The Three Kings Behind the Glass

Mariela is a good-natured and cheerful easterner in her thirties, living in the capital for years, to whom God has not given children, but “the devil gave her nephews,” and every time there’s an opportunity not to skimp on gestures to show her affection to the cherubs and to see, according to her own words, “how their faces light up,” when she gives them a present although they must share it between them. Last January 5, with the little bits of money she found “on the side,” she went early to one of the shopping centers in the municipality of 10 de Octubre selling in hard currency, to entertain them with something for all three, as once again there was not enough money to get something for each of them.

As a part of the population is returning to the tradition — although modestly on the most part — of celebrating Epiphany, or Three Kings Day, in Cuba, the number of people flocking to buy toys at the beginning of the year makes for long lines.

With the despair of those who wait, the protagonist of this story got in line at one of the stores that seemed better stocked, but as always happens there are people who get impatient and walk away to give time for the line to advance and attend to other matters in the interim, and the crafty devils who arrive recently who spread confusion about the order of the line* with the intent to “fish in troubled waters.” There was even a big woman of seven feet who threatened, “So! As the last one doesn’t appear, I am the first!”

The disorder was gaining in temperature and voices were rising in anger. But the line breakers didn’t make a clean getaway this day and the police showed up. The tough guys stayed to play the role of “red hot” offended ones with the intention of cutting the line, while the cops, batons on hand, got out of their cars ready to “convince” those present to be orderly and disciplines.

As Mariela grew up with the “sticks” of her parents and the police state, she wasn’t intimidates and stood there, impassive, waiting for a clobbering that wasn’t necessary, because everyone rapidly took their places. Easy job for the repressors that left an atmosphere with the subtext that, once again, their presence was sufficient. It could be argued that even the Magi, the Three Kings, were “threatened” and intimidated that day.

After the vicissitudes that confronted the star of our story, and after spending an hour on her feet, she managed to enter the establishment and select various options for her nephews that she had seen through the shop window. She liked them all and decided that the money she had been planning to spend on a pair of sneakers that same day, would be used to acquire at least one extra toy and so, for the first time, surprise the little boys with more than one toy on this significant date. She didn’t give much thought to the decision. It was fast because her feet were tired from so much walking and waiting, they were swelling up as a sign of protest.

But there was still one more line, the one where you go to hand over your cash to a person who, with the calm and superiority of someone who by necessity, but unwillingly, and in a bad mood and as if doing you a favor, attends to each customer in slow motion. Standing in that line she noticed the face of a little girl, maybe 6 or 7, stuck to the window, looking in with melancholy innocent eyes at the display of toys inside the store and beyond her reach. Her nose flattened and both little hands on each side of her face presented a bleak picture, her large eyes focusing so much sadness, like a chiaroscuro of Rembrandt portraying the face of poverty. And in the sensitivity of our heroine, the sun began to shine that morning.

Inquiring among those present who she was, one of the shopkeepers said was the little girl who came with her physically disabled mother to ask for “financial aid” from the people as they left the store. “It’s because the money she gets from social security isn’t enough,” added someone who paid and left. Mariela’s turn to leave also arrived (at last!), and she had to pass right by the girl, who was still looking through a little piece of the shop window she could reach that was not blocked by people. Without any hesitancy she addressed her:

“What are you doing, sweetheart?”

“Watching my toys.”

“Which ones are yours?”

“All of these…” she said, describing with her index finger an arch that covered the width of the place.

“What did you ask the Three Kings to bring you?” asked our protagonist while hiding the hand that was carrying her bag.

“Nothing, because my mother says they don’t come to Cuba, but I know they don’t exist, that the toys come from the stores. I have playmates who get gifts on the Day of the Three Kings. Do you think that if I were disabled, like my mamá, people would give me money to buy myself some?”

*Translator’s note: In Cuba people don’t necessarily stand neatly in line; each new arrival asks “who’s last” and so the order of the line is known, even as people come and go, sit down nearby to wait, chat with their friends elsewhere in the line, and so on.

Stepping on the Gas / Regina Coyula

It’s not all bad news. After more than six years with the installation of the gas at the door of the house, a campaign of the company responsible has been working in my neighborhood since December. In the effort to save time and the amount of pipe needed, the gaslines snake up the stairs like reptiles, looking for the shortest route, but we are a threatened and blockaded country, so we can’t pay attention to aesthetic details.

And so, since last week, I have blue flames in my kitchen that I regulate from below, thus the pressure benefits us. I have recovered the use of my oven; I have been able to roast peppers, (more good news), and toast stale bread. Alarmed, it’s true, by the stench of gas that has flooded the neighborhood. “It’s for safety,” says the employee I ask. I state the obvious, “Then we are in danger!” and another employee who, in a display of cold-bloodedness was smoking right next to the tool cart, gave me the key, “All the joints require a silicone seal that we don’t have, and so there is the stench, but don’t worry yourself, with the oxidation and the impurity of the gas, in a few days the pipes will seal themselves from the inside.”

As a collateral effect, I’ve noticed an increase in the neighborhood of chain link fences, whose installation benefits greatly from the availability of galvanized pipe.

January 26 2011

Dégas in Havana / Iván García

The new policies of flexibility in the U.S. embargo against Cuba have permitted an exhibit, provided by the MT Abraham Center for Visual Arts in the United States to be displayed at the National Museum of Fine Arts.

Nestled in Zulueta Street, a stone’s throw from the Spanish embassy in Havana Vieja, the Museum shows a complete collection of sculptures by Edgar Dégas (Paris 1834-1917), one of the key figures of world art.

The exhibition is part of the tributes that in 2010 were conducted in different institutions and countries to mark the 90th birthday of the prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso (Havana 1920).

Under the title “All the sculptures of Edgar Dégas,” the exhibit consists of 74 pieces, shown previously in Athens, Tel Aviv and Sofia. It will remain in the Cuban capital until the end of January and then continue its tour in Spain.

The star of the collection is The Little Ballerina of 14 Years, sculpted between 1878 and 1881, the only sculpture that this controversial and contradictory Frenchman showed while he was alive. Praised and reviled, Dégas is known as one of the founders of Impressionism. He was considered by Renoir as the best modern sculptor, ahead even of Rodin.

Despite the heavy and persistent rain over the weekend in Havana, the show has had an extraordinary reception. Cubans who advocate ending the embargo and normalizing relations with the United States are grateful for the possibility of cultural exchanges between the two countries and also the measures taken for the benefit of the families on both sides.

Now, from the United States, you can send through Western Union up to $10,000 and receive it on the island in convertible pesos with a 10% tax. Soon, direct flights to Havana will depart from several U.S. airports, not only from Miami, New York and California.

Raul Castro’s government is rubbing its hands. The Dégas exhibit can be a beginning. The icing on the cake would be to end the old, obsolete embargo and have droves of Yankee tourists arriving. It would not be bad for an economy that is leaking. Despite the drought.

Photo: Cubarte. Alicia Alonso contemplates The Little Ballerina of 14 Years, by Edgar Dégas at the Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 27 2011

The Pitcher Can Only Go To The Well So Many Times Before It Breaks / Yamil Domínguez

Written by: Yadaimí Domínguez

Faced with the delay of the Attorney General of the Republic, his refusal to modify the terms of custody and to violate the terms provided in the law, my brother started a new hunger strike on December 30 with only four months of recovery from another that lasted 107 days.

In this he demands a review of his case, seeing how our family has knocked on so many doors and been greeted only by lethargy and deaf ears. Today he claims his freedom to which he has a right, at least until the completion of the process, a change of custody measures.

When we were notified in September by the People’s Supreme Court that the sentence No 120/2010 was annulled and the whole process restarted, Yamil recovered his serenity, having to remain for some time more deprived of his liberty while the Instructor complied with the order from the Judicial Body. It was the middle of October when the case came to the hands of the Instructor and he proved the truth of my brother’s declarations, and so delivered the conclusive report to the prosecutor November 30, saying that the charge that Yamil supposedly entered the country illegally, was based on the argument that he had a flare gun at his disposal which he could have made use of.

On Friday December 3 the Instructor with Yamil and expressed to him that he would be released the following Monday and taken to the legal home of his mother to await the paperwork. While waiting for this to happen, Yamil remained in the same place and the official said he would be released in a week or a week and a half, saying the same thing to the consular officials of the United States Interest Section who visited my brother on December 10.

What happened is that since the beginning of the December the prosecutor had the file of the preparatory phase given to him by the Instructor and until the time there was no pronouncement, when Law 5 (Penal Procedures), in Article 262 gives a time frame for this of up to ten days. On the other hand, the attorney asked for a modification of the custody measures for Yamil and the response of the prosecutor was evasive and without foundation.

The defense was forced to submit to Record of Complaint to the Head of Criminal Procedure of the Attorney General’s Office, with 5 working days to answer, making Tuesday 25 January, the 5th and last day to issue a response.

The Prosecutor, the term implies, should guarantee the legality, however, limiting myself to this case, has been the complete opposite. To commence criminal proceedings, as was done three years ago, under an alleged crime that had no substance and to move it to the courts without objective basis, leaves a lot to be desired. But, he continues in error or perhaps pursuing an objective associated with his apocryphal mistakes, while an INNOCENT man suffer the rigors of an absurd confinement and hunger to demand respect for his rights.

Yes, Yamil is INNOCENT. The flare gun is used to signal that you are in danger and, though my brother was in a similar context, he did not feel unprotected. Despite the horrible weather and sea conditions, he had two sets of GPS equipment that allowed him to orient himself and his vessel had two outboard motors, in perfect working condition. Anyway, this gun is not a used as means to advise that one is entering an international port and his forced arrival for temporary protection (from the storm) exonerates him of any criminal liability, an issue set out in Article 22.1 and 215.2 of our Criminal Code.

The arguments for the innocence of Yamil Dominguez are overwhelming, but Cuba has to justify, before public opinion, the more than three years he has been in prison, so they have no other alternative but to charge him with illegal entry into the country.

Justice should be blind because we all have the same rights and are equal under the law. Unfortunately, many of those responsible for exercising it, remove the blindfold from their eyes and it is, at this exact moment, that they cease to be impartial and give birth to iniquity. Sufficient reasons exist for my brother to be freed. The reasons are obvious and we are confident that the truth will out; the pitcher can only go to the well so many times before it breaks.

January 24 2011

The Government Demands More Rigorous Police Work / Laritza Diversent

According to the January 6 edition of the newspaper Granma, “Updating the Cuban economic model demands concrete actions from the police to ensure the safety of families and order in society.” The Ministry of Interior made this known during the celebration of the 52nd anniversary of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR).

Apparently the Cuban authorities are fully aware of the dangers surrounding the application of its new policies — mainly, the plan to lay off 500,000 workers this quarter. This is something unprecedented in the history of the socialist revolution, which promised, in its state constitution, full employment for all its citizens.

The situation on the streets is tense. “Transportation is getting worse, food is scarce, prices have gone through the roof, and there is no money. The only option left is to steal,” says Peter, a young man of 38, self-employed, who fills lighters. “I chose this activity because I can be on the corner waiting for some business to fall into my hands. The license at least gives me some cover,” he comments.

The government is aware of this reality. It knows that the new self-employed workers need the black market and the illegal trafficking of merchandise in order to finance their economic activities. It’s the only way to guarantee enough resources to stay in business and pay the state taxes. Classified by the population itself as excessive, given the precarious state of the island’s economy.

Cuba has a population of 11.2 million people, and the State, the main employer, has the ability to hire fewer than 3.9 million. There are too many people “inventing,” and we all know that illegal activity is the main source of survival. Faced with this phenomenon, the government increases its repressive force, mainly in the capital. In July, the Interior Ministry graduated nearly 600 officers, and in September, 500 were added to the new class.

The Cuban police, to curb black market activity, control the inter-provincial highways and deploy operatives who hunt down traveling vendors. They can detain someone and make a record of his belongings on a public street, although this power is not derived from the law, but rather from the excessive power that the government places in this body, whose members do not skimp on abuse.

In fact, they decide which citizen will be tried or not by the courts. The Penal Code gives them the power to impose an administrative fine instead of referring a crime to the court. There are quite a few police officers who accept bribes to apply the law at their convenience.

This truth is well silenced by the government. They warn: “The law is applied with the utmost rigor and severity.” However, they tolerate corruption and abuse, in exchange for impunity for members of the police. They are the main force of repression and the only one that guarantees them that an unsustainable system in maintained.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 26 2011

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (4) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 4 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I turn on the TV.

They are rebroadcasting an old Roundtable show where Fidel smiles showing his dental prosthesis. He has his arm in a cast but with the other he gesticulates more. He talks of the dollar, that curse without which life would not be drinkable.

Fidel ranted about the pros and cons of the U.S. dollar circulating at will on the Isle of Freedom. He affirms there has already been enough audacity. If it bothers him, he will put an impossible tax on it. He takes the measure of the idea. He plays the fool. The panelists unanimously support him. They almost push him into the middle of the ring. The people of Cuba point thumbs down, each one eating off a tin plate in front of the TV. The poor dollar, it will lose this theatrical sporting competition. And in the end Fidel imposes that impossible tax. Tames that bull of the stars and bars and an eye more pineal than inscrutable. It’s taken him less than an hour to erase a decade of Yankee national heroes as icons of our national salvation.

It’s a Roundtable from mid 2005, I think. A year of hurricanes and power outages. The year in which Fidel tripped in public and broke his kneecap into one thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine pieces, I believe. His last year in power. And not even he knew it. On this morning’s rebroadcast Fidel still doesn’t know it. So he is immortal, I think.

I turn off the TV.

The crack in the ex-Soviet picture tube leaves a smell of ozone in the room. Electron-216.

Flashes through the blinds.

After a while distant thunder is heard, perhaps on the open sea beyond the wall of the Malecon and the forked lighthouse of Morro Castle.

An echo rolls far away, out there. In life, I believe, nowhere.

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (3) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 3 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

No it wasn’t.

It was JAAD.

Calling me from the quiet early morning in Spain. Six years or six-hours difference between my writer friend and me.

I heard him joking, almost happy. After decades of paralysis because of rather pedestrian politics, he had won his first literary contest. And not just any. The Hucha de Oro prize. Euros, many euros his broken street-bookseller pockets. With pinworms and lice, but with an incandescent brain. Indecent.

JAAD singing boleros into the receiver. It was a remix with themes of Habana Abierta: we were friends of Orlando, what a riot, an incredible riot …

He quoted full sentences of his winning story. The beginning was apparently the greatest: It had an ass of sixty and some tits of twenty, but wasn’t even fifteen…

JAAD would be free now. Finally.

Lack of money was drowned him as a child. He himself was a ruined character of JAAD. Or of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez. Or of Charles Bukowsky. Or of Lino Novas Calvo. Or of Roberto Arlt. A tragic guy. Always dying between suicide and semen and the upcoming toothache.

JAAD hung uo between his own applause and my congratulations.

I loved that man, but it was already too late for anything. For everyone.

Fuck you in your Europe of successes and Japanese whores touring with flashes in the museums of Valencia without leaving the whole of adolescence. Have zen sex in the lotus position under their hentai vulvitas. Vomit within the vaginas of the First World all your subnational hatred. Fuck with your cock the good news that soon you will not know how to write, nor to sing with your ding dong, balls. Rest in pus.

JAAD, the family idiot. JAAD, the pornographic genius of my generation. Coito ergo sum. Everything you touched turned to horror. The Hucha of Horror.

I wish you know a kitsch story of Kim Ki Duk. I wish you a rhizomatic death. I wish you all that the future molecularly holds for you.

Goodbye, JAAD.

I spent a lot of time listening to the static of the hung up telephone in Havana, first and only free territory of America.

Outside could be heard the early morning horns on Porvenir Avenue. Occasionally a train on the Crucero de Luyanó. From time to time a boat adrift on the oil in the port.

I wrapped the coiled wire around my neck.

Only then I hung up.

This is Not the Novel of the Revolution (2) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(CHAPTER 2 … …)

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I got to Lawton two hours later.

I’d walked fast. I got a nosebleed. I had chills.

I passed my block. I didn’t recognize my wooden house.

I turned around several times, finding myself on the stairs that make the corner of Fonts and Beales a cesspool.

Poles with no lights. Doorways with no lights. The moon above without light. A moon of props, cut like a pussy under the concave tarp of heaven.

Finally I opened the grill.

Fonts No. 125, my house.

My dog barked in the background. Kelly, remembered.

I laughed. Kelly, the first word in the world.

The laughter gave me motion sickness. Shortness of breath. I wiped my nose with quilted sleeves.

It was no longer dripping. There were just fresh outriders of coagulated blood. Black.

I breathed.

Smell of iron, rust, trains, harbor.

I took out my keys. I sat on the doorstep. The areca palm was moving in slow motion. The cold front numbed all reality.

I looked at the garden. The nopal cactus brought from the Fernández-Larrea house in Vibora Park. The false yellow flame trees. The fragile lilies, of glass. The witches before human history in Cuba. The snails endemic to my house. Roses, of course. And an asparagus bush pruned at every poor wedding in the neighborhood.

Lawton, the second word in the world. Also corset.

I do not speak Spanish.

I do not speak.

No.

.

I lay on the tiles. Kneeling. Ice on my back. I coughed. Having lungs is a danger.

If a patrol was passing, they would take me for dead. Better so.

Then they would take me for a madman. Than no.

I sat up.

I opened the door. I went inside. I closed. I walked without seeing, to the long, narrow hall of tongue and groove boards. I got to the bathroom.

Pissed.

Long and bitterly, pissed.

My urine bubbled, frothy. Beer of an uncivil and soft odor.

For a long time I stood there in the absolute darkness of the bathroom. My penis hanging in my hand. The left, always.

The penis flaccid at first. Then turgid, then hard. Tetanic muscles, circulation atrocious. The penis recognizable in the middle of a total state of unrecognition.

If I moved my hand now I would faint.

I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t.

I wanted more to survive that night. Let the dawn never come, but I survive that.

Then the phone rang.

A whip of chills in my spine.

Lightning out of the blue.

Of course it was Ipatria.

It would have to be Ipatria.

This is Not The Novel of the Revolution (1) / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

( …CHAPTER 1… )

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

I looked up.

I saw two moons.

I said, “Shit, Orlando, today you’re gonna kill.”

Two moons.

Perfect, in focus, insane.

The winter night in Havana as a red shroud.

I thought about my mother.

I thought about Ipatria.

I thought about me, about us.

Of all the dead and all dead loves, how to distinguish?

I thought about the beauty and lies of any Revolution.

Crime, screaming, wanting to run, anger, tenderness. Enough.

Two moons.

I was going crazy. Finally.

I knelt.

I did not want to go crazy. The idea terrified me.

I was terrified to realize that the madness was now pure truth.

“No, please,” I whispered to God or to anyone, and I closed my eyes and began to pray.

In silence. I do not know how to pray. They didn’t teach me in time.

In the middle of the night without Cuba. What do you call at this hour in the world this illusion of a city?

Havana, pray for us sinners …

Under the color-blind traffic light at 12th Street and 23rd Avenue, the most central and desolate corner of the universe. Most central and deserted.

Havana, now and at the hour of our death …

Two moons, Landy, fucking amazing.

I started to pray but the pain did not leave.

The worst always remains. The rest are words.

I opened my eyes. My eyes of undefined color. Of water.

The moon was still there.

Unique. Immeasurable. Inert. Myopic.

A nocturnal sun on our bodies again and again Cubans butting heads in the middle of the night.

“Orlando,” he said, “Orlando.”

I gulped.

I wiped my tears.

I stood up.

“Your name is Orlando and you will not kill,” repeated in the loud voice of no one: “Your name is Orlando and never ever ever are you going to kill.”

I stuck out my hand at a taxi charging dollars.

I threw myself at the car.

The driver avoided me slamming on the breaks and swerving. Then he made a U-turn and pulled out with tires screeching toward Zapata.

He fled from me.

Like my mother.

Like Ipatria.

Like any revolution.

Like love.

Like death.

Decisions / Pedro Arguelles Moran / Voices Behind The Bars

This past 18th of January, it was the 7th year and 10th month anniversary since we 8 members from the group of the 75 were kidnapped by the communist political police.  During this entire time, we’ve been hostages of the totalitarian Cuban regime.  Two days later, at around 7pm,  they took me to the office of the chief director of Canaleta Prison, the penitentiary where I am jailed.  The chief was there along with a gorgeous psychologist from the Interior Ministry.  They both tried to convince me that, given my age and state of health, the best option for me would be to depart from the island and into exile.

A few days ago, a doctor casually performed a medical check-up on me, informing me that my liver was inflamed and that I could not participate in hunger strikes.  I told her that I have no interest in leaving my homeland, for I was born here and I wish to die here.  At some point during the exchange of opinions the prison chief informed me that he had contacted me so that I could speak on the phone with Cardinal Jaime Ortega.  Ortega, who is also the archbishop of Havana, wanted to speak to me.  I made it clear that I didn’t have anything to talk to his Eminence about.  During July 10th of last year I already made it clear to him when I spoke to him on the phone that I was not going to leave my country.

The psychologist told me that people change opinions and, in turn, their decisions.  I replied to her that yes, she was correct, and that in fact, in the year 1961 (when I was only 13 years old) I joined the Conrado Benitez Brigade in order to work on the literacy campaign.  I was also a militiaman, for I had enlisted in the army, as I pretended to be older than I really was.  I belonged to the Association of Young Rebels and I considered myself a full-fledged “Country or Death” revolutionary.  Today, however, I am anti-Castro and anti-communist, and I am deeply convinced and committed to the honorable civil struggle in order to achieve that democratic transition which we so long for.

The good-looking psychological professional emphasized that the opportunity I was turning down was an opportunity that others were desperately crying out to have.  I flat out told her that I was the one who was going to desperately cry out if I were exiled from the largest of the Antilles.  In sum, I told the chief of Canaleta that I was going back to my cell and that if Cardinal Ortega called for me, to tell him, on my behalf, that “I do not want to leave my country.”  This is a decision I have developed over time and with much conscience ever since 1993, when I actually took part in an attempt to leave the country illegally via Havana.  I learned that, amid all the processes against me, my destiny was to remain in my country and to peacefully struggle for the human rights and freedoms which are inherent to human dignity.  And this is a decision I will maintain until the very last consequences because my life choice is to continue onward and to uphold the philosophy of Marti, which states, “the duty of a man is to reside where he is most useful.”  Amen.

Pedro Arguelles Moran
Prisoner of Conscience
Provincial Prison of Canaleta, Ciego de Avila

Me, the Terrorist / Ernesto Morales Licea

Suddenly I saw myself as the murderer before a possible victim: doubting, considering the possibility, weighing pros and cons. Like an inexperienced criminal warning of his intention to commit the crime, but not quite daring. Perhaps the only thing different in my case was the body of the crime.

I had no intentions of taking the life of anyone, or stealing their money and clothes. I only had a book in my hands, a crisp and provocative book whose price I simply couldn’t afford.

To put it in perspective for the readers: I was sitting on the second floor of a bookstore whose name, out of basic common sense, I prefer to hide. (I wouldn’t like, that in the future, this story would give me the title of a suspect in a place which I want to become my second home).

From my place at the mahogany table, one arm leaning on the railing, I had the privilege of seeing the fascinating panorama of buyers, students with homework half done, soft colors of countless books. I was watching the beautiful painting on the well-lit ceiling with some of the most famous faces in the world of literature: Fitzgerald, Rimbaud, Wilde.

I had arrived a little before two in the afternoon. I’d ordered a cappuccino, set up my laptop — a loan from a kind and adorable soul — on an empty table, and searched the shelves for books in Spanish until I ended up at my seat with six books whose prices, for now, were prohibitive for me. Ten minutes after ten that night, I was still there.

Among hundreds of volumes that in Cuba would have been Utopia, and the free wireless surfing offered every day in that place, the hours flew by, and suddenly I found myself fascinated with one book in particular, a survivor I couldn’t resign myself to returning to its shelf, as I had done with the rest.

“Terrorist” it said on the cover. The author: John Updike. One of the masters of American narrative. Twenty-eight dollars to take it with me. A swallow of gringo coffee, to ease the sadness.

And suddenly with butterflies in my stomach, the subversive thought: “After eight hours here, who watches that I don’t pack it up with the laptop, that I don’t smuggle it out of this bookstore.” Libro — book — and libre — free — in my language they look the same. They should be synonyms. And in my hand, Updike’s novel, unresisting, no complaints.

To put it in perspective for my readers a second time: It’s common practice in the country I come from. It’s a way of life. Steal to survive. Steal to eat, clothe yourself, put shoes on your feet. Steal to brush your teeth, get a ride somewhere. Steal to read, also, and to dream just a little of freedom.

In Cuba, according to the humorous works of Osvaldo Doimeadiós, everyone steals. And without the least guilt, which is really cruel. I’m pointing out the truth: Not from one another, everyone steals from the State, the owner of the newspapers, the grocery stores, the parks and their sparrows. And the bookstores. Everyone steals from this omnipresent owner if the occasion presents itself. And then they have the amazing cheek to boast about it. In Cuba, to ransack the State is a social practice too widespread for something called civic conscience to stop one’s hand.

Why? Why don’t Cubans respect the norms of coexistence, why has helping oneself to the State coffers become a custom as common as salsa dancing and playing baseball? Elemental: When no one can live honestly with what they earn for a month’s work; and when the cause of this situation — the State — is very easy to identify because they own and control everything, to take the hard way what is impossible to achieve in a good way, is an ugly but necessary method of survival.

Immediate consequences: To steal from Big Brother is now an uncensured practice. Uncensured socially, that is. But not legally.

There is a second reason: When citizens don’t feel gratitude for what surrounds them, the result is disrespect. When a Cuban has to spend days in a bus terminal, waiting for some vehicle of mercy to travel to his province, it’s very hard not to destroy the benches, to steal the soap — if there is any — in the bathrooms, to perceive this institution as anything but hostile, an enemy, to feel no gratitude for anything, and to inflict whatever damage is possible on everything within reach.

This explains the ruinous state of so many public institutions, urban transport, filthy hospitals, or movie theaters in my country: The employees steal and loot and destroy, the customers steal and loot and destroy. This also explains the poor misguided people who come to the United States ready to do the same to Uncle Sam, and end up behind bars, suffering terribly, until the documentary filmmaker Estela Bravo rescues them with her compassionate productions.

And this explains, ultimately, that those in Cuban know that man doesn’t live by bread and remittances alone, but needs books like vital oxygen, and doesn’t hesitate to steal them when a distracted librarian or a rude seller leaves the slightest margin to do so.

The assorted local libraries in my country, are children of a permanent state of theft. And believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Let whomever is free of this sin, among Cuban booklovers, cast the first stone.

But what did I do now? Why not just do what instinct told me to do and not leave John Updike’s “Terrorist” on its crowded shelf? The same thing that made me return the novel proudly to where it belonged. The same thing that prevented me from bringing harmful practices to the new society that just admitted me. Read it well: It’s called gratitude.

Gratitude to whom? To a bookstore where I sat for eight hours without anyone asking for my identification, questioning my ideology, or inquiring about what I had come to do. A bookstore where the person who serves me coffee smiles at me, where they hold the door open for me to pass through. Gratitude to this gorgeous place, well lit, where no one questions my sitting in one place, spending barely three dollars, while they offer me free Internet — Good God! Free Internet for a blogger recently arrived from the Island! — without asking me what I am using it for.

And perhaps more fundamentally: Gratitude for a society, that imperfect and deserving of censure it is in other things, allows places like this, private businesses like this, to proliferate for the benefit of their owners and of all citizens.

Three days ago I returned “Terrorist” to the place from which it is sold. It’s not the best novel I will read, I believe, and soon, very soon, I will be able to pay a friendly employee the twenty-eight dollar price of the latest work of this universal master.

Then I found out — sweating bullets — a revealing fact: All the books that aren’t paid for, on passing through the door, activate a security mechanism that floods the room with noise. I don’t remember if after finding out I looked toward heaven, and again showed gratitude. I should have.

But in that second, while returning the novel to its place on the shelf, no one would have understood my secret happiness. No one other than me would have understood the importance of an act like that, where a young man educated in social disrespect just savored the taste of the word civility. The word honesty, in its institutional home.

And don’t doubt it: he knows it very well.

Translated by:Daniel Gonzalez

January 25 2011

Havana Without Water, Another Headache for the Regime / Iván García

Photo: Martha Beatriz Roque

“Not even by paying 10 CUC (12 dollars) can a family get a pipa (water truck) in order to fill buckets, tanks and containers,” says Liudmila, a resident of El Calvario, a desolate hamlet south of Havana. Although there have been deliveries of water lately, shortages continue.

In the first week of January, in El Calvario there were 5 days without water. The lack of pipas to alleviate the water shortage created a very tense situation for people. The same thing has happened in other places, where there have been no lack of protests.

The drought that has affected the Cuban capital for 7 years has caused a deficit of more than 328 thousand cubic meters of water. The dramatic shortage has led to reductions in the delivery of the precious liquid to 10 of the 15 municipalities of Havana.

If you add to the disastrous drought the fact that 60% of potable water distributed in the city is lost due to breaks and leaks in the pipes, and that 128 major industrial centers in the capital use three times what they need, then in addition to being serious, the problem becomes complex.

Excessive exploitation of surface and ground water has resulted in the collapse of different supply points to the capital, with water quantities well below their capacity.

From 2003 to date, the average rainfall for Havana was as high as 89%. This has been the driest period in the last 49 years.

The provincial supervision of water resources in the capital has activated a Code Red. Five years ago, the company Aguas de La Habana, with hard currency financing from a Catalan society, began to restore the deteriorating distribution networks, but the work has been slow and insufficient.

Only 20% of the pipes in the city have been repaired, due to their age and a chronic lack of maintenance, which has left them severely damaged. The broken pipes in turn make a mess of the public roads, which are full of holes, due to torrential water flows daily in the streets.

Then there is the main aqueduct, the Albear, which was built in the 19th century and designed for a population of 400,000. Today Havana is a city of over 2,500,000 inhabitants. The most critical situation in the water supply occurs in the municipalities of Arroyo Naranjo, Habana Vieja and Centro Habana.

In the late 80’s the El Gato water main, on the outskirts of the city, began to function. But between the severe drought, the absence of systematic repairs and the lack of spare parts, it is working at less than 50% capacity.

To reverse the delicate situation, the Institute of Hydraulic Resources intends to quickly implement 14 investments to alleviate the crisis. They are valued at 7.5 million convertible pesos (about $9 million) and involve placing 22 kilometers of pipes. If these works are not carried out soon, for spring, the deficit of water will reach 493,640 cubic meters of water.

In Havana, more than 70,000 families have no direct access to drinking water. They have to carry it in buckets, tanks and other containers. When stored, it becomes a dangerous breeding ground for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, a transmitter of deadly diseases such as dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Due to the scarcity of water in poor neighborhoods, there are people who are paid 100 pesos (5 dollars) to fill a 55-gallon tank. “In addition to earning money, I get exercise,” says Philip, a bodybuilder engaged in the business of carrying water.

If in the coming months the powerful drought continues, if water is squandered and doesn’t reach households and production centers, the government of General Raúl Castro will have a new headache. Another one.

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 25 2011

Flags / Claudia Cadelo

To catch the pulse of reality is hard, and to portray that rhythm in a short film of less than an hour is even more so. However, Eduardo del Llano not only does it, he makes you laugh over what you would normally mourn. I see his work and wonder how it is possible that I don’t laugh all day, surrounded as I am by characters like Nicanor and Rodriguez. That is, of course, one of the delightful charms of film.

In “Aché,” one of his latest productions, a couple debate the social advantage of having a Cuban flag hanging from the balcony. The film has everything, from a guy who claims to have learned to be a communist because Ernesto Guevara loaned him a tire wrench, to the mistress of a deputy minister who seems to have an infinite supply of Cuban flags purchased abroad. The story develops in the seventies and, except for the flag hanger, could be Havana in 2011. The whole plot is connected by the hilarious desire of the protagonist to get approval to go to France on a scholarship.

With excellent performances by Luis Alberto Garcia as the likable Nicanor, Néstor Jiménez as the rigid Rodríguez, and Laura de la Uz as the reading teacher who “is still there,” it returns to the task of these sagas which is to cheer us up a little in our existence in this country that, in the words of Rodríguez, is one for all: it’s yours and, according the Nicanor, “that” must be grasped in moderation.

Message from Jorge Ángel Hernández / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate

About the text “A little ashamed of ourselves” by Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel, in response to “The crisis of low culture” of Francis Sánchez.

My friend Riverón,

Although I consider friendship one of the gifts that should be defended at all costs, I also think that standards about things that happen in life, art and literature, should, if not considered equally, at least be ahead by a nose at the finish line. Quite often our personal discussions have raised the tone to the point that only friendship has stopped the harmful avalanche of blindness on both sides. I also value highly the grateful recognition of good deeds from others who are not exactly part of that small group of friends, even more those that honestly spring from the adversaries who have accompanied us on the same journey.

This long speech, that you know well, maybe with more humorous tones and turns, as I like to talk person to person, allows me to introduce, in this communication that already I’ve given permission for you to use publicly if you feel it necessary, an idea that, although predictable given the many anecdotes that I can relate as a witness, does not stop surprising me negatively:

I’m referring to the treacherous message that Luis Manuel Pérez Boitel circulated and in which he tried to insult you “considering that an editor at the head of a publishing house with which he began to reach his first little bit of prestige,” is obliged to assume, without any benefit of the doubt, the fair and deserved price of his pay.

I remember at that time our poet and anti-fascist fighter, not “litigious” as he says, (as a lawyer, knowing what the word means by which meaning you would have put in a cumbersome legal process that did not occur) but haggled over I believe with good cause, his fees, which were set at the amount he demanded, in my opinion unjust, much less than he would have deserved.

I know the details because I also saw a dodge that consisted in declaring that he didn’t agree with the price, and, from respect for the scandal and out of solidarity with Boitel, he settled for a meager sum, and I hope the copies of the contract may serve as further proof and challenge as well a search for any proof of a “claim.”

What he did was to lobby senior officials to press his demand for payment and talk about the incident to many, too many, people. I also remember how you assumed as your own problem that he could attend the award ceremony for the poetry prize, which he won in a closed vote in the Casa de las Americas contest, news he received a few hours before, and how you pledged both your institutional influence and your personal courage as an intellectual and editor at a time when he was the subject of satirical gossip in much of the country.

I assumed he was grateful for these efforts, happily accomplished, even more upon hearing himself reclaimed — during the meeting, or encounter, that we had in the Villa Clara UNEAC with Iroel Sánchez and Omar Valiño, that is, the “duo of the Party,” who took the trouble to talk to us about what was happening around what I named the “Pavonazo” phenomenon at work — that attendance at the awards was definite and that the Casa de las Americas, naming Jorge Fornet as the irresponsible person, and careful of saving the “diplomatic decency” of Roberto Fernandez Retamar, had failed to inform him the following year, once his book was in circulation, about “What his role would be in the activities of the award,” and that they would not offer him any support.

That said about your commentary “Eating from the new-born turkey” (“pavo” — turkey — is a play on “Pavón”), which now seems so suspicious to him and about which he did not issue any opinion even though we were provoked to do it during those conversations. That attitude confirms that the title of what was written by Francis Sánchez continues to be accurate, since it confused the low cravings for the role with the lower passions and culture is something mean in the most Marti concept of the term. And although perhaps the overwhelming majority feels that he justly deserves not even the honor of the insult, the basic instinct of my low passions requests a retribution.

So, friend, on behalf of those dishonest and opportunistic intellectuals with a double standard, that like the dreadful English of Neruda we still hate, in virtue of what appears unthinkable “to take them out of circulation and credit” I ask you for an apology. I am ashamed that such a fight broke out in the midst of a moment that in my opinion is crucial to the cultural destiny of those of us who continue deciding to build from within.

A hug, and no antidepressants.

Jorge Angel Hernández

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 2007