Translating Cuba

In Cuba, access to the internet is restricted and very expensive for citizens, but it is also controlled by state institutions. According to the government, the restrictions on individuals are due to the embargo, which limits the conditions and quality of the connection.

In Cuba, Decree 209 of 1996, “Access from the Republic of Cuba to Information Networks of Global Reach,” created an Interministerial Commission charged with authorizing the direct internet connection and decreed selective access to it.

The body is presided over by the Minister of Informatics and Communication, and composed of the heads of Science, Technology and the Environment, of Justice, of the Interior, and the Revolutionary Armed Forces. These latter two regulate access to the internet to reconcile it with defense and national security.

In March of 2010 the United States permitted the exporting of internet programs that allow online conversations and access to social networks. The decision granted exemptions under existing sanctions to companies such as Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to offer services to Iran, Sudan and Cuba as a form of assistance to their citizens to be able to communicate with the outside world.

The Cuban government claimed that the measure did not weaken the embargo, but was a “subversive” and “destabilizing” plan to overthrow the socialist system. In Decree 209 it was made clear that information networks of global reach are a danger to State Security.

The Commission, as the Council of Ministers recorded in the rule, will guarantee that the information disseminated is accurate, and that it is obtained in line with ethical principles, and that it does not affect the interests or security of the state. In consequence the connection to a national internal network (intranet) is prioritized, that guarantees absolute control of information and minimizes the direct use of network of networks.

Alan Gross, an American subcontractor, was tried in Havana for intending to contribute to the “free flow of information among and between the Cuban people.” Little did he imagine that the Cuban government would feel threatened, when he tried to bring satellite connection equipment to the Jewish community in Cuba.

After fourteen months of confinement, his good intentions were interpreted by the island’s government as an act against “the independence and territorial integrity of the State.” Just afterwards, social networks such as Facebook and Twitter were used to organize protests that ended in the downfall of the leaders of Egypt and Tunisia.

It does not appear rational that communication satellite equipment could affect the sovereignty of the island, unless the Cuban government considers Internet a mortal threat.

April 4 2011

Just when you’ve forgotten how to teach a baby to walk, you give birth to a blog. A website to help articulate its first words, to warn of dangers ahead, and to show a world that you don’t quite understand yourself. You thought you wouldn’t have another child, because of the housing shortage, scarcities and the civic — and silent — protest of your empty uterus, but it occurred to you to play with the alchemy of kilobytes. The delivery was painful and prolonged, lasting not several hours but four years. With the baby came unstoppable hemorrhaging that absorbs your time and energy; supposed doctors also emerged who question you: Why did you want to get into all this? After an eventful pregnancy, the creature was born by Caesarean, they sewed painful surgical stitches around your life and although you can still wear bikinis, they no longer allow you to enter movie theaters, participate in any conferences, travel outside the country, or leave the city without the constant persecution of those shadows who also arrived with the birth.

You’re the mother of a peculiar and novel entity, in a society where differences are frowned upon. You want to explain to your family and friends that you would have burst if you hadn’t let this autonomous being — that today is your virtual blog — out of you. But many don’t believe you. To attribute to your womb the real authorship of this fruit would be to confess that they themselves have aborted a thousand and one times for fear of being publicly challenged. You just have to tuck in the baby, watch it grow, get used to its face crisscrossed with smiles and scars, listen to your instincts and know that this sprout you have given birth to is what you always wanted.

One day you watch it go out into the world with anxiety about whether it will survive the cynicism out there, the insults and mockery. But, instead of returning distressed, it arrives accompanied by its peers, dozens of stigmatized and demonized blogs, tucked in by those like you who couldn’t stop pushing. So now the child-blog slices its birthday cake and winks at you: you have given it breath, and let it soar through cyberspace, flying to the Internet. But not even being its parent gives you control over its life. It already belongs to the Cuban alternative blogosphere and has no reason to carry on its back those painful contractions you felt on April 9, 2007.

As one would expect, Senator John Kerry’s statement that he opposes the U.S. government’s $20 million budget proposal to promote democracy in Cuba has created quite a stir.

Analysts from different ends of the spectrum criticized his words, using adjectives ranging from “political opportunism” — linking his declarations with the possible conditioning of the Cuban government, during Carter’s recent visit to Havana, for the release of Alan Gross — to “traitor” to the United States’ commitment to democratization of the Island.

Even his senate colleague, the Democrat Bob Menendez, spoke up strongly against the decision of Kerry, who presides over nothing less than the influential Senate Foreign Affairs Committee.

But what were the controversial statements of the former presidential candidate with respect to these economic funds. He said, in essence:

“Before this $20 million is committed, a full review of the programs should be undertaken and the Administration should consult with the Congress. There is no evidence, however, that the ‘democracy promotion’ programs, which have cost the U.S. taxpayer more than $150 million so far, are helping the Cuban people.”

To explain my point of view, I take as a starting point the fact that I am a Cuban who has recently left his country, who lived there for twenty-six years, and most of all, who has recently gotten to know a significant number of opponents, both traditional and of the new kind, and members of an incipient but exemplary civil society.

Without mincing words, and begging your pardon for the arrogance: Nobody has to tell me how ordinary Cubans live, or think, nor how peaceful opponents carry out their struggle for respect for freedom on the Island. One of the most frequent mistakes I’ve noticed in exiles with good intentions, is to think in the name of people who, at times, they do not know.

And with this knowledge of the facts I say: If the American taxpayers have paid $150 million dollars so far to support the admirable efforts of some Cuban dissidents; if they have been told that their money has been decisive for the Cuban cause, I think they should demand a refund. They have been somewhat cheated.

As a committed journalist who knocked on the doors of defiant people, I can say that save minor exceptions, the vast number of the Cuban opposition, of alternative bloggers, of these new kind of guerrillas, whether public or camouflaged, suffer from an economic insecurity that is not consistent with the aid funds approved, year after year, by the American government.

And I’m not talking about the scandals. I’m not talking about the embarrassment of the Government Accountability Office’s inspection in 2006, which discovered that these funds to promote democracy on the Island were spent, in large part, on chocolates, leather coats, chain saws, crab meat and Sony Playstations. (I don’t think even a Marx Brothers film could bring together such a list of products to defend liberty.)

Better I should ask a question that could rightly be that of millions of American citizens in the midst of a worrying economic crisis, wondering where these tax dollars end up. The question is: What has been the real impact of that money on the Cuban cause?

Putting myself in the shoes of a native of this country, what have I gotten in that country for my money?

What I’m really interested in is hearing the response of those who see these funds as an indispensable help. To educate me with proofs, with facts, not with romantic suppositions, what is the real benefit of these dollars to the fight for democracy in Cuba.

Because I, like Senator John Kerry, suspect that those millions — which, by the way, are impossible to send directly, in cash, because the embargo prevents it — an imprecise number but no small number of them, have swelled the pockets of intermediaries, functionaries and presumed defenders of the cause of my country

And then comes the awful circumstance: Cuban opponents are sent flash drives, portable radios, some chocolate and some crab meat and the Cuban government says: “This is financing the internal counterrevolution.” And gives another turn to the screw of repression.

And while some sharp schemers on this side of the sea benefit from these projects, on the other side, at “the center of things,” they receive a few crumbs from this capital, along with all of the consequences.

No matter what they say: It’s not fair.

So I approve of the mistrust and the sharp interest of Senator John Kerry in reviewing what have been the uses of this budget, which is not out of this world considering the amount of other United States programs, but, in times of crisis, I don’t think anyone has it to spare.

And above all, it’s worth reviewing not only the capital itself, but the mechanisms by which it is invested in indirect aid. Who knows if the great fissure lies in the deficient apparatus of implementation, with too much bureaucracy that takes advantage of the loopholes, burdening an intention that in principle, as a Cuban, I appreciate and admire.

Let no one forget: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

April 10 2011

EML: Mr. Lesnik, we’ve already talked about the Cuban opposition, where does your aversion to these political activists come from? Why can’t you, a man so markedly political, not accept the right of these people to belong to parties that oppose the only official Party?

ML: It stems from, among other things, that for me the Cuban opposition has chosen the easiest path: receiving a check from the U.S. government, for which, with good reason, the Cuban government calls them mercenaries, and accuses them of being a fabrication.

I told you before that I can’t believe in the political militancy of fabricated leaders.

Tell me this, sincerely: Do you really believe that Yoani Sanchez is one of the 100 most influential people in the world?

EML: At the time she was included in that list, probably not. Now, yes.

ML: But not even Fidel Castro is one of the 100 people, boy!

EML: No, but for me it’s more than obvious that for a long time now Fidel Castro has ceased to be influential in the world. We’re not talking about fame, about historic importance. We’re talking about influence. And to say that Yoani is not one of the most influential people in the world today, is to ignore reality.

What this is about, Mr. Lesnick, is that the government has designed a tremendously effective machinery to that there is no legal way to exercise opposition.

Let me ask you: Does there exist any way of being an open opponent in Cuba, and being respected as one, not being denigrated by the communication media (without any right to respond), not being imprisoned or excluded from society. Does there exist even one way?

ML: I don’t know how many receive money or don’t receive it, how much more honorable some are than others. But what I do know is that those who present themselves as leaders of the opposition are probably financed by this government, And of the 75 who were put in prison in 2003 it was shown at their trials that they received money from the United States government.

I don’t want to make a categorical statement about all of them, but it’s true that nearly all are of this type. And if the Cuban people don’t respect them it’s because they don’t deserve resepct, because there are things that many of them don’t support about American policy against Cuban and they don’t dare say it publicly.

For example: Don’t you think there are many of them who don’t approve of the embargo? Don’t you think there are many who don’t support it and still they remain silent?

EML: Mr. Lesnik, there is a very well-known letter of May 2010, that has come to be called “Letter of the 74,” where a group of opponents and well-known members of civil society, among them Elizardo Sanche, Dagoberto Valdes, Guillermo Farinas, and Yoani Sanchez herself, wrote to the American Congress to suspend the embargo.

ML: Of course, but Obama’s is a different government. Please…

EML: You told me no one had done it and I am responding.

But let me emphasize: Why don’t you or I know even a single Cuban opponent whom the government respects, whom they don’t demonize on TV programs, and simply take as an opponent with the right to disagree? Doesn’t common sense say something’s not right there?

ML: Look, to me the History that I have learned since 1959, is that the Americans tried to use the Cuban opposition and paid them. I am a witness to how, from the beginning, the Americans put the government opposition there to control it.

And this has been the same policy up to today: they have corrupted the Cuban opposition to the point where the people don’t believe in it. The result is that today we have a Cuban government with an enemy so large, that it allows the Island’s government to accuse everyone in opposition of being traitors.

What I want to say is that this a product of American policies. Is the United States hadn’t intervened in Cuba from the year 1961, and if it hadn’t declared Cuba “the enemy,” and hadn’t used all its resources to bring down the government, there would have been no reason nor pretext to take measures against people who honestly cold have been within their rights to disagree.

For example, can you think of a civil society sector that historically confronted communism more than the Catholic church? And when the Pope met with Fidel Castro the Vatican declared peace in Cuba?

Is it true or is it a lie that from then on Catholics had freedoms that had never been enjoyed under a communist government?

EML: Provided they do not take any positions of disapproval against what happens in Cuba, Lesnik. Provided they remain silent about what they see around them. When Catholics take positions as dissenting Cubans, not even an institution as powerful as the Church can save them. And if you don’t believe me, look at what the police did to Father Jose Conrado in Santiago de Cuba in December of 2007, when they dared to enter his parish and use violence there during a mass in support of political prisoners.

ML: But Conrado is a provocateur… I know Conrado from before you were born, and what he’s looking for is a show, to be the enfant terrible of the Catholic Church in Cuba.

EML: I don’t agree with you at all. Are all the Cuban priests who maintain positions confronting officialdom provocateurs? Is Archbishop Pedro Meurice also a provocateur for reading that fantastic letter of welcome to the Pope in Santiago, where he denounced the suffering of many Cubans?

ML: No, but those who reprimand them are not the government, it’s the Vatican. Whoever has sanctioned them I suppose it to be th Vatican, for saying what they shouldn’t according to the Institution…

EML: I don’t know what sanction you’re referring to. None of them have mentioned suffering any sanction from the Vatican, Mr. Lesnik. Father Conrado, who right now is visiting the United States, exercises his profession currently in the parish of Santa Teresita, and Monsignor Meurice is retired due to his advanced age and lives in El Cobre.

ML: Fine, but what I wanted to tell you on theme of the Church is that the Cuban government has smoked the peace pipe with the Church, because they are no longer conspiring as they did before. And because of this the Catholics have their full freedoms on the Island.

Now, in the case of the United States, they have not made peace with Cuba and what’s more, returning to the dissidents, in the measures that the government of the Island sees that some of its nationals adopt positions that could be used by the American government to maintain its war with Cuba, they can’t have more freedoms for them.

Although you don’t know it, you were an agent of American policy there.

EML: You’re wrong in that assessment. I have always exercised, and I continue to exercise, my irrefutable freedom of expression. The problem is that the government of my country, whether this bothers it or not, whether they believe that it coincides or not with American positions. I leave that up to them. What I do, I dictate my thoughts to myself.

And look, the cynicism of the authorities in my cities got to the point where, as I said in a post, the official who “looked after me” for State Security came to my house expressly to tell me, “We are the ones who issue the Exit Permit. We know you have a Visa for the United States. If you stop writing, there won’t be any obstacles, if you don’t, look out for the consequences.”

Does this seem to you to be the fault of the American government? Do you believe that this is a valid way to fight American policies?

MJ: OK, and did you stop writing?

EML: Not only did I not stop writing, but I responded to them in my blog itself.

ML: But they let you leave! So where’s the problem?

EML: What is horrible is that they have the power to decide, Mr. Lesnik. What is horrible is that they have the mechanism in hand, the mechanism to decide for the lives of others. Whether they use it or not.

This reminds me of the film “Schindler’s List” when Schindler convinces the cold-blooded Amon Goeth that real power is not in ordering the death of someone, but in pardoning them. And I will tell you this: the leaders who possess the power to decide about the lives of people at will, on a whim, at their convenience, have only one name: they are called dictators, Mr. Lesnik.

ML: Look, I’m not going to defend the things that you and I both consider negatives. But I wonder what is the alternative given the this fact: Do we try to change these mistakes through dialog, and bit by bit manage to build a humanist society that we all support? Or do we try to destroy this process that is so valuable in many other aspects?

For me, I have no doubt about the answer.

Let me ask you something, for example: Do you or do you know believe the Cuban government with respect to the case of Zapata?

EML: Naturally, no. Remember that this was one of the reasons, supposedly, that I was left without a job in Cuba.

And now that we touch on the theme, of course, you said in the article To live on dreams is to die disillusioned, also published in Cubadebate, “A prisoner named Zapata, according to the Island’s government a common criminal, and to the anti-Castro opposition a true political dissident.”

I regret to tell you that you are wrong. Not only the Cuban opposition declared him a dissident. Also in 2003 one of the official “Bibles,” the book “The Dissidents” by Rosa Miriam Elizalde and Luis Baez, included Zapata among the political opponents, with photos and precise dates. You can look it up. What happened is that latter it was convenient to say that no, he never was, he was just a common criminal…

ML: Did I say in this article you cite that Zapata was a criminal?

EML: No, but I dare say that you believe it. Correct me.

ML: Yes, I think he was, but I don’t say it because I don’t have proof. But everything seems to indicate to me that he was. And you, doesn’t it seem to you that he was involved in those common criminal acts that he’s accused of by the Cuban government?

EML: Do you know why I don’t believe it? for two reasons: 1: Because I said a bit ago that the government has never recognized a single opponent as worthy of respect: they always demonize them morally, and 2: Because I myself, in my own flesh, suffered the most degrading defamation in the world being accused of being a pimp, and that I sold the bodies of several women. You didn’t know that?

ML: No, until now, no.

EML: I humbly suggest you take a turn through my blog and read my text there about it. I’d like you to see what State Security does to “protect itself from American policies.”

I really appreciate your taking the time for this dialog, Max Lesnik. Although we both know there were too many issues on the table to cover everything in just two hours.

ML: And I say the same to you. Hopefully some day you will understand that in the end, where I have come to in my thinking, Ernesto, is that in order for us to see changes in Cuban policy, we have to fight for changes in American policy. If not, the war is lost for people like me, who support a Cuban society that is more just and perfect than what exists today.

March 22 2011

To honor honors, said the Apostle of our independence. But this maxim doesn’t always fit reality.

Listening to the news on the shortwave, I am stunned to find out that the Venezuelan dictator has been awarded, in an Argentine university, a prize for the freedom of expression. Thanks to him, who has taken the free press of his country hostage, who — under whatever pretext — has closed down radio and television stations, and keeps journalists in jail. What irony! Unless they’re now calling “freedom of expression” of shameless language, insulting, lacking in ethics and decent diction. What’s more, the prize acceptance speech was edited, due to his prohibiting the press from transmitting it live.

Of course, if you know some of the characters that have preceded him in this honor, you will know that the prize is not very prestigious. In this light, it’s conceivable that to honor does not always honor.

March 31 2011

I saw him before me, for the first time, in a television studio in Miami. He had been invited to debate an incident in which he had been a protagonist: A billboard, in an anti-Castro city par excellence, that for twenty-four hours spoke out on behalf of the five Cuban members of the “Wasp Network” who are considered heroes in Cuba and spies in Miami. Shortly after being installed on a central avenue, the billboard of discord would be removed in the face of protests from radical groups.

The “Marti Alliance,” an organization headed by Max Lesnik, had paid for the placement of this sign.

I believe this aroused my curiosity, my particular interest, in interviewing one of the most controversial and least-liked public figures in south Florida. For many, he is the leader of pro-Fidel and pro-Communist movements within the exile community, regardless of how much he insists that he doesn’t defend a doctrine based on Communism.

Our meeting took place without protocols or restraints on his part: an email asking for an interview, another responding affirmatively. After, the address of the radio station where this man, a militant of the old Cuban Orthodox Party, dedicated a part of his life to the media.

Next to this small radio station, its walls decorated with images of Martí and Chibás, Antonio Guiteras, Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez, a small Chinese restaurant served as the stage for a two-hour interview, after the lunch to which Max Lesnik treated me.

How can I introduce this man, bound by ties of friendship to the leader of the Cuban Revolution, defending some of the most criticized positions of the Island’s government. As a young journalist, a recent arrival to this city, opposed to the regime that runs my country, but possessing a democratic vocation that allows me to hear the arguments of everyone who wants to share them with me.

Seen very clearly, Max Lesnik is nothing more than a dissident in Miami. And complex exhilarating characters, those who generate reactions — for and against — due to their unfettered advocacy of their positions, will never cease to interest me.

I reproduce below the first piece of this lengthy interview.

Ernesto Morales Licea: In the documentary “The Man of the Two Havanas,” filmed by your daughter, I remember you telling a reporter in a public protest, “Do not divide the Cuban family.” This was in relation to the limitations imposed by the Bush administration of three years between each visit to the Island. My first question is: in your view, who has divided the Cuban family more? The American government or the government of Cuba itself?

Max Lesnik: The Cuban family has been divided over time for different reasons. Both the Cuban and the United States governments have responsibility for this. But the seriousness of this is that when Cubans began to communicate again and there was a distension between the parties involved in a conflict, then the American government, pandering to the extreme right in Miami, took measures affecting not the Cuban government, but the Cuban people and the exiles who live here.

And I think Cuba does have responsibility with regards to the division of families, but two wrongs don’t make a right, and therefore the responsibility of the American government is totally immoral: when the Castro Revolution took measures that led to an exodus, they did it for reasons of principles that, right or wrong, had a self-justification.

But when the government here took measures to divide families they didn’t do it for honest reasons or ideological beliefs: they did it for electoral interests.

EML: But for many years the United States government didn’t touch Cuban-Americans traveling to the Island because it was the Cuban government who wouldn’t let them enter. It has been a trip of no return. In fact the Cubans who were left on the Island had to hide their links with the exiles, lest they’d face consequences. Does that strike you as more understandable and legitimate than Bush’s decision, which on the other hand I don’t share? It is more reasonable?

ML: No, no it’s not, but we have to recognize that this practice ended long ago. And in politics, like in daily life, the past must be understood and studied, because always when we work towards a better future we must start from a base of what it is, not what it was. And today Cubans on the Island do not suffer reprisals for having family abroad, nor do they have to hide them.

In the same way I recognize that the position taken by the current Obama administration is positive: eliminating all the obstacles established by Bush for traveling to Cuba, and if there are huge things in Cuba widely criticized like the so-called “white card,” then I believe it should be eliminated.

But I want to clarify that the Permission to Leave is not an invention of the current government; in the 1950s it was already a requirement to go to the Foreign Ministry and request a permit…

EML: Yes, but you will agree with me that we are talking about the Batista dictatorship, and supposedly this Revolution was to do away with all the bad practices. Or was it to continue them?

ML: That’s correct, I agree. But I just want to reaffirm that it is not a new procedure. And to be honest I will tell you: it was not widely applied at that time. It was in selective cases, with people of great interest to the government.

Anyway, if there are restrictive measures in Cuba for leaving the country, I am against them, and I said it there: I am opposed to limiting the right of people to leave the country.

EML: Call things by their name, Mr. Lesnik, these are not simply restrictive measures, These are violations of human rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, where it says in writing that “every individual has the right to leave any country, including their own, and to return to their own country.”

Let me ask you: What if you suddenly left Miami, which is not where you were born but it is the city where you have lived most of your life, went to Cuba and made statements contrary to U.S. policy, and suddenly the American government prevented your from returning to your house in Miami?

ML: It would be very regrettable.

EML: We’re in agreement. So tell me then, what do you say to people who are not terrorists, drug smugglers, who have not tried to assassinate any leader, nor to introduce any plague, who are not fugitives from justice, and whom the Cuban government prevents from entering the Island for life only because of their opposing views?

ML: Well, if I were the Cuban government I would let them enter. Absolutely. But I am not the Cuban government.

That country should let anyone who wants to leave, leave, and anyone who wants to return, return. Of course with the limitations you yourself have clarified: there are people who have been to Cuba and committed crimes and some are caught and some are not.

But you can’t fail to understand that freedom from the point of view of governments is always in direct relation to State security.

What does this mean? Well, when a State, for internal political reasons, feels insecure about the harassment of an enemy, it is clearly more restrictive in terms of public freedoms than when it feels solidly established.

In the United States a lot of people can say, “How much freedom!” But the American State is a secure State. But during McCarthyism when they imagined some Americans were sympathetic to the left, they were persecuted and imprisoned. Simply because the State wasn’t secure that it was in control of the situation.

EML: The problem, for me, is that Cuba has manipulated the issue of security at its convenience. It’s unacceptable that citizens, among whom I include myself, who never committed any crime nor have any links with violent organizations, cannot enter their own country because those who have seized it take reprisals against them.

ML: Have you applied for a visa to enter Cuba and been refused, or are you pre-judging?

EML: No, so far I haven’t applied, I’ve been in this country three months. But I’m reasoning based on well-known experience, Mr. Lesnik.

ML: Well, then let’s wait until you try it before judging, wouldn’t you agree? To me, you’re biased. I’m asking if you know any of these honorable people who are not allowed to enter Cuba just because they think differently about Cuban politics.

EML: I don’t have enough time in this interview to mention names, Mr. Lesnik. From ordinary people I’ve talked with here in Miami, to others who have become known precisely because of this, as in the case of Fernando Delgado Duran, a Cuban living in Austria, who recently staged a brief hunger strike to call attention to his case, that they will not allow him to visit his family. I’m sure that in Miami we could collect hundreds of thousands of similar testimonies, which I’m surprised you don’t know.

So I think that if your attitude is honest, you should not only defend some legitimate rights that the government of the island has on behalf of its sovereignty, but also defend the respect for universal rights which are continually violated.

ML: But look, what I do know is that many would be allowed to enter Cuba and they are the ones who don’t want to, who proclaim that they do not want to go to Cuba as long as this regime is in force.

EML: In that case, it is their right. What is impossible to explain, for example, is why writer Amir Valle, today in Berlin, has written hundreds of letters to the authorities of the island demanding an explanation of why he has been denied his visa, even though his children are there, and after he reached a dead-end Valle put pressure on by saying that if they did not let him take his children or go to Cuba, he would mobilize the international left in a “reverse Elián” case. And only then he was allowed to take his children, but not to enter the country.

ML: Well he is saving himself from being called a traitor by extremist sectors here (in Miami) thanks to all that trouble. Because the other problem is that when you are not allowed to enter Cuba you complain that there is a dictatorship, but when the government of Cuba lets you in you are called a traitor here.

EML: That is quite a pickle, at least for me. Being branded a traitor by people who don’t concern me the least.

ML: Over there it’s wrong that you are not allowed out or in, and here they do the same but in reverse, calling people traitors if they travel to Cuba.

EML: But there is no comparison between a laughable insult and a restriction to travel to your own country Mr. Lesnik.

ML: I am not saying it is the same thing, but Miami’s extremist community slanders and denigrates anyone who doesn’t follow the official stance of stigmatizing Cuba and saying that everything coming from the island is evil.

EML: But the evidence that this extremist community has no impact on anything is yourself. If this community had any control over things, any determination over anything, and any power other than uttering pointless insults, you wouldn’t be allowed to return to Miami when you appear on Cuban television praising the Cuban Revolution. This is the immense difference: the small group of extremists, as you call them, determines nothing. The Cuban government determines everything.

ML: Well, but if they have a way of controlling things they obviously wouldn’t let me back in. Because the facts are there: the Cuban community in the south of Florida, for electoral reason, pressures and conditions everything that has anything to do with Cuba.

Then the policies of exile don’t fully translate to the America policies towards Cuba, but that is the intention. I don’t tire of saying that to reach an ideal society it is easier to start from where Cuba is today than to change everything and go back to yesterday’s Cuba with all the ingredients that those in Miami would prefer.

That’s how I see it, as I declare myself a democratic socialist and averse to any form of dictatorship.

EML: I deduce from your words that you don’t consider the current Cuban government a dictatorship.

ML: In my view there is a government that maintains an evolutionary system capable of changing in any way if the Cubans desired to do so. But not because of outside pressures.

In that case, if Cubans wished, Cuba could be transformed; what will never be transformed is Cuban exile. Not even with your arrival here in Miami. Because people come from Cuba with a different flare and with a critical position against everything they’ve left behind such as yours; but, without intentions to make improvements of the Cuban society through terrorist acts or military action, they are left with not but one choice: to fold and adopt that position, contrary to their initial ideals, or they suffer the consequences of being considered communist or similar.

I believe, for example, that there are people in Cuba that also fold. People within the government who see with critical eyes many of the things happening around them and say nothing. Rather they stay the course in order to survive.

And there are some here who do the same; who fold to the interest of irrational and intolerant monsters who are in control of power.

Do you want a better example than what happen to the billboard we put up on a street in Miami asking for the release of the Five? I would have rather had it stay, to demonstrate that we do have democracy here. But no. What they accomplished was to demonstrate that there is more intolerance here than there is in Cuba, because there at least you can argue that the State has enemies that threaten its stability.

EML: I am glad to hear you speak about tolerance. In 1968 you started the magazine “Replica” here in Miami, which in many ways dissents with the United States policies. It is well-known that there were attempts to shut it down, either via violent ways as well as political campaigns. But you were able to keep it going, nobody threw you in jail nor did the government shut the publication down by force.

Today, you have a radio show that doesn’t agree by any stretch with US policies, much less with Miami views. Nobody shuts your radio station down or throws you in jail.

ML: Yes, but when “Replica” was first published, where, by the way, I allowed all parties to express their point of view, from leftist to rightist articles, the most obstinate sectors in Cuban exile wanted me to editorially abide by their position.

My declining, and the publishing of an editorial where I denounced terrorism, resulted in my being threatened with bombs, not just at the magazine’s offices but also at stands where it was sold. It also served to have all of those working, promoting, or supporting the publication be personally threatened.

EML: Nevertheless, just a bit ago you said we shouldn’t judge Cuba’s reality based on mistakes made in the past, right? You said that Cuba has overcome many things of the past and must be given credit for that. But I say the same thing here. This country has also overcome, and rapidly, many of the ways of the past, and if you don’t believe it tell Rosa Parks, who refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, that decades later someone with the same color skin as hers would be president of the country.

Currently there is not a single case of violence or explicit threats against people in this city who exercise their right of free expression, Mr. Lesnik. If you and I started a magazine now that didn’t agree with official government policy, nor with the extreme right of this city, no one would put a bomb… Correct me if I’m wrong.

ML: OK, I don’t know if they wouldn’t place a bomb because they’re afraid of the FBI. If they would use other methods. And terrorism isn’t only about setting off bombs. If the restaurant where we’re sitting now advertises in your and my magazine, and they get a telephone call accusing them of being traitors and communists, and the owner has to call our magazine and withdraw his ad because he’s afraid, that’s also terrorism.

EML: This is too subjective for me to understand. What is objective is that we could open that magazine. In Cuba, no. In Cuba it would cost us a prison sentence to fund and distribute a magazine against the interests of the government. The Penal Code includes explicit sanctions for those who distribute enemy propaganda.

ML: And then what about the blogs written from within Cuba against the government? Why has no one been imprisoned for that based on the same Penal Code?

EML: Very simple, because there’s a loophole in the law which, incidentally, will no doubt be filled very soon in some way. The blogs are on an ethereal platform, intangible, the internet. In addition, independent blogs are not “distributed”: they simply are. An author loads his post and users access or don’t access the site: there is no distribution. It’s as if I write a journal and leave it in the doorway of my house, and passersby come into my house and read the magazine there. Who can be charged?

Then, returning to the starting point, I find it incomprehensible to affirm that there is more tolerance there than here, when for me, for publishing a text that departed from the official posture regarding the case of Zapata and an interview the blogger Yoani Sanchez, I was notoriously expelled from my place of work, and they hung a sign on me automatically labeling me, “enemy.”

ML: Seen like that, it’s true, you’re right, but that’s not what we were talking about.

EML: We were talking about intolerance, Mr. Lesnik, which you said was worse here than in Cuba.

ML: What I said to you just now was that tolerance and freedom are in direct relation to the security of the State. I am free to express my points of view because in fact my comments have no repercussions with regards to changing the society in which I live.

EML: And then why, in Cuba, is there so much fear about articles that don’t share the official position. Isn’t the Cuban process supported by the masses, by the people? Then where does the fear come from?

ML: I’ll explain it to you: if I, for expressing my points of view, in a blog, a magazine, a newspaper, receive money from a foreign government, be it Venezuela, Cuba, Russia, China, obviously the American state would not tolerate it.

EML: And you receive nothing for your column in Cubadebate?

ML: No man, no. I don’t even send them those articles. They take them from Radio Miami and post them there, for which I thank them, just like I would thank Channel 41 if they took my radio commentaries and introduced them in their programming. I would be very glad to give them the rights.

But I repeat: If I were paid for what I do by an enemy foreign government, the United States would not allow it.

Thus, when the U.S. government publicly sends $20 million to help, support and maintain the Cuban opposition, how can we think this freedom of expression of supposed independent journalists and bloggers is clean when we know they receive this “help.”

EML: Mr. Lesnik: I never received a single penny for writing my articles.

ML: Fine, but it follows that the Cuban government suspects through associations of ideas that everyone who publishes ideas of this kind is financed by the enemy.

EML: But this “suspicion” is absurd, Mr. Lesnik. There’s nothing else to call it.

And speaking of dissent, if the government doesn’t allow me within my own country to have a position contrary to theirs, and at the same time to survive, to keep my life, I have two options: 1. To desist from this contrary position, to submit, to use their own expression, or, 2. To accept economic help which in this case can only come from the exterior. It’s a trap, a dead-end that leads to no one being able to speak in opposition.

ML: Then for you this practice is justified, this buying of the dissidents.

EML: No, what I’m saying is that this is a consequence of a mechanism designed so that Cuban dissidents cannot exercise their political arguments. If a Cuban with a lot of money, within the Island, would like to finance the political activity of an opponent, as happens all over the world, or if at least the dissidents could engage in their activity but sustain themselves economically within Cuban society itself, I think this problem would not exist: the United States could keep its $20 million.

ML: But in the Revolution of the ’30s, and in the fight against Batista and Machado, and in the War of Independence in 1895, not one patriot received money from foreign governments.

EML: No, but Martí came here just to raise funds for the struggle.

ML: Among the people in exile. Not from the government.

EML: Fine, but today’s opponents cannot leave Cuba as Martí could.

ML: Boy, they receive it by other routes, today there are thousands of ways… They can get it from Western Union.

EML: And in your view would that be legal? Let’s see: if I was now a successful businessman from Miami without ties of any kind to the government, and as a Cuban I wanted to finance the political career of Oswaldo Payá, Dagoberto Valdés, Oscar Elías Biscet… then what?

ML: It has already been published that Mrs. Pollán and the Ladies in White receive money from a gentleman here with links to terrorism. And for this she hasn’t been imprisoned…

EML: You aren’t answering my question. If the American government eliminated these funds, and if independent institutions — which also exist — were those who sent money for the cause of these opponents, just like exiles here gave funds to Martí for this fight against the Spanish, would you consider this fine, and from your perspective should the Cuban government accept it?

ML: I don’t know if the Cuban government will take measures against individuals from there who receive money from individuals here. My answer to you is: This is valid. What is not valid is to receive money from a foreign government.

March 17 2011

More than twenty years have past, and still, when I see desperate people looking for where they sell non-rationed eggs, I remember that time when my youngest son and I were alone. I opened the refrigerator and realized that there was only one egg left, and it was the only source of protein that we had. Fortunately, I had a couple of onions left and the bread was was still free.

“Look,” I said to my son, who was then eight years old (it had already been a year since he was entitled to a milk ration) and the dollar was illegal, “we are going to make a omelette with sliced onions, cut it in half, and we will each put it on a half a piece of bread and with a little oil on top, see! a nice snack.”

At that moment, my niece arrived with her boyfriend, and she enters telling me: “Aunty, we starving! The university’s lunch was inedible!”

I didn’t say anything. I beat that egg desperately, hoping that it would grow. I made the omelette with onions, and split it into four parts. I placed each portion on a piece of bread, topping each one with a piece of lettuce. I set the table with a tablecloth, napkins, and utensils, as if it were some big dinner. I made some lemonade and called to them.

“Bon appetit!” I told them, “At least we are all here together and have food to share.” We were all laughing really hard.

Translated by: Anonymous

April 6 2011

In December 2009, Cuban State Security detained without charges the USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, for bringing satellite connection equipment to the island. At the end of March 2010, the Department of Technical Investigations (DTI) which serves the “section of evils” (prostitution), arrested an Italian man addicted to sex with young girls, according to the record No 92 of the People’s Popular Court of Las Tunas, from February 25 of this year.

The two foreigners faced different outcomes. The American was sentenced to 15 years in prison for actions against the independence and territorial integrity of the island. The Italian was simply expelled, despite having, since 2005, sought sex with minors.

In June 2010, the United States reaffirmed Cuban as a country where there is human trafficking. The American government, since 2003, has included Cuba on the blacklist for “not complying with the minimum measures to eliminate human trafficking and not making significant efforts in this area,” according to its report.

According to one of those implicated in the case, who preferred anonymity, the Italian was expelled. After the prosecutor and an attorney took his declaration that was used in the trial against the 7 from Las Tunas accused of pimping. According to the court of justice, before leaving the island he confessed that one of those implicated had been involved with “more than thirty young people with whom he had sexual relations and that he paid them between fifty and one hundred convertible pesos.

The court stated that the foreigner also gave the girls presents, bought them clothes, and once he had returned to his country he sent them money. According to the record, the foreigner visited the houses or knew the families of most of them.

The court did not specify the exact date on which the events occurred, despite that fact that Cuban authorities through the Department of Immigration and Foreigners, maintains strict control over the entry into and departure from the country of both Cubans and foreigners.

An official from the Department of Technical Investigations , a reference witness at the trial, “testified that he was aware of the first information about the arrival of the foreigner in Las Tunas province, until he began to be of operative interest.”

The island is “principally a source of children subject to trafficking in persons, above all to exploit them commercially within the country.” The United States is concerned because prostitution continues being legal for minors age 16 and 17. The criminal legislation only applies special protection to minors age 14 and under, against pimping and human trafficking.

In August 2006 the Committee for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women recommended the Cuban State modify “the legislation relative to the age for contracting a marriage with a view to eliminating the exceptions that allow 14-year-old girls and 16-year-old boys to marry.” The Convention on the Rights of the Child understands a child to be any human being under 18.

For Revolutionary Justice, high tech equipment that improves access to information within the island is more dangerous than unscrupulous tourists who come to the country looking for underage children and cheap sex. Is it more important to protect political interests than the adequate development of children and youth? There’s no doubt, we know which way the balance leans.

April 8 2011

Watching the last chapter aired (and re-aired at the request of viewers) of the serial In Silence, in this new season called The Reasons Of…, I noticed that our authorities are so convinced of the total control they have over minds of citizens, they are unable to accept that someone, without orders or monetary compensation from anyone, can think with their own heads and have opinions, much less express them publicly.

According to the official scheme, anyone who does not think as designed, is a mercenary, an employee of the Empire (once again the happy Empire!), a lackey and many other atrocities. So accustomed are they to one thought (totalitarian principle), which they demand and require of their followers (absolute unconditionality), they can not understand the diversity of it as something inherent to the individual freedom of every human being.

With the litany of evidence to prove their truths, many taken out of context and others fabricated, they pursue the sole objective of discrediting and denigrating those whom they can’t conquer with arguments, using the absolute dominion they exercise over the national media, to which those they discredit and denigrate don’t have access. These others can only defend themselves on the Internet, utilizing dissimilar methods, more for foreign opinion than domestic, because it’s prohibited to Cubans.

Goebbels, the great Nazi propagandist, said that a lie repeated often enough becomes truth. During the existence of that regime he served it well. However, he and it disappeared at the same time, surfacing the truth that had been hidden for years. The same thing happened in all former socialist countries led by the former Soviet Union. The truth, sooner or later, comes out. It is happening today in many Arab countries where, one after another, their people are unmasking the fetishes created and maintained during years of lies.

Here, although in some speeches there was talk of considering different opinions, so far it seems more rhetorical than practical. The most absurd orthodoxy still applies, despite its failure having been demonstrated, and it’s a long way between words and actions. It’s a shame! In a healthy environment of pluralism of thought, much more would move forward without painful traumas that continue to divide and confront Cubans and, at the same time, delay necessary solutions.

To continue looking at every different opinion as the hand of the enemy, is an act of political blindness. Stigmatizing decent citizens is unjust, as well as contemptible, only explicable by the exercise of absolute power for too long.

Everything changes and everything that is born one day perishes: it is a law of nature and nothing escapes it. To understand and facilitate development is intelligent and responsible. To oppose it, in the end it can only lead to more tragedy and pain.

Nobody knows what will happen in the coming days and weeks, nor if there will be more chapters of the old serial. Abraham Lincoln said: You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

It would be desirable for the whole nation if sanity prevailed and if the demonstrations of force ceased. The citizenry, tired of so many political and economic tensions, as well as those inherent in our precarious daily survival, still maintain their civic indifference. Nothing guarantees this will go on forever. Respectful dialogue and not exacerbating passions is what can save us from greater evils.

March 24 2011

Lately on my planet, whenever friends get together the conversation revolves around the past. Why is this? Nothing pleasant is ever said in the present tense. We must always conjugate the imperfect indicative form of the verb, ending in “aba” or “ía,” i.e. comía, bebía, salía, bailaba, ganaba, viajaba, disfrutaba, etc. (used to eat, used to drink, used to go out, used to dance, used to earn, used to travel, used to enjoy…)

Especially when speaking about common acquaintances, we try very hard to avoid hurt feelings, since in many cases we don’t know whether we have lost touch because they have simply left our planet or they have gone far away.

If the talk turns to food, things really get ugly. You can’t give anyone recipes anymore. You have to say: if you have this, you put it in, or you substitute this for something else; all in all it has gotten extremely difficult to follow the book made so popular by Nitza Villapol — the cooking show hostess from the ’50s.

Even I, with my love of cooking, find myself having to constantly come up with solutions and substitute ingredients, or incorporate new ones instead of the usual ones. Thankfully my mom was a dietician and taught me a host of kitchen tricks. She suffered greatly seeing our gastronomy, an essential part of our identity, slowly disappear and in its place atrocities pop up, such as “orange steak” — a dish made by boiling orange peel to resemble meat — or “ground beef” made from ground-up plantain peel.

But our yearning gets the better of us when we begin to remember those spectacular Havana restaurants, each with its own wonderful specialties. Or when we would hit the road and all of a sudden someone would say, “Let’s go to the ‘Congo’, and eat sausage!” or, “Why don’t we get ourselves over to ‘La Dominicana,’ eat some delicious croquettes, and keep driving?” Then maybe we would stop by the “Rincón Criollo” or “Rancho Luna” and really get our fill.

Let’s see now, with the new paladares — private restaurants — popping up, whether they will be able to keep themselves stocked and regain, in part, our once-respected cuisine, which has nothing to do with caldosa (stew), and those croquettes whose ingredients are strictly secret and are commonly known as “aviators” because of the way they stick to the roof of your mouth. Hopefully soon we will be able to conjugate verbs in all their forms and tenses and not only the past imperfect.

March 30 2011