The Pharaohs of My Egypt / Ernesto Morales Licea

Exploding on the sands of the world, the dissatisfied burst. Mobs of low-paid workers, fed up with lies and empty promises, remember that governments have no more power than their subjects choose to give them, and they say, “Enough already.” They say: “Out with the tyrants.” Out with the perpetual satraps, who have made of our country a region of bare survival. A land without happiness.

Tunisia exploded first, and a domino effect spills over multiple countries. Yemen, Algeria, Jordan. And now Egypt, cradle of humanity, that threatens to remove the Mubarak cancer by the force of the protesters.

May god rest his soul: men like the Romanian Ceaucescu know what I mean when I say popular force. The world moves, the crushed crawl out from under the boots, deciding to be more than bits and pieces. Deciding to decide for themselves. It has happened many times. It will continue to come to pass, by terrestrial or divine law.

Meanwhile, my island, silent as the stone raft of Saramago, fleet unscathed. No one is shaken off. Forgetting that once, back in 1930 — when we were so worthy — we extirpated the jackass claws of Machado, and twenty-nine years later, again exercising the right of dissent, erased the Tyrant Batista, cause of so many evils, whom God, as with Ceaucescu, did not allow to rest in peace.

I wonder: why not Cuba? As I watch TV, listen to the demands of the volatile Egyptians. Listen, for example: “We got tired of lies, misery. For decades we endured the dictator Mubarak who has ruined this country.” We hear Egyptian scholars say:” I am a lawyer and live like a beggar. I earn $60 a month, and my rent alone is $75.” And we can not avoid the immediate association with our island.

I’ve heard all the arguments of the Egyptians. And I do not think there is one, I repeat — not one — which does not apply to my country. The same hunger and hopelessness, the same distaste for an inept government; the very low wages that don’t stretch even to survive, the underground corruption; the warning, just look at the living standards of the ruling class; and now, ironically, Cuba is also added to the list of countries with high unemployment.

And then there arises, inevitably, the pointed question: Why not Cuba?

If I had to respond I would start by pointing out a subtle reality: The control of information in my tranquilized country is, aberrantly, more fierce than in countries such as those that have just exploded. For those who don’t believe information has such an important role, I suggest they ask themselves: Why has the opening act of every classic dictatorship in History been to seize the methods of communication?

Look at the evidence, the steps in the snow that leave traces of intent and allow us to understand the reality: the newspaper Granma has published the article “Chain of illegalities” of the journalist (sic) Anaysi Fernández. A sad text reminding Cubans who claim  information not classified by the state, who try to watch television through a cable connected toa clandestine satellite dish, that these acts will remain a crime for which they will feel the full weight of the law.

Clearly and without ambiguity the official Cuban journalist (sic) says: “On television broadcasts illegally distributed destabilizing and interventionist messages arrive daily, messages that are oblivious to the cultural values that dignify the human being.” Underline the word “destabilizing” which tells us a lot.

It also tells us a lot that the finance society Rafin returned the only telecommunications company in Cuba (ETECSA) to purely State hands, after buying the Italian Telecom 27% stake in the Cuban telephone business.

Translate this into practice: For $706 million the Cuban Government has acquired full control of national telephone service, fixed and mobile, without the inoffensive but always worrying oversight of the Italian partners. If before the handover, when even one “destabilizing” incident occurred somewhere in the country the phones of some “restless” citizens stopped working, including my own, the picture looks bleaker today.

Looking at the other side of the equation, then, this massive revolt in Egypt was planned and organized through communication via Twitter and Facebook. Made in Internet coordination where the voices are freer and the censors more inept.

Which is the reason why there is no freely accessible internet in Cuba. And the reason why the brand new fiber optic cable — ah! delicious theme for this blog! — from the Bolivarian Venezuela to Siboney Beach Santiago, rather than liberate Cuban, rather than connect them to the world, will suffocate communication. As of now I bet on it. And I would be delighted to lose.

This is why in Cuba all of the worrying telephones are tapped and the conversations recorded. The reason international television is exuberantly blockaded, and its free messages, messages of individuality where the frivolous coexists with the profound, the banal with the rich, must be countered even if doing so requires eliminating radioelectronic space. They know what’s at stake: The survival of the system.

There are other factors evaluated in this game of speculation. There are more fruits in the basket, more or less weight, to ponder the differences between a distressed but docile island, and other nations now raging hunger for democracy and prosperity.

Using factors of social psychology (Cubans persist today in the idea that nothing can be done, nothing can change their reality) and the undoubted superiority of the establishment in my country in the use of “pre-criminal” repression, they don’t want for riots to happen to put tanks in the street. In the case of Cuba, the tanks are invisible, but have never ceased to be there: “The streets belong to Fidel! The streets belong to the revolutionaries!” shout the mobs. Let no one dare, eh?

But if I had to bring some basic, core, defining argument to comprehend the nearly incomprehensible, the immutability of some oppressed versus the outbursts of many others, I would say: The Pharaohs of my Egypt know that if they can isolate their slaves from the world, keep them incommunicado, they will. And whether we like it or not, their results continue to be magisterial.

February 1 2011

Mazorra and Secrecy / Regina Coyula

A scandal so embarrassing, an event that in any other country would have made a minister’s head roll, here has been resolved with a trial behind closed doors, with scant information in the press where not a single name has appeared. No one who has seen the archive of photos from Legal Medicine (leaked to the Internet, even in dreams the Cuban press would publish only those photos that show the Mazorra Insane Asylum as it was in 1959), no one who has seen them can remain indifferent, those photos show an abandonment of so much over such a long time.

As a society we have lost the ability to articulate a protest, and the press, which should function as a preventative mechanism, as a guardian of our collective interests, publishes a laconic item. A pity that the scandal had to come to light through the foreign press accredited in Cuba and divulged in the alternative media. For me, all those diligent journalists who now talk about productivity and “perfecting the economic model” and “getting in tune with the new Guidelines,” should be the first to be “re-sized” — as in down-sized. They are like house cats who get used to a plate of food on time, they have forgotten how to hunt. And not receiving the green light to be critical they could be, “But what should I talk about?”

January 31 2011

Tanatarja / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

For a Secret Literature

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

There where everything is law, everything is light, everything is readable. There I could never live.

Photophobia, logophobia, or whatever way anyone esteems worse. Maybe civilised spaces become as intolerable as deserts. The civilising process as an overflower of memory, as a compression of the lucid that will soon provoke nausea. The emptiness.

Having contemporary peers ends up being a tetric, terminal tara.

Growing up as bodies is already a crime. Growing as nations, an atrocity. There is never space for the I in any case. That I is that, I suppose: the exclusivity of the non-space.

And then there’s the curse of language. A stream of sense that accumulates pressure and comes out, seminal rale, confusion of meanings, and an energy half sonic and half sentimental.

And the silence that never arrives, not even when pain humiliates it.

And out there, the rain or the night or the atmosphere or the sound of steps or that which has no form or the silhouettes of the absent or the cold wind or the quarrel or the who knows if still Cuba or Revolution ever.

Writing is chaos. To write is to love. Writing is always writing for the first time. Writing is always also writing for the last time. Is writing this?

Darkness. Writing is illuminating and I disarray that synonymy to reinstall darkness. I would not want to leave anything clear. I would not like to be seen properly.

Shadow. Eclipse. Thick forest. Cave in which to stick the head. Black and breathable alveolar. Black lung.

Was death this?

Waves of shadow. Dreams cysted in dreams. Wings like eye rheums.

And now what else, until when, how?

January 18 2011

Of Letters and Dreams / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Last night I dreamt that a “national emergency congress” got all the government leaders together on a common task: eliminating subversive letters from the keyboards of all the computers in power over the Cuban population. The idea had been proposed by a “base panel”, which appeared when the bicycle on which it was traveling fell in the pronounced depth of a pothole and lost control, rolled with it down the rest of the pavement converted into dust, earth, and gravel … and it thought that it wouldn’t have lost its stability from not having even existed.

So it figured out that going the wrong way the authorities could avoid problems, criticisms and worries: if empty spaces were to exist in place of some letters, the infamies that some write about Cuba couldn’t proliferate and have receptive listeners at the international level. While the sweaty body dried itself off by the pedaling of the sandy dogfish that were burning their skin and their clothing with the intention of continuing in the same direction, they also thought: “Perhaps they’ll give me whatever a motorcycle might be for the difficulties I’ll save the leaders of our party and then I won’t arrive so wiped out at home”.

It was thus he revealed his genius in a labor meeting; but nobody thought his plan worth anything, he then took the “grand idea” (idiot) to one of the Union of Young Communists and from there, he traveled by the straight and fast dust course of censorship to the offices of the Central Committee. The plan was presented by a youth director who alleged that “some despicable Cubans” dared to speak and write badly of the government in spite of their magnanimity which permitted us to have computers. I was debating myself trying to intervene “from on high” — an altitude from which God could grant us the magic of dreams — to avoid a similar absurdity installing itself in our society or worse, legislating itself with such erroneous pretexts.

I spoke and spoke and nobody was listening to me. I tried to hold on to Rafa, my husband, who was clashing in a Quixotic chronicle with the oppressor’s bureaucrats, but in his place I grabbed only emptiness. My movements slowed and my voice turned slower and more serious than normal: I didn’t understand how I demanded at the top of my lungs that they weren’t going to take the ‘B’ key of ‘blogger’. I mixed myself with green air and melted myself with the nothingness as my startled eyes opened to discover the faint light of my nightlight. I got up agile but drowsy to go to the corner where I usually write my works. I had to glance at my accomplice work tool to check that it still had its keyboard intact. On seeing it I loosed such a snort of relief that it lifted papers off the table and took a little dust from the familiar old laptop.

Imagine in one dream such nonsense!

January 10 2011

Of Letters and Dreams

Last night I dreamt that a “national emergency congress” got all the government leaders together on a common task: eliminating subversive letters from the keyboards of all the computers in power over the Cuban population. The idea had been proposed by a “base panel”, which appeared when the bicycle on which it was traveling fell in the pronounced depth of a pothole and lost control, rolled with it down the rest of the pavement converted into dust, earth, and gravel … and it thought that it wouldn’t have lost its stability from not having even existed.

So it figured out that going the wrong way the authorities could avoid problems, criticisms and worries: if empty spaces were to exist in place of some letters, the infamies that some write about Cuba couldn’t proliferate and have receptive listeners at the international level. While the sweaty body dried itself off by the pedaling of the sandy dogfish that were burning their skin and their clothing with the intention of continuing in the same direction, they also thought: “Perhaps they’ll give me whatever a motorcycle might be for the difficulties I’ll save the leaders of our party and then I won’t arrive so wiped out at home”.

It was thus he revealed his genius in a labor meeting; but nobody thought his plan worth anything, he then took the “grand idea” (idiot) to one of the Union of Young Communists and from there, he traveled by the straight and fast dust course of censorship to the offices of the Central Committee. The plan was presented by a youth director who alleged that “some despicable Cubans” dared to speak and write badly of the government in spite of their magnanimity which permitted us to have computers. I was debating myself trying to intervene “from on high” — an altitude from which God could grant us the magic of dreams — to avoid a similar absurdity installing itself in our society or worse, legislating itself with such erroneous pretexts.

I spoke and spoke and nobody was listening to me. I tried to hold on to Rafa, my husband, who was clashing in a Quixotic chronicle with the oppressor’s bureaucrats, but in his place I grabbed only emptiness. My movements slowed and my voice turned slower and more serious than normal: I didn’t understand how I demanded at the top of my lungs that they weren’t going to take the ‘B’ key of ‘blogger’. I mixed myself with green air and melted myself with the nothingness as my startled eyes opened to discover the faint light of my nightlight. I got up agile but drowsy to go to the corner where I usually write my works. I had to glance at my accomplice work tool to check that it still had its keyboard intact. On seeing it I loosed such a snort of relief that it lifted papers off the table and took a little dust from the familiar old laptop.

Imagine in one dream such nonsense!

January 10 2011

Cautious Optimism / Fernando Dámaso

1. Once again small businesses have begun to appear all over the city, even on my Tulipan Avenue, where only five months ago they were wiped out. It’s like a weed no one can kill, but in this case weeds that should never die, and that should be transformed into strong and leafy trees, with well-established roots to resist the battering of the cyclones that are sure to come. Depending on the possibilities of each one, some better conceived than others, but all with the desire to prosper, something innate in human being. It is to start again.

2. We must look on their resurgence with optimism, although we can’t be too confident in their permanence. We have already seen several negative experiences previously (remember the “Kingbird On The Wire*” operations against the artisans and artists in the Plaza of the Cathedral, Adoquin and Maceta, against the self-employed, and others, to cite some of the glaring examples). Reality obliges us to be cautious. Some people have already begun to blame them for some of the product shortages in the stores.

3. Analyzing what’s in writing and talking about it with the self-employed, their efforts arise from the necessity to save the drowning, from conviction of the advantages, and we discover that to launch such a business they must pay the state between 30% and 35% in taxes on profits, spend (it’s calculated) up to 40% on expenses (legal proof must be provided for half), and earn not more than 25% (not enough to get rich). In other words, the State appropriates 75%, in one form or another (through expenses, that include energy, materials, etc purchased from the state, the only source and one that sets exorbitant prices), and the self-employed person gets 25%. Not even the demonized savage capitalism acts like this.

4. It’s as if someone on the point of drowning asks for help and his savior demands that he buy the rope and the life jacket with which he will be rescued, and at a fixed price. It would be absurd. As we can see, the self-employed, despite what they say, is still seen as an undesirable traveling companion, an ideological enemy, someone being used because there is no alternative, with the intention of disposing of him as soon as possible. It continues to focus on the failed socialist enterprise, that has never functioned anywhere where it has been tried. It is the contradiction between the efficient and productive and the inefficient and unproductive.

5. Despite these concerns, it’s healthy that something has started to move, even if the movements are minimal and with many strings attached. In short, the creature, if is manages to gain strength and develop itself, little by little it will be capable of freeing itself and picking up speed.

*Translator’s Note: A kingbird (pitirre in Spanish) is an aggressive little bird that will attack larger birds and even people. “A kingbird on the wire” is a common Cuban expression warning that someone is eavesdropping, or there is a snitch, with bad intentions.

Translated by Ariana

January 29 2011

“Don’t Be Afraid to Say What You Think” / Laritza Diversent

Photo: AFP

“A massive discussion of the Guidelines contributes an enormous and rich wealth of arguments,” said Esteban Lazo, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba, speaking before the National Council of the National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba. The information appeared in Granma on January 13.

In addition, Lazo said it was very difficult to carry out the proposed changes without the consensus and opinions of all. According to the newspaper, over 55,000 “discussion meetings” had been held in the country, about one-third of those planned.

As a worker of the Municipal Court of Arroyo Naranjo, I attended the meeting in my workplace on January 7. What was disturbing about the proceeding was not the opinions, but the method by which they were received.

The meeting had been announced three days before and scheduled for 4 p.m., half an hour before the end of the workday. As they had not announced what was going to be discussed, the comments started in the halls and fears surfaced. Everyone was waiting expectantly. They thought they would address the issue of who was “disposable,” that is who was going to be laid off.

At the time and place agreed upon, in a narrow room where the majority stood, the meeting began. A lady with sharp acrylic nails, claiming to be a member of the PCC and chair of the event, then reported the matter to be discussed: the economic guidelines for the next five years. They knew that if the matter had been revealed earlier, they wouldn’t meet the required attendance rate.

While each of the participants registered on a piece of paper and signed it, the Party member explained how the meeting would take place. First the document would be analyzed chapter by chapter, and then whoever wanted to give an opinion would raise his hand, give his full name and the number of the guideline he wanted to discuss.

“Don’t be afraid to say what you think, all approaches will be heard,” she said. “The proceedings will go into a computer and will be sent in an encrypted and encoded message to the Council of State, not to fall into enemy hands,” she explained, like telecommunications in Cuba were so developed and available to all, and information could be easily stolen.

I was amazed and I wanted to laugh. Was it fiction or did they want to make us feel like we were the center of the world? The vices of Cuban socialism are difficult to eradicate. Obviously, its followers have not internalized the words of Raul in his latest speech, when he confessed that we should struggle against state secrecy.

While the señora tapped her fingers on the table, my subconscious processed the information that I saw and heard. Would her salary allow her to keep her hands so beautiful? In the informal market, acrylic nails cost 200 pesos in national currency (8 cuc) and 100 pesos (4 cuc) to put them on and fill them periodically. Her Party militancy was not in keeping with her attire or the message she was trying to convey.

“First and last names, for the encrypted information.” In other words, they need to know who gave an opinion and what the workers were thinking, I thought. Under these conditions, the smart ones would weigh their words, especially when after this assembly another one could come, declaring who was “disposable.” Is this the way to encourage debate and divergent opinions?

If they really wanted consensus and everyone’s opinion, they would conduct a constitutional referendum as is legally required by the new transformations. In one day and with one single question, they would know how many Cubans support the upgrade of the socialist model. Of course, the country’s socio-economic conditions do not support that procedure.

Discussion meetings are more effective and reliable. It was the method used when they increased the retirement age. In France, faced with such a prospect, the workers took to the street and protested, creating a government crisis. In Cuba, the proletariat marched on May 1 to give its support for the Revolution.

The political propaganda calls it “a popular consultation mechanism.” And it’s a subtle way to control the citizens and silence opinion. It even allows you to predict the results and put in Granma headlines like this: “The people of Cuba unanimously approve the guidelines. ”


Translated by Regina Anavy

January 30 2011

José Martí , a Hero for New Generations to Discover / Iván García

Photo: Daniel, Picasaweb

José Julián Martí y Pérez was born on January 28, 1853 and died on May 19, 1895. For Cuban politicians, he is what Christ is to the Catholic Church. No matter the ideology or leaning. Everyone prides themselves on knowing him inside out.

It is politically correct for any official or dissident document to be preceded by a phrase from the great man. Even in my blog we have put one: “Nothing comes from hypocrisy.”

On the island, they really like taking photos with his picture in the background. In the independent libraries of the opposition and on shelves in government offices, you can see thick volumes of his complete works crammed together. It’s rare not to find a bust of him in a Cuban public school.

On the ideological propaganda billboards that surround the main arteries of the country, developed by unimaginative designers from the Department of Revolutionary Orientation, epic sentences from the hero appear on top of gloomy colors, where Martí always looks very serious, dressed in a funereal black suit.

The government likes to sell the image of a sad guy, committed to the independence of his homeland. Martí was much more. It’s not wise to sanctify men of such stature. Nor advisable.

It often causes hives in the new generations, who are not pleased with this frozen image of José Martí . Nobody likes to contemplate statues of ice.

Two Cuban intellectuals have tried to remove him from his pedestal. One was the late writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante, who won the Cervantes Prize in 1997. In various chronicles, Cabrera Infante offered us a flesh-and-blood Martí. The other who gave us ‘Pepe’ unwrapped is the filmmaker Fernando Perez, in his film The Eye of the Canarian.

158 years after his birth, José Martí is still an indispensable paradigm. But a re-reading of his work is needed. A disclosure without a cover-up that demystifies for us the undeniable greatness of this habanero, the son of a Spanish soldier, who lived his childhood in a small house on Calle Paula.

As a political genius ahead of his time, he was misunderstood. Rough military leaders of the jungle watched him closely. Guys who had strong arms to launch brutal machete charges against the Spanish troops, but of limited intellect.

They were people who were quick to take up arms, believing that they would win stripes by shooting or by collecting their enemies’ heads as trophies. And Marti was a scholar, a humanist and political strategist. In spite of everything, he won prestige working tirelessly for a different, democratic Cuba. In 1892 he founded the Cuban Revolutionary Party in Tampa, Florida.

On February 24, 1895, he landed on a beach in eastern Cuba, to start what he called a “necessary war.” Which it was. Although according to some historians, his presence was not needed on the battlefield.

But “Pepe” Martí wanted to prove he was more than a brilliant pen. He wanted to put himself to the test. He fell into the trap of his political enemies, who pejoratively called him “Captain Spider.”

Some scholars of his work agree: It was a real political suicide to join the insurgents. Three months later, on May 19, 1895, he was killed in an absurd skirmish, near the village of Dos Rios.

In this 21st century, the mandarins of the regime keep the island full of his images. At the first move, they place wreaths on him. But when the time comes for state policy, they value the guts and courage acquired in the trenches of combat more than men of ideas.

Martí was also a universal Cuban. The best ever. A precursor that serves as a catch-phrase for politicians from both sides, inside and outside Cuba. But the reality is that Marti is not yet fully known. They all take advantage of the aspect that best reflects their interest. The rulers and the opposition take the spoils of the national hero for their own ends.

Everyone believes they deserve Marti. One more useful dead man. A cliché. When the undercurrent of these stormy times passes, the work of rediscovering the Apostle, as they called him before 1959, will fall into the hands of Cuban intellectuals. Debt and obligation.

Those young people who have taken up the banner of banalities and whose goal is a passport and an exit permit need to do that. That decaffeinated figure of José Martí annoys them a lot.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 27 2011

Unanimity / Yoani Sánchez

He cleared his throat before explaining why they were meeting, in the sober drama that is rarely seen anymore. In his hands he held, like a script, the blue booklet with the guidelines for the Sixth Communist Party Congress, and behind the table those present included municipal and provincial officials. Before yielding the floor, he stressed that they should stick to what was written on these pages and only discuss economics. He stressed this last word to emphasize it, to ensure that they didn’t claim their right to “free association” or demand that they be allowed “to freely enter and leave the country.” E-CO-NO-MICS, he stressed again, widening his eyes and raising his eyebrows to emphasize it again, while staring directly at the most troublesome employees.

With such an introduction, the meeting became a tedious process, one more task added to the workday. Mechanically, dozens of arms went up when they were asked if they agreed with each point. Awkward silence followed the phrases, “Who is against it?” and a certain fatigue could be noted after each, “And who abstains?” Only one young man questioned the current prohibition against buying cars or houses, but a militant immediately took the floor to read a long eulogy to the figure of the Maximum Leader. And so it was every time someone pointed out a problem, others jumped in to emphasize the country’s achievements. The apologists were stationed equidistant around the auditorium and reacted as if they’d studied a script and rehearsed the choreography. The feeling of being at a staged assembly competed in intensity with the desire to leave — as soon as possible — to go home.

The next day the workplace had returned to its routine. A mechanic who had been sitting very close to the president no longer remembered a single one of the guidelines. The girl from the warehouse summed up the discussion of the previous afternoon for her friends with a simple, “Ah… more of the same.” And the manager’s chauffeur skeptically shrugged his shoulders when a colleague asked what had happened. Many experienced that day as sample of what will happen in the Conference Center next April, a sneak preview of the Cuban Communist Party Congress. In just a few months they will see the same staging unfold on their TV screens, but this time it was they themselves who were the actors, raising their hands in unanimity before the stern gaze of the director.

31 January 2011

The Grieving Country / Luis Felipe Rojas

I continue to be moved by the images of a Cuba that doesn’t appear in the newspapers. A country which does not exist to the authorities.

This is a blog made up of different pieces, among them the collaborations of my compatriots-in-the-struggle and all that I can do with my camera and pencil. The images you can see today are very similar to those which the propaganda scaffolding of the Cuban system reserves for special occasions, for example when they wish to make a statement such as, “Cuba will not return to the past.” In such instances, they are referring to the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, and to the eras of other past presidents who came before him. The “Bohemia” magazine would do a great job of detailing life in Cuba during the ’50’s, reporting on places and people who had not been touched by the hand of civilization.

In the photos of this post, one can see people who have been born and grown old under the achievements Cuba’s 1959 Revolution. Olivio, Rafael, and Cilia were all rescued from “ferocious capitalism” so that they could live under the kindness of Cuban socialism. Such a socialism was implemented based on the measures of a man who wishes to perpetuate himself in power. The photos were given to me by my friend Marta Diaz Rondon, who every once in a while helps these unfortunate people. They have lost their pensions for the simple reason that they have a relative living with them at home who receives (or “earns”) more than 7 dollars a month in their job. This is a measure imposed by the Ministry of Social Work and Security.

During this past week, my mother informed me that her 127 peso check (as the subsidy could be called in another country) was canceled because she has a son (me) who is of working age (although I do not live with her) and who does not have a job (although I was fired four years ago from the Cultural sector).

We have entered the XXI century with a rhythm of disaster and desperation. It is the result of a group of men who advance the country in the newspapers but push it far back in real life.

Translated by Raul G.

January 30 2011

On Days Like Today / Rebeca Monzo

Meme with Rosita Fornés

It’s Sunday again and once again I connect my old GE, on the pretext of keeping it running, to listen to the only radio program on my planet I tend to support: Memories, as well as taking advantage of it to move my skeleton, dancing alone like Isadora.

Once the tubes heated up I started to hear something that left me pleasantly shocked: On Days Like Today, by Meme Solís. This greatly caught my attention because it had been many years since I heard her voice on the radio. Would we once again get to hear Guillot of Celia Cruz? That would be great news because it would really show that something was changing.

I’m not one of those pessimistic people who always sees things in gray, but nor do I get excited about any old nonsense. When I was in the most enthusiastic stage of my choreography, Fernando entered with an expression between astonishment and disgust. He had been at the shops to buy chopped meat and it turned out that a package that yesterday cost 1.10 CUC, today was 1.70, and the one that cost 2.20 was now 2.80. So, as if by magic, from one moment to next it had risen by nothing more nor less and 60 centavos in CUCs, the equivalent of 12 Cuban pesos, or more than the daily wage.

But I insist that as I am a person who thinks positively, I think that sooner rather than later which will change, like it or not, and it will happen one of these days, as the words to the song day.

January 30 2011

Culture: A Shield or the Nation’s Rag? / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

A decade after fussing about how we would be the “most abundant and successful country in the world”, the first threats to overthrow the old cultural apparatus in Cuba have gotten underway. The monstrosity which led thousands to dream about the aims of a socialist art has grown, so much so that cultural modules were created. These groups do not contribute a thing to society since they have been built on subservience, propaganda, and the most rancid of ideologies, which only intends to achieve reverence from the subject before the monarch. And now they are starting to fade.

The proposed budget cuts have reached the door-steps of local Cuban culture, and the interior provinces are the ones most threatened. In Holguin, the popular “City Awards” (an event which takes place on Culture Day each year) have ceased financing the competitions in the areas of: Fine Art, Scenic Art, and Literature (in all its genres). The recipient of the Poetry Award will now only receive a small wooden statue, along with a cardboard diploma. In addition, the winner must wait for the local editor to publish his/her book in order to make any sort of earning or copyright.

The national “House of Culture” system has also launched its own plan of dismissals under the name of “available personnel”. The ideological apparatus has prohibited the use of the word “unemployed” when referring to those who will be left without jobs, it’s that simple. In Cuba we have Cultural Units made up of local institutions such as the House of Culture (for any acts of Theatre, Music, Dance, Fine Arts, and Literature), a museum, a library, a film theatre, and a Municipal Management Office. With such bureaucratic machinery, small towns like San German, Songo-La Maya, and Vertientes have created more than 100 titles for “specialists”, analysts, programmers, art instructors, economists, accountants, janitors, directors, sub-directors, artistic directors, cultural promoters, librarians, computer specialists, and a plethora of other positions which occur to them, as the government is bent on being the “most productive country in the world,” all the while ignoring any local talent.

In fact, there may be hundreds of cultural employees while there are not even 20 local musicians, actors, or craftsmen from a small municipality. Now, the budget-cuts have arrived and nearly 30 of these talented artists will be missing in the municipal sectors of Holguin.

While I jot down these notes from beyond the barbed wires, I have received some worrisome news. Around twenty or so young writers from Holguin will be traveling to Venezuelan slums. There, they will hand out their verses and share their work instruments with the sons of Bolivar. We continue “Lighting the streets while it’s dark inside our own house.” Now, the miserable thousand Cuban pesos ($40 U.S.) will no longer be offered to the author or poet recipient of the City Award. The Ministry of Culture will get ready to culturally invade the slums of Caracas. They simply continue to play with the dreams of some youths who embark on adventures simply to be able to bring back a cell phone, to make a good friend who will help them buy some necessary things, or to earn a thousand dollars to buy a laptop on their way back.

“Why go if you do not want to?” I asked one of the young men who is now taking a Popular Culture seminar. His answer was really the tip of the iceberg, “To escape this time bomb for a while.”

We are still a country where good books are scarce, still missing out on the best cultural supplements (found in papers like El Pais or El Mundo), where theatres are dilapidated, and where going to watch a good dance or ballet show could cost you an entire month’s salary.

Hundreds of so-called “cultural promoters” will depart to Venezuela soon. Upon returning after three months they will join the ranks of the unemployed. Dozens of musical groups have just been dismantled as a product of such a fierce staff reduction. Only on certain occasions may we watch films on 35mm, and in medium quality. Cultural events, such as the Party of Fire in Santiago de Cuba, and the Romerias de Mayo in Holguin, have reduced their interest to scarce foreign participation, and very little national talent. These are the wagers of those who preferred to make culture the nation’s sword, not its shield.

Translated by Raul G.

January 27 2011

COOOOOOOPERATE WITH THE CUBAN FAHMELICO AUTISTIC / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

COOOOOOPERE CON EL AUTISTA FAHMÉLICO CUBANO, originally uploaded by orlandoluispardolazo.

Please, if you want to smear yourself with the ex-creature Esquirlas of the Cuban bandit Peré Ahmel Echevarría (he has the name of an athlete but is an exceptional writer), you can purchase his book online at:
www.createspace.com/3504325

CV (looks like a biography to enter the Cuban Communist Party):
Echevarría Ahmel Peré (b. Havana, 1974). Mechanical Engineering from the Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría.
He is the author of the book of stories Inventario (David Award 2004, Ediciones UNION, 2007), and the novel Esquirlas (Pinos Nuevos Prize 2005, Publisher Letras Cubanas, 2006).
His stories were published in the anthologies:
Dream Histories and Other Ministories (Ediciones Luminaria,
Sancti Spiritus, 2003).
Those Who Tell – An Anthology (Publisher Cajachina, 2007).
The Insula Fabulante – The Story of Cuba in the Revolution, 1959-2008 (Publisher Letras Cubanas, 2008)
La fiamma in bocca-Giovanni narratori Cubania (Publisher Voland, 2009).
He was a member of staff of the e-zine THE REVOLUTION
EVENING POST, until Jorge Enrique Lage and OLPL expelled him out of envy for his luck with the girls languishing in Central and Upper Havana …

ESQUIRLAS ONLINE
Publication Date: nov 25 2010
ISBN/EAN13: 1456361252 / 9781456361259
Page Count: 100
Binding Type: US Trade Paper
Trim Size: 5″ x 8″
Language: Spanish; Castilian
Color: Black and White
Related Categories: Fiction / Literary

January 12 2011

It’s Easier to Buy Apples Than Tropical Fruit / Iván García

Lately in Havana, it’s easier to buy apples than tropical fruits. Strange things happen in countries where the economy is in chaos. Guavas, mameys, mangoes and oranges are missing in action. It’s more expensive to buy a box of orange juice made in Cuba than an imported apple, pear or peach.

Although now, even the apples are missing. It’s cyclical. Like everything. Sometimes there’s rice, black beans and melons in the markets. Then for weeks they disappear, bringing on hoarding, rumors and this optimism that spills over the inhabitants of an island where scarcities get worse: confidence that the ship is just about to put into port.

In any event, an apple is a luxury in Cuba. They usually sell for 0.50 to 0.60 centavos each in convertible pesos (some 70 cents in dollars). They have red, yellow and green ones. I always ask what country they come from and no one knows for sure. Some say Albania, others China, Spain or California.

The source doesn’t matter to the resellers. Their job is to buy apples in quantity, to later offer them at 10 Cuban pesos or 0.50 CUCs each, in the doorways of public places of entertainment, children’s parks and busy streets. Due to the chronic shortage of Cuban fruit, the palates of some children are more adapted to apples than to pineapples and sugar apples.

The capital also abounds in another kind of apple. Those with the Apple logo. Meanwhile the Castros carry on about the toughness of the embargo. But in the slums you see prostitutes, pimps and gigolos proudly carrying their iPhones.

Around the Capitol building, I’ve seen girls who look more like prostitutes than intellectuals with their shiny Apple laptops, which make any independent journalist’s mouth water.

Recently a Spaniard told me, “I’ve been more Apple products in Havana than in Andalusia, and yet the government goes on about the crisis of the embargo.”

Cuba is like that. An atypical country. The normal is abnormal and vice versa. Anyway, I prefer guavas and Creole mangoes to the apples sold on the island; we don’t even know where the fuck they came from.

January 30 2011

How You Can Sign the Civic Manifesto / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

Since The Civic Manifesto to Cuban Communists was made public in this space, we have received, by different routes, requests to join in on this document. Although the initial intention of the promoters was not to collect signatures of support, the opportunity for people to sign it electronically has been created through the following email: manifiestoaloscomunistas@yahoo.com, or by personally contacting any of the original signers.

January 10 2011