Translating Cuba

The Florida media commented on the details of the flow of musicians and writers that travel from Havana to Miami or New York, where they perform in clubs and theaters or speak in universities and conference rooms.

Among the literary figures the writer Miguel Barnet, the President of the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba and the Deputy to the National Assembly, whose presence in New York resulted in opposing opinions of his official chanting, his signature of support for the quick execution of three young men who tried to hijack a boat to escape the island, and his declaration of support for the convicted spies incarcerated in the United States.

I know that someone should unveil the masks of the accomplices of the dictatorship that utilize the springs of the democracy to promote their works and earn money, but I don’t believe that the writer-functionary deserves that much attention. In Cuba barely anyone speaks of him despite the re-releases of his novels (Cimarrón, Gallego, Canción de Rachel) and poems, though sometimes we see him on TV talking about identity or speaking in sessions of the National Popular Power Assembly.

If Barnet wasn’t a simulator accustomed to excluding the creators who challenge the rules of the game, he would not be leading UNEAC nor enjoying awards and invitations to foreign countries. But our grand intellectual commissioner removes the mask at times and reveals his way of thinking, which is very different than the things he says publicly out of fear or convenience.

I now remember my professional contacts with Miguel Barnet in the Fernando Ortiz Foundation towards the end of 2005, while editing my book The Basques in Cuba, still unpublished even though it was approved by the team of investigators and the Board of the Directors, presided over by Barnet and an annoying Trinidad Pérez,

In the first contact Barnet gave me his assessment of the book, talked about its ethno-historic and cultural contribution and weighed data on the confluence of the Canary Islanders, Galicians, Catalans, Hebrew and Chinese, many of whom fled with their descendants, “Frightened by the measures of the Revolutionary government and by its affiliation with Eastern Europe.”

In the second meeting my host exchanged erudition for the proposal to introduce some changes suggested by the UNEAC editor, hired by the Foundation to edit and redesign the work, which I opposed from the ideological suspicions of the specialist. Barnet agreed I was right but insisted on the need to look after the institution, because, “The elite who run the country fears anthropological studies and that would be pretext enough to close the Foundation.” He added that on two occasions he’d had to sit down with Abel Prieto — Minister of Culture — faced with absurd interpretations of the magazine Catauro. “Imagine what would happen if a book like yours were to make value judgments that put the hunters of phantoms on their guard.”

Given his fears I said something about freedom of expression that bothered the writer, who felt the need to talk about himself.

“I was one of those young men of the bourgeoisie who bellowed against the Batista dictatorship until they arrested me and I spent a night in a dungeon, listening to the screams; at dawn the minister of education too me home, my family sent me to the residence in Tarará where I didn’t leave until 1959. I joined the militia and undertook the different tasks of the time, coming to the point of throwing an ashtray at Paulita Grau and distancing myself from Lidia Cabrera during Operation Peter Pan, but years later I went to Miami and asked their forgiveness, and for that State Security called me in; for them it’s all about ideology. I’m not brave but I know the barbarians. They still haven’t apologized for the craziness of the 1968 Revolutionary Offensive, nor for the Congress of Education and Culture of 1971. What can we expect from those gentlemen who deny Doctor Hilda Molina permission to travel to Argentina and reunite with her son and meet her grandchildren?”

When I met with Barnet for the third time, in January of February of 2006, the book was ready for printing and we talked about the question of the check in hard currency for my foreign sponsors. That day the conversation was brief and relaxed, but the book hasn’t been released although they paid me for the copyright.

I don’t know if Barnet is one of the Bourbons the Bourbon Eusebio Leal recently spoke about, but for the last five years I understand a little better the caste of the gentlemen who shepherd the country’s intellectual flock.

February 15 2011

The meetings of all the country’s social sectors to define what the economic model of the future should be like, is described by the newspaper Granma was an unprecedented and unlikely event in the modern world.

The official organ of the Communist Party of Cuba is delivered in body and soul to make us feel that we live on another planet and galaxy. Sometimes I have trouble understanding the form of expression of Cuban socialists. Is it irony or simply mockery? I can’t get it in my head to call it ingenuity.

Who thinks of mentioning the word “to define” to characterize the supposed debate of the economic guidelines for Cuban socialism for the next 5 years? It would be very demagogic to say that the policies proposed by the political leaders are analyzed.

It would be very unrealistic and exaggerated to say that 15% of the guidelines will be refined after discussion with the population, in a system based on State planning and control, where the only economically favored actor is the state and its socialist enterprises.

Let’s assume the guidelines in their current formulation with an authentic and radically revolutionary vocation as advised by Granma in its propaganda work for the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party. Take two points of the guidelines: They do not allow the concentration of properties in native persons and the non-state sector, and they apply higher charges to the highest incomes.

Let’s consider the problem: the island needs economic recovery and the Cubans want change, for example free enterprise and abolition of the dual currency. Logic says that if the state sector has more than one million excess workers who, in the new circumstances, must live on their own, the administration must take advantage and facilitate new entrants who have the responsibility for generating the jobs and income that many families depend on.

The guidelines ignore these aspects. In contrast, they contain obstacles that impede the economic development and social progress of Cubans themselves. If they ask for results, vis-a-vis the public debate, I see numerous prosecutions for tax evasion, corruption fattening its tentacles, and the administration making confiscations for illicit enrichment.

None of these issues will be on the agenda of the Communist leaders this coming April, the planned date for the Sixth Party Congress. The policies are defined by the interests of those who now direct and control the country. Not to mention that the majority have already been recently adopted by the Council of State.

In short, living in Cuban society today is like a vulgar play, where the majority looking contemplate the work as mere spectators. Yes, it is unlikely that elsewhere in the world the fate of more than eleven million people depends on the will of a few. Undoubtedly, there will be no debate, just demagoguery.

March 9 2011

A week ago National Television aired repeatedly a new chapter in the serial incorrectly titled “Cuba’s Reasons,” from the eagerness of the authorities to always appropriate the voice of the nation, to monopolize it. In reality it should have been called “The Cuban Government’s Reasons.” The chapter, directed against some peaceful opponents and the Ladies in White, was full of images recorded with hidden cameras and intercepted telephone conversations, things illegal in any democratic country but common in ours.

In addition, it included declarations of two agents who in effect broke their cover, having finished their missions of infiltration. One was a fountain of derogatory epithets and even demonstrations of how he lied, discovering his true nature. The other was more parsimonious. There was no shortage of the usual sentimentality, melodrama and even patriotism, summarized in the final scene with the happy ending of them walking toward each other in slow motion. Yesterday they aired another chapter, even more boring, because it was based on images and events from twenty and thirty years ago.

Definitely more of the same. It seemed to me like seeing chapters of “It Has Had To Be In Silence,” that mythical serial. The important thing, however, is the reason for presenting this material now, and with so much coverage. Does it have something to do with the events taking place in the Arab world? It is a call to arms?

There is concern that, at a time of declared strength of the regime, with an upcoming Party Congress, which would be a healthy environment of civic tranquility, to analyze calmly the problems and seek solutions with the participation of everyone, unleashing this new campaign only demonstrates intolerance, one more time, and brings absolutely nothing to the needed national unity, under the principle of respecting a diversity of opinions, something raised in recent speeches by the president.

It is expected that, if the same mistaken path is followed, some upcoming chapter of the serial will be dedicated to discrediting the bloggers, independent voices, without owners and without salaries, that only express their opinions, misguided or not but in any case honest, on the web, as they cannot in other media, being responsible for them as Cubans who adhere to no party nor political organization, with the one objective of participating in the solution to national problems with a new perspective, taking into account what has been tried over the last fifty years has not been successful.

The ex-president, in a meeting with intellectuals at the recently ended Book Fair reasons: The most self-sufficient and incapable creatures that ever existed: Us, the politicians. Without a doubt, he’s completely right. Ours are a magnificent example.

March 8 2011

10 March 2011

A friend told me something unusual happened recently in a sugar mill, one of the few left on my planet:

The Director of the mill was on the verge of a heart attack because the transmission belt required for the mill to crush the canes had broken and there was only one technician in the whole province who could fix it, as this was a rare failure. The official in question sent a notice to the province saying that if someone didn’t come to fix the belt they would have to stop the mill without having finished the harvest.

That afternoon he received a telegram saying: The Ambassador of Korea is coming at 10:00 this morning. Right then they forgot about the belt and preparing for the bash. They started whitewashing all the tree trunks bordering the roads where the Ambassador would travel. The prepared a group of school children to welcome the important visitor, although they had no idea where to get some Korean ditty for them to sing.

They mobilized all the women millworkers to get old covers from Bohemia magazine, and to decorate the room where the ceremony would take place. The nearest art instructor was urgently sent for to teach the kids a Chinese dance, but it was closer than it seemed. They put false sisal braids on the children and used old files to make Chinese hats. The girls were all given folded paper fans to make the whole thing as authentic as possible.

Despite all the difficulties, they overcame them with great effort and on the following morning everyone was ready for the ceremony to welcome the distinguished visitor.

At that moment a battered old car arrived, kicking up dust, and the children began to wave their flags and fans. Heard in the distance were the first chords of the anthem when out of the car came a tall man, stocky, sideburns, dressed in greasy blue overalls.They say the recent arrival shed some emotional tears at such a reunion: Just arrived was the empatador de correas!*

*Translator’s note: The joke in this post is that “ambassador of Korea” and “fixer of belts” (empatador de correas) sound very similar in Spanish.

March 10 2011

Friends from Spain have appeared with a bottle of rum and gifts of books. In addition, they have left us a copy of El Pais, El Pais Semanal, Babelia and a provincial newspaper that taking into account all the national newspapers, these don’t even make up half.

I sat down to read them with the greediness of someone reading fresh news — OK it’s fresh news to me — with the widest coverage of the insurgent wave in the Arab world, in which I read over and over again the word “kleptocracy.” I read a very eloquent speech by Libya’s dystopian clown.

Lacking proof that it’s an apocryphal transcription, it’s a sad omission on the part of the Cuban press not to mention the threats the Dear Brother has made to his distressed people. Another piece of news was the defection of Libya’s senior military officials.

Aside from the stock market news, the obituaries and the weather, I read it all, and found a mountain of interesting things.

Meanwhile, here the news is saturated with the history of moles from State Security infiltrating the Cuban Human Rights Commission and the Ladies in White, and another where I’m not sure what they infiltrated. They talk to me about the “mercenaries of the Empire,” but no one says a single word about the mercenaries contracted from Chad and Niger for “our friend” Gaddafi.

Hopefully no international force will intervene in Libya and the dictator will be brought down by his own people. One less.

March 9 2011

The official media’s reporters are illusionists of the word. Magicians of rhetorical and hollow discourse. Professionals in hiding reality. Experts in disinformation. And the result is a bland, boring press.

Pick up the daily paper or watch the TV news to get informed about Cuban reality and the information people need is not covered. Having absolute State control over the media, they design the daily news at their pleasure.

Everything’s just fine. Or almost everything. There are more bananas, rice and malanga. Even though the market stalls are empty, the national news announcer, with his poker face, reports it all with a satisfied half smile.

The tepid critiques from the official press must be authorized from the censorship office at the Plaza of the Revolution. When the leaders decide, you can reprimand with a pen the sellers of industrial products outside the shops. Of the intermediaries for agricultural products. Or the bus drivers who appropriate part of the money in the farebox.

The most daring strike out against some administrators or people of little importance. City Managers irrelevant in the chain of command. Some mid-level Party functionaries who the higher-ups have given the green light for their crucifixion.

Government journalists are not a cynical and shameless group. They are good professionals. But they are trapped by a network of brass that stops them from doing serious, strong work.

From their classrooms at the universities of communications they become editors who want to conquer the world. Then they realize that, except for traffic accidents or baseball scores, the news is precooked by specialists from the Department of Revolutionary Orientation.

Their function is to serve the public by writing a note. Without deviating from the established norms. As the years pass they become experts in saying nothing. Sanctimonious genuflectors. Savvy in pleasing the leaders.

“Don’t look for trouble,” is the golden rule in the official newspaper. The reward for obedience can range from foreign travel, an internet account at home or your own television program.

Though they say little and what they say is of little interest, most government journalists master the current journalistic techniques. They know what is happening on the island and the world. They sneak a read of the foreign press and what bloggers and independent journalists write.

Almost all suffer the many scarcities of any ordinary citizen. They lack food in the cupboard. Money in the portfolio. And suffer from the bad service of urban buses.

They take off the disguise of simulation when they get home. As night galls, they talk to their wives about how long the histrionics will last. They are tired of faking it and keeping quiet. And being disciplined amanuenses.

March 10 2011

I was just a babe in the arms of my militia mother, an unformed chip of a New Man, when Fidel Castro traveled to Libya in the spring of 1977. Received with full honors by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, he awarded him the Medal of Valor, a distinction conferred for the first time on a foreign personality. In front of the cameras the commander-in-chief rewarded the recently named leader of the revolution with a handshake. They looked at each other and recognized their similarities. Later, in a closed door meeting away from the television cameras, they strengthened the foundations of an alliance that would last more than thirty years.

Cuba and Libya embarked on parallel paths that would join on more than one occasion. The point of major overlap centered on their leaders, in the sympathy the two caudillos expressed for each other. Thus, in 1980, when our island was shaken by the mass escape of more than 100,000 Cubans, Qaddafi officially extended his hand in solidarity. In a message filled with praise, he congratulated Fidel Castro for having been reelected as First Secretary of the Central Committee at the 2nd Communist Party Congress. The military academy man had been at the helm of that vast North African territory for more than a decade, while we exceeded that with twenty years of listening to the interminable discourses of the Maximum Leader. Both based their rhetoric in part on the free social services they offered their people. It was the way they reminded us — day after day — about the birdseed, without ever mentioning the cage.

Jamahiriya — a state of the masses — is the term Qaddafi coined to describe the political system he adopted in 1977, a kind of republic in the hands of everyone, very similar to the slogan, “The power of the people is indeed the power,” that they repeated to us on this side of the Atlantic. If things didn’t work in Libya, the citizens themselves were to blame for not knowing how to lead their nation; if the economic collapse took hold in Cuba it was because of individual laziness and people’s wastefulness, cracking the face of Utopia. Both leaders waved before their subjects’ eyes the specter of foreign invasion and a return to political dependence, the worst of threats. Anti-colonialism became the big bad wolf of the eccentric Berber leader, while the Caribbean leader scratched around in the mud of anti-imperialism, turning the metaphor of David and Goliath into a perennial reference to Cuba and the United States.

The nineties found them both scorched by the fires they had built with their stubbornness and belligerence. Qaddafi needed to clean up his image with the West, while urging Fidel Castro to raise foreign exchange to allow him to remain in power after the collapse of the socialist block. The eccentric Libyan president paid compensation, timidly opened his country to foreign investment, renounced — at least publicly — terrorism, and was even invited by Barack Obama to the G-8 Summit. The commander in olive-green was more cautious, beginning a process of economic reforms which he then tried to control with a return to centralization, qualifying his bellicose speech with phrases alluding to the ecological damage suffered by the planet, and ending the first decade of this millennium by presenting himself, now, as an ancient wise man publishing his illuminating reflections.

The official Cuban press slipped in his first criticisms of the performance of the brother-leader of the great Libyan revolution. He questioned the radical reform of the socialist regime which, according to him, could lead to “popular capitalism.” It seemed the roads that had intertwined over and over again were beginning to move along completely different paths.

But with my then 23 years, I had witnessed the affectionate grip the two caudillos shared. Unlike in March 1977, my mother didn’t want to hear anything about her militia uniform, and the Libyan leader was hard to recognize under the make-up, head cloths, and sunglasses. In 1998, when Fidel Castro participated in the Conference of the Non-Aligned Movement, he was honored with The Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize which came with a whopping $250,000. It was clear that the exchange of awards constituted — along with economic and military cooperation, declarations of solidarity, and the absence of condemnation — another form of mutual support in one of those ways that, over and over again, power recognizes and supports power, just so long as it sees the shine of its own reflection.

10 March 2011

The blue sky is so intense it blinds me. It’s not hot. The sea below, and the line of the horizon perfectly straight. Today Havana is beautiful. This island doesn’t deserve this, I say out loud without realizing it. I smile and think I don’t deserve it either, nor the guy who crosses the sidewalk in front of me. No, he doesn’t deserve this either.

Power, the worst drug in the world. I imagine Raul Castro renouncing his positions at the Party Congress… dreams cost nothing. I walk through Lennon Park and a teenager tells a group of girls that she took part in the repudiation rally against the Ladies in White last Sunday, that she insulted them. I stop short. I’m wearing earphones to avoid hearing the stupidity of people like this, but it manages to get into my ears and drill into my brain.

I turn off the music, walk back and ask her, “Why did you scream at the Ladies In White?”

She’s afraid.

“I don’t know, everyone was screaming.”
“No, not everyone. I never screamed. Why did you scream?”
“I don’t know.”

She was ashamed. Her friends were perfectly silent.

“Next time think better of it,” I say and leave.

The sky was as blue as blue, and although I could no longer see the ocean I sensed it — we islanders always sense it — and it still wasn’t hot. Paradise, I thought, paradise in hell. I look at the girls from afar. No, they don’t deserve it, not even they deserve it.

In the latest chapter in the Orwellian saga on television, we saw a frightened young face talking about how a tourist gave him data encryption software. Much of it, most likely, can be downloaded openly and for free from hundreds of web sites and it is use by individuals and businesses all over the world to safeguard their data from prying eyes. On this Island, however, where every gesture of privacy is interpreted as evidence of a conspiracy, to take steps so that a message or information on our computers is protected has been turned into something obscene and illegal.

Under the same premise, many of the dorms in the Schools in the Countryside had showers without curtains because covering yourself was contrary to collectivism. Reserve came to be profoundly rebellious and keeping a secret diary — where personal events were recorded — was evidence of a bourgeois attitude that ended when the “detachment commander” took your writings and read them in front of the classroom. Even today, few of my compatriots knock on a door before entering and the sport of rifling through the lives of others is not exclusive to the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution; the entire neighborhood practices it. To violate the intimate circle of a citizen has become such a common practice that no one was surprised when our small screen displayed tape recordings of the phone company’s clients, or photos of the interior of the home of some individual critic.

Now, the new “black beast” is encryption software. The military, who have spent their lives creating codes to safeguard their information, must be very upset because similar technology is now available to everyone. But this new campaign against discretion, unleashed in the official media, clashes with some of the passages in the official epic. If I remember correctly, since I was a child I’ve been told that Fidel Castro wrote with lemon juice — from prison — fragments of his plea known as History Will Absolve Me. I see no real difference between fooling the guards at the Isle of Pines prison with invisible calligraphy — which on contact with heat flowed from the pages — and the act of using TrueCrypt to protect from prying eyes. In both cases the individual knows that the repressive siege will not allow his uncamouflaged voice to travel far, convinced, as he is, that an authoritarian state will shamelessly dig into his life to snatch the last bastion of privacy and mystery that still remains.

Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina is a lifelong Cuban activist working for democracy and human rights in our country, founder the Alternative Studies Center of Cuban Youth for Democracy. In recognizing him as a Prisoner of Conscience in 1999, Amnesty International wrote: “Political activist, Nestor Rodriquez Lobaina, was arbitrarily arrested on 11 July 1999, for exercising his right to freedom of expression when he began a hunger strike in support of the Tamarindo 34 hunger strikers. His whereabouts are unknown. Amnesty International considers him to be a prisoner of conscience and is urging his immediate release.”

Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina Needs the Eyes of the World Upon Him
by Luis Felipe Rojas

Just like Sisyphus forced to push his stone uphill for eternity, Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina is enduring his latest arbitrary incarceration as a punishment for his unwavering commitment to civil disobedience. As I write these lines, Nestor has been on a hunger strike for more than 20 days.

His latest trials began when he was arbitrarily arrested in front of his 10-year-old daughter, Dayana, on December 9 of last year. He was beaten and forced into a police car, according to this child’s report, while she was left on her own standing in the street. By the time she made it home that night she was hysterical.

Although no formal charges have been filed against Nestor, his father learned that the arrest was apparently carried out in retaliation for an incident that had occurred several months earlier, in August of 2010. On the day in question Nestor’s house was stoned by government sympathizers, students recruited for the task, and political police agents. As these assault troops destroyed his home, Nestor, his brother and three other activists were taken into custody by a team from the Secret Police (the feared “G2”), and thrown into cells in the city of Guantanamo.

According to his accusers, Nestor “hurt a young girl” during this attack on his home, but in fact this “child” is 18 years old. An active member of the Communist Youth Union, she ultimately admitted that she was not involved in the incident, but was “passing by” in a bicycle-taxi, and  claimed to have been hit by a thrown bottle.

After more than two months of being held without charges among murderers, rapists, thieves, swindlers and other men who have lost their way in life, Nestor decided to begin a hunger strike to demand his rights. As happened with Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died in similar circumstances just over a year ago, when Nestor refused food the prison guards retaliated by turning off the water in his cell. When he finally was granted access to water again he refused to drink and is now being kept alive through an IV.

In addition to the apparent intention to charge him with “inflicting harm” he is also expected to be charged with “public disorder” — as a victim of the attack on his home. Together these accusations would carry a five-year sentence.

Nestor already served a six-year sentence under similar circumstances, at which time he was declared a Prisoner of Conscience by Amnesty International. During that prison term he was savagely beaten by a common prisoner with the last name of Duvergel, a former police office following orders from State Security (according to Duvergal’s own testimony, years later). Nestor’s jaw was fractured in this attack requiring a long convalescence.

Nestor Rodriguez Lobaina is on a hunger strike that may lead to his death.  All he is asking for is to be released, as he considers himself to be innocent.  His family is asking for people to join them in support, in hopes that the eyes of the world can help free this peaceful campaigner for Human Rights. We, his brothers in the opposition, fear that this could end in yet another death in Cuban prisons, and so we issue this warning and plea for help.

March 8, 2011

Yesterday I ran into a former colleague, who now contracts out his services in exactly the same ministry where, very young, we started our working lives.

Then I realized he was being careful about what he said, because as we hadn’t seen each other for years, he felt a certain discomfort about what my position might be regarding the current situation in the country.

He started to talk to me about the blockade. Embargo, I corrected, thus putting my cards on the table. Then he confessed that he was advising precisely the company that imported food, and said that as of four years ago, our country was currently the fourth largest trading partner of the U.S.

It’s quite clear, I said, when you go to the hard currency stores you always find on the shelves more than ten products from that enemy country, some with the flag and everything. It’s the same thing in the pharmacies in hard currency, you see a variety of medicines from the same country. So, I demanded, “What is the blockade?”

“The one our government has imposed on our pockets,” he answered.

March 7 2011

This March 3 I was detained for more than 72 hours by the repressive forces of the regime. It happened when I was walking along 51 Avenue in the Marianao neighborhood in Havana, holding a sign that said, “Down with the snitches like Serpa Mareira,” the State Security agent who passed himself off as a dissident. (See my article about it here.)

During the arrest I was threatened with prosecution if I continued my activism against the abuses of the tyranny.

It is time for Cuban civil society to make its way without fearing tyranny’s threats.

You who read my blog spread the news, knowing that you protect me, in my struggle, from the abuses this dictatorship can take against me in retaliation for raising my voice.

March 9 2011

From left to right: Yadaimí (sister), Inés (mother) and Marleny (wife).

Saying goodbye to Yamil at Jose Marti Airport, Havana, Cuba [on his way home to the U.S.].

March 7 2011

Seeing a newspaper photo of Sean Penn in Venezuela, once again, glamorously and fraternally shaking hands with Hugo Chavez managed to ruin my morning three days ago.

Of course the link between these two men, points of reference in their respective endeavors, wasn’t news to me: Penn is one of the most versatile and talented actors in Hollywood today; Chavez is the most rustic and shameful contemporary Latin America president. Both have enviable positions in their rankings.

But, there was something I wanted to forget. I would prefer to turn a blind eye to this reality: the Oscar winning Sean Penn, the same man who amazed me in Mystic River, Milk, and the tender I’m Sam, publicly and shamelessly flirting with the Venezuelan commander, as if he’s not one of those characters whom if you ran into, sometime, you’d prefer to run and hide.

But still, in this case, I say bitterly, I understand Sean Penn a bit. If you’re not sure what I said: I repeat, I understand him, but bitterly. Why? Because Commander Chavez, in addition to having ruined his country completely, and having established an almost unprecedented level of personal and institutional violence, collaborated with the philanthropic artist in his “Jenkins-Penn” organization to help the victims in Haiti.

The actor also declared unambiguously, of course, that the other considerable help for his foundation came from the U.S. Navy.

Would I have accepted money from a detestable government to save lives in a devastated country? Absolutely. I would have accepted it from Kim Jong Il himself, as long as I didn’t have to shake hands with him afterwards.

Let’s be clear, following the example of this event, we find a considerable number of artists, businessmen, athletes, and intellectuals whose unquestionable talents in certain areas don’t stop them from making fools of themselves in others. I think that when politics doesn’t go hand-in-hand with common sense, as illustrated, it’s best to shut your mouth and let it go.

How do we analyze, for example, the case of the Oscar Niemeyer, a true giant of universal architecture? That the designer of a city like Brasilia and of fascinating works such as the Funchal Casino and the Niterói Museum of Contemporary Art, is also the father of words like these:

“Fidel has demonstrated a reaction against the decadent capitalist regime that represents only money and power.”

Surprising. I ask myself if this same man who, thanks to the market economy, to what is earned by notable talent only in capitalist societies, has managed to amass a multi-million dollar fortune, deserves it. What’s more, if this is the same artist whose construction projects are only possible in vigorous economies. Read: Capitalist ones.

The list of horrors is swelled, sadly, by not a few writers. From an imprecise number I select two Latin American writers as a sample: Mario Bendetti and Gabriel García Márquez.

The latter, despite having produced the most incredible novel written in Spanish from Don Quixote to today — One Hundred Years of Solitude — and being one of the most fascinating literary and journalistic minds of the region, has very dangerous friendships and frankly incomprehensible ideological projects; but for me that’s old news. And what’s more, his books, thanks to the capitalist literary market, have traveled the world in every modern language.

But I remember my naive astonishment when, in Barnes & Noble one day — where, by the way, thanks to a kind stranger there is already one fewer copy of Updike’s Terrorist — I notice there’s not a single book by Benedetti on the shelves. Always in beautiful editions by Punto de Lectura or Anagrama.

Yes: The passionate liberal Uruguayan, author of La Tregua and other memorable works, does not seem to wonder where the money from his books comes from and has actively dedicated himself to pointing to capitalism as the origin of all planetary ills.

A worse case is that of other young newcomers to stardom.

I recall, with somewhat immodest pride, that the first time I heard a song by Calle 13 I said to myself: “This is reggaeton, but of another calibre.” I don’t seem to have been wrong in that diagnosis.

Because even today they don’t do reggaeton like its origins, but with something that for lack of a better name has been called “urban music” and these Puerto Ricans have offered authentic voices, taking into account the current Hispanic music scene.

But what’s with Calle 13? Because at times, between simply mouthing off and horrible poetry, they talk nonsense about an industry that has brought them 10 Grammy Awards, but not about the money it generates for them.

It’s true, who can doubt it, that they “give it to the gringos hard” — an actual phrase from their media hit Calma Pueblo — but then why do they accept with satisfaction the cheers and prizes awarded by the American Recording Academy?

Why allow none other than Sony, that capitalist music icon, to produce and sell their albums? This, in my language, has only one name and I apply it to this duo that I enjoy like few of their kind: Ideological hypocrisy.

Seeking to show some restraint in my judgments I want to distance myself, this time, from one of the remarks of René Pérez, leader of the duo, during his visit to Havana, “I come to this country because I am a free man and I don’t have to ask permission of anyone to travel where I like.” Really, dear René?

In Cuba we have an expression that describes this: “Speaking of the rope in the house of the hanged man.”

Would it be worthwhile to mention another illustrative example? I am tempted to mention “Diego de la Gente” — Maradona — the most marvelous and at the same time unbearable footballer from my beloved Argentina, land of great storytellers and of football that I follow with a passion that knows no bounds. I’m tempted, but I won’t give way to talking about Diego. He’s too much of a fraud to be worth more than a paragraph. Let him continue to enjoy his millionaire’s mansion, while showing a pair of tattoos, on an arm and a leg, that condemn him much more than his heinous vices.

So, I think that it would be a good idea if I subscribe to what one of Salinger’s characters says: “There are writers whom one, after reading them, would like to call on the phone.” I think there are also musicians who, after hearing their work, footballers who after watching their goals, and actors who, at the end of their films, we should do the favor of forgetting about until their next delivery, and act as if they do not exist outside of that, their natural environment.

Right now I don’t remember the last time I had news of Sean Penn.

March 8 2011