José Martí, Los Aldeanos, and a Christmas Celebration / Claudia Cadelo

There are those who say that every effect has its cause and that there is no chaos in the universe. Each to his own philosophy. A friend — half joking, half serious — asked me is I could define the year when our reality became an absurdity. Something like the Big Bang of our island reality — in an implosive sense, of course, a kind of anti-Big Bang. Jokingly I replied: After seeing some of Fidel Castro’s speeches in the archive, I’d say 1959. Later, when I was alone and thinking, the joke wasn’t such a  joke and the year perhaps not totally exact because I have no first-hand experience. I was born in 1983 and it was just a few weeks ago that I realized I haven’t lived in any other reality than that absurdity my friend was asking me about. Disheartening, no?

Turning to the effect, to the cause and the chaos, it would be illogical to draw a coherent line between the Christmas Eve party, the music of Los Aldeanos, and some of the thoughts of José Martí. However, two brothers from Holguin, Marcos and Antonio Lima Cruz, could attest otherwise, having been prisoners since December 25, 2010, charged with “public scandal” and “insulting national symbols.” This last paragraph from the Penal Code is only surpassed by the emblematic “Disrespect” — mocking the figure of the Commander-in-Chief — whose very existence as a criminal figure implies a hilarious joke, I would say.

In Holguin — anywhere outside of Havana can be frightening territory for freedom-related activities  —  Marcos and Antonio decided to write some of Martí’s thoughts on the wall of their house. Phrases we never see written on the government’s banners though it’s worth pointing out that some of the latter are apocryphal and wrongly attributed to the “Apostle” — as Martí is known to Cubans. Although the reasoning isn’t clear, if we follow the logic of the official propaganda, they supposedly admire Martí so much that they no longer remember what he wrote and what he didn’t, and after several repudiation rallies in front of the brothers’ house, Martí’s thoughts were erased in favor of Fidelist slogans.

Then came the night of the twenty-fourth — young in Cuba, recovering traditions through the perseverance of a people who did not forget them despite certain ideologies — an authorized party, a gathering of those in the area, music for the people. And the people’s music includes Los Aldeanos. So the Lima brothers listened to it while they celebrated Christmas. And because they were celebrating Christmas in Cuba, perhaps they came walking down the street — the rappers in the background — wrapped in a Cuban flag.

So the party was over. They are prisoners. And you, like me, might be asking yourself how listening to Los Aldeanos can become a public scandal, and in what way wrapping yourself in, dancing with, shaking, breaking or burning the country’s flag may offend a patriotic symbol. I didn’t know this outrage could be exercised against inanimate objects. There is no cause-effect relationship, it’s not logical, there isn’t least bit of sense in it, and yet, it exists. Wouldn’t this latter be the rejection of some Marxist principle I can’t remember right now?

February 7, 2011

The Honey of Power, the Reforms… and the Inheritance? / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Given the different and legitimate concerns that are displayed by a large part of society with regard to the measures outlined in the Cuban economic and social future, I offer my opinion, because of the indifference and the disbelief as well as the indolence and concerns of the citizens, which deserve attention.

There are concerns in sectors of the population about the real intention of the government to introduce reforms. It is true that there is an unfinished program to discuss in the next Congress, which has been published and will be “discussed and analysed” from its foundations, but the mistrust concerning its likelihood of benefiting society and that it will contribute to economic solvency and happiness crowns the plan with skepticism before its inception. There are so many broken promises and announcements of corrections that don’t correct anything, that a lack of confidence has lorded over and installed itself in a good portion of our fellow citizens.

My experience in these subjects was enriched and reaffirmed recently during a pleasant and fruitful interchange with a full and heterogeneous group of people. Some shared a triumphalist spirit which claims to infuse the leadership cadre of the country with a brave decision to carry out these proposals or guidelines and the lack of criticism generated: is this the system they’ve classified as a “model” and an example to imitate? If it has to be reformed because they admit that it wasn’t working well or, simply, that it wasn’t working at all, it implies a failure. But that isn’t what they’ve said until now, nonetheless, it’s something that many have known for a long time. This “model of inefficiency and anti-democracy” for many decades has ignored the needs and wants of the people and has listened to and prioritized foreign interests over their own needs, thus showing contempt to their comrades on the archipelago.Why weren’t these reforms undertaken sooner? Why just now?

More than two hours went by in which a civil tone wasn’t always maintained; many became indignant that this might be yet another demagogic commercial like that of the “correction of mistakes and negative tendencies” of the ’80s, which was followed by an arrogant “businesslike perfection” — which lasted until the beginning of this decade — and went on to detail the full and successful (for them) catalog of snipe-hunting that has characterized as floating our historic leaders on an unmovable peak of “regression”. Thus, in the group there was consensus in we defined as indisputable: the recognition that the current model failed and that updating it to keep the country moving in the same direction is an act of survival of those who savor and have tasted the honey of power for the last half century, and not a gesture of justice toward Cuban society.

We are not forgetting (we cannot nor should we) that the black and white times of demagogic slogans and the dizzying musical litany about the climb to “The Olympia of the Proletariat” was the refrain of an era’s Hit Parade. We sought strength in power, and it was necessary to dazzle the poor — the majority — confronting them with “the oligarchs who exploited” them or owners of giant ranches, monopolies, consortiums, and even small businesses — who were and are minorities in society — to send the message of the people’s revolution to the world. Thus, even a poetic allegory was seen as a suspicious sign of weakness in the bourgeoisie in moments of liveliness, fishing without a pole and “socialism with reverie“. To think differently remained prohibited by decree.

I have always wondered why we turned ourselves over resolutely to a patrón who persecuted the poets with prose and independent metaphors, and sent for “… Attila the Hun’s colts” to hunt them down. Had César Vallejo and Roque Dalton materialized, perhaps they’d have been more honest in recognizing their mistakes and observing that communism (read: state capitalism; always metamorphosed the same) has been shown to be “an aspirin of the size of … an aspirin!” nothing spectacular. Thus, the ideological Cuban invention didn’t get close to that which it alleged was its initial most elevated and humanist purpose.

Caudillismo — strong man rule — was the strategy to inject prohibitive laws into the arteries of society with the centralizing and nauseating purpose of submission. With strokes of pink teque (the empty rhetoric of political discourse and its phraseology) and red whips they manipulated the workers and looking down their noses, they rolled up their sleeves and took the elevator from demagoguery to “go down” to the proletariat and feel the “civic participation” in the process. What participation? That arising from an enslaving perception: work for me without any rights or demands! With cunning pre-concocted carbon copy phrases, they have held a speech contest; not of participation, but of general benefit for them, not for the national community. Thus they usurped all the gains they had obtained against their former capitalist patrons; now they have the audacity to say that the working class ceded it to them to form the present government of the people.

It seems that the ruling elite (or perhaps ruling bourgeoisie?) has its own vision of interpreting the Cuban reality and uses a language — glossolalia of Pentecost? — different from the rest of society, that for many years has communicated in a language that few seem to understand. Not to mention the added value, that for over half a century, it has taken from the national working masses!

A fleeting reminder leads us by the hand from comments that are not always pleasant — though necessary in order to set out from a basis of honesty, so as to make as most accurate an analysis as possible; of who we are and what we have achieved after decades of sacrifice. It’s a constructive critical look outlined from realistic or honest reading, but with new outlooks and always prioritizing that the spirit which should encourage us is the solution, not the pollution of the problems, and as a result we can get some valid questions that are worth reflecting on here.

We have all been unexpected and surprised witnesses of the critical comments made by government leaders towards the population. It turns out that now “we are pigeons with our beaks open awaiting the food they bring.” My God, from where was this idea conceived? In which planet do the government leaders live? Was it not they who confiscated (nationalized) Pepe’s fry stall, Pancho’s shoe shop, John’s plumbing tools or Kung Fu’s laundry?[i] The list of examples could be the length of fifty helpless years.

They began with the large landowners accusing them of monopoly and ended with the simple Cuban churros seller pushing a modest cart with his own willpower. It is why they continued to subjugate the citizens with the not laudable purpose of making a citizen economically dependent on the state. That has been the case and still remains to this day, even though they have disguised it in the form of paternalism; a hegemonic commitment of domination and subordination, which in this digital era is lagging behind and is condemned by the pragmatism of globalization, libertarian clicks on the Internet and technological advances in general.

One might think then that the price for raising the educational level of society or having “compelled us to think” is that it has to be done solely for the convenience of the institution of the state, and always with the patriotic, democratic and disinterested intent to the hold on power by the historical leaders.

The decades pass and Cuba seems an ageing photo; both the leaders of the State and the manner of imposing norms and implementing discipline remain as coercive and vigorous as ever. Cubans get tiny bites of freedom through development, modernity, the ever-increasing demands of society and its interaction with other individuals or groups of countries, not the will of the state. It is a narrow margin gained against the authorities and has prompted a state reanalysis and refocusing of current circumstances in favour of “maintaining everything that should be maintained” so as not to jeopardize the revolution , or namely, their own status.

In this way reforms are imposed. The reality of the political, economic and social stagnation Cuba has been led into, compared with the rate and international social levels (modernity) suggests, per se, an involution.

Many times we feel that the rest of the world moves or travels by plane whilst we walk. Long ago we should have taken action, but the government’s stubbornness and fear of loss of control or the inconsistency of what they have advocated so far has basically added to their ineptitude and indolence, as the inefficiency and infeasibility of the model has been stretched so far that the bond is about to break. Either way, the lack of self-criticism by the country’s leadership acknowledging that the current model has failed is the typical rubric of its political culture that it should not come as a surprise to all who have followed their litigant and discursive suggestions for more than five decades.

Governmental untouchability with its bad policies in almost every area and the applications of these, have demonstrated the expiration of the ideological prototype it defends. Who are those responsible for economic and social collapse in our national home? The drafting of the “Project of Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy [ii]” is another example of the arrogance that characterizes the government directive: Why introduce reforms now and not one or two decades earlier? The directives, which are now in the hands of many, were written by an elite committed to the leadership (or to themselves) who are, in short, the authors of the current crisis.

Of course we support any attempt to change what obstructs or curbs the development and welfare of society and its unfolding in the national context; but the authoritarian and controlling mentality of the minds of the leaders of government limits the good performance of any real attempt to reform, which would be those that must be made in today’s society. To this, one must add that they do not propose substantial changes, since they obviously obviate the core issues like human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of association, which are the pillars on which rest any proposal for amendments if they are to be genuine and not an ideological fairground carousel for them to continue playing for time.

We are not in the mood for warm washcloths and we must reform “everything that must be reformed” in order to allow Cubans to build their own dreams freely, which though they may not be perfect, at least would give us the opportunity to enjoy all that has been taken away under the guise of an ideology.

Also, the right of ownership should not be treated with prejudice or pseudo-paternalism and the participation of ordinary Cubans in the investment processes must be permitted, something that until now we have been excluded from.

In short, it has been such a long stay in power, and the number of accumulated problems is so high that it warrants changes instead of reforms, not just in economic and social development, as proposed by the leadership of the government, but integrally. The model is unrealizable, and has long been maintained through the force of control and obliged obedience.

I want to return to recalling the productive interchange I had with the interaction group; there was consensus that the maintenance of the system has always been prioritized regardless of the economic or human cost. So where is the humanity of which they boast? Why force this society to suffer and endure, rather than recognize the rights of the citizens? They gave us free education and healthcare (now also in crisis) and it has proved to be a sine qua non – that in modernity there is extortion – to disregard all other rights.

It is worth mentioning at this point how they are still working on the installation of a fiber-optic cable from Venezuela to access broadband Internet and have already claimed it will be “for social utility”, which they will determine, of course. And this is what we aim for as the key to development; free access to information through the mega network that is the Internet and other technological highways, and it is inevitable for the healthy progress and performance of social civility, liberalization or decriminalization thereof.

Someone then added that it seems that the claim over control of the Government has been that the capitalists will subsidize plans for a revolución against them. If they want capitalist finance, which is something they ask for publicly, why persevere in the socialist system?

My friends and I then came back to what we believe is the crossroads that Cuba’s historical leaders have always wanted to bypass, since this would imply democracy and, hence, a change in power. We therefore conclude that this point is also fundamental and an attack on development.

Those who hope that the guidelines will be the cure-all to the problems of the failed Cuban model, I recommend you check the label so that you read that it expired before its implementation. That way we reaffirm the setting of the debate that it already generates and the expectations that it sows amongst Cubans living in the archipelago. We believe it is possible to put into practice new and better challenges that will lead to other new measures, which in turn will contribute to the necessary and inevitable democratization of society. The famous theory of fine-tuning…

[i] In the years before 1959, small dry cleaning and laundry businesses in Havana, were largely in the hands of the Chinese settled in Cuba.

[ii] Document dated November 1, 2010 and drafted for discussion at the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which will be held this the coming April.

Translated by Eric Peliza

January 3, 2011

The Honey of Power, the Reforms… and the Inheritance?

Given the different and legitimate concerns that are displayed by a large part of society with regard to the measures outlined in the Cuban economic and social future, I offer my opinion, because of the indifference and the disbelief as well as the indolence and concerns of the citizens, which deserve attention.

There are concerns in sectors of the population about the real intention of the government to introduce reforms. It is true that there is an unfinished program to discuss in the next Congress, which has been published and will be “discussed and analysed” from its foundations, but the mistrust concerning its likelihood of benefiting society and that it will contribute to economic solvency and happiness crowns the plan with skepticism before its inception. There are so many broken promises and announcements of corrections that don’t correct anything, that a lack of confidence has lorded over and installed itself in a good portion of our fellow citizens.

My experience in these subjects was enriched and reaffirmed recently during a pleasant and fruitful interchange with a full and heterogeneous group of people. Some shared a triumphalist spirit which claims to infuse the leadership cadre of the country with a brave decision to carry out these proposals or guidelines and the lack of criticism generated: is this the system they’ve classified as a “model” and an example to imitate? If it has to be reformed because they admit that it wasn’t working well or, simply, that it wasn’t working at all, it implies a failure. But that isn’t what they’ve said until now, nonetheless, it’s something that many have known for a long time. This “model of inefficiency and anti-democracy” for many decades has ignored the needs and wants of the people and has listened to and prioritized foreign interests over their own needs, thus showing contempt to their comrades on the archipelago.Why weren’t these reforms undertaken sooner? Why just now?

More than two hours went by in which a civil tone wasn’t always maintained; many became indignant that this might be yet another demagogic commercial like that of the “correction of mistakes and negative tendencies” of the ’80s, which was followed by an arrogant “businesslike perfection” — which lasted until the beginning of this decade — and went on to detail the full and successful (for them) catalog of snipe-hunting that has characterized as floating our historic leaders on an unmovable peak of “regression”. Thus, in the group there was consensus in we defined as indisputable: the recognition that the current model failed and that updating it to keep the country moving in the same direction is an act of survival of those who savor and have tasted the honey of power for the last half century, and not a gesture of justice toward Cuban society.

We are not forgetting (we cannot nor should we) that the black and white times of demagogic slogans and the dizzying musical litany about the climb to “The Olympia of the Proletariat” was the refrain of an era’s Hit Parade. We sought strength in power, and it was necessary to dazzle the poor — the majority — confronting them with “the oligarchs who exploited” them or owners of giant ranches, monopolies, consortiums, and even small businesses — who were and are minorities in society — to send the message of the people’s revolution to the world. Thus, even a poetic allegory was seen as a suspicious sign of weakness in the bourgeoisie in moments of liveliness, fishing without a pole and “socialism with reverie“.  To think differently remained prohibited by decree.

I have always wondered why we turned ourselves over resolutely to a patrón who persecuted the poets with prose and independent metaphors, and sent for “… Attila the Hun’s colts” to hunt them down. Had César Vallejo and Roque Dalton materialized, perhaps they’d have been more honest in recognizing their mistakes and observing that communism (read: state capitalism; always metamorphosed the same) has been shown to be “an aspirin of the size of … an aspirin!” nothing spectacular. Thus, the ideological Cuban invention didn’t get close to that which it alleged was its initial most elevated and humanist purpose.

Caudillismo — strong man rule — was the strategy to inject prohibitive laws into the arteries of society with the centralizing and nauseating purpose of submission. With strokes of pink teque (the empty rhetoric of political discourse and its phraseology) and red whips they manipulated the workers and looking down their noses, they rolled up their sleeves and took the elevator from demagoguery to “go down” to the proletariat and feel the “civic participation” in the process. What participation? That arising from an enslaving perception: work for me without any rights or demands! With cunning pre-concocted carbon copy phrases, they have held a speech contest; not of participation, but of general benefit for them, not for the national community. Thus they usurped all the gains they had obtained against their former capitalist patrons; now they have the audacity to say that the working class ceded it to them to form the present government of the people.

It seems that the ruling elite (or perhaps ruling bourgeoisie?) has its own vision of interpreting the Cuban reality and uses a language — glossolalia of Pentecost? — different from the rest of society, that for many years has communicated in a language that few seem to understand. Not to mention the added value, that for over half a century, it has taken from the national working masses!

A fleeting reminder leads us by the hand from comments that are not always pleasant — though necessary in order to set out from a basis of honesty, so as to make as most accurate an analysis as possible; of who we are and what we have achieved after decades of sacrifice.  It’s a constructive critical look outlined from realistic or honest reading, but with new outlooks and always prioritizing that the spirit which should encourage us is the solution, not the pollution of the problems, and as a result we can get some valid questions that are worth reflecting on here.

We have all been unexpected and surprised witnesses of the critical comments made by government leaders towards the population. It turns out that now “we are pigeons with our beaks open awaiting the food they bring.” My God, from where was this idea conceived? In which planet do the government leaders live? Was it not they who confiscated (nationalized) Pepe’s fry stall, Pancho’s shoe shop, John’s plumbing tools or Kung Fu’s laundry?[i] The list of examples could be the length of fifty helpless years.

They began with the large landowners accusing them of monopoly and ended with the simple Cuban churros seller pushing a modest cart with his own willpower. It is why they continued to subjugate the citizens with the not laudable purpose of making a citizen economically dependent on the state. That has been the case and still remains to this day, even though they have disguised it in the form of paternalism; a hegemonic commitment of domination and subordination, which in this digital era is lagging behind and is condemned by the pragmatism of globalization, libertarian clicks on the Internet and technological advances in general.

One might think then that the price for raising the educational level of society or having “compelled us to think” is that it has to be done solely for the convenience of the institution of the state, and always with the patriotic, democratic and disinterested intent to the hold on power by the historical leaders.

The decades pass and Cuba seems an ageing photo; both the leaders of the State and the manner of imposing norms and implementing discipline remain as coercive and vigorous as ever. Cubans get tiny bites of freedom through development, modernity, the ever-increasing demands of society and its interaction with other individuals or groups of countries, not the will of the state. It is a narrow margin gained against the authorities and has prompted a state reanalysis and refocusing of current circumstances in favour of “maintaining everything that should be maintained” so as not to jeopardize the revolution , or namely, their own status.

In this way reforms are imposed. The reality of the political, economic and social stagnation  Cuba has been led into, compared with the rate and international social levels (modernity) suggests, per se, an involution.

Many times we feel that the rest of the world moves or travels by plane whilst we walk. Long ago we should have taken action, but the government’s stubbornness and fear of loss of control or the inconsistency of what they have advocated so far has basically added to their ineptitude and indolence, as the inefficiency and infeasibility of the model has been stretched so far that the bond is about to break. Either way, the lack of self-criticism by the country’s leadership acknowledging that the current model has failed is the typical rubric of its political culture that it should not come as a surprise to all who have followed their litigant and discursive suggestions for more than five decades.

Governmental untouchability with its bad policies in almost every area and the applications of these, have demonstrated the expiration of the ideological prototype it defends. Who are those responsible for economic and social collapse in our national home? The drafting of the “Project of Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy [ii]” is another example of the arrogance that characterizes the government directive: Why introduce reforms now and not one or two decades earlier? The directives, which are now in the hands of many, were written by an elite committed to the leadership (or to themselves) who are, in short, the authors of the current crisis.

Of course we support any attempt to change what obstructs or curbs the development and welfare of society and its unfolding in the national context; but the authoritarian and controlling mentality of the minds of the leaders of government limits the good performance of any real attempt to reform, which would be those that must be made in today’s society. To this, one must add that they do not propose substantial changes, since they obviously obviate the core issues like human rights, freedom of expression and freedom of association, which are the pillars on which rest any proposal for amendments if they are to be genuine and not an ideological fairground carousel for them to continue playing for time.

We are not in the mood for warm washcloths and we must reform “everything that must be reformed” in order to allow Cubans to build their own dreams freely, which though they may not be perfect, at least would give us the opportunity to enjoy all that has been taken away under the guise of an ideology.

Also, the right of ownership should not be treated with prejudice or pseudo-paternalism and the participation of ordinary Cubans in the investment processes must be permitted, something that until now we have been excluded from.

In short, it has been such a long stay in power, and the number of accumulated problems is so high that it warrants changes instead of reforms, not just in economic and social development, as proposed by the leadership of the government, but integrally. The model is unrealizable, and has long been maintained through the force of control and obliged obedience.

I want to return to recalling the productive interchange I had with the interaction group; there was consensus that the maintenance of the system has always been prioritized regardless of the economic or human cost. So where is the humanity of which they boast? Why force this society to suffer and endure, rather than recognize the rights of the citizens? They gave us free education and healthcare (now also in crisis) and it has proved to be a sine qua non – that in modernity there is extortion – to disregard all other rights.

It is worth mentioning at this point how they are still working on the installation of a fiber-optic cable from Venezuela to access broadband Internet and have already claimed it will be “for social utility”, which they will determine, of course. And this is what we aim for as the key to development; free access to information through the mega network that is the Internet and other technological highways, and it is inevitable for the healthy progress and performance of social civility, liberalization or decriminalization thereof.

Someone then added that it seems that the claim over control of the Government has been that the capitalists will subsidize plans for a revolución against them. If they want capitalist finance, which is something they ask for publicly, why persevere in the socialist system?

My friends and I then came back to what we believe is the crossroads that Cuba’s historical leaders have always wanted to bypass, since this would imply democracy and, hence, a change in power. We therefore conclude that this point is also fundamental and an attack on development.

Those who hope that the guidelines will be the cure-all to the problems of the failed Cuban model, I recommend you check the label so that you read that it expired before its implementation.  That way we reaffirm the setting of the debate that it already generates and the expectations that it sows amongst Cubans living in the archipelago.  We believe it is possible to put into practice new and better challenges that will lead to other new measures, which in turn will contribute to the necessary and inevitable democratization of society. The famous theory of fine-tuning…

[i] In the years before 1959, small dry cleaning and laundry businesses in Havana, were largely in the hands of the Chinese settled in Cuba.

[ii] Document dated November 1, 2010 and drafted for discussion at the VI Congress of the Communist Party of Cuba, which will be held this the coming April.

Translated by Eric Peliza

January 3, 2011

Alan Gross, the Ultimate Currency of Exchange / Iván García

Photo: Reuters. Alan Gross with his wife, Judy, during a visit to Jerusalem in Spring 2005.

He had bad luck, this American engineer with his nice grandfatherly face. December 3, 2009, as he was about to board a plane to the United States, he was arrested. And there he sits today.

After 14 months in detention without charges, through a brief note in the newspaper Granma, the people on the island learn that he will soon have his trial and the Prosecutor is asking for a sentence of 20 years for “acts against independence or territorial integrity.”

Alan Gross, 61 and Jewish, will be tried under Article 91 of the Cuban Penal Code, the same one used against the 74 dissidents tried in April 2003 who were sentenced to between 13 and 28 years imprisonment.

Independent Cuban journalists have barely written about his case. According to leaks, Gross had traveled to Cuba as a subcontractor of USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development), to bring modern equipment to the not very numerous Jewish community. There’s also speculation that he helped a group of dissidents. For more than 25 years, Alan Gross had dedicated himself to humanitarian work and development around the world.

In general, it’s not easy to access foreigners who, for one reason or another, are imprisoned on the island. But it’s nearly impossible when it’s an American who, from the beginning, the authorities have kept in isolation in a special prison regime.

The prosecutor’s request for 20 years could be reduced to 5 or 10 years. He could also be acquitted. But I doubt it. Gross is valuable exchange currency for the Castro brothers, in particular for Fidel, who already said last December, to several intellectuals, that the “Five Heroes” or the “Five Spies” (depending on your point of view), would soon be home.

The detention of Alan Gross has been a source of fiction between the governments of Cuba and the United States. For the regime in Havana, it’s become a question of honor and an obsession, to get the five agents out of prison.

Accustomed as they are, on the island, to the president’s being able to decide when a person should enter or leave prison, they think Obama’s signature would be enough to spring their “heroic spies.”

And as things don’t work like that in the United States, Alan Gross could become the man who would permit them to negotiate a trade. Five for one.

February 6 2011

Unions and Now What? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

So far, during this new year the expectation of massive layoffs has increased, and along with it so too the decisions of various people I know to enter the private sector as self-employed workers, whether it be setting up a small shop or becoming agricultural workers for farmers.

However, around here it is a fact that the “re-organization of the surplus labor force” has been held back “until April” (which curiously coincides with the long-awaited congress of the Communist Party). There are already signs of what’s to come, what has been set in motion by the current prevailing malaise.

In the municipal leadership of Culture in Holguin and San German, they have announced that 1/3 of the staff will be cut, without specifying what will be done with those left over. Uncertainty reigns around here, and an old friend of mine (who for a very long time was the leading union member in the Cultural sector) told me that:

“They are going to eliminate many cultural promoters, and you know the idea to form them in first place was of the Commander, but we can’t even escape that. The truth is that no one can make a living from songs and poems. I don’t know where we will end up, for here in this municipality there are more than 100 of us working in the cultural sector and sometimes even rounding up 20 fans is a difficult task. But what can we do?”

I asked her if she would appeal to the union of cultural workers to see which options they would give her. She stared at me with a mocking face and said, “What union are you talking about? They have always done whatever the Communist Party tells them to do, and now the order being given is that we must understand that it is necessary for the country to take such measures.”

In January, it was announced in San German that Housing Inspectors will have their salaries cut by 40 pesos. A neighbor of mine sees that as a contradiction. For many years, he was a union member himself and he always believed that “layoffs were in part to stimulate and increase the salary.” Now, he was another who with an incredulous face told me, “I don’t know what these people are talking about.”

Each citizen I have approached on the street has taken a different tone. In some, I can note the expectations, while in others I hear the frustration. Most commonly, there is a clear sign of alarm. The people have noticed that the direction taken by the government finds itself amid an old dilemma. Many express the feeling that, “Today they say one thing, and tomorrow they announce the opposite. But they won’t take the plunge… they are testing the grounds to see what will happen, to see what the people will do.”

Every corner of San German has become a public spot to debate, although many still do so with much fear. There are no firm demands or accusations aimed at anyone directly. In some instances, some labor centers have been host to heated debates in the presence of Party executives and representatives. Each argument has as its focal point the “The Draft Political, Economic and Social Guidelines,” but as usual many ask themselves, “How are we going to argue about something which has already been approved by Parliament and by the Party hierarchy?”

Antonio, my neighbor, is also a union member. He explains it to me as if it were a grand strategy “The unions are dormant. They only seek to amplify what the bosses of businesses or institutions are saying, but then again, people aren’t protesting much…”

February 6 2011

Brief History of Maternal Wisdom / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

I still remember how, as a teenager during the ’70s, my mother would give me sex education lessons: “Open your eyes wide and keep your legs shut tight,” was the verdict. A male-chauvinist invitation to my development, burdened by the prejudices of ancient moral concepts and different inheritances from other cultures and from our own Hispanic roots.

Back then, as had been the case since remote times, men—who, as opposed to women, could choose their partners—were entitled to a prize when they married. There were times when they would even receive gifts if they married a damsel, which more than discrimination was an affront. Incredibly so, in the Cuba of the ’70s, the idea that men needed to be awarded their partner’s virginity through marriage or nuptials still existed. Women must remain virgins until marriage, adults and believers would say back in the day.

Supposedly the woman would acquire her name and her representation in society through the husband, and he, in turn, would acquire her hymen and the innocence of a consort, not to mention the multiple and different functions the lady of the house would eventually undertake, (and without the actual help of the husband, due to the scourge of male-chauvinism), so we can reaffirm—something that is evident and many have pointed out already—that the male gender, through marriage, always gained much more than just a life partner.

During my early childhood I heard expressions such as “they married behind the Church” in clear allusion to people who had sex outside of marriage. “Bought on credit” would imply the same. In other words, such people had “played around” or “done little things” regarding their mutual commitment before actually “signing the papers.”

Other warnings would include “after what’s been taken, nothing is left of what was promised,” to warn of men “who promised villas and castles” with the sole purpose of “cleaning their gun“… So I would worriedly wonder what size was that gun, and, for a long time, I would go into utter hiding if someone took an interest on me; that is, until biology and physiology imposed themselves…

In 1989 my husband and I joined the ranks of opposition, and by then, the maternal litany was “open your eyes wide and keep your mouth shut tight,” because, if Rafa and I were imprisoned, what would happen to our children? It was a recurrent expression up until last year, when she traveled to the United States and was able to stay.

Even so, from La Yuma, she still calls and insists I too should leave, repeating her ancient script of the neglected housewife, neglected by the male-chauvinism that defined the society of her time, and which she reformulates, adjusts and reapplies according to the circumstances. All my life I have been chased by a set of words that constitute a set-phrase: “Keep your legs wide open and keep your eyes shut tight,” Or was it the mouth? Or was it keep your mouth shut and open your eyes wide? Who cares! In any case, I am a grown woman now, and I refuse to renounce what has defined my passage through this world: to do what my civic conscience dictates me.

That mother of mine just never got it that I decided to skip the Anglo salutation (Hi) and go straight to the motions, disregarding any moral etiquette that, even if in an ever-decreasing fashion, still permeated my youth. She never understood—and it seems she never will—that I am a transgressor when it comes to anything I deem unfair, and she has still not come to terms with accepting who I am.

The prejudices I have mentioned here fortunately have disappeared from society, and my poor mother reached her old age riveted by the discrimination and humiliation of centuries, and remains lodged at the edge of fear. These days I don’t refute her opinions, I don’t fight her; I limit myself to replying, half-caustic and half-joking, in allusion to her old litany: Let’s shut the doors tight to any expression of intolerance and open our eyes wide to the world, Mommy! (because it’s never too late….).

Translated by T

January 31 2011

Suicide Attempt / Silvio Benítez Márquez

A few days ago I witnessed a dramatic and heartbreaking scene as I walked in front of one of the guard stations at the U.S. Interests Section (SINA) in Havana. It was a suicide attempt by a tormented mother who, in the company of her two young daughters, hastily leaped over the guards of the diplomatic complex demanding a visa to leave the hell that was scorching their meager lives. It was the last straw from a desperate mother trying to save her own from such a precarious reality.

It was mid-morning when the woman broke the dividing line at the entrance to the consular building. She had taken no notice of the vocal warnings from the authorities. Her only aim was to penetrate the diplomatic headquarters and ask for political asylum from the North American officials. The gatekeepers—in a combat ruckus—flung themselves over the poor lady, preventing her from breaking through the official perimeter.

The rebellious woman, once surrounded by the gatekeepers, opted to sit down in front of them and shout anti-government slogans.

The atmosphere turned tense right away. There was a show of the good ones enacted right at the door of the SINA headquarters: a woman, refusing to budge and, in the company of two children, demanding to be allowed to travel to the USA.

It is a sad story whose ending I do not know. But I can imagine it in my sub-conscience. The mother, admitted into a psychiatry ward; and the young daughters—in the best of all possible scenarios—in the custody of some relative.

February 7 2011

Chronos at the Service of Politics / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

All of our mass media have already announced, with a great fanfare, the VI Cuban Communist Party Congress—which will take place in April, 2011,—and the “Project of Economic and Social Policy Guidelines” which is already in debate within the party’s base and which will be analyzed during said congress. As we read this announcement, we were slapped by the irony of the propaganda and the call being made by those eternally in power.

Debate what? They have already drafted the 291 articles of the program! The rest is just pure formalism to do what they have always done, for over half a century: to give a party or governmental task to their members, so they, in turn, can go back to the people for more shallow and monotonous meetings and discussions, so the people are made to believe in their usual fictitious staged offering of theatrical and participative banquets, when, in fact, all they are giving people is mimicked insinuations of buffoonery.

Then the other part will come, the implementation, which can last… who knows how long! because they never set real deadlines, making use of their usual trick of delaying projects to use the opportunity at hand to make people happy and content. The hope of the citizenry placed on the roulette of their chronopolitics. Always playing in the same key: to gain time.

The appetite for openness of our society is getting bigger and bigger, and more visible, which is why a conceptual change on the part of the highest leaders in our nation is crucial; but they have always demonstrated, and still do, that they are far too conservative and inflexible when it comes to facing such a challenge. Thus, they are leaving us with just one imaginative equation: If the old powers cannot properly drive the government car nor deal with those urgent transformations our country has needed for decades—not only economic and social ones, but also political ones,— then what is left for us, and what is left for them to do anymore, those stubborn and static leaders of the Cuban government?

Translated by T

Spanish post
January 31 2011

Learning My Way in Prison / Pable Pacheco

The weekend passed by with relative normality. I was taking my first steps in a world which was foreign to my will, and I was very far from imagining what would occur during the next 7 years and 4 months. It was a world behind the bars, full of insects, criminals, and soldiers who were real henchmen at the service of the dictatorship (save for some rare exceptions who could not find any other path of survival in a country submerged in a total crisis).

The first common prisoner which gained my trust was Raciel Prieto- a young man with my same age and who served a life sentence for murdering another person to rob their gold necklace valued at 1 thousand dollars, according to what he later confessed to me. Raciel explained to me how the prison machinery functioned — a real whirlwind of intrigue which through the years I finally came to understand but never adapted to.

The prisoners had questions about everything. Most had been jailed for many years without seeing the streets and the outside world. Without really realizing it, most of their minds had extremely weakened, so much so that all they did was take narcotics prescribed to them by doctors or smuggled in the prison by guards. Others just took part in illegal games or just took part in “survival of the fittest”. It’s difficult to find a prisoner in a Cuban penitentiary that has not come to the point of a relapse while captive. For the most part, they return to that world which they supposedly escaped under “re-education”.

From the very first moment I began to spend time with these men, I couldn’t help but to feel a sense of compassion for them. They were so isolated from the world that they did not realize that behind the bars there lay another world- a world that undoubtedly was difficult, but at least it was less cruel than the reality they faced. The majority of these men had lost their significant others, their family, and (worst of all) their will to carry on. Every once in a while, I would ask myself: Am I going to end up like these men at the end of my sentence? Fortunately, I always found the same answer in my conscience: Continue onward, don’t give up. The cause of freedom for my country is worth any sort of sacrifice.

That Monday, after I ingested the piece of bread given to me for breakfast, a soldier approached my cell and demanded, “Pablo Pacheco, get ready to come with me to the office of this prison.”

“No,” I responded. But I ended up being taken anyway.

We made it to the main office of the prison where a group of uniformed officials were waiting for me. The first one to speak was Diosdado, the director of Aguica. Diosdado presented me one by one to the penal Headship Council. I recall that, while we were speaking, they actually tempted to be decent until I told them: “You are all also very responsible for the untenable situation which our country is going through.”

A robust bald man who had a medal of superiority on his military jacket sprung up and shouted, “The culprits behind the situation we are facing are the Yankees and all of you who continue playing their game.”

I thoroughly looked back at him and told him, “You are wrong. The system which you defend is incompatible with human beings. Please, just let me go back to my cell.”

“Take him!” demanded Diosdado to the functionaries who, just a few minutes prior, had introduced me to him.

When I told my new companions about what had happened to me, they all said, “That’s Brito, the re-education chief and also one of the most cold-hearted guards of all.”

“Political one, protect yourself from him”, Raciel ended up telling me.

I decided to read the Bible for the rest of the day and this deeply helped me to withstand all that I was to live during the next few months of my life. Yet, as a source of inspiration I kept in my mind that I was not the only one to have passed through the jails of the regime just for attempting to express what my conscience dictates. In fact, I also was well aware (thanks to some prohibited literature I had read) that other fellow countrymen lived through this process under worse circumstances than myself, during the period dubbed “No one listened”.

In that same piece of literature, I got to familiarize myself with some testimonies from the men and women who had witnessed the ascent to power of Fidel Castro. Many of these Cubans had been supporters of Castro, but were soon betrayed by him, as he proved to be a real threat to all of the fundamental rights of Cubans. Such accounts inspired me to get back up from any missteps and continuing onward in the struggle for freedom, for I knew that I was not alone. The course of my destiny was unpredictable but I would not give up on it.

January 24, 2011

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.

31 AND POSTEANTE / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

31 and Keeping on keeping on…!

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I remember the conspiratorial slogan. The eighties were coming to an end. The twentieth-century of Revolutionary Cuba was coming to its end. It was December. Another December. It was Robaina and his Ujaycee, spelled like that—UJC, Young Communist League—with the seven colors of the rainbow on all the rundown façades of this city. It was 1989. Another date that ended in a 9, the preferred number for any respected Revolution (reread history to corroborate it.) I had just enrolled at University of Havana to do a BA in biochemistry, free of cost, right by 25th Street at El Vedado, one of the quiet little streets that are, secretly, the most beautiful in the world. A landscape with trees and shade and small, slow-paced businesses whose shop assistants never got old, with love dripping freely from each gaze at the edge of the large avenues and institutions of the capital city.

The Berlin Wall was going down, Gorbachov was God-bachov, our god forbidden after the bullet that stoned Ochoa and half of the Ministry of the Interior (there were hundreds of detentions and sackings: soldiers have always been the first victims of that political power they perpetuate, even if unwillingly).

I was I. My name was already Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo. I was not even 20, for god’s sake. I was eternal. Skinny. Fearful. Distrustful, distant. I had not yet made love. Or hardly. Helpless and intelligent. Prone to getting sick, and healthy afterwards. Sagittariatic. I was not sure if I would have the strength to make it to 2000: so far away, so futuristic, such a lie in the official discourse of magazines shutting down in their wholesale bankruptcy during the general crisis of Socialism (that CGS — General Crisis in Socialism — no Marxism professor ever instilled in us). I was not sure I would ever be able to taste a half-syllable of truth. Pardon me. I remained silent for twenty years because of you and because of me. I was ugly. I was bad. I was another, others.

But now I turn 31. December goes by like a charitable nightmare. There isn’t a worse Cuba than that made from the same wood. Of such a little slogan on consignment, “31 and Forward,” not even forgetfulness remains. Its author was defenestrated when Fidel was still alive, like all other Cuban officials, respected or not. Faith passed away. We were left alone, faithless. It’s nice.

With all the oil of America and those enormous air-conditioned Chinese buses, but alone. It’s beautiful. Raúl as residue, as inertia, as the rhetoric of the red tape to nowhere. The Castro of catharsis. We are still so young, going on 40 and still so young. That is, if we have lived at all. They kidnapped our time. We were exiled. They tattooed our genes with “outside” kills, and “inside” redeems, and we wanted to kill ourselves. Anything to not participate in that false feast in which this country didn’t sur-vive but sur-died, funereally. We left. We rented ourselves for just a while, no more. We would come back eventually, when death had taken care of cleaning up a bit those high positions of our imaginary nation. And we also stayed behind, some of us.

We humiliated ourselves for a while, another while, no more. We would eventually talk to one another, when fear had left our bones, tomorrow or in the following millennium. Or, for example, now, when December 2010 is ending and we are sad but free, and that desperation makes us unique and beautiful like a cosmic race, somewhat comical, and each one extends blank hands to the brother who loves us from so far away, and we tell each other the exceptional experience of the horror of a history without end. 31 and going.. and going good!

2011 is the year of the newest Cuba. That Cuba where we will need to wrap ourselves in a lot of courage so we can avoid killing one another like dogs at the Tienanmenville Square Motherland. Where we’ll need to come out of the closet we all let ourselves be boxed into by too much State or Exile. Neither the totalitarian State nor the totalitarian Exile exist. It’s I, you, we, all of you who exist. Nastiness among Cubans is done with. 2011 is now or never. If we don’t deserve our motherland, our patria, then many blogs will need to be deleted and we need to turn our attention to talking about some other topic.

The twenty first-century cannot go by with us still going on with our little freedom histrionics. We are not eternal. Soon we are going to die, perhaps before those in high positions (death is petty). 2011 is to be lived from this same line in atrocious freedom. Being I, being you, being all of you, being us. Please. What mediocre vice minister can stop such a march? What tinpot premier can scold when all the words in Cuba rebel and reveal themselves like new, shiny, exquisite, sonorous light? Even pain itself will be a virgin and thrilling pasture. Long live life, Cuba! Even a life without the burden of so very many decrepit Cubas! But may I, and you, and all of you and we live forever! There is a Cuba after Cuba. There are Cubans before Cuba, and Cubans after Cuba.

Translated by T

31 December 2010

Chronos at the Service of Politics

All of our mass media have already announced, with a great fanfare, the VI Cuban Communist Party Congress—which will take place in April, 2011,—and the “Project of Economic and Social Policy Guidelines” which is already in debate within the party’s base and which will be analyzed during said congress. As we read this announcement, we were slapped by the irony of the propaganda and the call being made by those eternally in power.

Debate what? They have already drafted the 291 articles of the program! The rest is just pure formalism to do what they have always done, for over half a century: to give a party or governmental task to their members, so they, in turn, can go back to the people for more shallow and monotonous meetings and discussions, so the people are made to believe in their usual fictitious staged offering of theatrical and participative banquets, when, in fact, all they are giving people is mimicked insinuations of buffoonery.

Then the other part will come, the implementation, which can last… who knows how long! because they never set real deadlines, making use of their usual trick of delaying projects to use the opportunity at hand to make people happy and content. The hope of the citizenry placed on the roulette of their chronopolitics. Always playing in the same key: to gain time.

The appetite for openness of our society is getting bigger and bigger, and more visible, which is why a conceptual change on the part of the highest leaders in our nation is crucial; but they have always demonstrated, and still do, that they are far too conservative and inflexible when it comes to facing such a challenge. Thus, they are leaving us with just one imaginative equation: If the old powers cannot properly drive the government car nor deal with those urgent transformations our country has needed for decades—not only economic and social ones, but also political ones,— then what is left for us, and what is left for them to do anymore, those stubborn and static leaders of the Cuban government?

Translated by T

Spanish post
January 31 2011

Brief History of Maternal Wisdom

 

I still remember how, as a teenager during the ’70s, my mother would give me sex education lessons: “Open your eyes wide and keep your legs shut tight,” was the verdict. A male-chauvinist invitation to my development, burdened by the prejudices of ancient moral concepts and different inheritances from other cultures and from our own Hispanic roots.

Back then, as had been the case since remote times, men—who, as opposed to women, could choose their partners—were entitled to a prize when they married. There were times when they would even receive gifts if they married a damsel, which more than discrimination was an affront. Incredibly so, in the Cuba of the ’70s, the idea that men needed to be awarded their partner’s virginity through marriage or nuptials still existed. Women must remain virgins until marriage, adults and believers would say back in the day.

Supposedly the woman would acquire her name and her representation in society through the husband, and he, in turn, would acquire her hymen and the innocence of a consort, not to mention the multiple and different functions the lady of the house would eventually undertake, (and without the actual help of the husband, due to the scourge of male-chauvinism), so we can reaffirm—something that is evident and many have pointed out already—that the male gender, through marriage, always gained much more than just a life partner.

During my early childhood I heard expressions such as “they married behind the Church” in clear allusion to people who had sex outside of marriage. “Bought on credit” would imply the same. In other words, such people had “played around” or “done little things” regarding their mutual commitment before actually “signing the papers.”

Other warnings would include “after what’s been taken, nothing is left of what was promised,” to warn of men “who promised villas and castles” with the sole purpose of “cleaning their gun“… So I would worriedly wonder what size was that gun, and, for a long time, I would go into utter hiding if someone took an interest on me; that is, until biology and physiology imposed themselves…

In 1989 my husband and I joined the ranks of opposition, and by then, the maternal litany was “open your eyes wide and keep your mouth shut tight,” because, if Rafa and I were imprisoned, what would happen to our children? It was a recurrent expression up until last year, when she traveled to the United States and was able to stay.

Even so, from La Yuma, she still calls and insists I too should leave, repeating her ancient script of the neglected housewife, neglected by the male-chauvinism that defined the society of her time, and which she reformulates, adjusts and reapplies according to the circumstances. All my life I have been chased by a set of words that constitute a set-phrase: “Keep your legs wide open and keep your eyes shut tight,” Or was it the mouth? Or was it keep your mouth shut and open your eyes wide? Who cares! In any case, I am a grown woman now, and I refuse to renounce what has defined my passage through this world: to do what my civic conscience dictates me.

That mother of mine just never got it that I decided to skip the Anglo salutation (Hi) and go straight to the motions, disregarding any moral etiquette that, even if in an ever-decreasing fashion, still permeated my youth. She never understood—and it seems she never will—that I am a transgressor when it comes to anything I deem unfair, and she has still not come to terms with accepting who I am.

The prejudices I have mentioned here fortunately have disappeared from society, and my poor mother reached her old age riveted by the discrimination and humiliation of centuries, and remains lodged at the edge of fear. These days I don’t refute her opinions, I don’t fight her; I limit myself to replying, half-caustic and half-joking, in allusion to her old litany: Let’s shut the doors tight to any expression of intolerance and open our eyes wide to the world, Mommy! (because it’s never too late….).

Translated by T

January 31 2011

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (6) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(…CHAPTER 6…)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

A Cuban woman kills herself. She leaps like a disoriented bird from her apartment at FOCSA, that dwarf skyscraper inherited from an equally dwarfed Capitalism. Alienating. The empty swimming pool gets some moistness once again after decades and decades of collective neglect.

A merchant from Nuevo Vedado adds some red hair dye to the tomato-less tomato purée that he will later sell at a State agro-market where soldiers’ wives will go with their children. The police arrest him on a Sunday. The merchant claims that there are no toxic substances, only toxic ways to employ them. He claims his innocence in regard to his dying of tomato-less tomato.

A beggar asks me for a peso. I give it to him. Every day I hand out dozens of pesos among the local destitute community.

Ipatria punches me with a closed fist. I do the same to her. I hug her. I spit blood and ask her to forgive me. I don’t really know exactly why, but I ask her to forgive me. Nothing of this should have been real.

Alive. I am alive. Like the off-key roosters in Lawton’s backyards.

To sing to him in the morning. What an image. How many octosyllables must have been rhymed in Cuba following such hoaxes? The morning announces itself with a trill. With the rooster’s song. Quiquriquí. Cock-doodle-doo. Arroz con país. Rice and country.

Everything rhymes. Everything fits inside décimas and seguidillas and slogans and headlines. Everything is ritual, rhetoric of the Revolution.

A million bees buzz in my ears. An army of scorpions in my temple. Crustaceans under my cheekbones and acid reptiles in my sternum. A zoo of tiny lies, so as not to name the truth.

I die. I am dying. Like pigs unsuccessfully challenging the neighborhood knives.

My telephone has an international outlet. 119, world. 34, Spain. I dial JAAD’s cell number.

It rings. I hang up. To hell with the Stepmotherland.

A morning smoke fills the corridor of my wooden house. Steam, dew. The beauty of these cyclical lines builds up pressure. Truth resounds in my veins. Daybreak, agony. Knock-knock, who was it?

Orlando lays down.

It’s nice to imagine him in vertigo from the male-female roofbeams, lying on the bedspread in shadows, a body so immaculate and horizontal.

A phosphorescent Orlando. The hair mat like seaweed. Medusa about to be reborn a corpse. Orlando, aphasic.

It is unimaginable to imagine him at this hourless hour, five-something in the Cuban dawn.

Orlando turns face-down. He curls up. A fetus with no consonants. Oao. And interjection with no vowels. Rlnd.

Reiterative until exhaustion. Unrecognizable.

His man buttocks, human, devouring the rest of his nudity. The remains of his muteness.

Orlando has no hands. His arms are buried under his rickety body, under his ideal-athlete biology, under his perfect skin full of irregularities. Patches, spots, crevices, pimples, scars, biopsies.

Orlando dances.

His back arches itself. His spine swells, his legs stretch until tendons burst from desire.

Orlando moans. He collapses. He makes a nest out of sperm and bed sheets. A bundle of scents accumulated under the coldness of the false winter coming in in strips through the louvers.

He lays exhausted.

It is natural to assume he is not asleep. That death is as deceitful as dreams. That Orlando has given out a slight, imperceptible whinny of pain and has magisterially stopped breathing.

Translated by T

February 6 2011

Pedro Argüelles on Hunger Strike!

With regards to my previous post (“Lead us not into temptation”), today I returned to see Yolanda, Pedro Argüelles’s wife, a Lady in White, where I learned that Pedro Argüelles has been on a hunger strike for five days.

Her eyes teared up, fearing the worst, because she knows that he is very ill and is someone firm in his principles. I remember when we met at Mass and sometimes talked sitting on a park bench opposite the church. I cry out to all people of goodwill. It is not just to keep punishing him because he refuses to go into exile. Please, for the sake of mercy, for the sake of peace and hope, for the government to keep its promise, and for his own rights: Freedom for Pedro Argüelles!

6 February 2011