Translating Cuba

The downside of Hollywood spy movies is that we are almost always sold an unchanging archetype of moles: tall, shrewd, skilled in handling weapons and fists and with the physical energy to test atomic bombs.

This is not the case for the newly unveiled Carlos Serpa Maceira, alias Agent Emilio, a short mulatto, not very sharp and looking nervous. He arrived in Havana from Isla de Pinos, now Isla de la Juventud. He doesn’t have a black belt in karate nor can he shoot a bad guy, from 120 yards, right between the eyes with a Russian Makarov a bad guy.

The day I met him he was purple due to several smacks in the face, which according Maceira, the rapid response forces on a main avenue in Havana had dealt him, as he was trying to cover as a journalist a march of the Ladies in White, for whom he claimed to be spokesperson.

I was accompanying a Spanish journalist who was making a short film about the poetry of Raul Rivero, and it seemed a good idea to go to the home from Laura Pollan, one of the best known of the women with gladioli in hand who demand the release of their relatives.

The Iberian correspondent wanted each one of those present to read a previously chosen verse of Rivero. There also was Maceira, who quickly turned on the batteries and started to play the role of “journalist barricade journalist.”

With great detail he described the confrontation with government mobs, insisting I see the photos he took. He repeatedly stressed that national television journalists had insulted him. He said their names.

I was really more interested in the impressions of the ladies, but to calm the hyperkinetic Maceira, I promised I would write a story about the journalists on the front line, as he appeared to be, a bad writer, but the courage to go out, to report news, with fists and truncheons flying back and forth.

I wrote a note titled Barricade Journalism. It was published in March 2010 and in it I mentioned Maceira. Later the little man, frenetic, loquacious and compulsive, stuffed my email with a stream of unnecessary messages.

One afternoon, from Switzerland, my mother asked my by telephone, “Who is this Serpa who writes with so many spelling mistakes.” I answered, “He’s a guy who has a screw loose, but he goes out in the street looking for news.”

Carlos Serpa Maceira was one of those journalists, like others in the island, who blended the profession with political activism. His notes were rough and unpolished, but gave an overview of the events, which we now infer that perhaps he invented or they were written by the tough State Security agents.

Within the independent journalism, few were surprised that the mixed-race easterner. Back in April 2003 (the Black Spring) several chivatientes — snitches — disguised as correspondents came to light. Of course they always seemed to be the most energetic and sensational. Perhaps to reinforce their legends as spies. They are always accompanied by cameras: all the creole stool pigeons live to photograph and be photographed. Advertising and self promotion is part of the game.

What worries the dissent is whether this new political soap opera could be the start of an escalation of repression against opposition and independent journalism. Or is it just about putting fear into the opponents.

For the rest, nobody will lose sleep. All of us who, in one way or another decided to disagree publicly, know the risks we take. We know that we are surrounded by moles and surveillance.

What intrigues me is whether Serpa Maceira was always a cold hard spy, prepared in some secret Interior Ministry school, or whether during his work as a journalist he was blackmailed by the Special Services.

If he was a professional mole his biotype and sharpness leave much to be desired. I think he was captured while serving as a combative “journalist of the barricade.” Old Lenin said that behind an extremist there is often hidden an opportunist. Or a coward.

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March 3 2011

Social harmony implies that scientific, technological, economic and cultural rights have a corresponding reflection in social justice, democratization and civil liberties. The absence of this correspondence makes the demands of the past coexist with the present and, therefore, its solution has to be undertaken jointly, which gives a high degree of complexity to the processes of change.

Some essential aspects contained in the Program of the Cuban Revolutionary Party (PRC) are still pending completion. Therefore, the PRC’s 116th anniversary on February 24 is an excellent opportunity to address an issue so vital.

Technical advances introduced in the mills, the replacement of slave labor by employees and the centralization of ownership in large sugar estates in the late nineteenth century, turned Cuba into the first producer of sugar that reached a million tons; in exchange, the economy was subject to a single product and almost entirely to a single market, which generated a structural deformation and unjust redistribution of wealth which was reflected in the plight of workers, poor peasants and freed slaves, a situation which led to the resumption of the revolutionary struggle in 1895.

José Martí, in his analysis of the failure of the Ten Years War, expressed in New York in January 1880, arrived at a set of principles which constitutes the foundation of the theory of revolution: the role of politics, its democratic and participatory character and observation of the time factor, the revolution as a form of evolution and the need to unite the various factors toward the same end; a study that put him in the highest ranks of Cuban politics.

After 12 long years of work, on April 10, 1892 the PRC was declared established simultaneously in all associations, from which would emerge the Republic that he wanted to create. That purpose was defined in the Rules of the Party, “founded in the frank and cordial exercise of the legitimate capacities of man, a new people of sincere democracy, able to overcome, through actual work and balance of social forces , the dangers of sudden freedom in a society made for slavery”[1] so, said the newspaper Patria, “The struggle for independence that today germinates will ultimately lead to independence tomorrow.”[2]

Democratization, freedom, human dignity, present in every speech, article and document prepared by Martí, would constitute the foundations of the Republic.

The Resolutions of November 1891 suggest that the reason for the PRC was the need to join together in republican and free action all the honest revolutionary elements to create a fair and open republic for the good of all. And in the program, known as the Manifesto of Montecristi, it is proclaimed that “War is not… the insane triumph of one Cuban party over another, or the humiliation of even a wrong group of Cubans, but the formal demonstration of the will of a sick country tested in the previous war to throw itself lightly into a conflict that can only end by victory or the grave …” [3]

In his speech on October 10, 1889, he stated: “All of the motherland is the common property, and free and inalienable object of the action and thought of everyone who was born in Cuba. The country is the joy to all, and pain of all, and heaven for all, and no fief or chaplaincy of anyone, and public affairs to which a group or party of Cubans put their hands with the same absolute right that we put them, is not theirs alone, and of privileged ownership, by subtle virtue and contrary to nature, but as ours as well as theirs …”[4]

In the dissertation With all and for the good of all, in 1891, he said: “We close ourselves to the passage of a republic that does not come prepared through means of dignity worthy of man, for the good and prosperity of all Cubans!”[5] In a letter to José Dolores Poyo, dated in December of that year, he said: “It is my dream for every Cuban politician to be entirely free.”[6] Similarly to Maximo Gomez he wrote: “The government of men is the highest mission of human beings, and should only rely on the men who love and understand their nature.”[7] On the same occasion he said: “For if in the things of my country it was given me prefer one good to all others, a fundamental right that all those of the country from top to bottom would enjoy, and without which all other goods would be fallacious and insecure, the one benefit I would want to secure: “I want the first law of our republic to be a tribute of Cubans to the full dignity of man.”[8]

The work organized by the PRC is expressed inside and outside the country. The multiple uprisings that occurred throughout Cuba, despite the failure of the Fernandina Plan, confirm this; in the eastern area alone more than 30 surveys from Guantanamo to Las Tunas were produced, so the Grito de Baire — the Cry of Baire — could, in justice, be called the Grito de Oriente — the Cry of the East.

Now, 116 years after this tremendous effort, due to the absence of democracy, freedom and the dignity of the Cubans, sugar production barely exceeds that of that time, with the difference that instead of one and a half million people now we are almost 12 million; the unfair distribution of wealth became widespread poverty; the land was absorbed almost entirely by the state, which made it impossible to realize Marti’s dream to form a country of many smallholders; the elimination of barriers that prevented the dark-skinned Cubans participate on equal terms is not accompanied by the appropriate affirmative action and the elimination of the debate the issue, discrimination remains in the racial prejudices that breed in the colony; and the desired free and democratic Republic took the form of totalitarianism.

In short, the fundamental reasons why tens of thousands of Cubans took up arms in 1895, for which they fell and/or other infinite sacrifices, are still awaiting realization. To those reasons are joined the demands of modernity. That is, old and new problems that demand joint solutions.Thus, Martí’s ideas that he tried to realize in the late nineteenth century, remain valid in 21st century Cuba.

Havana, 22 February 2011

1 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, p. 26
2 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, p.99.
3 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, p. 511
4 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TII, p. 367
5 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, pp. 9-10, 17
6 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, p. 24-25
7 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TII, p. 16
8 MARTÍ, JOSÉ. Obras Escogidas en tres tomos. TIII, p. 9

(Article originally appeares in Diario de Cuba, 23 February 2011)

March 1 2011

1. To speak of a legal culture in our society is to speak about something almost nonexistent. For it to exist, every citizen would have to have knowledge of the laws, beginning with the constitution and ending with the latest resolution or directive that affects them for better or worse.
2. Many times laws and decrees have diverged so much from reality, what is established in them is so difficult to fulfill, or they generate so many setbacks, lost time and money, that people choose to ignore them. What’s more, no time has been dedicated to the real study of them, most people being legal illiterates.
3. Knowing your legal system should be an important thing for every citizen. This would make each person an integral part of society, where their lives would be marked by duties and rights that must be respected and observed by all.
4. To feel truly part of this system, the citizen must participate in its creation, not just mechanically approving, in a collective meeting, what others have developed, but through a legitimately chosen representative, where the pros and cons of each article and its effect on the life of the nation are discussed.
5. A citizen lacking legal culture becomes a defenseless being, easily manipulated with regards to his duties and rights, lacking legal security and always likely to feel that justice is a sward of Damocles hanging over his neck.

March 5 2011

The licensed criminal defense attorney Ramon de la Cruz Ochoa has just made legal news in Cuba as the defense attorney for the American contractor Alan Gross, detained in Havana since a year ago while distributing computers to members of the Jewish community on the island.

Dr. de la Cruz Ochoa is a Specialist in Criminal Law from the University of Havana, where he is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law, and he obtained a Master in Public Law at the University of Valencia, Spain. He served as Attorney General of the Republic of Cuba, and currently works as an advocate of Special Services Legal Practice; he has written articles and papers in his specialty and heads the Cuban Society of Penal Sciences.

The good thing about his designation lies in the authority and respect earned by de la Cruz Ochoa within the Cuban legal framework. The experts tell stories about his time as a prosecutor and his “leap into the abyss” because this character is a “player” who switched sides, from top representative of the public prosecutor to advocate for international criminals.

Ramon de la Cruz Ochoa was replaced as Attorney General of the Republic by General Juan Escalona Reguera, who started in 1989 during the exceptional trial against the famous General Ochoa and other officers of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior, which sparked suspicions about possible kinship between the criminal and General Ochoa who was executed.

The former prosecutor who now defends the alleged U.S. spy has in his favor, in addition to vast experience, knowledge and prestige, the fact of having the freedom to express himself beyond what is permitted by the Communist regime to legal operators. Cruz Ochoa is said to be a walking institution and the majority of judges, lawyers and prosecutors have been his disciples.

Despite his advanced age he is still regarded for his professional competence. His reputation as a prosecutor is strengthened by the ineffectiveness of his successor, there are the stories of his wit, wisdom and honesty in taking on the defense of clients represented in the Special Services Legal Practice, for foreigners.

Remaining to be seen, however, are the political interests working behind the scenes with regards to Alan Gross because, apparently, the contractor arrested and subjected to investigations by state security is a bilateral chess piece being played by the governments of Cuba and United States.

The defender of Alan Gross will have to dig deep and even burn his bridges. The case requires the attorney to divorce himself from the official position regarding censorship of the Internet and other taboo subjects on the island, where civil liberties is an unresolved matter. Given the long history of Cruz Ochoa and his commitment to the regime, it is difficult to think he may break away and be fair. We’ll see what happens.

February 26 2011

“Gimme cable!”* A phrase that made the Karl Marx theater in Havana go mad in the eighties, coming from Venezuela in the voice of Oscar de León. After those concerts, Cuban popular music was never the same. And now from Venezuela comes a fiber optic cable to our disconnected island.

On this occasion, the shout “Gimme cable!” will not be backed up by a choir. The cable was brought by a ship with modern technology by the company Alcatel-Shanghai-Bell.Presumably the Chinese will also bring their expertise and infrastructure to set up a blockade of “enemy propaganda.” Their efficient censorship filters could work for Venezuela and Cuba. Nothing escapes the Venezuelan government’s steps to curtail citizen liberties and control the mass media, questions successfully resolved by the Cuban government. This cable incorporates the possibility of real-time high-security exchanges between the two governments on sensitive issues like the economy and national security.

Such developments have aroused great enthusiasm among the population. A few months ago the Cuban Minister of Information Science and Communications declared that there will be no growth in users (individuals, that is). This despite is 640 gigabytes per second.

Still, I’m optimistic. And not only because of the recent declarations by a high official in Information Sciences and Communications who said, “There is not political obstacle to bringing the Internet to all places, including homes.” Right now, with the skimpy and slow satellite connection, many officials and technicians rent and hack Internet time. New State workers will receive broadband service and, despite regulations and control, their need to augment their salaries, or simple desire for money, will bring more unauthorized users and a sophistication in methods for jumping the barriers, an additional incentive for the young nerds who enjoy these challenges as if they were a game.

I spoke with a webmaster who supposes the cable has owners. A limited group of people from the Cuban and Venezuelan governments who are major shareholders in Gran Caribe S.A., for starters. A couple dedicated to downloading and burning movies for rent with an internet sublease, will be able to accomplish in five minutes with the fiber optic cable what now takes three days. A retired programmer is convinced that he will get a connection.

Something more. Those with legal access to the benefits of the high speed will be diffusers, conscious or otherwise, of the information denied to us by censorship and control. This phenomenon appeared some years ago in our society, has been growing, and is unstoppable.

So nearly thirty years after the cry, “Gimme cable!” of a Venezuelan musician changed forever popular Cuban music, the fiber optic cable: submarine, underground, silent, shark-proof, comes to forever change Cuban life.

*Translator’s Note: Oscar de León is a Venezuelan musician. During a concert in Cuba he shouted at his technician, “Gimme cable” as he waded into the audience with his microphone.

March 4 2011

A few months after the much talked-about new licenses for self-employment, what has spread the most are small businesses selling food, some new paladares — small private restaurants — and small snack bars. These last, according to the regulations, cannot have tables or chairs, and do have been renamed by ordinary people as quick-stops.

Cubans, in a desire to break into this new and coveted opportunity, have not hesitated to prove once more their initiative, putting makeshift counters in their doorways where they display their offerings. The customers choose to eat standing or sitting on the edge of the curb.

Some of the new businesses are better equipped, one can sense they have FE (Families in the Exterior), because they have more resources to establish themselves.

Artisans have also taken a step forward, putting little tables with their work in the doorways of their houses or on the sidewalk.

Others have used the space intended for a car, which is conspicuously absent, converting it into an attractive shop. In general, the majority of citizens, especially those not too young, want to believe that this new possibility will improve their status. The oldest of us remain a little skeptical, because we have already seen this film before.

March 5 2011

Starting today, Friday March 4, is the trail of Alan Gross, an American subcontractor accused of the crime “Acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the Cuban state.” The prosecutor is requesting a sentence of 20 years in prison.

Gross, 61, has been detained without charges since December 3, 2009, for distributing satellite links in Cuba to create clandestine WiFi access points. According to a member of Cuban State Security, in a video leaked to the web, these are the methods the U.S. funds and uses to promote a cyber insurrection in Cuba.

The fear on the part of the authorities with respect to the use of the Internet and social networks like Twitter and Facebook, grew after Egypt and other Arab countries saw protests and demonstrations demanding the resignation of their governments sparked by the use of these methods.

A literal interpretation of the actions undertaken by the American contractor, however, suggest the application of Article 11 of Law 88/99, “Protection of the national and economic independence of Cuba,” popularly known as “the gag law,” that the government hasn’t used since April 2003, but which remains current in the legal system.

This article provides for a sanction of three to eight years in prison, and a fine of one thousand to fifteen thousand pesos, for each person who directly distributes financial, material or other support coming from the government or private entities in the United States, for the realization of acts sanctioned by the law.

To accumulate reproduce, spread or introduce in the country materials of a subversive nature; to collaborate, by any method, with radio or television broadcasts, newspapers, magazines or other foreign methods of diffusion, excepting accredited reports, constitute actions penalized by Law 88, which does violence to the freedom of expression of Cuban citizens.

The Cuban authorities, however, prefer to apply Article 91 of the Penal code that sanctions with prison terms of ten to twenty years, or pain of death, anyone who in the interest of a foreign state, undertakes an act with the object of taking detrimental action against the independence of the Cuban state or the integrity of its territory.

It is illogical to think that satellite communications equipment could undermine the independence of territorial integrity of the island. The question is, why did the Prosecutor decide to apply a rule that describes no action and that does not most closely match the facts.

In its text, Law 88 warns that “given the special character… its application would be preferred to any other penal legislation preceding it. However, its utilization remains at the discretion of the government.”

The reason could be in the political overtones and international interest generation by the case. The jailing of Alan Gross has become an obstacle to the normalization of relations between Cuba and the United States of America. It seems the tension will continue.

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March 4 2011

Here is an archive of Pedro Argüelles’ recent posts on Translating Cuba.

I started reading from the last page, where the graphic humor and the occasional caricature of a famous person appeared. I then turned to the crossword puzzle and when I reached the articles, I started to fear that my reading would soon end. I would have to wait another seven days for the seller to shout its name under our windows, a name with distant connotations in pages smelling of ink. My grandparents sought to curb my enthusiasm, saying that the weekly magazine, which they used to buy at the kiosks, was a shadow of its former self.

Bohemia, the oldest magazine in Cuba and in Latin America, was born in 1908 and now it’s the living dead. Though it continues to pile on the years, the fact is that for more than a decade it has ceased to be a reference point. The 1959 Bohemia of Freedom issue, where they showed the bodies massacred by the previous dictator, has been replaced by a boring, triumphalist, insignificant publication. It shrank and lost pages. Its articles repeated the same old sugary stories as the rest of the official press. Even its cover could be confused with those of other magazines, like Sea and Fisheries or the prudish, We’re Young. Its whole personality slipped down the drain of censorship as it was re-educated by a system that doesn’t like uncomfortable magazines nor incisive journalists.

Every day I walk near the building that houses Bohemia, home to the most beautiful of all the busts of José Martí I’ve seen in Havana. I try to explain to my son that dozing there is one of the most important journals once enjoyed in this country and the entire region. For those of his age, that area near the Council of State is simply a place where water collects when it rains, a natural pond that blocks the passage of cars after a shower. “Bohemia Lagoon,” they call it, but I explain that before being known for its floods, in that site beat the heart of the press; there they prepared the pages for eyes like mine to enjoy.

The guilt under the skin, in the air, in a look, in a walk. The guilt that bounces off the guilt of others. The guilt of no one of each one of everyone. His guilt, grandpa’s, the coma’s, the unnameable’s, the reflector’s, the beardedpapa’s… his great guilt.

The guilt for the broken streets, the heat, the sea. The guilt for the nonsense and the olive-green. The guilt for staying, for leaving, for running, for fleeing, for dying. The guilt for the Malecón, the heat, the joy, the grief. The guilt for living, surviving, returning, starting, never ending.

“What’s happening with Cuba, when will they rise up?” a friend from Spain asked me, as she eagerly follows the events that have shaken undemocratic regimes in North Africa. I reply that in our island disturbances can occur, but the government still retains the ability to govern as the opposition is weak and most of the population sleeps in fear, indoctrination and indifference.

According to my friend, thousands of people around the world “await the awakening of the Cubans.” I warn her how risky it is to predict insurgencies within different contexts, but she emphasizes possible comparisons and asks me “to compare the tyrants.” I limit myself to “comparing” the Libyan autocrat his Caribbean counterpart.

It is true, in less than two months riots happened from Tunisia to Yemen, from Egypt to Lebanon. Some despots boarded a plane. It remains to be seen what the Libyan Colonel Muammar Gaddafi will do. In power since 1969, he blames foreign television channels that are “working for the devil,” as if he were God. “I’m not leaving in this situation. I will die as a martyr.”

As the Libyan leader will not follow in the footsteps of Ben Ali and Mubarak, he ordered th protesters to be deterred with helicopters and fighter bombers, while hiring mercenaries and denigrating “the dogs that deliver drugs and money and distort reality.”

“I am not a president, I am the leader of the revolution” warned Gaddafi, as if such leadership turns him into a vital monarch and immunizes him against the changes demanded by the crowds who claim their rights and freedoms in ancient Phoenicia.

Colonel Qaddafi, like comandante Castro in Cuba, justifies its hold on power by blaming all the problems of his country in imperialism. Both are allied to the former Soviet Union and survived its debacle. They go so far as to appoint their heirs: Fidel Castro appointed his brother Raul in mid 2006, while Gaddafi chose his son Saif Islam, who is now trying to appease the opposition.

Gaddafi is as eccentric as his tropical counterpart, but he is pragmatic and has oil. The first came to the throne in 1959, shooting thousands of people, dismantling the Cuban economy and society, arming guerrillas in Latin America and intervening in military conflicts in Africa. The second wanted to become the scourge of Europe and the United States, supported the guerrilla movements who raised the Koran against the West and promoted terrorism by Bin Laden.

The Libyan despot dynamited discos in Berlin dynamited and brought down airplanes in flight. The Cuban tyrant committed similar atrocities, supporting by totalitarian regimes and promoting the mass exodus of the population. Both criminalize political dissent and violate the human rights of their peoples.

The popular uprising in Libya intends to shake up the medieval state restored by Gaddafi in 1969. Opponents want to build a modern, democratic state that promotes freedoms and rights. So far, Gaddafi prefers to “burn it the ground rather than surrender.” The death struggle is being waged in cities across the country.

In Cuba, Castro retains governance, but the powder keg can explode at any moment, but increased unemployment and rising prices of commodities suppress expressions of freedom, as a national despair spreads. The majority sleeps on, focused on survival and indolence, but in this island the carousel of history has always been driven by a bold and enlightened minority; this minority exists. Hopefully it will seize the moment.

March 3 2011