Saturday Night Fever / Regina Coyula

My friend Elena Madan has an employment contract with the National Ballet of Cuba in Guadalupe, a little island in the Caribbean, where she also teaches classes in water ballet and does administrative work at the office of the telephone company. It is a lot of work, and so Elena takes her vacations seriously, but as she has family in Cuba she ends upcoming often. On Saturday Elena invited my sister, my niece and me to a place called Jazz Café.

The first question was what would I wear. I don’t have any clothes, though later I realized this was an unnecessary worry. But we women usually get worked up on that subject. As it turned out, the place was informal and friendly, FRIGID!, nice waiters, and a varied cuisine. I enjoyed seeing live César López’s Havana Ensemble (the poet, not the other one), I shook my bones with the waka-waka, Charanga habanera y Kool and the Gang. At 54, I knew how I could spend a Saturday night with freely convertible money.

September 22, 2010

Mobile-Activism 2 / Yoani Sánchez


How do I connect a mobile phone to Cuban Twitter?

1. First you must connect to the Internet and and get an account at http://www.twitter.com

2. Keep the user name and password you are given in a secure place.

3. Add to your mobile phone address book a new contact named Twitter with the number 119447624801423.

4. Send four messages to that number. Each message will include a command and it is important that you send them in the order listed below, without spaces in front of or after the words, and without putting accents and “ñ”. If you make a mistake you must start again, from the beginning:

start
username
password
ok

5. Of course, where it says “username” put your Twitter username.

6. The four messages must be sent one after another. Before you begin you must verify that you have enough credit on your phone to send all four message.

7. As soon as you are done, you may send text messages (SMS) of no more than 140 characters to the number 119,447,624,801,423 which is already added to your cell phone address book.

8. Every text message sent to that number, once you have completed the procedure above, will be published on the Internet automatically.

9. Each text message sent to Twitter will cost 1 convertible peso, so prepare your wallet.

Source of text: http://twitpic.com/2pqj3q

September 22, 2010

Practical Instructions for Creating an Enemy / Ernesto Morales Licea

At age nine, a fall from a considerable height would give a resounding twist to his life. It would prevent him from ever walking again. He had to endure endless surgeries, which turned his adolescence into a cruel and painful time.

Despite all this, perhaps the God whom he invokes so frequently rewarded him with a spirituality strong enough to prevent his misfortune from ruining his smile. With barely any effort, now forty, he carries an undeniable distinction: enjoying, in his city, a much greater popularity than someone far from power or glory could be expected to achieve.
His name: Carlos Jesús Reyna. His house, located on one of the busiest arterials of eastern Bayamo, is a required meeting place for the most diverse and colorful characters of this city. His circle of friends and acquaintances range from respected doctors and lawyers, to criminals famous for their chronic misdeeds.
He knows that, after many vicissitudes, to be able to count on his legion of friends is an outright defeat for the system he suffered.

Because this man from Bayamos whose image could not pass unnoticed among the loftiest multitudes, with his long hair and his clothes which loudly declare him a fan of Argentine football, has, for almost two decades, suffered the effects of a political marginalization he never deserved.

BACKGROUND

– What was the origin of your political confrontation in this city?

Look, there’s a history to the fact that marked a before and after in that regard. It was a complaint that I made in 1993 against four police officers for abuse of authority.

Until then, I never had problems with any official body.

However, the nightlife I always had with several friends — we stayed until after midnight in some parks — attracted the arbitrariness of the police who, without any reasons or legal basis, expelled us from public places, supposedly because we were potential criminals.

Why? Because they said that someone who works can’t stay out late in the street. If we were out later than they thought we should be, we were antisocials. All of us were studying or working, but that wasn’t good enough for them. They came to arrest us and other times they fined us.

I denounced this situation, and two of the four that I accused were punished by military tribunals. However, as you will understand, with that I earned myself the eternal hatred of the police of this city. It was really a preamble to what would come some months later.

– The accusation of the crime of “enemy propaganda” …

Exactly. They hung me on the cross of being an antisocial who painted subversive anti-government posters.

– Tell me about that incident in detail.

– That was in the early morning of June 13, 1993.

Four of us friends had just arrived at Cespedes park, I think we had been sitting there some twenty minutes when someone called my attention to the benches, near us, where there were several signs written on the granite benches themselves in green crayon. The signs read “Down with Fidel” and “Down with the dictatorship.”

One of the first who noticed them, out of nervousness I think, started trying to erase them but the crayon wouldn’t come off easily. So we decided to leave, knowing that it could create serious problems for us.

– You went to your homes?

– No. It was Saturday and we went to the party at some other friends, not far from there.

I don’t think we had been there ten minutes when a police operation, with three patrol cars and several cops in uniform stopped the party. They arrested everyone, including those who hadn’t been anywhere near where the signs were painted.

For me, because of my physical condition, they sent for a separate patrol car. They took us to the station and put us in the cells without even asking for an explanation. When we asked them, the only thing they said was, “You know why you are here.”

The next day, Sunday, they took us to another station, highest security, underground, where they investigated all os us and processed us for crimes against State Security.

Because of my condition they locked me in a cell for women, because it was the only one that had a mattress. In the others there were only cement beds. In fact, I had spent the previous night in my wheelchair because where they detained us there were only cement beds and to put me there wold have certainly caused me to have sores.

We were in this other station almost 72 hours. They didn’t give us reasons, we had no lawyers nor laws involved. They kept telling us to confess, that we knew what we had done. They interrogated us about every hour, without letting us sleep or rest. They tested our handwriting; we had to write “Viva Fidel” and “Viva la Revolucion” about 700 or 800 times on pieces of paper.

After the third day they themselves feared for my physical state, because I said I wasn’t going to eat or drink water. By the way, I remember that before that, there was a day I asked for a towel to dry my face, and they gave me, like a joke, a rag for cleaning the floor. Then, because of my strike, they took me home, in a kind of house arrest. The rest had to stay there as prisoners for a week.

In those days no one could visit me, no friend nor family member: only the officials who came to interrogate me almost nonstop.

Until one day they found the real author of those posters who had nothing to do with us and confessed his guilt form the beginning. At that time they decided to release all the detainees and declare us innocent. The same State Security decreed us innocent.

– But what was this “decree”? Was it written?

No, they had meetings in the neighborhoods where each one lived, except in mine, to clarify that they had been processed by mistake and that they were innocent.

– What about you?

I was the only one they didn’t do this “act of reparation” with. They apologized to my parents, and to me, but nothing in public. We thought it was all over, when the truth was the real consequences were yet to come.

THE STREETS BELONG TO THE REVOLUTIONARIES

– What were the consequences afterward of that incident on you?

Then real police war against me started. There was a hostility that affected me in everything having to do with public life.

As a result of my complaint against the four officers, I became known among them, because it is rare here that anyone would dare to charge them, so they seized the excuse to discredit me socially, and to keep me in a state of unbearable social pressure.

They threatened anyone who came near me. If a girl stopped on the street to talk with me, they came up and in front of me asked her for her identification, and they told her she was having a relationship with someone cursed and she could be judged for that.

To give you an idea: I couldn’t go to the movies, nor the nightclubs, under the ridiculous pretext that I could provoke an attack in these public places. They would come and take me out of the movie theater with this pretext. Also they wouldn’t let me enter some places where food is sold…

– Such as?

A hamburger joint this city had at the time.

As it was in the middle of the Special Period, the lines to buy hamburgers were endless and the police were needed to organize them.

One of those days I was in the line and an official called Adis Zamora, who is still a policeman today, took me out of the line and publicly embarrassed me saying that I had no right so even eat a piece of bread produced by this Revolution.

Another day, in the Sierra Maestra Hotel, another official also still active, named Rafael Varela Luna, told me I could never enter this hotel. That the streets and all the places on them belonged to the revolutionaries.

Any time I left my house, without five minutes there would be a policeman controlling where I went and who I talked to. They publicly humiliated me: they told me I was crippled, they offended me.

– And at some point this situation started to change?

It changed because of a letter I sent to the Council of State in 1994, asking for a writ of protection from the President of the Republic because in my city I had no constitutional guarantees. My life had no sense or protection, because any officer could threaten me with total impunity.

I wrote another letter to the Commission for Human Rights in Cuba. I even remember that the preist who officiated at that time in Bayamo, Father Palma, prayed for me publicly, and let the Cathedral know about my case.

I began to take on the connotation of being a leader which I had never wanted. I was simply a citizen who wanted his constitutional rights to be respected.

– And was there a response from the Council of State?

They sent two colonels sent to my house to talk to me. They investigated, they found that my report was true, and took some measures with those principally responsible. They guaranteed me that this police harassment was going to stop right then and there.

But by then I had expressed my complete distancing from the organizations such as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), I had decided not to vote in the elections, because I considered myself betrayed and unjustly punished by all the official bodies around me.

I remember that I was no longer afraid of going to jail for expressing my disagreement publicly, because I was being held prisoner on the street just as if I was in prison.

They forced me to confront the system directly. Before they had built this story I was an ordinary citizen and although I had my own ways of seeing what was going on in this country, I didn’t express them publicly.

But when you see that you are attacked and charged with no justice of any kind, and that all the “factors” of society are against you, it becomes impossible to maintain a position far from complaint and confrontation.

BRIEF EPILOGUE

We began our friendship about five years ago. A closeness based on affection, solidarity and mutual interests: music, football. I don’t exaggerate if I say that he is perhaps one of the most original and admirable people I have ever met.

Not only because from his suffering he has built an amazing personality, which appeals to the engineer as much as to the alcoholic, but because he has succeeded, through sheer dignity, in deflating this explosive defamation campaign that had been launched against him.

Most of all, his real merit is shown in that those around him disregard those allegations. Because being true, I must say it: Carlos Jesús Reyna was never able to be the same guy from Bayamo who previously went through the day, in his wheel chair, just like any other regular citizen.

The first time I was investigated myself in the neighborhood where I live, had its origin in my friendship with him. When another friend we have in common was the boyfriend of the girl who is today his wife, they called the mother of the girl to tell her, “Be careful, your daughter is now the girlfriend of someone who goes around with a boy who paints signs against the Government.”

He knows it. We all know it. At this point it is simply material for jokes. Fortunately, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, tyranny and evil never have the last word.

September 20, 2010

Administrative Silence on the Judicial Route / Laritza Diversent

Article 63 of The Constitution of the Republic of 1976, revised in 1992, provides that “Every citizen has the right to address complaints and petitions to the officials, and to receive the appropriate attention or responses within a reasonable time, according to the law.”

Article 63 of The Constitution of the Republic of 1976, revised in 1992, provides that “Every citizen has the right to address complaints and petitions to the officials, and to receive the appropriate attention or responses within a reasonable time, according to the law.”

What happens if the authority remains silent before a protected citizen request in exercise of the right of petition?

The interested party can understand his request to be refused, by administrative silence (negative silence).

Administrative acts resulting from silence may be appealed through both the administrative agency and the courts. They take effect upon the expiration of the deadline for decision and notification (or attempted notification) of the specific ruling, as if it had actually been issued.

The deadlines for filing appeals are to be calculated from the expiration of the deadline for decision and notice.

The Law of Civil Procedure, Administrative and Labor, in effect in Cuba since 1977, recognizes the right of citizens who do not receive a response to bring suit against an administrative official who does not resolve any petition within the legal deadline. Interested parties may consider their applications rejected, and take appropriate action against the refusal.

But the procedure is virtually obsolete on the island, resulting in part from the legal ignorance that Cubans suffer from, and because few lawyers dare to pursue a lawsuit against a government representative.

Note: To proceed on the judicial route it is necessary to exhaust the administrative remedies (appealing all issues at every available level).

September 10, 2010

Legal Representative of the Minister of Justice Appears in Court / Laritza Diversent

This past August 10th, Dr. Diego Fernando Cañizares Abeledo, a specialist in the Legislative and Advisory Directorate of the Ministry of Justice (MINJUS), appeared before the Second Civil and Administrative Chamber of the the Havana Provincial Court, representing Justice Minister Maria Esther Reus González on the administrative claim filed by the attorney Wilfredo Vallín Almeida, based on the silence of the Administration, asserting the right of appeal recognized in the Constitution of the Republic.

In his brief, the Minister’s lawyer described the claim as “nonsensical.” In his opinion, the plaintiff, Mr. Vallín Almeida, chose “a legal wrong way. We do not know for what specific purpose,” he argued. In his view, the President of the Cuban Legal Association should try to gain legal recognition through the Associations Act, without the Ministry of Justice being required to issue anything in writing.

On April 7, 2009, The lawyer Wilfredo Vallín Almeida, president of the Cuban Law Association, a union of dissident lawyers, on behalf of his organization, had asked the Registrar of Associations of MINJUS to certify that there was no Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) in the country with the same name and purpose as the association of attorneys.

The state agency never issued the certificate, a document which is essential to continue the legal procedures for setting up the union. In March 2010, the group reiterated its request and received no response. The lawyers, on administrative appeal to the Minister, Reus González, lodged a complaint for breach of the required legal formalities, which was also ignored.

The Law of Civil, Administrative, and Labor Procedure (LPCAL) provides that if the administrative authority at any level of the hierarchy does not resolve an appeal by the legal deadline, or after the expiration of 45 calendar days, then the application shall be considered rejected, with the effect of establishing that implied rejection for the subsequent appeal.

Cañizares Abeledo, appointed by Ministerial Resolution No. 215 on August 6, 2010, alleged that it was impossible to deliver to the court the applicant’s government record, and the administrative decision of the head of Justice relating to the matter raised by the plaintiff, Mr. Vallin Almeida, claiming that the agency had no documents regarding the matter.

Translated by: Tomás A.

September 9. 2010

Stories of My Neighbors (I) / Ángel Santiesteban

Photo: Alejandro Ascuy

ALL NIGHT I LISTENED to my neighbor’s wife weeping. At intervals she claimed to be tired. Very tired, she insisted. Most of the time her husband wouldn’t respond, but when he did, he agreed: me too. Then she would moan, in a choking way that called to mind the crying of childhood. My anguish grew and dreams escaped me. I got used to it. The lament came to seem like inevitable music.

In the morning the sound of hammers makes me look out the window. My neighbor, the husband, with his two teenage sons, is making a raft from several empty tanks. I looked on the roof and they no longer have anything to store water. The wife spends the whole day shut in the house. She doesn’t open the windows, clearly so as not to watch the preparations for the family’s escape.

By the afternoon they already had the vessel ready. A refrigerated truck came to collect the raft. The three men went into the house to say goodbye, one by one. They came out even more sad, as if it were possible to increase the burden of so much anguish.

Before closing the refrigerator door they looked back at the house, perhaps hoping to see her one last time. But she didn’t look out. They gave the money to the truck driver, who then counted it and they took off. When the neighbors saw the dogs running behind the truck they couldn’t understand their desperation.

Long days passed and she remained shut up inside her house. From time to time worried neighbors called on some pretext, but she didn’t answer.

A sister who came from the countryside broke down the door. The doctors assured them that her family still hadn’t put the raft in the water and that she had been poisoned.

September 20, 2010

Doctrine, Cradle and Bread / Luis Felipe Rojas

Photos/Luis Felipe Rojas

A few days before the start of the new school year I was browsing my son Malcom’s school books and it seems to me he is going to have a heavy weight to struggle through. My wife and I bought colored jackets and cut our pieces of nylon to cover them, and pasted some little figures on them so they would look better. But what worries me is not the outsides, but rather the venomous burden he will receive in the next ten months.

His second grade reading book is infected with cartoons with militias, photos of Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara, an Abel Santamaría, the Moncada barracks, a high contrast black splotch that must be Fidel Castro jumping off a tank at the Bay of Pigs… and a thousand more slogans.

In the ruckus of the mornings to come his teacher will inject him, as if fulfilling a sacred duty, what she herself was injected with over nearly half a century of existence: hatred of the enemy, love of the leader, attachment to an ideology that at his age he can’t evaluate as optional.

In the middle of the new school year, the textbook — “which, as a sign of revolutionary benevolence, they have not made us pay for” — we see the lessons for April (a month that reminds me of the flowers the poets talk about), in which my son will have to forcibly repeat that yes, he wants to be like Che Guevara, while he salutes with his open hand to his forehead. Also, in October he will have to complete the Camilo-Che Lesson, where they always talk more about the latter.

It is a trap against the innocence of his nearly seven years. Banners with images of “The Five,” spies imprisoned in the United States, the television jingles that are not commercial but ideological, in short, a fence that it will be very difficult to escape from without a scratch. It will be up to us at home to speak of spring and winter, the pollen of the flowers and the stars of the night. Similarly we will have to bring him down to earth to teach him to plant the trees that will give shade, flowers and fruits tomorrow, and to try by any means to teach him to be a good man. It will be a long and thorny road.

September 19, 2010

Layoffs and Privitization / Claudia Cadelo

Working for the state is an ordeal: the wages are not nearly enough, productivity is zero, accountability is chaotic and worst of all you have to put up with the torpid meetings of a union which represents anyone but the worker. There are, however, those who have accepted all these conditions stoically and have endured years and years of state control in their jobs. It is not masochism that ties them to the apron strings of the state bureaucracy, but rather the little faith that a private investment will see them into their old age.

This isn’t the first time the government has decided — with a rope around its neck — to allow citizen initiative to sustain the national economy. We already saw, in the nineties, the emergence of private restaurants — los paladares — B&Bs, taxis, and little jobs in food service and household help. Today there is little left of that explosion of the self-employed. That is the problem: for how long will they let you keep your business?

To launch a restaurant, rent a room, or sell pizzas is not a short-term investment. People want to see the fruits of their efforts but the likelihood that the bureaucracy will, one day, knock on your door to take away all your permits has cycled through the history of the Revolution. I have a friend who had been operating a fairly popular restaurant for two years, when one afternoon an inspector came and took her papers to “verify them.” She is still waiting for them to be returned and in the meantime she cannot open the doors of her restaurant. She has received no explanation. She committed no crime.

September 20, 2010

The Claria, From the Rivers to the Sewers / Yoani Sánchez

Excerpt from documentary by Fabian Archondo and the
Foundation for New Latin American Cinema.

My son is at that age where he could eat the columns of the house if we didn’t keep an eye on him. He opens and closes the refrigerator door, as if he believes that this appliance could produce — just for him — food. His appetite is so insatiable and so difficult to satisfy, in the midst of shortages and high prices, that we’ve nicknamed Teo after that voracious fish, “La Claria.” His ravenousness reminds us of this species which some bright person brought to our country to promote fish farming, and which is now a pest in our rivers and lakes. Of course this is just a family joke, because even our fretful adolescent is incapable of wolfing down the things that enter the mouth of this walking fish.

Blue-gray, with a pronounced mustache and the ability to survive up to three days out of water, this African Catfish has already become a part of our country, both rural and urban. One of the few animals that can survive in the polluted Almendares river, it has managed to displace other, tastier, specimens in the fishmongers’ freezers. Not even its ability to adapt, nor its ugliness, however, have aroused as much alarm as its extreme predatory nature. Clarias eat everything from rodents and chickens, to puppies and every kind of fish, frog or bird.

As a solution to the food problems of the so-called Special Period, after the collapse of the Soviet block, our authorities imported this foreign species and so precipitated colossal damage to the ecosystem. Similar irresponsibility had already occurred with the introduction of tilapia and tench fish, but the results were incalculably more dramatic with this dark and elusive creature which today reigns in our waters. Whether nestling in the mud, emerging from a manhole in the middle of the city, or crawling along the side of the road, its spread demonstrates the fragility of nature when faced with ministerial directives. I have no doubt that this fish will be with us for a long time to come, long after those who introduced it into the country are only a memory, as fleeting as crumb in the mouth of a claria.

September 20, 2010

Cuban Teachers Desert An Increasingly Despised Profession / Yoani Sánchez

Exclusive to the Huffington Post

For a long time when I heard the word teacher, it brought to mind the word respect; it was one of those unconscious associations from which the psychoanalysts draw surprising conclusions. I associated the noun that indicated this profession with the names and faces of all those who taught me from elementary school through the university, men and women endowed with patience and wisdom.

Now in Cuba, the word teacher calls forth other associations. I read in the newspaper Granma, the official organ of the Communist Party, that an official from the Ministry of Education said, “As parents we want the best teachers for our children, but we don’t like the idea of their deciding to be teachers themselves.” The fact is that the shortage of teachers has become a real crisis at almost all levels of education, due to the growing desertion of those who hold these positions and the reduction of those who enroll in schools of education. The problem has become so bad that the State has now created a class of what is called “emerging teachers,” who train to be the teachers of other children starting in the 11th grade, at age 16.

There are many causes that have led to this crisis and so far the solutions applied have only served to exacerbate the loss of prestige of this noble profession. The secret is that almost no one in Cuba lives on the salary they earn, but must rely on what they can find to steal, what we call “the diversion of resources,” from their workplace, be it time, materials or equipment. Teacher have no chance to earn some extra money this way and their salaries do not differ from others who do.

Now, when I hear the word teacher, what I feel is pity for those who are educators, for their students, and for the future of our country.

Anti-Unionism: Another Revolutionary Feat / Miriam Celaya

Salvador Valdés Mesa, Secretario General of the CTC

On Monday, September 13th, in an unusual statement issued by the Cuban Workers Organization (the CTC), it was announced that half a million Cubans will lose their jobs in the coming months. The amazing thing is not the wave of layoffs in itself, (for a while, it has been rumored that about one million in total will lose their state jobs), but that the announcement, instead of being made by the employer, was assumed specifically by the organization which, by virtue of its name, calls to defend workers’ rights; such an organization which stands, in addition, for moderating to “maintain the systematic monitoring of the development of this process” (of layoffs). This is the paradigm of anti-unionism.

That is how it was made explicit that we will have 500,000 more unemployed by the end of March, some of whom are expected to swell the ranks of the so-called self-employed who will feed, by way of their taxes and leonine locks, the insatiable state coffers.

Without a doubt, this blogger would be guilt of false naiveté if she had ever believed that “the union”, as it is commonly called in every workplace, represented the interests of Cuban workers. Anyone who has ever been occupationally linked to a state job knows that the union is a pulley over the administrative machinery of the State. It is subordinate to it and to the nucleus of the single party at each center. As for me, I cannot remember once in my 23 years of official employment that the union, its members or its leaders ever supported me in any of the conflicts that I had to settle with different administrative levels, or in numerous complaints I had to file during my turbulent working life. I don’t remember “the union” ever forgetting to put out its hand… each payday. The financial collector of the CTC was present alongside the paymaster, to ensure the collection of union dues before the anemic wages would slip through the fingers of the “unionized”.

Another feature of Cuban trade union membership is automatic enrollment when entering the workforce, as with the CDR – an organization in which every Cuban is included as soon as he turns 16 – or with the FMC*, to which each girl “enters” at that same age. You start to work somewhere, and the mere fact of being part of the work force turns you into a member, per se, of the organization. No one asks if you want to unionize, no one explains your rights or the labor successes of the organization in favor of its members. You are limited to compling with its work plan, paying your fees, performing your “labor guard” and attending meetings and performing “voluntary” or “productive” jobs (they are not the same, but both are equally unproductive). That, and an enormous feeling of helplessness, are common attributes that the union imparts to Cuban workers today.

From the very beginning of its commandeering of power, the Castro regime has been responsible for destroying each autonomous organization in Cuba. More than half a century of union struggles that became popular in the nineteenth century and brought significant benefits during the era of the Republic were cleverly monopolized by the revolutionary government, beginning in 1959. The legendary Sierra Maestra commander knew all too well what great power autonomous civic organizations safeguarded. The Cuban labor movement, dazzled with the populism of the revolution’s first steps and with the charisma of its leader, gave up its strength and its independence in the presence of the olive-green caste, and soon it evolved into the servile mass it is today. There are no more traces of union leaders of the stature of Jesús Menéndez or Aracelio Iglesias, just to mention two of the best known, or a union like that of the port workers or the employees of the electric companies of the 50’s.

But, in spite of all that, not even in my moments of extreme fantasizing would I have thought that it would be the Cuban Workers’ Union – the country’s only union – that would consent to make the appalling announcement of a record unemployment rate. I never heard of any country – not even those where “wild capitalism” prevails – in which the organization that protects the workers is the one announcing and controlling layoffs. If any of my readers knows of a case, please enlighten me.

Finally, the facade covering the arrangement is cracking. It is exposing, naked and publicly, the perfect plot between the CTC and the sole employer, the State Party Government, counter to the detriment to workers. Interestingly, we had true unionism while capitalism lasted. Tropical socialism did nothing but crush organized labor. At the present time, when the past structures of “socialism” are blurring, in Cuba we are going back to capitalism, though such confessions have not yet been made public. With its return, workers, without rights or awareness of their own strength, are confined to the most difficult place while the government safeguards us, in another of its usual gestures of infinite sacrifice: it is appropriating the “maleficent capitalist tools” for its own use.

*Federation of Cuban Women

Translated by: Norma Whiting

September 17, 2010

Mobile-Activism / Yoani Sánchez

Image URL: http://twitpic.com/2pqj3q

Steps to activate Text Messaging service:

  1. Enter the code *#06# and immediately the phone will display your IMEI code which is a 16 digit number.
  2. Send the first 8 digits of the IMEI number by Text Message to 4222.
  3. You will receive a Text Message that will tell you if your phone model accepts the activation of Text Messaging. It does not work on a Blackberry or iPhone; recommended phones are the Motorola K1, Motorola U6, Motorola V3 and Nokia models that are not too modern.
  4. If the phone accepts the Text Messaging service, you will receive a second message that says “Accept” or “Install.” When it gives you one of these two options it will ask for a code, you should enter 1234.
  5. When the application is installed, you may need to shut down and restart your phone.
  6. When you turn it on, you will see, next to the signal coverage icon, if you have a Motorola, a pair of green diamonds; if you have a Nokia you will see the same thing next to the capital “G.”
  7. You can now send images by Text Messaging to another Cuban mobile phone with the Text Messaging service activated, at a cost of 30 centavos a message.
  8. You can also send an image to an email account at a cost of 2.30 convertible pesos (about $2.50 U.S., 1.90 euros), which is very useful for sending images overseas.

Source of the text: http://twitpic.com/2pqktq

September 19, 2010

Queenside Castling / Regina Coyula

I have a friend, who is an International Chess Master with the title of Grandmaster, whom we consider almost as part of the family, but I hadn’t heard from her since she got a contract to work in Costa Rica last year. Last May I went to the Capablanca in memoriam tournament and, being in the right place, I asked about her. I was surprised by the fact that everyone I asked grinned, looked at each other if they were a group of people, but no one dared to tell me anything about the whereabouts of my friend Tania Hernández. One thing did seem clear among all the evasive responses: Tania was not coming back to Havana.

There was no self-censorship or questioning from the part of those I asked, since Tania is a very lovable person. Despite her career in the sport of Chess, after twelve years as part of the National Chess Team, Tania still lived with her parents and grandmother in the same block in Central Havana where she was born, a home to which improvements were made thanks to the travel stipends she saved from each trip. When her results left her out of the team, they “turned off her lights”, and Tania had to leave her sporting career, give lessons, sell her Chess books, all of which I know was very hard for her.

I suppose she used the contacts she had made while participating in international events to obtain the contract to work in Central America. In this new chapter in her life, Tania will work as a coach or teacher, activities for which she has as much talent as she had for playing; her work will allow her to pay the rent for a cozy little apartment, and also to help her family in Cuba. Now that everyone knows her decision, the Sports Institute (INDER) will not forgive her. Branded as a deserter, she will be forbidden to re-enter Cuba for at least the next five years. Of course we are talking about five years counting from 2010, so I expect to be able to hug my friend in Havana before the sentence, sanctioned by public officials who know nothing about what it’s like to live in a small overcrowded room, expires.

Translated by: Xavier Noguer

September 15, 2010



Crossed Wires / Rebeca Monzo

It turns out that now, after the unexpected declaration that our model can’t be exported, that it doesn’t even work for us. An answer confirmed by the journalist who conducted the interview, because he couldn’t get over his astonishment. It happens that this wasn’t true, rather he was referring to the capitalist model, which has just been proven to work, at least much better than the old one. Nothing, as usual, changed one thing for another, trying to complicate everything.

This is something that has been happening for many years. The character has not changed at all, the ones who have changed are us. Before we swallowed everything without saying a word, and now we have learned to question everything. As always, we have gone from one extreme to the other. Not on a whim, simply because we’ve stopped believing in him. Some sooner, others later, but in general, no one believes. I think we don’t even believe in what he says.

The truth is that he treats us like we are kids or simple-minded. He tries to keep us asleep with old and worn out lies. And don’t even talk to me about the “coconut” (the war). We’ve been waiting fifty-one years for the enemy to attack us. And justifying, based on that, all the more and more harsh measures imposed on our people: a conflagration would justify everything. Not to mention it would bury in its fallout the failure of the famous model.

September 13, 2010