Anduriña’s Syndrome / Rosa María Rodríguez Torrado

In the ’60s the Spanish duo of Juan and Junior popularized a song named “Anduriña”, that still can be heard today on some radio programs in Cuba and on pirated CDs, and also you can hear other versions now and again on television and in those nostalgic cabarets of the so-called “Prodigious Decade.” The theme is about a young girl called Anduriña, who escaped from her town, and in part of the lyrics of the song they make note that “she flew” and asked her to “turn quickly to port.”

The Revolution of 1959 brought us the flight of Cubans to everywhere; that is no longer news for hardly anyone, nor is the conjugal agreement that matches and prioritizes a great quantity of our young females with the goal of emigrating. So, many countries increase their populations with our compatriots, those who as Anduriñan emigrants escaped from their land to have a better life in freedom. It has been a long process for the Cuban people, and at highly elevated economic, political and social price. But the Cuban demographic scattered throughout the world can be a boomerang that helps to rebuild our country and reconcile our nation.

I hope that in the future nobody is forced to emigrate because they lost their rights and freedoms in their own country. Also, I hope and desire that some day our Anduriños can look towards their own country’s border with all the legal guarantees and “turn quickly to port” to help us rebuild the disaster that the pirates of the dictatorship have added to Cuba for more than a half century.

“My dead father you are in a photo (in many)”
and in many Springs
–in the living dead of the wide narrow place
and in the lives dying for inequality;
in the dream of liberty that never happens
and in the continuous denial of the visa of freedom.
In a long wish list of a country
and a lethargic prison country that hopes…”
Fragment of my poem ‘Dead Father’.

Translated by: BW

June 1 2011

Illegal Cubans in Havana / Iván García

Havana is a sort of forbidden city for people from deep inside Cuba. By Decree 217, effective April 22, 1997, residing in the country’s capital is a complicated pattern of bureaucratic procedures and hours of queues at central administration. You have to meet a lot of requirements to be approved to move to the city. It’s a mess.

Unless you’re from Guantánamo, Camaguey or Santiago, and you have some responsibility in a state enterprise or within the Communist Party. Then they open the gates of Havana. And the generous resources of the State or the Party will assure you a dwelling from its vast network of housing for those situations.

If your visit to the capital is temporary, they will put you in a three-star hotel with an open bar, to eat and drink in your spare time. Without spending a cent from your own pocket.

Companies that handle foreign currency such as tourism, civil aviation and telecommunications have homes available to house specialists, engineers or administrative staff from other provinces. Or quality hotel rooms that must be paid in hard currency. It is the only legal way to settle in Havana with the permission of the authorities.

The other is to stay a few days with relatives in the capital, visit the Zoo on Avenue 26, take photos across from the Capitol and visit Chinatown or the beaches of the East. And get the ticket back to the country.

Otherwise, they will open a file on you as an illegal. In pursuit of stopping the growing exodus of Cubans from the country’s interior, desperate because of the acute economic situation and lack of a future. For fourteen years there have been controls and regulations that prevent settling in Havana to those born outside its territory.

They are foreigners in their own homeland. With Decree 217, State institutions pretend to provide a solution to overcrowding in a city that already exceeds two and a half million inhabitants, with a fourth-world infrastructure and a cruel shortage of housing, water and public transport.

There was the paradox that while they tried to stop the terrifying wave, particularly of young people in the eastern regions, who fled their villages to try to live better, they built huts with pitched roofs of asbestos cement, where they housed the builders and the police candidates.

And habaneros don’t want to be cops. Nor do they want to work hard in the construction trades, with low pay and poor working conditions. Thus the government had no choice but to hire labor in the eastern provinces for a period of two to five years.

But the provincial people find a way to leave the plow and the land behind and show up in Havana. There are several reasons. The main one is that in spite of the severe economic crisis affecting Cuba for 22 years, it’s in the capital where money flows, and products and services cost more.

It’s also a good place for girls to take the train from Bayamo or Manatí and prostitute themselves in the streets and bars of the city. There are abundant domestic customers and tourists on the hunt for fresh meat that makes sex pay a good price.

Of course, the hookers from the east of the island are frowned upon by their counterparts in Havana. The prostitutes born in the city consider that the easterners or “Palestinians” as they say, have devalued the longstanding profession, by the low prices they charge. And they hate them.

The easterners who arrive in Havana illegally do everything. From pedaling a bicycle-taxi for 12 hours, to collecting scraps of aluminum or cardboard, selling shoddy textiles, pirated discs, detergents and perfumes on Monte Street.

Those who come to work hard are worthy of admiration and respect. Others, violent scoundrels, want to make money on the fast track. And they become Creole marijuana dealers. Or pimps who get off at the railway terminal with a harem of hookers, disoriented with the lights, and put them to work in dilapidated rooms, screwing for 5 dollars a half-hour.

From El Cobre or Manzanillo, gays and lesbians are also packing their bags, coming from villages where they are frowned upon and kept in the closet. Once in the capital, they quickly adjust to the dissipated nightlife. With high heels, transvestites attend the gay or lesbian parties, without the disapproving gaze of family and friends.

It often happens that sometimes the police are from the same province, but this does not affect them. They hunt and then ride the train back in the morning. In vain. Because the illegals, marginalized by their sexual orientation, manage to evade the police cordon and controls. And they return to Havana. It’s a matter of survival.

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 14 2011

Anduriña’s Syndrome

In the ’60s the Spanish duo of Juan and Junior popularized a song named “Anduriña”, that still can be heard today on some radio programs in Cuba and on pirated CDs, and also you can hear other versions now and again on television and in those nostalgic cabarets of the so-called “Prodigious Decade.” The theme is about a young girl called Anduriña, who escaped from her town, and in part of the lyrics of the song they make note that “she flew” and asked her to “turn quickly to port.”

The Revolution of 1959 brought us the flight of Cubans to everywhere; that is no longer news for hardly anyone, nor is the conjugal agreement that matches and prioritizes a great quantity of our young females with the goal of emigrating. So, many countries increase their populations with our compatriots, those who as Anduriñan emigrants escaped from their land to have a better life in freedom. It has been a long process for the Cuban people, and at highly elevated economic, political and social price. But the Cuban demographic scattered throughout the world can be a boomerang that helps to rebuild our country and reconcile our nation.

I hope that in the future nobody is forced to emigrate because they lost their rights and freedoms in their own country. Also, I hope and desire that some day our Anduriños can look towards their own country’s border with all the legal guarantees and “turn quickly to port” to help us rebuild the disaster that the pirates of the dictatorship have added to Cuba for more than a half century.

“My dead father you are in a photo (in many)”
and in many Springs
–in the living dead of the wide narrow place
and in the lives dying for inequality;
in the dream of liberty that never happens
and in the continuous denial of the visa of freedom.
In a long wish list of a country
and a lethargic prison country that hopes…”
Fragment of my poem ‘Dead Father’.

Translated by: BW

June 1 2011

Welcome! / Regina Coyula

It was a little more than a week ago that I was in our little life of every day, it had been like riding a time machine and stepping down in the wrong place. Many times I have spoken about my little basement. Well, I found it with unmistakable odor of Cuban public bathrooms, because I can testify that the public bathrooms in Spain smell of disinfectant or air freshener; but so that I don’t change the subject, I found my house flooded with sewage (in Spanish literally “black waters”), that beautiful euphemism for such an ugly thing. Havana Water, the company that deals with those problems was our first option. A very kind employee took down our information and informed us that the inspector would arrive within the next 72 hours. It was many hours later when the inside of the house was like a sewer, but at moment, I could hear a woman with two little kids hurling threats about the health of her children, because her situation lasted a week and hadn’t been resolved.

About 48 hours later the inspector appeared, very understanding and knowledgeable about the secrets of the plumbing of sewage. His opinion was that as the flow was coming from the under the sidewalk, Havana Waters was not responsible for my case. Now for that moment, courtesy of a friend, we hired an experienced plumber that came with 3 more and opened a tight hole in the part under the driveway parallel to my dining room, a hole where only a head of young person working inside it could be seen. The things were dirtied with the blocking and unblocking, they opened the broken tubing with a modern tubing that they had brought (purchased in some hardware store?), they connected the empty tank, refilled the new hole, that then could flood the house with clean water to disinfect it. This service didn’t appear in the Yellow Pages, and nevertheless, is essential, 60 Cuban Convertible Pesos plus lunch; nothing compared to the work those men did and the peace of mind of having the house clean.

Translated by: BW

June 13 2011

Cuban State Remains Silent About Unconstitutional Measures / Laritza Diversent

The government extended authorizations to contract workers, a decision which violates the Constitution and which no tribunal can question.

Laritza Diversent

The Council of Ministers agreed to extend the authorization to hire workers in the 178 authorized activities of self employment. The measure was announced by the Granma Newspaper, the official voice of the Communist Party of Cuba, this past 17th of May during a meeting of the Cuban government in which they intended to update the “Economic Plan of 2011″.

The accord signed by the Council of Ministers violates and disrespects precepts of the State Constitution which acknowledges that Cubans have the right to use and enjoy their own personal goods. It also guarantees property over means and instruments of personal or family work. However, it prohibits contracting salary work.

In fact, other laws from the judicial system are violated as well. Contracting a work force is considered a crime by the penal code, which is punishable by up to 3 years of prison and or a 25,000 peso fine in national currency.

A silenced vital point for sustaining of the” rule of law”. Especially in Cuba, where no court of law can rule on the law’s constitutionality and guide or influence the actions of the legislature and the government.

On the island , the People’s Supreme Court is in charge of the judicial branch, but it is the parliament that decides the constitutionality of the laws enacted by themselves, the laws decreed, decrees, and the rest of the general rules and regulations, and that also revokes the judicial rules that contradict the national supreme law.

The ease with which the measures are adopted, still when it is unconstitutional, and the silence of the government respectively, creates mistrust, because the effectiveness and supremacy of the Cuban Constitution and the exercise of the fundamental rights recognized in it are affected.

A constitutional reform would offer guarantees to citizens who decide to exercise this right, to formally prevent new restrictions about the same things by political free will.

One fears that in the future, the government will rush off to prohibit the hiring of the workforce or they will be interested in putting the brakes on the boom of the sector, as happened in the last few years of the 90s, when they began to freeze the granting of licenses to the self-employed.

According to official statistics, since 1993, when the activity was authorized, until a little before the expansion and liberalization of the self-employed workforce in October 2010, the sector was made up of approximately 87,889 persons, 0.78% of the population. In 6 months, the figure tripled. Currently, 309,728 are self-employed, close to 2.76% of the islanders.

In the middle of the economic restructuring, the Sixth Congress of the Communist Party approved self-employment; it became the only economic activity that can be exercised individually by Cubans within the island.

Also, it constitutes an employment alternative. Since October, self-employment added up to almost 222,000 Cubans, of whom 68% didn’t have labor ties to the only legally recognized employer until October 2010, when self-employed work was expanded and liberalized.

Although the decision represents a benefit for the sector, its legitimacy brings an implicit constitutional and legal reform. The parliament, the organ that supposedly expresses and represents the will of the people, has the responsibility to defend the effectiveness and supremacy of the Cuban Constitution and to guarantee the interests and rights of the cuban people.

Translated by: BW

June 6 2011

Change in Mentality / Yoani Sánchez

They came with their trucks, a grader and even a new machine for recycling asphalt. They worked all morning before the astonished eyes of neighbors who, for over twenty years, have seen their street deteriorate without repair. For the most skeptical, there was also a dash of hope with the pavement was as smooth as glass, and then another brigade appeared. This itself was unprecedented. Instead of leaving the manhole covers below the tar–as in the past–the new group of workers dismantled them and placed them even with the ground. No one could believe what was happening. This “new mentality” some said, boasting of the already noted changes in the way things are done, was palpable.

To warn motorists of the fresh cement bordering the storm drains, they left a pile of rubble around them. “You’ll see, they’ll come back to remove it,” said the optimists. But there it stays. The passage of tires was spreading the stones all over the street, pressing them into the still-soft asphalt. The remains of the reconstruction were collecting in the grating of the drains, accumulating in the gutters. Two weeks later they were still spreading their dusty presence, and creating mounds here and holes there, spoiling the finish. “Ahh, this mentality!” the dreamers corrected themselves, immediately adding, “Instead of changing how they do things they dress it up, but it’s the same mentality as ever.”

15 June 2011

Habits / Claudia Cadelo

Photo: Lía Villares

Everyone has their sillinesses, their addictions, their moments of relaxation. There are those who watch three soap operas simultaneously, others spend a great part of the day with their ears glued to the phone, and many–they tell me–would give an arm and a leg to be connected to the Internet twenty-four-seven; the latter suffer from an illness called “geographic misfortune.”  For my part, I don’t like soap operas, I have no time to talk on the phone, and of course, even if I wanted to, the Internet is a kind of platonic and impossible love I’ve longed for, for many years. I plan my Sundays punctiliously. As my mother says, “rain or shine” at half past nine in the evening I plop myself in front of the TV to watch the one series that interests me: CSI at the scene of the crime. It’s all the same to me if it’s in New York or Las Vegas, I’m an indisputable fan.

Last Sunday, five minutes late and remorseful for having missed the opening scene, I turned on the screen. I love it all: the music, the script, the characters and the technology they use. Can you imagine my face–it’s a shame I was alone–when instead of hearing the theme music by U2 that opens each episode, along with fast-paced editing, I find some sepia images and a Cuban cop, billy club and all, on the screen? At the same time, on the same channel, they decided to substitute for CSI a program called “In the footsteps,” a pathetic series produced by the Ministry of the Interior, all rights reserved and everything.

Beyond disappointing all the viewers–because the difference in quality between the two programs would be, lets say, the same as that between Playita 16, a rough little stretch of sand, rocks and concrete along the waterfront here in Havana, and the world-class beaches of the resorts of Varadero–they must be unaware of their own limitations.  Perhaps some standard-bearer could offer a phrase from Jose Marti: “Our wine is bitter but it’s our wine.” (I’d like to offer a joke, “Our wine is bitter, they must import it.”) But humility is also an exercise of intelligence and, obviously, is one of the virtues lacking at the Interior Ministry.

14 June 2011

Self-Employed Feel Threatened by Granma’s Readers / Laritza Diversent

Workers in the fourth most popular self-employment activity feel threatened after the daily newspaper Granma published opinions criticizing them in its letters column.

According to the readers, these people are not self-employed. “They are unscrupulous traders who are strangling the economy of those who work,” said S.I. Chávez Domínguez last Friday, in one of three letters published in the Cuban Communist Party’s press organ.

In an earlier letter, on April 22, J.A. García Caballero says he is not against self-employment, but “if they resell with complete impunity products sold by the State, it is a source of enrichment for unscrupulous people.”

The second was published on May 6. C. A. Méndez Feliú supports the missive of J. A. García Caballero and expresses his opinion. “His approach is exactly right, but it is not just an ill that affects Holguin, but all of Cuba, and here in Havana it is much worse.”

“These people are doing a bad thing, now they’ll take away our licenses. May the happiness in the house of the poor be short-lived,” said Marielena Camacho after a client suggested she read the letters section in last Friday’s paper.

Señora Camacho, a housewife of 48, is one of the 10,187 people who were authorized to work as producers-sellers of various items for the home, after October of last year when self-employment was expanded and made more flexible.

In early January of this year the daily paper reported that 4%, approximately 3,336 licenses of the 75,061 approved, were for this activity. The figure tripled four months later.

The self-employed are worried about the influence this could have on the opinions of those at the highest levels of government. The Council of Ministers, recognized the lack of attention to those interested in this alternative employment in the municipalities.

“In addition, they asked for documents not required in the legislation that forced them to undertake additional steps, and there was an excessive delay in the paperwork to obtain a health license,” said a press release published by Granma about the Cuban government meeting on Mary 17.

The criticisms of the Council of Ministers coincide with some of the complaints raised about self-employment in the Letters Section, where they publish 6 or 7 readers’ opinions weekly. Self-employment is one of the most debated subjects. This year alone, 14 of the 20 letters sections published in the daily contained at least one opinion on the topic.

June 14 2011

The Party Approves Guidelines on the Rights of Cubans / Laritza Diversent

Although the word freedom was absent, 12.7% of the guidelines approved by the Communists, for the five years 2011-2015, referred to the human rights of Cubans

Laritza Diversent

The Communists clarified, before beginning the process of discussing the draft guidelines, that these would cover only economic and social policy, but they pushed through reforms that affect the exercise of human rights on the island.

Cuba has been a member of the Human Rights Council of the United Nations from 2006 to 2012. In February 2008 the state signed the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. At present, they have not been ratified.

Of the 313 guidelines approved, 40 are directly related to human rights, which represent 12.7%. Most of them, 36, are grouped in item number 6, under the heading “Social Policy” and generally refer to economic and cultural rights: health, education, employment, wages, social security, etc.

The remaining 4 are related to civil rights, specifically property and freedom of movement. Although with respect to this last one there was only a statement of good intentions. The Communists would consider a policy that allows Cubans living on the island to travel as tourists. This possibility does not mean the elimination of entry and exit permits.

The ideologues of Marxism-Leninism warned that they would not allow the concentration of ownership in the non-state sector. The conference, described as historic, had raised expectations inside and outside the island, about the possibility of making purchases of cars and homes on the island.

Although there was talk of updating the economic model, there are few changes. The system will continue based on the socialist ownership of all the people of the basic means of production. However, Cubans have no legal means to control the government, when it makes use of common goods.

The State, however, decides how its citizens have to use their personal property. It has the economic freedom to create and manage companies, but allows its citizens only to operate individually, by self-employment, described by many as the economy of small shops.

Although it touched on but did not recognize the theme of human rights, the reforms were not significant. Cubans continue to have, as their only option, the possibility of owning one single home. They need state approval to exchange, lease, donate or sell it. Nor can they predict how long they will have to ask permission to leave or enter their own country.

Translated by Regina Anavy

June 10 2011

The Cuban Parliament Will Not Consult the People / Laritza Diversent

Some 6.97 percent of Cubans expressed their views about the Party Guidelines, but in the legal process of implementing them, it is not expected that the assembly will consult the people through a referendum.

Laritza Diversent

In the midst of a crisis and the collapse of the economic system, Cuban communists decided to undertake reforms to “guarantee the continuation and irreversibility of socialism.” In the debates the term “human rights” was missing. Is is that Cubans are not interested in living in freedom?

In reality, they couldn’t include the islanders in these reforms, issues like freedom of association, the right to leave or enter Cuba, or the economic initiative on equal terms with the State. The Party says what will be reformed and how. It also sends their decisions to the National Assembly to be transformed into law.

In a report released for sale on the island in the second week of May, the Cuban Communist Party presented the results of the debates with regards to the 219 proposed political, economic and social guidelines, which were later expanded to 313, to be discussed “by all the people.”

The 1,000 delegates to the Communist Congress, who represent approximately 0.009% of the population, approved the reforms. However, their principle leaders are also those with the highest positions in the government and the state and also occupy seats in parliament. There is no doubt that their decisions have the force of law. A tremendous demonstration of unity and concentration of power.

The Communist Party is the only party recognized by the system. It does not submit itself to elections, but constitutionally it is recognized as the leading force of the state. With its 800,000 members, which represents 7.14% of Cubans, they have more decision-making power than the National Assembly, the organ that represents and expresses the will of 11.2 million inhabitants.

According to data provided in its, the Cuban Communist Party has consulted more than 8 million Cubans, approximately 79.6% of the total population of the island. Some 33.9% of the participants raised their hands, gave their names and surnames, to participate in the discussions in “meetings of their base organizations, workplaces, or schools and communities.”

In practical terms that means that some 26.9% of Cubans spoke. However, only 781,644 spoke up, representing 25.8% of those who attended, or 8.76% of the attendees, and 6.97% of all Cubans. A true lesson in democratic socialism.

With the first parliamentary session of this year, the third phase of the reform process will continue, “the institutionalization.” In a strict and practical sense, it will be institutionalized without first legally implementing the approved guidelines, or the National Assembly conducting a referendum.

The question is if parliament considers it necessary to conduct a referendum, after the Communist Party’s “popular consultation.” So far there has been no statement of their intention. Everything seems to indicate the answer is no.

June 12 2011

One Day, They Will Not Return / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photo: Luis Felipe Rojas

The automobile pretentiously came to a stop and interposed itself in front of the four individuals dressed in civilian clothing. Suddenly, two more vehicles arrived and took away one woman and a man. Nobody protested, everyone was astonished by the arrest. Those being detained screamed slogans against the government, but no one dared get involved with the protest, or what for the rest of the world is better described as a kidnapping.

A neighbor from the “Hilda Torres” Holguin neighborhood was the one who described the scene to me. Those arrested were Human Rights activists who, this past May, were protesting against the government’s behavior towards their ideological counterparts in the center of the country.

“Only one young man protested and they took him away”, said Fidel Garcia Roldan, former political prisoner and victim of that kidnapping.

For some time now, we have been seeing some changes in the behavior of the political police in various regions of the country. Caridad Caballero Batista and Mari Blanca Avila were locked in a car and savagely beaten, according to testimonies offered to this blogger. Jose A. Triguero Mulet was taken to a “security house” in the municipality of Mayari in 2010 and during his entire arrest there none of his relatives received any news about him. Journalist Alberto Mendez Castello was taken from his work place in Puerto Padre and kept in a “comfortable hotel room” with a hood over his head for a few hours while they warned him.

Caridad Caballero herself was locked away in a small cell of the political police unit of San German for three days. Her young under-age son was alone at home the entire time and did not receive any response from the authorities. Various friends living outside of Cuba called the number 53-243-81-323, the office of the police unit, and they were redirected to 53-243-80-480, which is supposed to be the office of the MININT Delegation. In each of these cases, the officials swore that there was “no one there by the name of Caridad Caballero”.

On February 2008, a green Lada vehicle stopped at the door of my house while the driver, who claimed to be called Douglas and who claimed to be the 1st official of Confrontation with the enemy in the province, assured my wife that I was going to be taken to the local police barracks but he quickly turned the wheel in the first street corner and I found myself in the G2 Operations Barracks. My family waited for hours outside the unit until a clumsy official assured them that I had been taken to Holguin.

Now, the repressive forces have alternated between kicks and punches and scaring the family. There has been an abrupt turn towards what, in the Central America of the 80’s, was considered a “kidnapping”. Now, we are insulted when people do not believe our testimonies.

Our names or identities are not registered in the Penal Control record books, we are never listed as detainees, and the operational G2 officials, the police officers, and the Military Prosecutor lawyers all lazily assure, over the Penal Code and the Constitution of Republic of Cuba, that “they do not need summons or citations to detain us”. “We do not have to add you in the book of detainees”, I was assured on August 4th 2010 by Juan Carlos Laborde, the attorney of the Ministry of the Interior of Holguin, located in Marti and Narciso Lopez. Captain Laborde, didn’t you assure me that there, in that unit, positive responses were always given to the PEOPLE? “And you are not one of the PEOPLE”, he replied to me in front of another Castroite official.

Cuban police units are reservoirs of people who bitterly stare at those who are detained and scream slogans against the dictatorship. While one is sitting in the bench at the waiting room, the functionaries dressed in blue stare at you out of the corner of their eyes as they try to relate you to some sort of robbery or violation of norms. But those claims are hammered onto us by the men from the G2 dressed in civil clothes when they deal with us. Then we become food for “the fattest of the fish”.

Photo taken from Cubanacan Press Blog

12 June 2011

The New Microphones / Yoani Sánchez

For a long time the only way to get one’s hands on that gadget called a microphone was to pass through many ideological filters. Given that same paranoia, to this day few programs on our national channel are broadcast live, so that no one can deliver–to the eyes of the viewers–opinions contrary to the system. And although in recent months criticism has been timidly allowed to pass in the official media, the doors remain closed to those who do not agree with the official discourse. Hence, we have had to find other microphones, other sets, other cameras. Improvised and less professional, yes, but indisputably more free than those of the studios at 23rd and L, at Mason and San Miguel, or at the provincial broadcast centers.

From the terrace of a house, with a sheet hung as a curtain and lights borrowed from a musician, one can make films without the boring triumphalism of the Roundtable show. One example of these new spaces that are emerging is the SATS project, where “art and thought come together,” directed by Antonio Rodiles. In a broad framework for debate, guests expound on a theme and then, later, respond to questions from the public. They analyze, equally, the trajectory of a hip hop musician, the work program of an outlawed legal association, or civil society from the viewpoint of a doctor of philosophy. Afterward, each day’s filming is distributed by the same alternative networks within which blogs, films, documentaries and opinions circulate.

Still missing, it’s true, from these space of SATS and also Citizens’ Reasons, is the presence of the “other.” Of those who defend the official versions of events and who are willing to come together with us and say so in front of a camera. But however much invitations have been extended to these people from State institutions, calling on them to debate and present their arguments, they prefer not to bestow on us the belligerence of their presence. I remain hopeful, however, that one day they will arrive. Sooner rather than later they will come, perhaps before they offer us their own spaces and allow us to speak from “their” microphones.

13 June 2011

Golf, The Sport of Aristocrats, Returns to Communist Cuba / Yoani Sánchez

Che and Fidel playing golf after the triumph of the Revolution

The sprinklers cover the wide, softly undulating area with moisture. Cut so neatly, the grass looks artificial, and the little carts loaded with balls shine like the drawings in an animated cartoon. Everything is so perfect it hurts to look at it, so carefully prepared it looks unreal, dreamy, far away.

The new golf courses that are beginning to extend across Cuba appear profoundly strange to the national eye, aware as we are of the deterioration and improvisation that runs through the rest of the country. Their emergence has been preceded by infinite whispered discussions about the appropriateness, or not, of building these spaces for the luxurious entertainment of tourists in the middle of an economic crisis. Popular jokes, the criticisms of those who for years haven’t believed in the efficacy of government plans, and even the odd chorus of a reggaeton song, have nurtured the absurdity that these pockets of ostentation signify in our straitened circumstances.

The last word in this discussion has been the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party which approved the creation of these pompous entertainment venues for tourists. Number 260 in the Guidelines approved at this Party event confirms that priority will be given to the “development of these services: medical tourism, marinas and boating, golf and real estate, adventure and nature tourism, theme parks, cruises, history, culture and heritage, conventions, congresses and fairs, among others.”

The official justification has been the dire need of the national coffers to entertain visitors with their splendid pockets and well supplied wallets. “All-inclusive” travel packages have proved to be a highly profitable business for the Island’s authorities. Though a good part of the financial slice they provide goes to foreign tour operators, enough remains in the country to support the hotels.

Thus, the new marketing strategy includes the promotion of other, more glamorous, recreational options that will attract the world’s tycoons, millionaires and aristocrats. A curious twist on the part of a government that confiscated and demonized private clubs which, before 1959, offered their members a little diversion with the club and a ball.

For decades the image of a gentleman in Bermuda shorts hitting a ball was the maligned stereotype of a past that would never return. In fact, many clubs to the west of the city, where wealthy Cuban landowners and businessmen engaged in the practice, were turned into military bases, schools, or recreational centers for workers and their families. “All this to now return it to the bourgeoisie,” say the most recalcitrant Cuban Communist Party militants.

And it’s true, they’re back. Although they are aesthetically beautiful, these green expanses provoke doubts in us rather than certainties. Our suspicion is not rooted in a rejection of this sport of eighteen holes, as if we cling only to baseball, the national pastime. Rather the uncertainty comes from knowing these recreation sites will be developed in a country marked by inefficient production, improvisation at every level, and the poor quality of most services.

If we add to this the lack of water which the current drought has worsened, then it is normal for the man on the street to anxiously wonder how they are going to maintain these impeccable lawns, other than at the cost of further reductions in the supply of this precious liquid for urban areas. The fear is, as happened with previous projects, that the whole economy is now focused on supporting the new idea of “luxury travel,” to the detriment of development projects perhaps less lofty, but more likely to come to fruition.

Taken from Internet: Cristobal Herrera / AP

But the main complaint is knowing beforehand that all the investment in these areas is not aimed at us. That among the prerequisites to cross the thresholds of these leisure resorts is not just a check with numbers of more than five digits, but also the possession of a passport of any other country except our own. To know that they are there but they don’t belong to us, is one of the aspects that causes the greatest discomfort among a population that is not yet accustomed to being second class citizens in our own nation.

Without our presence, the golf courses will seem more unreal, or perhaps they will look exactly like similar facilities located in Thailand or Bermuda. They will, perhaps, be little spots of efficiency and comfort speckled across an Island submerged in the longest material collapse of its history. With perfectly cut grass watered by a constant sprinkled rain, these golf courses will enhance the contrast between tourist Cuba and the real Cuba, between those who hit the snow-white balls and those who can only watch from the other side of the fence.