English Translations of Cubans Writing From the Island
Sadly today my insomniac experience has been different
Censorship in Cuba does not exist as an institution
It is enough that MINCULT exists, my love
What a prosaic paradise we Cubans had the good fortune to draw lots for!
Translator’s note: MINCULT = Ministry of Culture
November 25, 2010
Photo: Ana Gloria Lucas
Today I honored my grandfather, but we must also celebrate life. Today is the birthday of poet Raul Rivero. I am posting this photo without editing it, because Raul celebrates among his friends Ramón Fernández Larrea, Pío Serrano, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Miguel Rivera and Rafael Alcides.
November 23, 2010
Never before have I thought of the old saying my grandmother repeated so often.
She was a living storehouse of Spanish popular sayings, which we inherited from the mother country and that enrich our culture.
I once heard a professor of Marxist philosophy say that in his saying there were all the categories of philosophy. He always started his classes by spouting off a popular refrain in the classroom.
For many years, on my planet, to be the “outside lamp” has been a daily practice, invoking an unqualified solidarity. Every so often we see a group of doctors on television, departing for some “brother countries” to bring medical care and even medicines. All this is very laudable. As is helping the victims of earthquakes and other cataclysms, but what we can’t lose sight of is that the first duty of a doctor is to “those at home.” Often you have to trek from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, to find a doctor who can give you a prescription, or take your blood pressure. The same thing happens with drugs, most of which are often unavailable.
We can say the same thing about teachers, international aid workers, and even social workers, who are sometimes sent to teach the citizens of other countries, or to change regular light bulbs for energy-saving ones. It’s not as if that is such a hard thing to do. Perhaps it’s because we don’t have any work for them to do. We also have artists who have turned themselves into “street lights” for the official propaganda. The case of the singer Silvio Rodriguez, who appears in a TV spot now advocating for the so-called Five Heroes.
We worry a lot about what happens in other countries, and we turn a blind eye to what is happening right next to us.
That famous saying once again comes to mind: Light in the street, darkness in the house.
Translator’s note: The old expression “Candil de la calle, oscuridad de la casa” (a light in the street, darkness at home) means that a person is effective (“lit up”) away from home and with others, but useless (“dark”) at home.
November 22, 2010
somewhere i have never traveled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near.
your slightest look will easily unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose.
or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;
nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing.
(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.
December 1, 2010
Note: The original of this post is entirely in English.
I still can’t believe that the Cuban delegation at the United Nations added its vote to a group of “countries that include homosexuality as a crime under the law, including the application of capital punishment for that reason, in five of them.” I didn’t invent the quoted phrase, it comes from a statement published by CENESEX (The National Center of Sex Education) to try to explain this absurdity, to justify the abominable. On a peculiar list, where some of the great suppressors of individual liberties appear, this Island also appears, despite the official discourse that has assured us for some time that abuse of homosexuals is chapter from the past.
It goes without saying that no one consulted Cubans before ratifying — in our name — a resolution that gives carte blanche to the death penalty for reasons of the victims’ sexual orientation. Not a single word is said by the official press, no transvestites have been able to go out and protest in the Plaza of the Revolution or in front of the Foreign Ministry to demonstrate their displeasure with this act of political expediency. Initially, it was the Benin delegation that pushed for a change in the resolution about extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in the world, a change that as a result of which — as of two weeks ago — the UN resolution will no longer apply if the accused is subject to execution for loving a person of their own gender. Frightened, we witness the circle joined by the intolerant, the complicity established between the doctrinaire, the silence before violations committed by others, to buy silence for when they themselves will have need of it.
It is sad that an institution like CENESEX, that has worked to promote respect for diversity, engages in verbal acrobatics so as not to call things by their name. Mariela Castro, Director of CENESEX, cannot take cover behind the terse words of a statement where one finds no condemnation proportional to the mistake committed by our delegation to the UN. This coming Sunday she will appear on a national television show, Journeys to the Unknown, to present a documentary that touches on the theme of tolerance towards gays and lesbians. I think that would be a good time to explain to us why her response has not been stronger, why her silence has the ring of an accomplice.
December 1, 2010
I wish that as adults we could ask Santa Claus to fulfill our desires. Right now, on this fresh Havana morning, with a black sky brimming with starts, I would like to have the power to fulfill my dreams.
What would I give to be sitting in a corner of the massive Camp Nou de Barcelona stadium, this Monday, November 29, to enjoy the best match up that can be seen on the planet today: el Barça-Real Madrid.
If it’s football we’re talking about, I have many dreams to fulfill. To visit the Maracaná of Rio de Janeiro during the Flu-Fla derby. Or Anfield Stadium, in Liverpool, when the Reds take the field while their fans sing, “You’ll never walk alone.”
I would also love to see a baseball game in the new Yankee Stadium in New York. Or be entertained by a seeing my idol, Kendry Morales, painting the four corners with the Angels. then eating at a Taco Bell or a McDonald’s and hopping over to the Los Angeles Lakers to see the fantastic play of Kobe Briyant and Pau Gasol.
I wonder if one day we’ll be able to be tourists. Take a walk in Madrid, Lisbon, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo or the old San Juan. If not all of them, at least one city. Whatever.
I’ve saved the best wish for last. To visit the Swiss city of Lucerne with my daughter Melany. And beside the peaceful Lake of the Four Cantons, to chat with my mother, my sister and my niece Yania.
Seven years ago, on November 25, 2003, they were forced by political circumstances to leave their homeland. My mother had two options: risk going to prison for her work as an independent journalist, or try to make a better future for her oldest granddaughter and her daughter.
Left behind in Cuba are her other child and her other granddaughter, 7, whom she has never met in person. It is the price we pay for thinking differently from the Castro brothers. My family in exile and I on this island, more of an island than ever, mired in the deteriorating economy and a ferocious crisis of the system and of values.
There should be a Santa Claus for adults too. And the power to ask for wishes and dreams, And to make them come true, in my case, to spend a few days with my family, visit places and sites that enchant me, and return promptly to Havana. The 491-year-old lady who is always there, waiting for her family to return.
December 1, 2010
I want to start, this time, making a critical clarification: what I intend to address in this post will be an exception in the blog. The purpose of this blog is to inspire thinking, offer journalistic texts (and on occasion literary ones), where analysis and critical thinking predominate, in a manner of speaking. Whether I achieve it or not depends on many factors, but certainly that is my purpose.
This time, however, I want to make a stop along the way, and to formulate a sui generis denunciation. I want to give you, the readers, a concrete opportunity to see how far the repressive-slanderous apparatus is willing to go, in its efforts to shut down the discordant voices and sing along with the official choir.
In the post, “With a Homeland, But Without a Master,” I stated briefly that certain actions were directed against me by the keepers of the absolute truth, once I decided to act and write like free young person.
Then, in “The Untouchables,” I analyzed the methods and practices used by State Security to restrict our personal freedoms, violate all our constitutional rights, and punish the non-conformists with methods that have no limits.
Today I want to bring my foundations down to earth, shedding light on of the most incredible strategies with which this the apparatchik has tried to counter my blog, and annul my standing as an intellectual.
I hope that all of those who are suspicious of our complaints, who put question marks over our stories, and who defend the legitimacy of this system, will take the time to read this extensive material which I want to present in detail.
Big Brother is watching your email
As I said in the previous post, to have a Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail account on the island is a sovereign privilege. In many institutions where there is internet access, it is a violation of the rules.
Why? It is an open secret: because State Security has not managed to “filter” the communications on these servers; ergo they force Cubans to use e-mail providers that they can effectively hack.
I, without internet access, for a long time used a national mail account with which I communicated for personal and professional reasons. Almost three months ago, the officials assigned to subvert this blog, showed me how absurd the monitoring, reading and storing the digital correspondence of Cubans can be. And how unscrupulous are the “strategies” of those so-called patriots and defenders of the truth.
I, without internet access, for a long time used a national mail account with which I communicated for personal and professional reasons. Almost three months ago, the officials assigned to subvert this blog, showed me how absurd the monitoring, reading and storing the digital correspondence of Cubans can be. And how unscrupulous are the “strategies” of these so-called patriots and defenders of the truth.
Step one: “Mambi Stinger” in Crearblog
A “reader” appeared in The Little Brother, signing himself “Pepe,” later transformed into “Poseidon,” “Alex Rodriguez,” and other aliases. If you would like to check his existence, you can trace the posts of the past two months, where you will find a couple of virulent comments under his signature.
He appeared to be the manager of a smear campaign against me. Shortly after that, this busy surfer inaugurated a blog entitled Aguijón Mambí, with the following address which no longer exists: www.aguijonmambi.crearblog.com
This first “Stinger Mambi” remained on the network for a week. Then the administrators of the Crearblog platform closed the site for violating their policy against offering offensive or pornographic content.
What did they post on this blog? A text that I regret not having preserved to be able to expose it today. But, in essence, it “denounced” Ernesto Morales Licea, as a gusano, a worm, and apprentice mercenary in the service of the Empire, for making a living trading on the images of several women, and in particular those of his fiancée who lives in the United States. In addition, he said that in Cuba this constituted the crime of pimping, and that this miserable person should be punished for it.
The official “proof” offered to certify my role as a sex merchant, was the following photo, in which I have blocked out the private areas out of elementary respect for this blog.
The photo is, incredible but true, a digital montage. Nothing more nothing less. The face corresponds to the person they claim it to be. But the body is not hers. It is the image of a naive girl who posed in front of a camera, and whose body parts served this time to “discredit” an inconvenient blogger.
Where did the comrades of State Security get the face that they used in this assembled montage? From this photo which I had sent some time ago from that national email account.
A brief overview will allow the reader to see that her face, in both images, is exactly the same, although in the supposedly nude photo her face is tilted a couple of degrees to match the “chosen” body.
The Hunters Hunted
The IP addresses of three computers used to carry out this espionage and defamation are listed below (for readers unfamiliar with these terms, the IP address identifies each computer on the internet):
200.0.24.66
190.6.74.115
200.55.152.130
It is very likely that soon they will appear, right here, the institutions or private addresses belonging to these numbers: and will be seen to be from the political apparatus from which my country has implemented this dirty and depressing game.
Step 2: Mambí Stinger on WordPress
After the failure of their venture on Crearblog, removed by the network administrators who then blocked their IP address, the employees of State Security chose a second option: to work through another platform. This time, WordPress. They created www.aguijonmambi.wordpress.com where they announced that for every blog closed on the Internet they would open ten more.
It took WordPress less than a week to also take down their poor blog.
What did they publish there? Along with the same text as the previous try (these ideological soldiers are not very creative), they published the “nude” photo of my fiancée, and added another with the very nice title: “Ernesto, a cool dude.”
The photo was this one:
I have to confess, this picture made me roar with laughter. Every time I look at it, it amuses me more. But I think that here the brave comrades started to falter in their attempt to discredit me: The original photo had appeared in this blog just days earlier, in the post, “With a Homeland, But Without a Master,” and this time all the readers of The Little Brother could confirm the clumsy montage for themselves:
Step # 3: Another E-mail Skirmish
This pitiful creativity, however, really knows no bounds. Once they realized that these posts would host nothing but cobwebs, the intelligence comrades chose a more surprising method: they sent an email with the images, and another message, to ALL the electronic addresses to whom I had ever sent, and from whom I had ever received, an email.
In other words: their filtering of my email had provided them with hundreds of addresses of my correspondents. Valuable information for their purposes.
Among the address were those of my mother, my brother, colleagues from half the world, colleagues of my fiancée, people who had contacted me for professional reasons and hundreds more.
I ask readers who received this email, with the subject line “My Truth,” to confirm what I am saying in the comments at the end of this post, to prove that I am not lying when I say this.
What did they send this time? The same photos as previously, but with a slight addition. A third image, curiously selected:
Apparently it was not an interest of this institution to declare the supposed homosexual practices of my partner. But once again, the diligent defamers came up short on ingenuity: this image corresponds to a group of photos immensely popular in Cuba, to which I referred (but of course did not publish) in the post, “Sex, Truths and Video Cameras.”
The person with white skin now being passed off as my fiancée, was simply this:
In this new attempt they took the trouble to “write” a text for the occasion. A text that would “destroy” me to all my friends, acquaintances or colleagues whose email addresses had been trapped in their web.
I reproduce here some excerpts of this text. If I don’t produce it in its entirety it if because of its great length, and to protect my readers from the poor quality of the writing. The message was titled, no more and no less than, “Ernestico the Holy One.”
“By the heat of your anger and from the moisture in your eyes, I can see that my sting has hurt you.” But I am sorry to tell you, Ernestico, that the foregoing is nothing; approaching some of your male and female friends and colleagues they have thanked me for showing your true colors and have alerted me to some other small things where I continue to see the contradictions in what you write and what you do.
“I remind you that from when we studied at Silbeto, you started with many friends and finished with few. In Santiago, to the extent that we knew you, we realized you were not a part of our group — you were truly superior, the best, even better than our old profs — this self-sufficiency in everything you said and in how little, as always, you did.
“I remember that you always looked as us from the highest step and we, for you, were nothing more than just group comrades. Who were your ‘real friends,’ those who like me didn’t have name brand shoes, good jeans, a nice shirt? Your real friends were those you got some benefit from, a big slice.
“Because of this I doubt your sincerity, I doubt what happened to you in RB, that it was like you described it. I’m sure it was calculated, well thought out, to find a pretext (as always happens with you), a story that you have been weaving little by little until you converted yourself into a true dissident, one of the good ones, one of those who are expected by our ‘dear neighbors,’ who are waiting for you with open arms. (Welcome my hero.)
and umbilical, you like things ‘good inside and out,’ at times I envy you, in truth, there are few people who have this showcase of values.
“You taught me that one can’t be squeamish with someone who plays with shit, there go some more of my snapshots. Ah, more, more, more, more and moooooooooooore.”
The Momentary End of History
I have not the slightest doubt in this second the diligent boys from intelligence are squeezing their acid neurons in search of a new plan. A new trick that in time will make itself known on this blog, and that has started, of course, with a sui generis reader whose name recently appeared here. His name is Guaitabó Cubano, and his IP address is 200.55.152.132.
Why bring these schemes to light, a blog that was not conceived as a forum for denunciations, but as a space for ideas and thoughts? For a very important reason: it is time that we prove that it’s not infantile whines, or unfounded allegations, that sustain what so many of us non-conformists on this side of the ocean confirm: in Cuba today, the exercise of freedom, the right to disagree, remains an official risk that not everyone is willing to face.
These are the consequences: defamation, manipulation, the attempt to socially ostracize everyone who refuses to remain silent before what they don’t agree with, or who simply exercise their individuality.
My decision to choose journalism itself, consistent, questionable but sincere, could be analyzed at a professional level, or even an ethical one. You could debate the partiality or impartiality of my texts, their objectivity or subjectivity. But woe to those unhappy robots who assume, in an unlucky second, that such burlesque campaigns are going to tie my hands.
Cervantes said it much better than I can through his immortal Quixote: “They are barking, Sancho. It is a sign that we are riding.” Compared to the personal satisfaction of knowing oneself useful for some, and hated by others, no phony trick has any effect.
November 27, 2010
In the back, the Cuban flag waves high above the world. Far ahead, the Hicacos peninsula stretches across the horizon. Varadero, the only town on the island that has been spared the rust, grows right there. Just don’t look down, at where we stand. Cardenas, the neighboring city, is just a mishmash of oil, industrial waste, and urban trash. And all the patriotism inspired from that highest flag and the shining glory of the nearby Varadero beach cannot change the picture.
Cardenas, Ciudad Bandera — Flagship City — was not splashed by one drop from the Gulf of Mexico’s disaster created by BP. The contamination that saturates this stretch of land is caused by human activity in the ocean, the waste from Varadero beach, and the industrial presence along the shore including none other than the emblematic and prosperous distillery. Yet, the real disaster is the complete lack of concern of those who are supposed to respect and revere the place where our flag was first raised. All this in a country where there are laws to punish the flag itself.
Under these circumstances, the idea of attaining sustainable growth is more like the uncertainty of walking endlessly towards under-development without a sign of relief.
Cubans have not been taught to honor Cardenas as is the case with La Demajagua or Dos Rios. What happened in Cardenas in 1860, although of little influence on immediate political changes, was extremely relevant for the history of the island and at least two other countries: Spain and the USA. Yet, we, as people, are afraid to learn our history, the real one not the convenient heroic one that exists only in books and in the heads of some who benefit from their own version.
That year, the Spanish-Venezuelan Narciso Lopez entered the city of Cardenas. He waved in his hands the flag that has become our symbol to the human race and so it will be as long as we think the concept of nation is bigger than humanity itself. Back then, that idea did not call for too many emotions. The flag was just a rag designed by Teurbe-Tolon and it was meant to be carried by Lopez during his invasion of Cuba. It also provoked complex political associations for it resembled the one used by independent Texans years earlier to separate from Mexico and join the Union. The profuse blood shed of 1868 and the cautious American foreign policy turned a flag with northern flare into the flagship of an army of independent republicans.
In Cardenas, the population, Spaniards and Cubans alike, calmly allowed Narciso Lopez to land. People were not willing to change their world. Life was about getting by, as it is today, while the city grows thanks to tourism and the seashore rots under their nose. Maybe the citizens and officials of Cardenas think the city or the coastline do not belong to them. Perhaps they believe their space ends at the front door of their houses and offices. They are not yet convinced that the city, like the country, belongs to all of us.
Meanwhile, the flag in front of which we should kneel stands tall, two hundred meters away from a swamp of waste. A small swamp that pushes itself beyond the horizon all over the island.
Translated by: Wilfredo Dominguez
November 24, 2010
This is not the first time I felt like telling Mariela Castro* that she should have remained silent. It’s a strange reaction in me, because normally I encourage others to express whatever they want to say. With her, however, it is hard for me, and there is something called decency which — for those who, like her, are public and political figures — is essential.
The first time was when she called Yoani Sanchez an “insignificant ‘cocky hen’.” That a politician would insult a journalist over an uncomfortable question is shameful enough, but that the heiress daughter should allow herself to call a Cuban citizen “insignificant” was, without a doubt, the height of cynicism on the part of our nomenklatura. However, it’s worth mentioning that the question posed by the author of Generation Y was not as uncomfortable as it could have been, and that Mariela’s overreaction is evidence of her allergy to freedom of the press. In my opinion, a truly difficult question would have been, for example, to ask why CENESEX (The National Center for Sex Education) doesn’t present the government with a claim on behalf of the homosexuals who suffered repression and abuse in the sixties, seventies and eighties, and who deserve compensation and an official apology. That question, I believe, would have given our princess a heart attack.
Now, CENESEX has this statement on its home page. It reminds me of a popular joke: The Special Period didn’t benefit me nor harm me, but quite the opposite. It turns out that Cuba has the exclusivity of being the only country in the Americas that “adds its vote to the group of countries that include homosexuality as a crime under the law, including the application of capital punishment for that reason, in five of them.” It’s worth mentioning that CENESEX is the only institution recognized by the government that supposedly represents the rights of homosexuals. What impudence, gentlemen, to read such a phrase on the page of the National Center for Sex Education,” and signed by its director!
*Translator’s note: Mariela Castro is the daughter of Raul, and director of CENESEX.
November 30, 2010
After a long time without participating in readers’ debates, I am encouraged by comments arising from the post “Cuba: potential exit scenarios”, which, as I stated at the end of the text, was written precisely with the intention of the discussion of the proposals I listed in it.
Doing a general review, some readers coincide on points that one can almost say are in agreement, for instance, preferring changes in Cuba to be peaceful, seeking consensus, eliminating exclusions, overcoming social apathy, giving up positions of hatred, and encouraging participation by the young. Other readers exposed somewhat more complex views; there are also extreme positions and plenty of pessimism (justified, by the way), from those who believe that nothing is worthwhile. I first want to insist that, as far as I am concerned, all criteria is valuable, but I can’t help but disagree with some cases and qualify others. If we want consensus, it must be assembled. I will try to be as concise as possible, although such a long, turbulent and complicated scenario as the current Cuban reality and the circumstances that led up to it cannot be summed up in this small space, nor will it be completed in a forum of such modest proportions as ours. I ask of you, therefore, to be patient with me. I will dedicate two posts (not necessarily continuous) to the issues, to avoid a long write-up.
I will base some of my principles on interesting points that have been made among the commentators. One reader believes that the intervention of international agencies, proposed as a possible solution to a humanitarian crisis should not be considered, since such a case should have occurred before 1994, when hunger and poverty reached high levels in the midst of the worst economic crisis when the socialist bloc collapsed, a phenomenon that was officially and euphemistically called “The Special Peacetime Period”. However, despite the hardships of those years, and particularly between 1993 and 1994, what might be described as a “humanitarian crisis” did not quite take place. It is true that there was a large segment of the population that was more vulnerable, including the elderly without filial support, children from dysfunctional homes, families with lower incomes and, of course, the most vulnerable groups in crisis situations: the physically and mentally handicapped, people with chronic illnesses, the homeless, etc. But at the same time, there were factors that helped alleviate the ravages of the shortages relatively quickly, among them, the legalization of the dollar, foreign capital investment, the proliferation of self-employment and -of course, a very important role- the family remittances. We should also not forget that, back then, the ration card was “more generous”, and we must take into account that a series of products was distributed that –though they were of low quality- they served the poorest tables. I keep those years’ cards, significantly more voluminous than today’s. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t deny the terrible wrongs suffered by most Cubans at that time, but, according to the parameters that international organizations establish, so far, Cuba has not actually produced a humanitarian crisis as it has happened in Rwanda, for example, or the former Yugoslavia, even in Haiti and in many other parts of the world, with the ingredients of massacres, famines that have claimed thousands of lives, permanent epidemics, wars, conflicts (ethnic or otherwise), the absence of social control, anarchy, etc.
On the other hand, the 1994 emigration was massive, but that is not the only or sufficient requisite for the intervention of such organizations. Previous migrations had also been massive, as in 1980 (Mariel) or 1967 (Camarioca); and in the first few years of the revolution, let’s say between 1959 and 1963, when extreme positions were being defined, both in the Island as well as in its foreign policy, and the process was polarized, which led to the flight of thousands of Cubans who were affected in some measure by laws dictated by the new regime, those who thought that the revolution would be a brief and transitory period, or that they simply did not share in Castro’s politics, among other reasons. There are mass migrations from the world’s poorest countries to more developed and rich ones. Revolutions have also driven migration. It is the story of Humanity, and there is little that international organizations can do about it.
Another position I do not share, but one that encourages a debate of vital importance, is the eternal accusation against the young. The view that young Cubans are apathetic, irresponsible or comfortable with the status quo does not seem very reasonable or realistic. It is true that there is a general crisis of values, that the lack of expectations creates a sense of frustration among the young and that fleeing the Island has become the hope of thousands of… young people? Isn’t that what they have seen and are still seeing their elders do for decades? Hasn’t it been and still continues to be the desire of tens of thousands of Cubans well into adulthood? Young people have also been leaving for 50 years, ones who did not decide to change the reality they rejected, ones who elected to (sacred word, by the way) create a destiny for themselves away from their country of origin. The “youth of today” are not, then, the ones who circumvent confrontation or the promotion of civil liberties. “Today’s youth” are not exactly the ones who are apathetic. It is not fair, nor can we forget that these young people of today saw us (their parents and grandparents) avoiding responsibility, failing in our professional projects, surviving within the double standard of public compliance and private protest, accepting, lying, often nodding in silent complicity, and always afraid.
It is even less accurate to say that today’s youth lack a rebellious spirit. They may become disoriented or confused at times, but they are in many ways nonconformists and rebellious. Why should we demand from them that which the ones with the most experience, the most reflexive and the best prepared have not been able to accomplish? I’m not saying we should leave things as they are, I say we should infect them with willpower and awaken in them the courage that every young person carries inside; I say we should chart a path of freedom where a lot of them will run us over. The phenomenon of the alternative blogosphere is there, begun by a handful of Cubans, mostly mature adults, which today includes a number of invaluable young people. Involving our youth requires the direct involvement -with positive actions- of the less young, members of all the forces of the emerging civil society, including the opposition, under all insignias, who must work on it.
Young people have been held back for half a century, submerged in the midst of a system that told them the future was a done deal, that destiny had already been charted by a process born of violence. At home, we did not tell them: “come on, let’s change things, let’s demand our rights and let’s make the Cuba we want”. The fact is that we told them: “stay put, don’t believe them, but shut up so you don’t get hurt; pretend to obey, study, get an education, one day things will change… and if they don’t change, leave. Look for a better world than this death place. Fighting the windmills is not worth the trouble, the others definitely do not appreciate it nor deserve it”. That has become the national truth. We haven’t exactly been a paradigm of civility and responsibility to our young people. Even worse, we have failed them. How can we claim from them what we are responsible for? Who made them the way they are? Are we better than they are by any chance? I don’t think so. I am especially grateful that some readers have debated such a crucial theme as the role of the young people in the process of change, because, to win their trust and to engage them at the end of a dictatorship and the nation’s reconstruction, is the greatest possible utopia in today’s Cuba. In spite of everything, I, for one, will continue to bet on the young.
Translated by: Norma Whiting
November 30, 2010
Last night, on the television of my planet I was watching a newscast of Telesur*, which has become fashionable, not for its content (very similar to ours), but rather for the number of images (which we are not accustomed to). I was able to see, almost with amazement, what happened in many of the polling stations in Haiti.
Ballot boxes tampered with and thrown on the floor, with plenty of ballots, some already used by voters, scattered everywhere. Disorder and confusion reigned in the midst of an election. I do not understand how it was possible to conduct it, in the tragic setting of a cholera epidemic and in the aftermath of the earthquake, from which, incredibly, they haven’t begun to recover, despite immense help received from many countries
Moreover I was shocked to hear early on the news, on shortwave, that international agencies were satisfied regarding the outcome of the election.
I asked myself one question immediately. How is it possible that this chaos, called an election, has been approved by the OAS, and not the well-organized and freely carried out, democratic and transparent election in Honduras, with the high participation of the people who expressed their civic will?
*Translator’s note: Telesur is a Pan American Television network, headquartered in Venezuela, which was started in 2005 as a project to present the viewpoint of international and regional leftist intellectuals.
Translated by Ricote
November 30, 2010
In Cuba there aren’t stores where video games are sold, but their fans — and we can almost talk, in some cases, about professionals — generally young men, arrange their favorite games to be brought up to date by version, hacked, as it is supposed. There exists an underground market where the providers have everything to satisfy, in a spontaneous organization of market laws.
But last week a game rocketed up in demand and even those who didn’t play Super Mario wanted the latest version of Call of Duty. And all because the Granma newspaper dedicated a piece to speaking horribly about said video game and in passing about American imperialism. Or the other way around, because this military game, which began with missions in the Second World War, was set in the Cold War and the first mission that the player must complete is the assassination of … You guessed it!
Translated by: JT
November 29 2010
Millions of Cubans are beside themselves with delight. The biggest sporting competition in Cuba starts on Sunday, November 28th in the old Cerro Stadium, today called the Latinamerican Stadium. And they’re celebrating the 50th season of baseball, the King of Sports on the island.
January 14, 1962, in his inseparable olive green uniform and a pair of cheap sunglasses, Fidel Castro inaugurated the first national series with amateur players. On that day, he said “it is a triumph of free ball over slave ball”, referring to professional baseball which before 1959 was played in the country.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. The Latinamerican, the biggest stadium in the country, the home stadium of the Industriales, Havana’s home team and current champion, has no artificial lights and presents a lamentably deteriorated state.
The national series is surrounded by debate. Like the case of Frederic Cepeda, one of the best ballplayers who mysteriously wasn’t a member of the national team which took part in the 17th World Cup celebrated in Taipei, and afterwards, stayed off his team, the Roosters of Sancti Spiritus.
Such was the resulting hullabaloo, that some days before the inauguration of the new season the sporting hierarchy decided that Cepeda would be a member of the team from Sancti Spíritus. One interview with the ballplayer was published in the local newspaper, Escambray.
One would hope that in the press conference called for Tuesday the 25th, they’d give more details and clear up the situation of other players excluded from the national series. The lack of information usually makes of all classes of rumors and speculations explode among fans.
It is then when people try to find out what is said or published in Miami. From the Miami press some recent declarations of Antonio Castro, son of el Comandante, an orthopedic doctor by profession and vice president of the Cuban Baseball Federation were extracted.
According to his comment, during the celebration of the World Cup in Taipei, Castro made a proposal to permit that Cuban ballplayers could play in the professional leagues of other countries.
In the other ear also arrived the name of the latest “deserter”: Yasiel Balaguer, 17 years old, who excelled as a first caliber batter.
“Ball”, as the Cubans call baseball, is the only spectacle capable of filling a place made for 55,000 people not called together by the government. But owing to official censure, its millions of fans cannot follow the best leagues in the world, like those of the United Stats, Japan, South Korea, the Dominican, Mexico, or Venezuela.
Ball, besides, is a question of State. The teams for the national series correspond to the seats of the provincial communist parties. Among the tasks of the First Secretary of the Party in any province is that of attending to the material needs of his territory’s team.
Although more than 350 ballplayers have deserted in the last twenty years, the governmental press maintains its usual silence. The people find out from foreign newspapers; e-mails from friends who live abroad, or on Radio Martí — United States government broadcaster — which since 1985 transmits to the island and whose signal is strongly jammed by Cuban military engineers.
To try to stop the incessant flow of desertions, they’ve made living conditions better for the players during the national campaign. They travel in air-conditioned buses, sleep in comfortable hotels, and eat their fill. Even so, they earn laborers’ salaries. And because of that, at the first sign of change, they abandon their Fatherland to play as professionals, and in not few cases, earn salaries with six zeros*.
Secrecy and mystery surround matters related to baseball in Cuba. Nobody questions the professionalism of the official journalists, but their lack of cojones is criminal when it’s time to communicate and debate the red-hot themes, with the exception of some radio announcers.
In the middle of this grey outlook, at last comes the best time of the year — baseball season. And with it, the enthusiasm and noise in the stadiums. Good news for the ordinary Cuban.
Iván García
Photo: Getty Images, 2009. Fans seated around the statue raised in the bleachers of the Latinamerican Stadium, in homage to the late Armando Luis Torres. Better known as Armandito “El Tintorero”, for years he was the leading cheerleader or fan of Cuban baseball.
*Translator’s note: a salary with “six zeros” is, in English, a “seven-figure” salary.
Translated by: JT
November 28 2010
November 24, 2010
November 29, 2010