Translating Cuba

With their colorful covers and nylon sleeves, the new supply of CDs and DVDs fills every corner of my city. Selling music, TV series and movies is one of the self-employment professions that has expanded — more and more rapidly — in recent weeks. Everyone wants to have their own distribution point; the most creative offer compilations of the same actor, or the complete discography of a singer. There are no copyright barriers and the American and Spanish serials are the most commonly purchased. Piracy is no longer something whispered in the ears of those interested, rather the merchandise is displayed publicly on makeshift wooden and cardboard shelves. Anyone can wrap up record labels or producers, as long as they don’t cross the line of the ideologically acceptable.

Given the audacity shown in ignoring copyright, it’s striking that no one dares to offer the popular — but banned — programs readily available in the alternative information networks. Absent from the public catalogs are the documentaries — so often watched in Cuban homes — that approach our national history through a different lens from the official. Nor do the shelves in doorways and windows display films that show the situation in the Romania of Ceausescu, or in Stalin’s Russia, or the North Korea of Kim Jong Il. The real hits of the underground world would jeopardize the licenses of these newly minted self-employed. Warning “visits” to the new entrepreneurs make it clear, don’t even think about providing certain controversial materials. The censorship pact is in place.

Beyond the issue of control is that of profitability of these small businesses. When they first started to emerge, the price of a DVD with five movies was around 50 national pesos. Today, in view of the profusion of vendors, it’s dropped to around 30. Many don’t survive the first quarter as independent workers. Others diversify their production and expand their sales. But to stay afloat and become profitable, they will probably need to turn to themes currently banned. In a few months, a good part of them will have, in addition to the visible offerings, another hidden shelf only for trusted customers, to satisfy the restless seekers of the forbidden.

In these last days, the smell of roast pig wafted through the streets of good houses in Vedado and Miramar or in the shacks of marginal neighborhoods like Fanguito or Pogolotti.The penetrating aroma of pork also made mouths water in neighborhoods full of the unemployed, street kids, and prostitutes in Atarés and Cayo Hueso.

There were no big parties nor did the rum flow until dawn. The economic situation is not one for shooting off rockets. Ordinary people preferred sobriety. Most of them celebrated the date with their families. And with music, of course. Timba and reggaeton rang out in doorways and on balconies until the first light of day.

The government of General Raúl Castro is planning cuts, and therefore the public festivities took place in specific sites. Without any waste, so that ordinary people could await the arrival of the 52nd anniversary of the revolution as best they know how to do, moving their hips and drinking beer from a keg.

It’s a revolution that has lost steam. His Marxist discourse no longer dazzles. The logical erosion of five authoritarian decades in power has resulted in a economy that is adrift and a chaotic infrastructure, with poor, gray cities.

In the brand new year in Havana almost nothing works. Urban transport and services are grim. Even the black market falters before the rigorous controls applied by the government to certain businesses, making the thefts and diversions that used to fuel illegal commerce difficult.

The best thing has been the weather, without unbearable heat or chilling cold. Leisure and cultural life are limited and of poor quality. And very expensive, if you want to shake your body in the clubs and fashionable discos.

While the people said goodbye to 2010, wondering how the regime will save its skin, on January 1, the official babalaos divulged their predictions for 2011. According to their prophecies, known as the Letter of the Year, in 2011 Ogun, the god of metals in the Yoruba religion, will govern. And he will be accompanied by Yemaya, the orisha mistress of the sea.

Among more than twenty recommendations are calls for respect for women, maintaining the family unit, caring for children, and avoiding situations that provoke fights that could have fatal consequences.

Although in recent times the number of admitted believers in different religions has increased, so has the number of non-believers. Citizens who don’t believe in the predictions of santeros nor in the proposals made by governments.

It’s logical. After 52 years of failure in the economic realm, people have difficulty assimilating the rhetoric of “Now, yes, we are going in the right direction.” That dog has already bitten several times.

Raul Castro has entered a dark tunnel where there is no going back. If there is no exit, somehow he will have to turn on a light to try to find it. Two things can happen. Either reforms will be their own trap, or they will work fairly well and improve the quality of life.

Not a few Cubans, while they prepared the roast pig, went round and round over the economic puzzle. Everyone is concerned there is no alternative. It’s like playing Russian roulette. For Olegario, 72 years old and retired, what worries him most is that it fulfills one of the maxims of the babalaos: “What goes around comes around.”

Illustration: Orishas of the Yoruba religion

Translated by Regina Anavy

January 7 2011

As I had reported on this blog, in response to requests for a chance to add your name to this document, as of January 10, 2011 it can be signed here:  Civic Manifesto to the Cuban Communists. Interested parties also can now sign it via e-mail: manifiestoaloscomunistas@yahoo.com or by personally addressing any of the original signatories.

Text of Manifesto in English

January 10 2011

Since all the talk started about the new process for awarding self-employment licenses, Gladys sharpened her pencil, did her accounts, and finally concluded that the time had come for her savings of many years, jealously guarded for “the bad times,” to be turned into an investment to support her precarious condition as a divorced mother with no work at all. She would open a coffee shop selling light meals and, with luck, in time recover her investment and begin to earn some profits. In her neighborhood, on the periphery of the capital, there were not a lot of establishments of this type, and so she was assured of customers. That and her cooking skills practically guaranteed the success of her little business.

So Gladys went to the offices empowered to that effect in her municipality, where she was directed to the first and indispensable step: she had to contact her polyclinic and ask for an inspection by the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology. An official wold visit her house and determine if she met the health requirements to get her license approved. After three fruitless visits to the polyclinic, (the “compañero” was “working outside”), on her fourth try the persevering Gladys managed to find the most important official and ask him for the inspection. The man. imperturbable, hieratic, and silent, simply looked at her coldly from the majesty of his desk and pointed with a dirty fingernail to a paper hanging behind the glass of a cabinet, which she had not previously notices. It set out the conditions license candidates have to meet (or “new graduates” as popular humor calls them), the first of which is that the applicant must have two kitchens, one for the family and the other for cooking food for the public. OK, when we say “kitchen” in this case, we’re not taking about a simple stove, an investment that already would be very expensive. No sir. It must be a completely separate kitchen with stove, a tiled counter (preferably white tiles), sink, electricity and running water.

Gladys does not understand why, if she has a large and sparkling kitchen — which, incidentally, would also be subject to inspection — she would have to invest all her capital in building another one, without even having the space for it. “Those are the rules,” said the little man invested with Olympian powers; “What’s more, pay attention, you have to have two refrigerators: one for the house and one for the cafe.” There was silence, dense and brief, until, convinced that she had done everything possible and satisfied for having done her part, Gladys retired, a mysterious smile on her face.

I don’t really know anything more about it, but I have heard it said that from Gladys’s house are sold bread with croquettes and soft drinks that are the best in the neighborhood.

January 7 2011

One year goes out and another comes in while the exact classification for much “unfinished business” in the excessively long Cuban dictatorship fail to get a mention. And as if that weren’t enough the well-known major doubts — those that relate directly to the old yearning for freedom, democracy and human rights, as necessities that ever more Cubans demand — the regime still owes us answers to specific issues that arose, in the complex national life, in the year just ended.

For my part, I can’t help but remember that soon it will be one year since the tragic death of dozens of mentally ill patients at the Havana Psychiatric Hospital, known as Mazorra, in subhuman conditions and circumstances that have never been clarified, despite official announcement of “a commission to investigate the facts.” Of course, like all commissions here, this one is anonymous.

Curiously, the unfortunate crash of an Cuban Aerocaribbean plane in the center of the island in which 68 people — mostly foreign tourists — lost their lives in the last quarter of 2010, has already been investigated and explained, with the results published in the national press. True, the sad lunatics of Mazorra were all Cubans, which could be a determining factor in this case: the crazies are of little interest to anyone; and if, in addition, they are national crazies, they seem to be unimportant even to Cubans who indifferently pass by, believing they enjoy mental health. The average Cuban suffers from a ferocious amnesia… about anything that doesn’t affect him directly; so the government maintains the right to continue, without the slightest embarrassment, its display of solidarity on health care with other countries in the world, and what’s worse, it continues to be praised and recognized by international organizations which, it seems, are as insensitive and amnesiac as the people here.

The other matter pending which I want to refer to today is the release of the political prisoners of the Black Spring who remain imprisoned after the unmet commitment by the dictatorship to the Catholic authority and, thus, to Cubans. These are the prisoners who have refused to leave the country, those who reject exile, those who will not surrender. Everything indicates that the Cuban government, like the senior Catholic hierarchy on the Island and the brand new mediator of the occasion — the Spanish government — have agreed to to cover the unjustified prolongation of the euphemistically called “process of liberation” with a pious mantle, take a break, and quietly celebrate their Christmas: undoubtedly 2010 turned out to be, for them, a tremendously hectic year from the political point of view. The cardinal, for his part, had the kind charity to officiate at a mass in La Habana prison, Merry Christmas! It must be an almost burlesque phrase in that place. Perhaps the anointed also trust in the enduring Cuban amnesia will exonerate them of all charges. Or perhaps they have been infected with the same disease?

January 4 2011

I’m sure if this gentleman were alive today, on my planet, he would write of local customs.

I went with my friend Regina to the Veterinary School, because her puppy needed emergency surgery. I did not want her to have to undertake this sad errand alone.

It had been many years, thank God, since I had been inside this campus. On arrival, the impression was horrible: the state of abandonment, deterioration and filth hit me. Who is last in line for surgery? I asked. I immediately marked our place behind a lady carrying a little sata puppy with a strong demo. There was a German Shepherd with an ingestion of pork, and a cocker spaniel puppy with the same. It was still very early. Later the line swelled with the new patients arriving. One was brought in a wheelbarrow used for construction materials.

When we got ourselves organized and were waiting our turn, an employee shouted that the power company had informed them that today would be a “free hand” in the whole area. In other words, there’s not going to be any power until who knows when. My friend and I bristled. The thought of having to repeat the ordeal, we were not amused, when another voice, this time from one of the doctors, announced that surgery would continue because they were going to operate with the light from the sun. Yes, you heard it right, “A Pleno Sol” just like the movie, but without Alain Delon in the leading role!

A dog owner approached us and told us all the services offered in this place, but the only inconvenience was they could cut the dogs’ toenails but they didn’t have the clippers for it, and also they could vaccinate but right now they didn’t have any vaccines, and they could wash and style the dogs except right now they didn’t have any water and the electric clippers were broken.

Finally, after a long wait, even though we were third in line, but some emergencies arrived which logically had to go first, we could see the lamentable conditions of the place didn’t stop the magnificent and brave surgeons, saving the life of each little animal, spending the day in the “sunlit” operating room.

Hats off to the vets!

January 7 2011

This Sunday would have been tedious and boring like all the rest, if we hadn’t gotten an unexpected and agreeable invitation: Evelio Tieles and Francis, his wife, called to invite us to  a great concert being given in the Covarrubias Room of the National Theater.

We arrived early, a little before eleven in the morning, the hour scheduled for the even to start. The theater is usually full, moreso when the National Symphony announces a virtuoso like Tieles as the soloist. A real treat on a planet where good choices are few.

The room was completely full. For the opening the orchestra directed by the Maestro Enrique Perez Mesa honored us with the Simple Symphony by Benjamin Britten. Spectacularly well executed.

In the second half: the only Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D major, Op.61 by Ludwig van Beethoven. Evelio Tieles soloist.

The audience enthusiastic, a standing ovation for the orchestra, its director and Maestro Tieles, making them return to bow several times. The applause did not stop in appreciation of such a wonderful morning gift.

January 11 2011

Havana, January 8, 1959.  The dove had already defecated on his shoulder; the other bearded one had already answered the question, “How am I doing, Camilo?”; Habaneros had already started to worry about such a long speech warning them that things would be more difficult from now on.  So comandante Dermidio Escalona ordered the unruly capital crowd to shut up.

No one could calculate, then, the significance of that gesture, no one could suspect that half a century later the performance artist Tania Bruguera would recreate the scene in her production “Tatlin’s Whisper,” in which we had one free minute before the microphone, dove included.

I leave you the image here, and this link conjured by technology and nostalgia, so that we can assess what could have been and was not, and calculate what could be if we were less obedient to the order to shut up.

January 10, 2010

There are two men on the corner. One is wearing an earphone while the other peers into the door of a building. All the neighbors know perfectly well why they are there. A dissident lives on one of the floors of the building; two members of the political police watch who comes and goes and keep a car nearby to follow him wherever he goes. They don’t try to hide because they want this person, who signs his name to his critical opinions, to know they’re there; they want his friends to distance themselves so as not to end up caught in the network of control, in the spiderweb of vigilance.

It is not an isolated case. Here, every non-conformist has his own shadow — or a whole group of shadows — who follow him around. The so called “securities” also use sophisticated monitoring techniques that range from bugging phone lines and placing microphones in homes, to tracking the location of their targets through signals from their cell phones. The effects on the personal lives of those who suffer these operations are so devastating that we have come to refer to State Security by terrible names such as “The Apparatus,” “The Armageddon,” or “The Crusher.”

But not even these soldiers dressed in civilian clothes can escape popular scorn. Several jokes are making the rounds about the inordinate number of “securities” surrounding each individual opponent. Whispering and looking over their shoulders, many comment sarcastically, “There is so much manpower needed in agriculture, and look at these guys here, spending the whole day watching someone who thinks differently.” Because, indeed, what a contrast it would be if, instead of criminalizing opinion, they devoted themselves to productive labor; if instead of projecting their long shadows over the critics of the system, they let them fall over some lettuce or tomatoes, over the furrows — now empty — that they could help to plant.

In an early hatching of 2011, my city is full of tiny businesses selling useful and useless things. Some sidewalks in Havana these days remind me of the nervous and chaotic pulse of an Asiatic city. Many people with a doorway on a more or less busy street have taken out a license to survive on their own; others set up a rough metallic shed coarsely made, the ugly and poor version version of a container to sell pizzas for eight pesos. Everything that disappeared during the so-called Revolutionary Offensive in 1968, the little that was left in private hands after the nationalizations of 1960.

But nothing productive.

On all the streets — Carlos III, Ayestarán, 42nd Street, Diez de Octubre and Avenida 51 — you can find clothespins, eyeglasses, dye, plastic cups. And disks, disks and more disks. Predominantly rough shelves with disks when you pass through these emerging businesses. National music, foreign, children’s, TV series. The success of this business isn’t strange, a celebration of piracy in a country used to seeing cartoons, soap operas and movies on national TV where they “modestly” cover the logo of the originating broadcaster.

Watching this winter hatching, I surprise myself thinking about the layoffs that have begin and the available options for the “available.” It’s difficult to undertake these activities in the already congested streets of my city.

January 10 2011