Translating Cuba

Robin Hood fights against injustices and the powerful and shares the spoils taken from the rich among the poor of Sherwood Forest. The most humble are happy, but when he exhausted the fortune from “unjust enrichment”, he went to the city of Nottingham, installed himself in the castle, stripped the needy of their paltry wealth to distribute it among the poor of Yorkshire County with the result that in the end he redistributed poverty. Many suspect that his kindness and supposed solidarity was a way to hide hid inefficiency in administering the wood and his ineptitude in creating wealth. His economic stupidity is such that if Locksley were in a desert, he would long since have had to import sand.

Whether in medieval times or any times there will always be a John Lackland for the bandits.

May 2 2011

For Raul, the mathematician:

Education has been inadequate and we have graduated students from college who, with their in terms of meeting the requirements and quality, never should have been given a degree.

I remember how the Cuban press published such things as students in the United States did not know where Nicaragua was, or thought that the deceased was a bone in the neck. Well, a documentary is circulating with similar questions posed not to students, but to Cuban teachers. Also circulating is an email message about an assessment of 2009 students on the point of graduating. And there is another documentary where they randomly ask (including many young people) for Rosa’s Shoes by Jose Marti!

All three show the ignorance of the respondents. I work with my son who must take his entrance exams in May and who is the result of five years of sport education and the latter has not been much different. I have not been able to pay for tutors except in specific subjects, and this year, like the last, my husband and I have had to make adjustments to be able to pay at least in mathematics, but there was no one with any openings.

I myself gave classes up to the 12th grade and I narrated my experience with “General Integrated Teachers” in another post. This by way of a long introduction to show that I am aware of the issue, which worries me a lot.

… Not only in our society, but in any, participation is sometimes gained and on occasion snatched. Give us responsibility, show us what our role is, the nobility of the cause we are being asked to fight for.

Raul, as I see it, there is a contradiction in your words. If participation is gained and sometimes snatched, young people do not have to wait because no one tells them what their role is. Their intelligence, their preparation and the commitment they have acquired toward society should be justification enough to assume what they consider appropriate.

I believe that our historic leaders, being so old, are detached from the interests and aspirations of young people; they do not know what they want and can not understand because there are two generations in between them. The desire to maintain the current system (I seriously doubt that it’s about socialism), is natural for those who have tried to implement it for more than half a century, not necessarily to meet the expectations of the emerging generations, that is to deny the dialectic.

I have left out very extensive things, that I don’t like, but the post appears very interesting to me.

Many thanks.

Translator’s notes: In this series of posts Regina is re-posting comments she makes on the blog La Joven Cuba, which is a shared blog from students at Matanzas University.

April 27 2011

Yesterday began the process of sanctification of Pope John Paul II, who put his stamp on the second half of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first, leaving his temporary earthly life to join that of eternal heaven. Undoubtedly he was a different Pope. A global pilgrim, e took his ministry to the most remote corners of the world, and was heard and respected by believers and nonbelievers. Charismatic, a natural communicator, he established ties of love and peace with all peoples, deeply affecting children and young people, adults and elders of both sexes.

He lived in difficult times and in glorious ones, marked by fascism, the Second World War, totalitarianism, the Cold War and the collapse of the socialist camp–a giant with feet of clay, a utopia built against the grain of history–that turned into a daily tragedy for the many who suffered and those few who still suffer.

Honest and demanding of himself and with the doctrine of his Church, he always spoke out, expressing his feelings and what he considered correct at the time, undeterred by adverse opinions nor seduced by the need for approval. Controversial, he dabbled in all areas of worldly and spiritual life, and his voice was capable of reaching the most dissimilar ears. An ecumenical pope, he held out his hand to all varieties within Christianity and even other religions, uniting in the convergences, seeking the greatness of human beings in love and brotherhood and not hatred and violence.

From his native Poland he was projected to the world and never tired of traveling it, even when his physical strength waned. As in many other countries, he was among us. In the bright January of 1998 I heard a young and distinct address, different from the old, outdated, repetitive and boring of every other day, teaching us to not be afraid and to take our own destiny into our hands.

Undoubtedly, despite our national tragedy that has gone on too long, we had the good fortune to live the time of a momentous Pope, to whom Cubans are still in debt.

May 2 2011

I get up, got to the mirror to brush my teeth, and discover that my eyes are slanted. I can’t turn on the light because Rafa is sleeping; I prefer to think that I didn’t sleep well and that it’s because of the shadows in the room and I leave it.

I turn on the TV to see the Literary News from the Cuban press and understand nothing, the credits are unintelligible and all the announcers have eyes like mine. Now I know! The exaggerated military focus and the cult of personality of the Maximum Leader has Koreanized the Cuban caiman.

The incapacity of reclaim rights in Korea is something that affects even the members of the Politburo. I don’t know if they receive more money than the rest of the natives, but closeness to power gives them such advantages and influence that money passes to an inferior plane. In this way they fulfill the precept of false equality in the autocracies of the left.

Beyond sarcasm, the number of times they rehearsed the parade for April 16th, when they began the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the “Bay of Pigs Victory” was incredible. Truly, there are times I think that Cuba is North Korea.

It saddens me to think of the families that cook with kerosene or that have nothing to warm their children’s breakfast before they go to school, and how much fuel has been wasted in preparing for the march and in the march itself.

Also how, in workplaces, they are prohibited from turning on their air conditioners, despite the torrid heat of the tropics, because that have exceeded the energy conservation goal for the month. It’s this way in my production facilities and even hospitals.

But what really motivated these lines, was a personal experience I want to relate to you. Juan Manuel is a young professional working in a hospital in the capital and is a friend of my eldest son.

On Friday the 15th in the afternoon, we went by his house to see him and while there, the chair of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) came to demand his presence in the delegation that would go to the square the next day, representing that CDR. Our friend said he would participate for his workplace, to which the chair argued that a he must submit a paper certifying that, because if he wasn’t going to march for one or the other, he should stay and do “volunteer work” in the block along with the other neighbors who would attend.

Incredulous, we were discussing it with him and his mother, talking that these coercive gears and likely we are to hear on national television, as always happens, the interviewers talking to foreign guests about the “spontaneity” of people’s participation in the event. As if we Cubans don’t know how these “voluntary and obligatory” mechanisms that characterize the activities of this type in our country really work!

Hurrah Kim! Those who goto simulate freedom, salute you..

April 20 2011

Every day the information is more easily filtered from the closed official archives to those alternative networks where the news networks run without brakes. It escapes in floods–and not only in WikiLeaks–these well kept secrets and jealously guarded data. This avalanche of revelations has us believing that in Cuba we are living in a time of liberalization but not in the experimental style for the Spanish at the end of the seventies.

Ours, rather, is well fed on these previously hidden details of our national history, drawing on passages silenced by the press. One of the most shocking revelations of recent times occurred in January 2010 and was associated with the death–by starvation and cold–of more than thirty patients in the Havana psychiatric hospital. Around 300 photos taken during their autopsies escaped the controls and passed into the hands of citizens, showing the state of deterioration and maltreatment they’d been exposed to in life.

We never knew for sure who took this sequence of images in the Institute of Legal Medicine, nor how, in a few weeks, thousands of citizens viewed those emaciated corpses, with their contusions and neglect. Only after we had entered through forbidden paths, did the television make a brief announcement about the deaths.

A restless camera had also filmed, two years earlier, the discussion between a university student in computer science and the president of the parliament. Mr. Ricardo Alarcon could only reply to the young man’s incisive questions with certain unfortunate phrases, a nervous wringing of the hands, and some slogans.

The resulting video spread like wildfire and that high cheek-boned face, with the firmly stated questions, became a kind of popular leader for daring to say publicly what so many remain silent about. In addition to evidence of social discontent, the spread of those recorded minutes corroborated something very important: the efficacy of the clandestine channels of communication to divulge the forbidden. And we saw an effective way to jump over the censorship.

After that incident, the flood of information intensified, the network to spontaneously spread the news strengthened, and state monopoly on information seemed to yield before the force of citizens. So that our liberalization didn’t come, as in the Spanish case, in the form of bikinis or risqué films, but it has arrive in the little bellies of USB flash memories and in the thin surfaces of CDs and DVDs.

The latest example of the inability to keep something far from prying eyes has been the publication of the Fidel Castro’s macrobiotic diet. Designed and supervised by a leading institution specializing in nutrition, the select menu passed to the public arena in all its details.
The list includes everything from seaweed brought from Japan to brown rice harvested with zero pesticides or fertilizers. In a country where the greatest question people ask every day is “what will I eat today?” this discovery came as a bucket of cold water.

Beyond the outrageous cost of such an exclusive diet, what has most upset those in on the Island is that such excesses are committed under the mask of discourse or militant austerity and discipline. On the other hand, it has unleashed a veritable witch hunt, on the part of those in charge of information security at the scientific center, to determine those responsible for the leak of the Maximum Leader’s menu. Analyzing what happened is like watching a bag full of water begin to be punctured by small holes, until it is entirely emptied.

The leaks can destroy a system that has relied too long on secrecy. The Palace whispers can no longer be contained, the corruption scandals, the ousted officials, all pass within hours to the public realm. It is not as if 11 million Cubans believe that the Commander in Chief eats the same that each of them receive on the ration market quota, but the enormous difference between what is on their plates and that of another has left them bewildered.

In a country strangled by the financial crisis, the dual currency and low productivity, docking a ship laden with macrobiotic products arriving from Italy, in order to keep one man alive, leads to a lot of talk. It’s like a leap into the abyss, as most Cubans have no idea what organic farming, pesticide-free vegetables, much less first press olive oil are. The schizophrenic duality between what is said from the dais and what happens behind the doors of senior officials is overwhelming.

It is also a relief, however, to know that nothing remains hidden behind the curtains, and that we will not have to wait decades for the declassification of the what is hidden today. Each day the time gap between what happens and when we learn about it is shorter, every week that passes it is harder to hide information.

Perhaps right now a white-bearded old man is lifting a spoon of natural couscous to his mouth, taking as well a small portion of delicately-flavored sushi. He thinks he is alone but an eager crowd looks on. Each ounce that he lifts to his mouth is known in advance, every detail he has hidden in the past will also be known.

5 May 2011

Diario de Cuba y el dia antes, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo.

Cuban intellectuals, both on the island and in exile, try to imagine from time to time the more comfortable scenario of the day after. After, it is understood, the Revolution.

Each offers his pebble of futuristic prose about it. Our army of national Nostradamuses reiterates topics and styles. The death of the Maximum Leader. Succession by consanguinity. Lack of charisma in the higher spheres plus corruption at all levels. Slow decline or sudden chaos. Hypothetical popular protests in a copy-and-paste from the Internet. Ungovernable island. And, in the end, the foreign intervention postponed not since 1959, but 1933, at least. The saga of the day after, so far. And, after the day after, the deluge: democracy in perpetuity is assumed.

These post-country predictions, more or less documented and fundamentalist, be they involuntary or ex-professed, described a uchronic arch that goes from the native spiritualism of Cintio Vitier, to the most diplomatic praxis of Carlos Alberto Montaner, passing through more than few interviews with Fidel Castro himself, the naivety of the neo-socialist tantrums of the Cuban Communist Party, and some science fiction pamphlets no less laughable for the precariousness reality.

I could also pass myself off as oracle now. Pose as a fortune-teller int he face of posterity, in a hopeless beforehand bid because, as we know, History has no subjunctive mood. And from every side of the cosmetic and chromosomal changes in Cuba, those above will always call up his image and likeness, leaving on the cutting room floor anything that doesn’t fit the social consensus.

But I wonder whether it would be more profitable to chew on the rhetoric of the day before, this theater of operations by which, in principle, no one would have to wait, as part of the scraping the daily monolith of the official discourse, reducing it almost without wanting to to an implausible sawdust. The greatest display of imagination is not already in the slight-of-hand of who watches the horizon (it would be in the style of a military strategist with binoculars), but in fearlessly reading what’s in front of our noses. The day before is, most of all, immediacy. And that imminence terrifies the inertia of our mental repertoire.

To think of the day before in Cuba today would mean to have a desire to participate, to postulate, to engage in Realpolitik with the State and not only with the foreign press, to name things and traumas: the dead, memory, civil peace at the cost of repression? Latin America as a thieving, or at least violent, neighbor? The advantages of State Security? Constitutionality versus revenge? Multi-party system versus ruins? The nightmare of lost properties, and a roughness where Cubans can come to cannibalize Cubans. In short, we have to stop making poetry of statistics or of the heart, and be honest at least once since 1902, or perhaps since 1492.

To think, the day before day in Cuba is, also, a question of adult citizenship that in time learns the wisdom of ceasing to be an adolescent. Nobody wants to live in a era that has been left behind, from the Maximum Leader to the smallest self-employed. Having nothing to lose except their chains is perhaps a guarantee of change (even in its most simplistic slogans, Marxism has withered away).

It would not be idle to remember that, in elementary arithmetic, without first planting the day before, of course, we can never have reforestation the day after. Cuban intellectuals know this, but both in exile and on the island,they are more than willing to come in last in this steeple-chase race against the exhausted Revolution. Our vocation as witnesses supersedes any biographical temptation. As earlier with the notion of theoretical communism in the materialist workbooks, the transition is now comfortable no-man’s-land that everyone talks about but where no one wants to live.

May 2 2011

Joven interceptado tras performance en Plaza 1ro Mayo 2011, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo.

A young man is stopped and subjected to a check after his performance at the end of the parade on May Day in the Plaza of the Revolution, Havana, Cuba.

The boy looked very embarrassed, almost hysterical and crying as he overreacted to the civil authorities (State Security) who separated him from people and berated him against the railing in front of the monolith.

He was dressed in the orange overall of the terrorist prisoners at the American Naval Base in Guantanamo, Cuba. He carried a placard with anti-imperialist slogans. He was barefoot and masked. One of his captors is the famous Pavón who blocks the entrances of Cuban movie theaters to bloggers.

Hopefully this young man could be quickly identified and will have no problem with the Cuban authorities for his ingenious demonstration.

May 1 2011

One

Wael Ghonim

The sui generis Egyptian revolution which occurred very recently changed the status of two people in particular. The first, Hosni Mubarak, moved from an everlasting and plenipotentiary leader of the African nation, to swell the list of dictators happily overthrown. The second: Wael Ghonim. A name unknown until recently and who would soon be considered by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in the world, in its list of 100.

A professional in computing, a Google executive, and a fearless activist, Ghonim inscribed his name in the history of his country by developing an effective campaign of information and organization against Mubarak, employing social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Two

Mark Zuckerberg

Strongly related thematically to the previous name, another name that a few years ago could have been mistaken for a football player, or a professor of anthropology; not only does he share a place among the 100 characters that move the planet today, but he possesses one of the most mouth dropping fortunes, with nearly 7 billion dollars: Mark Zuckerberg.

Thanks to him, the globe grows smaller every day, I talk with my Cuban friends across the sea, and Egyptian revolutionaries–including Ghonim–taught the tyrant Mubarak to the times of the eternal pharaohs are in the distant past. The word “Facebook” must be one of the most used in all the languages we speak today.

Three

Yoani Sánchez

Not long ago, a Cuban in her thirties outshone the stardom of almost all the enemies of the gerontocratic of the regime that governs her country. Yoani Sánchez shares the now historic podium with those who belong to the Castro family, their acolytes and gatekeepers, considered the most visible faces of evil.

What has been the terrible work of this driven woman from Havana? Simple: to dare to have a blog. To dare to use Twitter as an unclosable door of freedom and expansion. And to spread the virus of cyber-expression to Cuban souls who will, in the future and to a greater or lesser extent, integrate themselves into this axis of evil (from the official point of view).

It doesn’t surprise me that some of the Island’s traditional opponents, brave as borders, have a grudge against this girl of Generation Y: she has unwittingly become Public Enemy Number 1 of the tropical dictatorship.

Four

Sohaib Athar

In the early morning in his peaceful region, a night owl twitterer was surprised by the noise of helicopters in an area where the only thing that flies in the heavens are birds of prey. Seconds later, hearing the sound of bombardment, continuous shooting, Sohaib Athar realized that what he heard in his district of Abbottabad was not a product of his fertile imagination, but something momentous, worthy of being tweeted, happening a few steps from his home.

What this Pakistani never would have assumed is that in that instant he became the first person in history to cover a momentous event via Twitter: almost step-by-step this man informed the world before anyone else, before any powerful television channel, of the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Five

Rest in Hell

During the structural planning of the concealed bunker that would host him as of 2005, the protectors of the world’s most wanted terrorist thought with devastating logic: one of the simplest ways to capture a pursued man is through communication devices.

In his residential complex of high walls and extreme vigilance, the mega-millionaire and mega-assasin Bin Laden survived peacefully, without telephone, television or the Internet. He believed he was more protected without these communication media, and

What his strategies found impossible to provide is precisely this detail that would turn irremediably against him: an enormous house valued at one million dollars, that turns its back on communications, technology, could only be a place that is hiding something. And hidden within it, was someone very important.

According to the CIA reports, their lack of any telephone, television or Internet services was one of the determining points to conclude who its terrible inhabitant was.

Epilogue

There are those who still do not understand that technology has become the best ally of the free and democratic mentalities in the world. People who distrust the devastating power reached by an invention without pretensions, as the Internet once was. Those who can not explain why the totalitarian governments that still swarm around the world, furiously insist on controlling, with an iron fist, the access of their subjects to advanced technologies, be it cell phones, satellite antennas, or a World Wide Web connection, must know: the balance of forces, the global picture has changed. And the modern era, with its creations of science fiction, and something like an implacable cyber-justice, increasingly complicate the impunity of terrorists and dictators in either hemisphere.

May 3 2011

Two weeks after the conclusion of the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, they have not yet published the definitive version of the guidelines which, according to their own report, are the fruit of the reformulation during which 68 percent of the population discussed the project. However, on the TV news report about the May Day March, the journalists extracted from those they interviewed expressions of support for the “acts of the Sixth Congress,” as if anyone knew for sure what had finally been agreed upon.

I wonder if those who run this country see this blind loyalty, deaf, mute, and even stupid among their followers as a good thing or a bad thing. For how long are they going to be proud of such nonsense?

3 May 2011