Translating Cuba

When I look at the images of the Sixth Congress the irrationality startles me. When I hear the list of delegates, the members of the Politburo and the Central Committee, I feel physically sick: Machada Ventura, Balaguer, Cintas Frias and an elderly etc., prevent me from continuing to listen objectively. To top it off, Raul Castro decides to tell a story about family machismo which seemingly belongs in a Mexican soap opera: he cuts Machado Ventura off after some brief gossipy chatter. Certainly this scene would have been more appropriate in front of the kitchen stove than at the long-awaited Communist Party Congress.

The worst — or best, depending on your interpretation — is that we have to wait until January 28, 2012 to implement the changes. It was assumed that the super-change would be now, but they give us a tiny-change and once again postpone the big-change. Raul Castro laments the archaic dogma, promises (another) rectification, predicts a future of younger leaders and assures us that, slowly, socialism and the revolution will be saved. The General knows, he has to know, that his promises will be fulfilled only when he is no longer on the Central Committee, when he is no longer First Secretary of any party, when a truly new wave of public officials assume power. And it is precisely this that is the imperative of the powerful elderly: minimize change and play a politics of drop-by-drop, to put off as long as possible the inevitable change, the end of the Party’s omnipresence.

But even I, the Queen of Incredulity, feel a certain optimism. The economic freedoms that the Cuban government is now forced to concede at the risk of “collapse” will be the foundation of social and political freedoms that we will snatch from them tomorrow. Because then, too, they will be compelled to concede, otherwise they will perish.

April 22, 2011

From their literary Mount Olympus, where they had already given the world their tremendous fiction, Borges, Monterrose, Quiroga, Bukowski, wrote Decalogues for young writers. Decalogues and, perhaps, subtle warnings.

Others, not content with brevity, took it more seriously; Rainer Maria Rilke published his “Letters of a Young Poet,” and Mario Vargas Llosa, balancing genders, his “Letters to a Young Female Novelist.”

I share only one aspect with them, the disease of writing. I’m not an Olympic winner, although I blatantly desire it. But I have an advantage over them in one way: these gentlemen of deserved immortality (saving the recent Nobel Prize winner, who is still alive), never knew the word “blog.” Not even a fantasist like Ray Bradbury could envision a future of digital spaces where one can publish with demonic freedom.

So today I wanted to perpetuate the tradition. This time, outlining a Decalogue that, sadly, lacks universality: I wanted to dedicate it to a potential Cuban blogger who, perhaps, at this precise moment, is assessing the possibility of opening his defiant blog.

1. You have already decided, and given it a name. You’ve launched it on the great web. With luck, some colleague will promote is in his own space and earn you your first readers. Well then, you know: you just took on a tremendous weight. Your blog does not become a pet, it becomes your child. And the difference from a pet is that you can play with them for a while and leave them at home whenever you like, but children won’t tolerate the distancing. You know that, like Cortazar’s text about the clock, you haven’t given yourself a gift of a blog: you’ve just become the gift for a blog that from now on will keep you on your toes.

2. The day you publish your most painstaking text, you might count ten readers, of whom half will have come to your site by mistake. The day you publish your most mediocre and unfinished text, you could attract the attention of someone very well-known on the web, and be recommended. This day you will have thousands of readers to whom you won’t be able to say, “Please, when you finish this one, go read the other one, it’s better…” First conclusion: never publish fillers. Second conclusion: pray that the day on which you publish the filler, the text that you couldn’t improve, no one with credentials will decide to visit you.

3. As you live in Cuba, freedom of expressions sounds like a hollow expression to you. However, you know you need it. And you try to procure it swimming against the current. This will always be admirable. Infallible rule: readers can tell when something is written honestly, and when it is written obeying orders from above. Spaces written from the need to express oneself, will always have incomparably more followers, people who consult them, readers in general, than ones written because it’s your job. Perhaps this answers your question about why official Cuban bloggers can only count on their family and friends as faithful readers.

4. Your daring will earn you immediate followers. They will applaud your courage in facing the regime you disapprove of. It’s beautiful. But take care: don’t believe all the applause is sincere. Many applaud only when your posts match their own points of view. Some alleged democrats who will cheer you on will also be the first to throw you into the flames, if something you write with the same honesty as usual goes against ideas that to them are nonnegotiable. The lesson is: Remember you are all alone. Remember you must obey yourself, your vital impulses, And you should be less and less interested in applause.

5. And as you are alone in the conceptual, so you are in practice as well: it doesn’t matter how many times you ask for financial help to sustain your blog. It doesn’t matter how many thousands of people take it as a reference. In the instant in which some of those thousands of readers have to make a contribution for your work, you will become fully aware of your quixotic solitude. Fine irony: the same ones who demand that you update, who demand certain themes and approaches, they are the one who, once they finish reading, lose all interest in your page even if you say you need some economic support. The loneliness of the writer and of the blogger are flesh of the same flesh.

6. An interesting point: never doubt, despite the loneliness of the previous point, you will find supposed administrators of your blog, censors, directors of your editorial policy. It doesn’t matter that you affirm, over and over, this is my space, here I say what I say, for this I created it. It doesn’t matter. Someone will always come along to tell you, “I think you shouldn’t write on this topic, but rather on this one.” Someone else will come along to tell you, “You are completely wrong, what are you thinking to say this?” And you will come to doubt, between responding that you are the author of this page, that you don’t ask permission from a reader to write, just as you don’t ask it of the government; or you will respond with your silence. There are times when silence is better. Don’t waste resources defending your right to say whatever you like. Those who at times wear us down, we have to accept that they’re a lost cause: they don’t understand that your freedom of expression is the truth.

7. The other side of the coin, which must be dealt with squarely, is the employees of Power. The diligent workers on the web, who find funding from the Island’s government, and whose only function will be, from now on, to fight your space. How? The methods are infinite. Get ready for a war without quarter, and without principles nor codes of ethics. These same people will post comments saying you are a child molester, that your sister is a lesbian, that they’ve heard verifiable rumors: for example that you are State Security. This is a brilliant tactic against which you can do nothing: there is very little harder to prove than innocence. Get ready to see photo montages of yourself, to know that your friends now reject you from fear, and that many doors will now be closed to you. Some in a literal sense. Ask since when Claudia Cadelo has not been able to pass through the doors of the Chaplin Theater. But you know what? There is something against which the employees of Power have no weapons: against your will to be dignified, your will not to remain silent. This is what will rob them of their sleep, not yours.

8. Don’t wonder how, because at times you won’t understand it, but rest assured that the people around you, even those you don’t know, will be reading your blog. Exotic phenomena attract attention. And a fearless blog in a county filled with cowards is an exotic phenomenon. When you think you are writing only for the world, be aware that your neighbor, though he won’t tell you, as a precaution, is reading and printing your texts. And secretly, he admires you.

9. Patience with human stupidity. If you accept that other people, your followers, are going to add their opinions below your writing, you should arm yourself with a solid shield against insults and nonsense. If you don’t have the iron constitution to deal with this, better that you turn the comment function off. It’s a simple thing: send them to the trash if they’re obscene or offensive, or approve them if they’re feisty but friendly. As you are alone in this, you don’t have to consult or ask for votes for and against. Your blog is your democracy, and don’t forget that since you suffer it, you decide.

10. Ask yourself, as Rilke asked the poets, if you could live without writing your blog. If the answer is yes, don’t take the trouble to start it. You will abandon it very quickly. If the answer is no, if your need to express yourself is unstoppable, if you think you really have something to say, ignore the nine points above and inscribe only these words in your mind: you will have no greater happiness than knowing you are true to yourself. Your blog will be a cry of freedom that we will from both sides of the sea.

April 18 2011

As if the proverbial mediocrity of the usual television programming weren’t enough, in recent weeks there is a new series, incredibly badly made and edited even worse, that has been presented on the screen. “Cuba’s Reasons,” is the title of this latest garbage, which clearly intends to disinform the national population trying to create a state of negative opinion around the use of new information and communications technologies. To accomplish this they are using old methods that everyone knows don’t work: demonizing the dissidence as “mercenaries in the service of the empire,” presenting “hero” agents infiltrated into the heart of it, and showing “proofs” — which is never presented — of the activities designed to destabilize the revolution and betray the people.

The official demonization of the Internet in a country where people have a miserable level of access would seem an absurdity, which is reinforced if we consider that this campaign takes place in the era of computers and in the midst of a true global revolution in communications technology.

However, if we analyze the current global context and internal conditions in Cuba, the fact is perfectly logical. The Cuban government may be too late, archaic and decadent (as it is), but its attitude is consistent, given that its ultimate goal is to retain power at all costs.

I will try to present an explanation of what appears to be the desperate resort of the island’s government: disinformation as state policy.

New scenes and new actors

The year 2011 debuted with a new scenario. At the international level, the processes of transformations that are occurring in North Africa and that continue to widen their influence over neighboring regions, have demonstrated the functionality of the technology in support of democratic interests. Long-standing autocratic regimes have collapsed or are in the process of extinction faced with the push of innovative ideas that have flowed through social networks and have been able to mobilize crowds. A new world landscape is being drawn, which necessarily influences the emergence of new global and national politics. There are clear signs of the coming of other times, not yet clearly defined, but generally showing a trend: The era of dictatorships, as we know, seems to be coming to an end.

At the national level, the Cuban landscape has been gradually and quietly evolving in recent years. It would be useful to mention the fundamental elements that indicate these small apparent changes, or that have influenced them.

• A growing feeling of popular frustration faced with a permanent socioeconomic crisis that has translated into a general apathy: the regime has lost the power to call on people. Instead of the old voluntary and massive mobilizations, it’s becoming ever more obvious that participation in “revolutionary acts” is being achieved through the setting of “quotas” — for schools and workplaces — to achieve a significant volume of people to attend these public rituals.
• Official recognition of the inability to indefinitely maintain the so-called “subsidies” (social benefits), such as the ration book and others; as well as the announcement of the layoffs of 20% of the working population of the country. The government itself has confessed that “the model is broken.”
• The growing significance of the activism of civic groups since the imprisonment of the 75 independent journalists in 2003 (The Black Spring) in a wave of repression what received wide international condemnation and that led to the rise of the Ladies in White, an example of peaceful resistance, of the ability to act and of the force of ideas, even in a closed society.
• The events of the Havana Psychiatric Hospital that resulted in the death by cold and mistreatment of more than two dozen patients there, which led to a number of criticisms among the population and accented the lack of confidence in these institutions.
• The death after a long hunger strike of the prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo and the following hunger strike of Guillermo Fariñas, events that unleashed an international movement to reject the Cuban government. For the first time in many years, different sectors of the dissidence, without articulating a common program, showed unanimity in support of the release of the political prisoners.
• Growth in the sector of active dissidence, refreshed by the growth in activity by independent journalists and in the rise and rapid development of the independent blogosphere and social networks.
• The sudden and extemporaneous announcement of a Communist Party Congress, which was eight years late and held in secret, admitting only the base of Party militants.
• Forcing the release of the political prisoners of the Black Spring, an undeniable achievement of the forces of independent civil society, particularly of the Ladies in White and Guillermo Fariñas.

Other factors of a diverse nature have influenced the emergence of a scenario in which new social actors are breaking ground with alternative proposals to the national stalemate. An interesting variable in this scenario is, undoubtedly, the fact that a share of the recently released political prisoners have decided to remain in the country, and to continue their activities within the peaceful dissidence. This not only puts to rest the government’s argument that “dissidents are only interested in emigrating,” but shows the power of the widening focus of alternative views of civil society in virtually all regions of Cuba.

The government’s “reasons”

To try to understand the government’s new disinformation strategy, one has to start from the essential premise: it is a strategy of survival. The regime has run out of time in an irreversible way, and is incapable of recreating even its repressive methods. This puts it in an extremely fragile position, to the point that the mere use of technology as an alternative option to create and develop citizen journalism and social networks accelerates the crisis of a system that has been able to rely, until recently, on monolithic control of the media.

The closed nature of dictatorships is, paradoxically, their most vulnerable point, given that anything that alters the monolithic nature of the system can pierce its structure and precipitate its fall. So the Internet is now a crack through which what up to now has been half a century of totalitarian power could begin to drain away, forcing the authorities to implement an urgent campaign against “the free flow of information.”

As if the critical position of the regime was not already sufficiently compromised, the recent arrive of the fiber optic cable in the country — via Venezuela — will allow an exponential multiplying of the capacity to reach the network of networks. Thus, it is urgent for the Cuban government to create a social climate that justifies the maintenance of controls on the use of technologies, establishing a rigorous system of selection to determine who merits (revolutionaries-faithful-reliable) receiving this service and at the same time using this as an excuse not to allow general access.

Arguably, then, the series on Cuban TV — for which four programs have been produced to date — is only the phenomenal external expression of the creative weakness of the government, as well as a scandalous demonstration of its incapacity to renew its methods and discourse, forcing it to remain barricaded behind obsolete formulas proven to be ineffective.

It is obvious that there are objective reasons not only for the authorities to systematically obstruct access to the Internet, but to try to convince the masses of the great harm that flows from freedom of information. It is because of this that the entire information spectrum must pass through the purifying hand of the government and its most loyal servants who will determine the relevance — or not — of each news item before it is consumed by the population. To orchestrate this campaign — a medieval crusade against what has come to be called “cyberwar” — the authorities count on the media, in their absolute control, and the relative technological illiteracy and lack of access of the masses.

The effects of injustice

What the authorities obviously did not count on, is the effect on the population ideological fatigue, caused by the general decay of the system at all levels, which manifests itself for the most part in the total lack of impact of the programs already broadcast and in the result contrary to what they hoped to achieve. The ordinary Cuban tends to reject the informers, hence the antipathy aroused by the real or supposed “agents” who infiltrated the dissidence. On the other hand, the haste and the hatchet job of the makers of the series, flagrantly present a product so badly made that it offends the natural intelligence of ordinary people.

As a result of these questionable shows, some Cubans I know have more questions than answers, among them one finds with great frequency the following:

Who can believe the testimonies of the “agents” of State Security and some paper scrawled with numbers as proof of alleged payments to the “mercenary” dissidents?

How can they support the idea that the dissidents are seeking to benefit from the United States Interest Section if the TV series clearly shows that it was an alleged Cuban government agent with which the officials of the “enemy” county conducted their contacts with citizens of this country?

Is State Security working now to create more national mercenaries, or “counterrevolutionaries”?

Who is “fabricating” new villains, the Empire of the government of the Island?

And another rhetorical question which arises from an overwhelming logic: When an agent of the Cuban government lies on Radio Marti, is it the station that is lying?

The official media manipulation that occurs in “Cuba’s Reasons” is so obvious that people quickly incorporated it into the repertoire of jokes that characterizes the Cuban people. “Did you see the third season of Castro’s espionage soap opera?” asks one friend to another. And there is no shortage of newspaper vendors who use the show to encourage a sale: “Hey! The agent in Granma!” a proclamation that at the same time expresses a covert irony: the real “agent” is the official press.

However, beyond the ill-fated attempt to “stuff” viewers, the price of this staging is expensive in other equally counterproductive ways, because fabricating imaginary enemies from the screen also has promoted the activism of dissidents, which is gaining recognition. In a country where the media is in the hands of the ruling class it could be argued that facts do not exist until they are reported by the media. If we add to this the increasing loss of credibility for that class and the social need of finding new spaces of expression — as developed in the sustained growth of the alternative niches of civil society — it could be argued that disinformation as a new government policy is doomed to defeat.

Now we must wait for the new episodes already being advertised on Cuban television. Surely in some of the chapters to come they will try to keep the promise, so often postponed, of showing us the actual payments of imperial emoluments on the part of the greatly debased home-grown mercenaries, be it a leader of the opposition, an independent journalist or a blogger.

They will need more than the reliable testimony of their own paid agents and, of course, they will have to completely renovate the production team for the series to see if they can give us a more finished product. Still, it won’t do to create too many expectation, the genre of suspense requires, in principle, a range of possible finales that the Cuban government is unable to offer. It turns out that the end of this process — a few chapters more or less — is already known by nearly everyone. In short, the ideological architects of the amendment to the Constitution were right in 2002 when they decided that socialism in Cuba is irreversible: it’s true; precisely in the static nature of its sentence.

April 18 2011

I remembered the flamboyant Chinese military parade last year while it passed by on the TV and very close to my house our warlike old tanks. I do the calculations (I’m terrible with numbers) on the gallons of paint and rust-remover used to improve their appearance, the gallons of gasoline used in the dry-runs, the mobilization and parade, the snacks, the uniforms, in short, I delve into what I shouldn’t because our current president alternates his military uniform with his guayabera, but at the same time I think that peace is more profitable than war.

April 20 2011

Since I was little I’ve heard countless times the use of the word fear associated with, among other things, the Cuban government. Sometimes, it comes from foreign propaganda to stigmatize the historic leaders still at the helm of Cuba, and their resistance to introducing the changes society needs, in the face of modernity and the systemic crisis that shakes all of us in the archipelago.

It seems to me that the manifestation or leaking of terribly fearful things by the Cuban high command is a recurring method they have used for years to justify the excessive levels of control, repression and coercion. Also to explain to their followers why they dismantled Cuba’s existing democratic structures when they came to power, and why Cuba remains a mobilized and militarized society even today. Their own leaders and relatives may have felt the weight of this total control that restricts, paralyzes and submerges us into helplessness. If we talk about fear, it is the only visible and permanent thing planted by the governing class in Cuban society, ever since the beginning of this process on January 1, 1959.

Actually there is a history of aggression and U.S. plans for Cuba — equally as long as the staying power of the old-fashioned Cuban leaders — to defeat the perpetual government. But these have been produced at different times in history since 1959, and it hasn’t stopped its founding, going forward, doing and growing. I want to emphasize that I am not convinced by the ancient and abused idea of “the government’s fear” before the “belligerent attitude” of the American neighbor; rather it seems to me a “manipulative political crutch” to ensure that nothing changes, to maintain the morale of the entire political military structure and to convince the real power of what must be preserved in such practices.

In short, I suspect that this enemy is a convenient excuse that provides pretexts to the Cuban government hardliners who have spent half a century in mutual verbal assault and defense. I feel that behind such stubbornness manipulation hides. The malevolent fairy of the Cuban government always waved her wand so that nothing would change, to freeze the image of a Cuba that never was. She launched the spell of the oppressor well, “to avoid greater evils,” and “to safeguard the homeland,” when in reality all they wanted was to stay in power without regard for the suffering they caused and the sociopolitical and economic disaster they have brought us. Now that they are exhausted by failure and old age, they want us to take the pill of forgetfulness and nod to these wolves as if we were sheep.

It is painful to see how they impose on us this trashy political novel riddled with partiality and pirated revolutionary melodrama, how they have hijacked the country and frozen its dreams. This is something that must be faced with “resigned courage,” while we focus on what needs to be our first and foremost objective: The democratization of Cuba and the reconciliation of the Cuban nation.

April 20 2011

Migdalia and Ramon can’t watch the afternoon sopa opera since the State inspectors confiscated the antenna in the middle of February.

Migdalia Suarez Estevez and Ramon, a couple of retirees, thanks to the efforts of their two children living in the U.S., spend their leisure time watching foreign programs, especially the afternoon soap operas on TV51, Florida.

“Cuban TV is boring and tedious, at least I entertain myself with the cable and I spend less time missing my loved ones,” said the lady of 64, to referring to her children and a sister, living in the northern country.

In mid-February, inspectors from the Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC), raided Párraga seeking satellite dishes in a neighborhood of Arroyo Naranjo municipality, on the outskirts of Havana.

In 2000, MIC administratively penalized the possession and installation of satellite dishes, the reception and distribution of foreign television programs. “From broadcasts on illegally distributed television, destabilizing and interventionist messages arrive daily,” said the newspaper Granma, in its issue of January 27.

In the report, “Chain of illegalities,” the newspaper, official organ of the ruling Communist Party, warned that people “will remain vigilant to those who insist on violating the existing legislation.” However, foreign TV programs, are in strong demand on the black market.

Prices for the installation of antennas are between 300 and 400 convertible pesos, for the distribution of the service it costs between 10 and 15 CUC per month. Terminal equipment for receiving signals from satellite television became essential for the illegal business, since the United States converted digital television signals in 2009.

Migdalia was taking a nap at noon, when she heard a noise in the ceiling. Shee got up, startled. When she opened the door, a man already on the property asked, “Where is it?” Without waiting for an answer he entered the house.

He searched the room. In the corners, lying on the floor and looking under the bed. Until, under the TV, covered with a cloth, he found satellite connection equipment. Ms. Estevez was speechless and almost on the verge of a nervous breakdown. When she reacted and he had already imposed a fine of 10 thousand pesos.

“Cuba uses modern technical means to confront any kind of illegality,” Granma said in a note published on March 8, referring to the use of electronics. A day before the national television demonized the use of antennas in their documentary series “The Reasons of Cuba.”

“To mount satellite stations, you need a license,” Mr. Carlos Martinez, Director General of Control and Supervision Agency (ACS) of the MIC, explained to the daily paper. He also reported that it is mandatory to obtain permission issued by the AC, according to certain technical rules.

The ACS works to confiscate illegal stations. The company is responsible for the control of computer networks and systems of national and international media operating in the country.

A part of “face” of technology acquired for the island, they also have a “body of state inspectors,” who “close the loop on the violations,” the newspaper reported. “Cuba is not against the use of technology, to the contrary … but it requires order, control,” said the only national newspaper.

“They took me by surprise, I thought they were robbers and almost died of fright,” Mrs. Estevez tried to explain to husband, referring to inspectors from the MIC, as she held out the fine. For the Suarez Estevez marriage, however, the biggest regret is missing the afternoon soap opera on TV51.

April 20 2011

And now, the end is near
and so I face 
the final curtain...

To say goodbye can be accomplished with just a brief note left on the table, or by a telephone call where we say our final farewells. In the preparations to leave the country, at the end of a relationship, or of life itself, there are people who try to control the smallest details, draw up those limits that oblige the ones they leave behind to follow their path. Some leave slamming the door behind them, and others demand before taking off the great tribute they think they deserve. There are those who equitably distribute all their worldly goods, and also beings with so much power they change the constitution of a country so that no one can undo their work when they’re gone.

The preparations for the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party and its sessions in the Palace of Conventions have been like a great public requiem for Fidel Castro. The scene of his farewell, the meticulous ceremonial demanded by him and realized — sparing no expense — by his younger brother. In the organizational excesses of the military parade, held on April 16, was seen the intention to “spare no expense” in a final tribute to someone who could not be there on the podium. It was clear that the announcement of the names of who would assume the highest positions in the Cuban Communist Party would not be read by the man who decided the course of this nation for almost fifty years. But he sat at the head table of the event to validate, with his presence, the transfer of power to Raul Castro. Being there was like coming — still alive — to the reading of his own will.

Then came the standing ovation, the tears of this or that delegate to the party conclave, and the phrases of eternal commitment to the old man with the almost white beard. Through the television screen some of us sensed the crackling of dried-up flowers or the sound of shovelfuls of dirt. It remains to be see if the General-cum-President can sustain the heavy legacy he has received, or if under the watchful supervision of his Big Brother he would prefer not to contradict him with fundamental reforms. It’s just left to check the authenticity of Fidel Castro’s departure from public life, and whether his substitute will choose to continue disappointing us, or to reject him.

April 19, 2011

Slogan: Let the enemies of the people tremble when every woman is a soldier for the Fatherland.
FMC = Cuban Women’s Federation

Every time I pass by 21st and Paseo it turns my stomach. A cross the street and I can’t help but read the enormous sign that illustrates this post. Signed by the Cuban Women’s Federation (FMC), it gives the idea that I all the women of the island are some kind of army ready to fire on the enemy. I’m not even a soldier of my own causes, how could I be one for the causes of the FMC?

It bothers me greatly that the multiple mass organizations which supposedly represent groups of Cubans feel like they have the right to speak for everyone, robbing individuals of their voices to make them into the single voice of the apparatus of control. Why are we urged to a militancy that we don’t need? Who said I’m not a die-hard civilian? Since when did we Cuban women form a battalion for the defense of the fatherland?

Razones ciudadanas 3 from Yoani Sanchez on Vimeo.

Since Friday, April 8, the heavens have announced to us the march is coming. Under beautiful blue the war planes rehearse, it’s not clear what or why, and down here on the ground we cover our ears against the roar. My dogs are losing sleep, the male barking desperately at the ceiling and the female cowering under the sofa. I wish I could explain to them that it is nothing more than a deployment of military vanity in a country tired of repeating to the world that it condemns war. I go out into the street and am surprised to see some tanks file past right before my eyes. I cross 26th Avenue and breathe deeply, it’s a fact: this island is governed by madmen. Traffic is diverted and the cars lost in the alleyways are a mess. I spend fifteen minutes trying to cross Paseo.

For ten days I’m living in a countdown: minus seven, minus five, today, finally, minus two. Never have I been so desperate for the coming of a Sunday. From Friday, everything will be paralyzed, schools, businesses, the city. With so much need and such a crisis I wonder how many zeros there are on the price of the mega-march for the fiftieth anniversary of the Bay of Pigs.

We Cubans say we are paranoid, and honestly, if we weren’t we’d be really sick, because there is nothing more chilling than to stand on the balcony and see a squad of soldiers screaming obscenities and stomping the ground, nor more theatrical than an army mobilized in times of peace, nor more irrational than taking men from their jobs to mobilize the reserves several times a year. Nothing as sad as this week, reminding us, mercilessly, that it is not the war of a whole people, but the war against a whole people.

15 April 2011

Recently I received a message from a reader who says his name is Osmel Camino, a Cuban “deserter from a medical mission in Haiti from ten and a half years ago,” in his own words, and who states he currently lives in the Dominican Republic. Osmel’s message refers to an interview Arleen Rodríguez Derivet, a journalist on Cuban television, did with the ex-U.S. president Jimmy Carter, on his visit to Havana March 28-30. In the transcript of it, alluding to the 5 spies imprisoned in the United States, Carter raised as an argument as a reason to pardon these Cuban State Security fighters, “These men have suffered greatly and lost family members without being able to be at their side…”

Osmel, rightly outraged, expressed his indignation at so much cynicism, and asked me to make his reality public, writing this paragraph in his message which I quote: “I want people to know of my case. I have never been able to enter my country since I decided to emigrate for economic reasons in 2000. The government will not let me, despite the fact that I’ve never engaged in any kind of political activity or committed any crimes.

Exactly a year ago my father died in Guantanamo City, and I asked the Cuban consulate to travel to his funeral. The Cuban government once again refused me entry into my own country. The Cuban government violates my rights every day by refusing me permission to travel to Cuba, which I have asked for on three occasions. Tell me what human rights they are talking about!!!”

I don’t think I can calculate how many cases similar to Osmel’s have occurred over half a century of dictatorship. One of the most well known is that of the beloved Celia Cruz, whom the government refused to allow to attend her mother’s funeral in Cuba, and she finally died herself without ever returning to the Island, but surrounded by the love of her fans on both shores, and with the hatred of the Castros unable to prevent millions of Cubans mourning her loss and greatly honoring her burial.

But in reality, there are countless anonymous Cubans who have been victims of such violations on the part of a government that hijacks all the rights of its citizens and applies this type of punishment — selective and unjustified — with impunity, at its whim and discretion. Many natives of this Island have died in exile without ever returning to visit Cuba, or have lost loved ones on the Island without the consolation of taking leave of them.

But I say again to out compatriot Osmel: Regardless of the political sympathies of any person, no government has the moral authority to restrict the free flow of citizens in any way. This is the essential truth of the problem. Neither you, nor anyone else, should have to “behave” to please the regime to have the right to freely enter and leave their own country. That is, what is truly humiliating is not permission or not to enter Cuba; what is degrading is the very existence of the “application or entry permit.” This is the essence of evil. That they deny it is nothing more than the effect.

In your case, as in so many others, it’s obvious that you are being punished for “betrayal” when serving a “humanitarian mission” fabricated by Fidel Castro as a part of his hallucinatory ideological crusades. Other cases are even more inexplicable, like that of a young friend of mine, recent University graduate, who “stayed behind” on a work trip before starting her “social service.” More than seven years have passed since then and she’s been denied entry into Cuba on several occasions. She, who as a successful professional abroad due to her own efforts has traveled to several countries; but she has never been able to return to the country of her birth. Fortunately, she will outlive the system that is punishing her, but the price of her personal independence has been — as for thousands and thousands of Cubans – tremendously painful.

Some day we will have to do the math on how much damage has been done to the national sensibility and to the Cuban family, how much personal pain the arrogance of the ruling caste has caused, how much talent we have lost that could have been put into service for the progress of Cuba, and how much uprooting we owe to this long Antillean satrapy.

For now, Osmel reminds us once again of an aspect almost forgotten in the midst of so much tragedy; a crime that could not speak more to the infinite contempt this regime feels for the Cuban people. We will not forget.

April 14 2011