So Long… Forever… Juraguá / Yoani Sánchez

In our little room, he told us that morning about the time he had spent in the USSR. He’d only been in Havana a few hours, after an Aeroflot plane had brought him back from his long sojourn in the land of Gorbachev. The gothic letters on his diploma showed he’d graduated from the university in some kind of engineering my childish mind couldn’t understand. It was the first time I’d heard about the Juraguá nuclear reactor, which was built in Cienfuegos in 1983. The recent arrival’s voice described an enormous VVER 440 reactor located in central Cuba as if it were a live dragon breathing its whiffs on us. Hundreds of young people, trained in research centers nearly 6,000 miles from home, would work there as atomic scientists. Millions and millions of rubles arriving from the Kremlin helped to construct what would be the pinnacle of our “tropical socialism,” the fundamental pillar of our energy independence.

Later I learned that this young enthusiast never worked as a nuclear engineer. The Soviet Union was dismembered just as the first of two planned reactors was 97% complete. Grass covered a good part of the site, and exposure to the elements broke down everything from pieces of the core, to the steam generators, the cooling pumps and the isolation valves. Juraguá became a new ruin, a monument to the delusions of grandeur left us by Soviet imperialism.

With his graying temples, while cutting metals in his new career as a lathe operator, the one-time expert told me now, “It was lucky we didn’t start it up.” According to what he and his colleagues had calculated, the chances of an nuclear accident at Juraguá were 15% more than at any other nuclear plant in the world. “We would have ended up with the island cut in half,” he said dramatically. I imagined a piece of the nation here and another over there, while a stubbornly smoking hole changed our national geography.

Now that the plant in Fukushima is spreading its residues, and with them fear, I can’t but rejoice that the Cienfuegos reactor has not awakened, that under the concrete sarcophagus a nuclear reaction hasn’t started. Thinking about all that has happened, all of our current problems seem small to us, insignificant trifles compared to the horrifying spread of radioactivity.

26 March 2011

Cyberwar / Regina Coyula

Peaceful citizens were shown on the TV program “Cuba’s Reasons” being accused of receiving money from the U.S. government. The program was seen by, let’s say, 6 million national viewers. These citizens then call out the government for lying and manipulating, and thirty million internet users, to pick a figure, learn of that complaint. The apparent discrepancy is not important: the six million are not included in the thirty; the discrediting, without any right to respond in the national media, of a handful of people who are trying to create a space for civil society, will be new information for the common citizen, for whom the program was designed.

What do I do with my opinions in this country? I could do what I was doing before opening Bad Handwriting: talk about them in my living room. It would be more comfortable, my next-door neighbors would greet me naturally, I wouldn’t have lost any friends, and my siblings and other relatives wouldn’t have to be careful to avoid the uncomfortable detail that I have a rebellious blog. This is a process of adaptation and often painful.

But I already decided to offer a discordant note, if I joke with those in the pay of the Empire and with the CIA missions, I trespassed a border that the citizen to whom the message of a program like Cyberwar is directed has not trespassed, that is believing in the right to express one’s opinions. This government’s objective is met within the country, and justifies the criticisms of international public opinion.

Spoken of as a triumph, in the program, were the more than 200 blogs of press workers and university students. In today’s world, having a blog is common and free. Many of these blogs exist as a kind of “trickle down,” thus their contents lack freshness and are simply an extension of the official press. Many of them are signed with a pseudonym and maintain an anonymity that would be inexplicable in alternative blogs. But if the unofficial bloggers are branded as mercenaries for using cards paid for in hard currency to connect to the internet, how does it look that in a country with such low connectivity the official bloggers use their working hours and State connection (also in hard currency, and paid for by “Liborio” — that is the Cuban equivalent of “Uncle Sam”) to maintain their personal spaces on the web?

One of those interviewed on the program quoted Fidel: Don’t believe what I say, read. Encapsulating one of the motives that led me to open my blog, wanting access to the internet. I don’t like anyone to decide what I should read, what I should believe.

March 23 2011

Looking for the Antenna / Laritza Diversent

Migdalia Estévez and her husband, Ramon Suarez, were waiting for “Cuba’s Reasons,” the TV series aired on Mondays on the island. They understood what subversion is, the media war, and the imperialist maneuvers. But they still don’t understand the government’s bitter struggle against cable TV or satellite dishes.

“The Cuban television programming is boring, at least with the cable I’m entertained and I spend less time missing my loved ones,” said the lady of 64 years. Thanks to the efforts of her two children living in the United States, the couple spends their leisure time watching foreign programs.

In February, inspectors from the Ministry of Information and Communications, raided Párraga where Migdalia lives, looking for antennas. She was taking a nap when she heard a noise in the ceiling. She got up, startled. When she opened the door, a man asked: “Where is it?” and without waiting for an answer, entered the house.

He searched the room. In one of the rooms he got down on the floor and looked under the bed until, under the TV covered with a cloth they found the equipment. The old woman was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, unable to speak. When she came to herself again they had imposed a fine of 10,000 pesos

Hours later, her husband came home and found her crying, “They took me by surprise, I thought they were robbers and almost died of fright,” and she handed him the paper with the fine.

Ramon Suarez, Migdalia’s husband, went all around the city in search of the officials who almost gave his wife a heart attack. He found the place in Zanja Street. They told him he should submit a letter in writing, but they wouldn’t give him the names of the people who had violated his home.

On the “Cuba’s Reasons” series, Suarez recognized the employee who talked to him after he requested an interview to complain about the boldness of his subordinates. In the report, the man had talked about satellite connection equipment from the United States coming into the country.

“I remember his name, Carlos Martinez, he is the director of National Radio Company,” he said as he read the resolutions 98 and 99 of that ministry, issued in 1995.

A friend had given him the legal rules on antennas. “He said that such bans were in effect from the mid 90’s, but the fines for citizens are 1,000 pesos. On me they imposed a ten-thousand peso fine,” said the man.

They go after the antennas but they don’t explain the reasons for raiding a dwelling and much less why people cheat,” says Migdalia. If the law says the fine is one amount, why do they impose another? How do they think we’re going to pay 10,000 pesos with the 460 pesos we receive as retirees?” she asked.

The program “Cuba’s Reasons” let Migdalia and Ramon know why the government fears the antennas that capture satellite signals. However, they do not understand the reasons for Carlos Martinez, a state official concealing his subordinates, tolerating those who violate the rights of Cubans, and also defrauding them.

March 23 2011

Instant Recharge for Cellphones in Cuba… Two-for-One Offer…! / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Recargas instantáneas 2X de celulares en Cuba…!, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo.

www.ezetop.com is the most reliable Internet site to recharge Cuban cellphones, instantly and confidentially for this isolated Island. Right now they have having a two-for-one promotion…!

Thanks to @ll web friends who can have helped me keep my cellphone working — (+53) 53340187– so I can Tweet live and direct from Havana mon amour. One day, after the cyberwar, if there are days left after the cyberwar, I will pay you back at a cafe on the Malecon.cu.

March 24 2011

Translator’s note: The bloggers’ cellphone numbers are under the link in the header: Direct Help to Cuban Bloggers

With Santiago de Compostella in Her Heart / Iván García

Every night she dreamed of Santiago de Compostela. It was a recurring dream for Antonia Ortega, who died in Havana at age 86, without returning to visit her native Galicia.

But Antonia described so vividly the places of the Galician capital to her daughter Rosario that she feels she has known the city inside out since childhood, though she has seen it only in pictures.

“My mother has given me a passion for Galicia and its customs. She inherited it from her usual habit of sitting at night in the backyard of the house to sing old Galician songs and dance muñeiras,” says Rosario, 69.

She lives in the bustling neighborhood of Santos Suarez in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre, in a mansion of the 1930s, in need of repair.

Rosario runs a Spanish dance school in Curros Enríquez, an old society that bears the name of the poet and journalist Manuel Gallego Curros Enriquez (1851 Celanova-La Habana 1908). Now, in addition to pool tables and a coffee, the place has a hard-currency restaurant where you can eat pork and drink good Spanish wine.

At the door of the school, Rosario takes attendance of the girls who attend dance classes. She charges 40 pesos (about two dollars) for registration and 20 pesos a month. Twice a week, the little ones go to tap their feet on the stage on the top floor of Curros Enríquez.

When it gets dark, after preparing a frugal meal for herself and her husband, memories and nostalgia begin to visit her.

“My mother came to Cuba in 1937. She came with at 16 in her uncle’s care. His parents died during the civil war. He was a fierce republican. Not used to attending meetings of his countrymen. Desperately poor, he quickly adapted to that Havana of the flamboyant 40’s, full of neon lights and prosperity.”

Antonia Ortega did not have a store on the corner, like most Galicians on the island. Neither did she go on Sundays to the society of Rosalía de Castro to eat empanadas, while from an RCA Victor could listen to the football games of Deportivo and Celta Vigo.

“She was very stubborn and did not speak of her misfortunes. She preferred to convey to me the good memories she treasured of Santiago de Compostela. She was very ahead of her time. She married a black man, my father, thirteen years her senior. They lived together until he died in 1996. They felt a deep respect for their traditions. She with her songs and prayers, he and his orishas and the dead. I was very happy in my childhood. My father used to tell me about his ancestors in Nigeria, and my mother exuded nostalgia when talking about Galicia,” says Rosario.

This daughter of Galicia did not take advantage of the new law of historical memory that allows travel to Spain for hundreds of Cubans. “I’m too old to leave my homeland. I have no children and do not wish to burden anyone. My only dream is to visit the land of my ancestors. Santiago de Compostela and its ancient streets and the village of Calabar where my paternal grandparents were born.”

In the living room of her house a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus goes hand in hand with a group of Afro-Cuban deities located behind the door, to “trap all badness.”

It’s eleven at night. The neighborhood of Santos Suárez is calm. At half-light and the water wasting away by the faulty mains. In the distance, I hear the bagpipes of a Galician muñeira and behind, an African drum. It is not uncommon. It’s Cuba. A mixed island.

Photo: Habano, Panoramio. Curros Enríquez at the corner of Rabí and Santos Suarez, Havana.

Translated by: Araby

March 21 2011

WEBDITORIAL / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

It’s beautiful to sit in front of the TV and contemplate the end of the Revolution. “Cuba’s Reasons,” they call it on Monday nights, this material clearly anonymous. My blog, which appeared for the first time on the small screen, is also called Monday. Post-Revolution Mondays. A slightly obsolete title. The Revolution is no longer even post anything.

It should trouble the Cuban State to not have a television program about blogs and suddenly to launch this hysterical hissy fit on a people illiterate with regards to the Internet. A hypocritical people terrified by the melody with which the political editors announce the imminent arrival of the police. A wheeling-dealing people belonging to no party but continuing to applaud from inertia. A people that continues on, understanding neither pi nor potatoes, but swallowing and obeying while trying to get a visa to a freedom imagined but known to be impossible. A people of ubiquitous Ubietas. A people that aspires to pass from stupidity by not signing and making life a yogurt.

There is a lot of yogurt in the Cuban free blogosphere. Our yogurt is bitter pixels but it’s our yogurt. This yogurt tastes like a magic substance, redemptive, defiant. A yogurt, of course, that begins with Y.

A government that excludes everyone for the good of all is something inconceivably gross. In fact, it is unlikely. So I stay in Cuba, even paraplegic. Because I don’t believe in even one of its ephemeral laws and institutions. Because the Revolution continues to be perfectly breathable being only gas. Because I’ve become addicted to the notion of our nation in debacle. Because I want to attend the murdering birth of the climax, coda of accelerated notes while dead. Because its marvelous to taste the same language with absolutely no power to communicate among Cubans. Because I am a virtual suicide, what the fuck. Because the words are given to me and not coerced nor the is the panic of my mother praying for me to shut up so I don’t go to prison.

It’s overwhelming to be Orlando Luis, I can assure you. The hated, envied writer, vilified by the president of UNEAC — the Writers and Artists Union of Cuba — (which doesn’t yet dare to expel me), giving diabetic hives to the Minister of Culture (who censored only me out of the documentary in homage to the centennial of José Lezama Lima, to the humiliation of its director Tomás Picard).

Once I even dreamed I was Lagarde. I washed my face in front of the mirror in the bathroom and for no apparent reason broke into tears. Raul Castro when General Ochoa was executed by the firing squad, remembering the last century or in 1789. Me flabby, earning dollars and a cell phone on behalf of MININT. Me married, tired, washing my face with soap that smells like a dead flower. With the light blinding me until I wake up with my heart choking me caught in my throat. Argh.

Again I argued with my septuagenarian mother. Whom I have wanted to kill. My mediocre mother, in retreat, raising the alarm, repeating maternalistic shit of the mass-media revolutionaries. Then I wanted to die myself. But that was a long time ago. I embraced her. I grabbed her by the shoulders. I shook her as if she were my daughter, the daughter I will never have and that I recover in each one of my wives. I told her, “What are we doing? You aren’t Catholic, you don’t believe in the Polish Pope who came to the Plaza? So don’t be afraid, then, dammit! This is what everyone in Cuba wants from you, to terrify you, to crush your life in the barbarity of those who read military orders on the news, getting you to take pills wholesale, like when the slobbering hounds of Iroel Sánchez called you nearly a hundred times at the end of February 2009, to insult and threaten you because I was presenting my book of censored stories, Boring Home, at the Fair at the Cabaña, right there where I was going to be beat up.

It’s hard being an angel and having a touch of the devil in your genes. Delirium, delight, crime. To be victim and agent. To be in the skin of everyone and all at the same time in the same place. To be Fidel, to be Zapata Tamayo. Chameleon, cadaver. To be a bird without peace in your veins. Offer your face, offer your ass. Turn the other cheek and to be, however, the first to strike a blow. To explode blood and semen from the highest floor of a workers hospital. Spraying the atmosphere with my lumps of putrid cabin boy and commiserate. Because I am sure that only I have pity on Cuba, so only I can disarm in words without losing even one of my tyrannical screws. Only only only, to repeat is a perverse pleasure in closed regimes. At times I wonder if I will not be the apocryphal son of Reinaldo Arenas. Love me, please, I can assure you that in the end my tragedy surprises us all equally.

It’s lovely to sit in front of the TV and meet Elaine Diaz for the first time in years without harming her, without them accusing her for playing to be my friend on the web or for not considering me a priori an outcast. Without them firing her from her job if she refused to let an old interview of hers with Intelligence be manipulated on “Cuba’s Reasons,” as they have dubbed the Monday through Friday material, claiming to play anonymous footage, the same way that Cuban justice is anonymous.  At this point, no one signs it…it’s residual.

I am watching the barbarity pass like ships stranded in the bay of Havana. I’m in a perfect state of decomposition. Still safe, thanks. I flow, float. I suspect that it is high time to be immortal.

I walk up to the fridge, a probe of the past, put to the test by communisms which the Yanks left abandoned in my dining room.  I open it.  It gets cold just like the beginning, or before the beginning.  Of course, I pull out a smuggled yogurt bottle I got from the black market.  Yogurt with a “Y”, whether they like it or not.  I chug it down.  Glug glug.  Hesigastric rhythm, we can now begin again…  

March 23 2011

War Signals / Miriam Celaya

Last Tuesday, March 15th, I went to the Hotel Parque Central, in the heart of Havana. It was my intention, as in previous occasions, and until just a few days ago, to use the Internet, after getting a prepaid card at the rate of a mere 8CUC an hour for a moderately fast connection.

About this point, I’m sure that the more distrustful readers might think “Hey, this blogger is so snobbish! Why doesn’t she go to some other nearby hotels, like the Inglaterra or the Plaza, offering a somewhat cheaper, though extremely slow service?” The reasons are several, but the simplest are self-explanatory: The El Inglaterra hasn’t offered Internet service for months, and the clerk can’t give an explanation; The Plaza does not allow uploading from flash memory, which forces the user to compose while online, which makes it expensive. In both hotels there is an absolute lack of privacy, since the internet service is located only a few centimeters from each other, in spaces extremely small. Finally, neither one of these hotels allows the option to connect via Wi-Fi, which requires the use of their own equipment and keyboards, in a sad technical state, not counting other possible maladies that I prefer not to mention.

Anyway, back to the subject, I went to the protocol desk at the flashy Parque Central, where they usually sold cards, and asked for my ticket for a mere hour of information, to which the young man who “was seeing to providing service”, with his Little Red Riding Hood kind of candor, asked me tenderly if I was a guest (you really have to have a mind as thick as a coconut tree to ask an obvious Cuban national whether she is a guest at a five-star hotel in the capital, no matter how faintly those stars may shine) I smiled, condescendingly, (a lot more than a young man speaking like a trained parrot is needed for my patience to run out) and I asked him when the hotel had stopped making the service available to the public, since I had used it a couple of weeks prior, to which the little shoot responded, unperturbed and all at once, with his little mouthful chuck full of little lies, which had probably been rehearsed a thousand times: “We have very few cards and we have to guarantee the service to our guests, this is the high season and the hotel is full. Guests have been complaining about the lack of cards.” I couldn’t contain my laughter, “Oh, sure, fine! And I still hung around the almost deserted mezzanine in order to appreciate for myself the presumptive “high demand” that was eating up all those cards: obviously the guests don’t appreciate the true value of the quality of the connections at the hotel. On the railing across from me, a security employee (of the hotel?) discretely watched me. Perhaps attributing to me the inclination for begging, he feared that I would fall into the temptation of asking some hotel guest to buy the damned card for me. As if some official restriction could lead me to such a humiliation! Finally, I went somewhere else, was able to connect, send, and download the information I was seeking.

This seemingly insignificant story is testimony to the evident official intention of boycotting the already restricted Internet access to Cubans, and the complicity in it of some recognized hotel companies. I could not swear that the ban on the sale of a card is specifically directed at me: this would be easy to check by just asking another Cuban, unknown to them, to purchase it for me. The trick — no argument here — about the shortage of cards could not be more stupid, because the issue could easily be solved by simply issuing more of them in order to provide better service. Nor should it be a coincidence that the incident took place when the government media is orchestrating a campaign of misinformation and misrepresentation against “certain elements who want to subvert the order through the free flow of information”, a formulation which carries within itself a confession of guilt. It is also part of a strategy as old as it is obsolete, forcing bloggers, independent journalists and other sectors of society to benefit from Internet services, offered free and in solidarity, by some foreign friends: a chance to demonize individuals, governments and countries and feed the old rhetoric of a small country beset by external enemies.

More of the same, but, at a time when dictatorships seem to have every reason to fear the power of technologies of information, and communications at the service of much trampled civil rights.

Translated by Norma Whiting

18 March 2011

Them, The Cyberwarriors / Angel Santiesteban

Source: Guama
1. A friend in the US said he doesn’t agree with some of the [Communist Party] Guidelines for… 2. He’s declaring cyberwar on you!!!!!!

Today we woke up to the Government’s onslaught against the Rebel Bloggers of the Island, with a two-page article in Granma titled, “Cuba’s Reasons/Special,” and the most special is the cynicism assumed at the highest level which we can’t get used to, when they assert that there “are more than 200 blogs on the Island, administered by professionals from different fields, who confront the slander, distortions, manipulations and lies of the cybermercenaries.” Not one of them could share a personal opinion that goes against the official dictation. An army of robots who think in one direction, and when they dare to step beyond the official line, we witnessed what happened with Eliécer Avila, a student leader at the University of Information Sciences (UCI), and recently another student at the same institution who was expelled for giving an interview to a blog in Spain.

In many cases there are “opportunistic professionals,” like the one who congratulated me for a post where I denounced the misery of Cuban intellectuals who make trips abroad and practically have to beg for food; he mentioned himself as an example and told me of such situations on his travels and then, the same “professional,” at the request of an official, came up with an aggressive response and wrote the exact opposite of what he had said to me that night, in front of witnesses. And yet, in my innocence, I asked a mutual friend what had happened, and with the greatest understanding he explained to me that in “tribute” he would get better work.

The journalist who gave his name to the article, made broad generalizations, confusing it with his own conduct, calling us “mercenaries.” He denies that we are independent, claiming that we act “entirely at the direction of and in the interests of Washington.” He accuses of us being backed by the United States Interest Section, where I have never even visited, nor have I had any relations with any of their officials inside or outside their offices, much less received payment or equipment for any personal interest. And they can corroborate this with their own puppet shows, their so-called national spies, who are nothing more than a part of this media show in bad taste which make a mockery of the supposed Organs of State Security.

I remind the journalist that before opening my blog I was approached by the then President of the Cuban Book Institute (ICL), Iroel Sánchez, so he could give me a cyberspace to anchor my blog, and then he asked me what the theme of the blog would be, and on learning from my own mouth that I planned to bring my point of view about the reality surrounding me, he categorically denied me any such possibility.

The digital daily Cubaencuentro gave me a space for my incursion without asking any questions about it, something I was always grateful for, but such an approach garnered the discontent of the Officials of Culture in Cuba, advised by the Political Police, and as punishment they closed my personal email account paid for monthly to the Ministry of Culture, which I thought not only was my right, but I thought worthy of my intellectual journey.

Then I was disconnected from the cultural institutions of my country. Mysteriously, soon after I was assaulted by do men who warned me: “Don’t become a counterrevolutionary.” And every outrage increased my will to blog, reaffirming my need to communicate my thoughts and ways of seeing events, and in particular focusing on national issues.

As if that wasn’t enough, they started to rain various accusations on my which, suspiciously, were not accompanied by evidence or witnesses to the acts they charged me with, on many occasions the alleged complainants didn’t even appear. It would just be a cop claiming I had raped a woman, threatened a man, hit a child with my car. Later they manipulated people very close to me, detaining for several hours my personal friends who had nothing to do with my incursion into cyberspace, with the intention of interrogating them, wanting to know if I received money from the United States Interest Section, visits from foreigners, etc, all with the greatest cynicism in trying to frighten and asphyxiate me to get me to abandon the plan to continue blogging. I even received a Prosecutor’s inquiry, over a year ago, for which the years in prison for the supposed offenses would have been more than fifty.

I recognize that every attempt to shut me down, stop me from blogging, sets off an opposite reaction. Every effort that they made just reaffirmed for me more the need to show that institutional abuse doesn’t always get its way, and that we are willing to take all the abuse and slander that they hand out. I don’t care about losing the national cultural space I had won, the “friends,” their breaking my bones, not even locking me in jail for the rest of my life. Indeed, I have already lived 44 years in this great prison they have turned our Island into.

I affirm that I am proud to be in this group of young people who say, honestly, what they think, and that I flee from those 200 revengeful “Professionals” who insisted in multiple invitations that I join them. (Today I received a message from Yoani Sánchez and Reinaldo Escobar wishing me luck because last night on television my name appeared among the list of dangerous bloggers.) It all reminds me of movies about the old west.

I’ve written several times for the opportunity to take part in the space “Cubadebate” and at least to be able to post my blog with complete freedom as I have done to date, so that this site will become a true plaza of intelligent and plural debate, to exchange points of view without aggression or disrespect. And to arrive at a national dialog that has been absent as long as I’ve been alive.

But I have to regrettably acknowledge that this would be a sign of democracy which to them, the cyberwarriors, is unknown territory.

March 23 2011

TV Appearance / Claudia Cadelo

Appearing on television is always an event in the life of an ordinary person. I thought I would be fearful, nervous, anxious. But when I saw my blog header and my photo on “Cuba’s Reasons” I was proud. I think there are many political texts in my blog Octavo Cerco which don’t hesitate to use words like totalitarianism, autocracy and impunity, and there are others where I don’t hesitate to mock Fidel Castro, Raul Castro or others I find disagreeable in the shameless Cuban government. But for some incomprehensible reason they twice showed the interview I did, about his novel Havana Underguater, with Erick J. Moto a Cuban science fiction writer who has repeatedly won national awards. Who can understand State Security?

In Yoani’s case, a detailed mention of each of her awards only served to demonstrate that she doesn’t need financing because her talent is internationally recognized by prestigious institutions. The sum of half a million at the end stunned me because, although I’m not good at arithmetic, it seemed they added a few extra zeros at the end. But if Yoani Sanchez becomes a millionaire with her prizes and continues to use her income to support the development of free access to information, breaking the state monopoly on it, and opening avenues for civil society in Cuba, then they can put three more zeros to the number shown on television.

On the other hand, State Security’s technique of putting attractive names on their blogs and sites so that search engines will find them, while very useful on the Internet, but on Cuban television seen by thousands of citizens have never entered the network of webpages — and contrary to the words of Elaine Diaz, they need to and badly — one wonders if “Changes in Cuba,” “The Unknown Island,” and “The Digital Debate” are these not titles sufficiently controversial to be seen as counterrevolutionary.

24 March 2011

Spain Limits Human Rights of Ex-Cuban Prisoner of Conscience Normando Hernandez / Voices From Exile

Exiled in Spain, the Cuban ex-prisoner of conscience Normando Hernandez, just like the rest of his brothers-in-cause, lived a harsh reality behind the bars of the Cuban jail cells. Now, his new life in Spain is supposed to be full of freedoms and opportunities, but his case has proven otherwise. The Spanish government has denied this freedom fighter his right to freely travel in and out of the country on various occasions, the most recent being in regards to an intellectual conference being held in Norway. Spanish officials have declared that the reason for which he was denied from being able to participate was because of his “International Protection in Spain” and “Political Asylum” status. If this really were the reason, Normando points out that this excuse does not make much sense, for travel permits exist which would allow such trips.

Normando Hernandez is not only a Cuban who was been deported, but he is also a Cuban who has continues suffering the lack of freedom in a foreign country, seeing as that, as his own words state, the Spanish government has served as an “accomplice to the totalitarian government of the Castro brothers”.

Here is an essay written by Hernandez, detailing his “trip which never happened”:

Chronicles of a Trip that Never Happened
by Normando Hernandez, Cuban ex-prisoner of conscience

I have just returned from where I was not allowed to go. This time, I did not reach the country where the aurora borealis is a tourist attraction. I did not get to visit the nation of the descendants of Leif Erickson (the first European to step on North American soil, nearly 500 years prior to Christopher Columbus). I couldn’t walk the land of the Vikings. I was not able to visit the country which awards the Nobel Peace Prize. The Spanish government did not want me to visit Norway.

On the trip that I could not go on, I had the honor of taking part in “The Bernt Breakfasts”. Bernt Hagtvet is a professor of political science who is popularly known for having written much against totalitarianism and ideological extremes. There, I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Norwegian intellectual elite for two hours. Later, we went out to lunch for some Norwegian Cod, this fish which is widely popular in my Cuba.

Along with Professor Steinar Andreas Saether, I headed a conference for University of Oslo students who are studying Spanish and are interested in the subject of the Cuban revolution. We did not need an interpreter to talk about the immortalized Cuban writer, Reynaldo Arenas (1940-1990), author of the novel “The Parade is Over” and more popularly known for his auto-biography, “Before Night Falls”. The Cuban poet, Nicolas Guillen was also present in the conversation between the students, who were particularly interested in his poem titled “I Have”, with which he welcomed the revolution in 1959.

In my visit, which never took place, to one of the countries with the highest literacy rates (99%), and which offers free mandatory and public education, I also had the honor of having a debate with Hὰkon Haugli and Jan Torre Sanner, both of whom belong to the Storting (Parliament) support group. I had the satisfaction of meeting Jan Torre Sanner for the second time. He had met with me the first time when I had recently arrived in exile. I spoke to him about the human rights violations committed by the Cuban government and I asked that he intercede for the two brothers-in-cause who still languish away in prison: Felix Navarro and Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia. They are two Cuban prisoners of conscience who are still kept in jail because of their choice to not accept exile in exchange for freedom.

I also exhorted both intellectuals to support Cuba’s most emblematic prisoner of conscience: Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet. I let them know that Dr. Biscet is currently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and that many people, both in and out of the maritime frontiers of the largest island of the Antilles, believe that he is the only person capable of unifying the organized, yet fragmented, Cuban opposition, with the sole purpose of toppling the totalitarian government of the Castro brothers in a completely peaceful manner. “Dr. Biscet needs more help now than when he was in prison,” I expressed to them.

I was in the land of the poet and playwright Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), who is considered to be one of the biggest and most influential playwrights of his era, and who is also the author of “When we Wake the Dead” (the last of his dramatic plays) and “Sofia’s World” (published in 44 languages and having sold more than 15 million copies worldwide). I also met with the philosopher and writer, Jostein Gaarder, who could not have been left out of a reunion with the colleagues of the Norwegian Writers Union.

There, I met with my friend Henrik Hovland, an author who organized the entire trip on which I was not allowed to go. The purpose of the travel was so that my wife, my daughter, and I could converse with politicians, professors, intellectuals, and writers from that Northern European country. I already knew Henrik, for he was the first person to travel all the way to Spain to welcome us to exile. My wife and daughter had already met him in Cuba when the president of the Norwegian Writers Union, Anne Oterholm, traveled to the island with him in 2009 in an attempt to visit my house and give me the Freedom of Expression Award.

This Sunday, 20th of March, the Spanish government did not allow me to participate in the annual assembly of Norwegian writers, nor was I able to express my gratitude to my Scandinavian colleagues for having awarded me such a prestigious prize. The government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also did not want my 8 year old daughter to live one of her dreams: to make a snowman. Nor did they want her to visit an animal museum (both these activities were part of the itinerary).

The justification for not allowing me to leave the Iberian Peninsula is that I am a solicitor of International Protection in Spain (Political Asylum), a law which states that the only place where I can be protected is within the State. While it is certain that this law does exist, it is also true that there are special permits which exist as well. Such permits allow people who fall under the category of Political Asylum to visit the territory of any State, as long as it is not the same country from which the refugee is fleeing from. If this permit did not exist, then last year I would have not been able to visit Brussels, and later, Poland.

It is not the first time that the socialist Spanish government violates my right to travel through Europe. In December, they did not allow me to travel to Germany. But it does not matter, the shame belongs to them, the same ones who are accomplices of Castro’s totalitarian government. It does not matter, because truth always champions over lies, and besides, the true German democrats await me, as do the Norwegian ones, so that they can get to know the true suffering of the Cuban people.

This very important post comes from “Pieces of the Island.”

March 24, 2011

Notes from Captivity XII / Pablo Pacheco

Rebellion in the “Polish”

Various weeks had passed with normality in the “Polish”. My life was similar to the routine-driven life of any other prisoner, until I realized that if I wanted to get out of that hell I was forced to live in with the least amount of damage as possible, then I had to change my own methods. I began to read the Bible thoroughly, as well as writings by our apostle, Jose Marti (and any other book I could get my hands on).

I would begin each of my days by reading the Bible. Afterwards, I would do some physical exercises, eat lunch, rest after the lunch, and then I would once again go back to reading. From time to time, I would join in on playing chess with some of my cell companions. We would shout out each of our moves from whichever cell we were being kept at and this would profoundly annoy the guards, but we would ignore their scoldings.

During one afternoon, the guard on shift — Infante — suggested that if other guards turned up the volume on their radios, then this would drown out and confuse our voices whenever we screamed out our chess moves. They ended up agreeing on this method, and they turned up their radios as loud as possible, leading us to put an end to our game, for listening to the sound being broadcast through their radios was a real torture for us inmates.

Suddenly, everything began to change around us. The chief of our particular detachment- sub lieutenant Ricardo Martinez- decided to not care for coming around our cells to check us, perhaps intentionally. The press would not reach our hands, as well as letters written to us. Medical assistance fell below the level of “least frequent” and no one would give us a response in regards to this situation.

One night, we listened to “Mesa Redonda” being broadcast through national TV and we were stupefied. The former minister of exterior relations, Felipe Perez Roque, confirmed the existence of a series of penitentiary services- out of which only a few were actually respected (and irregularly). Alexis Rodriguez Fernandez had the idea to summon the minister and he managed to sneak a note to each of us asking for our suggestions. We all supported the initiative of our brother-in-cause, and many common prisoners agreed as well.

Since there were a few weeks left until any of us had the opportunity to a family visit and since the situation was only getting worse, we decided to carry out a hunger strike in order to demand our rights to have these services which the government itself mentioned through the voice of Felipe Perez Roque. We were shocked to see that out of the 16 of us who were in the “Polish”, all but one joined the strike (and this one person was an informant to the guards).

The guard who was on watch noticed our behavior during breakfast. Manuel Ubals Gonzalez was the first of us to refuse his breakfast, and later we all followed. I am certain that Garvey , the Interior Order functionary, quickly informed his superiors about our attitudes because a State Security official rapidly arrived on the scene, but he did not ask anything.

Later, during lunch, we did the same thing. Officials from the Penitentiary Direction did not show up anywhere near our cells to discuss matters. Perhaps they thought that we would give up our stance, but we were determined to take our protest up to the last consequences: our demands would be met or we would simply never eat again.

Half an hour after refusing to eat dinner they began to come get us individually, putting us in rooms where, much to our surprise, we were to meet with the Head Council, our re-educator Ricardo Martinez, the political police official, and another State Security guard from Matanzas.

When it was my turn, I told them the same things the others had said, but I bumped into something I was not expecting. They actually gave me the benefit of the doubt and blamed the detachment chief for the situation, assuring that it would be fixed. Diosdado Munoz More, the director of Aguica, told me that I must eat in order to prove that I had ended my hunger strike. My response was that I would only eat in the same and only place I eat- my cell. An argument then broke out between them and me, which I was not expecting. I refused to eat where they wanted me to and I took on this strict position to avoid any future manipulations. They then suggested I eat in the lunch area where prison workers eat, but I was not a prison worker, I was a prisoner in a jail of maximum security.

My attitude cost me three days in complete isolation in a dungeon where light did not enter and where I would have no drinking water available. I would have never imagined that such dungeons existed in my country.

During the day, I could barely see anything, and when night would fall it was a petrifying darkness. The horrible odor of the bathroom was making me ill and since I did not have water, I could not clean it up a bit. I must add that in order to drink water I had to ask a few common prisoners to fill up three bottles for me and I would take the chance to shower myself with one of those bottles. During the 72 hours in which I resided in that dark hole, I came to know each and every one of the cracks on the cell walls and I imagined the suffering felt by men who had previously been condemned to live there.

When they removed me from that putrefied hell, I was returned again to the “Polish”, and I was received by my companions with applause and I was truly in awe because I was not relying to count on so much solidarity. Afterwards, I was able to tell my partners about my experiences, as well as to listen to their own experiences after being interviewed by the officials. Out of all them, I was the only one who was told to eat at the lunchroom. Food was taken to the cells of all the others. We reached the conclusion that maybe such treatment was reserved for me because they thought I had been the one who called for the strike.

Due to our rebellious stance, the officials of Aguica avoided leaving common criminals by our sides for too long, and they also avoided confronting us. We knew we had won the first battle, but we had to publicly call out the regime. Family visits were the only opportunities we had left, and we then began to elaborate another plan to achieve our objective.

Translated by Raul G.

NOTE: Pablo Pacheco was one of the prisoners of Cuba’s Black Spring, and the initiator of the blog “Behind the Bars.” He now blogs from exile in Spain and his blog – Cuban Voices from Exile – is available in English translation here. To make sure readers find their way to his new blog, we will continue to post some of his articles here, particularly those relating his years in prison in Cuba.

March 21, 2011

Since the Appreciation / Yoani Sánchez

Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 23 March 2011 — Had I hired an ad agency and a nimble publisher to disseminate the work of the alternative bloggers, I probably would not have accomplished such wide awareness of our existence, within Cuba, as that achieved thanks to the “Cyberwar” program shown Monday on official television. The tangible result is that my phone hasn’t stopped ringing and I’m hoarse from talking to so many people who have come to show me their solidarity. My sunglasses — as big as owl’s eyes — are no longer enough camouflage for me to pass unnoticed in my city. Every few yards someone approaches me on the street to offer words of encouragement and even big hugs, the kind that take my breath away.

What’s happening on this island such that those of us “stoned” by official insults have become so attractive? What happened to the time when aggravating State media represented years and years of ostracism and vilification? When did the spontaneous anger against those slandered, the sincere punch in the face for the stigmatized, fade away? I swear I was not prepared for this. I imagined that 24 hours after this pack of lies, told in emulation of Big Brother, everyone would pull away, stare fixedly at the cobwebs on the wall whenever I passed by. The result, however, has been so different: a complicit wink, a pat on the shoulder, the pride of neighbors who are surprised because a certain quiet and frail little woman who lives on the fourteenth floor is apparently enemy number one — at least this week — until the next to be stoned appears.

And I’m not the only one. Almost all the bloggers whose names and images appeared on the “Interior Ministry Soap Opera” are experiencing similar situations. Vendors at the farmers market who hand them a piece of fruit in passing, drivers of collective taxis who say, “You don’t pay today, sir, it’s on the house.” If the scriptwriters of that courtroom TV show had calculated such a response at the grass roots level, I think they would have refrained from putting our faces on television. But it’s already too late. The word “blog” is now irrevocably linked with our faces, glued to our skin, associated with our actions, tied to popular concerns, and synonymous with that prohibited zone of reality that is becoming more and more magnetic, more and more admired.

23 March 2011

Here is the TV show Yoani refers to, in 2 videos with English subtitles: Cyberwar in Cuba’s Reasons

The Hot Potato / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

The “younger” (almost 80) of the Castro brothers — and the current president of Cuba — attempts to govern and as if playing with a ball; tossing it from hand to hand drawing a neat arc in the air. I had to get really close to realize that it was not a toy ball that the Cuban leader was tossing, but a steaming hot potato.

Yes! That polygamous tuber we like so much and that helps us eat and which is officially married to McDonald’s, Burger King, etc., “it gets hotter” with every plate that goes missing from the Cuban table, with every child or elderly person, man or simple woman, who don’t eat it for long periods due to indolence, bad management and governmental administration. And this isn’t just a current issue but a recurring phenomenon which has been ongoing for many years and in a general form.

Raúl Castro had to wait for quite a while before “the magician” decided to cede to him the stirrer for the pot where he had already tossed all his ingredients. Even so, we note that the younger of the brothers has assumed the responsibility with dedication and has put out some “good news” to the citizenry which bothers the guru a little, to the point that every once in a while he “reaches out his arm” to try to retrieve the stirrer, which is further from him the older he gets and he speaks, and this is an almost impossible task to bear for someone who already doesn’t enjoy good health.

The old wise man supervises, guides, determines … and gives the impression that he’s given up his post with conditions and reluctantly.

He allows his brother to stir the soup, “but without disturbing it much” because the components “can get hasty,” and that, in his opinion, isn’t good.

Even so, he has cast spells that threaten immobility and repetition of the for-life menu, and the society that worries about “until when?” starts to become desperate while it dreams of a better Cuba.

Evidently there are signals which confuse Cuban society and international opinion a little; and at times it might seem that it’s the historical leader who pushes the buttons on the stove where the sweet future of the homeland is being cooked and hides the recipe book that represents one of his treasures beneath his tracksuit, as if at these heights the recipes for the evidence of the broken Cuban model are interesting to anyone! But the most delicate and regrettable part of the affair — too serious to take as a joke — is at times the publication of his reflective sketches which appear to delegitimize the current leader.

He writes how he favored someone or recommended someone else — all promoted to support his own success — to the higher echelons of power

This makes many Cubans reflect about it: “If this is how he treats his own brother what will be the treatment for the rest of us?” He also flares as a critic and solves with rhetoric the “grave issues of humanity” forgetting how complex these issues are for Cuba.

I believe he should probably employ all that time understanding other topics that could improve the quality of life for the population and envisioning the solutions to the current crisis, and change his targets — at least for a moment — from the United States and those whose governments criticize him or point out the flaws in the Cuban political and social-economical system; something many assimilate as a make-believe exercise to divert focus from national problems which should be at the top of our concerns and on our list of priorities so we can later look after any other issues in the rest of the world.

His experience could be dressed with a more constructive view and more attentive attitude towards the right to help this country and his President brother.

There is another intention behind the disorienting messages around the top Cuban leaders and the presumable quarrel between them: Duality? For quite a while they have been baking a high level little cakes of a “fraternal coup d’état” to distract the world.

A syrupy sweet with expertise to look for solidarity toward the youngest of the Castro brothers, and fundamentally to win some time and security against possible real or imaginary aggressions from the planet Earth judge, who happens, by geographical coincidence and geopolitical chance, to be our neighbor.

But it is a tough pill to swallow and very few seem to enjoy it. All of these distracting maneuvers concern the Cuban citizen because it has been fifty-two years of recurrent tactics that guarantee a stronghold on power for the never-ending dictators.

I believer these treacheries are a part of the strategy of giving compliments and the pleasure of being consigned to posterity as a tough, intransigent stoic, and a long sentence of etceteras that he thinks, of course, will adorn any references to his personality in history textbooks and biographies that will undoubtedly be written around the world.

But as long as high-class rascals win, this society loses. It is a very long process where those in powers have stopped at nothing to remain in charge, leaving a trail of “everything is fair” and “the end justifies the tricks” in their long journey. This attitude has permeated all layers of Cuban society and the responsibility of the governing class in the current crisis of values that is unquestionable and unarguable.

It is not easy then for he who represents the presidency to face a corroded and rusted coffin for which he is also responsible, and for which if he doesn’t have the keys he will have to definitively break the lock to remove all the citizen hopelessness and frustrations, to avoid the violence of disqualification, and to work with boldness and dedication for the happiness of this suffering nation, for the perfecting of a government system that is fair and concerned for the well-being of all citizens rather than just concerned for keeping the privileges and influences of a small group in power.

February 21 2011