Translating Cuba

Although the organizers of The Book Fair of Havana, held from February 9 to 19 in the old fortress of La Cabaña, sent the texts to the provincial bookstores where they will continue the sales and presentations, the event is now part of the past because the capital’s publishers finalized their rituals of promotion and the exhibitors and foreign guests returned home, among them the Brazilian theologian Frei Betto, author of Love fertilizes the universe, who, after his discourse on poverty and the responsibility of the United States for the problems of the world, got in his Mercedes Benz and went to his suite at the luxurious Hotel Melia Habana, located in the exclusive neighborhood of Miramar.

Betto, Ramonet and other intellectuals from Europe and America who attended the Fair exemplify the syndrome of the ideological as an element of legitimacy, marked by works that ratify the discourse of the left, clinging to power in this island for half a century. Books and brochures such as the Second Declaration of Havana, Making a revolution within the revolution, by the deceased Vilma Espin, Asela de los Santos and Yolanda Ferrer; libels from or about Fidel Castro, Ernesto Guevara and Hugo Chavez, and even reprints of Trotsky.

After visiting the booths of The Book Fair, dedicated to the essayists Zoila Lapique, Ambrosio Fornet and Caribbean cultures, it’s worth nothing that the Fair seems like carnival around the walls of the colonial fort and prison, now recycled to host cultural events, where the price of books promote the greed of the thousands of attendees who bring their children to eat and watch the city from the hill, fanned by breezes from the sea, where the medieval streets offer kiosks and restaurants.

This annual festival of Cuban authors and publishers, is an event that excludes those writers who criticize the Cuban authorities, which justifies the absence of the classics of our literature and of creators marginalized by the network of publishers affiliated with the Cuban Book Institute, which prints hundreds of titles on the revolution, socialism, anti-imperialism and other isms that the moths feed on from the shelves.

While the presentations, discussions, tributes and discussions were marked by norms, pacts of silence and euphoria, there was everything. The 2011 National Prize was awarded to Esther Acosta and the National Design Award to the painter Peter Oraá, delivered on Monday the 13th in the Nicolas Guillen Room.

The 2011 David Awards were awarded to Quadrivium, by Alejandro Machado (narrative), a work that outlines “ways in which images, stories, reflections and rewriting of myths and violent fables of knowledge that force the language of the referential.”

Poetry went to The unfinished novel of Bob Kippenbergergby Larry Gonzalez, captured by “the desire not to be descriptive, nor pathetic in poems that are almost stories”,; and the prize for Literature for Children and Youth went to In every time and in this place, by Lazaro Diaz.

The Alejo Carpentier and Nicolas Guillen went to The art of dying alone, by Ernesto Perez Chang; to Ritual of the fool by Roberto Mendez; Gatherings of The Traveler, byMayra Beatriz Martinez and Crafts, by Nara Mansur, all published by Letras Cubanas.

Among the samples from “guest cultures” we appreciated Poems of Pedro Mir, National Poet of the Dominican Republic; the interventions of Chiqui Vicioso, poet and playwright of that nation, author of Mischief, Wish-ky Sour, Songs of lawful passion and Threshold of the millennium; Ruler in Hiroona, by the novelist G. C. Thomas Hamilton, who attended with his daughter Monica Woodley; Haitian Lyrics: between reflection and pain. The memory bay, by Evelyn Trouillot; Colloquium life and work by Sergio Pitol, led by the poet Reina Maria Rodriguez.

Readers were able to acquire works of classical authors from Spain and other nations in Europe, Mexico, Peru and the Caribbean, as well as Cuba and Venezuela, whose governments funded award-winning books for the Casa de las Americas and volumes such as First constitutions of Latin America and the Caribbean for the Bicentennial of the Constitution of Venezuela.

Predominating in the offerings were the publishers Artes y Letras, Letras Cubanas, Ediciones UNION, Mini libros de Perú, etc.; Volumes such as Erotic tales of ancient Arabia, by Abdul H. Sadoun; Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust, The nuns, by Denis Diderot, and A Passion in the Desert, a selection of stories by the essayist Alberto Garrandés.

On the occasion of the centennial of Virgilio Piñera Llera several of his books were on sale and a symposium was organized in memory of the narrator and playwright who transited through the absurdity of existentialism without the “gloating” of José Lezama Lima, his diametric opposite, present as Virgilio in our literature after decades of ostracism.

February 24 2012

When a minister of culture has to concern himself with the trivialities of commercial art or its substitutes, that minister obscenely carries a gun under his incivil pants: phallic cannon to the left of his national fly.

Such is the case for quite unpresentable Abel Prieto in Cuba, minister of culture whose resignation (according to horrifying rumors from our intellectual flock) never granted by the senior management of the country, and who is now forced to censure a ridiculous reggaeton, who knows if under pressure from the political police, given the obvious impact of this kind among the population of the island and, especially, given the vertiginous explosion of a capital free of ideological-paternalistic control of the state, just in times of pica-cake from the national treasury facing a future of the Castro regime without Castros.

The victim is not Osmani Garcia (The Voice) or his incredible hit Chupi-Chupi, the most professional of all his video clips. The victim is the humiliated minister who humiliates an almost free-lance contest on Cuban television: the Grammy-loving Lucas Awards, which in turn have had to humiliate thousands of votes received in the Popularity Contest by text message. The victim is a fledgling cellular democracy and also, of course, a captive audience forced to swallow now not the lactic lyric of this and other reggaeton, but the Marxist-Goebbels-like rhetoric of a PhD in Art called to the race by the newspaper Granma and the so many timid ones of an expert who knows that his salary is paid by a cross-dressing censor: in the red ink corner, the evil academic witch; in the blue ink corner, the critic of good films.

In this chain of repression of repressors, we are all complicit in crimes against culturalism. Cuba silent. The local churches and those of the exile will be giving thanks at their prudish altars for the government of Havana’s war of against what they call with impotent piety “relativism of values” and “sexual permissiveness”: The Voice is the voice of Satan, as evidenced by the small eyes of demonic desires burning in his previous video clip, The Little Tongue.

The opposition (in the worst cases, inspired by Calvinist-Christian) handled this episode despotic episode badly, but not daring to defend the hedonistic poly-orgasmia that has already shifted from any outbreak of historical responsibility, just in time for the Transition (like the bearded peasants half a century ago, our dissidence can not dance). And, the guild of reggaeton artists and the new rich associated with this still underground industry, have learned a good lesson in local currency: nothing about collecting signatures in solidarity, nothing about boycotting the Lucas Award or other state spaces, no questions about which of them will be ousted next (if anything, they will rush to tattoo in dollars a Comandante who breaks balls: Baby Lords as a visionary). Curtain.

And in the midst of such mixed silence, the bottle thrown at the Evil One with the letter that Osmani Garcia could hardly write, his basic allegation against the ministerial monopoly of culture in Cuba. This text only crystallizes our drama as a nation so mummified by institutions, not by decrepitude much less decapitations. A mixture of clucking chauvinism with the naiveté of the outraged, Osmani Garcia lies from the truth of his kidnapped success, and does so as the little pioneer reclaiming a blot on his record of standing against the blackboard, eluding any trace of politicization that he commits to in perpetuity (certainly including this column).

However, The Voice functions 1959 times better than our whole cultural camp, doing himself proud like a Don Quixote of the Hips against a killing machine that he tragically ignored (but a member of the Apparatus he is not). Although, to be honest, I prefer his lyrics in Havana-Cabrera-Infante-esque slang, these little rhymes that boldly provoke us, perhaps from the post-pop prick-sellers of a Stanley Kubrick of mechanical dictatorships of the mind.

When the regaettonesque tom-tom of the bombs start to fall on this totaliridiculous Havana that doesn’t even leave space for a citizen to think or to prostitute themselves, we will remember then that it is possible to rule a country like an encampment but not like a concentration camp, that illustrated injustice is the worst extra-judicial crime, and that with Chupi-Chupi we are throwing away our penultimate opportunity to see the milk run, and not the blood.

Cubansummatum est!

November 28 2011

This morning (it’s Sunday, February 26) I was woken up by a call from a friend to tell me that during the night they went into Gorki’s house, and by force and after beating him they arrested him. Also El Sexto, in G Street.

The force, the brutality, the violence, using the henchmen of the regime against a person to intimidate and punish any manifestation of Freedom. El Sexto makes those graffiti that today, when I run across one (they appear in the most unusual places) make me look with tenderness. And Gorki is the singer from “Porno Para Ricardo.”

They have already released El Sexto but I don’t know anything about Gorki. I am going to mass to speak with God.

February 29 2012

This is a crowd funding project. To donate you must go to this website.

The Cuban graphic artist Jesús Hernández-Gero (+58-4124218907). As of February 28 there are 29 days left to fund this project.

jesushdez-gero.blogspot.com

The following text is from the crowd-funding website for this project:

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Cuba publications, both newspapers and magazines, offered their columns and spaces to important Cuban writers and intellectuals of the time in exile. In the post-revolutionary Cuba this policy ended.

Based on this fact I plan to make an artist’s book with very specific characteristics. I will include 18 contemporary Cuban intellectuals in exile, who have collaborated on texts written specifically for the book and other unpublished texts. Each brings new readings of diverse phenomena of today’s Cuba.

In the same way they vary their views, so do the discourses that underpin them: sociological, artistic, historiography, journalism, among others.

The texts gathered will be inserted in a selection of images scanned from Cuban publications emblematic of the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century.
The publications selected for each of the texts have been determined using criteria to establish consistency between the discourse used by the author and publisher profile of the profile chosen, i.e. a ratio between: author/text – speech/theme – magazine/newspaper.

The images of the publications with inserted texts will make up the pages of the book, where the texts give the feeling of being published in the literature of the corresponding eras.

www.yagruma.org/p/153001/la-tercera-pata

February 14 2012

After a thousand years, I’ve run Strawberry and Chocolate on my laptop.

It was a magical moment, that era. Cuba was laughing its head off. But the truth emerged as never before, on the remains of an infamous ideology, childish. We made free in the face of the Hegemon of our history. The death and repression have also raged over the ruins of a nation. It was the time of savages. Leave or shut up, in exile or in a Cuban jail. And amid the chaos and metastasis, the worst movies in America filming a mediocre movie based on a naive little story, but in both cases crystallized of the miracle in hopes of repopulating a country, an illusion.

It was just that, by the way. An instant. Our reality resists thanks to such flashes of insight. The rest is totalitarian boredom, gray rudeness, mute mummers go a little while to wait another month, another millennium, another lie.

Do not ask Senel Paz, or Tomas Gutierrez Alea, or Jose Maria Vitier, or any of its actors. They always responded with platitudes. It’s logical. They did not have enough courage to start a future slang. They were not convinced of wanting to star in an era, far beyond their biographies. All are in the best sense of the word, shadows. One chromatic effect of the excessive illumination so characteristic of film to create atmospheres, meanwhile more realistic than fiction.

Maybe Fidel Castro had the answer in august solitude, but as a good strategist of the masses know to it to their graves (or their incinerators). Maybe I should now pronounce something absurd or painful about it. But it would betray the intimate beauty of the Revolution. The clean thing that all process pissed off and suicidal, like one of the characters, always kept in the place most secret and safe from the soul. Of dreams. It would add new layers of verbal violence and inherent incomprehension over the crusts and scabs of oblivion that Strawberry and Chocolate accumulated at around twenty years. It is preferable to let the misunderstanding run. To let it play alone in the digital mercenary night of the world. Beyond them. Who are the foreigners of the left of the imperialist First World who exercise their exegesis and narrate their shitty academics about the meaning of the film.

Havana was so beautiful in its monumental ruins. The clothes so ragged. The looks do as feudally provincial. The madness whipping genes and hormones. The final ugliness so worth succumbing to. The epidemics of God to choose who is less hungry. Cuba of ulna we suffer. Eliseo Alberto was right, a poet of titles: No one wants Cuba more than I do. When you have to bounce the paper pedestrian we never were, emerge intact, from the bottom of the trunks of our secret barbarity, the Golden Nugget promised by Diego to David.

One can only capture love between contemporaries so. Compañeros of the scaffold, people at random who coincided in their identical paths of defeat. An imaginary people speaking without a voice. Who defenseless breathe the wonder of coincidence and true love between each other. Beyond that, there is nothing. Official passport, super-professional curricula and the dollars of the enemy, such as those abducted to the creators of this film of danger (all old people die and will not even be remembered, like Fidel Castro now). Beyond that, there is too much. To be others. Floating in a universe without islands. Become a cosmopolitan and don’t waste words in an act of pure past (like me today). Beyond that, I don’t know. I too, like you perhaps, have lost the thread of our history.

I want to add something. I intuit that I am the one who said it. But I still don’t know.

Do not make me despair more on this key point, I guess a little neurotic. Let me not think in peace, please. Thank you.

November 7 2011

The signature of Alina Brouwer in the Book of Condolences for Laura Pollán…

October 17 2011

Gia’s eyes were Earths, Planet Earths in miniature. Silvia recently asked me: are Gia’s eyes inhabited?

Gia, a blessing that we did not deserve. At least not in this country.

Gia came and went in 2011, more ephemeral than the angels who never dare to visit our island.

But Gia was generous. In her time she became a mom. And was my mom. And mine. Meow. That is why they killed her.

She waited nearly five hours. Dying. Among the land of the ants and blood from another planet. Under the autumn winter rain. Alone. With the memory of violence they performed on her without complaining. She never would have left without saying goodbye. Gia was not. My love is not. And never will be.

She had a gash on her lower abdomen. What was I thinking. The doctor was lax and unenthusiastic. No anesthesia. I’m going to resolve it, but without hope. He opened her up. “This is a disaster,” he said, “You do not know how many organs are pierced. I don’t even know how she’s alive. She is going to suffer.”

I knew how. I knew why. It’s so simple. Because if not, it would not have been Gia. Because if not, it would have been my love. Our love.

Once she made love. Almost physically love. Gia was upset and still a virgin. The Siamese and the ginger fought for her feline pheromones. I played to compete with males (my eyes are more catlike than those of either). And I hid Gia from them in a room, to make them a little crazy. To make them sing the song of desire. For Gia first surrendered to me. And I delivered.

I stopped chewing her armpits and stuffed tail and Gia took every invitation to be owned by Landy. And I hugged her hard, inside and pulled her mustache as feminine as her eyebrows and sniffed her saliva so neat and kissed her little moonstone nose and ate her goth emo lips (so black, so black) and I promised that one of her kittens would be mine, all mine and hers, a genetic alliance to save us from the treachery and oblivion. And only then did I free Gia for the Siamese and the ginger and the remaining eggs were shared.

Until the doctor put her to sleep. He had a syringe with potassium chloride. Actually, two. He swore they were just involuntary reflexes, unconscious, she did not suffer. All for fun. I know. She had even more life with me, just now she’d finished feeding her three kittens and it could again be just her and me. Silvia, her and me.

She was buried in Lawton, very deep, 24 hours later. It was hard, but also beautiful. She had not changed at all. Just the same, but rock. She was again waiting to not leave us with a final atrocious image. Silvia did not want to see her, I don’t know why. I knew Gia would still be Gia as long as we didn’t put her away to rot out of sight.

Gia’s eyes were Earths, planet Earths in miniature. What is Sylvia going to ask me now? If Gia’s eyes are inhabited underground?

You know they are.

Always.

October 17 2011

I want to refer to a history that seems to have been forgotten in the ferocious opinions around Pablo Milanés performing a concert on August 27th at the American Airlines Arena in Miami.

On June 25, 1993, at the National Hotel in the presence of government leaders and the Communist Party, singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés and then Minister of Culture, Armando Hart Dávalos, announced announced the creation of the Pablo Milanés Foundation.

Thus was created in Cuba the first independent, nonprofit, non-ideological cultural institution. It seemed to be the beginning of the end of state control over culture.

Until that time, institutions such as the Casa de las Americas, the National Union of Writers and Artists (UNEAC), the Nicolas Guillen and Felix Varela foundations, were all supported by the State. Pablo Milanés Foundation was absolutely independent, culturally autonomous, capable of self-financing and investing in projects, without asking anyone’s permission.

To create his Foundation, Pablo Milanés had to overcome bureaucratic obstacles to obtaining permits from the ministries of Culture and Justice. But the greatest effort was convincing the government to forego the juicy inflow of dollars that would no longer go into its coffers. Pablo Milanés was earning more than six digit figures from his annual world tours, record sales and royalties.

The freedoms and the free initiatives deployed at full speed within the Pablo Milanes Foundation, as expected, terrorized the Cuban leaders.

Faced with that  free electron, Mr. Armando Hart, under orders from Fidel Castro, he took it upon himself to make false accusations, and engaged in childish arguments such as the alleged diversion of the purposes that led to the foundation. These served, in 1996, as inconsistent pretexts to argue for the end of a highly altruistic project, which at the time of its dissolution displayed a broad cultural project beyond what is strictly musical.

At the time when Hart, by orders of his bosses, gave the coup de grace to the Foundation, its sponsors with Pablo Milanés at the helm, were plunged wholeheartedly into the development of Cuban culture, but as independents. So it could not be tolerated and it was liquidated.

ramsetgandi@yahoo.com.

Taken from: Osmar Laffita Primavera Digital [Digital Spring]

February 27 2012

Delegation of the CID in the 10 de Octubre municipality, honoring Laura Pollan on Human Rights Day

The Cuba Independent and Democratic Party (CID) in the municipality on October 10, paid tribute to Laura Pollan, at 6:00 pm on December 10 at the home of Aimé Cabrales Aguilar, located in the Fonts Street # 143 (interior) between 11 Beales in the Lawton neighborhood, under police surveillance.

The homage included a recitation of the thirty points of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the audience, they rose in prayers for the eternal rest of the late founder of the Ladies in White movement Laura Pollan, they dedicated a bouquet of flowers and lit a candle to her memory, condemned the crackdown unleashed nationally, on this date, against the internal opposition movement and acts of repudiation against the headquarters of the Ladies in White.

At the commemorative event Maikel Jose Suarez Rivero was received as a member of the municipal delegation; he said he would fight in the struggle to demand the rights of all Cubans. “I am grateful that I have been accepted into the ranks of the Independent and Democratic Cuba Party on a significant day, especially when it is dedicated to honor the woman famous for Cuba and the world, Laura Pollan,” he concluded.

Katia Sonia Martín Véliz

December 13 2011

For the last few months, since the new apertures from the government, the city has been filled with carts selling various agricultural products. They differ from the existing agricultural markets, precisely because of the variety and presentation offered. Many people have called this progress but it is, in my humble opinion, quite the opposite.

It is true that they are solving a problem of the people, and they are themselves opting for a job that until now was practically underground, and which was almost lost — street vendor – which allows them to be self-employed and to make a living for them and their families. What’s more, in most cases these are young men and even women who did not continue their studies, perhaps due to lack of support.

This profession of peddling with carts flourished in the forties, but already by the early fifties, due to social progress, it was disappearing, giving way to establishments where what was offered was more stable and pleasant, with all these agricultural products both local fruits and imported. What we have now is that the former stores of this type are closed and vacant, and in their doorways, without any kind of hygiene, piled up in old dirty drawers, are the products, leaving the sidewalks and streets full of their red dirt, once they’ve finished selling, making the city even dirtier than it already is.

With the emergence and proliferation of supermarkets, these carts disappeared permanently from the big city, and were found only in some neighborhoods on the outskirts, but in smaller numbers.

Now, in the 21st century, in 2012, they are resurfacing as on Fenix Street. Most people consider it an achievement, as they see agricultural products and some fruits reappearing, clean and well presented, with better quality and prices than in state shops, where they sell them with soil, roots and leaves included, and where you have to be alert not to be fooled by the prices, because the weight includes all of the above waste.On the one hand, it is nice to see this new activity reappear, but on the other hand it is a sad fact that all the young labor force that could be working in a large and pleasant supermarket, with good working conditions, as required by progress, rather than having to push these carts from sunrise to sunset in different neighborhoods, and to endure nasty comments from some retrograde or official-like people, who tend to criticize, not realizing that they too are part of the same suffering people, and they are trying to defend a system that has only made us all regress.

It is said that soon the authorities will prohibit all this once again. Is there any foundation in that? Because they enrich and offer products that do not exist in the state agricultural markets. If it were not so tragic, it would be laughable. The real reason for their possible elimination is that every day, they are a public demonstration of the government’s inability to solve the most pressing problems.

February 26 2012

In Cuba we barely acknowledge the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, on October 12, 1492, and his arrival on our shores on the 24th, as if the conquest and colonization by Spain were an outstanding bill and not an event from the past of historical and cultural significance. Officially, National Culture Day celebrates the start of the war of Independence — October 10, 1868 — and the entrance of the patriots into Bayamo on the 20th in that same month and year.

Such a bellicose perception distorts the country’s cultural heritage, burdened by the bureaucracy of the State, political ideology and the creation of a system of stars, subject to the network of monopolies that control artistic and literary production.

In the culture that preceded the Revolutionary destructuring process of 1959, influenced by the redesign of relations with the United States starting in 1902, and the migratory waves of Spanish and Caribbean who came in search of jobs and boosted the production and trade of the island , turned into one of the most prosperous nations of the continent.

In the mid-twentieth century Cuba faced socioeconomic changes that bankrupted traditional values: the advance of the so-called mass culture, based on the expansion of radio, TV, film, in education and the media. Urban architecture was driven by public and private, mainly in Havana and Varadero, investing in tourism sites, where the hotel industry and real estate took the lead, which generated jobs and alternative collateral.

With the socio-political changes spontaneous manifestations of culture were interrupted. The affiliation with the socialist model in Eastern Europe led to the system of government agencies that monopolized the areas of artistic creation. The Cuban Book Institute, the National Music Center, the Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC), the Council for the Performing Arts, the Institute of Radio and Television, the Center for Art and Design and groups like the National Ballet , Contemporary Dance or the Folk Assembly directed artistic production based on political and governmental interests.

The ICAIC, founded in March 1959, exemplifies the ideological control over the culture. Its founder, Alfredo Guevara, castrated the creative intellect of Cuban filmmakers. This character was essential in the long film industry of the tyranny, in whose controversial way statism was imposed and the critics of the New Cinema excluded, within which Gutierrez Alea, Humberto Solás and others survived.

The bureaucratization required creators to conform to the network of state centers. The officials issued rules, instituted censorship and stressed submission through the award system, including editions of books, recordings and foreign travel, which favored the opportunism and unleashed persecution upon and the exodus of those who challenged the canons of power. In this context, the affiliation to the Union of Journalists of Cuba (UPEC) or UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba), became collateral, as artists and writers are legally deprived of personality and tied to the schema.

From the colloquialism of the poetic we turned to poetry of the slogan, the narrative of violence, socialist realism and scriptural grayness that mythologized the Leader and his legion of “heroes.” Purges, epiphanies, trading in praise and even a National Movement for the Nueva Trova to reject the troubadour tradition begun by Pepe Sanchez in the nineteenth century and continued by Sindo Garay and Miguel Matamoros.

You had to march or dance in tune to the rules and precepts of the Leader and his party, at least until 1990, when the lack of economic resources caused by the fall of the Soviet bloc accelerated the crisis of the monopolistic institutions and the exodus of artists to other nations.

Perhaps the best of the official culture is the art education system, as it favored the education of trainers and arts schools tripled. The promotion of community culture and festivals of fans encouraged the emergence of cultural centers, museums, galleries and public libraries, installed in old cinemas, closed schools and new locations.

The imposition of rules and the bowing to the power affected musicians and actors, dancers and visual artists, writers and journalists. The dependence is emphasized in the media and provincial and community institutions also subject to local government bodies.

By submitting intellectuality to the rules of power through punishments and rewards that encourage opportunism and degrade the privileged, a market in perks was created based on dogmas and affiliations. The interplay extends to the new technologies and the shares of power allocated to the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, whose subsidiaries determine the feasibility of projects, editions and travel abroad with very little subtlety.

Despite the passage of time, the exodus of artists and involution of the country, the regime insists on imposing limits on the culture, converting its elites in appendages to the state bureaucracy. Silence and complicity favor the supposed unanimity to the detriment of the differences and freedom that characterize the expressions of art.

October 31 2011

Several months ago a friend gave me this magnificent manual entitled “Toolbox for citizen control of corruption.” Accompanied by a CD with numerous practical examples, I have read it in search of answers to a scourge that hits us harder every day. Right now we are surrounded by calls to eliminate the diversion of resources and theft in State enterprises. Thus, I have immersed myself in the pages of this book to learn what we, as individuals, can do in the face of such occurrences. Not surprisingly, I discover a word repeated over and over throughout every chapter: transparency. An effective anti-corruption campaign must be tied to exposure and denunciations in the national media. For every misappropriation a news report must offer the details, each embezzlement must face the most intense public criticism.

The calls made by the General-President at the recent conference of the Cuban Communist Party to eliminate secrecy, however, do not seem directed to throw all the necessary light on acts of this nature. There is an obvious selection of what can be said and what cannot be said, a clear line between what is publicly permitted and what is not. For example, still today, they have given us no details in the national press about the corruption in the Institute of Civil Aeronautics, which led to the dismissal of its president, Rogelio Acevedo. Nor a single word yet about the latest scandal in the banking system which has led to the investigation of several of its employees, although it still hasn’t “touched” anyone in senior management. And what about the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela, which hasn’t brought us Internet but rather rumors about functionaries ousted for having stolen a part of its budget. And these are not just whispers: it’s enough to travel through the recently repaired Linea Street tunnel to see that a good share of the materials destined for its restoration didn’t end up being used in it. Why doesn’t television talk about ALL of that?

It falls back into the same mistake: verticality. The fight against corruption is not only the task of a State or of the Comptroller General of the Republic. We citizens must all become involved, with the certainty that anyone can be called out for putting their hands in the national till. If the impression that there are “untouchables” continues to rule, thieves no one can judge because of their political history or their ideological fealty, then we cannot move forward. The day when we see one of these untouchables criticized on TV for diverting goods, adulterating prices, or lying about production figures, then we will begin to believe we are on the way to eliminating such a widespread problem. Meanwhile, I look at the manual I now have in my hands and it seems like nothing more than a list of improbable actions, a reservoir of illusions impractical here.

28 February 2012

When I was 17, in the midst of blackouts of the “special period”, I found a happiness in my heart. (I know what I’ve said but with a little patience you who read me will see where I’m going with this.)

It is only possible to speak of this in a language that resists time. Inherited. For a long time I tried to name my experience and lost, so I thought to share it with Rimbaud: “One evening I sat Beauty on my knees, and I found her bitter, and I reviled her,” from his second poem in “A Season in Hell,” a different reading, quieter and less iconoclastic. I think we both regretted not having known Beauty’s name. Temptations of language that kill us or give us life. It established a perfect parallel between “The Drunken Boat” and “The Dark Night,” and in this foolishness I passed many years.

To me the experience of the resurrection happened in front of a book that I think I have said before was the fourth Gospel, and through these words the locks were opened on my heart or my mind or my soul, and I only knew that I was saved from a very sad adolescence marked by family separations.

Then life was a feast overflowing with wine. Not even communism could take my freedom. In this moment I recovered my joy, my sense, I felt changed, loved and capable of love, from then I saw a life ahead of me.
What I cannot understand is why I wasn’t capable of recognizing what was happening in my country, perhaps I was very young, but meanwhile the world was like an open book and love was a fact — like a Let There Be Light. On the Malecon, in the year 1994, people were attacked by the Castro hordes. And I wondered what kind of thing was Nirvana. Smells like teen spirit.

That has been the most important experience of my life, and being a mother, the two have rescued me. So I do not see myself as a brace person in and of myself, I think I am only to the extent that I believe in God. But I believe in God not because a priest told me to, nor a preacher. I liked reading the Spanish mystics, because I believe in God in a vital way, and also for the poetry that unwittingly I can write.

I do not believe that Saint John of the Cross in writing the Dark Night of the Soul has done anything more than a navigation log, a Baroque blog. I wanted to talk about all this to explain why fearing the violence of the totalitarian Cuban State, I have no fear.

February 28 2012