Translating Cuba

A suspicious incident has provided me with writing material this time. As a sample of a rare will for controversy and democratic confrontation, the site Kaos en la Red, which promotes itself as the champion of intellectual reflection, has just censured a post originally published on this blog, which some reader decided to post on that portal.

The text My Own Vindication of Cuba appeared on that site under the free publication section and soon after went to the main pages of the section named Cuba. After reaching a considerable amount of readings, and after being commented on by many readers, it disappeared without leaving a trace.

The interesting thing is that, according to some comments I had access to via e-mail, a few feverish readers uttered howls of indignation before such opprobrium towards the progressive Kaos en la Red. The opprobrium was the appearance of my text there, not its later censorship, even requested by many of them.

How is it possible – they asked themselves – that our site, the trench of the united leftists allows the enemy to infiltrate in such way? How is it possible that we offer tribune here to an author (me) who admits on his Facebook page that he reads with dedication Mario Vargas Llosa and Carlos Alberto Montaner?

Soon after, Kaos en la Red retired my inglorious article.

I must confess: I have enjoyed the anecdote. At some point they announced to Sigmund Freud that the Nazis burned his books. The response of the wise psychoanalyst was a sarcasm without equal: “Humanity has progressed so much!” he said, “in the Middle Ages they would’ve burnt me.”

In no way does my ego want to think itself dangerous to the orthodox leftists, just as it seemed the work of Freud was to the retrograde fascists. But this thought seduces me: it had to have something, right? Otherwise my simple article would still be there.

Neither do I think I can discover any truth by affirming that Kaos en la Red represents a faction increasingly impoverished and discredited precisely for their lack of plurality, for the panic that divergent voices inspire in them; I wouldn’t expect anything else.

Even more analyzable is the scream “Enemy in sight!” coming, perhaps, from any of the trained boys from the University of Information Sciences (UCI), or from any other group with similar occupations, whose brains possess a delicate programming in binary coding: zeros-ones / friends-enemies.

As for me, I propose each day to fill myself with more doubts with respect to these frontiers. To undergo a general skepticism that can make me doubt how good of a friend the ones who call themselves my friends really are, and how much of an enemy are the ones that introduce themselves as such…

I’ll explain.

One of my best friends is a militant of the Communist Party. He’s 38-years-old and was previously a part of the Communist Youth. I have argued with very few people in my life as much as I do with him. In between beers and beers we have come, in certain moments, to whip ourselves up in an intellectual duel which (good Cubans that we are) resembles a violent dispute rather than a confrontation of ideas.

Later, having finished our drinks, we each go our own way onto our chores, and continue to miss each other for the rest of the day.

This friend possesses a vast universal culture, and a humanistic formation that with unusual frequency, allows him to disagree with the party he is a member of. Why does he confront its directives and arbitrariness, and yet keep sympathizing with the process? If I had those answers, maybe I wouldn’t argue with him so much.

But a man who loves women and Martí as much as I do, who would never betray nor condemn anybody for thinking differently from him, and who seeks out his own path for the well-being and progress of his country, can’t be my enemy, even when some of his ideological positions seem incompatible with his intelligence.

A little while ago, during my ephemeral link the official Cuban journalism, I met a radio broadcaster who had a certain prestige in my city. He would announce himself every day before the microphones, at six in the morning, and conduct an informative program lasting two hours which, in my Socialist Cuba, was strictly compliant with the establishment.

That man wouldn’t poke even a toe out of the box which his militant conscience established as just and necessary for his country. He felt proud of his politically committed broadcasting but, luckily, in his conscience of what is just and necessary, he would publicly whip incapable managers, demand attention to the handicapped elderly, and face, from his microphone, the prevailing local violence.

I rarely agreed with him in his visions about the Government, or on infinite topics surrounding Cuban politics, but in my particular Republic I would include a broadcaster who believes in what he says, whether he agrees with me or not, and who knows when to be on the side of the weak people if that is what his conscience dictates.

Now, the conflict occurs when this way of understanding divergence is not reciprocated. I have to admit it is necessary to be cold-blooded, to have a Tibetan superiority, in order to not harbor hostility against those whose beliefs we respect, but who are not capable of returning the favor.

Those who call us “the enemy,” and in their infinite array of vicious euphemisms, use terms such as “worms,” “scum,” and “deserters” to define all those who do not agree with their ways of understanding a social process.

I believe that a good exercise for all, liberals, leftists, humanists, republicans, ecologists, would be to copy the phrase from Voltaire on a piece of paper and stick it on the most visible spot of their home: “ I detest what you say, but I would die to defend your right to say it.”

After incorporating such message, it is very hard to censor articles, denigrate opponents, and consider as enemies all those who express, out loud and without hypocrisy or opportunism, what they really think, either about an ideological or religious doctrine, or about any sexual conduct.

My definitions of friend-enemy rarely pass through a political sieve. Above all, I am interested in human rights, and I celebrate that many great people I know don’t share my postures. When you are a democrat, when you have pluralistic thoughts, you are radically unable to accept intolerance and exclusion.

August 16, 2010

One.

They knocked on the door twice before identifying themselves. When they said “It’s the Police,” he already knew it couldn’t be anybody else. No one else would’ve knocked with such rudeness.

His face pale from nerves, he let them enter, knowing there was no going back. After searching the house all over, they decided to open a washing machine placed (strategically) behind the bathroom door.

They looked at each other with a satisfied expression: they had found the merchandise. The thief was lost. Soon after, in a drawer in the bedroom they would also find some money that, although it wasn’t much, it was proof of illegal commerce; therefore, it would also be seized.

They took him out in handcuffs, in the middle of the day. They put him inside a police car. One of them stayed at his house, interrogating his wife who was barely able to stammer with her throat tight from fear and astonishment.

The operation had concluded with great success on a busy city street, and the curious, the neighbors, and the occasional lingerers stepped away so as not to be taken as sympathizers of the disgraced.

Two.

I would’ve wished all this to be only my imagination, my literary voice, but it’s not. What I just described took place in Bayamo only three days ago. The detained man was a personal friend of mine. I have to confess I haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep since this past Thursday.

This delinquent is not really a delinquent. The merchandise is neither marijuana nor laundered money. It was simply pants. Just that. A load of twenty jeans bought at a good price in the country’s capital, and brought (along with many sleepless nights, shock and hardship) to this eastern city.

Let me clarify the “good price”: fifteen convertible pesos. They were bought at a store in Havana that had lowered their price for having small manufacturing defects.

They could be sold for twenty convertible pesos, or with luck for twenty-two, in this part of the country. Small profit for this smart merchant, big profit for the buyer who wouldn’t have had access to them any other way.

Nevertheless, the eyes trained in the art of informing don’t rest. Some diligent “collaborator” reported the crime, and the forces of order showed up. What crime? Well… something that in this, my island of euphemisms has been named, “hoarding.” That’s how it’s defined, and that’s how it is punished.

What does this idea of hoarding consists of? Possessing a large enough quantity of something to make it worth trading in it. It doesn’t matter if it is soda crackers, fan blades, or in this case, jeans with small manufacturing defects. The number they consider as too high has not yet been stipulated. That is left to the police officer’s interpretation.

That is why I remember, for example, my trips to the University of Santiago De Cuba, when the cops would board a truck full of students, go through our entire luggage, and detain or give tickets to anyone who had more than the usual packs of candy or wafers than was considered normal. Obviously, the merchandise was confiscated as well.

Many times it was only bread, guava paste, or any other edible product students would have to sell in order to earn some money to subsist, while at the same time alleviating the hunger of their companions in poverty.

“Hoarding” is only one of the many denigrating terms with which every attempt to trade, for personal benefit, can be nipped in the bud in name of a supposed common equality which becomes more pathetically fictitious each day.

Behind this term lies a government mentality dedicated, at its fullest, to mercilessly sweeping away anyone who refuses to live as an indigent on their state salary, anyone who decides to try to get by through some kind of trade, as minimal as it is stressful. For those, the path is strewn with red lights.

Three.

Two currencies circulate in Cuba. Workers’ wages are paid in one – “national money” or Cuban pesos; but what workers buy must be paid for with the other – “convertible pesos,” which are worth twenty-five times more. It is evident that “buying” the convertible peso – required to purchase basic needs – is, in itself, an almost constant labor for Cuban workers.

OK, at least in my city, with nearly 300 thousand people, there are only two “Exchanges” where you can undertake the operation legally. The serpentine lines that snake out through its glass doors are depressing — hundreds of people standing under the sun in order to be able to obtain the convertible pesos.

What does this bring as a consequence? That many choose to buy those convertible pesos at the Exchanges in order to then sell them to their fellow countrymen, who can then avoid the long lines under the hot sun for the such slight rewards. They would lose more time standing in line to get the convertible pesos at the Exchanges, than the time it takes the cops to arrest them if they are caught selling them in front of the stores.

The iron fist of a centralized economy, however improbably, never slips, never sleeps, never leaves an area uncontrolled. The private commerce in Cuba is a painful demonstration of the way in which a system has forced millions of humble beings to live.

Recently, I heard an elderly barber say that he had turned in his permit that allowed him to operate legally, and that he would, from time to time — at the price of being a nervous wreck — see some clients at night in his back yard. The reason? Right after the supposed economic reforms in favor of our society, the State had raised his taxes to up to two hundred pesos a month. With such lump sum, he would barely have any profit.

Seeing that old man with his wrinkled skin, his clothes transparent from being worn every day, knowing that he won’t even be able to cut hair peacefully, managed to ruin my day.

As a consequence, I can’t stop wondering what we have done to the ones who lead us, the ones who sign the laws, who manage the fate of this nation, that they would make us lead such a difficult and battered existence. How is it possible to think that a man who earns one Cuban peso – 4 cents – for each convertible peso he sells, or a few cents with a bag of limes that he displays in some doorway, is a deplorable scourge whom this society needs to wipe out?

AN EPILOGUE THAT IS NOT

I have not yet heard anything about my friend. I have passed by his meager apartment (which is so small it almost makes it hard to breathe) a couple of more times and every time I go I find the same windows and doors are shut. I’m scared for him. I know that he would at least be charged with a huge fine and lose all his investment. I know that if worse comes to worse, his wife and five-and-a-half-year-old son would not know how to live with him behind bars, without his risky inventiveness to sustain his family’s stomachs.

But I am mainly scared for the conscience of those who arrested him, and of those who blew the whistle. I suffer from the decorum of so many Cubans devoted to reporting their neighbors, with withering smiles, of taking away what little they acquire , of vaporizing the shred of peacefulness that it represents to a pater familias to be able to earn some money with which to alleviate the scarcities of the home kitchen.

It makes me suffer because in my commitment to some day building a happier and freer country, a country that better meets the needs of its sons and daughters, they will all be the burden that will tie us to the past.

Translator: Angelica Betancourt

August 14, 2010