A Simile / Rebeca Monzo



I’ve always thought that coming to a consensus is difficult, but not impossible, if there is the will to do so.

Walking around town, little by little I’ve come to realize how difficult it can be. You just have to look around to see the proof of it. Never before have we Cubans been so divided, never before has our selfishness been so much on display.

Long ago, when the badly named Special Period started, in conversation with my women friends I said to them: I don’t worry so much about the misery we’re going to face, as I do about the miserable beings we could become. Unfortunately, life has proved me right.

If it’s so difficult for the we neighbors to agree on how to paint the facade of a building, of only three apartments, how are we ever going to come to an agreement to promote changes in the country? I believe it’s time to shed our selfishness and unite, looking for solutions that benefit all of us.

April 8 2011

Paper Boat, Faithful Friend / Rebeca Monzo

Yesterday, Sunday again, hearing on the program Memories, on the radio, that childhood song that gives its title to this post, and that marks our children, who today are over forty, I shuddered. I would say that the lyrics were a premonition for that generation.

Those children of days gone by, today’s men and women, are dispersed throughout the world. Most of them traded in that little paper boat for one of wood with oars, or an outboard motor. The more fortunate took a plane. How sad! That faithful friend who would take us sailing on the wide sea, separated loved ones and many are still unable to return. Being forced by circumstances to form their own families, far from the land that saw their birth and the places and friends with whom they shared that song.

So yesterday, when suddenly I heard the melody again in the voice on Consuelito Vidal (imitating the voice of a child), far from smiling, the nostalgia and the grief made me cry.

April 4 2011

Criticizing is for Cowards / Silvio Benítez Márquez

I’ve been meaning to write a post about someone I respect and think highly of in my neighborhood. I’m referring to José Quintana y Pérez, that illustrious figure who became submerged in an alcohol addiction from a very early age. As for his reasons, I only know what his drinking buddies have told me, which is that it all started because he was seeking pleasure. Up to now, this mulatto — who already has white hairs and walks bent over — is one of the few who has been able to still uphold the most intrinsic values as a human being despite his bad habit of drinking excessively.

A few days ago, his sincere and plain words once again moved me. He had fallen into conflict with an agent of the secret police due to his fervent activism in the “Voices from the Neighborhood” project.

As I listened to him, various ideas faded away in my clear memory. José has not even remotely been able to imagine how many times I’ve had to defend him from so many hypocritical people who judge him for being such a marginalized member of society. Clearly, all these fools use this subterfuge to hide his cowardice before the civic push which José is so capable of giving in order to confront the future.

Punta Brava, Havana, March 22 2011

Translated by Raul G.

April 16, 1961: The Day They Sang Us The Script / Reinaldo Escobar

A few months earlier, when I was still a student in the seventh grade, I’d had my first major political debate with none other than my history teacher, a gentleman named Rodriguez, gray-haired and with an easy and passionate way with words. We debated about whether “this” was or was not communism. I remember that, in order to defend the Revolution from the teacher’s attacks, I explained that we were living a human process that proclaimed the slogan of bread and freedom.

My knowledge of geography was precarious, so I didn’t understand why my teacher asked me if I even knew what had happened, barely five years earlier, in Hungary, a place I’d never heard of, although it sounded to me as if it were some style of dancing. Repeating something I’d heard recently in a barber shop, my riposte to my opponent was that Cubans would never impose communism and that what had happened “in that Hungary” had nothing to do with us.

On the afternoon of April 16, 1961, in fired up with grief over those killed in the bombing of the previous day, and facing the imminent threat of invasion, Fidel Castro “let drop” the adjective socialist to describe “this Revolution of the humble, with the humble and for the humble.” Of course he also described it in the same sentence as a “democratic” Revolution, something that no one has ever celebrated as “the declaration of the democratic character of the process.”

At that time television was not as common in Cuban homes as it is today. I’m not sure if the event was transmitted live, much less if it was rebroadcast for the great majority who would have been at work at the time. The next day the newspapers did not announce that a new political destiny for the nation had been proclaimed, but rather that the country had been attacked.

History is rewritten with touch ups for the details that need highlighting, while the most uncomfortable are erased. The young people who will march in the Plaza of the Revolution this coming Saturday will perhaps have the idea that that memorable April 16, whose 50th anniversary they will commemorate shouting slogans and brandishing rifles, was a day people spent remarking, happily, on the declaration of the socialist character of the Revolution, but it was not. They spoke of a possible war, of survival, of death.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if the proposal to introduce a new political and economic system in the country had been made in a calm and measured way, after previous debate and allowing different opinions to be expressed, so that later, in a plebiscite, people could cast their votes. I imagine my teacher Rodriguez in this discussion, reminding everyone about what happened in Hungary, and others, ignorant like me, saying that that had nothing to do with us.

14 April 2011

The World is Upside Down / Iván García

Democracy is stammering. Let’s take a look.

I think it’s a good thing that bloodstained dictators, who savagely violate the essential freedoms of their citizens, be forced to face the bench of an international court that actually works. Not the current one which is stuck on intentions only.

Justice should be fair for everyone. Anything contrary is simply not justice. First World leaders who break the law should also be sentenced. Or, they should at least pay attention and respond to the accusations submitted by groups and social movements.

Silvio Berlusconi, ludicrous Italian president, should be forced to comply with the laws regarding the corruption of minors. And if it is proven that he committed the crime, he should go to jail. Like anyone else.

No one should be above the law. If young gang members are sentenced to several years behind the bars for robbing a gas station, the same should apply to bankers, managers, financiers, or even presidents of countries if they engage in corruption.

But the law is too far out of balance. Why are figures from the financial world, which are the main culprits of the current international economic crisis, not in jail?

In the United States, the country at the epicenter of the financial disaster, only Bernard L. Madoff, the investor who provoked the worst embezzlement in history when he magically made millions and millions of dollars disappear, has gone to jail.

I doubt that Madoff is the only one guilty of a global crisis which has affected each and every inhabitant of this planet. I read with much horror that, instead of punishing the responsible bankers, they are instead rewarded.

The financiers sent home for doing a bad job left with shocking bonuses, as if to keep them from worrying. And those who replaced them are making more money than their predecessors.

Talk about some binge. They spend the money of savers and pensioners in speculative moves which result in pure illusions, and later, when the panic spreads and they are left with no cash, they run to beg the State for money.

Those who caused the current international economic disaster should pay for their errors. The bill should not fall on the citizens of Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain, among other nations, which have only worked a lot and very hard throughout their entire lives.

Wherever it is they live, autocrats should not feel very safe either. Before pulling the trigger or sending people to humid and gloomy prisons just for thinking differently, they should know that there is a world-wide organism which is making sure that governments comply with the norms and rights inherent in man.

Real democracy should involve everyone. Large nations and small nations. Rich and poor. But to this day, some powerful people are evading the laws. It’s not just.

Translated by Raul G.

April 13 2011

Political Decisions Above Cuban Laws / Laritza Diversent

The American contractor, Alan Gross, was sentenced this past March 4th in Havana for carrying out acts which uphold the interests of a foreign State with the “objective of damaging Cuban state independence or territorial integrity”, according article 91 of the Penal Code.

The choice of the precept made it clear what the Cuban authorities were seeking, as they tried to apply one of the most imprecise and severe aspects of their legislation. However, Law 88/99 in regards to “The Protection of Cuban Independence and Economics” is less ample, and the penal infraction regulated by its Article 11 is related more to the case in question.

The precept establishes sentences of 3 to 8 years in prison, including a sanction of a fine of one thousand to 15 thousand pesos to anyone who directly distributes financial, material, or any other kind of means that come from the United States or any of its private entities.

In December 2009, Gross was detained without any charges for trying to bring satellite equipment to the Jewish community on the island. Fourteen months later, the public prosecutor asked for a 20 year prison sentence to Gross for actions against the territorial independence or integrity of the Cuban state.

The Public Minister took the opportunity to apply Law 88/1999, popularly known as the Gag Law, which is more benign and less ambiguous. The tribunal also returned the proceedings for an incorrect legal classification.

However, when the judicial process should be the same throughout the entire island, the interpretation and application of the law is anything but uniform. During the Spring of 2003, the Cuban courts condemned 75 dissidents to very long jail sentences. Only because the precept the Penal Code allowed it, and at least 43 of them were sentenced under it. They used the Gag Law on the rest of them.

In the case of the 75, the prosecutors office solicited the application of Article 91 of the Penal Code in the Provincial Tribunal of Las Tunas against one of the sentenced dissidents. In the sentence declared on 8/2003, the organ of justice rejected the prosecutor’s petition due to the special characteristics of Law 88/1999 which states in its text that it can be preferentially applied towards any other penal legislation which precedes it.

However, the Provincial Tribunal of Santiago de Cuba, in its 7/2003 sentence, rejected a legal mandate and the thesis of the defense to sentence according to the crimes of the Gag Law; because “the accused were seeking to undermine the sovereignty, to enslave the nation, and to annex Cuba to the United States of America”.

The fact that Alan Gross is a United States citizen worsened his situation before the Cuban authorities, due to all the differences which have existed for more than half a century between Cuba and the United States. The subordination of revolutionary justice to the mandates of the communist government also conspired against him.

The decision to sentence him and apply the most severe rule to him was the result of political reasons which, in the island, are above the law. As long as the State Council has the constitutional duty to impart instructions to the Prosecutor’s Office and the tribunals, it will continue working that way.

Translated by Raul G.

April 6 2011

Another Victim of the Dispute / Laritza Diversent

The trial of Alan Gross, the US subcontractor arrested in Cuba, concluded with its verdict this past March 4th. In determining his sentence, does the Cuban court base it on justice and reason, or on political differences which define the relationship between Cuba and the United States?

Which arguments does the Cuban justice system use to adjudicate the actions carried out by Gross on the island, the same one described in the penal precept which was the same judicial process applied against the 75 dissidents during the Black Spring of Cuba?

In April of 2003, 12 provincial courts dictated 28 sentences, dishing out long periods of captivity for the crime of “acts against the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its territory”, for at least 43 of the 75 dissidents. Supposedly, with their opposition and political activism, they were encouraging an armed humanitarian intervention against the island.

In the video which is circulating on the web, a member of Cuban State Security accuses the United States of financing the introduction of satellite communications in Cuba to create points of access to the internet which would be beyond the control of authorities. Gross is accused of distributing satellite connection equipment.

The Cuban government feels threatened after knowing that social networks like Facebook and Twitter were used to organize popular protests which led to the end of the rule of dictatorial leaders in Egypt and Tunisia, and which continue to threaten the rulers of Libya and Bahrain.

The National Assembly criminalized the individual relations of its citizens with the United States, using Law No.88/1996 for “Reaffirming Cuban Dignity and Sovereignty” and Law No. 88/99 of “Protecting the Independence and Economy of Cuba”. It means that the fact that Alan Gross is a U.S. citizen worsens his situation before the Cuban authorities.

Both norms were approved after the United States approved the Helms-Burton law in 1996. The North American government reinforced the unilateral embargo towards the island after the Cuban Air Force shot-down two airplanes being flown over international waters by exiles, known as the “Brothers to the Rescue”. Four Cuban-Americans died in this incident.

“The law of the strongest,” is what defines the dispute between Cuba and the United States. A marathon of obstacles and resistance, of action and reaction, which has lasted more than half a century. For the sake of this, citizens of both countries suffocate themselves over such absurd politics. The case of Alan Gross is simple evidence of this, and he is another victim of political differences.

Translated by Raul G.

April 9 2011

And Where Does That Leave Me? / Yoani Sánchez


The first slap of her life came as punishment for mouthing an obscenity in front of her grandmother; the same phrase she shouted a thousand times in the street and at school but that, until that time, had not dared to articulate at home. The slap came suddenly, across her face, leaving a painful mark and a huge embarrassment. She was really annoyed with the old woman, because in the tenement where they lived bad words were an element of survival, the linguistic mark shared by everyone who lived there.

That blow was a painful but effective cure, because as she grew up she banished from her mouth almost all the thorny “flowers” of vulgarity. Even today, she blushes — with great frequency — when, in the middle of a conversation and for no reason at all, someone lets loose with a lexicon of vulgarity. She’s afraid that at any moment her Galician grandmother will interrupt the recital to slap the offender across the cheeks, berating him in front of his friends because “Your mouth is dirtier than a toilet!”

Last Saturday a military squad rehearsed for the upcoming parade shouting — on a central avenue — a slogan using the language of the barracks, sexist and dull. It was barely nine o’clock in the morning and the neighborhood kids weren’t in school, but at home and in the parks. The soldiers, marching by with their martial rhythm and red flag, energetically shouted:

The Yankees wear the skirts!
We wear the pants!
And we have a commander,
With the biggest b…s of all!

Her son looked at her scornfully, throwing back at her that she’d scolded him for swearing, when the same words were acceptable to the Revolutionary Armed Forces themselves. She couldn’t stop thinking about the bony hands of her grandmother, and how the tenement of her childhood had finally spread itself across the entire nation.

13 April 2011

Cuba: Alternative Bloggers in Danger / Laritza Diversent

The personal freedoms of members of the alternative blogosphere are at risk after the official media publicly accused them of being mercenaries.

On March 22nd, the Granma newspaper (official paper of the Communist Party) published an article titled “Cyberwar: Mercenaries on the Internet”. A day prior to this publication, the televised documentary series “Cuba’s Reasons” used terms such as “cyber-mercenaries” and “cyber-terrorists” to describe the independent bloggers on the island.

Such terms imply very serious accusations. The penal legislation states that mercenaries and terrorists are perpetrators of serious crimes which attempt to attack State Security. Sentences for such crimes range from 5 to 30 years in jail. Meanwhile, Cuba ratified international instruments which oblige punishment for such activities.

Granma affirmed that “through bloggers and social networks like Twitter and Facebook, massive protests and uprisings have been inspired throughout the world”. According to the TV, bloggers use internet tools to destabilize internal Cuban social order.

Granma also asserted that thousands of “international media specialists have orders to keep a watch on the Twitter messages and blog updates of the mercenary”, referring to Yoani Sanchez, the author of the blog “Generation Y”, which up to this day has been a target of attacks on behalf of state-run media.

The International Convention Against the Recruitment, Utilization, Financing, and Training of Mercenaries defines “mercenary” as a person recruited to engage in combat in an armed conflict or act of concentrated violence in exchange for personal benefit or material payment. Neither nationals of a specific country or any of its residents can be considered mercenaries under this law.

In 2007, the Cuban government ratified the mentioned Convention, but with its share of reserves. It declared that it is enough with simple material payment, for whatever length, to consider an activity as “mercenary” and that it will continue applying the definition given by the Penal Code.

According to Cuban law, “mercenary” is someone who, “with the intent of obtaining a payment” joins a “military formation” whose membership is “individuals who are not citizens of the State, and it is there where they intend to act”, and who “collaborate or execute any other act” to achieve the same objective.

“Against Cuba and other countries considered enemies of the United States there is a form of Cyber-War: the fostering of a blogosphere which, although it claims to be ‘independent’ is totally subordinate to the interests of Washington”, Granma stated.

“The Cyber-War is a model of conflict which has appeared on the social scene of new information and communication technologies (NTIC), providing a military context”, the newspaper continued.

There is a political dispute between US and Cuba which has lasted more than 50 years. “Undoubtedly, the conservative Yankee wing has begun to formulate new pretexts and scenes of confrontation to finish the Cuban revolution and start an eventual military conflict,” affirmed Granma.

And, it continued: “These bloggers are people who have called for popular uprisings in Cuba during interviews. They have encouraged violence. These new faces of the counter-revolution lend themselves to the strategy game of subversion through the internet while deliberately using omission, distortion, and lies”.

Law No. 93 Against Terrorism also sanctions “employed acts executed through the media” with the specific purpose of provoking a state of alarm, fear, or terror among the population, by imminently endangering or affecting Cuban State Security. Among those listed are “acts carried out through the media and through information technologies”.

The norm condemns any person who uses, creates, distributes, or possesses equipment, means, programs, networks, and information applications to use, alter, etc. security information or national entities capable of producing the same effects.

Perhaps the official media is only aiming to discredit the members of the independent blogosphere. However, if that is their objective, the usage of such terms is completely unjustified. Cuban Penal Law is all-encompassing, for it allows the authorities to interpret it in multiple ways.

The case of Alan Gross provides the most recent example. The US citizen was judged and sanctioned in Havana to 15 years of imprisonment for bringing satellite connection equipment into the country. For the Cuban courts, this act represents a move against the territorial independence and integrity of the State.

The activities carried out by the new faces of the internal dissidence are completely peaceful. They have no relation whatsoever to armed conflicts or acts of violence. With that said, it is completely groundless to qualify them as “mercenaries” or “terrorists”. It is very possible that, by using the State-controlled media, they are preparing an operation to silence the alternative voices of Cuban society.

Translated by Raul G.

April 9 2011

Cuban Court Recognizes that Young People are Dazzled by Foreigners / Laritza Diversent

The Tunas Court on February 25, recognized in its Ruling No, 92 that young Cubans “are dazzled in the presence of a foreigner, seeing the possibilities of fashionable clothes and shoes and visiting historic sites,” in a case having to do with human trafficking.

Seven people from Las Tunas were sanctioned by the court for renting, without authorization, space in their home to an Italian who had sex with five young people, 2 who were 16, one 18, between 2005 and 2010. The ages of the others were not mentioned.

The Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, in June 2000, invited the government to expand its official programs through which Cubans could achieve economic independent, as a way of eliminating the need for prostitution.

The initial indictment was for the crime of pimping and human trafficking, although only three of those implicated were fund guilt by the court. The rest were fined for illegal economic activity. The owners who sentenced administratively also faced the demand for the confiscation of their homes.

The main players were arrested at the end of March 2010. Weeks later, the authorities found the body of a 12-year-old girl, apparently murdered, in Granma province. The case circulated in the media at the beginning of February of this year. Following the death of the minor 3 Italian citizens at least 12 residents of the eastern territory were detained.

Following the discovery of the body, the police authorities unleashed a major operation in Bayamo concentrating on the residents of that city who rented their homes to foreigners, the majority of which were confiscated.

The preliminary investigation didn’t mention the Italian citizens who were arrested barely two weeks later, nor the links between Lillian and the foreigners. However, the popular version of the events suggested that the minor visited a rental house where the foreigners were having a party, and there she consumed quantities of alcohol and drugs.

In June 2010 the United States reaffirmed Cuba as a country that traffics in persons. The American government, from 2003, has included Cuba on the black list for “not meeting the minimum parameters for the elimination of human trafficking and not making significant efforts to this effect,” it said in its report.

The island is “principally a source of human trafficking of children, particularly for their commercial exploitation within the country.” The country to the north is concerned because prostitution is legal for children of 16 and 17. In the Cuban legal code there is special protection for children under 14 with regards to the crimes of pimping and human trafficking.

The international committee, which provides protection to females, also recommended that the Island government delve into the causes of prostitution and the impact of adopted preventative and rehabilitative measures, in order to make them more effective.

Cuba actively prosecutes prostitutes, mostly young, under the crime of pre-criminal dangerousness. In the majority of cases, for their rehabilitation, they are subject to correctional work with internment in farms. The age of criminal liability on the island is 16. In this case the court did not rule on the matter.

April 10 2011

Fidel Castro: No Comments / Iván García

We have to see Fidel Castro as a piece of living history. A stream of bright ideas. God in olive green with a beard. The only comandante. The man who never makes mistakes.

Democracy, that word so used and which has provoked so many wars, has many interpretations according to whomever is using it. Kim Il Jong plays his head in a Russian Roulette through the Juche ideology. For the satrap of Pyongyang his form of governing is the perfect definition of democracy.

Cuba isn’t far behind. The “government of the people” is practices on the island. True democracy, assert the island’s leaders. A happy people fucked after a night of reggaeton in a plaza where they buy in bulk a beverage with a taste similar to beer, early in the morning present themselves at the polls to choose the neighborhood’s delegates.

For Castro, Western democracy is a scam. Trying to sell us, from the White House, the president in office. Who seeks to impose on us by hook or crook. And if you don’t accept it, he launches intelligent missiles. It’s legitimate to think this way.

But it should set off a fundamental debate about the desirability and utility of an authoritarian government without elections. And demonstrate that ruling uninterrupted for 50 years resolves more and doesn’t cost any money on political campaigns, for administering a country for 4, 6 or 8 years.

He could do it. He’s got the time and the gift of the gab. What I see badly about the comandante, or better I should say about compañero Fidel, is that in order to express the viability of the system he represents he tells us without blushing that Cuba is the most democratic country on the planet.

I would like to believe the old leader. If Grampa Castro would allow comments on his blog of reflections on Cubadebate, then we might think he’s a novice democrat. But no. Zero arguments. I’ve tried to leave my opinions on some of his incendiary reflections and found it impossible.

With the perfect ruler, who defeated Yankee imperialism at the Bay of Pigs, and who if Khrushchev hadn’t been a fool, would have swept that infamous country with the medium range nuclear missiles, there’s no debate.

Especially if you’re Cuban. Perhaps it might be permitted of a subject of the British crown or an American congressional representative. Castro is like that. You’re under his harangues and then we all have to read them in school assemblies and committee meetings, applaud and shout fatherland or death we shall overcome.

The Internet and new times have pointed to the corrupt, cheaters and autocrats. We can’t talk about democracy outright any more. The Gazette exhausted everything they put in it. But on the wed there’s a feedback loop. Something healthy and enriching.

Apparently Fidel Castro does not like discrepancies. He considers himself above good and evil. Reading him ought to be a pleasure. After all, he’s a veteran guerrilla, a survivor of the Cold War. Thus, without comments. But always, to tell the truth, I have my doubts.

April 11 2011

Coexisting with the Past / Reinaldo Escobar

"Where Past and Present Coexist"

A suspicious tourist billboard has now replaced another in a space traditionally devoted to ideological propaganda at the intersection of Carlos III and the Avenue of the Presidents. On this same site I’ve been tributes to Vilma Espin — the deceased wife of Raul Castro — protests against the imprisonment of the five Cuban Ministry of the Interior agents imprisoned in the United States, and a very historic one, where the comandante smilingly warned: So far so good!

What’s odd is that the message is very confusing. The idea that the past and present coexist in Havana could be contested by any Communist Party member, but what can’t be explained is the choice a photo of the Hotel Nacional, built in 1933, for the image of the present. Is there nothing to show from the Revolutionary present?

11 April 2011