THE YELLOW SUBGAYRINE / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

WE ALL LIVE IN A HETERO SUBMARINE

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The old Club Atelier at 17th and 6th in El Vedado, has been coated with a luxurious Beatlemaniacal iconography. “The Yellow Submarine” it’s called now. And from within is evoked the music of John Lennon sitting without his glasses in the little park next door (the glasses have been stolen about ten times).

The discipline within the club, as with all space in the nations, is quasi-military: not in vain is the submarine the fleet insignia of sixties Cuba, though it is full of youngsters with the tickets (paid in hard currency). You can not jump back and forth too much between the tables, let alone sing along to edge of madness when some group performs a cover. You can’t lean against the walls. Only the local crew can move the tables and chairs. And, most coherent in the case of a straight band like The Beatles: You can not kiss people of the same sex (in the bathroom, go for it; but on the floor, no way).

And it is not homophobia, please, The Yellow Submarine’s security machos don’t want any clash with the Marielitas of CENESEX*. It’s just that to show labio-lingual affection in public violates the rules of this and perhaps all nocturnal Cuban institutions. If, moreover, the flirting is between girl and girl, or between boy and boy, or between both in any random disorder, then the proletarian morals of the New Hetero that never completely went away are compromised.

This Saturday they came to expel various ex-Atelier young people, after admonishing them as if it were a school assembly (kissing from inside the closet, I say: is it so hard to understand that behind the relaxation nothing less than the Revolution itself is resigned? It even rose to physical violence when one of the expelled tried to film it with a cell phone. It is known that in classical socialism (unchanging by definition) cameras and VCRs are sneaky weapons of the enemy abroad.

I don’t want to give data. Nor details. I don’t want to be credible. I don’t give even half a damn. So get out of here right now by clicking, to comment and applaud at those demagogic speeches on Cuban Day Against Homophobia. I’ll stick with this anachronistic anecdote in the XXI Century (which in Cuba is read as an anagram of XIX). I’ll stick with the certainty that the repression in Cuba, rather than physical (which it greatly is, of course) is chromosomal: Cro-Magnon.

I know a thousand girls who are partners of girls and who don’t dare to show affection in the street. I know thousands of boys who are partners of boys and who believe in God and don’t dare to even whisper it to their neighbor. In this cynical and para-militarily uncivil Havana, the “tolerant” sites are filthy and full of gays who prostitute themselves on the edge of criminality. They are girls and boys I know who don’t even consider themselves gays. In fact, they aren’t. They are girls who desire or love girls. They are boys who desire or love boys. Why distinguish them as if they were patients who require specialized attention. They are Cubans, and no social process is better than the intimate soul of each and every one of them.

Anyway, I invite one of these island children of the night to drop into “The Yellow Submarine” with me. If you’re a girl, I will nod calmly at your side and not flirt with you overcome by hormones. If you’re a boy, Oh Darling, I swear by my mother who sleeps now in Lawton, I will not fall into the temptation to kiss you.

Translator’s note:
CENESEX is the National Center for Sex Education, run by Mariela Castro, Raul’s daughter.

May 29 2011

Raul Castro: Five Years in Power / Iván García

Last July 31st, Raul Castro completed his first five years in charge of Cuba’s destiny. Unlike Fidel, he speaks little and isn’t too inclined to self-adulation. He knows the Cuban economic model is a fiasco and bets on a miracle.

The old conspirator, now president of the Republic, has drawn his master plan. It relies on various cardinal sectors. And it isn’t the dream of a visionary or the fatherland’s little founder. If there is something he knows how to do, it is listen to those who know how and let them do it.

Of course, he is not a democrat. He is an old school Communist dinosaur. He is surrounded by a clan of military-entrepreneurs who have put away their striking uniforms and Spartan life in the barracks, and now they wear white guayaberas. They are informed on the latest innovative methods of business administration and finance.

The General has seen how the central planning of Marxist Socialism has failed. Therefore, he looks to China and Vietnam, two nations that still opt for the bizarre ideology, but are economically growing using capitalist methods.

He doesn’t want to improvise as his brother did. The sole commander got used to conceiving plans as if they were strings of sausages and, when they didn’t work, blamed others for it and turned the page.

Castro II, 80, knows that his principal enemy is time, and not the local dissidence or the lethal Creole bureaucracy.

But if he makes changes too fast he may lose the reins of reforms and become the Caribbean Gorbachev. The Revolution’s gravedigger. That idea terrifies the General. Therefore, his reforms go at a danzon pace. Slow, methodical and safe.

He doesn’t want surprises. When things get stuck, he shifts gears while the car is running. He knows how to improvise. As in the case of self-employment.

The gypsy cab drivers were unhappy about the taxes. He didn’t think twice, and made a tax reduction from one thousand to six hundred pesos.

The same with the paladares*; rumors and dislikes. He enacted an ordinance raising the number of seats in private restaurants from 20 to 50 chairs. With the land leases he has made ​​amendments. The number of private trades have been expanded to 181. If necessary he will make other changes, according to the circumstances.

Raúl Castro doesn’t stick to a dogma or fixed ideas. Publicly, he speaks of a planned economy. A speech to toss some bones to and provide pleasant music for the ears of the party orthodox wing. And also for his brother who looks on puzzles, from his bedside, at the chips that his successor has been moving.

Many think that Fidel Castro is abandoned to the mercy of God. We can not forget that the legendary partisan has an important asset in his hands: Hugo Chávez.

If Raul steps out of the script, Castro could convince Chavez to close the oil tap to the island. With this blackmail, he controls the excesses of the ‘olive green technocrats’ and their ambitions of founding state capitalism.

The Bolivarian is Fidel Castro’s wildcard, his counterpart. An unconditional. Because of these honors and attention, Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias feels strong. And at times, with hidden criticism, sends his hurtful remarks to Raul’s followers.

The General needs oil from the infamous Chavez. And to play on both sides. Like the conspirator he has always been.

Do not forget that Raul was the “Machiavelli” behind the episode of sectarianism in the Communist Party in the ’60s, known as ‘the microfaction’. He and his intelligence apparatus were those who managed the children and carried out purges in the armed forces, in 1989-90, at the time of the Ochoa and Abrantes cases.

While Fidel was interested in enhancing his image as a world-class statesman, Castro II was conspiring in the shadows. Since the mid ’90s, the real power in the island has been held by the General. The intrigues and political maneuvers are his favorite sauce.

Raul Castro has drawn his master plan facing the future.

One of his pillars is the water hydraulic resource. For two years, he has been building a major water transfer system across the eastern municipalities of the island. The port of Mariel is one of his ventures for an economic resurgence. Some scholars think that when the embargo becomes history, this harbor could be the largest in the Caribbean, outperforming the port of Miami.

Another strategy is to expand tourism and especially to attract travelers with money to spend. Today, the tourists who visit Cuba are using all-inclusive packages and, on average, spend $ 36 a day which its too little.

The General aims for the wealthy and the businessmen to make their trips to the island. Therefore he has launched the construction of hunting grounds and 18-hole golf courses. There’s also an increasing lobby to resume real estate construction.

In his economic design for the coming years, offshore drilling on the Cuban shelf is crucial. If the geological survey has the desired results, the dependence on Venezuelan oil will be cut short. And he would not have to bear Chavez’s subtle insults.

Among the Castro II projects is future participation in the businesses of Cuban-Americans who haven’t been too critical of the regime.

Raul Castro wants to go down in history as the statesman who laid the foundations for economic development in Cuba. Many are wary of him. He looks like a bad guy. But there are bad guys, like Pinochet in Chile, who sometimes do good things.

Share on Facebook

Translator’s note:
Paladares — literally, palates — are small private restaurants, where actually you eat in a home’s dining room.

Translated by: Adrian Rodriguez.

August 1 2011

WWWAITING FOR THE WWWORMS / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

THE DAWN* OF WAITING

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

José Lezama Lima waited for the death of his mother before feeling guilt-free enough to publish the scandalous Paradiso. Virgilio Piñera waited to amass 18 boxes of unedited material before letting himself die of loneliness or of State Security. Dulce María Loynaz sat down, like a character from the TV show Survivors, to wait among the spiderwebs of her garden for a pre-posthumous Cervantes Award. Heberto Padilla trusted that the Cuban Ministry of Culture would forgive him for leaving the game and would give him a visa to die in his homeland (which, since the XIX century, is supposed to be living*). Eliseo Alberto waited for the death of his father to report, in liberty, about himself, about ourselves.

The list is infinite. An island infinitely in line.

Cuban Literature is that oedipal wait, that dirty closeted little secret or that hysterical tantrum before our father in chief (who reads it all, can do it all, can wait for it all, like love). Writing in Cuba has been crouching for decades under a desk in boots in the National José Martí Library.

Cuban writers continue to wait for a domestic, historic death before having their hands free to write (that is why they allegorize all the time instead of just saying). Such complicity silences them and subsidizes them in terms of an intellectual nation, in terms of a dead class without a ticket to the future, in terms of sterile spectators of a fiction that is never capable of protagonizing reality, that prosaic term (that is why they poetrize all the time instead of simply narrating). Such is the typical trauma of the familial or political totalitarianisms, that in the Island they have already become indistinguishable because of the comfortable and criminal habit of waiting.

Deep down, we have to understand them, it’s about a bourgeois tic. No cowardice: it is elite lucidity, aesthetic instinct. They know the most important thing in the universe is to write their own little complete pieces. No hypocrisy or opportunism: it’s a sense of the transcendental. They know they are a caste chosen to create the Cuban beauty that will transcend them. Ars longa, Revolutium brevis. So they wait, if it’s possible with an insular career splashed of little races to capitalism.

In each new book Cuban literature dreams, in its collective unconscience, with strictly obeying the slogan that isn’t as fierce as it is faithful: within literature, everything; against literature, nothing.*** The Cuban author is too intelligent to be an author. Postpones, rather than proposes. A speech, rather than a delirium. Constructs, before deconstructing. Isn’t desperate (there’s more time than there are maximum leaders). That is why Cuban literature is so exasperating.

Translator’s notes:
*The original word in Spanish, “orto,” means the appearance of the sun or another star in the horizon.
**Reference to Cuban national hymn: “don’t fear a glorious death, for dying for the homeland is living”.
***A play on the renowned slogan of the revolution: “Within the Revolution, everything; against the Revolution, nothing.”

Translated by: Claudia D.

August 8 2011

Response of Laritza Diversent to Two Readers / Laritza Diversent

In Cuba, my unknown homeland, published on January 3rd, 2010, a reader who signed under the name of Philipp, and who, because of the flag shown, must live in Germany, left the following comment on August 3rd, 2011.

“A question remains: this I don’t understand…How is it possible that you have a blog (meaning you have access to the internet) and that you don’t have the possibility of making a trip with Astro, staying at a private house for national tourists, or any of the other camping sites of the many that exist in your beautiful country?

“I imagine that keeping this blog is at least as expensive as a trip similar to the one I described.

“Traveling around Cuba I met a bunch of Cubans traveling through their own country, in fact I found more Cuban tourists than foreigners. Can you explain this please?

“Thank you very much, warm regards.”

Since my internet time ran out, preventing me from commenting on the blog, I e-mailed the comment to the independent journalist Tania Quintero. Tania lives in Switzerland as a political refugee and along with the Portuguese friend Carlos Moreira, does Iván and me the favor of administering the blog From Havana, in their free time and without charging us a cent. Thus, the explanation that follows does not refer to this blog, but to Laritza’s Laws, blog that I manage all by myself and that I cannot keep as updated as I would want.

Mr. Philipp: I don’t doubt that you have seen many Cubans touring their country, entering the classification of “national tourism”, but they have to pay with hard currency, meaning, in convertible pesos. Keeping a blog from Cuba is not as expensive as making a trip throughout the entire island, especially if one knows the technological possibilities that the web provides, in order to program in advance all of the works that have to be uploaded.

I can’t always connect to the internet once a week, from a hotel, at a price of 15 convertible pesos (cuc), a price that in national currency would be enough to do a round trip with Astro, paying for the service in Cuban pesos, the way you suggest, in order to support the economy, and ignoring the time that I have to waste standing in lines, which I hope you have seen in Cuba.

Back to the topic of internet. With 15 cuc I can acquire a card for two hours of internet access in a Havana hotel.

My work begins at home, when I write the text in Word 2007. Then I use a template that allows me to publish it, once connected to the internet, along with images, directly to my blog or as a draft. Then I open the blog (Laritza’s Laws) and I only have to program it so that it comes out at the chosen date.

Internet cards are one of the best gifts a friend from abroad or a traveler to Havana can make to a blogger. In that sense, I am very lucky: thanks to that help, those 15 cuc that a card costs, I can use to buy food for my family or a pair of shoes for my son.

I hope my explanation can help you understand that traveling through Cuba is much more expensive than keeping a blog.

With a long delay on this case, I take this opportunity to respond to Anteco, a Spanish reader, whom I invite to coffee in my house, if he ever travels to Havana one day. These are his words:

“I have just discovered this blog, and from the few entries I have read, without a doubt this one is very moving and gives an idea of the sad reality of Cuba. I am a Spaniard in love with your country (which I have never been to) and with a great curiosity to get to know one day the Cuban people. However, I would have never imagined that the restrictions of the Castro regime reached that point. It seems that the wonders of your island are limited to the enjoyment of the rich foreign tourists, a contradiction-come-true in a communist regime. I hope there is soon freedom in Cuba.”

Read also: Daughter of the revolution and Why did you make me a dissident?

Picture: It is from 2009, in the Saratoga Hotel, when Laritza was managing the blog Laritza’s Laws which she later decided to call Cuban Legal Advisor.

Share on Facebook

Translated by: Claudia D.

August 6 2011

Meurice, the Friend / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photos by: Luis Felipe Rojas

On numerous occasions I have said that this is not a news blog. Here I can only hope to accumulate my travel reports, to make a map (for me) about the days lived, and on many occasions to be in places but not be visible due to my double condition of capturing an image and then writing about it. That’s why, today, on this blog, I have posted what was seen and felt on July 31st, when Monsignor Pedro Meurice Estiu was buried in Santiago de Cuba.

On the 30th, the government and the communist rulers of the province celebrated, surely under the orders of the superiors, the Day of the Martyrs. While it may be true that they celebrate it each year, this time, on the eve of Meurice’s burial, they are saying that it was the apotheosis. On the 31st, the roads of Santiago de Cuba, covering a diverse range of Eastern entrances, was inundated by uniformed men, as well as those dressed as civilians. Though this time, save for some exceptions, the majority of those who decided to go out were allowed to arrive. I had to board two separate means of transportation starting at 4 am until I arrived to the Cathedral of Santiago. There I saw Laura Pollan and Reinaldo Escobar, among others who had come from Havana. Also present was Jose Daniel Ferrer, the brave activist Samuel Leblanc, women like Aimee Garces, Tania Montoya, and other democrats from the Eastern provinces. There was an extreme heat over Santiago. When the mass commenced, it felt like we were roasting inside the central building, but one had to get in there whichever way possible. According to some, it was calculated that more than one thousand people were inside and outside in the patios.

A humble man

The words of Monsignor Ibanez, current bishop of Santiago de Cuba, surprised me. Not because Meurice didn’t deserve them, but because Ibanez is a member of the Cuban Catholic Bishops Conference, a group which usually does not honor those who go against the Castro regime. There was a moment in which the majority of the attendees remembered, by repeating in unison, the words of Meurice Estiu to Pope John Paul II in that Santiago plaza- one of the few occasions which such a truth has been told to the Cuban nomenclature. I saw lots of humble people crying when the coffin was taken through the street. In conversation with local Catholics, many were surprised to see so many non-practitioners of the Christian faith, yet who showed up as a sign of respect. “Meurice,” someone told me, “was a success”.

Once, during early 2004, I went to a communicator’s meeting in the Sanctuary of El Cobre. Meurice closed that workshop with such clarity, so much so that to this day many remember it. A day before the meetings came to an end, I went down to the city in the morning. In the corner of Enramadas and Carniceria I noticed a commotion. Pedro Meurice had gotten down from his car and was chatting with some well known ladies. But the conversation kept going, eventually becoming a chat with the public. He blessed some kids, gave an appointment to a lady so that she could drop by later to pick up a mattress for her child, and so on, until they practically forced him to get back on his vehicle.

The funeral procession traveled down the hot and narrow streets, down through the poor neighborhoods which surround the Santa Ifigenia cemetery. People waited for him on their porches and on the sidewalks. The police did not bother the dissidents which had their fists up, signaling a “V” shape for ‘victory’ and “L’ for ‘libertad’ (freedom). In the morning, I received news that independent journalist Alberto Mendez Castello was detained in Las Tunas in order to prevent him from assisting the burial.

The truth is that with this death, the authors of the 52-year long oppression can sleep calmly, because for them it is a thorn which has been removed from their throats. I cannot help but think of the story of when the Cuban bishops visited the Vatican in 1998 and Pope John Paul II told them these words, about the San Luis native (Meurice), while grabbing their hands: “That’s how bishops should behave”.

Photos: Luis Felipe Rojas

Translated by Raul G.

MONEY IS A HIT.. (AND A HASHTAG!) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The dictatorship of the market. I have heard the phrase on countless occasions, in boring meetings of this, that or the other state institution. The market mutilates and kills the best. The market is one of many modern masks of mediocrity. The market is shit, my love.

Invariably I felt guilty in those official premises. A hypocritical insect in midst of an applause in unison. An opportunist who, in his heart of hearts, only desires to succeed and succeed. A social climber with no talent (in the two senses: the spiritual and the numismatic). Someone who should renounce the identification card of his trade (the UNEAC: Cuban Union of Writers and Artists) before being expelled from the sacred amateur temple of national culture. A fucking merchant, my love.

Later I grew up, and I became a mental (metal?) adult. I saw how my colleagues tore their worker’s clothes to leave on the tour of any symposium or book fair abroad, events corrupt with capital in little checks empty of solidarity, only to the order of the author. I saw how they lost sleep over housing (to the last degree of humiliation) visitors with dollars brought to our homeland from that “absurd First World”. I saw how they sweetened the retrovolucionary tale of our bare reality, with their little moronic smiles in the role of tourist guides. I saw that money existed beyond art and beyond the paternalist speeches of the ministries of art. And I saw that money was good, my love. And a right of the people.

That’s how I became a radical of copyright law in the field of letters. I theorized lucid nonsense on the matter, like this very column. I concluded that there are no authors without copyright. That the dictatorship of the market is nonexistent or essential to resist another much worse dictatorship: that of the bureaucratic volunteering. That’s why there are no best sellers in Cuba. No good readers. No credible critics. That’s why the opinion or the thinking prestige of writers does not count (the political police considers them, not without a reason, fickle and irresponsible: a pioneer intelligentsia). That is why no part of the government budget is spent on promotional campaigns that legitimize names or shape the trend of each season. That is why the insular literary field is as insipid as it is insulting, literarid. Thus the zoocialist lack of solidarity. Thus also, the fear of finding ourselves suddenly in a bleak plateau of sincerity, among the applauses in unison of our expelling of a grotesque but gratifying trade: contests, positions, conspirator juries, little invitation letters, basically, The Forces of Evil… Thus the flight and never the theft of brains towards the “real world”. Cuba, so sad an island, my love. Whoever offends her loves her the most.

I don’t think the new generations come with values or courage to dynamize and much less dynamite such an absolute apathy. From being a radical I now become a residual. I made my nihilist niche, I dug my creative catacomb, I amassed 30 or 300 or 3000 hard currencies and I then bought a very expensive helmet of virtual unreality. I am happy, I am free, I am untouchable, I am immortal (immoral, my love?).

The state of things, tells. The state of the soul, tells. Ha. The dictatorship of the market, tells. The dictatorship of the proletariat, says. He-he. The civil society, tells. The civil war, tells. Hee! Responsibility, rhetoric. Ho. Generation, degeneration. Huh.

But sometimes, my love, only sometimes, in my gloomy nights of silent steps in Lawton, when the limiting moon isn’t crazy but loquacious, a steppe wolf jumps his way out of my throat with his claws. A pure beast of barbarity. Without concealment or taboos or fear of those who kill and lie only for the treat. A brown wolf, free, lucid, and ludic. Without style or aesthetics, without age. An animal that accelerates ideas and images (the beauty of poetry isn’t more than that: the truth of velocity). A mammal that howls, but now no longer flees. The last of the mohicubans. The pain made flesh tonight, my love. The flesh made text before dawn, my love. Face to face and body to body and Cuba to Cuba daily, my love. And then, only then, hope and disease cease to be synonyms in our future that never was. And then, only then, I feel good and real in midst of what’s not so much. And then, only then, do I forgive myself with a materialist prayer that always leaves an empty desk, of state property, just in case one of these deadly nights God wants to seat beside me.

Translated by: Claudia D. 

June 19 2011

Chancellor Filet / Rebeca Monzo

Having a profound interest prior to the openings of new restaurants (called paladares – which means “palates”) on my beloved planet and in this meal in particular, I offer you the following recipe:

Chancellor snapper filet (any similarity to a real person is a pure coincidence).

For two people:

1/2 pound of snapper filets.

1 lemon.

2 slices of garlic.

One piece of pepper.

1 tablespoon of salt.

1 cup of wheat flour.

2 cups of fine breadcrumbs.

2 eggs.

1/2 pound of ham.

1/4 pound of cheese.

Procedure:

Cover the filets with a mixed garlic, salt and pepper, add the lemon juice. Leave it for a while. Put it into a dish and put ham and cheese on every filet. Pass it carefully through wheat flour, coating both sides well.

Now, pass them through whipped egg until they absorb it well on both sides. Coat them with a sufficient breadcrumb, support them against the bottom of the dish to make the coating adhere.

Fry them in sufficiently warm oil. Serve them in a dish and garnish them with pieces of lemon and branches of parsley or rosemary.

This recipe has been practiced in our most famous restaurants for ages by our best chefs.

Enjoy your meal!

Translated by: Ivana Recmanová

August 4 2011

BOOKONEANDO… / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

THE NIGHT OF THE BOOKS

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

That propagandist title has always seemed a little terrifying to me: The Night of the Books…

It sounds as if the sun had set for books, as if brightness and clarity had disappeared, as if we had come across literary darkness and the letters had to wait sleepless for the light to hit them again. Merd Licht…

The first of July there will be another one of those parties through the course and bore of 23rd Street, in El Vedado of Havana. Anything else that happens on that Friday the 1st (although right now I can’t think of anything important), will be left on the shadows of the already shady Night of the Books.

I remember a scene in the University Student Federation (FEU) House, the usual chaos to buy some culture, chaos that seems so vain to me. I also remember a quarrel among the poets of Café G and 23 and the cooks in the place, who were determined to throw them out because they didn’t spend one dirty penny while they occupied the tables with the feast of their post-reading. I remember kaloied flags and fabric posters. Learned devils and ex-presidents of bookish institutes. Little plastic chairs (the dissidence and the official side share the fragility of legs that break very easily). Snacks. Poses. Everyone wants to be considered an author (Cuban literature is soporific to the point of being unbearable). But, I’m sorry; I better stop talking. It sounds like a resentful paragraph, but it’s not. It’s a post that doesn’t really know where it’s going. So don’t even look for yourself; typing your name here isn’t worth it.

One of those Fridays of the world, 6th day of the 7th month, I walked so sadly that I thought I wouldn’t survive the summer (year 7). The Night of Orlando Luis. A friend passed me by in the street by the AIN (that blue agency with a smell of Coppelia — the ice cream place) and walked past me because he did not recognize me. Then he turned around, and it was he who almost started to cry a river (in the 7 Seas): he told me my features were disfigured by anguish, that I was no longer myself. But then I remembered that exactly that was what José Lezama Lima told Lorenzo García Vega* on another night without a night, though a republican night. And the parody made me feel better despite the impossible weight on my cheekbones and sternum.

Next Friday, 1st of July of 2011, Year of No One in Cuba Cares, at 4 in the afternoon, to give a random example, I will walk again among the packed kiosks, looking without being able to decide what to buy (I haven’t bought a book in months; I haven’t read one in years). I will be whistling, perhaps mimicking the birds, or I will spend my time filming the suspect security agents that always swarm cross-dressed as civilians in those days of massive crowding. I might buy a beer, a Bucanero (every day they taste less like Bucaneros) or I might try to seduce a pretty, young emo girl from the post-presidential parks that reach down to the sea by G Street.

If I fail, I will go to 23 and 12, confusing myself among the anonymous moviegoers in any given erotic cycle presented without much pathos by Frank Padrón (why do I have to mention anyone in my posts?). If I succeed, if she picks the daisy petal that says Yes, I will take her where no one sees us, where the Chinese cameras of national security don’t reach, where the spy coverage of Cubacel cannot betray our desire, where language is free and not ritual, to an arid territory where the Suzukis of the securitycrats run out of their faithful fuel; there, where I can ingeniously invent to her the twenty-some years of difference that I will surely have on her (no one I can love now in Cuba was born in 1971).

I am sure my tale will sound better to a beautiful emo of limp hairstyle and eyes hollowed by black make up. Better than all that Cuban shiterature that each first Friday of July sets down among more and more books.

*Translator’s note:
José Lezama Lima and Lorenzo García Vega are both distinguished Cuban writers.

Translated by: Claudia D.

June 24 2011

Bad Handwriting in La Joven Cuba (12) / Regina Coyula

Dear Forum participants of La Joven Cuba, dear Osmany, with regards to your disagreement with Eduardo del Llano. I try to go every week to your blog, read the posts, and sometimes I have the impression that we live in different places, so distant are our points of view.

You start with an anecdote of the father of a friend who, from an habitual critic of the government, turned into a satisfied self-employed: How easy it is to resolve his differences! Why didn’t he do it earlier? For someone who has to pay for a license, the salaries and benefits of his employees, and an annual tribute to the treasury (correct theory, I have no doubt), selling large format products in hard currency is just a drop in the bucket.

Clarification, especially for foreign readers: the buying and selling of houses and cars is not permitted until the implementation of the corresponding law, the timing of which has not been announced. The government’s decision to stop laying off people, to me, reflects its ineptitude, first in engendering over-employment, and then by tried to amend it with a major blunder. You haven’t seen anyone complain about potatoes or soap no longer being included in the government rations, but are sure you haven’t seen ANYONE complain about the prices of these products on the open market

I haven’t asked the little old retired man who sells cigarettes at retail at the bus stop, was he protesting loudly, nor the little old retired man who resells newspapers at the door of the bakery, and the shopkeepers who sell those once-regulated product could write the book on the complaints to avoid the catharsis of every housewife who comes with many needs but only ten pesos.

I agree with you about the perniciousness of importing models of democracy. What we do know is that we imported the USSR and Eastern European model of democracy and, though you’re young, you’ve seen the results of such democracy. The students in Chile and Puerto Rico can associate, having virtual spaces like this one as well as Facebook and Twitter, but if they think something falls short or that their demands aren’t being met, they have the ability to strike.

It was (is) very frequent to run into phrases such as: this is not the time; this is not the context; this is giving ammunition to the enemy; that decision is already made; that’s a political decision. It was a subliminal way of making you conclude that you were too stupid or ignorant to understand the dark forces underlying anything you were worried about, of encouraging you to leave the problems in more knowledgeable and capable hands.

Since, in our idyllic society, the independent actions of the working class are not necessary, our press never reflected the tensions of collective labor fed up with being badly led, without getting any response to their opinions from the “correct” places, and having decided to call a strike, in response they get persuasion, division and intimidation.

I want to make an observation. You must have seen the video of what happened at a school in Jaguey Grande*. There I saw policemen dressed like extraterrestrials surrounding the facility. Do you think this expensive anti-riot gear was acquired so as to be available against overwrought Pakistanis?

For a long time I believed we were threatened by an imminent U.S. aggression. You have no idea how manipulated I felt when I heard about the pact between the Soviets and the Americans as part of the October Cuban Missile Crisis Accords. In my humble opinion, a military invasion has not been contemplated by U.S. administrations for several decades, and the idea of the U.S. annexing Cuba is completely outdated.

Don’t think that I woke up one morning with a vision, it was the result of much reading, of breaking down my dogmatic thinking. What I have said in my blog: With the Americans I would like a policy like that I practice with my neighbors: say good morning, ask for help if necessary, help them if they need me, but we each live in our own house. It’s already time to stop inciting this dispute.

And it would be good if La Joven Cuba, a blog devoted especially to young people, would do research and publish a paper on the origin of the Embargo Act, which is so much talked about but the genesis of which is so poorly known.

Excuse the length of this, Osmany, but unlike other commentators who comment several times, my comment is once a week.

*Translator’s Note:
In September, 2010, Pakistani students protesting conditions at the Latin American School of Medicine in Jagüey Grande were confronted by very well-equipped Cuban riot police. A video is here.

August 4 2011

A Proposal from the Possible / Miriam Celaya

The self-employed trying to catch a break in a ruined Cuba. Photo from Internet.

Editorial # 3-2011 of the magazine Espacio Laical (“The Challenge of Being Bold”; www.espaciolaical.net) is one of those essays to which one is grateful because of its timeliness, relevance, balance and respectfulness, but above all, because it contains within itself the quality–rare in our context–to overcome the temptation of the catharsis and the truths of Pero Grullo and target possible perfectly feasible ways to generate the pending national dialogue. A proposal to find solutions from the inclusion, tracing the wicked verticality that only serves “to contribute to the clarity of the political elite and to the consensus among them (…), but not to bring forward a great national consensus, capable to wholly present the wishes beating in the soul of the Island, thus actively involving the people in general.”

“The Challenge to be Bold” avoids the tired accusations aimed at those responsible for the national crisis, a debt that we all know too well, but that instead puts the magnifying glass on the immediate reality of our daily lives, with its load of dissatisfactions, frustrations and despair, though it does not constitute a lament in vain. On the contrary, it is a piece that stands out for its objectivity, calling attention to an essential term of this dilemma: the gradual adjustments demanded by the change in the socio-economic-political-legal model, and the urgency of implementing these changes because of “the insecurity that afflicts the lives of the Cuban people in general.”

A blatant contradiction of the reforms and official speeches is obvious in this editorial, when he argues: “We are progressing more rapidly (…) on measures that strip the State of responsibilities that it had wrongly assumed towards its citizens, but we are not thriving equally fast in the liberation of productive forces …. “, a proven fact that, in turn, leads some sectors to consider the “ongoing process of updates as an act of reaffirmation of the old political and ideological mechanisms” rather than a true transformation capable of reversing the crisis.

As can be inferred by the referenced text, the absence of true dialogue has been one of the “deficiencies” that have prevented “a more harmonious and speedy current process” (changes) in order to “minimize the dichotomy” between the gradual implementation of reforms and the urgency of their implementation, as well as between the process of dismantling government subsidies and the actual release of the productive forces.

All this leads to presenting a problem of capital importance, given the actual circumstances, which is still being delayed by the power elites–though it may not appear to be spelled out just so in the editorial–and that is “the need to also rethink the political role, and to seek the best way for the people to effectively participate in the community’s and the nation’s design”, which would involve outlining new venues and guaranties for anyone to express any criteria, and for the same to be debated in very diverse forums…. so that “the consensus reached in these debates are the projects carried out by the country’s authorities”; without a doubt, a proposal that exacts to break with the traditional government scheme of developing unilateral strategies from the ceding of power in order to impose them through a supposed process of popular opinion that invariably ends up “approving” the guidelines for whose establishment we are never called upon.

Finally, I must comment on the final paragraph of the Editorial, a real challenge to the Cuban authorities, when he proposes to openly discuss these issues at the National Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba (CPC) announced for next year. “We advocate for the CPC to assume such a debate and, in order to carry it out, to call once more on the people’s opinion, now through a bolder method of participation. Only thus will it be possible to answer to the people’s aspirations and to successfully achieve the process of changes inaugurated by the current President of the Republic”.

This time I think appropriate to acknowledge the authors of an editorial which, making optimum use of its title, constitutes a challenge summoning not only the government, but all of us; a lesson in respect and civility that should be found in all our media more often, an example that criticism and demands for our rights can be exercised from acknowledged and tolerated venues without having to resort to aggressive face-to-face antagonism and without falling into flattery or into accomplice complacency. Cuba’s plight requires that we all do what is necessary from and to whatever extent possible, considering each circumstance and from whatever position each of us occupies. Obviously, the “challenge of being bold” is one way to do it.

Translated by Norma Whiting

August 1 2011

It Won’t be Easy for Cubans to Buy or Sell Houses / Laritza Diversent

Photo: Havana House, drawing by the Canadian, Alicia Bedesky

A few days ago, the newspaper Granma announced that by the end of 2011, Cubans would be able to buy and sell homes. Despite the buzz caused by the news – according to the announcement, the steps for conveying property legally would be more flexible – many people still have misgivings.

According to the newspaper, “the payment of the price agreed upon between the parties will be made through a bank branch.”

“I don’t like that. It seems strange that they’re now making it so easy,” says Manolo, 40, who works filling cigarette lighters. He distrusts the requirement to open a cash account at least for the buyer, and adds: “What worries me the most is having to justify the money.”

The government only recognizes as legitimate income from employment, remittances and inheritances. “How do I show the money my brother sends me through ‘mules’ or one of those private agencies that are not recognized by the government?” asks Manolo.

Indeed, for those who can’t certify the legality of their inflows of money, there is the risk of being prosecuted administratively for unjust enrichment, because the state can presume that the deposits are the result of theft, diversion of state resources or activities on the black market.

In these cases, they confiscate homes, cars, bank accounts, etc., acquired over a period of time that may be prior to when the inherited wealth was verified, which allegedly enriched the individual and the close relatives who can’t justify the legal origin of their goods.

Moreover, taxes are also on the list of concerns of those who are obliged to create a bank account to buy a home. The seller must pay personal income tax, while the buyer has to pay for the transfer of property.

And the tax rates make people uneasy. On the black market, real estate is priced in convertible pesos. The price of a stone house with a room, kitchen and bathroom, located on the outskirts, can run between 5,000 and 6,000 dollars in hard currency. In local currency, by which taxes are calculated, it would be between 125,000 and 150,000 Cuban thousand pesos.

The more anxious analyze the situation by comparing it to the taxes on private businesses. “If someone who by the sweat of his work makes more than 50,000 pesos has to pay a 50 percent income tax, can you imagine how much it will be for selling a house?” commented the clerk at a privately-owned cafe.

The transaction, undoubtedly, will eliminate tax evasion, but not fraud in the affidavits. It appears that the relaxation of bureaucratic regulations in the sale of housing will not eliminate “the manifestations of illegality and corruption,” as Granma says. And the government waits.

Share on Facebook

Translated by Regina Anavy

August 4 2011

Premeditated Eviction / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo/Luis Felipe Rojas

His name is Rubisner Utria Gomez, he resided in La Cuarteria neighborhood of San German, in the province of Holguin. On the 8th of July he was evicted from his workers’ housing which he occupied along with two other families, due to the overcrowding and precariousness with which he previously lived. When, on that Sunday, a special operation from the Ministry of the Interior and State Security arrived to kick him out of the place, they first dropped by my house to detain me so that I wouldn’t inform the outside media about the imminent eviction. Thank God, I had left my house the night before, apparently guided by pure instinct. If I hadn’t, I would have ended up in one of the dungeons of the thousand demons.

That Sunday, they evicted him and took him, his wife, and their youngest daughter three kilometers outside of San German, to a place known as the “Rabbit Hole,” an uninhabited farm where they once raised these furry creatures, but which is now completely abandoned. But upon arriving there, not even the soldiers had the courage to drop them off in those roofed cages.

They immediately took them towards some huts which serve as summer resting spots for distinguished sugar plantation workers. A few days later they moved them again to a half of a rented house, “until we build you a room in a run down building”, he says they have told him. Two weeks have passed and they still have not even marked his land and he and his family are under strict vigilance.

Fifteen days later I was informed of more bad news, which was expected. Rubisner Utria Gomez, the night guard of the “Urbano Noris” Sugar Plantation, was fired from his Security and Protection position. His crime was to become a non-comformist, like those Spaniards which they put on Cuban television each night, as a slap in the face to capitalism. The only difference is that in the case of Rubisner no one supported him, except for some relatives and opponents of the regime. The latter, the dissidents, were classified as opportunists and manipulators.

Rubisner Utria Gomez has a small daughter who suffers from congenital brain problems and he has spent all of his money in tending to her and taking her from place to place whenever her convulsions kick in. He has spent his entire “socialist worker” salary on this, like he told a local police official who is known for his coarseness and violent treatment of detainees.

Now he must embark on an infinite journey between citizen processing offices, writing letters to the Central Government of the nation, and complaints on all sides. It is an ordeal that doesn’t know the hope without which one crosses oneself and prays to God for another Cuban family thrown into the inferno.

August 4 2011