Posada of Terror / Jeovany J. Vega

The monster publicly confesses that be brought down the Cuban airplane and that he’s proud of the 73 souls plunged into the sea in 1976, in cold blood, a crime consummated in Barbados where the entire teenage fencing team died as they returned to Cuba with all the Central American gold medals.

He also confesses that he organized the chain of bombings of hotels and public places in Havana where Flavio died — a young Italian “in the wrong place at the wrong time,” according to the words of his assassin — but it just as well could have been my children. His contempt for life also plunged Venezuela into mourning for decades, with his claws covered in blood along with the executioners’, under the sinister wings of the condor. Wherever he was, he always engendered the greatest possible human suffering.

Recently a court in El Paso, Texas refused to find guilty such an accomplished and confessed assassin, not even of the initial charges of lying to the authorities of the country, and so the beast was acquitted of all charges and today walks the streets of Miami with satisfaction, clean as a daisy, immune to U.S. law, like the equally unpunished Orlando Bosch, his accomplice in the Barbados, who died in April.

In the country that saw John F. Kennedy slaughtered before the television cameras, also in Texas, and then saw the investigation squelched by the same power that killed him, nothing should surprise us. The same country that saw the destruction of the World Trade Center, burying thousands of innocents now tries to offer me a pill I can’t swallow: that Osama Bin Laden was killed by Seals commandos in an operation worthy of a Hollywood script, and was later thrown into the sea or something like that, without even showing a photograph of the precious trophy. The power in the shadow that perpetuates such affronts on mankind today is the same one that pardoned the homicide in the Barbados.

I can’t stop wondering how many dark secrets Luis Posada Carriles knows, that give him such a capacity to blackmail the forces of power in the United States. In any event, we must not forget that the now “respectable” gentleman, was wandering around Dallas on that tragic November 22, 1963.

This this notorious terrorist continues to go unpunished is also an insult to whatever of dignity survives in the people of Washington and Lincoln and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I can’t conceive of a better stimulus for global terrorism. Starting now, every new terrorist barbarity will also take a bit of the aroma of this criminal pardoned in El Paso.

June 10 2011

 

Allow us a word… / Jeovany J. Vega

To Dr. Adelaida Fernández de Juan.

Esteemed colleague:

I recently read your article, “Medicine defended, which circulated on the web this past August. Before I read it I saw your name at the bottom, and as this is a sign of responsibility and courage — as those who dare not to hide in anonymity may be arrested — for me, in advance, I felt your sincerity and valor, and so I feel a reverence, far beyond what I can share. Like you, I am a doctor, graduated in 1994, and I find in your writing references to the abuse and misunderstandings, so I would like draw your attention to some details.

During the time I practiced medicine I was a witness to various situations in which a health worker mistreated, consciously or unconsciously, some patient or family member. This is undeniable. But as undeniable as this, is the fact that for each of these cases of mistreatment I can recall a dozen cases (without exaggerating), on the contrary, only in these, different from the others, were rarely reported.

When a patient feels mistreated, frequently they immediately complain to the different levels of the Health System, the Government and the Party, but this almost never happens when the mistreatment — much more frequently than people think — happens in reverse. Sometimes the patient isn’t even aware of his attitude, as the grievance is assumed from the professionalism of the mistreated, in this case us.

However, there is a point where I disagree with you or with whomever suggests it. When you refer to the topic, “…the extremely low and disproportionate salaries, the undervaluing of the vocation, the truly abusive treatment of which we are victims and other grave matters…“; then giving the sense that, “…there are possibilities of lessening these evils.”

This takes me to past times, when our sector was on the list of the so-called “budgeted,” that is those depending completely on State financing. This was the excuse to explain why professional salaries in the health sector were so low and could not in any way be raised. But time passed, then came the era of medical missions abroad and now we live in a very different reality.

Today Cuba maintains collaborative medical missions in over 70 countries, which have been reported in recent years to bring up a sum of between five billion and eight billion dollars annually. A rapid calculation converts 8 billion dollars — in the Cuban peso in which we receive our wages — into 180 billion pesos annually.

With this alone we are the most productive economic sector of this country. But to these millions in income (which greatly exceeds even Tourism, which generates some two billion) we have to add that contributed by the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, the third highest exports after nickel and petrochemicals. It’s clear: our section has become the engine of the Cuban economy, so there is no compelling reason that we should be paid this miserable salary, equivalent to less than 30 dollars for an entire month’s work.

If I go on about the numbers, it’s only because they are very eloquent. You know, as I do, that the added human sensibility that makes our work priceless, despite our great scarcities that perhaps those who judge with surprising lightness us don’t know, don’t fully understand the seriousness of the matter.

You, like me, have been on medical duty where there is a lack of vital medications, reagents, X-ray film and essential disposable materials; where we don’t even have running water, where we can’t even wash ourselves on a 24-hour shift, without even being able to wash our hands; resting in such tough conditions that people wouldn’t even believe it if they saw it; eating poorly — for example broth and mashed potatoes, or corn flour and boiled potatoes for every meal — knowing beforehand that this shift did not bring us a penny to feed our children and knowing, as well, what is even more painful, that other State sectors like ours, which don’t generate anywhere near the income we do, are much better paid.

For decades we have been a very poorly served sector. In my case, I remember that since 1994 I worked for seven years with only the two doctor’s coats I was given as a recent graduate, and this compares with other sectors that have received uniforms and shoes every year — some even every six months — as well as extra monthly pay in convertible pesos, personal hygiene products and food. I couldn’t explain this if it weren’t accepted, with pain I say it, hard evidence: those responsible for dealing with this sector don’t concern themselves with the well-being of our workers, nor with our families, everything is a matter of sheer laziness, a proverbial irresponsibility, or both.

You quote another journalist, Fernando Ravsberg, as part of what is already becoming a crusade, also on the attack — according to what I infer from what you wrote, because I haven’t had access to that article — extending the shadow of bribery on the just and the unjust. I read it and remember, however, such elevated examples of moving dedication: professionals who are second to none in knowledge, and also in ethical principles, people of integrity, who carry their wisdom with a shining humility, living in the midst of shortages and that it shames me even to remember, and who even so, prefer to die rather than stoop so low.

I know there are the unscrupulous among us, I know its face, its name, its last name, they are not abstract examples but reality. But for my pride and yours, Doctor, and perhaps to the surprise of Mr. Ravsberg, they will never be the rule, they are a painful exception. That I know and I would hold both my hands to the fire for that, my disinterested and honest people. Who search the trees for firewood, who look above us and find enough reed to cut it; but when there is not enough courage, it is more comfortable and certain to take from us, those below.

For saying words very similar to yours, Doctor, I was stigmatized, and some idiot even accused me publicly of being “money-grubbing,” when I am among those convinced that capitalism is very far from offering a solution to the problems of the world, but to belabor this point would take us far off topic.

I think it is stupid to run after the superfluous, following a consumer culture that compels me to buy a cellphone every month or a new car every year. But as absurd as this is, after working 26 years, to be without a penny three days after being paid; that the workers of our sector eat lunch at noon without knowing if they will eat dinner that night; that our “salaries” honorably earned don’t even allow us to feed our families for more than a week a month; that a specialist with 20 years experience has only one pair of broken shoes; that the most that we can aspire as physicians is to a battered bicycle.

Before such a picture, even Kafka would pale, would certainly suffer a massive heart attack with all the complications described by cardiology. I don’t ask for irrational opulence, but nor do I deserve the miserable existence they seem to want to condemn me to.

Excuse my manners, allow me to present myself: I am Jeovany Jimenez Vega, I live in Artemisa and I have been a specialist in Internal Medicine since 1999. Five years ago I was disqualified to practice Medicine anywhere in the national territory indefinitely, since October 2006, for having channeled to then Minister Dr. José R. Balaguer Cabrera the opinions of 2300 professionals in Public Health about that disrespectful “salary increase” in our sector in mid-2005.

At the time of my punishment I was a Party member – since 1995 – and was studying the final year of specialization in Internal Medicine; I was expelled from the party immediately and suspended from my Residence, and several months later was disqualified, along with a colleague and friend who accompanied me on that initiative.

The details of they flat out lied to try to legitimize our punishment can be found in the first post of my blog “Citizen Zero” (http://citizenzerocuba.wordpress.com), open since last December to denounce this injustice and fight to regain the exercise of the profession that was taken from me.

Doctor: Despite everything, I have no doubt, we can count on the respect and caring of the majority of our patients and this is a great encouragement to continue. Along with this, I am comforted that there are professionals like yourself, who are not resigned to look on with indolence and shame, but who break their silence and share the truth. We consecrate our lives to the medical profession, as we must, but this should never be understood as renouncing the right to proudly defend our rights.

We live proud of our sublime profession, far beyond that “…contempt for the vocation, the abusive treatment…” to which we are subjected by those whose job it is to ensure our well-being as workers.

We will never forget that our oath imposes on us the duty to comfort man in his sickness and at his death, and to always comfort him in his pain, even if in his delirium he comes to bite the hand that cures him. In this endeavor, Doctor, we hold our heads high and our hearts open, and nothing else matters. Be assured, better times will come.

September 12 2011

Neither a Poet or a Cuban / Luis Felipe Rojas

It is the determination of the literary colonels of the Cuban Book Institute.  Five years ago, they officially ceased inviting me to artistic events, competitions, and public readings.  An edict, coming from the ditches of Villa Marista and aimed at cultural institutes, has automatically excluded me from any sort of intellectual debate.  Still, to this day, no one has showed me an official document which prohibits cultural promoters from including me in the learned spaces of my generation.  I know it is just a whisper, a card slid under the table.  There a dozens of my friends and acquaintances which have already been visited by the “colleagues of Security”.  Almost none of them have been tactically pressured, but they consider the warnings to be like yellow cards, and just like in soccer, some have challenged the referee and have reached for the red card.

The latest beauty of the list of prohibitions is that of “The Island in Verses: 100 Cuban Poets”, published by La Luz, 2011.  Each anthology is an authoritarian exercise, I know.  In just an instant, I have been left out of hundreds of bards which one day I believed I was part of.  Luis Yussef and Yanier Echavarria have understood, for the good of their poetic discrimination, that despite the fact that I was born after 1970 and before 1988, I do not count with sufficient literary quality to be ranked in the list.  I would say, in reference to the host Jorge Luis Sanchez Gras, that I am not a third world poet in the era of postmodernism.  I am not, according to the violation of the Hermanos Sainz Association, a human being who seeks change and not utopia.

However, it would not be just to say that- marginalization aside- I do not enjoy the selection which did make it to the list.  Among those 100 Cuban poets which I can say are part of my generation, are some which kept me up at night reading, those which I applauded during an afternoon of youth in the Gulf of Guacanayabo or under the shades of an Eastern beach.  Though I keep writing in isolation from San German and hover through the city of Holguin like a ghost, I still celebrate my mention in the other anthology: the one which includes the excluded and marginalized.  The ones who have been prohibited from publishing in our own country- Cuba- are more than a hundred and if we count those around the world, maybe even thousands.

As a writer and a mutilated artist (because of a military decree), I have no other option but to continue writing for me.  There is no editor waiting for me.  I have all the time in the world, even to read the island ‘one verse at a time’.

Translated by Raul G.

27 December 2011

 

The Pineapples of Wrath / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

I’m not referring to John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath written in 1939. I’m talking about the culinary experience that led me to the farmer’s market: I decided to make a cold salad with a pasta base. For any mortal in another country, it’s probable they would have the option of buying the dish ready-made, or if they wanted to make it at home, of buying all the ingredients at one time, or perhaps making a second trip because they forget something, but everything would be available.

In Cuba it’s an exercise in mental hygiene requiring huge portions of patience. This recipe calls for — at the least the one we make at home — lots of mayonnaise and white onions, as well as boiled potato cut in small pieces. Some reinvented their own recipe for mayonnaise, and by saving great quantities of oil (a scarce product selling dearly in hard currency), make it by giving the oil body with mashed potato, milk with cornstarch, or some other ingenious and available substitute.

Rafa and I preferred, this time, to spend the hard cash — I don’t think mayonnaise is sold in Cuban pesos — to give it the familiar taste. For a customary exercise in survival, we Cubans often forget to eat, and so to feed ourselves is a pleasure.

Recovered from the horror of the fiftieth anniversary of Castro, I didn’t want to find myself surprised by the usual shortages and was collecting some of the ingredients several days in advance. After roasting the quarter chicken I was going to throw shredded into the salad, I tossed my lucky coin and went out shopping to buy what I lacked. As we were packed like sardines in the farmer’s market I searched quickly for what I needed so I could get away from so many people rabid for food. The onion cost me very dear, I bought it with a little mountain of national currency, and I also acquired the mayonnaise easily — notwithstanding the excessive price which I paid in hard currency — but it is the third ingredient that led to this post.

Incredibly, the farmer’s market near my house only sold green pineapples. To avoid disgracing my salad with sour pineapple, I walked from market to market and found the same thing at some while others had none at all. After two hours and so as not to waste the whole day, I went to a stall and asked the seller for a ripe one. “Señora, all that I have are ready to eat and very good.” As she had them in front of her and I am not colorblind, I responded and we got into an argument because she wanted to tell me that a green rind is a sign of ripeness, and that I shouldn’t “be picky” and ask for “difficult things,” but just be grateful there was pineapple at all.

In the end, as I didn’t have enough cash to substitute apples — which are only sold in convertible pesos — and I left the crush of people disgusted by the dispute, wanting to punch myself for my stupidity in demanding “ripe tropical fruits in the tropics” and in frustration for “leaving the party” empty handed.

I left mentally fuming, making an analogy with the title of the Pulitzer Prize novel of 1940 which is considered a major work: The Grapes of Wrath. I also remembered the phrase attributed to the late Armando Calderon — anchor and host of the long-gone Sunday TV show, “The Silent Comedy” — who said that one morning he had modified his usual chatter for the children present: “This is de piña*, dear little friends!”

*If you substitute “ng” for the letter “ñ” in “piña” (pineapple), we have the name of the masculine sex organ which is a part of so many expressions and expletives in the vulgar Spanish of Cuba.

Translator’s note: This text in the original Spanish plays with longer words that include the letters “piña”; unfortunately this wordplay cannot be reproduced in translation.

November 15 2011

Cubans. Period. / Jeovany J. Vega

Foto: Orlando Luis Pardo.I confess that when I found myself referenced as an “alternative” voice, lacking previous reviews and bordering on misunderstood, I manned the battle stations against Elaine Diaz’s blog “La polémica digital” — The Digital Controversy. But when I noticed the objective and conciliatory tone in her post “Blogger, period,” I quickly took off the helmets of war and went unarmed to a discourse that seems sincere.

My initial reaction, though primitive, has a simple explanation: too much despotic, too much hypocritical invective has been released at my door and when that happens, something hardens inside and easily bursts into the guttural reflection of the battle. But once calm I take on the proposal, because we always have time to liberate the beast, since any bridge of reconciliation, once laid, is a trophy that this people can’t afford to lose.

But I think that saving the qualitative highs and lows that are natural in every human congregation — and the blogosphere, although virtual, in some way is that — I find that the lack of arguments is not the rule but the exception. Among our bloggers — who continue in their effort not to spin off into factions and will be called bloggers period — we can count more than one impassioned, “What Cuban isn’t one?” Just that each one goes in the direction dictated by his conscience.

This “exhausting war” on both sides is nothing more than a virtual reflection of what they’ve forced ordinary Cubans to fight for five decades, within and outside the island, a painful sequel to the quarrel between the powers on both sides of the straits that has profited them both — money for some, allegations for others — while the Cuban people are the big loser in this saga.

On the way to harmony it should be the State that makes the first move, because being the power it has at its disposal all the resources, being the strongest it is ethically obligated to respect the weaker, for being the one who makes the laws that stoke or dampen the embers of discord.

Here, everything is summed up in the common sense, because if the Cuban Adjustment Act is inappropriate, it is also inappropriate to prohibit us from traveling abroad; if this policy called the blockade by some and the embargo by others that is forced on us from outside is misguided and anachronistic, so is the excessive centralization of the state, forced on us from within; If the world press is biased, so is, in no lesser measure, the Cuban press; if it is immoral to lie to pardon Posada Carries, it is also immoral to do so to disqualify a doctor for something he never did, or in the end both sides are capable of cheating and in what falls and rises on the tide life escapes us.

The world today experiments with alternative routes and social networks to gain prominence, but in Cuba we seem to go in the opposite direction. I do not think that the principle demand of the bloggers is free access to the web, nor is this comparable in size to the critical situation in housing, food, or absurd wages.

Starting from the precept that the solution to a problem doesn’t imply ceasing to fight for the solutions of others, if there is an essential difference between the Internet and the rest of these issues: it is that while the others demand a logical reordering of the physical infrastructure of the country, a massive deployment of resources, and short and long-term investment, in comparison giving people the keys to the Internet would be like snapping one’s fingers; it would imply an immeasurably more discreet investment, possible in the short-term, and in fact only requires rearranging the mental infrastructure of those who make the decisions, it is purely a question of political will, and to refuse the people this right, at this juncture in history, is pure medieval obscurantism.

At the place where I connect once a week — where nobody charges me, nobody pays me and nobody censors me — it takes me a three-hour journey to get them, eight hours total to hang this post, something that at home would take eight minutes. It is no sin, nor does it bother me, that the “revolutionary bloggers” access the global network, but it is a capital sin to deny it to the “alternatives” — along with the rest of the people — especially if they are then labelled mercenaries by the same power that refuses it to them, when they are forced to connect through an embassy.

There is an obvious cynicism in this and I don’t propose to make you pick at the scab, but there is one inescapable fact: when a blogger plants a flag in the shadow of the authority he assume very little or no personal risk; if the flag, however, is an “alternative” one, he must pay dearly for boldly confronting a power that sees everything as black or white, that does not admit of any diversity of tones, and whose slogan continues to be “with me or against me!” A power that constantly incites the dogs of war, that does not forgive that these words posted in Cuban voices it being Cubans who write them, a power whose intolerance itself becomes the original sin, the first stone thrown into this maelstrom with neither winners nor losers,and in the end the Cuban nation loses.

History is full of examples of people bled by killings and resentments lasting decades or centuries, who were able to raise themselves from the ruins through indulgence. Our sublime Marti comes to mind, who still convinced of the inevitability of the war of emancipation, knew to launch it without hatred towards Spain; the example of Gandhi comes to mind, whose great soul brought an empire to its knees with only his word, who without a single shot being fired founded a new India; the great Mandela comes to mind, who after 27 years of as a captive of the racists, emerged from the prison, forgave his jailers,buried a regime of more than a century and founded the South Africa of the new era.

Before these high testimonials, results of confrontations that seemed insurmountable, the question arises: could Cuba follow the same paths? Will we overcome our differences and found for Cuba a new era of tolerance? In that hope I live and believe that this is the true mission of my generation.

It is along this line that the Cuban blogosphere must press today, which is both sides of the same coin in this dichotomous relationship, inevitable and difficult. We are all in the same boat, stripped of the same rights — because these are not privileges — and this is something that unites us. In the end, every nation needs to be reborn from the ashes. In the laudable task of reconciling the best and most authentic of each part, I would extend both my hands. I would demand, as a condition, to desire the highest good of the country. For now, all who love the diverse and free colors in the same flag could begin calling each other, without epithets, Cubans, period.

May 30 2011

A Little Report about Governmental Fraud / Ángel Santiesteban

The last thing able to survive from our Cuban heritage is housing, owing to the totalitarian will of Fidel Castro, who dictated for more than 50 years that everything was his property and only he would decide what was whose and when it stopped being so. Fortunately or unfortunately, the family home was the only thing that couldn’t be sacrificed to survive the debacle that has lasted over 50 years. Soon that ban on the sale of real estate will be a memory.

In the 1980s, the Cuban people were robbed of jewelry inherited from their ancestors; the elderly, to satisfy their children and grandchildren and alleviate their extreme poverty, handed over their goods in exchange for a few “chavitos” [Cuban convertible pesos], which had value only in hard-currency stores, where the prices of the items were laughable. And everything worked like a robbery because there were no other stores where they could get these products, which were nothing special, other than the opportunity to acquire them.

Having dollars in those days could send you to prison for many years. People were confronted with the perfected gears of a governmental blackmail, which left some in bad shape, those who refused to sacrifice the memory of their ancestors for their family. In the end, the old women who gave up their engagement rings, relics that they exhibited on their hands as a window into profound feelings, did it with a mixture of pain and satisfaction, to please their families. They were left with the perception that they were duped like the Indians at the arrival of the Spanish, when they traded gold nuggets for stained glass.

The State also bought their porcelain vases, silver and gold, paintings that their ancestors hung on the walls to admire, design furniture, wealth that went into the coffers of politicians or their families and that now rest in safe deposit boxes in foreign banks. If I may say, it reminds me of the Jewish Holocaust, where they even removed gold teeth by force.

Our people are like the sugar cane: squeezed.

Cuban society has been sacked spiritually and materially, like the cane, which is repeatedly passed through the mill, where it loses consistency, becoming bagasse and powder. What’s painful is that everything happens in total silence, under the auspices and complicity of Cuban officials and intellectuals, who don’t comment because of the fear that always accompanies them in their artistic souls. They remained silent before the grand theft that exchanged jewelry for bread. For once they didn’t fulfill the role, so vaunted, that makes intellectuals the voice of society, its defender, its living memory. Instead, they preferred to turn their backs on the people, and history will recognize this in its righteous assessment.

But circumstances have changed so much for the ruling elite, that it has no choice but to revise its extreme methods and wave the flag, always for the sake of its benefit, ignoring the repeated and lengthy speeches that claimed that “private property will never return to Cuba.” Have you ever wondered how much pain it must cause Fidel Castro to see how the whole house of cards he forced us to visualize is crumbling? He wanted us to believe it as if it were true and palpable. What must be happening and what plans do they have for beginning to return some small freedoms that they took away before and that makes them feel they are losing their valued power? Surely it’s the same feeling of helplessness  the masters felt when they were forced to free their slaves. For let’s not deceive ourselves, no measure of this Government will ever improve things for the people, not even to restore the freedoms and rights that correspond to being human.

The right to be born….in the wrong place?

Now the government has approved the sale of houses, something that had already been announced. But it’s also been more than a year, as “by chance” they began in Cuba, after 50 years of stagnation, to update the property registrations. Everything has been done with the utmost urgency. It has been a so-called mandate for the state enterprises, with the inescapable management of citizens for any procedure involving their homes. In each municipality offices were opened to enter into the books the names of the current owners, with extreme urgency and pressure. They know that time is running out. The locals have handed over premises for these offices, given training courses, printed flyers that have been corrected, and delivered computers, files and office supplies. Visits by the Provincial Director of Justice and political officials are constant. They also are pressured with other requests. They have to answer for how much the total climbs when they get an entry on the books. The first person who began this task, as part of his duties as Prime Minister (Mayor of Havana), Juan Contino Aslan (may his small power rest in peace), was dismissed and now is on the “pajama plan,” (like his predecessors and political mentors, who allotted houses to their mistresses).

The Government of Cuba never makes a move that will not bring it compensation. But in this case, all the trappings lead us to the true intent, which is to take back the properties belonging to the old owners, who have left the country or died in Cuba.

The goal is to erase the past. When the State gets in its possession all the old properties, it will make them disappear and, with the registration, only the updated properties will remain. No property owner whose property was “nationalized” beginning in 1959, nor their heirs, will be able to reclaim something that doesn’t exist and that they can’t prove officially.

Perhaps some have conveyed their properties from exile, but they were the minority. And you might think it’s a commendable gesture of the Castros to assure Cubans that they will not be thrown into the street when the inevitable political change appears, but that would be naive. The real reason is that the power elite is trying to hide the family estates that were seized or inventoried after the departure of their original owners. Inside the great mountain of paper that contains the entries, the personal properties will be lost. By the way, this will reassure the generals and acolytes that they will not lose the confiscated property given to them when they came to power.

The country is bleeding 

The Cubans, in this carnival of small, unknown freedoms, in their desperation to change their reality, in the desire to fulfill some dreams, especially that of emigrating, now can sell their homes. Those who wish to stay on the island immediately think about how that money will solve all their pressing needs: eating, dressing and sleeping without the torture of not knowing what you will eat the next day. The government is already warning that it is “not responsible for the bad decisions of owners who spend the money and end up in homes in poor condition that may fall down, or for those who are wandering around without a roof over their heads.”

Once again, we wonder what function this supposed revolution had, which presumably was made to guarantee people a secure life with equal rights. What do we gain from suffering a dictatorship for more than 50 years, if at the end we find ourselves selling the only things we posses, the only things we could keep? And what’s worse, it’s a “socialist” state that has nothing to do with its people, who were its only standard and justification in this long march of agony.

 The Comandante’s bag

As a child, we thought the “coconut” would come for us, for our body; it would come to take us away for not eating all our sweet potatoes, or for not going to bed on time. After growing up we knew that the man with the bag, the bogeyman, had passed through our lives, and he took in his bundle more than wealth and family belongings. He took the lives and dreams of my grandparents, parents, siblings, friends, those relatives who still grasp me with their nails and their teeth so they won’t be snatched, and already he controls my children and now, if we permit him, our grandchildren.

The Cuban State, for more than half a century, has held up the monster of “capitalism,” which it constantly criticized, to children who were frightened that the “coconut” would come, and by studying so thoroughly the original, it now has become the reflection and has converted itself into the image of “the bogeyman who is coming to take us away,” in order to frighten us with capitalism as communist propaganda.

We Cubans have been scammed. The socialist State is slowly giving way to ideas with which they can perpetuate the dictatorship, a frank regression to capitalism. With the difference that now it will be more vulnerable, because there is no knowledge of either family or social infrastructure, which is necessary to meet and sustain a dignified life.

The big difference is in who wins at the considerable sacrifice of millions of Cubans in this more than half a century. The Castro family lives in luxurious mansions They own several cars and yachts. They travel constantly and have prosperous businesses, fortunes and properties in other countries. They definitely enjoy an income that allows them to live like millionaires.

The beginning of the 21st century has begun to be their end. They sense that they are running out of time. The only thing I don’t know is how and what they will develop for the family to maintain its status and wealth, and to ensure, of course, that it will not be returned later to the Cuban people.

While they prolong the strategies for usurious benefits for the Castro family, the Cuban peoples’ dreams of freedom and a prosperous economy are put off and continue being deferred.

Ángel Santiesteban Prats

Translated by Regina Anavy

November 16 2011

 

Leaders Die in the Land of Good and Evil / Ángel Santiesteban

Two political leaders have died only a few hours apart. But aside from the timing, they were also incompatible in their ways of seeing life, acting and delivering for their people. One represented Justice on earth and the other personified evil. The first, Václav Havel, was a born fighter, an intellectual and politician by nature, one of those who did not wait for more suffering to oppose one of the most ferocious dictatorships of mankind. For this he was persecuted, humiliated, put into prison and tortured. At the end he died from the after-effects caused by his daring to face a dictatorship that suffocated its people. But at least his people knew how to reward him, and today they mourn him, because he gave them the gift of a free and prosperous country. He was President for the time he needed; he served his term and then watched as his country took off and developed.

The other death, of the dictator Kim Jong Il, we can’t call “human loss,” because for that we would have to have feelings that justify that category. He was no more than a tyrant, the most perverse and egomaniacal that ever lived. After his death, he left behind only the suffering that all of his kind guarantee: punishment, famine and death.

Václav Havel was not content to see his country sovereign, but also fought for the freedom of other nations such as Cuba. In his personal geography the Cuban archipelago occupied a central place. His interest in the Cuban reality and conditions for the Cubans was constant, and from the seat of his country in Havana, we felt the support of his Government for free thought, individual rights and national independence. In us he saw himself in the years of dictatorship, in the current totalitarian state that we suffer. He felt at one with us Cubans.

Kim Jong Il did not stand out in life other than having been the prince of this new type of dynasty shared by North Korea and Cuba, the family legacy. His father, the dictator and mythomaniacal Kim Il Sun, guaranteed the delivery of power to him, which his grandson also received, then is great-grandson. No matter that his country lacks food and freedom; the only requisite is that which coincides with the rest of his autocrat lineage: to maintain power. And before the general disgust of the civilized world, the Cuban government decrees national mourning for the vile tyrant.

At some point, maybe very soon, we will erect the monument that Václav Havel deserves. We will lay flowers there for the rest of our lives, one generation after another. While in North Korea, they would tear down the statues of the Il family, given the opportunity.

We Cubans hope the Korean people will soon get their freedom, like we also want, and we wish them happiness. We offer the Czech people our sincere condolences, and we mourn their leader, a friend who understood and accompanied us at all times. And we will mourn him for more than 72 hours.  We will mourn for eternity.

Farewell, President Václav Havel.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Translated by Regina Anavy

December 24 2011

My Record of the Year / Regina Coyula

Text appeared in Diario de Cuba in the section “Lo mejor de tu año” (The Year’s Best) under the question: “Which book, film, or musical recording did you enjoy the most this year?”

Porno for Ricardo is an uninhibited punk rock band that tries to do its thing from Cuba.  I like them a lot, but I don’t like punk.  My tastes tend towards progressive music, which is why I am going to try to convince you to listen to Dream Theatre, a band that doesn’t get a lot of recognition but is highly familiar to those “in the know” – a group to which I do not profess to belong.  However, thanks to my son, these talented musicians entered my life; it is a rare day that I don’t listen and discover something I had missed before.

Right now, I’m enjoying A Dramatic Turn of Events, a title that alludes undoubtedly to the departure of the band’s leader and founding drummer, an exit that was cloaked in all kinds of speculation about the future of DT.  Now, with this record, I imagine that fans of the band will be divided, both for and against.  I really like this record, which is a perhaps a bit less earth-shaking than others, but the ballads are amongst the group’s best, and the second last cut, the monumental Breaking All Illusions, is a roller-coaster of a song that is twelve minutes in length, with occasional plateaus so that one can catch one’s breath (their songs are long: my favourite, Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, from the record of the same name, is 42 minutes long).  Beneath the Surface surprises the listener while bringing heartrates back to normal with a lovely acoustic theme.

I completely recommend this album, with the additional recommendation to not pass judgement after hearing it for the first time.  The third time around, pour yourself a favourite drink, and you’ll double your pleasure.

In short, I wanted to write about Porno para Ricardo, but I couldn’t express myself the way I wanted.  They’ll understand.  We recognized each other in the Theatre of Dreams.

Translated by: jCS

December 23 2011

Chronicle of Asclepius in Cuba (Part 2) / Jeovany J. Vega

Translator’s note: Asclepius is the ancient Greek god of Healing and Medicine

If you are moderately well-informed you know that we 11 million Cubans living in Cuba are subject to a ban on free travel abroad. In this case it’s not about a personal decision, but requires that you be invariably authorized by an arm of the Ministry of the Interior with discretionary power to say yes or not to your “permission to leave”; a privilege that becomes the stuff of blackmail, with perks awarded to those who remain “quiet” and refusals as punishment for the irreverent, to set an example to others. This general prohibition is contained in the Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) Resolution 54, specifically designed for those who work in Public Health, and which presents a bleak picture.

But returning to our mental exercise, here we have our thoughtful doctor who is forbidden to travel abroad, who can’t support his family on his evanescent salary, who can’t go to work in another better paid sector because the Resolution prohibits it, with a purely decorative Union that bows to the orders of the Administration and the Party, through which he can’t channel any solution to these basic problems, nor will it acknowledge his starvation wages, nor the terrible conditions of hygiene and good, coupled with the lack of resources and medications which, save in happy exceptions, he passes his medical shifts in our polyclinics and hospitals; shifts for which our doctor, incidentally, does not receive even a penny.

Then our thoughtful physician has only one way out, and resignedly chooses the only door left open; he applies to be part of some medical mission that our supportive government sustains in some dozens of countries. He just has to fill out the rigorous documents, and spend a few months or years, and then our doctor leaves his office or hospital to care for the poor of the world.

I believe in human solidarity like I believe in the light of the sun, but in life you have the discern the luster of gold from the shine of the mirrors. When a doctor, dentist or other Cuban health professional leaves to work on a foreign mission, regardless of any moral valuation, he does it under indisputable circumstances. This worker, until now deprived of a decent wage, will from this moment forward receive 300 or 400 dollars a month, while his family in Cuba – which under no circumstances Is allowed to accompany him — will receive his full wages in Cuban pesos along with 50 convertible pesos every month.

Although under certain circumstances it can come to more depending on the destination country, it will never exceed 15% to 20% of what the host country is paying Cuba for his services. This is an estimate, as this information is practically inaccessible, but it’s true that around 80% of what our doctor generates in his contracted wages — not taking into account extras for additional tests, radiology studies, etc., which are generously covered — goes directly to the coffers of the Cuban state to be administered by human functionaries.

Meanwhile, the Cuban health workers abroad receive a wage that in many cases is less than the legal minimum wage for a native of the country they are working in. When the worker returns to Cuba on completing his mission, he is once again subject like any good Cuban to the travel ban. Any professional that abandons his mission is invariably treated like a traitor, and is never permitted to enter Cuba again and will not be able to see his children grow up; he will not even be authorized to come in the case of an illness or death of a loved one.

Now let’s look at a revealing fact: over the last decade contracting for medical services has brought the Cuban government tens of billions of dollars, and has become the country’s largest source of export earnings. The selfless medical missions which our government exports to the world’s poor, in the last decade, have generated between five and eight billion dollar annually; tourism is a distant second at two billion. This number accounts for the export of services only; our professionals in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries are third in line, surpassed only by the nickel industry and the petroleum products.

Note, first, the enormous economic dividend this implies, and secondly the obvious, and no less important, political benefit, that makes our leaders smell like Messiahs and garners votes for them in international forums. Add to that, thirdly, the escape valve it provides for the mood of the worker, who knows if he waits patiently for a mission abroad he can multiply his salary by 20 to 40 times during the two or three years, on condition he remain silent.

For the protestors, the outlaws, they will never join this mass of internationalists who now amount to about half of our practicing physicians who, clearly, resent the quality of medical care offered to the Cuban population.

Every human society is a complex system of relationships that require adjustments in their mechanisms and which should reward personal effort, because this will encourage respect for the value of honest labor. In this system, each one should have a well-defined place. While it is the role of the doctor to safeguard health and human life, that of the senior leaders of this country should be to guarantee the strategic design of a balanced and functional society and this, without a doubt, they have not managed to accomplish after 50 years of projects and conferences.

Not only did they fail in their design, but they did so resoundingly. The apologists talk about “free” education and health, but without attempting to complain of the sun for its spots, I suggest that this is relative, because the money they don’t charge me at school or at the hospital, bleeds from my fingers in the hard-currency stores with their absurd policy of extremely abusive prices, where things are marked up 500% or 1000% over their wholesale price.  Also, to guarantee an education and people’s health is not a gesture of goodwill, but an obligation of the State. We mustn’t forget that over his whole life a worker salary is cut by 33% to guarantee his Social Security. This gloomy subject is rarely spoken of in my country.

I have clean hands and I like to play it straight, so someone who’s playing a game can save the lectures on patriotism. I believe the necessary Revolution of 1959 was right and authentic, but I can’t applaud what it has condemned us to, because if there is no respect for the rights of man, there is nothing left to defend.

I am with the Revolution, but will never resign myself to its errors, nor with the acts of demagogues and opportunists. I am a doctor, a Cuban, I live in the real and difficult Cuba, not in the TV newscasts and I do not wish to emigrate. I graduated in 1994, and since 1998 have had a specialty in General Medicine. I was a third-year Resident in Internal Medicine until April 2006 when, in my last year, I was suspended from the study of this specialty and then disqualified from the practice of medicine in Cuba, for an indefinite time in October 2006, along with a colleague, Dr. Rodolfo Martinez Vigoa.

The ancestral intolerance to which we were already accustomed made the powers-that-be react as if we had thrown a Molotov cocktail. Terrified by that tiny consensus, they did what they do best: put down by force and show of dissent. They never responded, they were unscrupulous and brutal. The details of this injustice are fully known by all the relevant central agencies including the Attorney General’s Office, without anyone doing anything to fix it.

I am one more among tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who live every day under this outrageous reality. I live under a government that deprived me of the right to exercise my profession for political considerations, that systematically censored my opinions, that took away my right to travel freely, that doesn’t respect my right to receive information first hand and that denies me 21st century Internet access, all of which give an idea of how retrograde they are when topic is man’s right to think freely.

The government that commits this flagrant violation of the rights of millions of Cubans now occupies no less than the Vice Presidency of the Human Rights Council of the UN. If you had the patience to read this far, you already have a rough vision of what our professionals in Public Health experience. If you belong to the group of apologists or those with clenched fist, know that this is the Cuba that you applaud or condemn so fervently as your conscience dictates.

August 19 2011

Art Versus Political Speeches and Promises / Ángel Santiesteban

A few weeks ago I wrote a response about a naive comment on my blog that they signed under the name “Lori” where the following was recommended:

“It is my desire to improve myself, read books by writers who have had to leave my country. Read the bloggers of Vocesdecuba.com, come to Cuba and take the bus, walk the streets. Leave the tour guide and talk to people on my own, those who don’t give a learned speech that protects them from being persecuted. I wouldn’t stay in the hotel pool, but would walk along the malecón and learn about the Cuban reality. I wouldn’t waste my time with the shows at the hotel. I would go to the theater, to see the dilemmas facing today’s society. I wouldn’t buy only traditional music, which they recommend, but also the music that is not promoted, and whose songs are passed, thanks to Bluetooth, from cell phone to cell phone.”

This afternoon I remembered the many “Loris” who hide behind a nickname, either by ingenuity, opportunism or because they are actually cybernetic soldiers in the service of the Cuban state. I invoked them while attending the Bertolt Brecht Cultural Centre for the performance at the Vital-Theatre, of Four Less, by the playwright Amado del Pino, which won the Carlos Arniches International Award (2008) in Spain.

When the Director-General Alejandro Palomino said to light up the stage, on opposite sides appeared two small and humble rooms. In the center, a park bench, the kind that are scattered throughout the island and where Cubans still go to give flight, incredibly and with that stubborn calling, to their dreams and hopes for a dignified life.

The work, intense from the start, which builds to a crescendo from which the story breathes and takes shape, and, well, without being trite, could be called empty-nest syndrome, proposes a journey through a family’s destinies. Generations that harbor different and conflicting illusions. Andrés, the typical old father, a destroyed leader, expelled from the Communist Party, the usual stubborn and honest character that nevertheless needs to continue clinging to utopias, to promises that fade like clouds, who persists in his blindness to the present time and the changes that are imposed for a society lacking the most objective necessities, although he survives in a miserable reality, where fear, opportunism, spite and the abuse of sexual rights converge in an environment that doesn’t help heal the wounds.

Tamara: And that is your job? Do those who run things love you? Look, the worst is that there is no room even for a guy as romantic as you, who holds on to being revolutionary. (spoken with emphasis) Re-vo-lu-cio-nary, not to repeat the same litany…

Ania is Andrés’ daughter, who as a minor requires his signature to emigrate and definitively leave behind their home, and a country that is falling apart without mitigating the imposed conditions of extremism, which her generation doesn’t accept or understand or consider relevant. The mother, the ex-wife, begs him not to agree, that he not allow her to go.

Ania: I can’t take any more speeches, papá.

Tamara: … and at this rate we will have asylum in America!

Pollo: I had a professor who said you have to give up the past for the young. Not out of kindness but because if you only go half-way, they will knock you over and and go by on top of you.

Tamara: This is the only country where people don’t retire, where ministers are 70 years old. If there is no retirement, everything gets confused and you reach your forties receiving treatment as if you had  young promise, with tender certainty of tomorrow.

Andrés:We have become a marriage agency. Here the “uncoupled” Europeans meet partners who are healthy, educated, enthusiastic and even passionate. An entire nuptial prostitution!

In addition, Andrés has a son from a previous marriage, Saul, and because he did not give him legal authorization to leave the country, he separated Saul from his mother, who decided to give custody to the grandmother, so Andrés has a guilty conscience.

Saul: I never knew if you refused to sign to protect me or so you would not have your own problems, and that doubt was certainly the worst part of all.

Andrés: Now would be the time to answer you but I have no answer. Nor do I know; I was mixed up by convictions, by fear ….

Saul: Don’t go looking for answers, papá. They’re not needed. I want to learn to live without asking so much.

As if that were not enough conflict, Tamara, Andrés’ current wife, 15 years younger than he, is expecting her first child and has received a job offer abroad with the possibility of his accompanying them and which he refuses to consider, because leaving is treason, and also because he feels ashamed about his son Saul, who he separated from his mother and who, after all, has had the chance to emigrate, because he works on a cruise, but always returns.

Tamara: What can you offer your next child?  Maybe you’re denying him the possibility of a better life!

All the pros and cons of life as seen from different angles and options, accompanied by the characteristic humor that Amado del Pino places in his works, and that makes us feel like we’re there listening, a mental game of sympathy that infects us with brief sparks of cubanía.

Pollo is a gay friend and work colleague of Andrés. He has refused to join the Communist Party, because it’s the same people who berated him for his courage and honesty in living openly with his partner.

Pollo: It’s fashionable now to save us, to claim us, to enfold us, but neither am I going to ride – as old as I am – in that “triumphal” car. The boss called me on Monday to tell me that they offered me membership in the Party, now. If that means being in the vanguard, they should have given it to me a long time ago.

Andrés is discussing his doctoral thesis, which has been rejected because it was a study showing the low birth rate in the country, considering that young people emigrate at the time when they would normally be having children, and which would have given him his degree.

Tamara: Condemning those who leave or go away is shitty. Some do more damage by staying. My uncle watches the Round Table every afternoon and believes 100 percent of what they say on TV, but he dresses, eats and fixes up his home with what my cousins, who left, send him. I know he’s not rude, he still believes his ideas are true, but it seems to him that it’s too much to continue loving them, to pick up the phone and accept that they aren’t traitors. And that we are in the 21st century, because he buried his younger sister alive when she left for Puerto Rico.

Andrés: I suffer with the defects of this Revolution precisely because it’s mine.

Tamara: That’s the worst part of your thesis.

Andrés: If the young people leave, who are we going to work with? Who are we going to convince?

There’s a moment of greater anguish when Andrés accompanies his daughter to the airport, and she sings a verse of Fragancia. Then the sound of the plane taking off until a light goes out and leaves the stage dark.

The public swallows its suppressed tears because most of us suffer a similar separation.

Next comes a light that reappears like the birth of dawn.

Andrés: Fuck whoever invented the airplane – an agonized sentence because he can still hear the rumble of the engines.

Final theme song: “Thinking, thinking, tell Fragrance that I love her, that I cannot forget her, that she lives in my soul, go and tell her… tell her that I think about her, although she doesn’t think about me.”

Sometimes we doubt if life is different from theater, novels, conflicts that we writers invent and cast to the streets like a virus which then mutates and adapts to the environment to achieve greater damage. How do we measure the influence of our Art on the times, in the actual context of social life? And to what extent can we warn the next generations so they won’t be deceived like us?

I congratulate the playwright Amado del Pino for helping to disseminate with his art the hardships of the Cuban people, which are the same. A reality so alive and Cuban these days, like the royal palms. A denunciation of the social conflicts in today’s Cuba with respect to human feeling, regardless of their place of origin, language and geographic latitude. A perfect canvas that spreads, like rays of light to dark and unknown corners, with the technical and precise colors of Art in its fullness.

I counted the seats that were occupied and came up with 484, and because there were no more, they used the stairs and some chairs around the edge of the stage. Outside there were, like there have been for several weeks, two times that number of spectators who welcomed the news that the run would be extended until October 23.

I wish the Cuban communities scattered throughout the world could enjoy this work, inviting the group Vital-Theatre to book fairs and theater festivals, or by having it put on by artists in other cities. How is not important. The urgent need is to spread the work to get a greater understanding by other spectators about a national reality that has condemned us for over 50 years.

And paraphrasing a text of the play, I would like to remember that 50 years is two times 25. It is five times 10. That means 10 multiples of five. Fifty percent of a century. The full life of a man. A time and space where three or four generations converge, and that the most advanced has not been able to improve the fate of the last, in which coincide the fears and cause hair to fall out and wrinkles and furrows to appear on faces worn out by tears at seeing the departure of our children, siblings and friends. Several descendants who face the same abyss. They lose their teeth and their illusions. We have always been “four less,” up to a hundred less, thousands and millions less who walk scattered around the planet and whose spaces await them on this island of all.

Now it’s time to return. To retake the reins of a runaway country. To be able to spread hope in a land that doesn’t know that crop, so that eventually it serves as gratitude to all those who, in the past 200 years, have given their life for the Cuban nationality, free and authentic. This we owe to them who knew how to die for us, without having earned on our own a minute of that bitter agony.

Let them live in glory!

Translated by Regina Anavy

October 11 2011

DOUBLE RECHARGE ON CUBAN MOBILE PHONES DECEMBER 26-29 ON EZETOP.COM / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Double recharge click here.

@OLPL: +53-53340187

Cubacel Cuba (2x double bonus): The special promotion period is from December 26,2011 at 00:01 AM to December 29, 2011 at 23:59 PM. The promotion applies for recharges ranging from 20 CUCs to 50 CUCs.

The bonus credit and the nominal recharge do not have an expiration period. The bonus can be used on all services available to Cubacel prepaid customers at the same rates currently available to prepaid customers.

The bonus received by the customer is the double of the recharged amount and not the double of the total payment. The prepaid account duration is 60 days for the the use of the balance available and an extra 30 days for recharging the mobile phone (the same as current terms).

The received amount shown in the recharge receipt won’t show the extra credit given, however the mobile phone will receive the promotional balance.

December 25 2011

Merry Christmas / Rebeca Monzo

.

Many thanks to those who have followed “Por el ojo de la aguja” (The Eye of the Needle) for almost two years, especially for the comments that have helped me to make improvements.

I hope to not let you down and continue to count on you so that “mi planeta” (my planet) will continue to be read around the world.

May the changes that we all dream of become realities, and not, as they have been so far, purely cosmetic.  Best wishes for health and prosperity for all of you.

Translated by: jCS

December 25 2011

Gaming, Escaping / Yoani Sánchez

They meet up every Saturday night for a party, without alcohol, without girls, without music. They spend all night in front of the keyboard looking at the screen, with their computers connected to the web to play. It’s the latest thing among Cuban teenagers, especially among boys of the emerging middle class who don’t even recognize themselves as such. “Slumber parties” with popcorn and tents set up in middle of the living room have given way to these get togethers where technology mixes with laughter, the playful with the escapist. The young people themselves call these tech marathons “turbos,” and many rent places to spend the night with their hands on the mouse. Among the most activities most in demand are games of strategy, parallel cosmologies that help them escape from the national reality.

Those who don’t own their own PC or a laptop to bring to the “feast” can go to the computer labs in some schools where, on the weekends, the teachers organize — without permission — massive “gamefests.” Starcraft, DotA, Counter Strike, Call of Duty, are sweeping the adolescent preferences and a parallel market in pirated copies guarantees the latest updates and all the necessary complements. The greatest challenge is keeping up-to-date in a country that continues to be among the least connected to the Internet in the world. So, on the list of desires and requests made to the uncle who travels, or the friend who returns from abroad, are the DVDs of these games. The on-line marketplaces — such “Revolico” — offer an extremely wide range of options to distract oneself at the margin of daily complications.

Some conversations on the street reveal the scope of this entertainment. “You have to skip that level, because the other is better,” “Don’t kill him the first time, if you don’t want them to force quit you as well,” “Build the city on this terrain, which isn’t so infested with demons.” From recreations of the Middle Ages to the most daring futuristic fantasies, they are part of the imagination of today’s young, an important piece of their lives. With them, they have filled that place that for us was once filled with speeches and slogans. They don’t applaud, they click; they don’t believe, they just play. And you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, whether to welcome them to evasion as a weapon against fundamentalism, or to lament because their escapism deprives us of that adolescent rebellion that is so badly needed.

26 December 2011

What to Celebrate? / Rebeca Monzo

Today, December 3rd, we celebrate the Day of the Doctor in my world.

I have a doctor friend, with twenty-five years of experience, specializing in psychiatry, with good results, according to the acknowledgement of her patients, which is what really counts, who this year will be in her house baking cakes to be able to survive, while in her ancient place of employment, a polyclinic in Central Havana, they will hand out flowers and make speeches, with out taking into account that of the five psychiatrists who work there, only one of whom kept their job, while the other four, including my friend, were let go.

My friend is still young, not yet fifty years old, and has vast experience in her field, is divorced and has two children to take care of who are still studying. It is inconceivable that a doctor’s knowledge and experience would be wasted in this way. I understand that if this polyclinic had too many psychiatrists, something I doubt as this is an overpopulated city in which people do not enjoy the best living conditions, they should have had the others sent to other health centers where they could have used them. The sick who come in search of medical help almost always have to be attended to by inexperienced foreign students, who in some case cannot communicate very well with them, because they do not speak our language correctly. In general, this is not well received by those who come seeking medical attention, when our government shows off by sending so many doctors on foreign missions.

Is it that, since people here the do not have life insurance (it doesn’t exist), they come to practice on us as if we were guinea pigs? What’s certain is that already this is causing discomfort among people; we like to be well served and to be in the presence of an experienced doctor, from whom the students next to them can gain experience, rather than practice on the sick.

Nevertheless, my congratulations to all these hardworking Cuban doctors who take the bus (guagua in “good Cuban”) or bicycle to their hospital or polyclinic, who have shifts too often, who work with many difficult materials and who even so are kind and professional with the patients (as they should be), receiving a lower salary than an employee at Aurora (a business that sweeps the streets) or a fumigator. To all of them, my deepest respect.

Translated by: Meg Anderson

December 3 2011

Message from Magaly Sánchez / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate

I think that creating a climate of concern and anger among Cuban intellectuals at the moment is the best service you’ve been able to provide to the ideological enemy. I think you have to get away from this tendency to make amends for and single out people who, geared towards I don’t know whom and with evidently much pleasure, left such painful footprints and not just within the field of culture.

Magaly Sánchez

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007