Translating Cuba

The latest heroism publicized by State Security starred Agent Emilio who worked under cover as the independent journalist Carlos Serpa. One of the missions assigned to this soldier of the Revolution was to infiltrate the Ladies in White (not disguised as a woman) to try to get some information that would serve to discredit this group of relatives of the political prisoners. In his televised appearance he didn’t manage to show conclusive evidence to that effect.

What Agent Emilio did show was the daring and audacity with which he faced the camera as it filmed him lying to a radio station (Radio Martí). The purpose. To demonstrate to naive viewers that what independent journalist say is a lie, a matter “totally proven” because he was lying.

Operation “Flim-Flam Man” was a complete success.

28 February 2011

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Generally, on this piece of land and sea where I live, the cause of all problems that oppress us and make our existence a yogurt, is the embargo (officially known as the “blockade” although one word differs from the other) that the government of the United States has subjected us to for over fifty years. This cause, so often repeated, is taken for granted, and most of our foreign friends share it as do many members of the United Nations without question.

There is no doubt that the embargo hinders our trade and obtaining credits from the United States, as well as relationships of all kinds that should exist between neighboring countries. But it is inefficiency, demonstrated in all aspects, that is the principal cause of our long crisis.

Scapegoating and throwing blame around for all the disasters had been the daily practice. Victims of this practice have been hurricanes, rains, drought, cold, heat, epidemics, etc. There is always somebody or something responsible for the ongoing productivity and economic failures.

This dogmatic and erroneous position has prevented the necessary self-criticism as well as the acceptance of criticism and recognition of mistakes–always seeing in them the hidden hand of the enemy–which is necessary to begin to repair the wrongdoing, though it might have been done with the best intentions.

While they don’t assume responsibilities for the outrages committed, while they don’t accept that it’s because of their own will and inability, and then they continue to blame the empire and its employees, they will not advance a single inch toward real solutions to our problems.

27 February 2011

The crematorium located in the town of Guanabacoa is a clean building with an amiable and personalized treatment. Anabel, 49, has no complaints. The last wish of her mother, who died of a terminal cancer, was that they cremate her body.

But the crematorium price made Anabel jump like a spring. “A couple of years ago, when they incinerated my father, we paid 50 pesos (2 dollars). Now the service raised its price to 300 pesos (13 dollars), which seems excessive to me”.

The silent rise in prices of funeral services promises to grow. On an island where the rumors are more credible than the news published by the press, the possible announcement of the readiness of the State to collect for wakes — until now, gratis — are attracting strong comments.

In his zeal to make meticulous reductions in these awkward official subsidies, which according to its auditors are burdening the good function of the Cuban economy, President Raul Castro hopes to eliminate — all of a sudden — the ‘gratuities’, one of the flags flown 52 years ago by Fidel Castro’s revolution.

In that future designed by technocrats in olive green, we’ll say goodbye to the ration book and 1,300,000 workers will be laid off. Also, benefits subsidized by the State, like the movie theaters, sports events, and funeral services will have a price increase.

The clue was given by the independent journalist Moises Leonardo Rodri­guez in a note published in Cubanet. According to Rodri­guez, there would be a charge between 1,500 and 1,800 pesos (65 to 75 dollars) for funeral assistance.

That quantity of money is equivalent to seven times the minimum monthly salary of 225 pesos. Sources consulted in the Rivero Funeral Parlor, situated in the Vedado section of Havana, confirmed the news.

“Besides the caskets, they’ll charge for veils, lights, and they will rent out the chairs and armchairs. The hearse will also be more expensive”, the funeral home employees assured.

During the 60s, the Castro government, who by then had a populist argument in favor of the poor, intervened in funeral parlors and their services were presented for free.

Those were other times. The urgent needs to slow the fall of the fragile Cuban economy have provoked heavy-handed and Draconian measures, similar to shock therapies applied in capitalist societies.

The news from the independent journalist spread fast among Cubans with internet access. Elena, employed by a food manufacturer, commented that the State tourniquet to contain the hemorrhage of this crisis is too tight.

“In one year, it’s difficult to change the mentalities of people accustomed to living with their mouths open, waiting for the State to give you your pablum. The sudden elimination of numerous subsidies, besides bringing discontent, might transform itself into a spark that could set off open, massive protests. The cases of Egypt and Tunisia are an example”, Elena underlines.

Another big problem that’s been noticed is that the government makes no mention of a rise in salaries, which would compensate in part for the suppression of subsidies and dangerously shooting prices.

In a country where two currencies circulate, replete with material shortages and where the workers’ salaries are a joke, it is not only difficult now to confront the cost of living. Now death also has a high cost.

February 26 2011

The saga of undercover agents, of moles within the ranks of opposition groups, far from alarming me, made me yawn. When they show one of those “heroes” on official television, I feel like I’m watching a fictional serial, where the characters are actors, the script has been written by someone with literary talent, and the scenes were filmed over and over until they seemed convincing. The strategy of the secret police has been overly exploited on our small Cuban screens, too common a part of our Cuban reality. The idea is to make us believe that any friend, family member or even our own children could be some kind of Mata Hari, ready to make a case against us; to convert distrust into a paralyzing element.

I met Carlos Serpa Maceira once when he came to my house because he wanted to open a blog, and wanted me to help him in the endeavor. He happened to tell Reinaldo and me that he had studied in the Journalism school at the beginning of the 1990s. We asked him about some of our friends who had studied the same specialty in those years and were met by painful confusion. He didn’t know a single one of the names we mentioned. When he left, my husband and I remarked on the poor devil who had invented a university diploma. I confess that I didn’t associate him with State Security, but I labeled him with one of the strongest adjectives I utilize for individuals: pathological liar.

Two years later, last Saturday, I received a brief text message from Serpa Macier. In just 90 characters with four misspellings, he said he needed to see me urgently, or to call him. I did neither. It was a final ploy, desperate bait to be able to record a conversation with me which probably would have been on the program that aired last night. His face on the television was not a surprise, his delight in how he spied on the Ladies in White and independent journalist seemed pathetic. As the credits rolled on the serial, I sent a brief message to his mobile: “Rome pays the traitors, but it despises them.”

I wanted to say more, but he has enough already, what with the contempt he receives from his own Caesar, that institution for which he worked considers him nothing more than another “snitch.”

Translator’s note: Following is the Cubavision TV show aired on 26 Feb 2011 — “Pawns of the Empire” — with English subtitles.

Yamil, 22 years old, earns his living by rummaging through dumpsters. For him, a good day means filling three sacks to the brim with empty, flattened-out beer and soda cans, which he earns by walking 30 kilometers (about 18 miles) daily.

He gathers the sacks in a corner of his shack made of wood planks and cardboard. When he has 15 or 20 bundles, he puts them on a rustic wheelbarrow and takes them to a local junkyard where he exchanges them for packs of cookies, candy, chocolates, and plastic soda bottles.

The transaction ends once he manages to sell all the knickknacks. His earnings come to about 1,000 pesos (45 dollars). Half of this money doesn’t reach his poor home. On the way, he stops at a market to buy pork, vegetables, beans, and rice. At the black market he gets oil and soap, which his family uses for bathing as well as washing their hair and doing laundry.

Now I present to you his family. The mom sleeps ten hours a day on a dirty cot surrounded by cockroaches and mosquitoes. She spends the rest of her time drunk, drinking a rum so rough it’s scary. Once drunk she falls unconscious on her cot.

Because of this, Yamil is in charge of the house. He has four siblings: three girls, 7, 9, and 12 years old, and an older brother of 25, professional pickpocket serving 15 years in jail for forced robbery of an occupied home. “Thank God he’s in jail. When my brother Oscar was home, the fights were endless. He would hit my sisters and eat all the food.”

Yamil dreams of making money to be able to build a brick house. “For that I need to get together six or seven thousand pesos (250 or 300 dollars) and besides collecting junk material, start buying it wholesale. Then, I would gain 200 dollars in the exchange for candy. If I saved up half of that, in two years I would have 200 dollars. With that money I could start putting in the foundation for the new house.”

His 12-year old sister wants to help out; leave school and start turning tricks on the National Highway. But Yamil would rather wait until she’s older. “When she’s 15 she could start hustling. She’s not ugly and has a nice figure. That’s why I try to keep her and my other two sisters eating well, so their bodies will develop well. They are essential for building this house and having a better life in the future.”

Yamil barely managed to finish sixth grade. Life has made him tough. His latest struggle is against the government, which wants to have junk collectors pay taxes. “It’s abuse. If I pay taxes, I’ll barely have money to maintain my family.”

In his shack of cardboard and wet rotted wood, surrounded by thick shrubbery, with a single light bulb, without a radio, fridge, or TV, the mother wakes up and looks around. Without a word she takes a large gulp of homemade rum; “As you can see, she can’t be counted on to change our luck.”

February 26 2011

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26 February 2011

A proverb says that man is the only animal that stumbles twice over the same stone. It could be added: With the exception of politicians, who never tire of it. Why bring this up? It turns out, watching the National Television News, something we rarely do, in various reports it appears that a major political leader in a working visit to eastern Cuba, first in one town suggested Raul as a delegate to the next Communist Party Congress, then another village, proposed Fidel, and finally, in another village, proposing himself. It’s not a Kafka story: it really happened.

It is known that the delegates to Party congresses should be chosen from their base. This is what the regulations say. If it were truly a democratic process, there would be nothing more to say, but the whole world, knows that it’s a formal process, where the leaders, to ensure their presence and permanence, are designated in advance based in areas of similarity (birth, insurrectionist struggle, etc.), where they must be nominated and elected. It’s the same system applied to the electoral process. It’s noteworthy that when they talk about eliminating anachronistic and bureaucratic methods, this one continues to be in use.

Another fact: in the meeting of the CADECAS (currency exchange) workers to analyze, discuss and approve the Guidelines for the 6th Communist Party Congress, some of them, perhaps motivated by having heard, “Do not fear differences of criteria or opinions, expressed preferably in place, time and form, that is in some appropriate place, at the opportune moment, and in the correct form, which will always be more desirable than false unanimity,” thought they could think freely. The Party official who, along with the managing director, presided over it, seeing that the opinions went beyond the set agenda, decided to suspend it, arguing that it wasn’t well-organized which was the fault of the director.

In either case, as it’s easy to check, for too many years they have applied primarily dogmatism and formalism, and it’s very difficult to eradicate it with a few speeches and, perhaps, good intentions. It’s a problem of a created mentality that needs deeper measures, if they want results and not to just keep spinning in place.

In order to have citizens, in the base, express what they really think and not what you want them to express, there has to be a dismantling of the entire system of organized social coercion, which is used to show there is a unanimity that in fact doesn’t exist and in which no one believes, starting with the highest leaders, when they establish: Reject the false unanimity, based in fakery and opportunism. I share the views that disagree with the regime: it is a right no one should be deprived of. Let us begin now to make it a reality.

February 24 2011

For those who grew up in a country where the state, for decades, has been the monopoly employer, to be forced to make a living independently is like jumping into the void. Thus, workers are overcome with fear, lately, as they await the publication of the dreaded list of names of those who will lose their jobs. Not only do fears flourish, but also opportunism and favoritism. The decision of who will keep their places and who will not is made by the directors of each workplace and we already know about cases where it is not the most capable to remain, but those closest to the director. Ironically, the positions they are trying to keep are underpaid, and the loss of a quarter of the workforce does not mean — for now — a salary increase for those who stay.

Downsizing meetings occur in every workplace, even in such sensitive sectors as Public Health. These meetings decide something more important than monthly salaries or belonging to a certain company or institution. It is also a time when people’s eyes are opened to a different Cuba, where the premise of full employment is not proclaimed to the four winds and where working for oneself appears as a bleak and uncertain option. Some exchange the white coat for barber’s scissors, or the syringe for an oven where they bake pizza and bread. They will learn about the inevitable march from economic independence to political independence, they will go bankrupt or prosper, they will lie on their tax returns or honestly report how much they have earned. In the end, they will embark on a new and difficult path, where Papa state cannot support them, but nor will he have the power to punish them.

26 February 2011

Few countries can compete with Cuba in the daily production of bad news. It’s a sad reality, which I wish I didn’t know, but a very true one: We have become competent exporters of unpleasant news, exceeded by only a small handful of nations.

So much so that more than one television station, more than one world newspaper, maintains its current news quota thanks to Cuba and its outrages. And we know that the good news of the world is not what fills the programs and opinion columns.

When I stepped on U.S. soil, for example, almost immediately the diligent producers of bad news sent me my corresponding dose: they suspended my mother’s email account that she had maintained for her duties in medical school.

Needless to say, her lack of communication with me, at the moment, is an effective weapon to punish me for my unacceptable attitude.

Now I have learned that the four letters that make up the name of my country, seen in headlines or pronounced by someone returning from a tropical vacation, rarely contain something like repeated scarcities, camouflaged dismissals, repression, prohibitions, strategies never accomplished.

This time, the dose of bad news comes to me from an incorruptible friend — a fearless chatterbox — who from a subsidiary of ETECSA (the only phone company in Cuba) in Santa Clara warns:

“They are taking away almost all the internet accounts of the workers. Not just in this company, but in others like Copextel as well. The argument is that there are too many staff with access whose work doesn’t specifically require a web connection. So as you already know, we probably won’t be able to talk any more.”

And I don’t know whether to be surprised, indignant, take it as a joke, or follow the most common route for those who don’t live on the Island: wash my hands of it while browsing, with complete freedom, any site I like.

But I still haven’t learned to do the latter, and therefore I say: What is frankly appalling is the capacity the owners of our Island display to change the pretext when the circumstances change making it necessary to rearrange the prohibitions.

Let’s see.

Until recently, the stellar argument to justify Cubans’ inaccessibility to the Internet was more or less: “We have limited and expensive access, via satellite, because the American imperialists don’t give us access to fiber optic cables. So we must prioritize those most in need.”

It was never clear who determined the actual level of need between one citizen and another, or how to explain that only foreigners could contract for a legal connection on the Island, while a Cuban with money to pay for it could not.

But there we were.

But as it now happens, the “expensive satellite — limited connection — imperialist blockade” factor is about to disappear thanks to the work and grace of our sister Bolivarian Republic: From Venezuela a fiber optic cable has been docked in Playa Siboney since February 8, which will presumably solve the former problem.

What is the discourse now? What precise words, timely, studied, are repeated at the time of giving a social connotation to this new redeemer-cable?

Let’s look at the statements to Prensa Latina of Waldo Reboredo, vice president of “Caribbean Wide Telecommunications,” the Venezuelan-Cuban company that undertook the operation.

“The submarine cable will increase the current data transmission speed by three thousand times. However, laying the cable alone does not increase the Internet capacity in Cuba, since the deployment of connectivity is not resolved overnight because of the high cost of other needed investments.”

So what does this mean?:

“Our priority is to continue to create collective centers of access, in addition to strengthening the connections in centers of scientific research, education and health.”

Clearer than water: Let no one rub their hands thinking of normal access, for example from home. Let no one believe that this cable will offer free navigation for the disconnected. Let Yoani Sanchez hold off on launching fireworks from her 14th floor apartment.

Previously, the operating theater is prepared with full intentions: the new bad news, that more Cubans will lose their access to the network of networks, is not coincidence. As nothing is coincidence in my coincidental Island.

Let’s say it in plain English: The Electronic Battle has begun in Cuba, and the army is ready. How? Closing the cracks, the possible breaches, that the enemy could take advantage of. Andy account that is not demonstrably necessary, completely secure, must go down or it could be turned into enemy ammunition.

It doesn’t matter if it’s on ETESCA or Infomed. The priority is to secure the flanks. God save us from uncomfortable bloggers taking advantage of an account that’s not deactivated.

The broadcast — fortunately — of cyber-cop Eduardo Fontes’s lecture to the yawning Cuban military should not be interpreted as an isolated or unconnected event: It is the preparations, the preamble that tells us that the new battlefield (in his own words!) is the Internet. And in this direction they march, combative.

Yes, don’t you doubt it: Cuba is a strong contender in the world market for ugly news, bad omens. Little is heard of a million and more laid off workers. Little of stoning peaceful women dressed in white. Little of silencing, excluding, sanctioning, exiling. Now, the unusual: My Island in the Caribbean makes news because it has decided to use the Internet to not communicate.

Sometimes I wonder where such ingenuity, such wealth, comes from.

February 24 2011