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

Simply Marta / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

For those who cannot see the photo attached to this post, Marta Diaz Rondon is sitting on a stool with her fingers in a V shape. The “V” represents “victory”. Her eyes are black and can either make you fall in love or feel fear. Up to that point, the description could very well fit any woman. But when one looks down you can see her thighs, legs, and arms are covered with bruises. These marks are the results of a beating given to her by the experts of the Cuban political police on October 31, 2010 in the town of Banes.

Marta was imprisoned in Holguin, and upon being released she went over to the house of her friend and sister, Caridad Caballero Batista, and that is where I took these photos. A few days later, she told me about the beatings. The culprits were men, although some women also took part in her mistreatment. However, the actual physical blows were given to her by men — those same men who claim to be patriots and protectors of Cuba’s security. Majors Freddy Aguero Allen and Wilson Ramirez Perez had already mistreated her once, along with Caridad, inside a car with music blasting on the stereo. This all occurred in Banes, the land of the poet Gaston Baquero y Antilla, and the very same place where it is said that the Virgin of Charity first appeared.

If I were to bump into any of these “men” in any of the torture cells or interrogation offices, I’d ask them about the perverse beatings of these women which occurred behind tinted windows and with reggaeton background music.

Despite the beatings, each week Marta continues to walk 2 kilometers from her house to the home of Reina Tamayo Danger to accompany her to the church and to the cemetery.

Between the old La Guira cemetery and the historic Banes monuments of the Republican era there now lies a trail of blood, of abuses, and laments of defenseless pro-democracy activists who, one day, will really frighten their oppressors. But it will be the fear of truth, as is shown in this photo, and which is always present in the words of Marta and many others, who both accuse and forgive at the same time.

There will be many voices working in favor of that country which was lost one day… in what century? The Nineteenth? Twentieth or Twenty-first? Who knows.

Translated by: Raul G.

January 24 2011

Free Fall / Fernando Dámaso

When an economic system has demonstrated its ineffectiveness for decades, dragging the country into regressive process which has erased the achievements of previous generations and established poverty as the standard of living, it means the time has come to replace it with something more efficient.

Arguing that it should remain based on the idea that it would terrible to remove something for which people have struggled for more than fifty years, is not a comprehensive plan. The roads that lead nowhere, even if they have been traveled for a long time, should not continue to be traveled. It’s like beating your head against the same wall over and over.

Moreover, to plan a route that borders on the abyss, when in reality you’ve been in free-fall into the abyss for a long time, is too optimistic.

It’s natural that, faced with the mistakes involved, it is not an easy situation. Even worse is having to inform one’s travel companions that the road was badly chosen and the sacrifices in vain. It encompasses a great historical responsibility. However, it is the honest and courageous path.

Wanting to buy time is more difficult with each passing day, as both capital and time are depleted and the time is coming when there will be neither one nor the other. To insist on defending something indefensible, and something in which most citizens don’t believe, although they still don’t dare to say so publicly, is to maintain the immobility and unnecessarily prolong the national tragedy.

January 17 2011

Ode to Caballero / Ángel Santiesteban

Rufo Caballero won admiration for his objective and perceptive criticism. All the artists understood, even when his judgment was negative toward the work in question, that the only thing he worried about, and defended above all else, was creativity, which he respected to the point of adoration. Whoever managed to discern and assume his point of view generally rose in office.

He became a popular character through TV programs and his appearance on a video clip, made so we could share it with the rest of the social spectrum. He balanced his role as a sharp critic with the capability to be sympathetic, and, especially, with a language that made no concessions, he knew that the spectator would understand the reasoning behind his points of view.

On the launching of my book Happy Are Those Who Cry, he told me beautiful things that I won’t repeat, I keep them to myself to call up in depressed moments, and I remember his sharp observations in each literary task.

In the days when I opened my blog and the state launched its institutional and repressive attacks, he met a mutual friend in Cienfuegos, who asked him which country I had gone to. He responded, none, I was still in Havana, and just a few days before we’d had a conversation and, as an aside, I let him know how hard it would be for me to live somewhere else.

Rufo was surprised because he had no idea that these truths were said from inside, “an artist, especially, knows all that he loses when he confronts the system.”

Afterward we saw each other on some corner in Vedado and were happy, he told me he was “a living ghost or a badly buried dead person,” and we laughed. Later he was more himself, he let me know that he respected my point of view because he understood that it was a personal necessity for me to communicate, to get myself out of the poison the majority was swallowing without breathing so as to suffer as little as possible.

Now that Rufo Caballero is not here physically, we have to be satisfied with his spirit, his vast works, and his proven goodness.

22 January 2011

Once Again, Stoic Waiting / Reinaldo Escobar

In the years 1986 and 1987 an unusual enthusiasm proliferated, in our country, for what was happening in the Soviet Union. The weekly News from Moscow, which for years had piled up in the kiosks, came to be sold in the black market for 20 times the cover price. In October of 1988, at a meeting of the students from the School of Journalism, the then youngest prince Carlos Aldana predicted that the restless perestroika boys were not looked upon kindly by the leaders of the Revolution, but Pepito, the sage protagonists of our best political jokes, had already alerted us to this: “What is expected of us is stoicism.”

Having have had more than 20 years to meditate on that time, our leaders announced some changes whose main purpose is to keep the socialist system afloat. On the night of October 12, 1960, Fidel Castro announced that 382 large corporations, many of them American, “and also the banks,” would be nationalized. At dawn on the 13th, the controllers were to make themselves available at each one of the confiscated entities. In another speech, on March 13, 1968, he proclaimed the nationalization of all private businesses. That same night, from their encampments, the new administrators of “Ecochinche” (which is what people then baptized what could be called the Empresa Consolidada de Chinchales*) emerged to take, by assault, the last remnants of capitalism. The speech on the university steps had not yet ended before the lights went on in bars and nightclubs to let the customers know that the party was over, because all these establishments would be closed as part of the Revolutionary Offensive.

The velocity was dizzying because it was the pace of demolition. Everyone knows that a building that took years to erect can be demolished in day, or even hours or minutes if explosives are used. Now it’s about searching through the rubble to look for usable bricks and that takes time. Raul Castro’s speech before the National Assembly of People’s Power to detail the nature of the changes proposed was in December, the Communist Party “Congress” will be in April, and then we will have to wait for the measures to be implemented, with a long view and short steps, as those who have reached old age are wont to say.

Pepito hasn’t shown up and in the absence of his ingenuity for naming things we seem to be, once again, waiting stoically. What I don’t know is if the patience will last.

*Translator’s note: “Chinchales” is a slightly derogatory Cuban term for small businesses. “Empresa Consolidada de Chinchales” translates as “Consolidated Small Businesses Company.”

24 January 2011

Of the Cable, a Fiber / Yoani Sánchez

It is getting close, but it hasn’t arrived; they announced it but it’s not concrete. We may be able to see it soon from Punta de Maisi, nevertheless it seems so distant and remote to us. For more than two years the fiber optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela has been the carrot dangled before the eyes of the inhabitants of this disconnected Island. Its thin threads have served as an argument against those who insist that the web access limitations have more to do with political will than lack of bandwidth. We have paid attention to the sluggish wanderings of the umbilical cord that will connect La Guaira with Santiago de Cuba, the boat that brought it from France, and the news which announced it will increase our data, image and voice transmission speed by three thousand times. But something tells us that this cable already has a name, an owner and an ideology.

With its 640 gigabyte capacity, the new tendon will be particularly devoted to institutional projects monitored by the government. When the official press mentions its advantages it stresses that “it will strengthen national sovereignty and security,” but not one word is directed to the improvement of the information spectrum for citizens. At a cost of 70 million dollars, this underwater connection seems destined more to control us than to link us to the world, but I am confident we will manage to upset its initial purposes. In these times, when several installations from the so-called Battle of Ideas have been converted into hotels to raise foreign currency and there are warnings that unprofitable businesses will be liquidated, it is quite likely that many of the digital pulses will reach the hands of those who can pay for them. With authorization or without, connection hours will be sold — to the highest bidder — in a country where diversion of resources is a daily practice, a strategy for survival.

When we are connected with Venezuela along the seabed, it will be even more immoral to maintain the high prices for access to the vast World Wide Web from hotels and public places. They will also lose the justification for not allowing Cubans to have accounts at home, from which we can slip into cyberspace, and it will be more difficult to explain to us why we can’t have YouTube, Facebook and Gmail. The pirated connections will increase and the black market for films and documentaries will feed on those megabytes running across our island platform. In workplaces with Internet the employees will also use it to register with the U.S. visa lottery, surf foreign sites looking for work, and engage in lovers’ chats. They won’t be able to prevent our use of the cable for things very different from what is planned by those who bought it, those who believe an Island can be neatly tied up — with no loose ends — with a simple fiber optic cable.

“For a fag, fear is always best.” / Iván García

He lost his high heels in the race. And the unprecedented tropical downpour, furious and fleeting, spoiled his vermilion make-up, which dripped from his pleated dress, staining the imitation leopard skin.

The bright beam of a 400 watt light, focused intently from an idling police car, provoked a stampede of stunned homosexuals, caught red-handed in the middle of intercourse in a dark Havana park.

Cordoba Park, in the heart of the La Vibora neighborhood, has become a permanent plaza for discreet gays, scandalous transvestites and brave sodomites who do not believe in weather without the predictions of the Cuban Meteorological Institute.

That night, the guards in the patrol car are in a bad mood. STOP! they shout through a megaphone. The homosexuals disappear in seconds. But the transvestite on high heels can’t escape.

He tried running barefoot while holding his dress up. In his rush, he put his foot in a grating and got trapped. The cop, a black guy from Eastern Cuba, was fed up with the chase, completely soaked in the rain, and his military boots were full of mud. He looked at the anguished fag and screamed at him:

“Why are you running?! Maybe you committed a crime! You should have stayed put! Give me your identity card!”

The cop threatened to take him to the nearest police station. Trembling with fear and cold, his make-up smeared, in a barely audible voice, the transvestite answered:

“If you’re gay and a police car shines a powerful spotlight in the middle of having sex, the first impulse is to run. Things may have changed, but for a fag in Cuba, fear is always best.”

The two cops cut short the dialog. They frisked the transvestite and an imitation leopard skin wallet fell to the ground. Among the cosmetics something metallic and shiny rolled. A knife. It was the trump card for the nocturnal guards. “Now you’re fucked, faggot. Possession of a weapon,” they said, gloating, and handcuffed him without mincing words.

From their hideouts, the group of gays and sodomites watched the scene. Minutes later they returned to the gazebo in the unlit park, converted into the biggest homosexual inn under the open sky in Havana. This time, fear didn’t do their friend any good.

Photo: Cuban transvestite, by Marcello Bonfanti, AP. Word Press Photo 2005 Photo Prize.

23 January 2011