Translating Cuba

The name “Eladio Cid” was confusing for a moment because it was used to identify two stadiums which were called by the same name, on in Los Pinos and on in  Seville. “Los Pinos” is located in the municipality of Arroyo Naranjo and Seville is located in the municipality of 10 de October, both based in the capital of Cuba, “Havana.” Actually the name belonged to the Seville  combined sports facility, previously known as the “Athletic.”

The locals refer to what once was the great arena of “The Pines” (the name itself identified the “Pines” neighborhood) which had facilities for sports like football, baseball, softball, basketball courts for small and larger categories, judo, karate, swimming, diving, (a 30 yard field where they played Basque Ball and Fromm tennis), volleyball and a small area track and field events such as long jump, triple jump or shot put.

Their practices lasted into the evening as it was fully lit and fenced. Today in 2012, the Basque Ball court is no more as it has been torn down as it was in danger of collapse, the trampoline was also removed because the pool is always empty because the two motors are broken, as the river filtration runs below the pool.  Because of this there have been two fatal accidents of people who have fallen off the trampoline.

Once they put up light towers but today they elsewhere, in “Ciro Frías” in the same municipality of Arroyo Naranjo. The towers ended up there through administrative influence (better understood if you know that the director of Ciro Frías has better personal relationships with managers who assigned the towers ans so were about to force their diversion over 20 years ago).

Ricardo is one of the neighbors who lives across from the stadium and he says it is a great loss and inconvenience to lose such an important facility, and now he is forced to take his grandson to another stadium, as this has no place for volleyball.

Thus, the chances for recreation are limited with each passing day, their deterioration is irreversible. A foreign organization provided some very helpful tools for the reconstruction of the stadium, such as boards for basketball hoop, and they painted and cut the grass. When this organization left they took the boards off the basketball court and I’ve never seen them since, in short their good effort disappeared.

I remember this expression we used to hear every day: Sport is the right of the people.

February 17 2012

Racism in Cuba is far from being left behind. Forget the official ideology of a single nation without races. People do not live in compartments. Whites, blacks and mestizos get on the same bus. Go to the same schools. And live in the same neighborhood.

But they know the differences.. One of the most racist variants in the 21st century that persists in Cuba is in creating a family. Yoanna, a light skinned mixed-race college student, has a black boyfriend.

Her family is black. And they do not welcome the groom. They are very concerned stability and seriousness of the relationship. Especially the future. And the likely children.

“My family is concerned, they say I have to delay’. My mother married a white man. And they want this to continue’, having children with whites. I won’t lie, I’d rather not have to deal with the nappy hair of a little black girl. And although I really love my boyfriend, I want to form a family with a white man,” said Yoanna.

Planning for children between blacks and mestizos is an important issue in some home environment. “To whiten” the family is the purpose. Purely from a complex, some blacks and mestizos are shying away from their blackness.

I won’t make this into a long story. We know the past. Centuries of slavery. Being nobodies and despised by the color of your skin. When Cuba became emancipated in the racial aspect, it was only in appearance.

In Gothic letters it was enshrined in the Constitution that all Cubans, no matter what the color of their skin, were equal. Not so. Blacks and mestizos are left at a disadvantage.

They came out of slavery with their belongings in a duffel bag and not a penny to their names. For decades, they have been called the ugliest. They have the worst living and working conditions. This lack of stability, bad housing and little money, has limited the number of blacks who go to college.

Also the marginal conditions in which they live has fueled crime. 88% of prisoners in Cuba are black or mixed race. Therefore, when designing the future, young blacks and mixed-race people dream in white.

Marrying a white woman or white man is the plan of many. Or a light-skinned mulatto. To keep it going. “It’s like a ladder. A dark black person, who nobody sees, can not suddenly think to be equal to a white champion. It is step by step. First a dark mixed-race person. Then the children must marry to light mixed-race person, or if they are lucky, with a white person. Such is the picture to gradually whiten the family,”says Yoni, a 34-year-old mixed race man.

There are black and mixed race women who do not like their skin color. It shows at once. It straighten their hair and in fashion mimic the patterns of white women. Miriam, black, 22, goes every month for the hairdresser to get her hair straightened.

She spends a fortune on straightening creams and shampoos. She chooses her friends. She likes hanging out with whites and light-skinned people. “Blacks only talk about problems and difficulties. They’re always complaining. They’re out of control,” Miriam says bluntly.

State media does not address the issue at length and complexity. They put it aside. Pass over it. A broad spectrum of Cuban society sees black culture and history as folklore.

But in their homes, blacks and mestizos speak without taboo of the need to ’whiten’ the family. Having children with lighter skin what the parents propose, and what their children see as a goal.

Photo: Javier Monge, Flickr.

September 28 2011

The taxes and hard currency in the system of international legal consulting and special notaries — for foreigners — enabled in every Cuban province by the Ministry of Justice, does not appear in the Yearbook of the National Statistics Office, but must be one of the most profitable sources for the state bureaucracy, whose avidity for raising dollars, euros and other strong currencies does not correspond to the paperwork delays, lack of water, air conditioning and the solemnity of the officials who deal with those who come to these places.

Perhaps the only kindness of these offices is the information brochure given to visitors at the headquarters of the International Legal Department located at number 314 16th Street between 3rd and 5th, Miramar, Havana, which lists the services they provide, the cost of the documents legalized and the addresses of branches in the rest of the country, including Nueva Gerona on the Isle of Youth.

The branch of the Legal Havana International is located on 22 Street, number 108 between 3rd and 1st, Miramar; while the Office of Notary Services is on 5th Avenue no. 405, between 4 and 6, Miramar, where the ceremonies are performed for nuptials between Cubans and foreign citizens.

There is also the International Consulting on 24th between 19 and 21, Vedado, empowered to legalize notarized documents or to register with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, essential for those who seek to formalize other citizenships and foreign travel.

According to the leaflet, the International Legal Counsel is “a law firm that stands for integrity, professional competence and experience gained over more than twenty five years of work.” It provides “legal services to individuals and companies, domestic and foreign, based in Cuba and abroad.” The advice and assistance includes “civil law matters, family, property, administrative, labor, criminal, economic, commercial, financial, tax, maritime trade, foreign investment and intellectual property.”

As in Cuba, corporations, joint ventures, representative offices and travel agents are businesses exclusive to the state, citizens of the island who come to these offices perceived them as a place to be divested of their money in order to process the collation and legalization of documents, the formalization of marriage to a foreigner, immigration documents such as temporary travel permits, permits to reside outside the country, or to leave the country permanently, valued at $ 200 each, which adds to the prior cost of the passport at $55, or its renewal at$30.

Those who marry foreigners must pay the attorney fee of $525 USD, plus 100 for probate, 75 for handling and 10 for seals in local currency. By giving the first firm the foreign contract it will show the notary the legalization of its documents at the Cuban consulate in your country, which cost 500 euros or dollars, depending on the location. If you want to celebrate the marriage you must empty your wallet of hard currency and offer it up.

The international consultants work with Immigration and Nationality and with other institutions to get the certified documents for travel to Cuba (150.00 USD), the certification of criminal records, birth, marriage and death, Acts of last will and proof of degrees and titles, notes and thematic plan, which costs between 100 and 350 dollars each.

For people from other latitudes the costs listed are due to the logic of the tax revenues of any nation, but for Cubans they are abusive, because the offices are a monopoly and they price legal services on the island in hard currency, though they pay our salaries in national pesos, which are valued at 25 for one dollar.

September 22 2011

Something very serious happens in a country where people live by stealth and avoid criticizing the decisions of their government, where the transcendent issues are spoken in a whisper, quietly monitoring the environment, just in case; where so many do not consider honest labor as the only morally legitimate source to earn the bread they will put in the mouths of their children.

Something very serious happens in a country where Parliament unanimously supports provisions to undermine the welfare of their people and keeps intact laws whose practicality expired long ago. Something very serious happens where unions betray their purpose and becomes the point of a spear capable of lodging itself in a worker’s back; where, paradoxically, beating people is legitimized as a way of ensuring the freedom of man.

What is presented by the Cuban government as a monolithic consensus, as unanimous support for its line of thought, is nothing more than paralyzing fear, which reduces the individual to zero, shuts off his voice with an overwhelming power before which he knows he is completely helpless.

Because if something has become typical in Cuba it is the culture of hard blow. Every time convincing arguments have failed to implement any particular action or policy … there goes the whack that is reluctant to accept any decision so “democratically” taken!

For what I say, my example is very illustrative. When the then Minister of Public Health received that demand for attention from 300 workers in his sector with respect to wages, 5 minutes would have been enough to give a response a few paragraphs, which, regardless of its content, would have been correct, but far from this he chose not to respond ever, and months later along comes… the cudgel of the caves! So here I am five years later, still disqualified, struggling to recover my profession and denouncing the injustice.

Now, knowing the tiger by his stripes, I sense they are paving the way to neutralize this little matter of the bloggers. As they have demonstrated repeatedly that they do not know any other way to resolve disputes, it would not surprise me were they to lash out at any moment, using whatever variant of the wide spectrum they possess, be it through the typical raid, through individualized attacks, creating diplomatic friction with some embassy that offers a breach to the Internet to the Cuban strictly deprived of this service by his own Government.

Any excuse will serve to get that nail out of the shoe. Something tells me that they are about to show their big claws.

June 16 2011

 

Citizens of Havana are increasing concerned about living in dilapidated buildings, as there have been several building collapses as the year 2012 progresses. A lady of 55 from a Havana neighborhood commented that the cold season is running out and the rainy season looming, a dangerous stage for buildings in poor condition as the contrast of water and sun is a time bomb.

The news of cave-ins in these neglected areas are heartbreaking, because we are going through the same thing, says Alberto, 21. And neighbors have lost hope that the government will assign them a brigade for the salvation of the buildings on the block. The delegate said that it has been raised in several meetings and no answers have been given yet, and this has been going on for over 3 years. Construction products are for sale, but to get something, even to repair each one individually, is a dilemma of long lines and the demand from the population is so great that they can’t cope.

When the month of July comes around, many buildings have fallen in Havana and we already hear, that hopefully and with lick there will not be people who live in fear every day of losing their homes and being forced into a miserable collective shelter.

February 22 2012

Havana, Thursday, January 26, 2012

To: His Holiness Benedict XVI.
Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.
Head of the Vatican State.

From: Ignacio Estrada Cepero
Executive Director of the Cuban League against AIDS.
Human Rights Ombudsman.

With joy and great rejoicing the Catholic population in Cuba received the news of your visit to the island, a second pastoral visit to the Greater Antilles. Your predecessor, our beloved John Paul II on his first apostolic visit, gave us, or gave us back, that hope that our leaders had taken from us. He awoke smiles, displays of gratitude, tears and was allowed to hear even some voices that enthusiastic cheered, shouting “Vivas” to the Virgin and cries of freedom.

There is a difference in your first trip in the coming month of March when you want to visit Cuba. You begin your visit by arriving in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba where you will began your papal visit at the feet of the patron and mother of Cubans, and by this act receive the thanks of every Catholic, but what if you do not appreciate, is that you will shake the bloody hands of the current president of the Cuban nation, who is sure to be welcoming you. You may not know that the province where you will arrive is the home of a young prisoner of 31 who recently died of a prolonged hunger strike to demand our rights. You may also be unaware that in this eastern province police forces have entered the church buildings over which you preside to arrest people and stop the services. You may also be unaware of the escalation of police violence against Catholic women clad in white who visit the national shrine of the Virgin to ask for the release of all political prisoners in Cuba.

Here are some of the reasons why you should reconsider your trip to the island, however I also want to argue that your visit also will result in more police control the streets of Cuba, more detention and arrests, the taking beggars and alcoholics off of Cuba’s streets, actions that they will take only to try to show you a different nation from the one in which the Cuban Catholic people really live daily.

The Cuban League Against AIDS, an organization that advocates for full respect for human rights applied to HIV / AIDS asks you to reconsider your  travel to our nation, a country that still confines over 500 prisoners with HIV / AIDS in six prisons. Inmates who despite living with the disease receive harsh sentences for minor offenses and who while serving their sentences are not guaranteed adequate medical care, and who also lack medicines and food.

The dual confinement at times in punishment cells and the cruel inhuman and degrading treatments, among them constant beatings until they see them fall to the floor.

The Cuban League Against AIDS declares in most of these prisoners with HIV / AIDS acquired the disease by way of self-inoculation, true suicide to which the prison and health authorities of the island become accomplices.

Your Holiness Benedict XVI whether or not you decide to visit Cuba, please remember that what I am describing to you is a nation damaged by 53 hard years of dictatorship. A nation that needs to be heard in a space that guarantees security for every citizen, so I ask that I ask you to reconsider the trip. But if even after our letters you decide to come, please consider visiting us on behalf of our organization, we request that you keep us in mind when you have an exchange with Cuban civil society.

The Cuban League Against AIDS, your Holiness, asks for a hearing during your visit.

We ask God and the patron of Cubans to keep you safe on your trip and may you be welcomed in the warmth of real people waiting to be confirmed in the Christian faith, and that you do not see in a single head of state.

Yours respectfully.

Ignacio Estrada Cepero
Executive Director of the Cuban League against AIDS.
Calle 53 No 5206 Between 52 and 56 Rpto: La Ceiba, Playa.
CUBA Havana.
Phone: (53) 5317 3339
estradacepero@yahoo.es

With a copy to the Vatican embassy in Havana, Cuba and to the International press.

January 26 2012

Eliot Ness and his group in Chicago in the 30’s were called ’The Untouchables’. They fought head on rampant corruption in the Windy City, and through legal chicanery of tax evasion led gangster Al Capone to prison.

That group of Chicago has a female version in Cuba. Her name is Gladys Maria Bejerano Portela. She is the Minister of Audit and Control. That is, the Comptroller’s of the Republic. She has BA in Social Sciences, is vice president of the State Council and deputy for the province of Guantanamo. Her second in command also wears skirts: Alina Vicente Gainza.

According to informed sources, Gladys Bejerano is now enemy number one of the huge apparatus of bureaucracy and corruption from one end of the island to the other.

They say that the corrupt tremble when they see Bejerano’s inspectors appear. No wonder. Corruption has become a way of life in Cuba, and is rooted in all levels of island endeavors.

The most visible are the different ’clans’ created in sectors such as food, tourism, telecommunications, aeronautics, free zones and department stores and refrigerators where they blatantly run rackets with the State’s resources..

These ’cartels’, almost mafia, have become rich selling wholesale chicken, oil, tomato paste, textiles and electronics, pirated internet accounts, prepaid cell phone cards, cement and construction materials. It is composed of party cadres at the mid-level who hide their silver under their mattresses.

They are double-faced and full of double talk. They update the union murals praising Fidel and Raul, propaganda for the release of the five spies imprisoned in the U.S. And, at the request of the State Security, attend acts of repudiation and beatings against the Ladies in White.

The unseen face of corruption points to national leaders and the advisors of some ministers, who make straw figures and count on the cash balances from the dirty money generated by their business.

It is a chain. On weekends, each manager of a hotel, restaurant, cafe or club delivers an envelope to a confidence guy of the municipal director.

The figures vary according to the importance of place and the amount of money coming in. Then, the director passes on the take to some ’godfathers’ within the provincial party, the ministry of domestic trade or tourism.

With the creation of the office of Comptroller the gears of corruption have been threatened. When in August 2009 the Gazette published Law 107, creating the Comptroller General of the Republic of Cuba, administrators and directors did not take it seriously.

They thought it was one of the cyclical battles against corruption being undertaken on the island. Later forgotten about. An anonymous tipster said he was convinced that leaders of the status quo derived large profits with money and influence peddling generated by corruption. Not a few believe that financial fraud, misuse and monumental theft are designed in ministerial cabinets.

But Gladys Bejerano, 64, had other plans. She is a woman who has the absolute confidence of General Raul Castro. She received direct orders from him to play hard ball against bureaucracy and corruption. That did not stop with names or threats.

In just over a year, audits and controls have been key in sending more than 60 officers of major companies operating in foreign currencies to prison, including the Food Minister, Alejandro Roca.

In the investigations that are currently taking place in Havana and the rest of the country, to detect irregularities in ETECSA, the telecommunications company, Bejerano’s team is playing an essential role in the discovery of the whole network of corruption and bribery.

They never notify in advance when they will do an audit. Managers and leaders of higher echelons hate it. From below they call them ’incorruptible’. And “The Untouchables.”

In Raul Castro’s crusade against illegalities and corruption ithe final chapter of the investigations against senior officials ETECSA is still to come. It is the drama of the summer in Cuba because of the powerful heads that could roll. It will be a litmus test for Gladys and her protector, Castro II.

Ramiro Valdes, a former Minister of Information and Communications, now a superminister, is an “historic” leader of the revolution and one of Fidel Castro’s men. If she sees him involved in shady deals, can the Cuban ’Iron Lady’ see the game to the end?

In Chicago in the 30’s, Eliot Ness eventually destroyed Al Capone. But Ramiro Valdes in Cuba is more powerful than the American gangster. Much more.

September 5 2011

Cuba has become a universe with its own rules, perhaps somewhere in the the historical past, or in an existential limbo difficult to read facing the outraged crowds who curse the politicians, and the financial institutions in dozens of cities in Europe and North America.

In the island universe things continue at the pace of the Middle Ages. But neither the money nor the economy seem important, rather politics or ideology that sustains the only party, the King Star around which countless planets and satellites orbits, whose life depends on its ability to adapt: generals and ministers, deputies and provincial governors, chiefs and local busybody of all kinds, including artists and writers.

In the orbit of Power stars move, sometimes managing to raise their heads and look up. Some transcend space, while many fall from the top, reeling from the change of passwords of the uniformed little gods. In a special limbo are the faceless: agents of State Security. And finally, just finally, in the confines of that universe are those who are not considered part of it, the men and women who disagree and oppose despotic platform. These are in some way, the kamikazes who show their faces and break the rules.

Because the State owns the means of production, communication, education and the cultural centers, if you do not adjust their patterns you confront the monster. Those who wish to prosper would do better to never forget that the limit is somewhat obscured and the staircase leads to the basement. Most go unnoticed by voting for the designated candidate, showing obedience, not protesting, and neither asking anything from the government nor criticizing it.

Nothing of outrage. Under the socialist universe it is not possible to love as a hero, save for those who come from the past and illuminate the future from above. The worst thing is how natural the collective cynicism is, smelling of a whiff of human degradation. The mental wall helps you survive and you turn your face when they kick your neighbor. Personal bravery is marked-down merchandise. Plurality is on other coasts.

This postponed plurality joins itself at some point in the island’s astrological calendar, the legion of defeated rebels and the intellectuals who perceived the light in the corner of the absolutist firmament, most of them beyond the seas.

In the end, only at the end, and without comments from the foreign press, the opponents figure in, the opponent who are shaking the limbo of prudence and challenging the entelechy of a unique and exclusive scene. Some emerge in the foreign media; sometimes they ricochet within. Meanwhile, most see the bulls from the stands and watch on TV the thousands of angry protestors in the far off plazas of Barcelona, Madrid, Rome or New York. The question would be, of course, how long?

Note: First published in Cubanet

November 15 2011

… and the portable lamp moves from one horror to another…

One of the most critical times of the day is the News Hour. It is overwhelming, sometimes I despair. But I use all personal resources to recover and reclaim my serenity, it could be the power of some memory that stimulates the opioid in my brain to flow all through my body and comfort me and then, I breathe.

Still I have hope, it’s where I find it.

What I have in my heart is the power of the atom but not to destroy, rather to still believe in happy transitions. I can be everywhere with a little faith. And the mountains move. I think that’s an important value of the human person: the infinite is not reached by the wide roads but by very narrow doors that no State can possess. I am not always like this, sometimes my heart fills with tears, like a weighted load that makes me feel my weakness.

Sean Penn was in the News today, telling stories of his encounter with F. Castro. Supporting the consummation of the communist dictatorship in Venezuela. Here they trained many doctors. They also trained Villa Marista — the headquarters of Cuban counter-intelligence. In the shadow of institutions such as Villa Marista sadism is developed. How contradictory that in the daylight the State trains doctors to heal the body and win votes, and in the shadows thrives an army corps of sadists to destroy the opposition.

I have always caught the irony of Camilo Cienfuegos when he declared that with the Caudillo one could never be with or against the ball. The best model to dominate humans and to make them submit, even to annihilation, is communism. It is the only system that dares to declare openly that the great dehumanizing ideas are presented as humanitarianism, to justify the killing and destruction of opponents who are first deprived of all their rights.

Has Sean Penn seen what they do at home to Sara Marta’s home? To me with was like watching the movie “Resident Evil” when the thugs, paramilitaries, government employees, in hopes of some kind of perk within the system, jumped the fence of Sara’s house in Rio Verde to besiege it.

That’s what you get with the undoubtedly hard currency that certainly means graduating many doctors who sanitize neglected areas, but later, when that same family needs something else, it remembers freedom, but it will, perhaps, be too late.

The world was much darker when there was the Soviet empire. I will not miss the Venezuelan oil because I’ll be sure my freedom will illuminate my house.

February 22 2012

El Sexto rapping for his Freedom of Expression

vocescubanas.com/boringhomeutopics/files/2012/02/sexto-be…

February 21 2012