The Lethal Weapon of the Cuban Revolution / Laritza Diversent

In Cuba, we do not fear physical pain. Instead, fear is directed towards all the weapons of the government which they use to oppress. The most lethal of them: the law and its punishments. It is the perfect method used to deprive you of everything: your freedom, your home, your goods, and even your desire to live. The application is strict and severe, using legal norms to condemn you for trying to survive, to think, or to speak.

Jeovany Gimenez Vega, a First Grade General Medicine Specialist, perhaps refused to feel such a fear when he decided to send a letter to the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party on March 31, 2006, where he openly explained the neurological issues found in the health sector of the country.

His words were classified as subversive and his behavior was deemed to be “contrary to the social, moral, and human principles generated by a just a socialist society”. His attitude was a danger for the credit and services offered to the people by the Ministry of Public Health. He was more of a danger than the death of nearly 30 mental patients caused by starvation.

Gimenez Vega awaited anything — a meeting, a disciplinary council, a public warning, etc. But he wasn’t expecting to be stripped from his title of Doctor for an indefinite period. They were making him pay because of his insolence in questioning the economic politics of the country, the decisions adopted about medical collaborations in foreign countries, and the audacity of demanding a different lifestyle for the workers of the medical sector, one that would be different from those defined by the “principles of revolutionary society”.

Jeovany said what he was thinking, but his letter did not contain the desired form, and he sent it to the wrong place. Raul Castro already said it in his most recent discourse. They accept “differences in opinion, preferably expressed in an adequate form, time, and place”, in other words, “in the precise moment and in the correct form”.

They did not forgive his sincerity and his bravery for saying, without any cover-ups, that salaries of professional health technicians are “evanescent”, leading them to lives of suffocation, urgent agonies, and all of this at the expense of grateful patients, further leading them to lives absent of medical ethics. They also did not appreciate the fact that the letter was signed by 300 other workers from the health sector.

They had the perfect judge — Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera, who was stripped from his position in the Ministry of Public Health since his incompetence led to the death of mentally ill patients. Perhaps Cabrera was far too occupied with punishing the non-conformists instead. If he would have listened to the demands of Jeovany, maybe the Cuban Health System would not have such a horrid stain on its reputation.

 

Later, they used the ideal weapon — Resolution No. 8 from February 7, 1977. This particular law allows the procedure of suspension and disqualification of professionals in the health field for breaking “the active legal provisions and rules, or for acting without social, moral, and human value which medicine should have in our society”.

Balaguer, in protection of the referred rule, dictated his own — the Ministerial No. 248 of 2006. He did not care that the attitude of Gimenez Vega did not go against labor discipline, or that it also was unrelated to his performance as a doctor. This prohibited Vega from exercising the profession of medicine on a national level for life. Not for leaving mentally ill people to die of hunger, no. His crime was simply saying what he thought.

If Jeovany would have been involved in the Mazorra case, perhaps revolutionary justice would not have been so severe on him. Only two of the health professionals on trial were sentenced the prohibition of exercising their professions. In fact, those who were sentenced actually have the right to appeal the tribunal decision.

In the same manner, whenever it wants to be, socialist justice is very slow. What happened in the Mazorra Hospital took more than one year to carry out a trial. The sentence, dictated by Balaguer, which tried Gimenez Vega, took less than 6 months.

He did not have the possibility to appeal their decision, and not even the ability to complain to the Attorney’s Office that in his case there was a violation of the law, despite the fact that the Ministry did not claim any legal precepts which would classify the infraction committed by the young man. The prohibition of Jeovany from being a doctor had nothing to do with medical malpractice. It can also be seen as a warning for those other 300 who supported his demands.

And that is what is feared in Cuba: the law which legitimizes oppression and justifies every single governmental action, despite how arbitrary they may be, as well as their severe forms of punishment. The non-conformists, the dissidents, and all those who even slightly disobey them know what they are up against — a powerful force capable of turning them into nothing, of burying them so that they can never again lift their heads. And that is the lethal weapon of the Cuban Revolution.

Translated by Raul G.

March 11 2011

Seven Cents More / Reinaldo Escobar

On Monday, March 14, the newspaper Granma published on the second page in huge point type, Agreement No. 30/11 of the Central Bank of Cuba Committee on Monetary Policy, where it was announced that from this day forward the dollar and the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC) would have a parity of one-to-one in the whole country. Retirees and hopefuls, cautious Cubans who had saved their “bucks” waiting for a better opportunity, thought that for every ten dollars they would be given ten convertible pesos, as happened from 1994 until April 2005. Or so thought those who didn’t read as far as the seventh paragraph where this information was added:

“It should be clear that profit margins currently applied to foreign exchange operations will be maintained. The purpose of this is to cover the costs of financial institutions that provide these services.”

It was worse for those who didn’t read the eighth paragraph where it specified:

“Likewise, the current 10% tax applied to those who wish to buy convertible pesos with U.S. dollars remains in effect, as compensation for the costs and risks originating in the manipulation of the latter as a consequence of the irrational and unjust economic, financial and commercial blockade, imposed, for more than half a century, by the United States government on Cuba.

So the hundred turns into 87 and not 100 as the optimists believed. Seven more CUC cents for every dollar sent by family overseas means little in the domestic economy though it can’t be denied that it’s a slow and timid step toward making our finances healthy.

Although this decision still doesn’t affect the exchange rate between CUCs used to buy products in hard-currency stores and moneda nacional — Cuban pesos — in which wages are paid in State workplaces. We can assume that the 1-to-24 ratio for selling CUCs and the 1-to-25 ratio for buying them won’t last forever and I dare to conjecture that when this relationship is modified, appealing to the same rationality invoked now, it will not increase the value of the bills illustrated with photos (Cuban pesos), while those illustrated with statues (CUCs) are worth more.

March 14, 2011

A Man’s Role, or the Creole Viagra / Yoani Sánchez

The “gift bag” last month wasn’t very full. Supplies were scarce and he had to settle for some bananas and few pounds of chicken. Better times will come. Anyway, he felt blessed because when he got to his neighborhood with the ten eggs that were also distributed at work several neighbors came out to ask him — anxiously — where they were being sold. He blushed slightly, but told them, with a touch of vanity, that he hadn’t bought them, they were part of the portion given to all members of the Ministry of Armed Forces.

Wearing a military uniform on this olive-green Island has multiple advantages. Not only are there perks in the form of food and material objects, but each individual is invested with a certain capacity to cushion legal penalties, skip procedures that would take another citizen forever, and even expeditiously obtain new housing. The same official, who now better hides his food quota from his neighbors’ eyes, told me once that his grade of captain was like “a check made out to bearer.” When his younger son committed a crime it was enough for him to dress up in his epaulets and boots for the judge to send the “misguided youth” to serve his sentence under house arrest rather than in a penitentiary.

But our man with the pistol on his belt and his helmet aspires to more. Only senior officials, those who attain a certain level in the hierarchy, receive a frequent allocation of the drug PPG, also known as the Cuban Viagra. He has little time left to climb the ladder before retirement age, but he doesn’t want to retire without achieving his monthly quota of these little vitality pills. The Ministry to which he devoted his life will help him fulfill the role of a man, because a soldier must be ready to conquer — and to uphold the names of his leaders — not only on the battlefield, but also between the sheets of whatever bed he might come across.

March 14, 2011

Blogging, A Necessity / Laritza Diversent

Photo: Laritza looking at one of the blogs in a Havana hotel.

Blogging is a challenge and pleasure to me, just as much professionally as personally. It gives me the opportunity to say what I think, as well as feel, without prohibitions. The possibility to escape the control.

Writing online is not easy for Cubans. A challenge. And we have to be brave to face it. Because every citizen is strictly supervised by social and mass organizations: at home by the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), in school by the Union of Young Communists (UJC), at work by the Workers Central Union of Cuba (CTC), as well as other “revolutionary” organizations.

Some people outside of Cuba may perceive this as a structured social system, broad and plural, but it’s really a meticulous and excessive control machine.

Each person has a file where every incident from their student, work and social history is recorded. These controls are aware of each and every one of the residents on the island.

Thus the fear, the silent panic that accompanies every Cuban since they can remember. Be careful about expressing yourself and commenting on the system. If it’s reported you are in opposition, your existence can change overnight. You can loose the career path you’ve yearned so long for, your job position, or receive other “punishments.” The saddest thing is that family pays the consequences in most cases. A subtle and insidious way to suppress, but in the end it’s still repression.

When your name first appears on an internet site, specialists from the Cuban Department of State Security immediately make a report. And they start to dissect and investigate you like a lab-rat.

At first you are paranoid. But you get used to 24 hours a day of this hellish surveillance mechanism. Now I don’t pay too much attention to the control apparatus that used to scare me so much. They follow me, listen to and record my conversations, take pictures and videos…It’s all the same…I overcame that fear when I decided to start blogging.

However I can’t rest on my laurels. I am aware of those who have power and how far they will go to keep it. But I decided to take those risks. Frustration and the feeling of helplessness is stronger than my fear. Because those feelings do more damage than all the terror and control that could be exercised over you.

Since I started blogging, my view of society and life has changed. I act freely now within the limits my conscience, common sense and judgement make. Without crossing the line. I don’t have the makings of a heroine. Nor do I wish to stand out or be famous.

I have acquired an individual freedom. I no longer have to justify myself for not going to the May 1 parade or one on another date. I don’t help out at those pathetic meetings for the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution, just to guarantee myself a job with financial opportunities or professional promotions. I behave and project myself as I am. Without hypocrisy, without a mask, without any double standards.

That’s why blogging has become so important to me. It’s the way I found to say what I feel without reproach or censorship. To share how we live without embellishments or nuances. To make an opinion, inform, express myself.

To feel free despite the fear.

March 14 2011

A Fair, a Fury / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

A few days ago, the 20th Annual Book Fair concluded in Holguin. This event traveled from Havana where it was presented as an event of international character, but other provinces received a watered down version.

When I walked by the small stands where books were displayed for sale, it seemed as if there were two fairs, two countries, and two provinces. On National TV, they had been enthusiastically promoting books which contained testimonies from soldiers who had gone to the war in Africa, as well as other titles which consisted of discourses, essays, and other documents belonging to Fidel Castro. The TV would show the publications from the Ministry of the Interior: police novels where the bandits were always caught and such.

But the fair that we actually miss is the one where true political or social literary novelties were sold. Those were the days where some books would be snuck in, and although they bothered the vigilant eyes of the ideological apparatus of the PCC (Cuban Communist Party), they always somehow found their way into the hands of readers. The frank and open debates which challenged the current radical thought which prefers to cheer on the so-called Bicentennial Collection (of American Independence) before bringing some clarifying texts of current social thought to light.

I bumped into a rather amusing sight in Holguin: a tent with many books on display, some happy and expectant customers browsing through the titles, and a gang of uniformed MININT (Ministry of the Interior) officials keeping a close watch from behind. I asked myself, “What were they guarding? What were they searching for? What are they defending?” Maybe this would be logical at a bar, one of the ones known as “Perreras” where Cubans go to empty out their worries over fermented drinks. Maybe, there it would make sense to have some sort of authority to calm down so much energy (never through beatings, right?), but at a book tent…

As a product of the budget cuts, we were once again presented with the same old books which had been circulating among some of the darkest libraries throughout the island months ago. Here, they were presented to us as if they were brand new literary publications. Once again, that old custom of going to a bookstore or library to always find some recent publications has been lost. It’s all an absurdity, an urgent measure taken by a fair which has gotten worse each year, just like the euphoria which instantly vanishes time and time again.

Translated by Raul G.

March 13 2011

Alan Gross, an Old, Deceived and Sick Gringo / Iván García

Photo: AP. Alan Gross arrives at court surrounded by guards.

The saga of espionage used by the government of Cuba against U.S. contractor Alan Gross, 61, could end in the coming days when the prosecutor announces the final penalty.

Gross’s trial, with the prosecution asking for 20 years in prison, was adjourned pending sentencing on Saturday, March 5, at the 10th of October Court of Justice, situated in Havana’s most populous municipality.

The official press released a simple statement which reported that “U.S. citizen Alan Gross acknowledged that he had brought into the country computer equipment and satellite dishes to form parallel networks, which are not authorized by the government. ”

It said that Gross was provided all the legal safeguards stated in the Cuban Constitution and that he admitted having been deceived by the company he works for, Development Alternatives, contracted by the State Department, and by the Department of State itself.

According to the report released by the Cuban state media, the contractor complained of economic losses and family hardship during his 15 months of imprisonment on the island.

In parallel with the case of the Jewish contractor, State television announced on Monday, March 7, a new chapter of denunciations of actions by the U.S. against Cuba, and that on this occasion it will stress the satellite communications, precisely what happened to Gross, and will provide “hard evidence” of Washington’s interference.

Anyway, despite the regime’s gibberish about the Gross case, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that the penalty could be waived or greatly reduced from the 20 years requested by the prosecutor.

While the fate of a gringo, old and sick, and according to him, deceived, depends on the good will of the government of Raúl Castro, in the back room a new wave of spies is being cooked up. In addition to submitting photos and videos of the American’s activities in Cuba, they will take the opportunity to try to discredit to the utmost the opposition, independent journalists and the local blogosphere.

A threatened and even more discredited dissidence would make it nonviable as a catalyst for future popular unrest.

The real enemy of the Castros is not Gross. The American is nothing more than a good currency of exchange. It’s not bad for negotiating with the Yankees. Or as a political show. Little more.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 8 2011

Travel, How Delicious! / Rebeca Monzo

There are different ways to travel on my planet: one is through official channels, this is the most expeditious, the passport in this case is red, just by chance. Another is scientific or cultural exchanges. This is currently the most common way, given the great number of artists and scientists who travel, and the passport is blue. Another, the most hazardous, is the personal, the most difficult and expensive. Perhaps there is another but I swear I know nothing about it.

I want to talk to you about cultural exchange, because as an independent artist, this is the one I’ve used the most. For this, the first thing is to find an institution dedicated to art or related and get an invitation, addressed to you and sent to the agency that represents you, where it specifies that you are invited and they will assume all the cost incurred, including a round-trip ticket. So begins the journey.

On receipt of this letter of invitation you must go to the institution to which you belong to complete the rest of the requirements: The consent of the institution, accompanied by a passport (if you have a current one), photos, stamps, effective for the paperwork etcetera, and most effective, cash for what you need to do. Once approved, you will go to the next in the chain of command where you will also must be authorized by the director of that institution. If you are a plastic artist, or artisan-artist, you will also have to pass through the Ministry of Culture. Once you are found to be in conformance with them, you take your papers to Immigration which has the final word regarding whether or not you will fly. If you are accepted, your application will now take the same route, but in reverse. Once you’re back to where it all started, they will contact you by telephone to tell you that your request is now pending approval from the country you plan to travel to.

Then, you should take a deep breath, if you are a believer you should pray and pay attention to your purse to cover the cost of the visa and the airport exit fee. These are, irremediably, in hard currency. Of course maybe you will be lucky and can get some pocket money, in case you have any little problems. You will travel nervous and scared, because you know you don’t have so much as one peso for anything extra. Once the ship ascends to the heavens, and you see the clouds out the window, you will know with certainty that after three months of procedures and paperwork you are finally travelling.

March 13 2011

Neighborhood Voices Discuss Strategies / Silvio Benítez Márquez

Punta Brava, La Habana-22-02-11.Punta Brava, La Habana

After several weeks of communication and interaction with the different segments of Cuban Civil Society, the Neighborhood Spokespeople decided to call a working meeting Saturday morning, with the aim of analyzing and evaluating the results of the first stage of the proposed modification of the current Electoral Law.

Through admirable effort, the Neighborhood Spokespeople outlined the first piece of the initiative, despite the usual schemes of the totalitarian State. However, the promoters assured that in the coming weeks the proposal will arrive at the rest of the provinces, thanks to the tremendous efforts of the collaborators in the interior of the island.

The meeting also offered a chance to analyze and discuss the lack of response by Cuban parliamentarians to the citizen petitions from the 14th of December activists of the Voices of the Barrio Project, delivered it the headquarters of the Popular Power National Assembly in the hopes that the highest chamber can be relieved of its characteristic morass and produce a viable solution to the ever more chronic problems.

This indifferent attitude of parliamentarians and officials of the mechanism of People’s Power leaves the Neighborhood Spokespeople no option other than filing a lawsuit against the figure of Ricardo Alarcon de Quesada, President of the Assembly.

Finishing on that topic, the activists went through other agenda items to define new strategies for the second stage of the proposal: The phase that will begin at the beginning of March with the massive collection of signatures and that will conclude at the end of November presenting the population’s support with the Citizen Proposal to the same Assembly that today ignores the petitions of the Spokespeople.

At the end of the meeting, the Spokespeople spent several minutes to honor the memory of the martyr Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died a year ago after a long hunger strike.

Silvio Benítez Márquez
Promoter: Voices of the Neighborhood Project

February 23 2011

Laritza Diversent Weighs In on the Conviction of Alan Gross

Interviewed for Radio Martí, and in a first reaction to the sentence of 15 years in prison authorized by a court in Havana for the U.S. contractor Alan Gross, lawyer and independent journalist Laritza Diversent said the crime – if it existed – didn’t deserve such a penalty.

Diversent explained that the act of distributing equipment to connect to the Internet does not attack the independence and security of the Cuban state, and, therefore, he could have been given a less severe sentence.

The blogger also said that the stipulation in Law 88, the “Gag Law,” could have been used for a lighter sentence, as it took into account that whoever distributes equipment of any kind from the United States or private entities shall be punished with a fine.

According to Laritza, the purpose of harshly punishing a U.S. citizen was, before all else, a fact that has political significance, since it further constrains the deteriorating relations between Washington and Havana. And she thought the sentence could serve several purposes.

One could be the intention of exchanging the contractor for the five Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States. Another would be to give an “exemplary lesson” to people and institutions around the world who try to help the nascent civil society on the island, said Laritza Diversent from Havana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

March 13 2011

Many Cubans Steal to Survive / Laritza Diversent

Miguel, married and with three children, used to work as a cook in a State enterprise. He would get up at three in the morning and undertake a trip of more than 12 kilometers and arrive early to work. He paid union dues and on two occasions was chosen ‘vanguard worker’.

But his salary didn’t reach high enough to meet his economic needs. Sometimes more, sometimes less, Miguel took part of the food from the breakfasts of the other workers to sustain his family. Oil, rice, chicken, fish, eggs, meat, beans … he took what he could.

He had to assure the subsistence of his family. On occasion, very discreetly, he’d sell in his neighborhood some of the things he used to steal. With that extra money he used to cover other expenses. His kids needed clothes and shoes, things that are only sold in hard-currency-only stores; hard currency that he couldn’t earn because his salary was paid in pesos.

Somebody informed on what Miguel was doing. He was fired from the center. And because it was the first time, the court sentenced him to six months’ deprivation of liberty for the crime of larceny. He had to work in a correctional facility in agriculture.

In the sentence they didn’t take into account the motives that led him to commit what is called in good Cuban “robbery”. From his new location, when he’d leave on a pass, he’d continue taking food for his house.

Before 1959, in the Cuban Penal Code existed the character of the “family larceny”; a circumstance which, in some cases, exempted the actor of penal responsibility, and in others, diminished the sentence. It was taken into account when a person — hungry or indigent — took objects necessary for his survival and those people in his care.

“Revolutionary justice” eliminated this character of penal law. The supposition was that the government of the bearded ones attended to the needs of all equally. Supposedly, vagrancy, unemployment, mendacity, and vices and causes of misery had all been eliminated.

Seen in this way, this character was unnecessary in the new Penal Code. For socialist legislation, no citizen in the newly created conditions had any extreme necessity which would compel him to steal. It was assumed that Cuba was a nation in which all its citizens enjoyed opportunity and the right to work.

It is ironic that in actuality it should be precisely the ‘proletarian’ class which finds itself in a state of necessity such that it sees itself obliged to swipe the State’s resources to survive and maintain a family. It is one of the social problems that affects the national economy the most and that the government confronts as a “fight against illegality”.

What’s certain is that the justice applied by socialist society is interested more in punishment to set an example than in forgiving a criminal fact committed out of necessity. Fifty-two years later, experience demonstrates that the revolution has been incapable of attending equally to the needs of the population.

Laziness and destitution have increased and bribery and corruption have gone sky high. It remains proven that full employment, by itself, is insufficient to make misery disappear, and with it, the commission of “family larceny”.

Miguel’s story repeats daily in many Cuban families. You can count on different forms and with other people. But the reality is singular: the critical economic situation that has swept the nation for decades has led the majority of workers with labor ties to the State to convert the “swipe” into a way of life indispensable to survival.

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Translated by: JT

March 10 2011

Blacks in Cuba Aspire to More / Iván García

People of the black race are those who live the worst in Cuban. Also, the descendants of Africans are the majority of those in prison. Despite the fact that blacks and mixed-race exceed 50% of the population, they occupy the hardest jobs and earn the lowest salaries.

On the social scale, there are a minority of AfroCubans in important positions. They tend to be pigeonholed. They are famous or well-known in music, sports, the Santería religion, and of course sex, as in the case with hookers and pimps.

According to Fidel Castro in a speech from eight years ago (and the last known statistics), 88% of the prison population in Cuba — estimated by dissident sources to number 100,000 common prisoners 00 is black or mixed.

The most violent crimes are committed by people of this race. And this is the sector that receives the least hard currency from family remittances. As far as we know, the Castro brothers aren’t racist. In Geneva, the vice chancellor Albelardo Moreno recognized before the United Nations Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination that “certain” racial prejudices persist on the island.

Within Cuban society are worrying indices of hidden racism. A casual observer may not see it. However, it’s latent. A dangerous Pandora’s Box. Whites and blacks accept each other. Ride the same buses. Talk together. Sit together on the wall of the Malecon and shoot the breeze while sharing a bottle of rum.

But we know there are differences. Ask Ramiro, a manager, about subtle racism and his mouth curls up in disgust. He’s white, tall and blond. He runs a cafe that sells French pastries in the center of Havana.

“I’m not racist. But in tourism and businesses serving foreigners, almost all the employees are white. Among the bosses the predominance is almost absolute. The strongest racism isn’t white towards blacks, but blacks toward mixed-race and white. They always think the whites want to fuck them over,” says the boss.

It’s true that there are phrases and disgusting attitudes among black and mixed-race people. But in terms of racist insults, the large-caliber bullets are fired by people with white skin.

With few exceptions, a white Cuban man would be willing to marry a black woman. “Sex, whatever you want but marriage, not even a joke,” confesses Heriberto, student.

Young white women don’t think the same. Because of existing taboos, like the supposed body odor, enormous penises, or the tendency to beat their wives, they don’t usually like blacks. “But if I fell in love with a black man, there’s no doubt I would marry him. As long as he wasn’t too dark,” says Noemí, cashier.

Elsa, a sociologist, is concerned about a number of symptoms and signs of racism on the island. “It’s about a hierarchy of economic power that does not hide its segregationist behavior. They see blacks as a threat. Where there is no racism is when it has to do with sex. Something that we inherited from the Spanish colonizers, who liked to go to bed with black and mulatto women. Between whites and blacks in poor neighborhoods there is no racial prejudice.”

Veins of racism also occur in children. In schools or when they play each other, at the first sign of trouble, even if the child is a mulatto a while boy shouts scornfully “black piece of shit.” For Lucia, an elementary school principal, “It is a problem the kids bring from their homes, where they hear their parents refer to blacks in a pejorative way.”

Ana, a black student of international relations, feels marginalized in her class. I’m the only brown one in the group. They don’t go so far as to offend me for the color of my skin, but they ignore me and don’t invite me to their parties,” she says.

Still, to be black in Cuba is not a serious problem. Laws punish racial discrimination. And the Constitution says that everyone has the same rights.

Dark-skinned Cubans don’t see it like this. They live in the worst houses, are the majority in prison and don’t occupy important jobs. The blacks in Cuba want things to change. They aspire to be leaders some day.

March 10 2011

Artemisa Province / Miguel Iturria Savón

If the political administrative division of 1977 increased the number of Cuban provinces from 6 to 14, the bureaucratic reshuffling of 2011 raised it to 15, because it reduced the size of the capital, cutting the urban environment in two, and distributing the 19 municipalities of Havana between the new Artemisa and Mayabeque provinces.

As in similar readjustments the State’s reasons for uprooting thousands of inhabitants in Havana and Pinar del Rio, we assume that offices, tensions and expectations grow while the regional boundaries are configured. They change the provincial boundaries but not the municipalities.

As we discussed, the configuration of Mayabeque, composed of 11 municipalities of Habana province, with San Jose de Las Lajas as the top; we will refer to Artemisa, a province cut and pasted from three municipalities from Pinar del Rio (Bahía Honda, Candelaria y San Cristóbal), plus the remaining eight of the extinct Habana province: Alquízar, Bauta, Caimito, Guanajay, Güira de Melena, Mariel, San Antonio de los Baños and Artemisa itself, which was in Pinar del Rio province until 1976, along with Guanajay and Mariel.

The new Artemis, the largest municipality in size and population of the old structure, becomes the thirteenth province in the country by size (4004.27 square km), the eleventh in population (502,392 inhabitants) and the third in population density, preceded by the capital and Santiago de Cuba. Bordered on the south by the Gulf of Batabano, on the east by Havana City and Mayabeque, on the west by Pinar del Rio and the north by the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Of its current territory, the oldest are Alquízar (1616) and Guanajay (1650), followed by San Cristobal (1743), Bauta (1750), Mariel (1768), San Antonio de los Baños (1775), Guira de Melena and Bay Honda (1799). Artemis, founded in 1810, flourished with the development of coffee and the regional sugar industry. The region was the scene of struggles against colonialism and the dictatorships of Machado, Batista and the Castro brothers.

From the geographical point of view it is dominated by the southern carcásica plains, the flood plain at the western end, given the presence of several rivers, the Sierra del Rosario and the red soils and natural features (caves, sinkholes, lakes, coasts and three bays). Within Mariel Bay we find the Majana cove at the narrowest point of the island (31 km).

For its forest reserves, bays, rivers, reservoirs and agricultural potential, livestock and manufacturing, the new provincial structure raises expectations of development that depend on investments, initiatives and freedoms essential to modernize industry (cement, thermal power, textile, agricultural), maintain the road and rail networks, and promote the tourist attractions (Soroa Natural Park, Las Terrazas, Hotel Moka).

The territorial culture evokes illustrious names such as the novelist Cirilo Villaverde (1912-1894), composers Maria Teresa Vera (1895-1965) and Luis Marquetti (1901-1992), trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, the tres guitar player Pancho Amat, singers Polo Montanes (1955-2002) and Alex Puente, the historian Manuel Isidro Méndez (1882-192), the geographer Antonio Núñez Jiménez and cartoonist Eduardo Abela (1889-1965). A tenth of the improvisational peasants, political cartoons, and other expressions of art and literature nest in the region, coexisting with the centers for military training, pedagogy, sports and science.

If all territory is an ongoing identity with urban, geographic or economic elements that characterize and differentiate one from the other, it remains to be seen if there is a convergence between the municipalities of La Habana and Pinar del Rio added to Artemisa. The changes the nation needs can dynamite, reduce or strengthen the political-administrative intentions designed by the current military bureaucracy.

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March 1 2011

I Dream of a Day Without Serpents / Francis Sánchez

Photos: Francis Sánchez.

I have the excuse of two children so I can play outside. At home I say I’m going with them to please them and keep a close watch over them, the reality is that I escape, in this way, the tensions and the routine, or it might be, the idiotic world. Sometimes we just go out in the sun and kick a ball around. If it’s raining, we make goals in the street, with two stones on each side, and carry on like we’re in a swimming pool. But on the weekends, because school is out, we aspire to drastic solutions, one in particular: we take the road out of town. This we call “The excursion.” Usually then we add some boy from neighborhood, sometimes three or four if their parents give permission.

Clearly within the city there aren’t that many choices, nor within the family budget, to go looking for better options in other cities or resorts. However, we don’t think about that, we simply enjoy what we do. Riding bikes, in fifteen or twenty minutes we’ve “changed the channel” and are enjoying another landscape on our big screen. Instead of the chipped and stained colors of the houses, out there it is predominantly green, strongly speckled with flowers or chopped by the sharp gray of the rain, depending on the season.

We go looking for surprises. So we avoid the pastures which are almost always empty with their fences separating us from a slightly tentative plain. It’s more exciting for us to suddenly get visual pleasure, or that of the other senses, touch, smell and taste. We go after any dazzling fruit.

We get up to the most amazing things. Children are, of course, those who take on the most. I’ve brought only a knife, a pair of containers with water and little else. But Fredo de Jesus, for example, wants to live in a country where animals talk, where they filmed Alvin and the Chipmunks making it on the music scene, so he still has the ability to hear or believe that he listens to talk to animals when they are, or believe they are, alone. Perhaps a bird that has migrated from there… He also wants to be like Legolas, the elf from The Lord of the Rings and also use, to perfection, the bow.

Francito, like the magician Merlin, wants to invoke the spirit of fire with a spell and nothing else, putting the palms of his hands to make a flame rise from the ground. His cousin, Enmanuel, older and without whom they can’t imagine a happy day, says, “the fire is beautiful.”

Fredo asks me if the shops don’t sell torches, and is this the time, when his mother isn’t watching, to make one. We share out trees and crannies in usufruct, between good and evil, pure and simple: everyone is good and has the right to believe that the others are ogres, trolls who must be expelled from the forest. We ride with care not to get a puncture. Francito makes the observation that in the paradise landscapes of movies you never see the spines, nor the ants, nor the tiny ticks!

Coincidentally, they all plan to graduate some day as explorers or conservationists. They collect amazements while I give a score on a scale of one to five. Almond shrubs in a sea of marabou weed and West Indian elms; Three points. Rundown bull without horns: four. Giant centipede — any creature whose capture is effected without the use of a cap earns extra points — maximum score. Mashing and eating almonds by the ton ends up being our version of the coming of the dinosaurs to the green valley after the great cataclysm.

I let them talk when they get tired. This is the part where they share their experiences. Above all I keep quiet while it seems they cross the forest of social reality or rub against the dangerous edges. I learn. In particular I learn about the innocence that I would like to preserve even at the cost of my life, if it were possible. Today they travel the world freely and return.

Fredo offers his point of view: the dream consists of a great solution to all constraints. In dreams he has the freedom to be and do whatever he pleases. He says that when he wants to have adventures like Harry Potter, he uses his powers, the dream, and there you are. They agreed, but another notes that the ideal is to be able to leave, to earn money and get all the things necessary to live.

I remember a friend, a poet who spoke of the country as if it were a landscape that one passed through on the way to exile: the day you left you could come to visit, you could know it. They are happy to live in a healthy country, where there are no poisonous animals, where boa constrictors don’t swallow people, nor lions, nor crocodiles as in the Florida swamps and in Australia…

I think about what happiness is theirs, ignoring other environments which also grow at the expense of imagination and the Utopias, the literary the worst of all, and the morbid politics. My deepest desire unconfessed: that they not grow up. That they be good men, too. But that they walk among the snares of the world with firm step and not fall into the fallacy of being “useful to society,” where many end up turned into efficient deplorable instruments, those who become the long tentacles of injustice, like the opportunists, sycophants, snitches, bootlickers, always crawling under the dark cloud of power. That they avoid being poisoned by jealousy and the fear of living openly. That they never abuse, corner or humiliate another human being.

To Francito the argument of a harmless endemic fauna is especially appealing, as he is one of the few children who has been bitten by a Santa Maria Cuban boa, the almost extinct Cuban cousin of the viper that has a reputation for stupidity. (See photo above.)

It wasn’t too stupid, or it was tired, the sad specimen they use at the Cayo Coco resort for the visitors to take pictures, he took him out of a suitcase and even hung him around his neck. I insisted that he, ten at the time, not be left without an Indiana Jones souvenir, with such bad aim that, in the fraction of a second it took me to turn on my camera, the boa decided to attack. Fortunately — as the doctor on duty at the hospital explained, there was no poison — but he refused to believe it. The photo, along with my regrets, would bring the victim an unexpected popularity among his friends in the neighborhood and at school.

“Watch out! How scary!” they exclaim running their eyes over the bushes. By now we’re at a natural pool in the bed of what was once a stream and should have become a canal according the Utopian agendas and absurdities of the bureaucracy, but they still don’t know that. Water collected since the last downpour remains among the stones.

They go swimming. Fear ties me to the rock from which I watch them. Splashing and laughing. What amuses them most is fleeing from a crocodile or an imaginary boa.

January 20 2011