Nameless Animal / Claudia Cadelo


Last October 16 my blog turned three years old. As is normal for me, I forgot the anniversary — I always forget important dates which has cost me dearly but that’s my head — but I can’t stop feeling, every day, that Octavo Cerco is my luxury. The ineffable luxury of writing whatever occurs to me in Cuba, as Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo would say, post-everything. I reached the point of going out to buy a copy of Granma. This so-called newspaper that provokes spasms of disgust in my friends has become, for me, study material.

I have not lost my fear of State Security and from time to time I fall into states of paranoia, but I’m doing what I want. I watch the soap opera “Cuba’s Reasons” and relax: They reach levels of paranoia and fear unknown to me. I’ve lost the fear of the nameless political animal on this island. I speak of what I want when I want and I discovered, on the weekend, that this could be disturbing.

There are many cases of self-described “revolutionaries,” Communist Party members and even once zealous fighters who once told a free electron like me: “Be careful with your words, you’re putting your life and the lives of those you love at risk.” Who is really the “worm”: Me, who says what I think? Or those who believe in a system with the ability to “eliminate” people like me?

Although these are not the ones who leave me speechless, because there is a whole generation of terrorized communists without faith in yesterday, today and tomorrow. Rather than being brainwashed by a third party, they wash their own brains every morning before leaving the house and so they survive. What makes me gulp are those who “set everything aside,” those who swing their hips to the rhythm of national decadence and when they hear a political lyric they turn down the volume and shout: “Not for me! Politics is nothing to me!” But then they get up the next morning and curse, quietly, a new dawn of their bodies in Havana.

March 15, 2011

Dago on TV / Yoani Sánchez

I finish helping my son with his homework on Boccaccio’s Decameron and turn to watch a serial on television filled with another kind of human misery, so distant from medieval Italy. There are more than thirty minutes of a broadcast full of forced conclusions and barely convincing “proofs” about the relationship between opponents, plastic artists and independent journalists, and foreign powers. The script was written from fear, from the tremor produced in Cuban institutions by those individuals who can interact, learn and prosper beyond the limits of the State.

I’m yawning from boredom when suddenly there’s the familiar face of Dagoberto Valdés accompanied by a description of a “counterrevolutionary element.” I shout for joy because next to his photo they’ve mentioned the magazine Coexistence that he leads. A websurfer knows well the number of hits an attack on national television can bring to a website, even in a country with connectivity as low as this one. But beyond my enthusiasm for statistics, I realize that my friend is taking a public stoning on prime time television. Dago is strongly denigrated with no right to reply, demonized in a way that causes several colleagues to call me, frightened, “Is he going to prison? Maybe going to be shot?” I try to calm them down, while is seems that greatest offense is the despair and helplessness our leaders feel from not being able to contain the phenomena citizen-generated information. But I don’t tell those who ask me how worried I really am, extremely worried for this man from Pinar del Rio whose profession was once palm frond collector.

When the weakest of the “Cuba’s Reasons” chapters ends I grab my mobile and send some tweets. Is this the big difference, I wonder while typing, between the government campaigns of years past and those that happen in this millennium of computerization and social networks? Now, a good share of my compatriots prefer to watch a program recorded from an illegal satellite dish, rather than be indoctrinated by a serial about undercover agents, captains of the Ministry of the Interior, who speak with suspicious sweetness, and hidden cameras that show what happens in public view. But in contrast to the seventies and eighties, Dago now has a website, a blog and even a Twitter account to say what they give him no chance to respond to in the official libelous report. He is a citizen with his own opinion channel, with the capacity to disseminate ideas which — in the face of an attack like this — becomes his principal sin and his only protection.

The Era of Soy? / Reinaldo Escobar

“I know the naysayers are coming now to pour cold water on my illusions,” a neighbor parodied in a tango tempo, on hearing a Cuban television report revealing a plan to flood with soybeans what has been taken over by marabou weed, where sugar cane was once planted in the fertile lands of Ciego de Avila. The long documentary had its premiere at the end of the last meeting of the full Council of Ministers and tasted of a long-hidden letter, revealed at just the right time.

After the program he told me he had committed the inexcusable error of not recording it, as the promises of the Havana Cordon* had never been recorded, nor the Ten Million Ton Harvest*, nor that flood of milk the intensively grazed F1 and F2 cows* would bring, nor the promises of amazing pedagogical results from the Schools in the Countryside*, nor the solution to the housing problems with the Microbrigades*, nor the micro-jet bananas* in the food plan, nor the success of the new Chinese locomotives* and so many others of the “Now we’ve got it…!” heard over the course of a half century.

Soy and corn as alternate crops is a brilliant idea, especially it if can be brought to pass without relying on volunteers and paying attention to profitability and ecological environmental sustainability; but not another “test project” that will be completed “no matter what the obstacles,” in order to prove that someone was right. Hopefully my neighbor’s tango parody will not end up like the original of, “Everything is a lie, to lie is to cry…”

Translator’s notes:
Havana Cordon: Fidel’s plan in the late 1960s to plant coffee trees in a cordon around Havana and to grow coffee as an export crop. It didn’t work; coffee doesn’t grow at sea level.
Ten Million Ton Harvest: Fidel’s “conservative” plan to have the largest sugar harvest in Cuban history in 1970. It failed.
F1 and F2 Cows: Fidel’s plan to “flood” the country with milk from hybrid Brahmin-Hereford cows. It didn’t work and milk is severely rationed in Cuba.
Schools in the Countryside: For decades Cuban teenagers were sent to boarding schools in the countryside to study and work in the fields. The program has been discontinued.
Microbrigades: “Self-help housing” through assigning groups of people from each workplace to build large apartment houses. Reinaldo was assigned from his workplace and lives in one of the apartments built. Still, Cuba has a tremendous shortage of housing.
Micro-jet bananas: Fidel’s project to import an Israeli growing method to flood the country with bananas. Bananas are in short supply in Cuba.
Chinese locomotives: Cuba has imported over 50 locomotives from China and they do help, but the trains continue to run late, often days late.

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