I’ve gone much longer than usual without posting, as I find myself in Spain accompanying my husband who has come to receive an award, but I am not going to prepare a chronicle of the trip. I knew that despite reconnecting with the friends, and seeing new or revisiting old places, this would be an opportunity to have the Internet be an important part of my time. A friend has given me a small laptop and an Internet link so I have the internet whenever I want.
I have mostly spent the time reading other blogs on the subject of Cuba from outside the Island, and of course I follow the national scene and take advantage of the foreign media, of the bloggers and Granma. As ever, I see the subversive nature of so much information that is just a click away.
Too much information can be misleading; it all depends on where you focus your antenna and encounter the most dissimilar opinions on the same topic. In any case, I am convinced of the need to popularize a phrase that unfortunately was not coined by me, but I love it: Discrepancy must be decriminalized.
Not so long ago self-employment began to materialize, in keeping with a medieval list of approved occupations, and now dissatisfaction proliferates among those who pinned their dwindling hopes on it. Among the absurd regulations, improvised inspectors, and highway robbery taxes, the only beneficiary is the State, leaving the citizen sunk in misery, with barely enough to survive in precarious conditions.
The city, which in the early fifties had a modern network of stores, is now filled with little kiosks, makeshift stalls in windows and doors, tables in doorways and on sidewalks, the majority unsightly and lacking minimum hygienic conditions (for food products). What’s on offer is pretty shabby, too commonly repetitious, without any kind of variety. Everyone sells the same thing. It’s as if there’s been a time warp and we landed in the Middle Ages.
Those who offer services and products in Tulipán Street, opposite the mini-railroad station, to mention just one example, have to do so outdoors, under the tropical sun and blocking pedestrian traffic. Coexisting in a tight space are salesmen and saleswoman of shoes, ornaments, jewelry, cleaning products, hardware, leather belts and Santeria items (including pigeons and birds for sacrifice). Also people who repair and fill cigarette lighters, manufacturers of pizzas, sandwiches, sweets and soft drinks. A real tropical Tower of Babel.
The content of these businesses is at the discretion of the inspector concerned, as there are no specific regulations in this regard. For example, the manager of travel calls out loudly the in the parks the destinations of taxis and buses, but he is not the one who organizes the trips. An ambulatory seller of iced drinks must always be on the move with his cart, and can’t stop in any public place longer than the appropriate inspector decides. It seems absurd but that’s the reality of everyday life in this country, where the authorities and officials have become so bureaucratic they’ve lost the ability to think and reason.
I once wrote that self-employment was a forced fellow traveler, unwanted by the regime, regardless of speeches and public declarations. In the short duration of its exercise this has already been proven. There are many today who are quick to turn in the licenses they once requested, when they hoped something would begin to change. The harsh reality has beaten them and, once again, proved that they were misled: there is nothing more, here, than a game to gain time, without real intentions to change anything. This is what those who marched on April 16 in the Plaza and elsewhere in the country on May Day ratified.
When it comes time to acquit a suspect, the Cuban justice system does not believe in any evidence, not even DNA; but if the problem is to lay blame, anything is good enough.
Laritza Diversent
The Provincial Court of Las Tunas, sentenced Rafael Ramos Utra to 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting a minor in his own home in March 2005. The Camaguey court condemned Delvis David Peña Mainer to 40 years for the brutal machete killing, in January of the same year, of a young man of 23 and his wife age 17, in Vertientes.
Utra Ramos, 51, and Pena Mainer, 44, both pleaded innocent, but justice found them equally guilty, despite physical evidence that said otherwise. In the case of Rafael, it dismissed the first two reports of DNA prepared in the province of Las Tunas, which confirmed his innocence. In the case of David, the Camaguey court credited rumors circulating in the neighborhood.
Mainer Peña allegedly decided to kill the young man because he said he had sex with his daughter and tried to have sex with his wife. The girl was killed when she came to the aid of her husband. According to a weather report the night of the crime, the night was well-lit. Enough to convince the court that the young woman was seen by Peña Mainer in the midst of the crime, and knowing himself discovered, he decided to do away with her
According to the court the injuries on both victims were made by a lefty, as is Peña Mainer, with a short blunt instrument. They confiscated a blade from David, a wide machete curved at the end, which is used in Cuba to cut sugarcane. According to the report, on the “inside of the handle” o the weapon they found blood, “but could not determine to which species it belonged.”
The Camaguey court found it unnecessary to compare the blood sample found on the murder weapon, with the DNA of the victims. Maybe that’s why they ordered the blade sent to a provincial prison work camp, and the “destruction and tossing out” of the clothes of the young people killed, some of with “possibly bloody stains” and the traces of blood from the crime scene.
With Ramos Utra, it happened differently. The Central Criminal Laboratory of Cuba, in a first review acknowledged “there is no relationship between semen present in the underwear” of the 6-year-old and “the blood sample sent as that of the suspect Utra Rafael Ramos,” who denies have been alone with the child and much less touching her.
They then said “the yellow stain in the panties” of the child, coincided with “the blood sample from the child herself.” “It was not possible to establish the genetic profile of semen found in the panties, because the seminal material was exhausted,” admitted the laboratory in the second report, conducted two months after the first.
The probability of finding two people with the same genetic information, is 1 in 15 million individuals. Despite the certainty of the first test showing Ramos Utra to be innocent, the Court of Las Tunas also found him guilty and ordered the incineration of panties, a piece of evidence of the crime.
Cuban courts, it wold seem, neither accept nor rely on DNA testing, the most reliable test to date, to confirm the guilt or innocence of a person. Their maxim is to do justice, although they condemn an innocent. They will never fail to find someone to blame.
With Regards to the Chinese Report about Human Rights Violations in the U.S.
Wow! The pot calling the kettle black.
Human rights are violated everywhere. But the Chinese are very sensitive when you step on their toes about this. They now have unbridled capitalism and totalitarian censorship. They seem to tell their citizens: “Enrich yourselves, and let me deal with the governing.”
Almost all the information that they have put in the report, is information published on legal sites in the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that is mentioned is an NGO that monitors civil rights violations, unlike its counterpart in China which operates illegally.
The Chinese have a program known as “The Great Wall of China,” the most effective censorship filter that exists for the Internet.
According to news reports, in 2010, candidates for the House …
… According to figures from the U.S. Justice Department.
Statistics show that in that country there were 12,000 homicides caused by guns …
“The New York Times” reported on 23 of…
According to statistics, about 20 million…
The figures published in the official website of “Love Our Children USA” show that …
Statistics show that seven out of ten million …
… Says the report, quoting McClatchy Newspapers.
Here this doesn’t say much, but the Nobel Peace Prize winner this year is a Chinese in prison for making these kinds of complaints in his country; you are very young, but with the economic reforms already undertaken, in 1989 Chinese youth also wanted to have democracy and they staged a series of protests in Tiananmen Square, which were ruthlessly suppressed with an unspecified toll of dead of wounded. The Chinese government refused to allow it to be divulged in the news and even expelled foreign correspondents. There is a very famous photo of a young man moments before he was crushed by a tank in Tiananmen.
A slippery slope, my friends of La Joven Cuba.
Note: Many thanks to Eduardo and other commentators who explained to me that the young man in the photo was not crushed by the tank as I was told several years ago.
Cuban civil society is looking forward to what will happen in July when the network structure of the island is connected to to the fiber optic cable that came in early February to Cuba from Venezuela. The event, which will multiply by 3,000 the speed of data transmission, also helped the government admit its fear of individual use of the virtual tools of information.
In 1996, Cuba was officially connected to the Internet, but the government made clear, legally, its policy towards full access to the services the network provides. Since then, the “network of networks” is centrally managed by Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba SA (ETECSA) and operated by state institutions specifically authorized by the Ministry of Informatics and Communications (MIC).
Beginning in the year 2000, the Cuban government implemented, legally and technologically, an infrastructure that allows it to control access by Cubans to the Internet, through a hierarchical network of state agencies, identified as providers of “Public Services of Internet Access.”
That same year, a common international access point to the network (NAP) was legally established, ensuring that all international outgoing Internet traffic was sent from that connection. In that way, it was assured that the interconnections between national users of the Internet were routed through the national transmission media.
At the end of January 2011, the Cuban government announced the sale of the foreign shares in ETECSA, and also the purchase, at 706 million dollars, by RAFIN, a Cuban company owned by brothers Raúl and Fidel Castro. The possession of most of the shares lets them control the principal provider of the public service of data transmission.
The providers of Public Services of Internet Access cannot accept requests for installation by persons not duly authorized by the MIC. However, the regulations governing the activity requires them to accept as users “all natural or legal persons who want it.” However, the same laws have a proviso. Providers offer their services “without more limitations than those imposed by the laws in force in the country.” Since 1996, the Cuban government declared that “access to computer networks of global reach shall have a selective character” and “will have to be approved by the Interministerial Committee” composed of five ministers and chaired by the head of the MIC.
Among other legal obligations, these providers “are required to define the authorization of persons and entities that require the use of national or international Internet access services,” including “remote access from home or anywhere in the country, as well as from abroad.” They also have a duty to report the number of users with full access to the Internet, those with e-mail accounts and their IP addresses. Also required are the number of computers that access the network from places of residence and publicly. A supplier who fails to comply with the regulations of the MIC may lose its operating license.
In 2004, the Cuban government designated the “Internet Zone” to the spaces in hotels, post offices, cybercafes, etc, which provide navigation services over the Internet and email to the public costing between 1.50 and 10 convertible pesos (CUC) for one hour of access to the Web. In 2008, it completely regulated service in these centers, after Raúl Castro announced that Cubans could receive services in hotels, and authorized the sale of computers in the retail foreign currency market.
From that moment, the alternative Cuban blogosphere began to develop, currently composed of about 40 blogs critical of the government, belonging to a group of citizens, mainly young people who update their sites from hotels, embassies or with the help of relatives and friends abroad .
Providers must also block “access to sites whose contents are contrary to social interests, ethics and morals, as well as the use of applications that affect the integrity or security of the state.” One of the works of the Interministerial Commission created in 1996 was to ensure that the information “is reliable, and that it is obtained in line with ethical principles, and does not affect the interests or security of the country.”
The Cuban government is mainly concerned that the new generation of dissidents uses Twitter, Facebook and other online social networks. These sites were used to organize digital protests earlier this year that led to several revolutions in the Middle East.
Last March, the newspaper Granma announced, according to statements by Justice Minister Maria Esther Reus, that “Cuba will adjust the existing legal rules to the decisions taken as a result of the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba,” held April 16 to 19.
Motivated by the advent of fiber optic cable to Cuba, the deputy minister of MIC, Jorge Luis Perdomo, referred to the development of the first Telecommunications Act to regulate the sector and to “promote order” in the services it encompasses. The progress in technological development that was represented with the arrival of the fiber optics cable to the island was overshadowed after State Security considered the “network of networks” as the new “battlefield”–a cyberwar–and the official media demonized the use of communication equipment.
Faced with these developments, there is no doubt that the future of the Internet in Cuba has a question mark hanging over it.
Good old Ted Henken was caught in the crossfire. I met him on his latest trip to Cuba. He’s an academic who speaks Spanish like a black man from Carraguao. The Cuban reality interests him greatly and he understands it well.
He was born in Pensacola, Florida and is a professor at a university in New York. He has a blog, El Yuma, and is a humanist and leftist. He meets all the requirements of a good democrat. He knows how to listen and respects differences of opinion.
He’s the type of person the Cuban government, which I don’t think has too many followers in the United States, should respect for his rectitude, honesty and professional ethics.
But as it happens the Cuban special services are wary of most of the people who come from the North. Erasing mental stereotypes takes time. And, unfortunately, the Cuban intelligence officers have been trained and raised with the image of Uncle Sam who comes in every disguise, including academics, to subvert the order.
And Ted comes from the North and is an academic. Also he brought a burning proposal in his backpack. Talking with bloggers from both sides. He was a perfect target. We already know that the regime sees a portion of the alternative bloggers as cyberwar commandos capable of causing more damage than an Al-Qaeda franchise.
In the rearview mirror, the Creole mandarins are seeing in technicolor the wave of protests in the Middle East and the civil war in Libya. The autocrats are trembling.
And they have to find new enemies to suppress and scare the masses. They can’t sit the creators of internet, twitter or facebook, in the dock of the accused, they point the censoring finger at those who use such tools without state approval.
In the “brave fighters of silence” didn’t like a gringo from New York coming to Havana to try to build bridges. The political police, more than any other authority, need an enemy. They don’t look kindly on pro-government bloggers who let their heads hover over the words dialogue and council.
And even though Ted didn’t come to Havana tobe the mother-in-law trying to harmonize damaged matrimonial relations, he chatted with bloggers of both tendencies. And he made the State Security tough guys nervous. At the airport, before he left, they put him on the black list. And told him, this will be your “last visit.”
Their motives could be great or nothing. They need adversaries. It’s the combustible to sustain the battles, justify the spending of resources, and maintaining high morale.
So Ted gave them the hook. A Yankee who is interested in the social situation of Cuba and not mulattas and mojitos. A weirdo. The authorities want the Yankees to come … but to spend dollars and shake their hips at evening soirees. Don’t think and leave a lot of tips.
Thus, Ted Henken unwittingly got caught in the crossfire. Despite being a ‘gringo’ leftist Latin American scholar and coming on his own account. But he came the North. That’s enough.
On Friday, April 22, on the corner of H and Calzada, Vedado, Havana, I was intercepted at 3:45 p.m. by a Lada car without police plates, from which four plainclothes agents of State Security emerged. Taken by surprise, I tried to ask them for their arrest warrant; meanwhile the leader ordered, “Get in Iturria, your time has come,” and one of the cops punched me and pushed me in with the help of another.
In the vehicle they took my belongings (cell phone, camera, a book, papers and identity card). Already underway, they went down G to 23rd and from there to 41st and 31st. At the Marianao Military Hospital they doubled back toward Siboney and got out at the San Agustin police station in the city of La Lisa.
During part of the ride they kept me with my hands handcuffed behind me and my head down. The driver responded to cell phone calls with phrases like “I’m carrying the cargo, call later,”pick up ten teams and wait for me at Section 30.” By his side an officer in his fifties, tall, black, thick lips and a face of disgust; he was the only one wearing military boots.
At the station they searched me minutely. I was in the lobby under the watch of the guy who punched me–swarthy balding thirty-something with a face of hatred–and the young mulatto from the back seat, until a sub-officer took me to an average shabby office, where one of the military guys came in who had been at my house on March 8 when I refused the summons for an interview with the “Official Octavio,” who shows up looking for two chairs; but then comes Captain Tamayo and they take me to a place with air conditioning, starting the repetitive “verbal exchange” with Tamayo, escorted by subordinates who were at home, both fierce and silent.
Tamayo is white, of medium size and light eyes. He suffers from oral incontinence and likes to dazzle with statistics that show State Security’s control over the on the peaceful opposition, exile organizations, independent journalists and alternative bloggers, whom he denigrates and minimizes incessantly, which contradicts the low importance he gives to them.
He mentions contemptuously Elizardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, President of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights; Wilfredo Vallín Almeida, leader of the Cuban Association of Jurists; communicators Juan González Febles, director of Digital Weekly Spring; Julio Aleaga Pesant, Jose Alvarez and others like me “who exceed the limits of tolerance that we have set” and “dare to refuse the subpoenas from State Security, without knowing that we do not need to comply with the articles of the Criminal Procedure Act, it enough for us to issue a verbal subpoena; be warned so you won’t be detained again in the street.”
In his monologue, Tamayo combines the information and statistics with praise for the Commander-in-Chief, “the man of the century”, and General Raul Castro, “modest and humane like the Commander.” He ponders the “historic generation that leads the revolution,” the health system, education, sporting achievement and participation in elections and political events.
To compensate, he unleashes his grievances against the hardships of the past in Cuba (although he was born in 1970), attacks the aggression of the United States toward the island (quoting the words of President Obama in Chile), global capitalism and poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. To make matters worse, he blames the economic embargo as the cause of our problems and thinks “if the Yankees allowed tourism and allowed us to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, it would save socialism and we would live better.”
He spoke about his farming origins and the poverty of his family, as he was born in a village in the Sierra Maestra in the Contramaestre municipality in Santiago de Cuba Province. He reiterated that he spent 23 yeas in the Ministry of the Interior, where he barely earned enough to eat despite having a house in Havana and being a communist. He lamented not being able to drink a bottle of rum every week and bring gift boxes to his relatives in the mountains.
More than interrogate me, Tamayo combined the discourse of power with threats against those who think differently. He warned that his department had a file on each one of the 109 independent communicators in the country, “Lists to present to the prosecutor as we did in 2003.” He added that “State Security decides who gets permission to leave and who would rot on the island.”
Before such a codified mentality I limited myself to asking a few ironic questions and rectifying certain of his opinions with conflicting data. I told him that he served a totalitarian tyranny and not a socialist revolution, that what remains of the slogans, rituals and masks of the terrified majority who depend on the State, seems increasingly like an Arab sultanate; that the economic embargo and the supposed external aggression are not the cause of the national disaster, nor the inefficiency, the corruption and the lack of freedoms and opportunities to liberate the productive force and initiatives of citizens.
At eight in the evening the official returned my belongings as “a goodwill gesture,” in the expectation that I would “not make a circus out of what happened.” I assured his that I would continue to write without censorship and would denounce the kidnapping arranged by him.
Is there anything really new in the terrible incident that has just cut short the life of another nonconforming Cuban? In my view, only the speed with which his death has been echoing around the world, on Mother’s Day, when the news wires and standard television programming prefer to convey messages of family harmony.
Sad to admit it: the new chapter of extreme intolerance, militaristic asphyxia, which snatched the breath of Wilfredo Soto Juan Garcia of Villa Clara, is not just another episode to mark in the history of abuses and misdeeds of a system designed to kill, one way or another, the rebels who refuse to live without freedom.
Similar stories of prolonged martyrdoms, beatings that end in the cemetery, physical and psychological torture, have occurred for decades without many–I include myself among them–even suspecting among the dense fog that repressors extend them to ensure impunity.
Not surprisingly the dictatorial procedures manual that all the tyrants and aspiring tyrants seem to work from, includes absolute ownership of the media as an inviolable element. The fourth power in the hands of the State makes it impossible that any reporter dares to attach to a national newspaper the stories of those who knew the damp hell of Kilo 8, Las Mangas, Villa Marista, Boniato, or any of the provincial gulags where opposing Cubans are confined.
The problematic, however, of this dreadful new death of a man whose crime consisted of not wanting to leave a public park in his city, and who, on refusing to do so, received a police beating that hospitalized him until his death this last Sunday, is that it puts Cuba back in an internationally embarrassing dilemma that no one seems to want to resolve.
But to keep your mouth shut when three youths are shot for wanting to escape from the country where they were born, to keep your mouth shut when a bricklayer dies of hunger for claiming fair conditions for a prisoner of conscience, and to keep your mouth shut when a peaceful opponent is beaten to death by police who encroach on his right to remain where he pleases; to look the other way when this is happening in the Socialist Paradise, goes beyond indecency: it’s an ethical and moral disgrace.
But to keep your mouth shut when three young people are shot for wanting to escape from the country where they were born, to keep your mouth shut when a bricklayer dies of hunger for claiming fair conditions for a prisoner of conscience, and to keep your mouth shut when a peaceful opponent is beaten to death by police who encroach on his right to remain where he pleases; to look the other way when this is happening in the Socialist Paradise, goes beyond indecency: it’s an ethical and moral disgrace.
I have never understood why these intellectual thugs, under the camouflage of “progressives” advocates for universal justice, go to extremes to cry for the rights of the butcher Osama Bin Laden to have a legal representation; which is why I hate the hypocritical humanity of those who shed tears of ink for the innocent children of Muammar Gadaffi, but who change the channel, turn the page, and dance salsa with a good cigar in their mouth, when the atrocities taking place in Cuba are right before their eyes.
What can we expect after this Monday, when the body of another innocent rest underground and his mother will never again enjoy an ordinary day? Well, I believe two things are too predictable to be able to boast of my powers of prediction:
First, the swift campaign to discredit those who can not defend themselves today, as they could not defend themselves in life. The unimaginative script that runs whenever the name of an opponent brings ill winds to the guardians of power: we will expect to hear about a long criminal history, perhaps as a butcher, perhaps as a pederast, his record of vandalism that made him a scourge to without the right to sit in a public park, where some said that Mariela Castro, daughter of the General-cum-President, was going to make her appearance.
This, if the turmoil caused by the crime is similar to that of the notorious Zapata case, when it was impossible to conceal or to not offer an official version to the world and to Cubans. If the tide does not cause too strong of waves, nor require the work of defamation, they will simply ignore it.
The second thing we expect is that John Wilfredo Soto García feed the news agendas of some of the world media, his name and his case will be followed with great attention while generating readers, listeners and viewers, until another news event will steal the scene, and his drama will remain as some vague, incessant, incurable pain, that his poor mother will exhale forever.
Nothing will change. No conclave of the powerful will take this straw that broke the camel’s back, and what is worse: no group of the masses, of the millions of Cuban, will take this new assassination as the call to slaughter against the satraps who ride the straw horse of “change” and “reforms” and “congresses,” while death or exile remain the only options for those who refuse to live without dignity.
And so those who cling to a habitable Cuba are alone. So those who are not afraid of silence are alone. Doomed to solitude in hostile territory.
These days, when we are leaving behind the Cuban Communist Party Congress, which addressed a series of measures which have left a people not hopeful but concerned; when a there is a shortage of the word of the day in our lives; when our government excludes and marginalizes the whole idea of favorable change for all Cubans, and turns their campaign to discredit a part of civil society into a tasteless campaign, we should reflect on the value that is being given to the Nation.
The actions taken on behalf of the Nation, be they to honor the fallen, or for love, never should be undertaken to threaten those who form a part of our nationality. The country belongs to everyone, and therefore we are all called to support her, take care of her, and raise all of our children to be a part of her.
When we truly loves our native soil, and see it dying as ours it, for lack of the many values that strengthen a country, we must be united, thinking of solutions to benefit everyone, not tearing apart and rejecting plans and projects that could help the majority.
Cuba is in times of change, we reject all who call for hatred and exclusion, and above all we call for all the pride, or remorse, our Nation imposes.
Sironay González Rodríguez
b. San Cristobal, Artemis. 1976
Lately it has been repeatedly affirmed by leaders and officials that the Cuban people chose the Revolution in 1959 and Socialism in 1961, such that it is no longer necessary to decide anything because it was already done at that time. Accepting that it’s true that in 1959 the majority of the people welcomed the insurrectionist victory, we mustn’t forget that that meant getting rid of a dictator and seven years of dictatorship.
The struggle then was based on restoring the 1940 Constitution and freedom, not about changing the economic, political and social system that had previously existed. In 1961 the declaration of the Socialist character was made at a rally at the corner of 23rd and 12th in El Vedado, before enraged militants holding their rifles high, in response to the air attacks that were the prelude to the Bay of Pigs, where there was a limited number of people who, by and large, did not represent the Cuban population. In reality, it was imposed, taking advantage of the right moment, and later, through propaganda and political pressure, extended to the whole society.
Even accepting these realities, which occurred at a given point in our historical development, and whose responsibility was solely that of the generations active at that time, nothing obliges current generations to accept this decision they had nothing to do with as something unchanging and unchangeable. It is like trying to establish, for life of the nation, a Gordian knot, which can not be undone, on pain of being stigmatized as a traitor.
When these decisions were taken and were implemented, they ignored all of our republican history, as well as the principles established by our forefathers and thinkers who had fought and won independence from Spain, and the creation of a republic with all and for the good of all, based on democratic principles.
Why could all could be changed in 1959 and now it can not be done again? Is it that the generations active in 1959 were more intelligent and wise than those in 1900 and now? Were they considered to be more patriotic?A Nation is not anyone’s personal feud nor their ideas, however important or not a performance was in a given historical moment, and to pretend it is is nonsense. Children do not have to pay for the sins of their parents.
The present generations have the full right to change anything they deem necessary to change. No one can limit them to simply refurbishing a badly constructed social edifice. The present and immediate future belongs to them and their children, rather than to past generations who, at one point may have been revolutionary and progressive, and who played a role, but now have ceased to be. Wanting to keep laws and decrees, that sooner or later will be abolished, is something that has clearly demonstrated its inefficiency and failure and is an attempt to unnecessarily prolong the agony of the nation.
Let us put our feet on earth, as one of the recent government slogans says, and understand once and for all that the process of change in a society is unstoppable and that like it or not, it will happen. In addition, social change does not allow straitjackets. Recent developments in the international arena prove this.
A few days ago I went to Santiago de Chile, a beautiful city that like her Cuban namesake city is in a depression. The difference is great, although they both speak Spanish. This is a city that from last year’s earthquake which had a magnitude of that in Haiti, suffered as much damage as that other country, plus a tsunami. However, when we went to the airport yesterday to pick up a very dear friend who came from Miami to this city just to see me, I realized (as I hadn’t when I arrived for obvious reasons), that this air terminal, which had suffered the strong shocks of the earthquake, was completely restored, as if nothing had happened. Also the rest of the capital looks bright, as clean and flowery as usual.
Yesterday my friend Ritza and I went to the free municipal museum of Matta, to a beautiful exhibition of paintings, “The Return of the Worm Joseph” by Nicolas Camus Joannon. We also saw another of photography, “The World at Night,” by different artists. In addition to enjoying, enormously, these two exhibits, we toured the beautiful gardens of the house, taking advantage of the good weather to take some photos.
As we left the place, more than satisfied and smiling, we approached a few students who were at the bus stop to ask how much the fare cost. They very kindly told us that we had to buy a card and that to get it, we had to walk quite a ways since the place where they were sold was a bit far.
As they told us this I said that walking wasn’t a problem for me because I come from a planet where we have to walk a lot. One of them asked me where this planet was, and I answered: Cuba. My friend spoke up and said, “I’m also from this planet but now I live on the other shore, in Miami.”
They laughed, said goodbye and we continued our journey. I was thinking about the anniversary of Girón, or the Bay of Pigs as it is also known, which is commemorated on this day. I was a little sad to think that at that event Cubans from both shores faced off against each other and we were all hurt.
Tuesday 9 May, on listening to the reading, on the National Television News, of the official daily press note from Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba, I remembered the old joke about Napoleon, Granma and the Battle of Waterloo: “If Napoleon had had a newspaper like Granma nobody would know, yet, of his defeat at Waterloo. ”
The praise has a Spanish-Creole version: “If the Spanish monarchy had had to rely on reports from Granma, the world still wouldn’t know who lost, in 1898, the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.”
The evocation of the joke about the usual disinformation of the partisan scrap of paper comes to mind because in the press note above, as serious as the pompous voice of the announcer, the paper reports on the police who caused the death of the peaceful opponent Wilfredo Soto Juan Garcia, who received a beating on Thursday May 5 at Vidal Park in Santa Clara, from where he was taken to the police station and from there to the provincial hospital, where he died three days later.
The free-form and biased version from Granma doesn’t limit itself to masking the death of former political prisoner and member of the Central Opposition Coalition; as if that were not enough it goes on to talk of alleged criminal record of the decedent’s and blames his death on his health problems, which did have but which were compounded by the caresses of the military.
Granma’s press note would not have been written if the incident had no significance in and out of the island. The night before, the Spanish reporter Mauricio Vicent published in El Pais (Spain): “Death of a dissident after being beaten up by the police.” The Spanish writer cites the twitter of Yoani Sanchez, who warned that “this police brutality is not an isolated case.”
The network of bloggers and independent journalists such as Guillermo Fariñas, Martha Beatriz Roque and others, knew the agony of Soto Garcia, whose crime was to refuse to leave the park in their city, located 280 km from Havana.
Clothes make the man. Granma distorts what happened instead of denouncing it and demanding criminal responsibility for those responsible for the death of a sick citizen, kicked in the public street. In February and March 2010, Granma and Cuban National Television News denigrated Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in prison after a prolonged hunger strike to demand an end to the beatings in prison. They also slandered the journalist Guillermo Fariñas Hernandez for declaring a hunger strike to demand the release of ailing political prisoners.
Granma reporters, like Napoleon, who sent Paris fictitious reports from the battlefields, and like the colonial government in Cuba, who embellished the reports to Madrid and described supporters of independence as “rascals, lowlifes and highwaymen,” entangled themselves in a lie rather than conform to the truth.