Signed in Havana / Iván García

The blog Desde La Habana is an adventure that today, January 28, is two years old. It has not been easy to get here. The idea of creating a blog came to me in the winter of 2006.

From the end of the 90s, I had been collaborating regularly with the online site of the Interamerican Press Society and the digital version of Encuentro de la Cultura Cubana, a project of the deceased Cuban writer Jesús Díaz that was launched in Madrid in 1996. Also with the Revista Hispano Cubana, funded in the spring of 1998 in the Spanish capital.

But there were difficulties for un-official journalism. In the spring of 2003, as is well known, Fidel Castro’s government unleashed a raid that put 75 dissidents in prison, among them 27 alternative communicators.

Between the fear that some late night the guys from State Security would knock on my door and arrest me without words, and the desire to try new paths, I decided to try my luck with other tools.

In an issue of Newsweek in Spanish I had read an incredible report about the blogger phenomenon. Just what I was looking for. An instrument where I would be writer and editor. But to make it a reality cost more than I’d hoped. I didn’t know the techniques to create a blog. Nor, at that time, were there public sites to connect to the Internet in Havana.

I didn’t lose faith. Three people signed on to the idea of my having my own blog. On March 25, 2007, my mother, Tania Quintero, an independent journalist and also a neophyte in the management of technology, Magia, and a Cuban living in Spain, opened a blog. Since November of 2003 Tania has lived in Switzerland as a political refugee. Her computer is old but it has 24/7 DSL.

Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar were essential for enabling me to open my blog. Through a Swiss journalist I met the Sánchez-Escobar couple in December of 2004. On certain crisp and starry nights, in their apartment on the 14th floor, drinking Guayabita from Pinar del Rio and eating pizzas made by Yoani, several of us friends would talk about the state of things in Cuba.

And then Escobar, with his degree in journalism, had the idea for the magazine Consensus, he was thinking could be produced by our own effort. He invited me to write about sports, but I wanted something else.

Over the end of the year I continued visiting the couple now and again, and Yoani told me about the blog she had opened in April 2007. But it wasn’t until December of 2008, when Yoani lent me a hand. By this date in Havana one could navigate the Internet, paying a lot and in hard currency.

In my personal project, for the collaboration with me, I involved Luis Cino, in my opinion the best independent journalist on the island at that time, and Laritza Diversent, a recently graduated young lawyer. From Madrid my mother would write and from Madrid would come the stories of Raul Rivero published in El Mundo.

I remember going crazy managing a webmaster who charged $ 60 for designing a page layout and $ 5 extra every time he hung your posts. In a café in central Havana I met with Reinaldo and Yoani and they told me I didn’t have to spend a dime. On 28 January 2009 they were thinking of opening a platform they were thinking of calling Voces Cubanas — Cuban Voices.

I joined the party. To ease my ignorance in the management of a blog, they invited me to participate in an accelerated course that Sánchez offered twice a week in her house. I was in the first of six bloggers inaugurating Voces Cubanas.

For me, it was easy to write the posts. But I needed a person abroad to post them for me, because the rising cost of doing the task was unaffordable. Tania talked with Ernesto Hernandez Busto and he accepted. But the blog wasn’t going as I wished.

Starting on 1 January 2010, an extraordinary Portuguese friend, Carlos Moreira, despite having a lot of work, incredibly took on this function in his free hours. Like my mother, who spends up to eight hours a day in front of the Computer, revising texts, verifying dates, selecting photos and videos for the posts written in Havana that I send.

On 22 October 2009 I started to collaborate with the Spanish digital newspaper El Mundo/América. They pay me for my work and topped off with what my family sends with a million sacrifices, they help me to pa the 60 Cuban Convertible pesos I spend each month in Havana hotels to connect to the Internet.

I’ve had bitter moments. After cyber attacks against my blog and the disappearance of the archive with all the posts published in 2009, after I was thrown off Voces Cubanas without a convincing explanation.

Even today, the only argument I’ve been given as a cause for my exclusion as been articles critical of Guillermo Fariñas written by my mother (see the final note). I don’t share this argument. Personally I disagree with the form and content of some of the work written by Tania.

But at her 68 years, living in exile with more than thirty years of experience in journalism, first official and then dissident, she is completely within her right to publish what she thinks in my blog.

We talk enough about democracy and freedom of expression. A discourse in vogue. But in practice, we behave like bigots and censors. An basic evil we Cubans don’t manage to pull out at its roots. Neither those on the island nor those abroad.

I still don’t know if Voices Cubana threw me out because of my mother or if the one to blame is me. During the time I was a part of this platform I never had a serious incident with any blogger, to the point of spoiling the deal we kept. If I had enemies in this group, I didn’t know it.

If I’ve addressed this topic it is because many friends, Cubans and foreigners, have asked me and I don’t know what to say. The one who knows is Yoani.

I hope for an honest answer. I appreciate Yoani Sanchez, and more her husband, Reinaldo Escobar. I have nothing against Orlando Luis Pardo and Claudia Cadelo, two of the most active bloggers.

This adventure of creating a blog is marvelous, like raising a child. I have many material limitations and to top it off I can report enmities to you. But I don’t do journalism to please anyone. That’s the point.

Either way, 2011 appears promising to me. I have a ton of ideas to grow the blog in quality and content. For now, my posts from Havana will continue to appear on time.

*I took the title from a poem borrowed from Raul Rivero (Editorial Sibi, Miami 1996)

Photo: Stathis, Panoramio. Central Park in Havana where the principal statue dedicated to José Martí inHavana is found. The colonial style building is the Hotel Inglaterra, founded on 23 December 1875.

Translated by RST

January 27 2011

Martí, the Timeless One / Rebeca Monzo

Oil painting by Cuban painter, E. Abela

So loved by many, misunderstood by some and utilized by others.

Martí is the instinct of love, of generosity, of altruism, of sacrifice.

So predominant was the creative impulse in Martí that the sweep of his life arched further and further away from the center of his “me”.

“Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.”

“I do not believe that in matters that interest all and are the property of all, nor even in private matters, should the opinion of one man attempt to prevail.”

“All power broadly and extendedly exerted, degenerates when made a caste. With castes come interests, haughty positions, the fears of losing them, the intrigues to sustain them. Castes seek each other out among themselves, and support each other by the shoulder.”

“In the world, there should be a certain amount of decorum, as there should be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without decorum, there are always those who carry within themselves the decorum of many men. Those are the ones that rebel with terrible strength against those who rob peoples of their liberty, which is to rob men of their decorum. Within those men are thousands of men, an entire people, human dignity.”

Remembering the Apostle*, on the 158th anniversary of his birth (28 January, 1853).

*Translator’s note: This refers to El Apóstol de la Independencia Cubana, the Apostle of Cuban Independence, as José Martí is known reverentially by all Cubans.

Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

January 27 2011

Martí / Regina Coyula

This image is my favorite You can see the whole figure of Martí, the lean man, the wrinkled suit, an outfit with a glossy sheen from repeated wearings. An insignificant man against nondescript weeds in a foreign country. The impression changes when you look into his eyes. He looks at the camera, but slightly obliquely, as if it were an annoyance and his thoughts are deep in contemplation of a far away country, a lost family. I can identify with this man; he arouses in me the respect that comes from intelligence. This national icon, so quoted or ignored according to convenience, has left us a bottomless emptiness*.

*Translator’s note: The line is from a César Vallejo poem, To my brother in memorium.

January 28 2011

Revolutions / Claudia Cadelo

I recently translated for my own use an interview the French newspaper Le Temps did with Michael Parmly. I was interested, most of all, in making available the opinion of the man who had signed almost all the cables sent from the United States Interest Section in Havana that have been leaked to Wikileaks. We are all running after those cables. Even the Roundtable TV show aired a documentary about Julian Assange and the “Wikileaks” phenomenon. The controversy is huge and I confess, to my regret, that my view on the subject is still percolating. Thus, I haven’t written about it, but seeing that time is passing and I’m not on the verge of offering a specific opinion, I will throw myself, as we say here, on the moving bus and write a post full of doubts — and hopes as well, of course.

I understand well Michael Parmly’s apprehensions, the concerns of the former section head that his sources will be identified. I’m also quite anxious about it. When I read the cables on the internal dissidence and can identify, despite the X’s, the names alluded to, I know that Cuban State Security also recognizes them. Unfortunately these are not the names of Cuban government officials, but of simple Cuban citizens who dare to challenge a system that accepts no criticism or opposition. Undoubtedly the cables where representatives of civil society can be recognized pose a threat to the freedom and work of these people. For my part, I refuse to classify this risk as “minor damage” as some friends call it. I think that Wikileaks has a duty to perfect its editing work to guarantee sources the protection they deserve.

However, give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. When other friends tell me that Julian Assange and his team are not journalists, it demonstrates that the concept of “journalism” is becoming obsolete faced with new technologies. Wikileaks came to prove to us that the right to information is not merely Utopian, and undoubtedly establishes a basis both for diplomacy and for the traditional information media. It seems to me that it makes little sense to deny the reality: Wikileaks exists. We have to live with it and learn from it. It is, in fact, the citizen power I aspire to: I have the right to know what the politicians over my head are planning to do with my future.

The Three Kings Behind the Glass / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Mariela is a good-natured and cheerful easterner in her thirties, living in the capital for years, to whom God has not given children, but “the devil gave her nephews,” and every time there’s an opportunity not to skimp on gestures to show her affection to the cherubs and to see, according to her own words, “how their faces light up,” when she gives them a present although they must share it between them. Last January 5, with the little bits of money she found “on the side,” she went early to one of the shopping centers in the municipality of 10 de Octubre selling in hard currency, to entertain them with something for all three, as once again there was not enough money to get something for each of them.

As a part of the population is returning to the tradition — although modestly on the most part — of celebrating Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, in Cuba, the number of people flocking to buy toys at the beginning of the year makes for long lines.

With the despair of those who wait, the protagonist of this story got in line at one of the stores that seemed better stocked, but as always happens there are people who get impatient and walk away to give time for the line to advance and attend to other matters in the interim, and the crafty devils who arrive recently who spread confusion about the order of the line* with the intent to “fish in troubled waters.” There was even a big woman of seven feet who threatened, “So! As the last one doesn’t appear, I am the first!”

The disorder was gaining in temperature and voices were rising in anger. But the line breakers didn’t make a clean getaway this day and the police showed up. The tough guys stayed to play the role of “red hot” offended ones with the intention of cutting the line, while the cops, batons on hand, got out of their cars ready to “convince” those present to be orderly and disciplines.

As Mariela grew up with the “sticks” of her parents and the police state, she wasn’t intimidates and stood there, impassive, waiting for a clobbering that wasn’t necessary, because everyone rapidly took their places. Easy job for the repressors that left an atmosphere with the subtext that, once again, their presence was sufficient. It could be argued that even the Magi, the Three Kings, were “threatened” and intimidated that day.

After the vicissitudes that confronted the star of our story, and after spending an hour on her feet, she managed to enter the establishment and select various options for her nephews that she had seen through the shop window. She liked them all and decided that the money she had been planning to spend on a pair of sneakers that same day, would be used to acquire at least one extra toy and so, for the first time, surprise the little boys with more than one toy on this significant date. She didn’t give much thought to the decision. It was fast because her feet were tired from so much walking and waiting, they were swelling up as a sign of protest.

But there was still one more line, the one where you go to hand over your cash to a person who, with the calm and superiority of someone who by necessity, but unwillingly, and in a bad mood and as if doing you a favor, attends to each customer in slow motion. Standing in that line she noticed the face of a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, stuck to the window, looking in with melancholy innocent eyes at the display of toys inside the store and beyond her reach. Her nose flattened and both little hands on each side of her face presented a bleak picture, her large eyes focusing so much sadness, like a chiaroscuro of Rembrandt portraying the face of poverty. And in the sensitivity of our heroine, the sun began to shine that morning.

Inquiring among those present who she was, one of the shopkeepers said was the little girl who came with her physically disabled mother to ask for “financial aid” from the people as they left the store. “It’s because the money she gets from social security isn’t enough,” added someone who paid and left. Mariela’s turn to leave also arrived (at last!), and she had to pass right by the girl, who was still looking through a little piece of the shop window she could reach that was not blocked by people. Without any hesitancy she addressed her:

“What are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Watching my toys.”

“Which ones are yours?”

“All of these…” she said, describing with her index finger an arch that covered the width of the place.

“What did you ask the Three Kings to bring you?” asked our protagonist while hiding the hand that was carrying her bag.

“Nothing, because my mother says they don’t come to Cuba, but I know they don’t exist, that the toys come from the stores. I have playmates who get gifts on the Day of the Three Kings. Do you think that if I were disabled, like my mamá, people would give me money to buy myself some?”

*Translator’s note: In Cuba people don’t necessarily stand neatly in line; each new arrival asks “who’s last” and so the order of the line is known, even as people come and go, sit down nearby to wait, chat with their friends elsewhere in the line, and so on.

The Three Kings Behind the Glass

Mariela is a good-natured and cheerful easterner in her thirties, living in the capital for years, to whom God has not given children, but “the devil gave her nephews,” and every time there’s an opportunity not to skimp on gestures to show her affection to the cherubs and to see, according to her own words, “how their faces light up,” when she gives them a present although they must share it between them. Last January 5, with the little bits of money she found “on the side,” she went early to one of the shopping centers in the municipality of 10 de Octubre selling in hard currency, to entertain them with something for all three, as once again there was not enough money to get something for each of them.

As a part of the population is returning to the tradition — although modestly on the most part — of celebrating Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, in Cuba, the number of people flocking to buy toys at the beginning of the year makes for long lines.

With the despair of those who wait, the protagonist of this story got in line at one of the stores that seemed better stocked, but as always happens there are people who get impatient and walk away to give time for the line to advance and attend to other matters in the interim, and the crafty devils who arrive recently who spread confusion about the order of the line* with the intent to “fish in troubled waters.” There was even a big woman of seven feet who threatened, “So! As the last one doesn’t appear, I am the first!”

The disorder was gaining in temperature and voices were rising in anger. But the line breakers didn’t make a clean getaway this day and the police showed up. The tough guys stayed to play the role of “red hot” offended ones with the intention of cutting the line, while the cops, batons on hand, got out of their cars ready to “convince” those present to be orderly and disciplines.

As Mariela grew up with the “sticks” of her parents and the police state, she wasn’t intimidates and stood there, impassive, waiting for a clobbering that wasn’t necessary, because everyone rapidly took their places. Easy job for the repressors that left an atmosphere with the subtext that, once again, their presence was sufficient. It could be argued that even the Magi, the Three Kings, were “threatened” and intimidated that day.

After the vicissitudes that confronted the star of our story, and after spending an hour on her feet, she managed to enter the establishment and select various options for her nephews that she had seen through the shop window. She liked them all and decided that the money she had been planning to spend on a pair of sneakers that same day, would be used to acquire at least one extra toy and so, for the first time, surprise the little boys with more than one toy on this significant date. She didn’t give much thought to the decision. It was fast because her feet were tired from so much walking and waiting, they were swelling up as a sign of protest.

But there was still one more line, the one where you go to hand over your cash to a person who, with the calm and superiority of someone who by necessity, but unwillingly, and in a bad mood and as if doing you a favor, attends to each customer in slow motion. Standing in that line she noticed the face of a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, stuck to the window, looking in with melancholy innocent eyes at the display of toys inside the store and beyond her reach. Her nose flattened and both little hands on each side of her face presented a bleak picture, her large eyes focusing so much sadness, like a chiaroscuro of Rembrandt portraying the face of poverty. And in the sensitivity of our heroine, the sun began to shine that morning.

Inquiring among those present who she was, one of the shopkeepers said was the little girl who came with her physically disabled mother to ask for “financial aid” from the people as they left the store. “It’s because the money she gets from social security isn’t enough,” added someone who paid and left. Mariela’s turn to leave also arrived (at last!), and she had to pass right by the girl, who was still looking through a little piece of the shop window she could reach that was not blocked by people. Without any hesitancy she addressed her:

“What are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Watching my toys.”

“Which ones are yours?”

“All of these…” she said, describing with her index finger an arch that covered the width of the place.

“What did you ask the Three Kings to bring you?” asked our protagonist while hiding the hand that was carrying her bag.

“Nothing, because my mother says they don’t come to Cuba, but I know they don’t exist, that the toys come from the stores. I have playmates who get gifts on the Day of the Three Kings. Do you think that if I were disabled, like my mamá, people would give me money to buy myself some?”

*Translator’s note: In Cuba people don’t necessarily stand neatly in line; each new arrival asks “who’s last” and so the order of the line is known, even as people come and go, sit down nearby to wait, chat with their friends elsewhere in the line, and so on.

Stepping on the Gas / Regina Coyula

It’s not all bad news. After more than six years with the installation of the gas at the door of the house, a campaign of the company responsible has been working in my neighborhood since December. In the effort to save time and the amount of pipe needed, the gaslines snake up the stairs like reptiles, looking for the shortest route, but we are a threatened and blockaded country, so we can’t pay attention to aesthetic details.

And so, since last week, I have blue flames in my kitchen that I regulate from below, thus the pressure benefits us. I have recovered the use of my oven; I have been able to roast peppers, (more good news), and toast stale bread. Alarmed, it’s true, by the stench of gas that has flooded the neighborhood. “It’s for safety,” says the employee I ask. I state the obvious, “Then we are in danger!” and another employee who, in a display of cold-bloodedness was smoking right next to the tool cart, gave me the key, “All the joints require a silicone seal that we don’t have, and so there is the stench, but don’t worry yourself, with the oxidation and the impurity of the gas, in a few days the pipes will seal themselves from the inside.”

As a collateral effect, I’ve noticed an increase in the neighborhood of chain link fences, whose installation benefits greatly from the availability of galvanized pipe.

January 26 2011

Dégas in Havana / Iván García

The new policies of flexibility in the U.S. embargo against Cuba have permitted an exhibit, provided by the MT Abraham Center for Visual Arts in the United States to be displayed at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Nestled in Zulueta Street, a stone’s throw from the Spanish embassy in Havana Vieja, the Museum shows a complete collection of sculptures by Edgar Dégas (Paris 1834-1917), one of the key figures of world art.

The exhibition is part of the tributes that in 2010 were conducted in different institutions and countries to mark the 90th birthday of the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso (Havana 1920).

Under the title “All the sculptures of Edgar Dégas,” the exhibit consists of 74 pieces, shown previously in Athens, Tel Aviv and Sofia. It will remain in the Cuban capital until the end of January and then continue its tour in Spain.

The star of the collection is The Little Ballerina of 14 Years, sculpted between 1878 and 1881, the only sculpture that this controversial and contradictory Frenchman showed while he was alive. Praised and reviled, Dégas is known as one of the founders of Impressionism. He was considered by Renoir as the best modern sculptor, ahead even of Rodin.

Despite the heavy and persistent rain over the weekend in Havana, the show has had an extraordinary reception. Cubans who advocate ending the embargo and normalizing relations with the United States are grateful for the possibility of cultural exchanges between the two countries and also the measures taken for the benefit of the families on both sides.

Now, from the United States, you can send through Western Union up to $10,000 and receive it on the island in convertible pesos with a 10% tax. Soon, direct flights to Havana will depart from several U.S. airports, not only from Miami, New York and California.

Raul Castro’s government is rubbing its hands. The Dégas exhibit can be a beginning. The icing on the cake would be to end the old, obsolete embargo and have droves of Yankee tourists arriving. It would not be bad for an economy that is leaking. Despite the drought.

Photo: Cubarte. Alicia Alonso contemplates The Little Ballerina of 14 Years, by Edgar Dégas at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 27 2011

The Pitcher Can Only Go To The Well So Many Times Before It Breaks / Yamil Domínguez

Written by: Yadaimí Domínguez

Faced with the delay of the Attorney General of the Republic, his refusal to modify the terms of custody and to violate the terms provided in the law, my brother started a new hunger strike on December 30 with only four months of recovery from another that lasted 107 days.

In this he demands a review of his case, seeing how our family has knocked on so many doors and been greeted only by lethargy and deaf ears. Today he claims his freedom to which he has a right, at least until the completion of the process, a change of custody measures.

When we were notified in September by the People’s Supreme Court that the sentence No 120/2010 was annulled and the whole process restarted, Yamil recovered his serenity, having to remain for some time more deprived of his liberty while the Instructor complied with the order from the Judicial Body. It was the middle of October when the case came to the hands of the Instructor and he proved the truth of my brother’s declarations, and so delivered the conclusive report to the prosecutor November 30, saying that the charge that Yamil supposedly entered the country illegally, was based on the argument that he had a flare gun at his disposal which he could have made use of.

On Friday December 3 the Instructor with Yamil and expressed to him that he would be released the following Monday and taken to the legal home of his mother to await the paperwork. While waiting for this to happen, Yamil remained in the same place and the official said he would be released in a week or a week and a half, saying the same thing to the consular officials of the United States Interest Section who visited my brother on December 10.

What happened is that since the beginning of the December the prosecutor had the file of the preparatory phase given to him by the Instructor and until the time there was no pronouncement, when Law 5 (Penal Procedures), in Article 262 gives a time frame for this of up to ten days. On the other hand, the attorney asked for a modification of the custody measures for Yamil and the response of the prosecutor was evasive and without foundation.

The defense was forced to submit to Record of Complaint to the Head of Criminal Procedure of the Attorney General’s Office, with 5 working days to answer, making Tuesday 25 January, the 5th and last day to issue a response.

The Prosecutor, the term implies, should guarantee the legality, however, limiting myself to this case, has been the complete opposite. To commence criminal proceedings, as was done three years ago, under an alleged crime that had no substance and to move it to the courts without objective basis, leaves a lot to be desired. But, he continues in error or perhaps pursuing an objective associated with his apocryphal mistakes, while an INNOCENT man suffer the rigors of an absurd confinement and hunger to demand respect for his rights.

Yes, Yamil is INNOCENT. The flare gun is used to signal that you are in danger and, though my brother was in a similar context, he did not feel unprotected. Despite the horrible weather and sea conditions, he had two sets of GPS equipment that allowed him to orient himself and his vessel had two outboard motors, in perfect working condition. Anyway, this gun is not a used as means to advise that one is entering an international port and his forced arrival for temporary protection (from the storm) exonerates him of any criminal liability, an issue set out in Article 22.1 and 215.2 of our Criminal Code.

The arguments for the innocence of Yamil Dominguez are overwhelming, but Cuba has to justify, before public opinion, the more than three years he has been in prison, so they have no other alternative but to charge him with illegal entry into the country.

Justice should be blind because we all have the same rights and are equal under the law. Unfortunately, many of those responsible for exercising it, remove the blindfold from their eyes and it is, at this exact moment, that they cease to be impartial and give birth to iniquity. Sufficient reasons exist for my brother to be freed. The reasons are obvious and we are confident that the truth will out; the pitcher can only go to the well so many times before it breaks.

January 24 2011

The Government Demands More Rigorous Police Work / Laritza Diversent

According to the January 6 edition of the newspaper Granma, “Updating the Cuban economic model demands concrete actions from the police to ensure the safety of families and order in society.” The Ministry of Interior made this known during the celebration of the 52nd anniversary of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).

Apparently the Cuban authorities are fully aware of the dangers surrounding the application of its new policies — mainly, the plan to lay off 500,000 workers this quarter. This is something unprecedented in the history of the socialist revolution, which promised, in its state constitution, full employment for all its citizens.

The situation on the streets is tense. “Transportation is getting worse, food is scarce, prices have gone through the roof, and there is no money. The only option left is to steal,” says Peter, a young man of 38, self-employed, who fills lighters. “I chose this activity because I can be on the corner waiting for some business to fall into my hands. The license at least gives me some cover,” he comments.

The government is aware of this reality. It knows that the new self-employed workers need the black market and the illegal trafficking of merchandise in order to finance their economic activities. It’s the only way to guarantee enough resources to stay in business and pay the state taxes. Classified by the population itself as excessive, given the precarious state of the island’s economy.

Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people, and the State, the main employer, has the ability to hire fewer than 3.9 million. There are too many people “inventing,” and we all know that illegal activity is the main source of survival. Faced with this phenomenon, the government increases its repressive force, mainly in the capital. In July, the Interior Ministry graduated nearly 600 officers, and in September, 500 were added to the new class.

The Cuban police, to curb black market activity, control the inter-provincial highways and deploy operatives who hunt down traveling vendors. They can detain someone and make a record of his belongings on a public street, although this power is not derived from the law, but rather from the excessive power that the government places in this body, whose members do not skimp on abuse.

In fact, they decide which citizen will be tried or not by the courts. The Penal Code gives them the power to impose an administrative fine instead of referring a crime to the court. There are quite a few police officers who accept bribes to apply the law at their convenience.

This truth is well silenced by the government. They warn: “The law is applied with the utmost rigor and severity.” However, they tolerate corruption and abuse, in exchange for impunity for members of the police. They are the main force of repression and the only one that guarantees them that an unsustainable system in maintained.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 26 2011

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (4) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 4 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I turn on the TV.

They are rebroadcasting an old Roundtable show where Fidel smiles showing his dental prosthesis. He has his arm in a cast but with the other he gesticulates more. He talks of the dollar, that curse without which life would not be drinkable.

Fidel ranted about the pros and cons of the U.S. dollar circulating at will on the Isle of Freedom. He affirms there has already been enough audacity. If it bothers him, he will put an impossible tax on it. He takes the measure of the idea. He plays the fool. The panelists unanimously support him. They almost push him into the middle of the ring. The people of Cuba point thumbs down, each one eating off a tin plate in front of the TV. The poor dollar, it will lose this theatrical sporting competition. And in the end Fidel imposes that impossible tax. Tames that bull of the stars and bars and an eye more pineal than inscrutable. It’s taken him less than an hour to erase a decade of Yankee national heroes as icons of our national salvation.

It’s a Roundtable from mid 2005, I think. A year of hurricanes and power outages. The year in which Fidel tripped in public and broke his kneecap into one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine pieces, I believe. His last year in power. And not even he knew it. On this morning’s rebroadcast Fidel still doesn’t know it. So he is immortal, I think.

I turn off the TV.

The crack in the ex-Soviet picture tube leaves a smell of ozone in the room. Electron-216.

Flashes through the blinds.

After a while distant thunder is heard, perhaps on the open sea beyond the wall of the Malecon and the forked lighthouse of Morro Castle.

An echo rolls far away, out there. In life, I believe, nowhere.

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (3) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 3 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

No it wasn’t.

It was JAAD.

Calling me from the quiet early morning in Spain. Six years or six-hours difference between my writer friend and me.

I heard him joking, almost happy. After decades of paralysis because of rather pedestrian politics, he had won his first literary contest. And not just any. The Hucha de Oro prize. Euros, many euros his broken street-bookseller pockets. With pinworms and lice, but with an incandescent brain. Indecent.

JAAD singing boleros into the receiver. It was a remix with themes of Habana Abierta: we were friends of Orlando, what a riot, an incredible riot …

He quoted full sentences of his winning story. The beginning was apparently the greatest: It had an ass of sixty and some tits of twenty, but wasn’t even fifteen…

JAAD would be free now. Finally.

Lack of money was drowned him as a child. He himself was a ruined character of JAAD. Or of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Or of Charles Bukowsky. Or of Lino Novas Calvo. Or of Roberto Arlt. A tragic guy. Always dying between suicide and semen and the upcoming toothache.

JAAD hung uo between his own applause and my congratulations.

I loved that man, but it was already too late for anything. For everyone.

Fuck you in your Europe of successes and Japanese whores touring with flashes in the museums of Valencia without leaving the whole of adolescence. Have zen sex in the lotus position under their hentai vulvitas. Vomit within the vaginas of the First World all your subnational hatred. Fuck with your cock the good news that soon you will not know how to write, nor to sing with your ding dong, balls. Rest in pus.

JAAD, the family idiot. JAAD, the pornographic genius of my generation. Coito ergo sum. Everything you touched turned to horror. The Hucha of Horror.

I wish you know a kitsch story of Kim Ki Duk. I wish you a rhizomatic death. I wish you all that the future molecularly holds for you.

Goodbye, JAAD.

I spent a lot of time listening to the static of the hung up telephone in Havana, first and only free territory of America.

Outside could be heard the early morning horns on Porvenir Avenue. Occasionally a train on the Crucero de Luyanó. From time to time a boat adrift on the oil in the port.

I wrapped the coiled wire around my neck.

Only then I hung up.

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (2) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 2 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I got to Lawton two hours later.

I’d walked fast. I got a nosebleed. I had chills.

I passed my block. I didn’t recognize my wooden house.

I turned around several times, finding myself on the stairs that make the corner of Fonts and Beales a cesspool.

Poles with no lights. Doorways with no lights. The moon above without light. A moon of props, cut like a pussy under the concave tarp of heaven.

Finally I opened the grill.

Fonts No. 125, my house.

My dog barked in the background. Kelly, remembered.

I laughed. Kelly, the first word in the world.

The laughter gave me motion sickness. Shortness of breath. I wiped my nose with quilted sleeves.

It was no longer dripping. There were just fresh outriders of coagulated blood. Black.

I breathed.

Smell of iron, rust, trains, harbor.

I took out my keys. I sat on the doorstep. The areca palm was moving in slow motion. The cold front numbed all reality.

I looked at the garden. The nopal cactus brought from the Fernández-Larrea house in Vibora Park. The false yellow flame trees. The fragile lilies, of glass. The witches before human history in Cuba. The snails endemic to my house. Roses, of course. And an asparagus bush pruned at every poor wedding in the neighborhood.

Lawton, the second word in the world. Also corset.

I do not speak Spanish.

I do not speak.

No.

.

I lay on the tiles. Kneeling. Ice on my back. I coughed. Having lungs is a danger.

If a patrol was passing, they would take me for dead. Better so.

Then they would take me for a madman. Than no.

I sat up.

I opened the door. I went inside. I closed. I walked without seeing, to the long, narrow hall of tongue and groove boards. I got to the bathroom.

Pissed.

Long and bitterly, pissed.

My urine bubbled, frothy. Beer of an uncivil and soft odor.

For a long time I stood there in the absolute darkness of the bathroom. My penis hanging in my hand. The left, always.

The penis flaccid at first. Then turgid, then hard. Tetanic muscles, circulation atrocious. The penis recognizable in the middle of a total state of unrecognition.

If I moved my hand now I would faint.

I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

I wanted more to survive that night. Let the dawn never come, but I survive that.

Then the phone rang.

A whip of chills in my spine.

Lightning out of the blue.

Of course it was Ipatria.

It would have to be Ipatria.

This is Not The Novel of the Revolution (1) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

( …CHAPTER 1… )

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I looked up.

I saw two moons.

I said, “Shit, Orlando, today you’re gonna kill.”

Two moons.

Perfect, in focus, insane.

The winter night in Havana as a red shroud.

I thought about my mother.

I thought about Ipatria.

I thought about me, about us.

Of all the dead and all dead loves, how to distinguish?

I thought about the beauty and lies of any Revolution.

Crime, screaming, wanting to run, anger, tenderness. Enough.

Two moons.

I was going crazy. Finally.

I knelt.

I did not want to go crazy. The idea terrified me.

I was terrified to realize that the madness was now pure truth.

“No, please,” I whispered to God or to anyone, and I closed my eyes and began to pray.

In silence. I do not know how to pray. They didn’t teach me in time.

In the middle of the night without Cuba. What do you call at this hour in the world this illusion of a city?

Havana, pray for us sinners …

Under the color-blind traffic light at 12th Street and 23rd Avenue, the most central and desolate corner of the universe. Most central and deserted.

Havana, now and at the hour of our death …

Two moons, Landy, fucking amazing.

I started to pray but the pain did not leave.

The worst always remains. The rest are words.

I opened my eyes. My eyes of undefined color. Of water.

The moon was still there.

Unique. Immeasurable. Inert. Myopic.

A nocturnal sun on our bodies again and again Cubans butting heads in the middle of the night.

“Orlando,” he said, “Orlando.”

I gulped.

I wiped my tears.

I stood up.

“Your name is Orlando and you will not kill,” repeated in the loud voice of no one: “Your name is Orlando and never ever ever are you going to kill.”

I stuck out my hand at a taxi charging dollars.

I threw myself at the car.

The driver avoided me slamming on the breaks and swerving. Then he made a U-turn and pulled out with tires screeching toward Zapata.

He fled from me.

Like my mother.

Like Ipatria.

Like any revolution.

Like love.

Like death.