Decisions / Pedro Arguelles Moran / Voices Behind The Bars

This past 18th of January, it was the 7th year and 10th month anniversary since we 8 members from the group of the 75 were kidnapped by the communist political police.  During this entire time, we’ve been hostages of the totalitarian Cuban regime.  Two days later, at around 7pm,  they took me to the office of the chief director of Canaleta Prison, the penitentiary where I am jailed.  The chief was there along with a gorgeous psychologist from the Interior Ministry.  They both tried to convince me that, given my age and state of health, the best option for me would be to depart from the island and into exile.

A few days ago, a doctor casually performed a medical check-up on me, informing me that my liver was inflamed and that I could not participate in hunger strikes.  I told her that I have no interest in leaving my homeland, for I was born here and I wish to die here.  At some point during the exchange of opinions the prison chief informed me that he had contacted me so that I could speak on the phone with Cardinal Jaime Ortega.  Ortega, who is also the archbishop of Havana, wanted to speak to me.  I made it clear that I didn’t have anything to talk to his Eminence about.  During July 10th of last year I already made it clear to him when I spoke to him on the phone that I was not going to leave my country.

The psychologist told me that people change opinions and, in turn, their decisions.  I replied to her that yes, she was correct, and that in fact, in the year 1961 (when I was only 13 years old) I joined the Conrado Benitez Brigade in order to work on the literacy campaign.  I was also a militiaman, for I had enlisted in the army, as I pretended to be older than I really was.  I belonged to the Association of Young Rebels and I considered myself a full-fledged “Country or Death” revolutionary.  Today, however, I am anti-Castro and anti-communist, and I am deeply convinced and committed to the honorable civil struggle in order to achieve that democratic transition which we so long for.

The good-looking psychological professional emphasized that the opportunity I was turning down was an opportunity that others were desperately crying out to have.  I flat out told her that I was the one who was going to desperately cry out if I were exiled from the largest of the Antilles.  In sum, I told the chief of Canaleta that I was going back to my cell and that if Cardinal Ortega called for me, to tell him, on my behalf, that “I do not want to leave my country.”  This is a decision I have developed over time and with much conscience ever since 1993, when I actually took part in an attempt to leave the country illegally via Havana.  I learned that, amid all the processes against me, my destiny was to remain in my country and to peacefully struggle for the human rights and freedoms which are inherent to human dignity.  And this is a decision I will maintain until the very last consequences because my life choice is to continue onward and to uphold the philosophy of Marti, which states, “the duty of a man is to reside where he is most useful.”  Amen.

Pedro Arguelles Moran
Prisoner of Conscience
Provincial Prison of Canaleta, Ciego de Avila

Me, the Terrorist / Ernesto Morales Licea

Suddenly I saw myself as the murderer before a possible victim: doubting, considering the possibility, weighing pros and cons. Like an inexperienced criminal warning of his intention to commit the crime, but not quite daring. Perhaps the only thing different in my case was the body of the crime.

I had no intentions of taking the life of anyone, or stealing their money and clothes. I only had a book in my hands, a crisp and provocative book whose price I simply couldn’t afford.

To put it in perspective for the readers: I was sitting on the second floor of a bookstore whose name, out of basic common sense, I prefer to hide. (I wouldn’t like, that in the future, this story would give me the title of a suspect in a place which I want to become my second home).

From my place at the mahogany table, one arm leaning on the railing, I had the privilege of seeing the fascinating panorama of buyers, students with homework half done, soft colors of countless books. I was watching the beautiful painting on the well-lit ceiling with some of the most famous faces in the world of literature: Fitzgerald, Rimbaud, Wilde.

I had arrived a little before two in the afternoon. I’d ordered a cappuccino, set up my laptop — a loan from a kind and adorable soul — on an empty table, and searched the shelves for books in Spanish until I ended up at my seat with six books whose prices, for now, were prohibitive for me. Ten minutes after ten that night, I was still there.

Among hundreds of volumes that in Cuba would have been Utopia, and the free wireless surfing offered every day in that place, the hours flew by, and suddenly I found myself fascinated with one book in particular, a survivor I couldn’t resign myself to returning to its shelf, as I had done with the rest.

“Terrorist” it said on the cover. The author: John Updike. One of the masters of American narrative. Twenty-eight dollars to take it with me. A swallow of gringo coffee, to ease the sadness.

And suddenly with butterflies in my stomach, the subversive thought: “After eight hours here, who watches that I don’t pack it up with the laptop, that I don’t smuggle it out of this bookstore.” Libro — book — and libre — free — in my language they look the same. They should be synonyms. And in my hand, Updike’s novel, unresisting, no complaints.

To put it in perspective for my readers a second time: It’s common practice in the country I come from. It’s a way of life. Steal to survive. Steal to eat, clothe yourself, put shoes on your feet. Steal to brush your teeth, get a ride somewhere. Steal to read, also, and to dream just a little of freedom.

In Cuba, according to the humorous works of Osvaldo Doimeadiós, everyone steals. And without the least guilt, which is really cruel. I’m pointing out the truth: Not from one another, everyone steals from the State, the owner of the newspapers, the grocery stores, the parks and their sparrows. And the bookstores. Everyone steals from this omnipresent owner if the occasion presents itself. And then they have the amazing cheek to boast about it. In Cuba, to ransack the State is a social practice too widespread for something called civic conscience to stop one’s hand.

Why? Why don’t Cubans respect the norms of coexistence, why has helping oneself to the State coffers become a custom as common as salsa dancing and playing baseball? Elemental: When no one can live honestly with what they earn for a month’s work; and when the cause of this situation — the State — is very easy to identify because they own and control everything, to take the hard way what is impossible to achieve in a good way, is an ugly but necessary method of survival.

Immediate consequences: To steal from Big Brother is now an uncensured practice. Uncensured socially, that is. But not legally.

There is a second reason: When citizens don’t feel gratitude for what surrounds them, the result is disrespect. When a Cuban has to spend days in a bus terminal, waiting for some vehicle of mercy to travel to his province, it’s very hard not to destroy the benches, to steal the soap — if there is any — in the bathrooms, to perceive this institution as anything but hostile, an enemy, to feel no gratitude for anything, and to inflict whatever damage is possible on everything within reach.

This explains the ruinous state of so many public institutions, urban transport, filthy hospitals, or movie theaters in my country: The employees steal and loot and destroy, the customers steal and loot and destroy. This also explains the poor misguided people who come to the United States ready to do the same to Uncle Sam, and end up behind bars, suffering terribly, until the documentary filmmaker Estela Bravo rescues them with her compassionate productions.

And this explains, ultimately, that those in Cuban know that man doesn’t live by bread and remittances alone, but needs books like vital oxygen, and doesn’t hesitate to steal them when a distracted librarian or a rude seller leaves the slightest margin to do so.

The assorted local libraries in my country, are children of a permanent state of theft. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Let whomever is free of this sin, among Cuban booklovers, cast the first stone.

But what did I do now? Why not just do what instinct told me to do and not leave John Updike’s “Terrorist” on its crowded shelf? The same thing that made me return the novel proudly to where it belonged. The same thing that prevented me from bringing harmful practices to the new society that just admitted me. Read it well: It’s called gratitude.

Gratitude to whom? To a bookstore where I sat for eight hours without anyone asking for my identification, questioning my ideology, or inquiring about what I had come to do. A bookstore where the person who serves me coffee smiles at me, where they hold the door open for me to pass through. Gratitude to this gorgeous place, well lit, where no one questions my sitting in one place, spending barely three dollars, while they offer me free Internet — Good God! Free Internet for a blogger recently arrived from the Island! — without asking me what I am using it for.

And perhaps more fundamentally: Gratitude for a society, that imperfect and deserving of censure it is in other things, allows places like this, private businesses like this, to proliferate for the benefit of their owners and of all citizens.

Three days ago I returned “Terrorist” to the place from which it is sold. It’s not the best novel I will read, I believe, and soon, very soon, I will be able to pay a friendly employee the twenty-eight dollar price of the latest work of this universal master.

Then I found out — sweating bullets — a revealing fact: All the books that aren’t paid for, on passing through the door, activate a security mechanism that floods the room with noise. I don’t remember if after finding out I looked toward heaven, and again showed gratitude. I should have.

But in that second, while returning the novel to its place on the shelf, no one would have understood my secret happiness. No one other than me would have understood the importance of an act like that, where a young man educated in social disrespect just savored the taste of the word civility. The word honesty, in its institutional home.

And don’t doubt it: he knows it very well.

Translated by:Daniel Gonzalez

January 25 2011

Havana Without Water, Another Headache for the Regime / Iván García

Photo: Martha Beatriz Roque

“Not even by paying 10 CUC (12 dollars) can a family get a pipa (water truck) in order to fill buckets, tanks and containers,” says Liudmila, a resident of El Calvario, a desolate hamlet south of Havana. Although there have been deliveries of water lately, shortages continue.

In the first week of January, in El Calvario there were 5 days without water. The lack of pipas to alleviate the water shortage created a very tense situation for people. The same thing has happened in other places, where there have been no lack of protests.

The drought that has affected the Cuban capital for 7 years has caused a deficit of more than 328 thousand cubic meters of water. The dramatic shortage has led to reductions in the delivery of the precious liquid to 10 of the 15 municipalities of Havana.

If you add to the disastrous drought the fact that 60% of potable water distributed in the city is lost due to breaks and leaks in the pipes, and that 128 major industrial centers in the capital use three times what they need, then in addition to being serious, the problem becomes complex.

Excessive exploitation of surface and ground water has resulted in the collapse of different supply points to the capital, with water quantities well below their capacity.

From 2003 to date, the average rainfall for Havana was as high as 89%. This has been the driest period in the last 49 years.

The provincial supervision of water resources in the capital has activated a Code Red. Five years ago, the company Aguas de La Habana, with hard currency financing from a Catalan society, began to restore the deteriorating distribution networks, but the work has been slow and insufficient.

Only 20% of the pipes in the city have been repaired, due to their age and a chronic lack of maintenance, which has left them severely damaged. The broken pipes in turn make a mess of the public roads, which are full of holes, due to torrential water flows daily in the streets.

Then there is the main aqueduct, the Albear, which was built in the 19th century and designed for a population of 400,000. Today Havana is a city of over 2,500,000 inhabitants. The most critical situation in the water supply occurs in the municipalities of Arroyo Naranjo, Habana Vieja and Centro Habana.

In the late 80’s the El Gato water main, on the outskirts of the city, began to function. But between the severe drought, the absence of systematic repairs and the lack of spare parts, it is working at less than 50% capacity.

To reverse the delicate situation, the Institute of Hydraulic Resources intends to quickly implement 14 investments to alleviate the crisis. They are valued at 7.5 million convertible pesos (about $9 million) and involve placing 22 kilometers of pipes. If these works are not carried out soon, for spring, the deficit of water will reach 493,640 cubic meters of water.

In Havana, more than 70,000 families have no direct access to drinking water. They have to carry it in buckets, tanks and other containers. When stored, it becomes a dangerous breeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a transmitter of deadly diseases such as dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Due to the scarcity of water in poor neighborhoods, there are people who are paid 100 pesos (5 dollars) to fill a 55-gallon tank. “In addition to earning money, I get exercise,” says Philip, a bodybuilder engaged in the business of carrying water.

If in the coming months the powerful drought continues, if water is squandered and doesn’t reach households and production centers, the government of General Raúl Castro will have a new headache. Another one.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 25 2011

Flags / Claudia Cadelo

To catch the pulse of reality is hard, and to portray that rhythm in a short film of less than an hour is even more so. However, Eduardo del Llano not only does it, he makes you laugh over what you would normally mourn. I see his work and wonder how it is possible that I don’t laugh all day, surrounded as I am by characters like Nicanor and Rodriguez. That is, of course, one of the delightful charms of film.

In “Aché,” one of his latest productions, a couple debate the social advantage of having a Cuban flag hanging from the balcony. The film has everything, from a guy who claims to have learned to be a communist because Ernesto Guevara loaned him a tire wrench, to the mistress of a deputy minister who seems to have an infinite supply of Cuban flags purchased abroad. The story develops in the seventies and, except for the flag hanger, could be Havana in 2011. The whole plot is connected by the hilarious desire of the protagonist to get approval to go to France on a scholarship.

With excellent performances by Luis Alberto Garcia as the likable Nicanor, Néstor Jiménez as the rigid Rodríguez, and Laura de la Uz as the reading teacher who “is still there,” it returns to the task of these sagas which is to cheer us up a little in our existence in this country that, in the words of Rodríguez, is one for all: it’s yours and, according the Nicanor, “that” must be grasped in moderation.

Message from Jorge Ángel Hernández / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate

About the text “A little ashamed of ourselves” by Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel, in response to “The crisis of low culture” of Francis Sánchez.

My friend Riverón,

Although I consider friendship one of the gifts that should be defended at all costs, I also think that standards about things that happen in life, art and literature, should, if not considered equally, at least be ahead by a nose at the finish line. Quite often our personal discussions have raised the tone to the point that only friendship has stopped the harmful avalanche of blindness on both sides. I also value highly the grateful recognition of good deeds from others who are not exactly part of that small group of friends, even more those that honestly spring from the adversaries who have accompanied us on the same journey.

This long speech, that you know well, maybe with more humorous tones and turns, as I like to talk person to person, allows me to introduce, in this communication that already I’ve given permission for you to use publicly if you feel it necessary, an idea that, although predictable given the many anecdotes that I can relate as a witness, does not stop surprising me negatively:

I’m referring to the treacherous message that Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel circulated and in which he tried to insult you “considering that an editor at the head of a publishing house with which he began to reach his first little bit of prestige,” is obliged to assume, without any benefit of the doubt, the fair and deserved price of his pay.

I remember at that time our poet and anti-fascist fighter, not “litigious” as he says, (as a lawyer, knowing what the word means by which meaning you would have put in a cumbersome legal process that did not occur) but haggled over I believe with good cause, his fees, which were set at the amount he demanded, in my opinion unjust, much less than he would have deserved.

I know the details because I also saw a dodge that consisted in declaring that he didn’t agree with the price, and, from respect for the scandal and out of solidarity with Boitel, he settled for a meager sum, and I hope the copies of the contract may serve as further proof and challenge as well a search for any proof of a “claim.”

What he did was to lobby senior officials to press his demand for payment and talk about the incident to many, too many, people. I also remember how you assumed as your own problem that he could attend the award ceremony for the poetry prize, which he won in a closed vote in the Casa de las Americas contest, news he received a few hours before, and how you pledged both your institutional influence and your personal courage as an intellectual and editor at a time when he was the subject of satirical gossip in much of the country.

I assumed he was grateful for these efforts, happily accomplished, even more upon hearing himself reclaimed — during the meeting, or encounter, that we had in the Villa Clara UNEAC with Iroel Sánchez and Omar Valiño, that is, the “duo of the Party,” who took the trouble to talk to us about what was happening around what I named the “Pavonazo” phenomenon at work — that attendance at the awards was definite and that the Casa de las Americas, naming Jorge Fornet as the irresponsible person, and careful of saving the “diplomatic decency” of Roberto Fernandez Retamar, had failed to inform him the following year, once his book was in circulation, about “What his role would be in the activities of the award,” and that they would not offer him any support.

That said about your commentary “Eating from the new-born turkey” (“pavo” — turkey — is a play on “Pavón”), which now seems so suspicious to him and about which he did not issue any opinion even though we were provoked to do it during those conversations. That attitude confirms that the title of what was written by Francis Sánchez continues to be accurate, since it confused the low cravings for the role with the lower passions and culture is something mean in the most Marti concept of the term. And although perhaps the overwhelming majority feels that he justly deserves not even the honor of the insult, the basic instinct of my low passions requests a retribution.

So, friend, on behalf of those dishonest and opportunistic intellectuals with a double standard, that like the dreadful English of Neruda we still hate, in virtue of what appears unthinkable “to take them out of circulation and credit” I ask you for an apology. I am ashamed that such a fight broke out in the midst of a moment that in my opinion is crucial to the cultural destiny of those of us who continue deciding to build from within.

A hug, and no antidepressants.

Jorge Angel Hernández

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007

Papa’s Boys / Iván García

The children of certain heads of the nomenklatura have their own style. They wear designer clothes. Drink cognac or whiskey. They have their own cars. Internet at home. They’re fond of good food and spend nights dancing in the best discotheques in the city.

They have a passport to travel abroad. And in private they inhale more cocaine than a vacuum cleaner. They’re fans of lesbian pictures and sex with several girls. To obey form and follow in the footsteps of their parents, they study at military colleges.

They study either administration or marketing at prestigious schools abroad. Their double standard is exquisite. In front of strangers, they parrot the typical nationalistic and anti-American speech.

Among friends, they await the final outcome of the revolution to see which side wins. Until the moment arrives, their parents position them in good jobs.

When there is real change in Cuba, not the artificial one designed by the gurus in olive-green, Papa’s children will be the future managers of the companies, banks, hotels, golf courses or any other business that makes money in post-Castro Cuba.

Now they go about under cover. They waste fuel and spend hard currency on Havana nightlife. They live well and eat three hot meals a day. They dance salsa at night clubs like the Red Room of the Capri or the River Club, a discotheque in Miramar, a few meters from the Almendares River.

The always leave smiling, with a full wallet. They end the night in cafes that are a stone’s throw from the Malecón. Drinking Heineken beer and snorting a mixture of drugs in the back seat of their cars. They usually go to bed at the time that many people are going to work. They lunch on meats and seafood while they watch the latest world news on giant plasma-screen televisions.

Their parents are allowed to have satellite dishes and ADSL (high-speed Internet access). They are trustworthy revolutionaries. The cream of the socialist revolution. When the official discourse calls on simple Cubans to tighten their belts, these offspring, the sons of important men, sleep for ten hours, have central air conditioning in their homes and spend their weekends fishing on the old man’s yacht.

The good thing about being the son of a “big-shot” (leader) in Cuba is that they don’t have to worry about paparazzi or scandals in the tabloids. Their dirty laundry stays at home. Their parents have the power. They control the army, the communications media and production.

These young people have a free hand to lead a dissipated, easy life. And their parents? They prefer to look the other way.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 23 2011

Covering the Sun with One Finger / Miriam Celaya

Luís Posada Carriles. Photograph taken from the Internet

In the absence of a complete chronology of the struggle for freedom of the press in Cuba, it is possible to follow, step by step, the increasing deterioration of the “national information system.” Tune in to radio and television newscasts, or browse through the newspapers which, as a rule, repeat misinformation or misrepresentations of what happens in the world. This emphasizes, in uppercase, all that is omitted, and with it, the lack of freedom, initiatives and opinions by industry professionals. The official “journalistic” activity on the island is now an occupation lacking in veracity, dignity or in the minimum decorum, with very few exceptions. And it must be really hard to serve a master as deceitful as the Cuban government while maintaining respect for a profession that is as old as it is necessary in a globalized world at the height of the age of the Internet.

Examples to support what I’m stating abound, but one of the most typical is being created right now. This past January 10th all the nation’s media announced the start of the trial in the United States against Luis Posada Carriles on charges of fraud, obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements, “despite his long history of terrorism against Cuba.” That day, the Round Table TV talk show was also devoted to this conspicuous character (on that occasion, the TV evening ritual was titled Posada Carriles and the Route of Terror, and it had two parts, aired on successive days), and — if that were not enough — the Cubavisión channel aired a special evening program conveying what they usually call “new evidence” against Posada, based on the very credible testimony of a Salvadoran rumored to be a confessed terrorist, sentenced to a 30-year prison term in Cuba, whose life was spared through the generosity of revolutionary justice, (which was exemplary and inflexible with three young Cubans shot against the wall in 2003 for highjacking a passenger vessel).

At this point, I leave a personal note: I do not defend Mr. Luis Posada Carriles, nor do I condemn him until, beyond any doubt, his participation in the heinous 1976 Barbados crime is established, as well as other criminal acts he is accused of by the Cuban government. I condemn any acts of violence, mainly those that threaten innocent lives, even if they wear the make-up of any supposedly higher ideal. To blow up a civilian airliner in flight is as criminal as to down planes or to sink ships full of defenseless people, so a much longer and fuller bench is required to judge the culprits of terrorism.

Daily since its beginning, the Cuban press has reported details of the trial being held in El Paso, Texas. Posada Carriles was, once again, the media’s supreme obsession, until someone from up high was forced to react to the dust under our own rugs: alternative bloggers again, with the usual nonsense, were pointing insistently to the absence of trials in Cuba for the murders at Mazorra. So, on January 17th, a week after choking us with the terrible shortcomings of the judicial system of the enemy Empire, which continues to ignore the proverbial Cuban government impartiality, the authorities allowed its anti-informative spokesmen to issue a brief, bare-bones note announcing the beginning, that same day, of the trial “against the principals involved in the untimely death of patients” at Havana’s Psychiatric Hospital that took place the previous year. The note closed with a significant sentence: “Once the judicial process has been concluded, the results will be made public.”

After that, Cubans have continued to learn everything about Posada Carriles’s trial that the authorities have seen fit to disclose, while the process that follows the deaths of scores of psychiatric patients in Cuba has remained a stubborn official silence, despite the impact that the crime had in people’s sensibilities at the time. Needless to mention that the transparency of the El Paso trial, with the disclosure of what happens in a U.S. court, contrasts against the murky conspiracy brewing inside the inaccessible and secret confines of a Cuban court. Management of information in Cuba, with its typical contempt for public opinion, has reached unparalleled heights of shoddiness.

Meanwhile, and in the absence of official reports, popular opinion declares that there are many obscure points in the trial being held in the capital’s Provincial Court. It is said that “all who should be there are not,” that filling the courtroom with people chosen by the authorities is not really “in public view,” that among the notable absentees from the bench of the accused is the then Minister of Health José Ramón Balaguer Cabrera, one of the darlings of the lesser Castro. It is said that, once again, a selection of scapegoats will cover responsibility for the corruption and the lack of scruples of the higher-ups. Only the naive and the morons will settle for the results of this farce.

The Cuban press, as always, is silent, but many people are not. And the national state of disbelief at the government is not the only thing, but the general discredit that employees playing a part in the media suffer in their unhappy compromise with a dictatorship doomed to extinction. Obtusely lacking common sense, they are a manifest reflection of the deceptiveness of the system, and, in the long run, as responsible as their master.

Note at closing: Today, Monday January 24th, the official press published the following information: “sentence ruling concluded in trial for the events at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital.” I suggest to readers that they visit the official website cubadebate.com and assess the news for themselves.

January 24, 2011

Punished to “Set an Example” / Laritza Diversent

Bárbaro López Villavicencio, 44, and Rafael Felipe Martínez Irizar, 41, both from Cienfuegos and addicted to alcohol, decided, midway through 2009, to take over a boat to leave the country for Mexico, and from there, to go to the United States.

When making their plan they assigned themselves certain tasks. Martínez Irizar was responsible to find people with money who wanted to leave the country, as a way of helping to pay the expenses of the operation. Meanwhile, López Villacicencio was in charge of finding the fuel and the owner of a boat, who would be paid to fake a hijacking.

Pablo Gómez Castillo, a counterintelligence officer, reported the matter. They hadn’t even acquired a single liter of fuel at the time they were arrested. The court of Cienfuegos declared them guilty of the crime of leaving the country illegally.

None of the evidence provided to the court could give the exact dates on which the crime had supposedly been committed. The justice panel admitted documentary evidence about the place the plan was conceived, the research and attempts to buy petrol, between the last days of May and the beginning of June 2009.

The crime was considered proven exclusively by testimony of the witnesses and the accused, who confessed in court to having come up with a plan that they never put into practice. In vain they tried to have the case dismissed. The court did not accept this because “before their arrests they were making arrangements and inquiries related to the aims they were pursuing.”

The ‘dangerous plan’ “happily was prevented by the timely action of the authorities,” who, by arresting the accused, stopped the illegal activity from taking place. There was an acknowledgment in the court’s sentence, at the Division for Offenses against State Security in Cienfuegos, the body in charge of the ‘criminal investigation.’

It meant nothing that the prosecution accepted, in their provisional summary, that López Villavicencio ‘intended to speak about the mission’ to the witness Rafael Jiménez Solís, captain of the ferry and of the tugboat that the accused were planning to hijack, but “he did not carry it out.”

Neither did it help that “in the case the confessions were detailed and explicit, even to the extent of helping to clarify the supposed offense,” according to the court in its sentence. They believed, ingenuously, in the law. The Penal Code relieves of responsibility any person who voluntarily refrains from committing an offense, as long as they inform the authorities.

In its rush to deal with crime and injustice, the Provincial Court in Cienfuegos ignored the fact that all the attempts by the accused came to nothing. The sentence itself acknowledged that Martínez Irizar was unable to “achieve any practical result from his attempts to find fuel.”

An indication of the “efficiency, rational and individual treatment, appropriate communication with people, professionalism and speed in clearing up criminal acts and other services provided to the people” by the organs of justice and repression of the revolutionary government, as the newspaper Granma stated recently.

The court heard the statements of five people contacted by Martínez Irizar, as he sought to bring about the illegal exit. However, the sentence failed to clarify whether they had sufficient resources to finance the operation, which the plan of the accused required. Quite the opposite; the assumption was that they had all refused the offer, something quite unusual nowadays.

The evidence used to back the case was considered “consistent with the principles of science and reason.” Bárbaro was sentenced to 4 years in prison and Rafael to 5, the maximum sentence allowed for the offense of promoting and arranging the illegal departure of anyone from national territory.

If all Cubans who hatch plans to leave the country were punished the prison population on the island would be about 11 million. That truth doesn’t matter, and neither did the sentence reflect the fact that the offense was prevented and the accused repented of their acts. Far better to make an example of them. What matters most to revolutionary justice is applying the law “with the utmost rigor and all necessary severity.”

Photo: Gustavo Rumbaut, Panoramio. A tugboat used for transportation in Cienfuegos Bay.

Translated by: Daniel Gonzalez

January 23 2011

Cuban Dissidents: Looking Inward / Iván García

The WikiLeaks revelations have shown the Cuban opposition in a bad light. What a sector of U.S. diplomacy thinks about the poor performance of traditional dissent is the same thing that independent journalists and foreign correspondents talk about.

If a series of shameful acts of corruption, nepotism and caudillismo committed by the leaders of opposition groups haven’t been brought to light, it’s because of that old straitjacket that makes alternative journalists think that making such issues public is a favor to the island’s secret services.

I don’t share that opinion. It’s time for the local opposition groups to change their tune. If they don’t turn 180 degrees and plot their strategies looking inward, they will remain simply a movement of courageous people who openly challenged the Castro brothers’ regime.

To their credit, many opponents must have passed through the harsh island prisons without breaking. It’s admirable that Cubans who could have been peaceful parents or grandparents had the courage to establish political parties and organizations that the government considers illegal and that Cuban laws punish by several years in prison.

But being brave is not everything. Inside the traditional dissent there are quite a few autocrats who pretend to be civil. They are intolerant and dishonest gossip mongers. They have become accustomed to living off U.S. government agency aid or groups and people of different political leanings in Europe.

I am one of those who thinks it’s not healthy to accept money from any government. I could be wrong. Years ago, in a public and transparent manner, the opposition had to tackle that uncomplicated issue.

It’s true: when they take the path of dissent against Castro, as a rule, dissidents lose their jobs and stop collecting a paycheck. It’s also true that they need money to do any political work.

Hiding the issue of money has led to the unfortunate rise of corruption. By not having effective controls, internal democracy and transparency at the heart of many dissident organizations, certain group leaders have shamelessly appropriated money and material assistance.

The list is long of heavyweights inside the dissident movement who steal hand over fist. Out of decency I will not reveal their names. In addition to being corrupt, with some exceptions, the Cuban opposition is mediocre and ineffective. A banana dissidence. You can count on one hand their political projects that try to involve citizens.

The local opposition is directed toward the Exterior. From their living rooms, small groups of people write a document, quote the foreign press, read it on Radio Marti and then feel they’ve accomplished something.

Ordinary people in Cuba don’t even hear about it. It’s painful. The number of people upset by what the government does, I assure you, is broad. If the opposition parties started proselytizing, they would be known in their own country.

There is unexplored territory for the dissident movement. The lack of materials and services in Cuba affects everyone, loyal to the regime or not. Both sides want to repair their children’s schools, the hospitals and streets of the neighborhood. Both sides want to have clean water every day, and not lose 60% due to leaks.

Regardless of ideology, every one suffers from having to travel like sardines in a can on the crowded buses of chaotic urban transportation. Think like they think. Cubans want more and better food. Decent wages. Clean cities. A single currency. To be able to travel without state permission. To have Internet access and satellite dishes for reasonable sums.

In 52 years, the Castros have failed to solve these problems. If the dissidents would do community work in the neighborhoods, they could inspire a number of small and modest projects that would involve and benefit the people. You hardly ever meet activists like Sonia Garro, a black woman living in a slum in Mariano, who helps children living in homes that are small hells.

It’s good to demand democracy and freedom from the regime. But it’s also good to look for options – and solutions – for the women and men deep inside Cuba.

Of course, the secret services do everything in their power to make sure the dissent doesn’t forge a real social base. It’s also true that the traditional opposition has adapted to living from unrealistic projects, better known in Miami than in Havana.

It’s healthy to have different political tendencies and discrepancies inside the dissent. But there are four or five points of agreement between the opponents that would allow them to design joint projects.

Disagreements do not mean the opposition groups are enemies. It’s what happens. But so many quarrels and hatreds have diminished coherent and serious political work.

The current opposition, if it’s not recycled and doesn’t democratize the rules of the game, will be a political corpse. But it’s never too late to change.

Photo: EFE. Press conference of the Agenda for the Transition, Havana, April 2010.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 23 2011

Migration and Xenophobia / Laritza Diversent

Ana Luisa Millares, 43, from Holguin, has lived for less than eight years in a neighborhood of Havana. Nobody can explain how, in such a short time, they gave her a phone line and assigned her a ‘mission ‘ (collaborative work) in Venezuela. She returned full of electrical appliances and enough money, in less than twelve months, to build a house.

Her neighbors are annoyed with the rise in living standards of Mrs. Millares. Many haven’t managed to get half of what she has in their whole lives. Disparagingly and to her back, they call her “the Palestinian” as Havana natives call those born in the eastern provinces.

Migration, mainly from the countryside to the capital, is determined, in the first place, by the difference in economic and social development among the country’s provinces. On the other hand, the government fills the workforce in positions Habaneros reject with people from the east.

Little or nothing is said about it. Until today, no sociological analysis explains the wariness of Habaneros with respect to easterners. Even the legal rules imposed by the government curb migration to the capital, like Decree 217 of the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers reinforces this sense of rejection.

Some justify the rejection with historic events. Accordingly, they allege that when the guerrillas, mostly easterners, arrived in Havana in January of 1959, they destroyed the capital. They became the dominant group and took over the best properties in the city for themselves and their families. Since then, like the musical group Van Van sings, “Havana can’t take any more.”

Habaneros have other hypotheses. There are those who think it’s a problem of idiosyncrasy and are sure that the easterners are usually unconditionally supporters of the government and, in turn, the most hypocritical. They also argue that the top leaders of the government are nominated and elected by the eastern territories from which they come.

Others mention a reality: easterners make up the majority of the police, the principal force repressing citizens in the capital. A job rejected by capital residents, even before the triumph o the Revolution in January of 1959.

It’s a fact recognized by Raul Castro in the closing of the first parliamentary session in 2008, when he said that, “if the easterners didn’t come to look after the Habaneros, there would be an increase in robberies.” A phrase with more than one interpretation.

In reality, it’s the government itself that foments the migration from other regions to the capital. Raul Castro himself asked, “Who is going to build in Havana if construction workers don’t come from almost the whole country, and especially from the East. How many teachers from the provinces of the interior and especially from the East. And the capital, I believe, is what most inhabitants have.”

As a result of this situation, in Havana the citizens native to the east of the country are the most vulnerable from a social point of view. And some attitudes may even be described as xenophobic. An issue where the government has the major responsibility. On the one hand
it blocks migration, violating the fundamental rights of these people. And on the other, it stimulates it, according to its convenience.

January 25 2011

Prayer for Rufo / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

RUFO R.I.P.

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

We clashed once, in early 2000, in the midst of editing the journal ExtramuroS, he being the great critic Rufo Caballero, and I the same as today, an obscure writer with politically incorrect eccentricities.

We published a text from Duanel Diaz that gave gorgeous conceptual tastiness to the caballero Rufo. He deserved it. It was, in addition, a delicious little essay where Duanel Diaz distorted theories to undress King Rufo a little, as in those days he had begun to drift into cockiness and despotism when it was time to legitimate or stigmatize the slightest little jealousy having to do with art. It was also, of course, a brilliant text like all of DD’s from when he was a student at the University of Havana, to the ire and envy of even the most mediocre and Marxistodox professor.

Rufus was pissed. He went to several bookstores in the capital and bought as many issues as he could of that impoverished edition of ExtramuroS. He turned into a censor thanks to his growing acquisitive power. Later he became a literary cop, when he wrote a letter of complaint to no less than Iroel Sanchez, president of the Cuban Book Institute, where he accused us of “sensationalism” and “attacking national cultural figures.” Still later, he also joined the City of Havana Provincial Center of the Book, with the objective of punishing the staff of ExtramuroS in the face of our more or less ignorant and terrified director (she didn’t want to lose her position which, in the end, she did).

He was a killing machine. RC wanted blood. DD laughed and rubbed his hands over there in his Lawton refuge (he’s my neighbor, although now he lives in the USA). I think everyone should applaud as in the boxing ring, as if the Cuban literary camp retained at least a hint of belligerence. Rufo Caballero then made a fool of a radical (it wasn’t even remotely our objective). He even called a kind of private auction so that his friends would write against Duanel Diaz (several of them did, but very awkwardly). The truth was that, at the height of my civil naivete, I wanted to take advantage of that rare interview to meet one of the most intelligent and iconoclastic critics of the 90s in Cuba, but I only scared myself in front of the injured ogre with his engorged ego.

We had to defend ourselves as badly as we did. Rufus was raging. He overwhelmed us with his wisdom, but we relied on the ExtramuroS editorial board to support us, it voted in favor of publishing that critique of DD versus RC. In the end, we lost the trust of our director general, and from then on he saw Margarita Urquiola, Norge Espinosa and me as a gang of outlaws cast in the editorial heart of the system of provincial magazines.

I never again interacted with RC. I had the good luck to run into him, one on one, always on the sidewalks of El Vedado and at bottom of the San Lazaro hill. Maybe he lived in that area. Every time I saw him I had the urge to say hello and to tell him, in peace, that inquisitorial anecdote. But Rufo Caballero’s gaze into the distance told me he didn’t even remember me. I’m sure he never read me (unlike you, he himself escaped me). OLPL had been scarcely a moment of hatred, like so many others for him. A fly hovering over the learned cake of his fame. A mediocre little shit molesting the maestro. And, in more than one sense, it was literally so. Forgive me, if it’s possible, but I have no regrets. Because there was never any malice on our part, we just wanted to provoke an argument within our pacified Cubanesque intelligentsia.

Goodbye now for real, dear Rufo of the rhetoric. In a way that not even I understand your death quickly fills me with pain. I counted on you secretly for the dismantling of the excessive cultural Cubanness. I still read you with humor and respect, with care and a desire to replicate if I had the aesthetic tools to carry it out. You were one of the good ones, it doesn’t matter how many rotten things you could have been involved in as part of floating in the revolutionary waters here and there. It doesn’t matter about the share of power you dreamed of investing yourself with to project from within the monster of your vehement voice. It doesn’t matter what you could have turned into to have a high political position in this Cuban of the changes that never change.

The truth is that we are left with less and less of the best. And more and more of the brutes.

Rufo Caballo, for you a flower not cut, but living. And for the last time, goodbye.

January 6 2011

Addiction to Prehistory / Fernando Dámaso

Some days ago, a public propaganda billboard, demanding the liberation of five sanctioned Cubans who are serving out sentences in American prisons, appeared in Miami; it was front-page news in the daily Granma, which also made propaganda points of the tours of Cuban artists, residents of the island, through the States. All this is noteworthy and good. It was a commitment to the necessary tolerance, although the billboard is gone and some protests have sprung up against the artists. It’s understandable, after so many years of missed connections. It would be fair that it should happen here, and that it would receive equal propaganda; some billboard demanding liberation of the political prisoners, and that artists who live abroad and are prohibited in Cuba, could offer concerts and their music could be transmitted by radio and television.

Around this time, also in the same daily, an official notice appeared, repudiating the meeting of the American delegation’s representatives — which participated in the discussions about migratory accords — with some Cuban dissidents, calling them mercenaries and repeating the old slogans against imperialist interventionism. It calls attention, as is already the practice of the Cuban government, to those who govern and represent it, that when they visit whatever country — including the United States — they meet with those who oppose the established government, and even organize and participate in public propaganda acts. It seems valid in some cases and in others not.

A defrocked functionary, who used to move about in the ideological sphere, hypothesized once that, in order to conduct dialog, it was indispensable that those who participated should respect each other, and bring with them to the dialog two suitcases: one to receive and the other to give. I don’t know if this hypothesis sped up his dismissal.

It seems to be a smart and simple formula, although facts demonstrate its non-acceptance by those who live anchored in a political prehistory, masking it over with a behind-the-times patriotism which — instead of opening roads towards understanding — shows a commitment to confrontation and violence, abandoning the necessary union of all Cubans, to live wherever they might and think however they will.

The superficial measures that are applied to the economy and which — with the passage of time and propelled by reality — become more profound each time, must also be accompanied by changes in policy, as much internally as externally, more pragmatic and compliant with current times. They are necessary to save the nation.

Translated by: JT

January 20 2011

The Prince and the Pauper / Rebeca Monzo

clip image0024clip image0042The year starts and private businesses proliferate. The recently laid-off self-employed, with their classification somewhat vindicated, are no longer the badly named exploiters, quacks, et cetera, terms with which the regime disrespectfully referred to them. Now they need them so they are self-employed workers.

In my neighborhood, from the earliest days of Nuevo Vedado, there has been a hair salon once gorgeous and elegant, that after the year 1959 lost its luster. until it turned into a dark place with broken windows, no light, and big water problems. So, little by little, it languished until it turned into the misery it is today. Also, originally, it was separated only by a staircase to an entry where there was a barbershop. After that it was attached to a hairdressers. With time, the deterioration of both spaces accelerated, lacking an owner to take an interest.

Now, since the beginning of the year, the new hairdresser (old barber shop), with its new owners, has regained its charm. Moderate prices and careful attention are a part of its new image. However, the other side, the one belonging to the state, continues to be deteriorated and dark. Since the two are next door to one another, popular ingenuity has begun to refer to them as The Prince and the Pauper.

January 13 2011

The Thousand and One Attempts / Laritza Diversent

Those who know him in the Pedro Luis Garcia neighborhood call him “the little rafter,” for the number of times he’s tried to flee the country by way of the sea. Until today, he hasn’t managed to reach his goal, but he swears he won’t stop trying and the only way they can stop him is to put him in prison.

He can even recite Article 13 from the Declaration of Human Rights from memory and in a rap rhythm: “Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” Some have declared him nuts.

In Cuba, leaving or entering the country is subject to legal procedures, which, if not met, constitute a crime with a fine of 300 to 500 pesos, or up to three years imprisonment, rising to up to eight years if violence or intimidation of people is used, or force in the attempt.

No one could believe that “the little rafter,” barely five and a half feet tall and less than 100 pounds, has launched 14 attempts to leave the country illegally. Nine of his attempts happened between 1998 and 2004, and were frustrated by U.S. authorities.

He was returned in compliance with the migration accords between both nations in 1994, after the second Mariel exodus. At that time the young man, now 28, was barely an adolescent of 12.

Despite being a criminal, Pedro Luis was never sanctioned for this reason. The Cuban state, adhering to the bilateral treaty, agreed to suspend the application of judicial sanctions against rafters repatriated to the island.

In 4 of his recent tries, he had to return voluntarily, due to technical problems with his rustic boat, which couldn’t even be called a “raft.” On the most recent, less than 8 months ago, he was caught red-handed by the Cuban Coast Guard, nine miles off the coast of the island.

Although the same thing had happened on earlier tries, when they returned him to his house this time it was different. Just a month later he was notified of a resolution by the Havana Harbor Master that he was imposing on him and on each one of traveling partners, an eight thousand peso fine for violating the regulations governing possession and sailing of boats.

He had incurred four of the 14 infractions detailed in Decree Law 194, “Of the infractions regarding the possession and operation of boats in the national territory,” classified as very serious.

They fined him for building a boat without authorization, using it in illicit ways, operating it without its being registered with the Harbor Master, and navigating in territorial waters without permission.

The provision issued by the State Council authorizes the Harbor Master to apply forfeiture and civil penalties, in an amount ranging from 500 to 10,000 pesos, depending on the rating of the violations received: minor, serious and very serious. It also punishes recidivism or the commission of several offenses.

Pedro wasn’t expecting it, in fact he didn’t even know such rules existed. Nor does he understand why the Harbor Master didn’t make any reference to leaving the country illegally. “Well, if it’s not for one thing it’s for another, they always keep an ace up their sleeve,” he commented.

In any event, he has no income nor assets with which to pay the fine. The little rafter is convinced he should try to flee the country. “It’s better to die trying to do what you want, and even much better than ending up in prison for not paying a fine. Until the thousandth and one try,” he concludes.

January 24 2011