Political Economy / Laritza Diversent

[Translator: One of an ongoing series of articles.]

They also demanded for the health sector, payments for biohazard risks, night shifts and seniority. The 6.00 in Cuban pesos ($0.25 US) paid monthly to nurses for working nights is ridiculous. A pizza cost 10.00 Cuban pesos on the street today, as does an avocado or a canned soft drink.

“Also, it is not proportional that the study of second specialty earns the worker 50.00 Cuban pesos a month (~ $2.00 US), while without even blushing they price a toy at 5.00 to 10.00 CUCs ($5.00 – $10.00 US) or a color TV at 300.00 CUC, which is 13 month’s wages; not forgetting that in a little over a year the CUC retailers have increased prices that were already scandalous from 10% to 30%,”  they said.

“Our workers are asked for a spirit of altruism and selflessness, high doses of sacrifice and a great humane sensibility, all qualities they undoubtedly possess. But unfortunately, the chain of hard currency stores, where the State fixes the prices and sells very high, where they end up on many daily errands, the currency they set prices in are not altruistic, and have nothing of sacrifice and dignity (which was really touching), but is simple the Cuban Convertible Peso (CUC),” they expressed in the letter.

“There we have the dentist who receives 540 Cuban pesos for an entire month’s work, who has to pay his entire salary for a pair of poor quality shoes, 2.75 CUC (68.75 Cuban pesos) for a pound of ground meet, or 1.75 CUC (43.75 in Cuban pesos) for a quart of Cuban-produced milk,” he said, by way of example.

According to the doctors, health workers had greater expectations for this context.  “Raising the 48.00 Cuban peso monthly salary of a doctor was a little more than symbolic,” they said. In the corridors of our hospitals and polyclinics harsh words are heard, full of grievance and resentment, slanderous phrases murmured which I we won’t repeat here as a matter of basic decency,” they confessed.

March 21, 2011

My Meeting With Jimmy Carter / Claudia Cadelo

The first time I heard Jimmy Carter was in 2002. My memories are hazy but one moment sticks in my mind from his speech at the University of Havana’s Great Hall. It still makes me laugh to remember Hassan Perez — who at the time hadn’t yet been ousted and was still heading up the Young Communist League — launching a supposed question at the president, fired off in a machine gun staccato and lasting about three minutes. Carter gently asked him to repeat it, apologizing for not having understood. It was an historic day for Cubans, because in the full light of Cuban television we learned about the Varela Project and that Osvaldo Paya had collected eleven thousand signatures to change the Cuban Constitution. The Varela Project was ignored and vilified by the government, the Constitution was changed for the worse, and the Black Spring arrived. I was twenty.

Yesterday at the Hotel Santa Isabel I had the honor of meeting Jimmy Carter, to listen to him and for him to listen to me. And I also had the tremendous satisfaction of sharing the table with many of those who have for many years — longer than myself — pushed for things on this tired island to change. Men and women who have spent their whole lives gathering the grains of sand to save civil society, for the respect of civil rights, who have suffered imprisonment and sacrificed their personal dreams in pursuit of the dreams of an entire nation.

I know Jimmy Carter does not hold in his hands the solutions for all of Cuba. I know that despite all those who have left their souls by the side of the road for this land, we are still suspended in a strange half-century “Revolution.” But meetings like today’s remind me that no matter how much we lack, there is a light at the end of the road.

———–

Translator’s note: Here is a link to Jimmy Carter’s own trip report, released April 1, 2011.

Why the Black Spring of 2003? / Pablo Pacheco

I remember that distant but unforgettable 18 March 2003. Two friends of mine went to my home after lunchtime and informed me that the home of Pedro Arguelles Moran was filled with State Security agents.

I visited the residence of my friend and colleague, and I began to make some phone calls to the capital, denouncing the situation of Arguelles. I was shocked to hear other reports coming from leaders of the peaceful dissidence and independent journalists about what was happening that day. The regime of Havana was attacking all the democrats with all its power. I discovered that Arguelles was just another one of the victims of that oppressive wave, and that I was not about to escape that list. Just a few days after, I would find myself standing just a few feet from the cell where my friend was.

All of us who were convicted faced an unpredictable and difficult path. On one hand, the international scene benefited the dictatorship, or at least that is what they thought. The Iraq invasion and other military conflicts were what captured the world’s attention during that moment. The regime took advantage of this context in order to arrest the members of the group of the 75, and even worse, to execute three young black men for trying to escape the island without hurting anyone else in the attempt.

However, international pressure did not take long to respond with our situation. From diverse parts of the world, voices began to demand the Communist Cuban regime release us, while others condemned the infamous executions. Amnesty International declared that all 75 of us were prisoners of conscience. Soon, we would see the results of such actions.

A few months later, the regime had no choice but to release the most sick members of our group. Afterward, any other releases happened in a very slow manner, as a way of the rulers of our country saying that they are the ones with absolute power.

During each anniversary which I spent behind the bars, I wrote about the subject. This year, I wanted to publish something simple, but something that would prove our innocence and our victory. They sanctioned us to jail sentences which ranged from 6 to 28 years behind bars. Today, 8 years after that oppressive wave, the majority of the 75 are already out of jail thanks to the sacrifice of our brave brother, Orlando Zapata Tamayo, the dignified Ladies in White, the determination of Guillermo Farinas, the growing international pressure, and the strengthening of the internal dissidence. Only Felix Navarro and José Daniel Ferrer remain behind the bars without justification.

Each day that passes, the dictatorship displays more and more signs of weakness, and it does anything in its power to try and isolate the peaceful Cuban opposition. Luckily, not everyone believes in their absurd tricks and the truth spreads throughout the population that is sickened by the same government rhetoric. Our path has been thorny and torturous, but it has taught us that fear is conquerable and that prison is not the last place on earth.

The Black Spring of 2003 was far from being a hard blow to the opposition, like so many people say. I would say that it was instead a serious misstep of the Cuban regime. Those days remained etched in my memory, marked forever. I’ll remember that hate and intolerance which kept me from my family, my neighbors, and my brothers-in-struggle. But at the same time, I will acknowledge the fact that our fates made the world aware of our reality — a reality that has been distorted by those who tightly hold power without measuring consequences which, in the future, will be reproached by another generation.

Cuba does not belong to one group or another, Cuba belongs to every Cuban. Sadly, the nation has been mistakenly associated with one party, one ideology, and the whims of one man.

While I write these lines, there are mobs led by the political police harassing the Ladies in White while other dissidents are being arrested just for trying to commemorate the 8th anniversary of the Black Spring.

Cuba needs its children, and her children need her. We must all fight alongside each other so that an oppressive wave like that of the Black Spring 2003, and other similar events which have plagued our nation, will never happen again. Together, we can do it.

March 21, 2011

Friends That Remain / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

I met Jose A. Triguero Mulet during a heated political debate. The nearly 70-year-old Mulet is a freedom-loving man. I’m writing this after he gave me an article he wrote about the humiliations he has lived through just for daring to scream the truth at the militants which rule my country. It was from those experiences which I took these living testimonies. I’m simply re-telling his griefs and hopes:

“On July 29th of 2004, I was detained in San German. For two hours I was interrogated and threatened by State Security Captain Abel Ramirez and Major Parra from State Security in Holguin. That’s where the harassment really started, through the phone and in person, towards me and also towards my family”.

“On September 10th 2004 I was then harassed in the middle of the street by State Security Captain Abel, just for participating in a vigil held in San German”.

“Then, on October 19th 2004 at 9 PM, he tried to hit me with his car. Since I quickly tried to jump out of the way, I fractured my finger and suffered various bruises and wounds on my left hand”.

“On March 15th, 2004 Lieutenants Wilmer Sarmiento and Jose Hidalgo, an unidentified State Security sub-official, and two witnesses from the neighborhood named Yolanda Mompel and Odalis Velazquez showed up at my house. The reason for such a visit was to carry out a search in my home for articles used in illicit sales. Of course, they did not find anything of the sort, so they revealed their true intentions, which were to dismantle my independent library. They not only confiscated all my prohibited political literature but also anything written which attacked the Cuban dictatorship, as well as 2 portable radios and an old typewriter. The home of my eldest daughter was also searched. There, the authorities behaved in a gross manner. They took my stuff and threw it up on their jeep and they took me to the P.N.R (People’s Revolutionary Police) unit. Nothing was returned to me, and they did not even give me a copy of the confiscation letter after I was detained for 8 hours”.

(…)

“On June 17th 2006, when I was on my way to the city of Holguin, the bus I was on was detained at the entrance of the city by a Captain. This official boarded the vehicle and walked directly towards me, asking for my ID card. He then told me to follow him off the bus with my bookbag. When we arrived to the P.N.R sector I saw that Lieutenant Colonel Enrique and Leonides Licea (both officials from State Security), a police named Emilio (and nicknamed “SOUR YUCCA”), and 5 other uniformed officials were also there. In total there were 9 of them, standing there like police dogs waiting to pounce on me in that tiny office we were crammed in. They snatched my bookbag from me and found documents which were to be sent to the Cuban Liberal Party of Havana. This detonated all those henchmen to fire the most humiliating and offensive insults at me. As if that was not enough, they took advantage of their strength and they rushed up on me, pushing my shaky body down, despite the fact that my blood pressure was through the roof. They forcibly took off all my clothes and told me to squat. I am guessing that the purpose of this was to make sure that I did not have anything hidden behind my genitals. While I was getting dressed again, my hands were shaking with fear (I am not ashamed to say it) and I noticed that my nose was bleeding and my right eye hurt. Apparently, while they were forcing the clothes off of me, one of them actually hit me. Whether they intended to do so or not, I do not know, but I had been hit with a ring, and that’s how the small wound on my nose and the pain on my eye was produced. They seemed to have gotten scared when they saw the blood, so they decided to let me go, but only after they threateningly told me that I was already an old man and that prison would not be easy on me”.

(…)

“During February 3rd of 2010, at around 5 PM, a group of Eastern opposition members, along with others from Camaguey, were all savagely beaten. I was among one of the victims. There were also 8 women. In my case I received a strong blow on my neck and a strong kick on the back of my left leg. All of this was perpetrated by the political police, all dressed as if they were civilians. Some civil functionaries also took place, led by the first secretariat of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) from Camaguey, Julio Cesar Rodriguez Garcia. Also present was the chief of the Provincial Camaguey Prisons, Lieutenant Colonel Bombino. They were beating us because we were carrying out an act of solidarity with the demands made by the prisoner of conscience from the group of the 75, Orlando Zapata Tamayo”.

“I hope that this testimony will serve to inform readers that, without a doubt, the entire Cuban island is a large prison where some of our brothers have been summarily sentenced and jailed in hundreds of small jails away from their loved ones”.

That’s the testimony of Triguero. It is a truth that is similar to a tree planted in the middle of the forest. Jose A. Triguero Mulet is coordinator of the Cuban Liberal Party in the eastern provinces. He is also one of the 4 members of the secretariat of the Human Rights sector of the Eastern Democratic Alliance. Every semester, his role is to write up a report of the human rights violations committed in this region.

Jose resides in Ave. 29, No. 1806, e/ 18 and 20. San German, Holguin, Cuba, and his telephone is (53)243-81594.

March 29 2011

Internet for Cubans / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

By this means I want to call on the attention of all the righteous people of the world to show solidarity with the demand for internet access for Cubans. Now that Cuba has a fiber optic cable provided by the Republic of Venezuela, the pretexts to prevent us from exercising our right to freedom of information have expired. Every time you promote human rights for everyone, it is a vote in favor of free access to the “internet for Cubans.”

Internet para los cubanos

March 28 2011

Largarto Verde / Rebeca Monzo

Another story for distant granddaughters

In the small island Largarto Verde, everyone lived happily. They had almost everything, but people wanted more. They longed for it so much and with such strength that one day a handsome man showed up, speaking soft words to the wind that caressed the ears of the islanders. His name was Delfi. Soon he gained the trust and respect of the naïve lagartoverdianos, who had little and poor experience in political matters.

Young Delfi felt secure, admired and feared. Little by little he started gaining control of everything: first the houses, then the businesses, the animals and the money of each and every one of the inhabitants of the island until he gained control of their thoughts. Some noticed this pretty soon and were able to escape; others decided to trust and were trapped in the middle of the greatest inertia while Mrs. Apathy slowly swallowed Largarto Verde.

Time went by and there was nothing left to do. The spell was beginning to crack, but all exits were already closed and Delfi was the only one who could order the gates that communicated with the great oceanic wall that led you to freedom to open.

When everything started, Bighearted Grandma was still very young. She thought that if she stayed she could prevent the evil from expanding or at least she would try to stop it from reaching her family, but it was not like that.

More leaves from the tree of time inexorably fell. The new family and the new friends withered as well. New members were born and some others died without her being able to be at their side and as time went by she was lonely once again.

One day she found an angel and asked to borrow his silken wings so she could fly, and fly, and fly and meet her granddaughters and see her children who lived far, far away next to the stars. When she returned to Lagarto Verde she had to return the wings and now she has been waiting so many years that Delfi, who is now very old and with a lot of ailments, mistakenly leaves the doors from the big wall opened so grandma can get the crystal boat with platinum oars that she hides in her house, go to the blue water and row, row, row until she meets her loved ones again.

Translated by: Alegna Zavatti

March 24 2011

Cubalex, Free Legal Advice for Cubans / Iván García

Larisa Diversent, 30, returns to the fray. Having received her law degree four years ago, this young black lawyer always seems to have a loaded agenda. Since 2007 she has been one of the busiest and best independent journalists in Cuba.

She writes for several sites about legal topics and has a blog for legal advice. In early January, Diversent created an office where she provides legal assistance to any person, without concern for ideology or religious creed.

It is called Cubalex. Its headquarters is in Laritza’s half-built house south of Havana, located in a poor village known as El Calvario. Surrounded by clumps of bananas and lemons, cats and a cloud of mosquitoes, the lawyer welcomes guests in the kitchen, the only place of shelter already repaired.

“Not only do I advise on the legal steps to follow, but elaborate opinions. It is hard work that takes me 12 hours a day,” says Diversent sitting with her laptop on a high chair in front of a coffee thermos and a mountain of documents.
Right now she is working on the case of two citizens who served a five-year sentence for a comment that they were trying to hijack a boat in Cienfuegos province, 180 miles from Havana, and escape to the United States.

“The interpretation the Cuban legal system gives current law is unfortunate. They often use it as an instrument to punish people to set an example for others. The worst thing that is happening in Cuba is that so many citizens, and the authorities themselves, in many cases don’t know the laws that emanate from the Constitution. With Cubalex and my newspaper articles, I hope to let people know their rights. And to demand them,” comments Laritza.

Most of the requests she receives are from people with a proverbial legal illiteracy. Humble people who sometimes live in difficult places and are like blind bats when faced with the bizarre legal machinery of the island.

Supportive lawyers like Laritza try to lend them a hand. Despite her youth, she has become an expert in constitutional rights. And is convinced that the Cuban government blatantly and systematically violates its own laws. She talks to dissidents, bloggers, groups from Cuba’s incipient civil society, and also engages in protracted legal arguments for individual defendants.

This Havana lawyer is never happier than when she is able to stop an unjust eviction of a desperate family who asked for her legal aid, or when the courts are forced to reconsider sentences passed. She celebrates her small victories against the monolithic power of the judicial system by drinking coffee without milk in the kitchen of her half-built house in El Calvario.

Among texts eagerly awaited by her avid readers in blogs and websites, caring for her 11-year-old son, cooking, washing, ironing, taking care of her husband and now a legal aid office, she has just discovered a new formula: multiply the 24 hours by six. The best part of Cubalex is that the advice does not cost a penny. Go then, to Laritza Diversent’s house.

March 30 2011

Complaint / Silvio Benítez Márquez

Punta Brava, La Habana
29 March 2011

For days the omnipresent political police have been plotting a vast campaign of hostility and harassment of activists and relatives of the citizens’ project Voices of the Neighborhood.

Yesterday afternoon an agent of the repressive apparatus informed Joisy Garcia Martinez, one of the leaders of the citizen initiative, that he was officially called to appear on the morning of Wednesday the 10th at the police station of San Agustin de la Lisa.

This citation and harassment against members of this project led to agreement on a new strategy of the neighborhood spokespeople to collect signatures across the whole island to repeal the current electoral law.

Silvio Benitez Marquez
Promoter of Voices of the Neighborhood Project

March 29 2011

There is No Truce / Rebeca Monzo

There Is No Truce
Yesterday afternoon when I went to visit a friend I saw an enormous slogan written on a wall on 13th Street between L and K in Vedado (and with the cost and scarcity of paint!). I immediately thought: It’s true, for fifty-two years we haven’t had a truce.

When we are not running after potatoes, we are desperately searching the neighborhood high and low looking for someone to sell us powdered milk, or standing in a huge line to wait for the expensive bread to be ready, because the other is much cheaper but they only give you one per person and besides it’s inedible.

Suddenly my thoughts turn to the terrible earthquake in Japan and its aftermath and the unrest in the Middle East with so many wounded and dead, and the extreme hunger strike of the students in Venezuela a month ago, etc. etc. I tell myself: good grief, how selfish am I, with everything that is happening to those poor people and I’m thinking about bread, potatoes and milk. After thinking about I speak again: yes, it’s true, but they know that their nightmare will end, because despite all their troubles they have defense mechanisms to address them, they have hope and can fight to change things.

We do not. Our realities, unknown not only outside our borders but practically speaking to the majority of our own people. The information media are under tight State control. The day there is change and the truths see the light, the majority of people who survive here are not going to want to believe it. They say that a lie repeated over and over becomes the truth. This is fundamentally what I mean when I say there is no truce.

Back home, I’ve been thinking: Apparently, since Owen, Marx, the already failed experiments in the countries of Eastern Europe and now the much publicized XXI Century, or whatever you want to call it, socialism is a useless gift presented in a bad wrapping.

March 27 2011

The Little Pioneer and the President / Yoani Sánchez

He was the first American president I shouted a slogan at. I don’t remember the precise words of the insult as almost thirty years have passed. However, I can remember the feeling of my clenched fists, my red and white uniform trembling with each scream that I launched at Jimmy Carter who — according to my kindergarten teacher — would destroy the island, the palms, the classroom desks, happiness.

And three decades later, here I am in Havana, talking with him and other familiar faces from our nascent civil society. I barely resemble that Little Pioneer buried in the hysteria of political slogans and this man I am speaking with doesn’t fit the role of the leader who was the target of my insults. Now he is a mediator, a man who doesn’t seem interested in wiping Cuba off the map, as they once assured me in primary school. So the girl who was supposed to be the “New Man” and the former commander of the armed of the forces of the United States, have met at a moment in their lives in which neither has the same position as before, in which the path of both has taken the direction of dialog; although once we could have killed each other, across some battle field.

I see him speak and wonder if he knows that I was trained to hate him. Will he be the villain of my childhood stories, the face of grotesque caricatures in the official newspapers, the man whom government propaganda blamed for all our ills? Of course he knows, and still he extends his hand to me, speaks to me, asks me a question. And so he, who was “the enemy,” offers me his kind words.

Outside the Hotel Santa Isabel where we have met, in some school in the area, another little girl repeats her slogans, squeezes her hands, shouts, focuses her mind on the face of a man whom she says she detests. Fortunately, she too will forget the words she screams at this moment, erase from her mind the slogans full of resentment they make her chant today.

__________________

P.S. I am attaching a message, accompanied by a gift, that we gave Mr. Jimmy Carter in the name of several bloggers and other Cubans.

Havana March 30, 2011

Mr. Jimmy Carter:

On behalf of several alternative bloggers and other members of Cuban civil society, we would like to give you this present. This is a small sample of the food that the self-employed are able to make from maní, the word Cubans use for peanuts, that dried fruit that you know so well.

For over half a century the maní has been one of the few products that has escaped the control of State planning. Even in the hardest days of the so-called Special Period one of the the few things we could buy on the free market produced by independent people were these cones and peanut butters that we offer to you today. There were times when the traditional cry of “peanuts, the peanut seller is here…” had to go practically underground, becoming a phrase whispered into the ears of clients.

This popular “criminal” food, within the reach of every pocket, has become the symbol of public resistance before totalitarian pretensions, a stronghold of creativity and ingenuity in the face of centralism and control. Here is the maní, the conqueror of difficulties, stubborn disobedient, transformed now into a symbol of union, a meeting point between your people and ours.

30 March 2011

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Translator’s note: Here is a link to Jimmy Carter’s own trip report, released April 1, 2011.