Translating Cuba

Perhaps as a punishment for their decision not to leave Cuba, the prisoners of conscience from the Black Spring of 2003 who have chosen to remain in their country will be the last batch to come out of prison.

This was announced by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla in an exchange with the New York media. I don’t know if it is a concerted strategy by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, General Raul Castro and Cardinal Jaime Ortega, as had been expected that the “plantados” — those who refuse to emigrate — will be the last to be released.

There is also a serious drawback. Rumors are that the political prisoners will be released on “extra-penal license,” an ambiguous legal term, which has already been applied to dissidents from the Group of 75 such as Martha Beatriz Roque, Jorge Olivera, and Oscar Espinosa Chepe, among others.

Said “license” is an open invitation to the government. And under certain circumstances, they could be returned to prison. It’s a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of released opponents and independent journalists who remain in Cuba.

I would like to know if the plans of the triumvirate of actors in who negotiated the prison releases of 52 dissidents, anticipated that these “extra-penal licenses” would be kept in place against the opponents who don’t want to go into exile.

It was a masterful psychological move by the regime. It is not easy for a group of men who have spent more than 7 years behind the bars of a cell, to say no to a friendly phone call from Cardinal Ortega, suggesting they can go to Spain voluntarily in a matter of hours, if they wish.

Among those refusing to leave are Pedro Argüelles Morán, Oscar Elias Biscet, Arnaldo Ramos Lauzurique, Guido Sigler Amaya, Angel Moya Acosta, José Daniel Ferrer García, Héctor Maseda Gutiérrez, Librado Linares García, Eduardo Díaz Fleitas, Félix Navarro Rodríguez, Iván Hernández Carrillo and Diosdado González Marrero.

Among the group of those released and exiled to date (of which two are in Chile and the United States), some wanted to stay at home and then changed their position. Perhaps pressure from their families or because of fear that the government, at any time, could change its mind and not allow any more exits to Spain.

Everyone already knows how the regime works. They are unpredictable. The mood of the brothers from Birán varies in accord with certain regional and global events. And the majority of imprisoned opponents know that.

None of those who have left have done so with pleasure. They had wanted to remain in their provinces to continue working peacefully and writing their points of view about the reality within the island.

Almost three months have passed since the government statement, where they agreed to release the 52 prisoners of the Black Spring over the course of four months and it’s clear that their strategy was to try to have the least number of dissidents remaining in the country.

They are uncomfortable people. The fewer of them remaining in Cuba, the better for the Castros.

October 1, 2010

On the streets of Havana you can see older men dressed like dandies, which used to be seen as an eccentricity. Not anymore. It is one of the 178 activities the government has authorized for self-employment.

It is one of the most striking, but not unique. The activities also include fortune teller, and the “Havana woman,” as they have decided to call those women, almost all of the black, who in recent times can be found in the colonial areas of the city: colorfully dressed, smoking cigars, selling flowers, or giving spiritual consultations to distracted tourists.

Novelties aside, the fact is that hundreds of jobs were eliminated in Cuba after the arrival of the Castro brothers. In their place others grew up, creations of necessity.

One of them — and with this name, at least, it doesn’t appear on the list issued on September 24 — is that of debris collector. Jose, 53, unemployed, charges 100 Cuban pesos (4 dollars) for each sack of bricks, stones, pipes, pieces of wood, and leftovers from home repairs. “I put the sack on a cart and empty it in the first vacant lot I find.”

Luisa, 64, retired, works cleaning rice at home. For each pound she charges two Cuban pesos (ten cents on a dollar). “I already have an established customer base. I earn about 100 to 200 pesos a week and with that I can buy pork and food at the farmers market.”

Although not included in the official list, such work already forms a part of the native landscape. Older people sell “jabitas” (nylon bags), newspapers, single cigarettes, peanuts and homemade candy. Others, younger, prefer to refill cigarette lighters. Yes, the same ones that in other countries are thrown away.

After 1959, the wearing of suits, collars and ties went out of style in Cuba. The Mao style prevailed.

Men dressed alike, thick cotton, opaque colors and Russian boots. That’s when the tailors started their decline.

Lacking material, the dressmakers became “patchworkers.” Thanks to Rosa, 71, many neighbors can cover themselves with sheets and dry themselves with towels that are more or less decent.

As a patchwork specialist, Rosa cuts out the worn parts of a sheet or towel and on her old Singer sewing machine, joins them with pieces in better condition. “I don’t trash the worn out bits, I throw them in a box and give them to a relative who uses them as wadding to stuff mattresses.”

If there is a trade in high demand in Cuba in 2010 it is mattress repair. And the same for the private shoe repairers, plumbers and electricians. Although no one is as well as paid as the car mechanics, charged with keeping the ancient American cars rolling.

With or without a license, for a long time one has been able to hire clowns for children’s party, and photographers, who have become experts in photo-montages or Photoshop work for weddings, baptisms and birthdays. One of the most successful private businesses is the legion of specialists in quinceañeras — the celebrations for girls when they turn 15 — from gown rentals to the choreography and editing of the party video.

Unlike seamstresses and refillers of lighters and mattresses, this sort of trade in a luxury in a country full of shortages. Similar is everything relating to dogs, an activity that is emerging from the closet of illegality. Orlando, 39 and gay, alternates giving ladies haircuts in their homes with the attention and care of their dogs. “The little tame dogs, I bathe them and do their hair. If the owner pays me I make clothes for them. For the big fierce ones, I don’t want to know,” he says, laughing.

Those are for a braver race of men among whom we find Manuel, 43, who pocketed almost two thousand Cuban pesos (80 dollars) in a month — four times his salary — training German shepherds.

Perhaps they don’t earn as much, but the dandies are more picturesque. At least they don’t have to tramp around the city selling peanuts, cigarettes and newspapers.

October 3, 2010

“I’m sick of everything. Fidel Castro and his brother Raul’s “blockade.” I can’t stand one more speech. It’s all lies. False promises. At this point in my life, after working for 50 years and fighting in all the wars they sent me to, they come and say now is the time to build socialism.

“Fuck this government. And what hurts most is to see how they’ve used me. I’ve been manipulated like a puppet. That’s what I’ve been: a common puppet moved at their will. This is as far as I go, as Saramago said.

“Not one day more will I support those two who have ripped off my future, my dreams, even my family. For supporting them I lost three marriages and neglected my children. Both left the country and we stopped talking, because I was a Party member. The first thing I’m going to do is call them ask them to forgive me.

“After taking part in every kind of Revolutionary idiocy, from planting coffee in the Havana Cordon, cutting cane like a slave in the ten Million Ton Harvest, even training the Latin American guerrillas in subversion and putting my own skin on the line in the wars in Angola and Ethiopia, now comes some guy wearing his white guayabera and chatting about the past and after giving me a pat on the back, he tells me I should write a book about my Revolutionary career and suggests I should rent out my Russian car, my Lada. And the only thing I have after half a century of being a true believer, I should chase some bucks with the Lada? That’s the solution they have for me, after leaving me in the street without even a latchkey?

I’m 68 and now that I’m old it seems I’m not the right person for my job. That we have to do everything to move the country forward. That the economy can’t support State paternalism. Then, why the fuck did they install it? Nobody, at least no one I know, asked the government to be our father.

“I don’t have a cent and the easiest thing is to lie and pretend that we’ll keep applauding those who are leaving us unemployed. Machiavelli is a baby at the tit next to the Castros. To do this to me, who never stole a thing; who traveled halfway across the world in the name of this government, and it never crossed my mind to flee with a suitcase full of dollars. They throw me out like some disposable object.

“That hurts. But the worst thing is that they’re not capable of facing reality. And they say what goes on in Spain is bad, the United States is hell, and nuclear war is around the corner. They are not capable of explaining, looking you in the eyes, that the Cuban system is broken and we have to change it.

“At this age, I have to go back to my beginnings, when I was 18-years-old and driving a taxi to help my widowed mother. I don’t mind that I had to do that. What pisses me off is having been such an asshole. I distanced myself from a part of my family and many of my friends because they thought differently.

“Now, after it’s all gone to hell, I feel like a free man. Without political strings. I’ve learned my lesson. I hope it’s not too late.”

October 7, 2010

Troubled waters, a growth in the number of jineteras — prostitutes — and thieves. With the number of unemployed expected to be more than a million in the coming year, the streets of Havana will be getting more dangerous and cheap hookers will be the order of the day.

Loipa, 24, draws his weapon. After a stint in jail she thought she’d redeemed herself. And she started work as a receptionist at a business. But she was the first to be laid off.

The only option they offered her was as a farm laborer. Then she decided to return to the “trade” she knows best: hooker. “I don’t think the police presence will be too severe, I will be engaged in a lot of things. Now I’m going to offer my services, even in national currency, but in foreign currency, of course, if I can catch some ‘yuma‘ (foreigner). It will be hard. There aren’t enough tourists for the number of prostitutes in the country, there’s three of us for every one ‘yuma,'” commented this mulatta with expressive eyes and a striking mole under her mouth.

Competition in the prostitution world in Cuba is strong. There is a legion of teenagers between 14 and 17, still students, who spend their free time selling their bodies. Cheaply.

The crippling economic situation, that has lasted 21 years, and the growing number of hookers swarming the streets, has lowered prices in the island’s pleasure market. Already no outsider pays more than 30 convertible pesos (35 dollars) for a hot night with a whore. For 70 convertible pesos (85 dollars) you can take a couple of lesbians to your room.

When they give another turn to the screw of harsh living conditions in Cuban life, it’s not unreasonable to think that the number of “sex workers” will shoot up. The same as other illegal activities. The thieves are also having a field day.

In times of crisis and hardship, delinquency rears its head. Havana is not yet a city where violence is a problem. It’s far from being Caracas or Juarez. But so many unemployed people, with no future and empty wallets, is a perfect breeding ground for thugs to prosper.

The black market has dried up, leaving the residents of the poor neighborhoods, who live by doing “bisne” (business) under the table, few alternatives. The women, young or old, if they have a good butt and have grown up with the promiscuity, might be thrown into the street. Not to protest. To “search for bread” (prostitute themselves).

Black men, strong and athletic, could begin to try their luck as ‘pingueros‘ (‘dick-men’, i.e. toyboys), which until now has been the province of good-looking whites and mulattoes, gays and transvestites. Or they might “specialize” in stealing music equipment from the cars of tourists, or in the “art” of swiping the bags of visiting foreigners.

The news is very bad for the police force. A ton of disgusted people without money, who are trying to put food on the table by any means possible, and to dress in the latest fashions, is a more serious matter than it might seem.

Loipa has already gotten her start us a hooker. She lost fifteen pounds at the gym and is chasing after the first tourist to buy her two or three dresses, high heels and a nice perfume. That’s a starting point.

Her ultimate goal is that of any prostitute. To marry a foreigner with several credit cards in his pocket. Loipa’s hope is that the United States Congress will end the travel ban for Cuba.

“If this happens, I’m going to ‘hacer el santo‘ (make an offering to the gods). But all I want is just let the gringos come. I am waiting for them with my legs open,” she says, laughing.

Like Loipa, thousands of Cubans pray for this measure to pass. The Americans are seen as a lifeline. And not only by the hookers. Also by the Castro government.

October 7, 2010

On one of those nights in Havana, when the sky is clear with a handful of stars as a witness, someone told me that the Castro brothers feel a particular hatred for three Cubans. The list, what a coincidence, three writers: Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Reinaldo Arenas and Zoé Valdés.

The resentment was so great, this person told me, that they even performed curses, with the bones of the dead and elephant tusks brought from African soil. I don’t think that’s true. But I have to admit that this woman from Havana, born with the Revolution on May 2, 1959, is feared by more than the Castros.

Zoé Valdés uses her pen like a whip. She usually fires high caliber bullets. Between prose and poetry, this woman with 22 published books and a collection of prizes in her Parisian bag, writes for the Spanish and European media. She has a personal blog and whoever wants to read or hear it will hear how she sees Cuba and the world, without any rose-colored glasses.

Her brain is directly connected to her tongue: critical, controversial and bold. At times vitriolic, most of the time gently. With a recurring dream: to walk with her daughter along Havana’s Malecon and through Old Havana’s cobblestone streets.

Valdés’s grudge is exactly that: Fidel Castro has usurped her Havana. And the sensitive and altruistic novelist will never forgive him. When the dark years have become a part of our past, perhaps Zoe will devote herself to writing children’s books. From her house in Paris, she has given us an interview.

La Nada Cotidiana (1995) (The Daily Nothing) has become one of the most read of your novels by Cubans on the island. Do you expect that El Todo Cotidiano (The Daily Everything), your latest novel, will be also?

“Although El Todo Cotidiano is not a continuation of La Nada Cotidiana, we can talk about it as Part Two, because the people, for the most part, are the same; We also find characters there who represent other exiles. I hope that many people in Cuba will read this novel, because my natural reader, despite the censorship and the ban on my books in Cuba, is the Cuban reader.

“This is a more thoughtful novel, choral, Pantagruelian, Gargantuan, where there is a great deal of humor but also the Cuban drama from both sides, without morals or moralizing, which is always expected — coming from both sides — of a Cuban novelist. My writing is absolutely subversive and amoral, where desire is the direct resource and freedom, in all its enormity, is the environment in which the characters are moved.

Was it the success of La Nada Cotidiana that led you to continue the saga?

“No, it wasn’t the success of La Nada Cotidiana that drove me to take up writing the novel El Todo Cotidiano. It was the character of Ida, who is the mother of Yocandra, in La Nada Cotidiana. This has partly to do with it being partially autobiographical, because the character has become a literary institution: when I could get my mother out of Cuba, after a great and traumatic effort caused by the Castro dictatorship, I lived with her for two years in Paris. She loved everything about this city, and lived as if she had forgotten the long years during which she had resisted and sacrificed under the Castro regime. She only remembered her life from before 1959, and was enormously appreciative of how she was living. But my mother was very sick, and she only enjoyed two years of freedom.

“As she was dying, she told me I should write this story, of those two years. It all started with her but at one point I needed Yocandra, that it, I used the daughter to better observe the grand the great transformation of a lady — her mother — who had to go into exile, fight the world, and who dares, and so then I had to resuscitate her (Yocandra), and the rest. I started writing and came to the point where it was telling me this was El Todo Cotidiano, that I was telling the daily lives of those Cubans in Paris, mixed with other exiles, from other places that had little to do with the island. And it was all very dramatic and also humorous, because they had already changed, they saw life differently, they were involved, including emotionally, with other realities, but the one thing that didn’t change was the island. So it was born, and in this way the cycle closes.”

On the island, there are those who see you as a feminine version of Guillermo Cabrera Infante, wielding the machete of slaughter against the Castros.

“Guillermo Cabrera Infante is one of my literary fathers, I think the most important. He was a friend, and still is, because through Miriam Gómez, his widow, we have continued codes of understanding, of love, of respect. She is a great friend, she has fought for his work, and she is a great Cuban, universal. My work is inspired in part by Guillermo, that is, in his Havana, but I tell my story, and also I constantly learn from François Rabelais. I deeply love Manuel Mujica Láinez, Lydia Cabrera. They are also literary parents, Then I have literary examples, which can even be my own age, or just a few years older. That’s the case with Reinaldo Arenas, who is two generations — if we count five years — ahead of mine.

“But Guillermo is the author I admire, and the friend, also very loved; for me it is a great honor to be compared with him. I think that we both assume the social and political commitment of the writer, but in reality, between us, we spoke little about it, we only discussed (he most of all) that marvelous Cuba that he lived, and literature and film. In France it is natural for writers to be politically involved with their opinions, even if they don’t belong to any party. This is something I essentially learned in France, where I knew what it meant to live in freedom. Something that for Cubans is extremely difficult.

“I also want to say something about being the machete — as you have called it — anti-Castro, it turns out it is not easy, no special resources are given, in fact it closes many doors, even today, when people want to believe, or see Cuba as a social example. I don’t see myself like that, as a machete, I only respond when someone asks me about politics. I am usually a calm person, but yes, I say what I think, and as I defend human rights for the world, I defend them for my country,  as I cannot defend them in the land where I was born. And I did it long before, from my world, that of literature and cinema, within Cuban in the 1980s and up to the mid 1990s.”

How do you see the situation in Cuba right now? What about the Cubans, including opponents, independent journalists and bloggers?

“I’m a hopeful pessimist in relation to Cuba, at the moment. Because I think that only with the passing of both brothers, number 1 and number 2, and the chaos that will remain, can we resolve the Cuban situation. I never expected anything of Raul Castro, because I know well how communist, totalitarian, countries work. And I will continue expecting nothing.

“But I think he has in his hands the possibilities of parting ways with his brother and delivering the country to the Cuban-Americans who have studied and lived under capitalism, and who have made fortunes, with which they could settle on the island, and in the end they are Cubans; and not, on the other hand, giving it over to the Chinese, the Russians, just for two examples.

“The exile of the political prisoners, and the continuing imprisonment of Biscet and others who have refused to accept exile, speaks to the real intentions of Raul Castro, who is fundamentally following the same hard line. You can’t expect anything else from a person who executed innocents from the first day of the Revolution or the Castro Revolt. The abnormal is how the world had already become accustomed to seeing the normal succession of the Castro-Communist-Dynasty, period. I just hope to see how things go, it can’t get any worse, and then the changes that will be caused by the laws of nature. We know they are preparing their children for the Castro legacy, but I’m not so sure people will put up with it.

“As for the opponents, the independent journalists and bloggers, I think they are all necessary, with their different points of view. Personally, however, I dismiss those who want to keep sucking, now “rebelliously,” at the tit of the Castro regime. I deeply regret that being anti-Castro has become a way of living. That said, I recognize those who have made our country great in recent times: the majority are black, loudly calling for freedom and democracy, without the Castros, and every day they are persecuted, beaten, tortured, imprisoned and murdered as was the case with Orlando Zapata Tamayo.”

Most Cuban exiles tend to keep alive the hope of returning to their homeland before they die. Is this one of your wishes?

“I would like to return, of course, but not to destroyed country. I have my tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, together with my mother. For my eternal rest, I like this place. With the summer sun, and covered in snow in the winter. I am fascinated by snow. I travel a lot, I have other commitments with other people I also love and respect deeply. Thanks to my author’s royalties I am able to help in some places, as in the case of Haiti and Pakistan, I have been able to build shelters and schools for teenagers leaving prostitution. I speak very little of this, because I want to offer support in silence, and when I can, and now make some kind of public fanfare of this. I love Cuba deeply, it is my country, and I will return without any doubt. At the moment, for now, I only aspire to continue writing, to learn from other places, and to further integrate myself into this country that gave me the possibility of being truly free.

Finally, I wonder what is daily life like for Zoé Valdés and her family in the City of Light.

“I work night and day, I have never stopped working on a thousand things at once: my books, films, the production of the films of Ricardo Vega, my husband, and mine, and also the art gallery. I get up and then turn to my notebooks and the computer, later I work on other issues that have nothing to do with my books, I return to writing and I read very late into the night. Ricardo also has his work and our daughter is at school.

“I love Paris, it is a city that each day brings something new, culturally and from all points of view. I could not live in the future without this city. Although I said the same about Havana. What happens is that Havana lives inside me, inside my dreams, and my nightmares. You will notice when you read El Todo Cotidiano, and I think you will really enjoy it.”

Iván García

October 6, 2010

Note to the readers from the translators:

Please accept our apologies for the gap in English translations!

A few weeks ago some “behind the scenes” technical changes were made in Ivan’s blog in Spanish, which we weren’t aware of on the “English side.” From that time the “automatic post grabber” for the translating site, HemosOido.com, could no longer pick up the posts because it was searching for the “old” computer code, not the new one.

Unfortunately, it took us a little while to realize there was a problem, and then quite a bit longer to fix it because, frankly, our volunteer programmer has been completely swamped with her “regular job.”

It is now fixed and we will, entry by entry, fill in all the missing entries from September, and of course keep the translations coming going forward.

Again, our sincere apologies! And please… those of you who are bilingual… translate Ivan so we can catch up!

October 7, 2010