The War of the Paladares (Restaurants) / Francis Sánchez

(A Contribution to Travel Literature)

That the facilities for obtaining patents for small services trigger a headlong rush among Cubans you already knew. The restrictions on private enterprise, and chronic shortages, plus the deep social (and stomach!) vacuum left by inefficient state enterprises that have monopolized the trade, was an antecedent too pitiful to not run counter to the slightest opportunity.

By the time of announcement by the government itself that the Cuban economy may be touching bottom — supposedly now — and that the State will proceed to shake off the burden through welfare cuts, massive layoffs, of course, everyone will take advantage of one or another exits from the dominant, paternalistic and possessive authority, conceding too individuals to continues their lives once they’re left in the street: to survive on their own.

It has opened the door to private enterprise, at the last moment, as these maximum security prisons leave no other choice but to open in the middle of a flood, if the water level touches the roof. Better late than never, think the beneficiaries.

Among those who take the time to think, are those who don’t know what to do, where to invest, to ask for a license for the first thing they see, like the same “business” the next door neighbor has, or a close relative, and try their luck.

They could be parkers of bicycles, or sell soft drinks and fries, if they look and see that where they can park one they can park two, and with the same ounce of flour they can make a croquette they can make two and even three, without collapsing the black market in raw materials.

There are those who fear that at any moment the possibility of getting a license will be closed down and they rush to obtain one, though the required conditions are not yet created, but just in case. The most optimistic say it’s not going to be a cyclical play like before, in the nineties, when after the critical period passed they again received fatal notices of taxes and violations, accused of being the problem and not the solution.

But that they would suddenly be in the middle of a fratricidal war, the bus passengers between Havana and Ciego de Avila could have no way of knowing, when the driver stopped to have lunch, as is apparently the custom, in the town of Jatibonico.

This town, situated almost in the middle of the long and narrow island of Cuba, has the benefit of a central highway that splits it in two, making it a mandatory transit point for people traveling across the country.

Perhaps that is why Willy Chirino chose the place to compare with cities like Paris or London in the refrain of a popular guaracha that probes the paths of Cuban nostalgia. “Tell me, tell me, tell me of Jatibonico,” sings Chirino to the sound of the maracas.

The driver announced that with the arrival in the center of Jatibonico, at that hour of the night, the opportunity had come to put the gastric juices to work, and, as a matter of safety, his full bus needed to be emptied, momentarily.

He meant the signal of a change to be welcome, because before the emergence of restaurants, or as they are known at the grassroots level: “officially approved paladares,” it was natural that travelers had to head to the middle of the hill towards a camouflaged hut among the jungle, where they secretly met your needs.

A good traveler is docile toward the man the helm, who knows by heart not only the road but also the surrounding underworld. In any case, always in these cases, the drivers have all the threads in place with local industry to deliver a safe clientele in exchange for their own rations being served them for free. Now, very different from the adventure of rural or semi-wild food, these passengers were handed over to a more stable business, legal, also in an urban landscape.

Through the windows, the square of the town chosen by the driver looked particularly promising, revitalized, by dint of lots of little lights that wanted to attract your eyes. Besides the gift of hunger, the travelers were carrying some spiritual attributes necessary to appreciate a good meal. It turns out that in this bus the delegation from Ciego de Avila was returning from participating in the International Book Fair which was held in Havana.

No more did poets, novelists and historians set foot on land seek the satisfaction of their appetites, than were shouts torn from male and female throats. Two families were locked in a quarrel accusing each other of theft. What was the item stolen?

Nothing more, nothing less than the passengers themselves, the clientele. It seems that driver had not parked in the exact one-meter strip previously agreed upon, and as there were two paladares there, one beside the other, it gave rise to the violation of a dining agreement, disorder, insults, stones, punches and general chaos. Both paladares asserted their claims to the hungry passengers.

One poetess, I say it like this instead of “one poet”, as in recent times some women who commit verses want to be identified in this way on the literary menu, because in this manner one can better understand their state of fragility and strangeness here, in the middle of this brawl she almost fainted when she saw how a machete entered and left the face of a man. Someone called for the arrival of the police, but they did not appear. And never appeared.

Across the street, where the travelers huddled in terror, trying to save themselves and also overcome the shock of knowing that they were the obscure object of desire of two bands specializing in casseroles, a villager commented that they were cousins or relatives — in any case they carried the same surname, Montague and Capulet they were not — and that more than once they had crossed the limits of their expertise, passing to carving and literally slicing each other. What was their purpose? Would they lose their licenses? They definitely were not cut out for free enterprise? Would they find the right balance between their feelings and urgent needs?

Perhaps it was the so-called depth of the blood that caused the swollen river to collect itself and finally become calm again. By then, across the street, travelers unwittingly took refuge in a portal which constituted a third palate, not less emerging but quieter, so the group ended up going there and yielding there to a much stronger curiosity.

P.S. Some days later both paladares continue open, or at least the signs announcing their services continue to hang over the street. The following photo was taking February 24, 2011, from a moving car.

Photos: Francis Sanchez

March 6 2011

They don’t know everything, my love, they don’t know… / Yoani Sánchez

sombrasWill there be microphones here? You ask me while poking your head into every corner of the room. Don’t worry, I say, my life goes on with my guts on display, letting it all hang out. There is no place dark, closed, private… because I live as if walking through a gigantic X-ray machine. Here is the clavicle I broke as a child, the fight we had yesterday over a domestic trifle, the yellowing letter I keep in the back of a drawer. Nothing saves us from scrutiny, my love, nothing saves us. But today — at least for a few hours — don’t think about the police on the other end of the phone, nor the rounded eye of the camera that captures us. Tonight we are going to believe that only we are curious about each other. Turn off the light and for a moment send them to the devil, disarm their eavesdropping strategies.

With so many resources spent on watching us, we have conjured away from them the primordial facet of our lives. They don’t know, for example, even a single word of that language made for twenty years together, that we can use without parting our lips. They would score a zero on any test to decipher the complex code with which we say the trivial or urgent, the everyday or the extraordinary. Surely none of the psychological profiles they’ve done on us tell how you comb my eyebrows and jokingly warn that I’m going to end up looking like Brezhnev. Our watchers, poor guys, have never read the first song you sang me, much less that poem where you said one day we would go to Sydney or Baghdad. Nor will they forgive us every time we escape from them — without a trace — on the diastole of a spasm.

Like Agent Wiesler in the film The Lives of Others, someone will listen to us now, and not understand us. Not understand why, after arguing for an hour, we come together and share a kiss. The astonished police who follow our steps can’t classify our embraces, and they wonder how dangerous to “national security” are those phrases you say only in my ear. So I propose, my love, that tonight we scandalize them or convert them. Let’s take the ear off the wall and in its place oblige them to scribble on a sheet: “1:30 am, the subjects are making love.”

14 February 2012

The Cuban Magazine "VOICES 13" Coming Up Friday the 17th / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Number 13 is for the free Cuban bloggers… the best luck.

All the official trolls are invited to enjoying adding their accusations.

All the nice people of the Island and the World (not coinciding in time-space) are invited to collaborate and read this new issue of the magazine of the future in Cuba.

COME!

February 13 2012

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (26) / Regina Coyula

For Peralo for your post “The socialism I want

My dear teacher, I liked this post very much for its inclusiveness. Ultimately we live in the same society and we see it tarnished by the claim that the dissidents are thugs and neo-annexationists. For and against the government there are the good and bad, conditions that have nothing to do with ideology.

I am convinced will be born and we Cubans will not be that child’s parents. Like other socio-economic formations, it will not be imposed, it will come naturally from the development of productive forces, and no one will be able to violate the laws postulated by the theorists.

Could you tell me then, should we cross our arms? I would say to you, no, that trying to make a perfectable society, without labels or political stripes, with a body of laws that no one is exempt from, with social security, with individual freedom, we could achieve so much more than the overwhelming ideological propaganda — which falls on deaf ears– and which has allowed a small group to misgovern the country for more than half a century.

I think the 1959 revolution was necessary. But there were too many mistakes by the leadership of the country, and now once again we ask people for carte blanche. Long ago I exhausted my dose of confidence. Better I think that the young people govern a country where 60% of the population is under 55, people like you, because you understand better your contemporaries and your time.

Transparency. Much transparency for all public functions. To be critical since Cuba does not generate a sense of risk. I am also being dreamy. Combat, it works because power is not life, which constitute a Council of Elders if that’s the popular vote, but we retire our leaders when their best years are gone. Leave to our children a true democracy.

January 30 2012

The Right to Know / Cuban Law Association – Wilfredo Vallin Almeida

by Wilfredo Vallin Almeida

The Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba is over. From it, what we have left is a single phrase: “no illusions.”

This is equivalent to saying — in good Cuban — that things will continue as they are, we should not expect changes and future rosy prospects and must resign ourselves to our fate for any number of years.

It also means that anyone who thinks differently, who dares to protest, to questioning the higher ups about their performance, or to engage in a hunger strike will be, unquestionably, “an employee of imperialism, a traitor to his country, a scum criminal who already had problems”; finally, someone totally disqualified to question anything, even at the cost of his life.

A sad fate that we live as a country.

But I think that the constraints are limited and what seems to be coming in Cuba, though it doesn’t appear so, is that things are changing and one of those changes is what happens with information.

Information used to be exclusive to the State until a few years ago. Now the technology (although we are still far from the INTERNET), along with the bravery of a group of independent journalists (despite the Black Spring), have broken the monopoly and the public finds out things they previously would not have known.

Of the Ladies in White there is no need even to speak: its very existence and the release of the 75 political prisoners — first and foremost, the credit for this is theirs — speak for themselves.

In this context, we will continue doing what we believe is our duty as Cuban lawyers, namely: Let our countrymen know their rights under the law of the country and ways to exercise them accordingly.

Let them know the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights signed by the Cuban government for the people of Cuba, but never published for the information of citizens.

Continue to help Cubans who can not afford it to pay for services from the Law Collective, the transport of these firms’ lawyers to prisons or other places, or what is often asked for “under the table.” and any other advice requested from civil society.

The eternal heroes of this nation, who unfortunately are no longer with us, long ago gave us the rights “we don’t have to beg for,” many of which are inalienable because they derive from our essential human condition.

And this, which we note here, is in that category, because it is a question of the Right for Cubans to know.

Translator’s note: This is the first translated post from the Cuban Law Association blog — an outstanding blog about the law and human rights in Cuba.  The original blog in Spanish is here.

13 February 2012

What Confusion. What Joy. What Pain. / Francis Sánchez

What confusion.

Pablo Milanes, the mythical founder of the Movement for the Nueva Trova (1972), began the second part of his nationwide tour “For Cuba” in the center of the island, only about ten minutes on a bike from my home. They premiered, even a rebuilt stage for large events on a track between insulated walls.

And off I went running, that it, pedaling, as always a little late, sure I would no longer find a space to see him sing for the first time, close up. But I was wrong.

Our beloved Pablo was sitting on a bench in front of a handful of people stuck on a platform at the end, basically on a track where law enforcement officers had been with almost nothing to do. It was a cold night, and suddenly, the loneliness was troubling. While crossing this long space to join the select audience, the distinctly melodious voice fluttered in the air, nothing could be more suggestive then the song “Days of Glory“: “The glory days were flying …”

What joy.

To enjoy his voice, so fresh in the night like the first time. An intimate concert with chronicles of the little tragedies and delights that give human beings a stature to cherish: the lost childhood, the discovery of love …

He took for his repertoire those pearls polished by generations, but they were cared for only in this moving chapter that he makes as pure and vital as the more traditional Cuban trova. No choirs of collective militancy.

Even while living in Spain, he knew and he was here to prove it as he had lately been giving his statements to the press, giving them to understand he will not shut up. So, we could enjoy humming the lyrics or the music of a love poem by Nicolas Guillen, without battalions being mobilized.

He kept in reserve this time the fuel that until recently he used in large amounts spent in meetings, rallies and other ideological pursuits. He also set aside the promotion and opportune initiatives, being an artist who for the last twenty years had not offered this type of event in his homeland, where he played a role in almost total anonymity.

Even a local weekly, two days before, reported the day and concert venue, but not the time. Insiders briefly set aside other concerns, and he would forgive us leaving behind that apocalyptic call to sink into the sea rather than “betray the glory that was lived” (“When I Met You“), to be happy breathing for a moment on the surface.

What pain.

I discovered in the front row a friend, who was among those who looked back at the end of each song, as if in pain, to see if the audience had grown. He embraced his wife, and together they sang and cheered.

It seemed to me an image sufficiently good to justify the event, for it was not too long ago that they were not only separated but in the midst of a divorce, the burden of living with their two children and little hope of ever having their own home, he with the crippling of his honesty driven by a pittance of a salary, and an aggravating factor: he already know that this year he would become one more drop in the sea of the people who would be left unemployed.

Pablo Milanes ended up asking us to dream with “I prefer to share / before emptying my life” (“The brief space where you are not“), barely having the space necessary to introduce the musicians and thank the support team, a bow, and he left.

It all had not lasted more than an hour. My noble friend, when we shake hands, told me that more people had arrived and, finally, he was not so alone. He was referring to the troubadour.

Photos: Francis Sánchez.

Television Notidrama / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Retrieved from “http://ganardineroadsense.net

On January 30th, the National Cuban Television (NTV) star of the 8PM news, who occasionally dresses strangely, was transparently fawning over problems which are not normally covered on Cuban TV and radio. As we know that everything on NTV is controlled and passes through that inescapable screen of censorship. At home we deduced that it was one more manipulation, due to the Cuban visit of Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, and her delegation.

Unusual reports of low productivity, in general, and the decline in potato production are known evils, in our country, but suspicion is aroused when these reports are accompanied by others that indicate there are few trains on our island and reduced fertility in our population resulting in few births. In this regard, Cubans have an aging population and therefore have not reached 12 million. Ignoring the two million who have emigrated and reside outside our territory, they are only taken into account for propaganda purposes and to fill state coffers.

Ironically, the meteorologist who often appears on camera to do the weather forecast, said there was a decrease in the number of cold fronts and rainfall rates, in January, compared to the same period last year. Anyway, that day’s edition of the news, exceptional for Notidrama, made me wonder. If you didn’t know except by repetition, you would not suspect the favourable economic intentions behind that veiled whining. For them it is worth it because the crocodile tears will revert to an aerosol medicine for their economic suffocation, increase their bank accounts and give them more time in power.

Translated by: Hank Hardisty

February 5 2012

Television Notidrama

Retrieved from “http://ganardineroadsense.net

On January 30th, the National Cuban Television (NTV) star of the 8PM news, who occasionally dresses strangely, was transparently fawning over problems which are not normally covered on Cuban TV and radio. As we know that everything on NTV is controlled and passes through that inescapable screen of censorship. At home we deduced that it was one more manipulation, due to the Cuban visit of Brazil’s President, Dilma Rousseff, and her delegation.

Unusual reports of low productivity, in general, and the decline in potato production are known evils, in our country, but suspicion is aroused when these reports are accompanied by others that indicate there are few trains on our island and reduced fertility in our population resulting in few births. In this regard, Cubans have an aging population and therefore have not reached 12 million. Ignoring the two million who have emigrated and reside outside our territory, they are only taken into account for propaganda purposes and to fill state coffers.

Ironically, the meteorologist who often appears on camera to do the weather forecast, said there was a decrease in the number of cold fronts and rainfall rates, in January, compared to the same period last year. Anyway, that day’s edition of the news, exceptional for Notidrama, made me wonder. If you didn’t know except by repetition, you would not suspect the favourable economic intentions behind that veiled whining. For them it is worth it because the crocodile tears will revert to an aerosol medicine for their economic suffocation, increase their bank accounts and give them more time in power.

Translated by: Hank Hardisty

February 5 2012

Saint Valentine in Nuevo Vedado / Rebeca Monzo

As much work we go through, this is how much they want us to rip out by the roots all dates, customs and traditions, we Cubans manage not to get carried away by so many obstacles and against all odds and we celebrate, in a country where there are good few things that deserve it.

But the fact remains that the to be alive, and even more to be in love, gives us enough energy to overcome so many difficulties, and each of us celebrates in our own way this and other dates.

The new businesses, especially restaurants, have breathed renewing air into the neighborhood, already a little saddened by the absence of the youth who have emigrated. The gleaming owners seem to have shaken off the old socialist vices, that so permeated and did much to undermine the State locales where to be served food: sending two to fill the empty seats at a table for four, sending one to complete a table, etc. etc. These depressing phrases can never be repeated, because the private restaurants have brought back the intimacy, quality and good taste that once took precedence in this business.

Today I passed by La Casa restaurant to investigate and I was delighted to see the special offers for Valentine’s Day: the tab of 25.00 CUC per person, includes welcome cocktail, appetizer of home-based salmon rolls stuffed with fruit and cream sour, croquettes, ceviche, fried taro, squid and shrimp with garlic and onions. The main course to choose from: turkey with apples and plums, thin fillets a la fine herbs, fish fillets with seafood sauce. All dishes come with white rice, black beans and salad, a glass of wine, a special dessert for lovers (those who aren’t shouldn’t eat it, just in case) and coffee. All this plus entertainment with live music.

It is true that these prices are only within reach of a few, but I’m sure there will be other offers for less healthy pockets. The point of all this is that there is a possibility, and especially the right to choose. Those who can not access these nice places, may choose to what the State has on offer, much improved, due to the challenge posed by the private sector. Also a special dinner at home would not be bad. Nothing extraordinary, with what we have at hand, the important thing is to set a nice table with flowers and candles and to share it with your loved one. Gentlemen, practice the use of customs and rights that were almost forgotten!

Make a celebration where it suits you, but above all be assures those who don’t want to won’t be forced to, just to fill an empty space. Most important, no doubt, is that you and your partner spend an afternoon or a night to remember and salute the representation of Saint Valentine of this wonderful feeling we all call love.

Why the propaganda for La Casa restaurant? Because they are my lifelong friends, because they are great impresarios, hardworking, sacrificing the privacy of their home, have eighteen years as business owners, and when most people were afraid, they threw themselves into the ring with a tremendous love and undertook the project.

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day!

February 12 2012

The Internet for Cubans: A Permanently Impossible Dream? / Yoani Sánchez

Ministry of Interior "cyber cop" Eduardo Fontes Suárez, delivers a seminar in "Enemy Campaigns and The Politics of Confrontation with Counterrevolutionary Groups" CLICK IMAGE FOR VIDEO AND ENGLISH TRANSCRIPT

It’s 10:00 am at the Plaza Hotel a few yards from Havana’s Capitol building. A smell of moisturizer wafts from the bodies of tourists rushing through their coffee so they can go out and explore the city. On one side of the lobby several people line up at the entrance to a small office where there are six computers connected to Internet. Inside the room, anchored to the wall, a security camera focuses directly on keyboards and the faces of people who use the service. No one speaks. Everyone seems very focused. Any web page can take several minutes to open and some give up after an hour without being able to read their email.

But most surprising is that most of those sitting there are not foreigners, but Cubans seeking the oxygen of information and communication. They seem willing to sacrifice even one third the average monthly salary for sixty minutes of surfing on the great World Wide Web.

While outside our borders there is increasing debate between permissibility versus control on the web, 11 million Cuban citizens wonder if 2012 will be the year that we will finally become Internet users. We feel as if we’re abandoned and motionless by the side of the expressway, with ever faster and unattainable kilobytes speeding by us. Again and again the announced deadline for providing us with mass access to cyberspace has failed, leaving us isolated from and behind the rest of the world.

July 2011 was the last official date for the fiber optic cable laid between Cuba and Venezuela to began to function, and to multiply by 3,000 times the Island’s scant connectivity.  But for now, the status of implementation is one of the country’s best kept secrets, second only to reports of the health of former President Fidel Castro.

Some say corruption, technical incompetence and mismanagement have left the modern cable — laid at a cost of $70 million — not functioning. Others murmur that is already operational but only available to “very reliable” agencies and institutions, such as the Ministry of Interior. The most credible version, however, appears to be that the Cuban government has stopped its implementation for fear of the flow of information it would bring to the nation. A fear, it seems, that the house of cards of government power — held up at the expense of secrecy and censored news — would come tumbling down.

Official journalists have been warned not to touch the subject of the cable, and prices for access from the hotels continue to vary between 6 and 12 dollars an hour, or more. Having a home connection is a privilege given only to the most politically reliable, or the result of the audacity of those who pirate a state account.

Instead of opening up to social networking and other interactive tools, the authorities have offered in vitro versions of Facebook or Wikipedia style sites to schools and workplaces. They spend thousands of dollars from the national budget to create highly controlled programs and interfaces — for local use only — that will keep local readers far from the hubbub of the democratic Internet.

Each day they postpone our entry into the virtual village, the country’s academic and professional capital plummets a little more. In addition, they thereby delay our development as citizens, and keep us oblivious to the debates and trends that are occurring in the world today.

Right now the controversy between intellectual property and free exchange of files across the network gains strength far from our ears. While news headlines all over the planet announce the arrest of several directors of the Megaupload site, it’s embarrassing to know that the vast majority of Cubans do not even know the existence of this portal.

Echoes of the criticisms over the new content controls on services like Twitter reach us, but lacking any framework, we can’t decipher their real implications. When we do manage to read the critical analysis of the so-called SOPA Law (the Stop Online Piracy Act), or of Spain’s controversial Sinde Law (that country’s version of an online anti-piracy act), we wonder what the name of the ministerial — or presidential — directive is that keeps us far from the great World Wide Web.  Worst of all is that we can’t even complain about such limitations by filling the forums with texts or images of protest, or decreeing a blackout day on the social networks.

They have reasons to suspect web surfers and many motives to remain vigilant and active before what is happening. Because not only the times of sharing music, movies and software may be coming to an end. The fight against piracy has become the fight against the Web 2.0 itself, putting at risk the most public and dynamic part of this advance. But the doubt that assaults Cubans is whether the Internet — as it is known today — is going to die before we ever experience it, if it will become a cage before we could have used it as wings.

13 February 2012

Tracey Eaton’s Interview of Oscar Espinosa Chepe

Tracey Eaton, a Florida-based journalist, has been traveling to Cuba for a long time, and more recently has been undertaking a series of interviews with Cubans ranging all across the ideological spectrum. He has now begun the work of subtitling these videos in English.

Here are links to Tracey’s blogs/sites: Along the Malecon; Cuba Money Project; Videos on Cuba Money Project; Video Transcripts; Along the Malecon News Updates.

The Long Arm of Zorro / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Foreign and domestic news pours forth in Cuba with extensive coverage of the international and national press; academic, intellectual, social, and cultural events, contests, speeches and appearances: all manipulated, at the convenience of the powers-that-be with a huge media coverage.

Almost simultaneously the authorities unleash a wave of repression that stirs concern and solidarity. So new information arises that will take prominence and displace other no less important news. Wilman Villar died without having been morally vindicated by those who caused his death and later, as an aggravation, they reviled him.

Hmmm! It is a strategy repeated endlessly with one arm so long that it extends beyond our borders. Some might think that luck accompanies the Cuban totalitarian government and safeguards the aftermath of world opinion, but I think that traditionally and historically they have pulled the strings of the Creole political puppet and will continue to do so, with the reins firmly attached behind the scenes and from time to time the scriptwriter-in-chief comes to light. I watch and comment, because it is my duty and right to freely express my opinion.

February 12 2012

First Season / Fernando Dámaso

Flipping through various economic and social information, for the Republican era in Cuba, in newspapers, magazines, yearbooks and other documents of the time, I note, again, the actual development reached by the country, and the prominent place it held in many important indicators, a measure of the effectiveness of policies implemented by the different governments. Not everything was resolved, of course, but the path of solutions in process for fifty-six years, with undeniable results, allowed confidence that what was still lacking was only a matter of resources and time, because the forms and methods to achieve it were more than proven by years of successful application. That was the country that existed on 31 December 1958.

The new regime introduced from 1 January 1959, overturned the whole economic, political and social structure, engaged in the execution of willful experiments, with no serious scientific basis or citizen control, which converted the normal evolutionary process of the development of a nation into an artificial accelerated involution, with increasingly absurd decisions and actions.

The result: a country in ruins. We can put forward thousands of reasons and justifications to try to validate the hundreds of costly mistakes, but the harsh reality of generations sacrificed, resources wasted, destroyed wealth and talents lost, will not allow it. It has been over fifty years of continued decline, promising an uncertain and unattainable future, at the expense of the daily misery of the majority of the population.

Now they try to attack the evil with pills, bandages and some ointment, but it is an impossible mission: to bring about healing of the nation surgical actions are essential sooner rather than later. Everything else is the waste of time to save time.

The measures implemented, greatly limited and in drips and drabs, remain far below the expectations of citizens. Many more and deeper measures are needed in virtually all areas, and must be applied in the near term, if we are to begin to undo many wrongs, although it will by no means solve all the complex problems accumulated.

We can not ask for calm and wait for the Greek calends — that is a time that never comes — until the many committees set up complete their work.

On the street people are saying we are now in the early chapters of the first season of the guidelines — those created to “update” the model. These opening chapters aroused some interest but with the passage of time, they have been losing their following.

If the script of this drama is not improved, viewers will stop paying attention, as has happened with other earlier serials. But all kidding aside, this is not actually a soap opera, but something much more momentous and important to the nation.

I hope the authorities are aware of this situation and act with responsibility and restraint, but also with depth and speed. Despite all the many signs to the contrary, this is what the average citizen really expects, being so bored and tired of government inefficiency.

Photos: Rebeca

February 11 2012

The Long Arm of Zorro

Foreign and domestic news pours forth in Cuba with extensive coverage of the international and national press; academic, intellectual, social, and cultural events, contests, speeches and appearances: all manipulated, at the convenience of the powers-that-be with a huge media coverage.

Almost simultaneously the authorities unleash a wave of repression that stirs concern and solidarity. So new information arises that will take prominence and displace other no less important news. Wilman Villar died without having been morally vindicated by those who caused his death and later, as an aggravation, they reviled him.

Hmmm! It is a strategy repeated endlessly with one arm so long that it extends beyond our borders. Some might think that luck accompanies the Cuban totalitarian government and safeguards the aftermath of world opinion, but I think that traditionally and historically they have pulled the strings of the Creole political puppet and will continue to do so, with the reins firmly attached behind the scenes and from time to time the scriptwriter-in-chief comes to light. I watch and comment, because it is my duty and right to freely express my opinion.

February 12 2012

Another Pope / Yoani Sánchez

Image taken from radiomambi710.univision.com/

In just a few weeks Pope Joseph Ratzinger will arrive in Cuba but we are already breathing something of his incense from a distance. In a country where many of those who pray in the churches by day light candles at night to an African deity, the visit from His Holiness awakens enthusiasm, but also curiosity. The Catholics are preparing their liturgies and their pomp to receive Benedict XVI, while others wonder if his arrival will bring some significant transformation in the political or social situation of the nation. People want to believe that the Holy Father will push the reform process of Raul’s regime, driving it toward greater speed and depth. The most imaginative even dream that the highest figure of the Vatican will achieve what the popular rebellion should achieve: real change.

There are too many differences between this month of March in which his Holiness will land at the Havana airport and that January of 1998 when John Paul II did so. He, who was also known as the “Traveling Pope,” came preceded by stories relating to the fall of the regimes of Eastern Europe. Ratzinger, for his part, will arrive at a time when there is an entire generation of Cubans born after the fall of the Berlin Wall who don’t even know the significance of the initials USSR. At the end of the nineties Karol Wojtyla lit up our hearts – including those of agnostics like myself – saying the word “freedom” more than a dozens times in the Plaza of the Revolution. But now the apathy and discouragement will make it more difficult for the phrases of Ratzinger to inspire the same emotion. His visit will be but a pallid reflection of that other, because we are no longer the same, nor is it the same Pope.

12 February 2012