a native of Guantanamo, admits having been one of those kids who joined the human tide growing up under slogans, sheltered by the “bright future” that engaged his generation from the speakers’ platforms and posters with which they redesigned the urban environment of Cuba in the sixties of last century.

Although he stumbled several times because of his frankness with school officials and with officials from the Fishing Fleet, he joined the latter in the early years to earn a living and channel his passion for the sea, never imagining he’d end up an “incorrigible” for shouting some truths and letting go of “the libertarian dream” that he’s been infected with by teachers and soldiers who influenced his military training.

Now, with half a century on his back and more frustrations than means to live, Enrique is a member of the payroll made up of graying men who take three drinks in cheap bars of Havana and talk about their personal and collective past, surrounded by a pair of friends who are all gray.

In recent days, seeing me make some notes in an institution of Vedado, where we met in a line, Henry asked me my profession and insisted on telling his story. To put any doubts to rest he pulled from his pocket a portfolio in which preserved as an archive, several certificates and official documents that corroborate part of his truth.

“When I came in Guantanamo I settled with my mother and brothers in Campo Florido, near Guanabo, then we moved to the center of the capital. All went well until in 1983 when I was taken prisoner for the first time in the face of the eviction of my mother at Aranguren and Final.

Then I knew that Cuba was a huge cell bounded by its shores. I went through the Combinado del Este prison, the Cinco y Medio in Pinar del Rio, two prisons in Camaguey, Guantanamo, Guanajay, again Pinar del Rio and the 1580 San Miguel del Padron. I met Antunez, several prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003, Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina and others like me who witnessed beatings, hunger strikes and untold problems. “

“In Pinar del Rio I met Captain Orlando Rodriguez Pedraza, who shot at close range a prisoner who tried to escape. I also met Cornelius from Santiago who killed Chapman for burning the flag on July 26. In the Combinado del Este, the largest of all, better not to say. I remember, for example, the major Darius, who supported the first lieutenant who killed Rey, resident of 31st between 31 and 35 in Playa “.

“Yeah, those things don’t happen if the authorities respond to complaints but they did not think of prisoners as human beings. At Guantanamo, in March 1997, the major Yoel Casamayor and Pablo Reyes, from Internal Order, along with Vito Reyes, chief of rehabilitation, nearly killed Nestor from Baracoa, whom I supported in his protest against bad food, a kind of animal feed.”

Enrique is free now, but he doesn’t have his own home, nor children nor wife, although there is a monthly check and he survives through work on commission that barely pays for rent and food. Perhaps that is why he tells his story and shows the documents that he was, above all, a prisoner of conscience “on Dr. Castro’s island.”

February 23 2012

From December 15 to 30 the 13th Havana Festival of Poetry Without End was held, sponsored by the sociocultural project OMNI ZONA Franca, according to the program catalog given out by its managers on Saturday 10 during the press conference before the cameras at the audiovisual space Estado de Sats.

Poetry Without End is poetry at home, defined as outside the institutions, that is in squares, parks, gardens and other urban places, where poets, orators, singers, painters, photographers and audiovisual promoters interact to make poetry in a fiesta, like those of the ancient Dionysian celebrations.

It started in 1997 in Alamar, east of Havana, where OMNI ZONA FRANCA emerged in the mid-decade, and has spread to various public spaces in the Cuban capital. Similar events are also held in Germany, Spain, France and in U.S. cities like Miami, headquarters of the Cuban exile.

As OMNI ZONA FRANCA consists of poets, musicians, actors, dancers, designers, painters, photographers and producers of audiovisual performances who socialize ideas and alternative actions in city spaces, Endless poetry expresses this diversity under the slogans “If two people look at and recognize each other the world changes” and” Change us, change the world. “

The 2011 program includes these activities:

• Spontaneous reading in the Bar de la esquina on Thursday, 15, 4 to 6 pm, the bar is located at Teniente Rey and Aguiar, Habana Vieja.
• Dark Room: poets in action Puerta 1, the 16the at 5 pm, with Lina de Feria, Orlando L. Pardo, Grisel Echavarría, Daniel Díaz Mantilla and others.
• The Pilgrimage of Scribble to the Rincon de San Lazaro, the 17th from the Sports City, for the Health of Poetry.
• Spoken Word, the 20th, with Mesa debate, Show and Video poem.
• The Cuban Joint Exhibition, the 21st at 5 pm, with Photo poems of OL Pardo, Nilo J. Damian, authors of the events Country of Pizels and A Big Sign and Another Small One.
• The Dark Room Day, the 22nd in the Casa Templo del Arte Cubano; Rotilla-Electrospoken, the 23rd in the afternoon; the Spiritual Fair the 25th in the morning: Poets in action Puerta 2, the 28th at 5 pm, with Reyna Maria Rodriguez, Desiderio Navarro, Victor Fowler, etc.
• OMNI Poetic Cabaret, the 28th at 8 pm; the Cultural day for racial integration and diversity, the 29th; the Day of Dark Room: Fiesta Poetics (30), and Voices in Endless Poetry, the 31st at 7 at night, with the presentation of the magazine.

The organizers of such an unusual poetic look dedicate this Fiesta “to the community of Alamar, to the light of the nation and to the Holy Family of Cuban Poetry” as well as to their relatives and friends.
December 20 2011

I will summarize my opinion on the posts referring to transportation in a single comment because in both posts I find the element of corruption. Of course there is corruption elsewhere, even more aggressive than in our country; the difference is that it is supposed that we work on “project” in which corruption has no place because as everything is social property, it would not occur to anyone to steal.

The reality has been otherwise.

One of the commentaries talked about a yacht in which Fidel and Garcia Marquez went fishing. The Blue Bird I, the Blue Bird II, the Yaguaramas or another yacht I don’t know? The young almendrone (taxi) driver only offers a tiny picture that I haven’t seen. To fight against corruption, which has two powerful allies — the double standard and the lack of transparency — is like tilting at windmills.

Although it was widely criticized, I agree with Tatu. The teacher’s task is to educate. The anti-corruption crusade is not an individual task. In Cuba there are no laws or regulations that specify limits to the powers of public officials. Of ALL public officials. If there is not vertical control it is a losing battle. You can’t play with the weakest links in the chain and ignore that it is those who are at the end of the chain who are responsible.

March 5 2012

On the evening of Saturday, February 4, at the headquarters of the State of Sats audiovisual project (number 4606 1st Street between 46 and 60, Miramar, Havana), the Country of Pixels Exhibition was held, promoted via the Internet since early 2011 by Cuban Voices blogger platform.

“Thank you for everything, we can’t remain indifferent before the pixels that an impossible country, little by little made possible,” the writer and photographer Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo told the audience. Orlando organized the exhibition for which his virtual site received hundreds of comments on the photos displayed.

A Country of Pixels brought hundreds of photos from amateurs and professionals of Havana and other cities of the island, at ten per author. Also participating as guests were Cubans living in the United States, Mexico, Spain, etc..

From 700 images chosen previously, the jury chose 40 that were mounted and displayed to the public, which voted for the Popularity Award, which went to the work number 18 (Bodega), by Jorge Luis Perez, who expressed his gratitude.

The jury, chaired by Saili Borrero, presented the awards and mentions, provided by anonymous donors emerging community, contacted through the Internet. The mentions went to:

• Caset William Diaz, author of The Hope of the World.
• Alejandro Menendez Vega, Acts of nations series.
• Claudio Fuentes, mounting faces.
• Alina Guzman Tamayo.

The Awards went to:

• Alexander Sanchez Riva, photographer of Holguin.
• Martha Mayra Rodriguez, Cienfuegos.
• Ernesto Blanco, Holguin.

The award ceremony was a celebration around the displayed photographs, almost all urban and of artistic value and anthropological sense. Among the attendees were Antonio Rodiles, host and spokesman for the State of Sats, the blogger Yoani Sanchez, Reinaldo Escobar, Dimas Castellanos and Eugenio Leal, Wilfredo Vallin, leader of the Cuban Law Association, the musicians Gorki Aguila and Ciro Diaz, of the rock band Porno para Ricardo, actress Ana Luisa Rubio, the graffiti artist El Sexto, independent journalists, writers, painters, photographers and dozens of representatives of alternative civil society .

February 19 2012

To my knowledge never before were the themes of food and dining so fashionable in all types of publications. Even in the latest issue of the journal Voices an article of this kind appears, although the writer addresses some issues in a somewhat superficial way.

Obviously the author of the lines mentioned shares with me a taste for seafood and shellfish, gifts to the palate and the sea offers up the raw materials used by chefs around the globe. The article is based on an analysis of the alleged indifference of the Cuban people to consuming products from the sea, the author’s perplexity that there are not examples of seafood among the most famous Cuban dishes and the irony of being surrounded by water and not bringing fish to the table.

First of all, I do not share the idea that we Cubans are indifferent to good fish and exotic crustaceans, the hottest restaurants in Havana have always featured a number of specialties in these foods, La Divina Pastora,  Don Cangrejo, Puerto de Sagua and other places that are more or less successful attempt to market their offerings, so their countrymen no longer need go to the Floridita to savor a Lobster thermidor, nor is it that they prefer the vulgar hot dog. Economic constraints are the reason that sites like this have few domestic customers, and so should never be a meter of the tastes of a people.

It’s the same with fish; the seafood establishments, the only sites authorized to market the products of yore, hardly ever have specimens that have spent centuries in the freezer, and at exorbitant prices, not at all affordable to the average Cuban, or perhaps you can find shrimp grown in captivity, of course of bland flavor.

In my case I wouldn’t think of buying a grouper one of those businesses, nor acquiring a fat sea bream hooked in the warm waters off Chivo beach, fish for some of the adventurers with cameras and fins that abound along the capital’s coastline. Third and 70th? Palco? Certainly I would not suggest to you to acquire your fish there, no further comment.

Perhaps the most disturbing part of the article to me is when he says that seafood is bland and requires a lot of seasoning, something that puts it further outside popular preferences. Allow me to recall some of the nonsense that illustrates how easy and convenient it is to prepare the tributes of Neptune: With just egg whites and salt you can cover a whole snapper and bake it, and it is delicious when the salt crust is removed. Any fish filet or lobster tail can be spectacular on the grill or barbecue, with just salt, pepper, and a touch of butter. Garlic shrimp are also simple and complex plates include lobster thermidor, which I mentioned before, which has fallen into disuse, particularly the infamous lobster made with coffee and other preparations along this line.

It is not complex to cook seafood and shellfish, gentlemen, if you follow the basic rules such as sealing the pieces at high heat and avoiding drying them out by overcooking. I agree with the Voices contributor that Cuban tables should enjoy the presence of other foods much more often, but I don’t think it’s the indifference of my compatriots that is the reason for the exile of snapper and lobster from our kitchens.

In 1997 a man with long hair and progressive airs assumed the post of Minister of Culture in Cuba. The intellectual and artistic sector was relieved, because the other candidates for the post had long histories of ideological extremism. For writers and artists Abel Prieto represented a more modern current and more open thinking. Many of them placed their hopes on the young minister for an end to censorship and exclusion on ideological grounds. But it was not to be.

Over fifteen years, this man who looked like a hippie was turned into a bureaucrat. It is true that he won some battles against the demons of political extremism, but he lost the most important ones.

He managed, for example, to simplify the cumbersome paperwork required of academics, artists and musicians traveling abroad. While he was at the head of such a complex ministry the most trustworthy figures of our national culture also acquired some privileges such as Internet access from home and the possibility of buying a modern car.

But under the command of Abel Prieto we saw some dark times for the artists on this Island. Exiled authors and those critical of the government continued to be excluded from publishing and school curricula.

With the passage of time and despite the hair that continued to fall over his shoulders, Abel Prieto became the symbol of culture bowing down to power. A few days ago the national press announced he had been “released from his post” to retire and write literature. It is unlikely that the man who managed artistic creation as “a weapon of struggle in the Revolution” will find the the peace he needs to create fictional characters in novels very few will read.

Instead, he should make a final gesture of honesty and put down on paper all the concessions he had to make, all the blacklists he helped to draft.

6 March 2012

The news that Abel Prieto, minister of culture had been ousted from his job has been suggested for more than a month by the blogger Yoani Sanchez. All indications are that Abel was given the opportunity to close the Book Fair where he shared, with the former Cuban president, a meeting with numerous intellectuals.

Abel Prieto will be remembered for being the only man with long hair in the upper echelons of government. Like any public man he had friends and enemies, these latter said that the literary genre in which he was most successful was that of writing letters to approve travel and authorizations to buy cars. His greatest success was perhaps to protect the economic interests of artists, and his greatest blunder, that I remember, was to have suggested to the poet Raul Rivero that he should be grateful to the Revolution for not having ended his days as a corpse thrown into a ditch.

We knew each other from a distance when we were both studying at the University and whenever we passed he was kind enough to say hello. I think he might have been the only minister who shook my hand.

My greatest wish for him is that he dedicate himself to writing and in particular that he recount all those things that occasionally made him doubt whether he was doing the right thing.

I recently read a document on the net that captured my attention immediately because of its suggestive title and the justice claimed in its content.  Grupo Concordia (havanatimes.org) in Contra la Censura en Cuba, dated February 27th of this year, has complained against certain official actions which states that “in recent months…have been carried out against cultural and informative communities and groups of the Cuban population”, and it describes some highlights in this escalation of censorship.

The document in question takes into account the date November 25th, 2011 as the beginning of the acts it denounces, when the First Cultural ArtEco Festival was suspended in San Antonio de los Baños: Art, Ecology and Community, organized by the Collective La Rueda (a “libertarian socialist” group) financed by the personal resources of their moderators.

Later on, it includes the case of the scheduled program for the project “State of SATS”, dated February 10th, 2012, sabotaged by political police agents when pressed to prevent the attendance of one its main guests, the American poet Hank Lazer, scheduled to participate in the show. Both he and his compatriot, musician Andrew Raffo, who would also be in attendance, were visiting Cuba for the celebration of “ten years of collaboration between the Universities of Alabama and San Gerónimo, in Old Havana”.

Finally, the “blocking of the email address of the Critical Observatory (observatoriocritico@gmail.com) during the month of February this year” is denounced.

Because of its importance, and the undeniable truth of the facts that are reported, I want to give my pledge to that document. I join the complaint, convinced that all Cubans and self-ruling organizations of civil society have the right to organize, discuss and promote their own projects in favor of changes needed to be implemented in the country. Censorship is incompatible with the democratic aspirations of large segments of the Cuban population, but also goes beyond cultural and informative groups. This is why I allow myself some remarks about certain elements that, from my point of view, limit the scope of the document:

1. There are obvious omissions that should be taken into account in any serious document seeking to condemn censorship by the Cuban government against the citizens of civil society. The most outrageous censorship, for example, is manifested in the form of “rallies of repudiation” against civic activists, such as the Ladies in White and peaceful opposition groups, not since “recent months”, but over several years. At the same time, it is a dangerous practice that encourages hatred and violence among the legitimate children of one nation.
2. One could extend the range of official condemnation to the blocking applied to other Web sites, of which the Critical Observatory is not quite the first victim, though that group has already had the civic mindedness to condemn censors’ practices. Websites such as Desdecuba.com and vocescubanas.com have been systematically blocked since 2008 and 2009, respectively, and from time to time are “hacked” by cyber-Taliban groups at the service of the Cuban government. Interestingly, among today’s victims, there are some who doubted the veracity of our reports of those facts, and only a few echoed our protest then.
3. Many journalists and bloggers inside Cuba are deprived of their rights to go to connection sites, and are intercepted or detained by agents of the political police, even when it’s well known that they have to travel long distances as a rule, and with their own funds, to try to cyber-navigate only for a few minutes. This is another one of the many faces of censorship in Cuba.
4. The latest edition of Gibara’s Festival del Cine Pobre was senselessly boycotted by Culture members, specifically by the ICAIC and by known “ideologues” servants of the government, despite the festival being a prominent, traditional and cultural event that has provided a venue for productions lacking in film financing and official patronage.
5. For twenty consecutive years, permission to leave Cuba has been denied to the quasi-demonic blogger Yoani Sánchez, winner of several awards and also the recipient of punishments. The absurd Cuban immigration laws are one of the most humiliating forms of censorship that we Cubans have been enduring.

These are some important absentees from the list, facts which — according to my personal opinion — also “stand out”, even when the intention of the referenced document is not to present a complete listing. In fact, I would have liked to meet the criteria for such a peculiar selection, or perhaps such exclusions don’t exist, and the events I labeled as missing are included in the generic category of “many others”. Let’s lay aside all possible suspicion.

I don’t harbor any doubt about the rights of the entertainers who drafted Documento Contra la Censura to choose which events to include in their list and the time frames they consider appropriate. That is, if they assume that government censorship is reprehensible since last November onwards, then I have no objection. I’m on board too, because any censorship that curtails civil liberties is “reprehensible” at all times, even one that is directed against its own lines related to the official preaching, i.e., the left (note that I am only referring to “preaching, “assuming that the Cuban government is not of the left nor right, but “of itself”). And, of course, no one should demand a sort of droit de seigneur just for having been censured, reprimanded or threatened long before, or for not belonging to the ranks of believers-sympathizers of one or another ideology, or of none.

However, beyond the ideological difference of any group, it’s evident that numerous hurdles of mistrust need to be surpassed in the Cuban civil society. Reservations persist, instincts acquired through decades of exclusions, but sooner, rather than later, we will have to assume that civic activism is not confined to mere social or cultural aspects, since every independent or autonomous in Cuba is sheathed in an unavoidable political tone. On the other hand, politics is an element contained in the culture of any society.  Why avoid the term? The causes of the real renaissance of civic activism on the Island have an undeniable political sheen from the very moment they face  — intentionally or not — the monolithic power of over half a century of authoritarianism.  Each independent project –whether about puppeteers, musicians, poets, liberals, socialists dilettantes or “pure of spirit”- is a challenge to the government and, for that matter, has an implicit “politics” attitude.

At any rate, this Document is another positive step.  Machines do not necessarily work at the same temperature, nor are all obligated to assume the same risks.  As far as I’m concerned, I second any document that denounces any trampling on the part of the authorities and its agents against citizens.  I don’t care if those who do the denouncing are from the right, left, center, religious, political or “apolitical”, insiders or outsiders, believers or atheists.  Against censure, count me in.

Translated by: Norma Whiting

March 5 2012