Your photographs are very powerful. Very. I am going to make sure that they are real and correspond to the bombing of Libya. The reply gave the impression I wonder why that dystopian ex-leader who is Gaddafi didn’t stop of avoid the massacre and continue hiding in some place without showing his face (possibly modified by plastic surgery?).
Personally, before Gaddafi seemed to me to just be a ridiculous guy, but I didn’t know the half of it. I don’t know if you want to be branded the mass media as manipulative, the sharing of power with this sons and other family members, the survivors’ horrifying testimonies of their repression, the responsibility assumed for the terrorist Lockerbie plane bombing, the personal enrichment at the cost of the public exchequer. Ah! The enormous corruption of dictatorial regimes. I would have preferred that the information about Libya circulated in the national press had been more objective. But no. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. And this Mr. Gaddafi is an honored friend of our government.
Be careful of what you say to your students with these conspiracy theories that belong in a Le Carre novel rather than to real life. What will stop this government is the marabou weed; the marabou weed in the fields and in the minds of the stagnant. Without a single bullet being fired.
We have just observed once again the overwhelming vote in the United Nations condemning the U.S. Commercial Embargo against Cuba. An overwhelming vote for others because they also voted against the third party effects at the heart of the extra-territoriality of the Helms-Burton Law. The intense campaign being run by the government this year was exhausting, particularly in the fortnight prior to the U.N. vote. Neighborhoods, schools, workplaces, let alone the mainstream media. For those born after the Embargo was imposed — who are now the majority — in Washington, they woke up one day furious by the things being done against the little island in the south, and the application of the Blockade that lasted until today. This fraudulent simplification caused my son to ask me what was different from everything he’d heard since elementary school. My first explanation left him more confused.
“So is it a good law?”
It was such a mess I confused myself.
I recapitulated but didn’t capitulate. Recap to not capitulate. Rafael is no longer a child and deserves an explanation that is not based solely on the statistics of what the blockade against Cuba costs, which is what he knows. I had to go back to that it was a lawyer [Fidel Castro] who decided to nationalize American property by forfeiture, leading to the existing legislation, because he said the Revolution was the source of law, then the consequences would have been foreseeable to him versus a layman.
This measure with its political, more than economic, character, could not go unanswered: in the context of the Cold War diplomacy was not proactive, and the U.S. responded with legal action. I had to explain to him the difference between a blockade and an embargo, something these kids never hear in all this barrage of “information”(?). And they end up reacting like someone listening to the rain.
He understood, but he had more questions. Those anyone who lives in Cuba would have. The leaders don’t lack for gas, medications, nothing. Even if there were a real blockade they would be the last effected. We would be left on our own.
Without a doubt. But here comes the other blockade. The one that inflicts the most damage. The internal blockade. Which has ruined the national economy, which encourages rampant corruption. Our civic capacity seems to have undergone a genetic mutation in opposite directions: In those who suck the honey of power, it has sublimated self-criticism more than resignation. And in those who suck the gall of power — the people — the castration of our rights to freely express ourselves without risk.
No foreign law will change the course of national events, to condition the lifting of the Embargo Act on this or that requirement, only empowers the government, as it has for so long.
Well, yes. A Cuban blogosphere has come out with blog graphs. I have just read the works of the Spaniard Josep Calvet which appear in La Joven Cuba. It is patient work to scrutinize evidently diverse and diverse material on the Network.
Calvet commits an often repeated error that seems intentional which is to identify Cuba with the government. Cuba is all Cubans, wherever they are. No law, and of course no research monograph will change this truth: Cubans are Buddhists, gays, communists, vegetarians or any other of the countless personal decisions.
Although the author has repeatedly denied having an obsession with the author of the blog “Generation Y,” it’s rare that his text doesn’t appear. In it, he says he is suspicious of the absence of a visit-counter in “Generation Y,” suggesting that the blog’s figures are inflated. He doesn’t note the several thousand comments that accompany each new entry. They don’t seem to note the number of translations. They don’t seem to notice the hundreds of links to each post. Here I have to declare that I don’t know the importance of “Alexa” that the author is always mentioning.
“We don’t believe there is any blog coming from someone who pretends to do citizen journalism merits the adjective ‘independent’.”
Given that statement, the author should clarify what he understands by “independent” because the term is simple to explain: Everyone who express their views in a sovereign manner and does not receive payment for it. The author prefers the arguments of the libelous TV show “Cyberwar” to a field investigation or a healthy silence.
We find assertions in the statement like the following:
“… currently to be a 100% Cuban blogger, is to be 100% Combative.”
Naturally, Mr. Calvert is referring to a pro-government blogger.
So punctilious with the titles of journalism, which is not decisive, because a good journalist may not ever have spent time in the classrooms of journalism; Iroel Sanchez graduated in technical sciences.
Another thing Mr. Calvert seems to ignore is that the bloggers attached to the official canon never have an “enemy” among their links, despite the fact that among the rules of good practice is that if you are going to criticize the work of others, the least you should do is link to it, and if it is an author you customarily tear to pieces, then you should include them in your blogroll. In contrast, among the alternative bloggers, they list blogs “from the other neighborhood,” will that be for independent opinions?
As if his active participation in the Cuban blogs is insufficient, Calvet needed to take part in work with an aspiration of research, which he discounts.
The lack of real spaces (not virtual) to freely issue an opinion independent of the government, has resulted in the polarization of the most visible blogs made in Cuba. They reflect the social dichotomy that runs like an underground river. And attacks do nothing to establish what we need which is a culture of dialogue.
Finally, I offer the bad news. For now, there is no cable from Venezuela.
Just a few months ago the films on the TV seemed to me to always be about protestors. I saw keys of complicity where ideological purity led the charge. I remember a feature film taken from the correspondence of Dalton Trumbo. I was very impressed by the affinities between McCarthyism and our current situation. Another film was about the last days of Franco, another strongly metaphorical of 1984. Someone else thought as I did and it was very evident.
Currently the Saturday movies are a few clunkers, goofy things like Tanda del Domingo, Sara Montiel and Maria Felix triumphing on the small screen; you have to search to find entertaining movies on TV, so to see Km Ki Duk or David Lynch I go to the ICAIC, where I enjoy the big screen and the surround sound. The TV is an evil box which the forgers of the New Man are terrified of, seeing as they have to play the lead.
But let’s not exaggerate. The availability of moves, there are hundreds of vendors selling pirated discs: series, entertainment programs, music, the baseball World Series, whatever you ask for. And there are illegal connections to satellite TV. People on the street are more capable of discussing what happened on Esta nochetonight than on the Mesa Redonda. The man who calls himself “The Most Cultured Mad in the World” [Fidel Castro] is a fan of imported television, even that of dubious quality. These are his models and aspirations. What are you going to do? The people are distracted while the government… the government?
It seems that the Honey of Power is addictive and that many civilians and military consume and permanently succumb to this sweetness. Like a psychotropic leadership it collects bosses, subordinates and entire peoples. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t in the same spectrum of colors, yellow and red hallucinogenics mix just the same in Asia and America like a dusk in modernity. We already suspect what will happen in North Korea when Kim Jong-Il is no more, the former “daddy’s boy”; it’s normal now that another “brilliant” descendent will take the reins of that country. After all, it doesn’t matter to real power if a toddler is recognized, stealing the cameras, the microphones and all the attention, they always allow them to enjoy absolute domination and impunity.
I imagine the austere North Korean soldiers pompously breaking the news to them of the death of the “Supreme Leader” and the brave soldiers tearing up at the loss. I suppose those who worked most closely with the “Great Leader” of the Workers Party of Korean forged a halo of genius over the offspring of the Korean “Dear Leader” as a prelude to the announced succession.
The Cuban television cameras showed us the village women and men in the streets crying over the death of the”Beloved Guide.” Perhaps because of this in this Oriental country, psychoanalysts and politicians, noting the identification of people kidnapped with their kidnappers, coined the term “North Korean Syndrome” to refer to the collective psychological reaction on the death of a dictator.
Although with logical cultural differences, perhaps the descendants of the Cuban “Juche” will look closely at these events through the prism of their genetic relationship with the highest office in the country for which their parents fought and which allowed them to enter, as in Korea, the “progressive” caste of the “enlightened” owners of power in Cuba. Hopefully I’m mistaken.
It seems that the Honey of Power is addictive and that many civilians and military consume and permanently succumb to this sweetness. Like a psychotropic leadership it collects bosses, subordinates and entire peoples. It doesn’t matter if they aren’t in the same spectrum of colors, yellow and red hallucinogenics mix just the same in Asia and America like a dusk in modernity. We already suspect what will happen in North Korea when Kim Jong-Il is no more, the former “daddy’s boy”; it’s normal now that another “brilliant” descendent will take the reins of that country. After all, it doesn’t matter to real power if a toddler is recognized, stealing the cameras, the microphones and all the attention, they always allow them to enjoy absolute domination and impunity.
I imagine the austere North Korean soldiers pompously breaking the news to them of the death of the “Supreme Leader” and the brave soldiers tearing up at the loss. I suppose those who worked most closely with the “Great Leader” of the Workers Party of Korean forged a halo of genius over the offspring of the Korean “Dear Leader” as a prelude to the announced succession.
The Cuban television cameras showed us the village women and men in the streets crying over the death of the”Beloved Guide.” Perhaps because of this in this Oriental country, psychoanalysts and politicians, noting the identification of people kidnapped with their kidnappers, coined the term “North Korean Syndrome” to refer to the collective psychological reaction on the death of a dictator.
Although with logical cultural differences, perhaps the descendants of the Cuban “Juche” will look closely at these events through the prism of their genetic relationship with the highest office in the country for which their parents fought and which allowed them to enter, as in Korea, the “progressive” caste of the “enlightened” owners of power in Cuba. Hopefully I’m mistaken.
How is it possible that intellectuals who were humiliated and punished by the same people who now govern the country, stay next to the boots that kicked them into submission, that harassed them until they were broken in body, soul and artistic endeavor?
They suffered so much that the fear still corrodes them and they continue to talk in whispers for fear of being overheard and punished again.
These intellectuals reaffirm the lesson received when they learned: this is and will be the rest of your days. Many have already died and could not go beyond the artwork for which they were punished. The fear never left them. Nor have those who remain gone beyond, obviously because they lack the time and spirit to do so.
Isn’t it time to submit the bill? Someone has to pay for the books not written. The plays not staged. The music not created. The empty or fatuous canvasses. Who will pay for all this lost culture?
Some were imprisoned in concentration camps known by the acronym UMAP (Military Units to Aid Production), because then everyone had to be a man, strong and ready to pick up a gun. If they were not suitable physically, or insufficiently masculine, or morally or ideologically unreliable, they were sent as a punishment for not being useful in the defense of the “Revolution.” The artists who didn’t openly defend the Revolution in their works were put on the black list.
They also were sent to these concentration camps for not wearing Russian boots, smoking cigars, or passing their working hours without getting their hands dirty; and there were those labeled gay, religious, or unenthusiastic about social tasks such as not participating in “voluntary work” or the sugar cane harvest; these, too, were caught and sent to these hells.
The sacrilege of the different
To receive mail or calls from abroad, to wear outlandish dress or new fashions, was a direct affront to the socialist system. It was sacrilege to listen to foreign music or to Cuban singers living outside the island, to access literature that didn’t sympathize with the “Revolution,” to have long hair was an insult to machismo, to be frowned upon by any official or simply not to get along with the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution on your block. Those fascist-style or Stalinesque concentration camps (we know now they did the same damage) were designed according Fidel Castro’s version, and he has not had the dignity to publicly acknowledge, or at least to say that we was wrong in one of those writings he calls his “Reflections.”
It’s true that most of the intellectuals did not go to these concentration camps, but as artists they are supposed to have the sentiment to suffer those disastrous events that happened in their time. In any event, they did not escape unscathed, suffering other acts of torture, derision for being creative. Most were expelled from schools and workplaces. Their cultural work was slanted for many years, and ultimately it was permeated by that fear that sinks into the bone.
All the artists were mocked by political, military and cultural officials, who concurred in being the same. And “Socialist Realism” took off because it was the only way to present yourself as an artist. And they are still out there presenting their anti-aesthetic and submissive works.
Several decades of those early events that marked Cuban artists have passed, and still the horror keeps them prostrate, the impression caused by the punishments imposed, their bodies still bleeding from the wounds as in the early days, sometimes covered by false scars constantly hidden by makeup.
Frozen by the horror
Worst of all is that they remain silent and still pretend to support the system. They still respond like intellectuals of the seventies. The horror froze them in time and they don’t know how to reject it, to share their real opinions about “the damned circumstances” that occur in society because their mission, they were told, is to be artists, and the artists are concerned only to entertain people without questioning the political leadership of the country.
If one is an artist of the “left,” from anywhere in the world that questions the United States or any political process opposed to the dictatorial regime of Fidel Castro, then one can be a political artist and you were and are invited to summer in Cuba. Artistic thought can only go in one direction, and the arrow of orientation is toward the government.
The question that follows is whether they will die with that fear. If they will never be able let escape what they have always hidden. If they will contain their catharsis and present their suffering and discrepancies from surfacing before the ways of acting of the political process, and if they will conform to the narrow purged space they were permitted during “the email war” of 2007. If they will continue being the bland part of society, as we were labeled by that disagreeable, and later crazy, State functionary?
At least it is my wish to invite them to fulfill their aspirations, that are reasonable with their conscience, with which they can honestly expound their ideologies and their personal conversations where they give free rein to their real thought, and say and assume it publicly.
You will then see that their hearts will swell with emotion as they beat.
In October Laura Pollan left us, in a dark hospital on a drizzly day, in a year, 2011, that had been born already battered. In the early months, the final prisoners of the Black Spring had been released and national and international headlines gave most of the credit to the Catholic Church and Spain’s Foreign Minister, downplaying the struggle of the Ladies in White, the pressure exerted from the street, Guillermo Fariñas’ hunger strike, and the wake of outrage left by the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo. April, the cruelest month, brought us the Communist Party Congress focused only on economic issues, preferring the word “adjustments” to “reforms,” and consolidating the power of a blood heir to the Cuban throne.
August, with its dog days and its scarcities, wasn’t very different. “Where are the changes?” many asked themselves. It wasn’t until October that they began to trickle out. We could buy a used car, but not freely associate ourselves with a party nor express ourselves without punishment. Then came the most daring of Raul’s measures: it was possible to buy or sell a home, although the most modest of them necessitated the total wages of 45 years’ work. Something was moving in a society mummified for decades, but so slowly we despaired. In mid-December we learned that more than 66,000 Cubans had obtained the nationality of their grandparents, emigrants from the Asturias, the Canary Islands, Galicia… people kept escaping. The despair is not perceived in the streets as much as in the long lines at the consulates.
The area of land allowed to be given to farmers in usufruct grew, but the price of food grew almost as much. The press spoke of advances, but the reality showed stagnation. Private restaurants invaded every neighborhood with their menus of spicy dishes and their anxiety about whether they would be left to survive a while longer. The mute choir of the National Assembly confirmed that for 2012 the country would need much more money to import the foods that could well be produced on our own soil. And the expected travel reform was kept from us again, for the umpteenth time.
On Saint Sylvester night few homes displayed parties or music, at least in Havana. But I felt relief that the year was ending. Of 2011, with its advances overstated by propaganda and its setbacks silenced, once was enough.
On other opportunities I’ve written about these croquettes, which people usually call — half seriously, half joking — “mystery” croquettes since we don’t know what’s in them. Their components seem to be a State secret.
A few days ago, I was at my sister’s house tasting some delicious croquettes made by neice and finished off by frying, the neighbor came over and seeing me, she said, “You know I have a friend who likes them like that, hot off the stove, not like those but the ones they sell at the fish market. While she was tasting it, one exploded and burned her lips and the roof of her mouth. Now I have to go with her to the clinic to be seen there.”
Returning home, I met Mari and commented on this incident, and she told me of a woman who lives in her building, who also burned her chest frying them. Everything started to explode and she didn’t have time to protect herself while trying to turn off the stove.
I imagine that these accidents, among other causes, could be because the main component in them is wheat flour. If they aren’t refrigerated and stored corectly, the ferment easily and this makes them explode when they are cooked at high temperatures. To my way of thinking it’s a lack of quality control, especially in the area’s so-called “Cuban peso” products destined for consumption by the population.
It’s unfortunate that this article (I have to call it something), so often requested by so many people for snacks for their children in schools, or for a frugal lunch, because of its low prices, can’t be made with the required quality. And this is here where they brag so much about “quality that shows respect for the people.”
I did not want to start the New Year like this but Fidel Castro is still present in our lives. That’s just how screwed we are and I fear that will be the case for a long time, even after his demise.
It was nearly the end of 2011 when the Ministry of Construction (MICON) — surely at the suggestion of Machado Ventura — decided to give out a special award dedicated to the “lifetime achievement” of the former basketball player from the College of Belen (Fidel Castro).
They handed him a diploma which was luxuriously laminated and wrapped in anti-reflection plastic, a floral arrangement, and a message confirming that all Cubans appreciate what he has achieved for us. Ha! A bit of cockiness which is permitted to the head honcho from time to time.
With this new prize to Fidel Castro, I ask myself where do we put the information of the disturbed minister of construction — Homero Crab — about the disastrous situation of nearly 70% of the bridges in the country. The old central highway inaugurated during the first half of the past century only receives patches and quick repairs. Many rural schools, which consist of coarse Giron-style construction and which were once the pride of Cuban style socialism are being remodeled as semi-open penitentiaries.
Each week, the provincial newspapers publish poor photo reports of the bad state of the roads in the so-called “interior of the country. As for Cuban television, they barely have any destination options left to present on the screen as tourist post cards. Architecturally speaking, the island is falling to pieces.
But since the prize was awarded because of lifetime achievement, it would be a good idea to refresh our memories. The so-called Pastorita neighborhoods, in an allusion to Pastorita Nunez, there national proponent, are now just hodge-podges of steel and rubble which have not fallen down on their users thanks to a miracle. Examples are found in Santiago de Cuba and in Guantanamo. I have lived in them, on more than one occasion.
The inheritance which we received from European and North-American architecture was destroyed by the blow of a wrecking ball, under the orders of the Builder-in-Chief. If not him, then who is to blame for the exile of the graduates of the best school of architecture of the University of Havana? To whom do we owe the national exchange for the modest American cabins for the monster of the low-cost self-built houses? Before handing out apartments like bird cages during the 70’s, was there another way to build a home if not by one’s own effort?
In just two decades, we have gone from the solid masonry and steel houses to the suffocating plastic habitat, built from the residues of Venezuelan oil. Unless the award aims to make a joke of the former Cuban president, there is no other option but to see him as a monument, in the same flattering way a slave sees his slave master.
The term left-right, for Cubans in Cuba is like additional data that should appear in on our ID cards, because the authorities always have a subliminal — or overt — need to label us, to complete our personal data with information that lies in the deepest part of the head.
I can’t deny that I’ve only lived this “reality?” My knowledge, my upbringing, obey the historical and dialectical materialism of all those theories that I studied in the manuals of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and twenty years since the disappearance of that Utopia that was to complete the future, there are still flashes of it in our centers of study.
I don’t pretend to be a specialist; but it also turns out that some people from exile seek a social taxonomy, similar but opposite to that applied in our parameter-setting country.
If my life depended on the famous dichotomy, I believe that I would say left, but not to placate anybody, especially not the Cuban government so aged and conservative that still seeks to be appear like a paradigm of the left; rather because in addition to not knowing the updates of the social theories, I would say “left” because it seems that yes, I’m on that side, although many are quickly checking out of my company, and others say: “You’ll see, I told you so!” …you never fooled me.”
Common sense tells me that it’s not important to be left or right, it’s important to recognize the country’s urgent need for change, and that in this change there have to be many voices because democracy, according to what I imagine, has lengthy discussions preceding any vote.
I aspire to have friends who are liberals, Christian-democrats, conservatives, social democrats, environmentalists, communists, what do I know, without it being considered a “problem of principles” to think differently.
All these years the government has instilled in us that ideology marks a boundary. The response of that warmth, I see the sequel, even in Cubans who live in open societies. Nothing has done more damage to the left than the left itself.
Only when the events in Egypt exceeded the predictions, did the Cuban press note (with tweezers) some isolated incidents. Nor had it published anything earlier about the riots in Tunisia and Yemen, nor did it later dig into the deposition of Hosni Mubarak. On Libya and and the fall of Muammar Gadaffi, it limited itself to denigrating the role of NATO, without mentioning the popular movement against the dictator. On Syria, Cuban press coverage remains minimal.
2. Latin Grammy Awards
As no Cuban artist in residence in the island won a Latin Grammy in 2011, the Cuban press accolades applauded only the Puerto Rican duo Calle 13, and omitted all exiled Cuban artists who were winners: Amaury Gutiérrez, Lena Burke, Paquito D ‘Rivera and the late Israel López “Cachao”.
3. UN special report on Iran’s nuclear program
On November 8 the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations presented a detailed report which showed not only Tehran’s efforts to achieve the atomic bomb, but to do so in record time, based on special designs of enriching uranium by catalysts process methods. Not one word of this report was revealed in Cuba, an ally of the regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
4. Convictions for child prostitution
Five were implicated in the death of a 12-year-old child prostitute in the eastern city of Bayamo and four subsequently arrested for ties to a child prostitution ring were sentenced in September of this year to prison terms of between 10 and 30 years. Three of those convicted are Italian. Despite the national and international turmoil after the death of the girl, in 2010, the Cuban press did not reflect on the case.
5. Sports defections
In addition to promising young players such as the pitcher Gerardo Concepción and footballer Yosniel Mesa, two major athletes fled Cuba in 2011 through risky and illegal ways. The great Yoenis Cespedes, member of the Cuban baseball team and current national home run record holder, left the island on a boat bound for the Dominican Republic in the summer, and expects to contract with the major leagues. Paralympic swimming champion at the 2011 Pan American, Rafael Castillo, crossed the border and sought political asylum in the United States. Nothing was said officially in Cuba about either of them.
6. The “cubañoles”
In 2011 Cuba set a record for requests for Spanish citizenship. According to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, the Spanish consulate in Havana has already nationalized some 66,000 Cubans, and it is estimated that at the end of the process about 190,000 residents of the island will be citizens of Spain due to the Law of Historical Memory (qualifying requires having a Spanish grandparent). In Cuba, not only has this event been silenced, but Internet pages with information about how to apply are blocked.
7. Hugo Chavez’s Cancer
With the exception of an official note on the surgery in June of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, news coverage on successive chemotherapy treatments in Havana, relapse, revenues emergency in Caracas and in general the Venezuelan president’s illness has been practically nil.
8. Bill Richardson’s visit to Havana
Only after former New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson declared his frustration with the unsuccessful trip he made to Havana in September, did the official Cuban press counter with the reasons why the government had not allowed Richardson will meet with Alan P. Gross, let alone bring him back to the United States. During his stay in Cuba, Bill Richardson was ignored by the Cuban media.
9. Pablo Milanes Controversy
Nor was a a visit to Miami by one of the two most important singers of the Cuban Nueva Trova movement, Pablo Milanes, mentioned, nor was a word published about his accusatory statements against the repression of the Ladies in White and the stifling centralization of power. Only by alternative means did Cubans learn of the controversial Pablo Milanes concert at American Airlines Arena in Miami, and his public break with the regime of the island
10. Cuba’s first gay wedding
An event covered by the international press found no place in Cuban journalism: the wedding of Wendy Iriepa, a transsexual, and the homosexual dissident Ignacio Estrada in August. Not even because this one-of-a-kind wedding occurred on the “symbolic” date of August 13th (the birthday of Fidel Castro) did the Cuban media report it.
11. Record for corruption
Scholars of Cuban issues classify 2011 as the “year of corruption in Cuba.” Scandals in the fields of nickel (Sherritt International and Cubaníquel), telecommunications (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba, known as ETECSA), the Cuban Volleyball Federation, the Tobacco Industry (Habanos SA), among others, led to dismissal of ministers such as Yadira Garcia (Basic Industry ) and legal actions against sports officials such as the glory of Cuban volleyball, Raul Diago. On all these scandals, the Cuban media issued terse notes, or in some cases ignored them entirely.
I have followed with interest what has been published on the preparation before the Eighth Ordinary Session of the National Assembly, as well as the sessions themselves, not because I expect some kind of novelty, but to see if the virtual discourse (accepting different opinions, not pretending false unanimity, etc.) correspond to the actual discourse.
Unfortunately this has not happened: bureaucratic methods seem to continue to prevail and, although the criticism seems to be a little more widespread, it remains skin deep.
Even the President of the Assembly, on presenting a draft agreement to the vote, has demanded that the deputies unanimously approve it, with such thunderous agreement that no one sleeps! It has happened, although everybody knows that there is no unanimity in a family, much less in a national legislative body. Complacency on the achievements, despite the difficulties and the unjust blockade, was present, along with what will be done in the coming year.
In the closing speech, in addition to vigorous congratulations, they included some of the commonplace threats of every year, this time against the white collar corrupt. It is true that corruption has taken place and is a scourge that must be removed, but that will not be achieved by attacking only the phenomenon and its causes, while wages and pensions do not allow citizens and their families a decent life, nor will diminishing corruption become an isolated phenomenon.
The repression will not solve the problem, nor will filling the prisons with new tenants. In addition, this denomination of “white-collar” reminds me of the white coats, unleashed by Stalin in the former USSR, when he did away with the medical professionals and scientists. Is it a revival of the discredited socialist purges?
Honestly, I hope not, and that is only a coincidence of names. There were expectations about the necessary and expected immigration reform, but it seems that, if completed, it will be with an eyedropper and without deadlines. As the old saying goes things of the Palace go slowly.
Returning to the closing speech, the most interesting was the announcement of the pardon of about 2,900 prisoners — regardless of what his real reasons are, hopefully it is a prelude to a climate of tolerance and civic peace! — and the announcement of the Pope’s visit before Easter.
But something is still missing. As we begin the new year, a reality lurks that cannot be ignored: the historical leaders have used up their political time and they are coming to the end of their physical time (most are older than eighty) and so far, at least publicly, there is no real responsible relief in sight. Along with the economic update of the model, there is an urgent need to update policy, something unavoidable for the good of the nation.
Cuba is not North Korea, where power has passed from father to son and grandson, as if a divine dynasty. We’ve never had this evil tradition.
Poor little doll of sticks and tinsel, as she bumps over the length and width of thousands and thousands of kilometers. Last night I saw her, in Lawton. It was overwhelming. For her and for the fading environment. A neighborhood tensed from the spirit of its citizens towards heaven which hovers up there, propped on the poles of poor and pasty yellow light. The light and the houses like caves. The light and the faces like grimaces. The light and the sensation that none of these biographies en masse should call themselves human, much less of God (amorphous animalia, ignorant from forgetfulness). The light that only shines on the sirens of the Made-in-China cop cars and on the reflectors of the motorized traffic brigade. The light that has only an edge but no faith, in the lewd eyes of the most proactive of State Security.
Midnight begins at seven in the evening in the Cuban winter. It seems the people were willing to sing the forty to anyone, hysteria of entertainment for everyone to get the height of the weekend, as if it were a regaetton concert (the dress of the young confirmed it). The cars barely slowed at the stoplight, although at the corner of 16th and Dolores there was a sea of bodies. I heard women curse the drivers’ mothers. I saw them beat the hoods (in a fetish scene from the film Midnight Cowboy). The stench of anger was not diluted, but added its spicy patriotism to our pedestrian concept of devotion. That is, once in each Revolution.
And indeed, in its class or acrylic case, shield at the ready between the Vatican flag and the heroic rag of our nation (without bucolic Byrne in the XXI century), the anonymous island Maria under her cape in her rented car, from the chapel cared for by the nuns on Conception Street, far beyond Lawton and the unused railway lines and the now putrid Pastrana river, in this sub-industrial mountain head that invades the capital from the Havana Cordon itself.
Virgin Mambisa. The running. Horns, chants, applause, loudspeakers preaching. A rope to keep out the faithful. Human circles trained in the parish, ancient and somewhat alienated men in their quasi-military Christian-inspired jargon, seventies clothes with a belt that hangs around the naval. Crude collage: cooperate with the Cuban widow! It’s a game of masks where Cardinal Jaime Ortega comes under his own sleeves and walks B up to Porvenir Avenue, until he turns right on 10th Street. Then he speaks.
Our cardinal looks exhausted at the microphone. No one pays him much attention (a drunk kisses his hand and the securities return with the airs of the suddenly devoted to his non-place on the sidewalk). And it’s logical that the word of an old man doesn’t engage Cuba this night (it’s not fooled); the superstar today is Cachita. In addition, Ortega, from his last rebound on Cuban television, almost without credits or promotion, continues speaking of Antonio de la Caridad Maceo y Grajales, nineteenth century soldier who before going out to kill his neighbors (or to be killed by them) always took care to wear on his starched mulatto chest a little virgin of noble metal.
Then the head of the Catholic Church in Cuba stopped talking. And finally it is our turn alone with the barbarism (headless power). And we give a good bath of vandalism. Against the gates of the temple and up the steps, a movie sequence not silent but not loud. Hundreds, thousands. Young girls, old men. A man, whose mother he told me recently had a heart attack. A woman who rode the wave of legs which had crushed her (bleeding from the calves). And again, cursing, a holy riot. The clergy and seminarians shouting with too proper diction to be violent, almost excommunicating their parishioners with little primary-schoolteacher judgments such as: “If they do not behave, there will be no virgin for anyone in the neighborhood.”
We are witnessing the avalanche of a soccer final, or, of course, a concert in hard currency by tough guys who do not understand anything. This is our undeniable raw material (blows from a minority who cannot impose a myth in perpetuity, being the canonical Gospels or “History Will Absolve Me.”). But this set lacks the elite police squad, the special forces to perpetuate the peace of a Special Period. It’s clear that the Cuban State wants the Catholic Church to know that so many processions a year, sooner rather than later, could lead to a tragedy (I saw several women, all black of course, taken away half unconscious to dissimilar destinations). For a while they crushed in counterpoint the complaints and curses. But it is obvious that the only thing that may not have voice here is another kind of swearing, a worse kind.
Freedom, for example. Just when some guys get on me about why all my photos are going downhill against the popular fight. We discuss the relevance of truth. I show them my white Laura Pollan Lives T-shirt. They mill around and hurry to surround me, while a woman tries to distract me and shouts herself hoarse interrogating me from a distance about who I work for (they all have the serial slang of the “Cuba’s Reasons” counterintelligence TV series, also shared by the official blogosphere), but I am already inside the temple and take refuge near the high altar to portray faces blessed by the Italian priest, whose smile I cannot define adjectivally other than as democratic. No wonder I have a work credential to keep clicking without them stealing or ripping off my camera “by mistake” or by “a stroke of luck.”
And the virgin? The mother of all Cubans who predates even the country? Every prayer and every tear is accompanied by a photo taken by cellphone. La Caridad is thus a little pop, before so much media delight (Nokia Syndrome). Her light mood a bit timid, despite her brown skin, pretty and outgoing, a Cecilia Valdes. And, with a certain wooden modesty, I would say our virgin is Islamicly hidden under her sorceress-queen’s cloak. Perhaps it is difficult to interpret if today the subjects of God, or of Nothing, adore her. Perhaps She knows more than four things for tomorrow (hence the sad smile). Perhaps she feels very lonely, condemned to carry that baby who never grows up in the face of eternity.
Poor little thing, so fragile, surrounded by a holocaust of flowers, petals with that odor so desperately indicative of an undertaker’s establishment. Poor little thing, forced into the insomnia of the ventilators of devotion, walled in under that falsely cheerful little tune for when death avenges us, egged on like a fugitive by the intermittent blackout that stalks the convent decommissioned for a school (just so says a totalitarian State: turning off the circuit breaker). Poor little thing, so invisible under the greedy eyes of the mob, disposed to be Maceos in exchange for a quality miracle. Poor little thing, my heart, so Cuban.
The house of the lady Emiliana had been deteriorating with the passage of years, without painting or repairs, but still, surrounding by identical badly-constructed buildings full of bright colors, it stood in its nobility in the center of an area of a hundred square yards, planted with fruit trees and flowers which, like a solitary island, refused to disappear.
A refuge for birds, the perennial green of Emiliana’s property incited envy in some of its neighbors, less favored by luck or with ancestors who worked less in the creation of wealth. Every morning, Emiliana would walk through her gardens and orchards. Howard, her German Shepherd, accompanied her, barking at any intruder and baring his teeth. Around noon, after lunch, he could be seen in the wide entryway at the feet of his mistress, who took a nap sitting in a rocking chair. This happened every day of every week.
Because of this, what happened was a great surprise to everyone. It began one morning when, instead of the famous morning walk of the lady and her dog, the garden and its fruit trees were filled with children who ran and shouted like overflowing rivers. Emiliana, seated in the rocker with Howard at her feet, observed the games. The scene, repeated each morning, became habitual. No one knew where the children came from or where they returned to when they finished playing.
Today Mrs. Emiliana’s house is vacant and abandoned. The oldsters say that they last saw her one morning when everything continued as usual, except that when the children were playing one little girl, all dressed in white with a yellow ribbon in her hair and accompanied by a German Shepherd puppy, joined them.
