Translating Cuba

Two hours with the New York Times’ Ernesto Londoño / 14ymedio

Our team had a conversation with the New York Times journalist who has authored the editorials about Cuba.

14ymedio, 1 December 2014 — Ernesto Londoño, who authored six editorials on Cuba published recently by the New York Times engaged in a friendly conversation on Saturday with a part of the 14ymedio team, in the hotel where he is staying in Havana.

Our intention was to interview him, but he told us the rules of his media prohibit his giving interviews without previous consultation. He also declined our proposal to take photos. Instead, he was eager to listen to our opinions in an atmosphere of mutual respect. There were two hours of conversation dedicated to refining, enriching and debating the controversial ideas that the newspaper has addresses in his editorials.

The following is a brief synthesis of what was said there, arranged by topics and ascribed to the author of each opinion.

Journalism

Yoani Sánchez: Cubans are going to need a great deal of information to avoid falling into the hands of another authoritarianism. In 14ymedio we are including a plurality of voices, for example on the issue of the embargo. We leave it to the reader to form his own opinion from a variety of information.

Reinaldo Escobar: The official Cuban press, which is all the press, there are no public media, they are private property of the Communist Party. Now, has there been a change? Yes, there has been a change. Since a few years ago the newspaper Granma has had a weekly section with letters by readers where you find criticism of bureaucrats, things that don’t work or prices at the markets. But look, the emphasis is on the self-employed markets.

So far I have not read a profound criticism of the prices at the convertible peso markets that the Government has, which are abusive. Nor can you talk about the legitimacy of our rulers or the impracticality of the system. Here are two big taboos, and in the third place, the topic of political repression. If they report on a repudiation rally, they show it as something spontaneous on the part of the people, without telling how the political police were behind it, organizing it all.

Miriam Celaya: There are changes indeed. The problem is that there are real and nominal changes, and these changes are generally nominal. Now everyone in Cuba can legally stay in a hotel, which before was forbidden. They never explained why it was forbidden before. But Cubans cannot really afford the luxury of a hotel stay, with wages being what they are; nor can they buy a car, a house, or travel. The problem with the reforms is that they are unrealistic for the vast majority of Cubans. They are a government investment in order to buy time.

There are two of those reforms that are particularly harmful and discriminatory for Cubans. One is the foreign investment law, which is explicitly for foreign investors and it does not allow Cubans to invest; and the other is a new Labor Code which does not acknowledge autonomy, the right to strike, and which spells out explicitly that Cuban workers cannot freely enter into contracts with potential companies investing in Cuba, which constitutes a restraint and a brake.

Víctor Ariel González: Yes, things are changing, but we ask ourselves if really those changes offer a brighter horizon and why people keep leaving, even more are going than before.

More Apathetic Youth?

Miriam Celaya: It is a backlash against ideological saturation, a submissiveness which conditioned almost every act of your life to obedience, to political subordination, whether picking a university career, a job or an appliance, anything. Everything was a slogan, everything a roadblock. This has subsided somewhat, but previously, it was impossible to take a step without hearing “Motherland or death, we will triumph” and go, go… The investigations they undertook to see if you belonged to the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution… the youth of today have not experienced that bombardment of “the enemy that harasses us.” I did not bring up my kids in that, on the contrary, I tried to detoxify them. So this generation, the children of the parents of disenchantment, grew up devoid of that and are at a more pragmatic level, even at a marketing one, whose greatest dream is to leave the country.

Economy

Eliécer Ávila: The law governing the leasing (in usufruct) of lands for farmers to work them was the basis of a plan for increasing food production and lowering prices — so that the average salary for a day’s work might be more than just three plantains.

I come from the banana plantations of El Yarey de Vázquez, in Puerto Padre, Las Tunas. The nation’s food supply is the most critical element in our collective anger. In January of last year, a pound of onions cost 8 Cuban pesos (CUPs). Later, between March and April, the price rose to 15. In May it increased to 25 CUPs and now, the onion has disappeared from low-income neighborhoods. It can only be found in certain districts such as Miramar, at five convertible pesos (CUCs) for 10 onions — more expensive than in Paris — while the monthly Cuban salary still averages under 20 CUCs per month).

I know very few farmers who even own a bicycle. However, any young person who joins up with the Ministry of State Security is in no time riding around on a Suzuki motorcycle.

Embargo

Yoani Sánchez: When talking about the end of the embargo, there is talk of a step that the White House must take, and for me I don’t care for the idea that what happens in my country depends on what happens in the White House. It hurts my Cuban pride, to say that the plans for my future, for my childrens’ future, and for the publication of 14ymedio depend on what Obama does. I am concentrating on what is going to happen in the Plaza of the Revolution and what civil society here is going to do. So for me I don’t want to bet on the end of the embargo as the solution. I want to see when we will have freedom of expression, freedom of association and when they will remove the straitjacket from economic freedom in this country.

Miriam Celaya: The reasons for the establishment of the embargo are still in effect, which were the nationalizing of American companies in Cuba without proper compensation. That this policy, in the limelight for such a long time, has subsequently become a tug of war is another thing. But those of us with gray hair can remember that in the 70’s and 80’s we were under the Soviet protectorate. Because we talk a lot about sovereignty, but Cuba has never been sovereign. Back then, Soviet subsidies were huge and we hardly talked about the embargo. It was rarely mentioned, maybe on an anniversary. Fidel Castro used to publicly mock the embargo in all forums.

Reinaldo Escobar: They promised me that we were going to have a bright future in spite of the blockade and that was due among other things to the fact that the nation had recovered their riches, confiscating them from the Americans. So what was going to bring that future was what delayed it.

Miriam Celaya: The issue remains a wildcard for the Cuban government, which, if it has such tantrums about it, it’s because it desperately needs for it to be lifted, especially with regards to the issue of foreign investments. I am anti-embargo in principle, but I can see that ending it unilaterally and unconditionally carries with it greater risks than the benefits it will supposedly provide.

Victor Ariel Gonzalez: The official justification says that as we are a blockaded country so we have the Gag Law. Because we are under siege and “in the besieged square, dissidence is treason.” There are those who believe that if the embargo is lifted that justification would end. But you have to say that this system has been very effective in finishing off the mechanisms for publicly analyzing the embargo, it has killed off independent institutions.

Then, how will people be able to channel discontent and non-conformity with the continued repression the day after the lifting of the embargo?

Reinaldo Escobar: They will have another argument for keeping repression when the embargo is lifted. Write it down, because “this will be the test” as they say around here: “Now that the Americans have the chance to enter Cuba with greater freedom, now that they can buy businesses and the embargo is over, now we do have to take care of the Revolution.” That will be the argument.

Repression

Yoani Sánchez: In this country people are very afraid. Including not knowing they’re afraid, because they have lived with it for so long they don’t know that this is called “fear.” Fear of betrayal, of being informed on, of not being able to leave the country, of being denied a promotion to a better job, not being able to board a plane, that a child won’t be allowed to go to the university, because “the university is for Revolutionaries.” The fears are so many and so vast that Cubans today have fear in their DNA.

Eliécer Ávila: We also need to understand how Cubans make their living. Ninety percent of Cubans do not work where their calling or vocation would take them, but rather where they can survive and make do. In this country, to be a Ph.D. in the social sciences is truly to be the idiot of the family. This is the same guy who can’t throw a quinceañera party for his daughter, who can’t take his family out to dinner at a restaurant. The successful person in this society is the manager of a State-owned cafeteria. This is because he controls the supplies of chicken, oil, rice, etc. and sells the surplus on the black market — which is really how he makes his living. The fundamental tactic to create social immobility in this country is [for the State] to make as many people as possible feel guilty about something.

Self-employment

Eliécer Ávila: People think that because there is now self-employment in this country, that there is a way to be more independent of the State — which is true up to a point. But the question is, how does a self-employed business person survive? I had to leave my ice cream business. After having received my degree in information technology, I was sent to the interior as a sort of punishment for having an incident with Ricardo Alarcón, who at that time was the President of the National Assembly. It was a turning point for me as I tried to become one of the first self-employed people in my town. I had a 1967 German ice cream maker. The process requires 11 products — including coagulant, which someone had to steal from the ice cream factory. Or rather, I should say, “recover,” because in this country we do not call that kind of thing “stealing.” The milk had to be taken from the daycare center, or from the hospital, so that it could be sold to me. The point is, there simply is no other way.

All of these private businesses that are springing up and flourishing are sustained by illegality.

Yoani Sánchez: … Or in the capital that comes clandestinely from abroad, especially from the exile. There are restaurants in Havana that could be in New York or Berlin, but those have received foreign money or are engaging in “money laundering” from the corruption and from the highest leadership itself.

Eliécer Ávila: Many of these businesses are created so that government officials can place their children, grandchildren and friends in them, people who are no longer interested in the creation of the “New Man” nor in achieving a communist society. Rather, they want to launder their money and insert themselves in society like any other person.

I do not know a single communist worker in Cuba who has been able to launch a business. Those committed Revolutionaries, who gave their all, are today the people who don’t have onions in their kitchens.

Yoani Sánchez: Self-employment has been presented as one of the major indicators of the “reforms” or the Raul regime changes. But on the issue of self-employment many things are not considered: they have no access to a wholesale market, they can’t import raw material nor directly export their products. Thus, the annoyance all Cubans have with the customs restrictions that went into effect in September. The Government justifies is saying that “every country has this kind of legislation,” but in those countries there are laws for commercial imports.

Miriam Celaya: They made a special regulation for foreign investors, so they can import, but not for Cubans.

Yoani Sanchez: Another issue that greatly affects the economy is the lack of Internet connection. We’re not just talking about freedom of expression and information or being able to read 14ymedio within Cuba, but that our economy is set back more and more by people not having access to the Internet.

Luzbely Escobar: It’s not only that: Self-employment is authorized only for selling or producing, but the professionals cannot join that sector with their abilities. You cannot be a self-employed lawyer, architect or journalist.

Miriam Celaya: A large administrative body was created to control the self-employed and it is full of corrupt individuals, who are always hovering over these workers to exploit them and relieve them of their gains. Some tell me that there are fixed fees for inspector bribes. Here, even corruption is institutionalized and rated.

Eliécer Ávila: In this country, for everyone who wants to lift his head towards progress, there are ten who want to behead him. There is much talk of “eliminating the middleman.” However, the great middleman is the State itself, which, for example, buys a pound of black beans from the farmer for 1.80 CUPs, then turns around and sells that pound for 12 CUPs at a minimum.

The New York Times Editorials

Eliécer Ávila: It would be a great favor to Cuba if, with the same influence that these editorials are intended to have on the global debate about one topic [the embargo], they also tried to shed light on other topics that are taboo here, but that go right to the heart of what we need as a nation.

Miriam Celaya: I have an idea. Rather than making gestures about the release of Alan Gross, rather than making gestures about making the embargo more flexible, I think that the strongest and clearest gesture that the Cuban government could make would be to liberate public opinion, liberate the circulation of ideas. Citizens should manifest themselves; this is something that is not happening here.

Reinaldo Escobar: Without freedom there is no citizen participation.

Miriam Celaya: What is going on with these editorials? They are still giving prominence to a distorted, biased view, composed of half-truths and lies about what the Cuban reality is. They are still giving prominence to what a government says, and Cuba is not a government. Cuba’s government today is a small group of old men, and when I say “old” it’s because of their way of thinking, of individuals who have remained anchored in discourse rooted in a cold war and belligerence. The Cuban people are not represented in that government.

Yoani Sánchez: I read editorials when they came out but last night went back to read them more calmly. The first editorial is perhaps the most fortunate, because it achieves a balance between one side and the other, but there are some that I think are really pitiful. Such as the one about the “brain drain” because these medical professionals are living a drama in this country that is not recognized in these texts.

First, I am against the concept of the theft of, or brain drain, because it accepts that your brain belongs to someone, to the nation, to the educational structure, or to whoever taught you. I think everyone should decide what to do with his or her own brain.

That editorial gives no space to the economic tragedy experienced by these professionals in Cuba. I know surgeons who may be among the best in their specialty in Latin America and they can’t cross their legs because people would be able to see the holes in their shoes, or they have to operate without breakfast because they can’t afford breakfast.

Miriam Celaya: There is something in that editorial that cuts and offends me, and it’s that slight of condescension, for instance, in this quote: “Havana could pay its workers more generously abroad if the medical brigades continue to represent an important source of income”… But, gentlemen! To do so is to accept the slavery of those doctors. It is to legitimize the implied right of a government to use its medical personnel as slaves for hire. How can that be?

Yoani Sánchez: With regards to these medical missions, I must say that the human character, no one can question it, when it comes to saving lives. But there has to be a political side and that is that these people are used as a kind of medical diplomacy, to gain followers, and because of this many countries vote at the United Nations on behalf of the Government of Cuba, which has practically hijacked many countries because they have Cuban doctors in their territories. It becomes an element of political patronage.

Another aspect is the economic, which is pushing doctors to leave because they can see the appeal of having a better salary, they can import appliances, pots for their home, a computer. Also, every month their bank account gets a deposit of convertible pesos, which they only get to keep if they return to Cuba and don’t desert from the mission. From a labor and ethical point of view it is very questionable.

Another issue is the negative impact it has on the Cuban healthcare system.

Luzbely Escobar: You go to a clinic and it is closed, or of the three doctors on duty, only one is there because the other two are in Venezuela, and then there is total chaos.

Miriam Celaya: In these editorials, I have read “Cuba” instead of “the Cuban government,” and I have read that the members of “the dissidence” were considered “charlatans.” These definitions, in addition to being disrespectful, put everyone in the same bag. Here, as everywhere else, society is complex, and, while it’s true that there are charlatans among the opposition – and among the government too — there are a lot of honest people who are working very faithfully for a better Cuba, with the greatest sacrifice and risk.

When they demonize it, then it seems that they are speaking the government’s language, as if they had written this in a room of the Party Central Committee and not in a newsroom of a country in the free world. Such epithets, coming from prestigious media, end up creating opinion. That’s a big responsibility.

Dissidence

Yoani Sánchez: In this country the nation has been confused with the government, the homeland with a party, and the country with a man. Then this man, this party and this government have taken the right to decide on behalf of everyone, whether it’s about growing a tomato or a cachucha pepper, or what ideological line the whole nation is going to follow.

As a consequence, those of us who have ideas different from those of that party, that government, and that man in power, are declared to be “stateless” or “anti-Cuban” and charged with wanting to align ourselves with a foreign power. It is as if now, that the Democratic party is governing the United States, all Republicans were declared to be anti-American. This is, like all the countries in the world, plural. If you walk down the street you are going to meet every kind of person: anarchist, liberal, social democrat, Christian democrat and even annexationist. Why can’t this so plural discourse be expressed in a legal way? And why do people like us have to be excluded from speaking and offering opinions?

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison, MLK, MJ Porter and Norma Whiting

The Cuban version of Facebook does not convince users / 14ymedio, Luzbely Escobar

The Cuba social network: “The Clothesline”

14ymedio, Luzbely Escobar, Havana, 5 December 2014 – Although its organizers deny it, La Tendedera (The Clothesline) is trying to emulate Facebook inside Cuba. The competition is tough because among the youngest on the Island Mark Zuckerberg’s social network has many followers. More than a year after its creation, its tropical competition has only managed to attract 4,500 users, and there are no clear figures on how many are really active.

In an interview published Wednesday by the newspaper Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth), Kirenia Fagundo, leader of the project Cuba Va (Cuba Goes), which includes La Tendedera, tells readers about the obstacles and challenges facing the digital site. At the beginning, the social network was designed for those without access to the Internet, the young woman explained. However, currently it is only possible to access it from the Youth Computer Clubs, which inhibits its expansion and is an inconvenience for users.

Presented to the public on 7 September of last year, La Tendedera isn’t hosted at the Cuba Telecommunications Company (ETECSA) national data center, which “would facilitate connectivity through the intranet.” The programmers didn’t want to wait for it to be ready and opened public access to those attending the Youth Clubs. A mistake that has been detrimental to the quality and expansion of the service.

The slowness at which the website loads is one of the problems most mentioned by La Tendera’s users. The platform is way too heavy for the low speed Cuban networks. Although, according to Fagundo, it’s hoped that a lighter version will be hosted on the ETECSA servers and finally be accessible from the national intranet.

On inquiring among several users, what comes to light is not only the speed and the access restrictions which conspire against this tropical emulation of Facebook. The most widespread criticism, not reported by the newspaper Juventud Rebelde, is the impossibility of interacting with users beyond our national borders. You can only connect with other domestic users who have registered on the service. “If I travel outside the country I can’t update my profile, because you can only access it inside Cuba,” says Julian Casanovas, a high school student.

The announcement a few weeks ago, that Youth Club will begin to charge for its services, has been a new obstacle for La Tendedera, although the majority of these sites still having implemented the charge. “If only a few people come here now, imagine when you have to pay to do it,” says the administrator of one of the sites in the Plaza of the Revolution municipality, who asked to remain anonymous.

La Tendedera’s creators don’t appear to have learned the lesson. Despite the great limitations imposed by the Cuban networks’ slow speeds and lack of connectivity, they are planning to create a national version of Twitter, provisionally called Pitazo (Whistle). Will this new project also languish before the indifference of users and the competition from the large social networks? The answer can already be anticipated. Cuban users don’t seem disposed to put up with limitations.

El Sexto Again in Danger, December 2014 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Friends of the world, I just talked with the graffiti artist El Sexto — Danilo Maldonado Machado — from Havana, Cuba.

State Security agents are like bloodhounds after him, all over the city, on motorbikes and in cars.

They are intimidating him, but in the end his arrest by the police appears imminent.

The Ladies in White Association is going to organize a huge, peaceful, pro-human rights march in El Vedado on 10 December. And the repressors are doing what they did during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI in March of 2012: “preventative” mass arrests for more than a week, without legal charges nor any right to make a phone call: Pure State kidnappings.

El Sexto’s art has no place in the Castroism that castrates our free Cuban hearts.

The agents are pressuring him to go into exile. I also told him to consider it, because between the Cubanamericantotalitarian Tycoons and the European Business Left, the play is already set to impose on us another half century of Castroism without Castro.

El Sexto just said to me, “Thank you for your friendly advice, Landy, but for me… they are going to have to kill me in this country.”

And El Sexto knows very well of what he speaks, because he wears on his skin the assassinated bodies of Laura Pollán y Oswaldo Payá.

1 December 2014

Alan Gross, ‘The New York Times’ And The Spies / 14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart

14ymedio, Mario Felix Lleonart, Havana, 1 December 2014 — Last November 4, the White House reiterated that the case of citizen Alan Gross, prisoner in Cuba for bringing electronic equipment onto the Island, is not comparable to that of the Cuban spy members of the Wasp Network and that therefore there will be no exchange.

The reaffirmation invalidates the principal objective of the Havana regime in the kidnapping of Gross and took place amidst one of the intense campaigns by the so-called International Conference for the Liberty of the Five, which more than freedom for the prisoners has as its objective making noise and gaining followers from among the naïve of the world who may still be in favor of a Caribbean totalitarianism that approaches its 60th year.

Far and wide, the name of Gross has kept petitions moving that join the regime’s proposal that he should be exchanged for the spies. The Church World Service, for example, which since its beginning in 1948 has served the interests of the extreme left, made a three-day visit to Cuba at the beginning of November in which it made clear that Gross is only its excuse, and its objective: the liberation of the Cuban spies.

Among the saga of the editorials devoted to Cuba by the New York Times, which so far add up to six, the fourth, published at the very beginning of November, aligned with the proposal for exchange contrary to the reiterations by the American government. November, by the way, concludes with the visit by the editorial writer Ernesto Londono to Cuba, and with him, also, the spirit of each editorial arrives on the Island.

The support of the Church World Service for each propagandistic slogan Havana’s political agenda is to be expected, it has always been its trajectory. Never a statement in favor of the victims of the system, always in favor of the victimizer.

But the case of the New York Times has been different, because in its history we remember positions contrary to the dictatorial excesses on the Island, as occurred in the face of the so-called Black Spring of 2003. At that time, Fidel Castro’s “Reflections” did not report favorably on the positions taken by the New York Times, nor did we see the wholesale publication of New York Times editorials in the Communist Party Organ, but all to the contrary.

Like that article in Granma of April 24, 2003, under the signature of Arsenio Rodriguez, which Reinaldo Escobar of 14ymedio reminded us of, where he stated: “…its editorial decisions are neither serious nor liberal, but they obediently comply with the defense orders of the dominant power interests of that nation,” to conclude: “…the true role of The New York Times (sic) was, is and will be to represent the essence of the empire.”

On the other hand, the New York Times has never said that those who hold political power in Cuba are a good government, what it criticizes are positions historically maintained by the United States, which from its point of view have been ineffective in achieving the dismantlement of totalitarianism on the Island and for which it proposes another policy, one of rapprochement, which some call “the embrace of death.”

Even if I do not agree with the New York Times’ thesis, I do hope that after their present visit to the island, the new editorials that are published will correct a little their current direction. For example, in the case of the fourth editorial I have the hope that Londono will not only interview Gross himself in person, but that he will explore other possible resolutions for the case that worries him, that of the spies, more feasible for an exchange and that until now he has not considered: that of the exchange of other probable spies for spies.

This has to do with cases like that of Ernesto Borges Perez, accused of spying for the United States, now confined in the Combinado del Este Prison, in his 16th year of incarceration, the same amount of time as the three who are imprisoned in the United States accused of spying for Cuba.

Under accusations similar to those of Borges are found also Rolando Sorraz Trujillo, sentenced to 25 years since 1995; Claro Fernando Alonso Hernandez, sentenced to 30 years since 1996; the team of Ricardo Alarcon, ex-president of the National Assembly of Popular Power, Miguel Alvarez, sentenced to 30 years, and Mercedes Arce, sentenced to 14; and Eusebio Conrado Hernandez Garcia, close to the ousted Carolos Lage and Felipe Perez Roque, sentenced to 20 years, which he is serving in the Guanajay prison.

It is obvious that the Cuban regime is not interested in packing off these prisoners who seem to be a high priority of general Raul Castro, but one would have to see his reaction if the United States government recognizes that the accusation under which Havana keeps in prison – with severe penalties – these Cubans were correct and were to take an even further step, weighing as more valid the option of exchanging for them the three Cuban spies in United States territory.

Maybe the New York Times, which likes to look for the fifth leg to the table, will redirect its proposal and expose this more comparable option. And that, of course, the exchange of spies for spies will be produced with the antecedent liberation of Alan Gross, who evidently did not spy for anyone and finds himself unjustly imprisoned in Cuba.

Translated by MLK

An Old Castro Weapon Still in Operation / Ivan Garcia

Renato’s family emigrated to the United States on October 3 but that did not stop them from having some weak communal soup, drinking cheap rum and dancing the timba on a block of Reparto Sevillano south of Havana on the night of the 27th, the eve of the anniversary of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR).*

There were photos of Renato with the president of the CDR and the person in charge of surveillance, a guy with connections to the special services. As a momento of the festivities, they were shown with their cell phones.

Thanks to a stereo on loan from a bookie of an illegal lottery known as the “bolito,” or ball, a round of boleros began after midnight and ended with “Lágrimas Negras,” (Black Tears) the anthem of Cuban emigres.

Have times changed? Yes. Are the Castro brother’s quasi-state institutions more tolerant? No. The ongoing twenty-five-year-old economic crisis has led to a political sleight of hand in the strategies used by the Communist autocrats.

Now the goal is to generate enemy greenbacks that Cubans living in the United States generously send to their poor relations in Cuba. The CDR, the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC), the Young Communist League (UJC) and other state institutions have thrown off their heavy ideological ballast in favor of the political pragmatism currently being practiced in Cuba.

It is not unusual for a successful Cuban prostitute living in Europe or someone who has risked his life crossing the treacherous Florida straights to return after a few years and take part in a celebration sponsored by the CDR in his or her old neighborhood.

It was not always this way. On the night of September 28, 1960 — amid the sound of firecrackers — Fidel Castro set a system of collective surveillance on every block. Democratic civil society was dissolved until further notice.

Cuba was divided into “revolutionaries” and “worms.” Institutions were militarized. Obsessive spying into citizens’ private lives became routine. Everything was of interest to the special services, from how you lived and what you ate to the marital infidelities of members of the party and armed forces.

Betrayals and anonymous phone calls denouncing neighbors flooded the switchboards of police precincts. Cuba had entered its worst phase in the Cold War.

The CDR was and still is one of the primary instruments of control and cooperation for the Department of State Security. Thanks to its informants it was able to detain thousands of Castro opponents in April 1961 in advance of the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Though it still keeps an eye on dissidents, after fifty-four years the CDR is now an organization in obvious decline. Once upon a time its members organized scrap drives, were involved in public health campaigns, conducted nighttime neighborhood watch patrols, did volunteer work and taught political science courses.

It spite of its decline it remains the governmental institution with the largest membership in the country: around seven million people. Everyone is automatically enrolled at age fourteen.

The committee on each block maintains a book known as the “Directory of Addresses” in which the names of everyone who lives on the block are scrupulously recorded.

If you move, you are required to notify the the committee so that the new address can be registered in the book. Anyone visiting the home of a neighbor must also be reported to the CDR.

According to CDR reports the police detain and return to their provinces of origin Cubans from other areas who are living in Havana illegally.

Perhaps its most important current function is to exert civilian oversight on those suspected of illegal activities and corruption, but especially over activities by opponents and independent journalists.

Individual CDR committee heads provide data on all citizens residing their areas to the local police chief or investigators from the UJC or Cuban Communist Party (PCC), and regularly provide information to State Security.

On individual blocks there are other anonymous informers. They are responsible for checking and reporting on a dissident’s routine and visitors.

Generally, they are bored retirees or diehard Castro supporters. They take down license plate numbers of people visiting a dissident’s home and go through the trash cans of opponents looking for food containers, bottles of perfume and empty beverage bottles that might indicate “an expensive lifestyle.”

At a ceremony last year in Havana’s Convention Center, Raul Castro stated that the CDR must employ new tactics to combat dissident activity.

The general asserted that “the enemy will never stop working, will never change, so the organization must alter its strategies.” The regime is trying to carry out a bizarre course correction on a hybrid of the worst form of state capitalism combined with inefficient and authoritarian Marxist socialism.

He is trying to build bridges to the new breed of émigrés using any means possible. Though a large segment is unsympathetic to the regime, they also want nothing to do with political dissidents.

Not even megalomaniacal dictators like Mussolini or Hitler had groups of people in every vicinity who betrayed neighbors and mounted systematic acts of repudiation against opponents.

Though it has become something of a formality, the CDR remains an effective weapon for the regime. In terms of controlling those who opposed his revolution, its creation was one of Fidel Castro’s indisputable achievements.

Ivan Garcia

Photo: Cubanet

Translator’s note: The CDR is a network of neighborhood committees across Cuba. Committee heads monitor the activities of every person on their respective blocks. Yearly neighborhood parties to commemorate the organization’s founding are centered around a “caldosa,” or communal soup, to which residents are expected to contribute.

22 November 2014

Unidentified Coiled Objects / Rebeca Monzo

To the astonishment and concern of patients, one day there appeared in the ceiling of a surgical recovery room in the old Charitable Clinic (now renamed the Miguel Enríquez Hospital by the government in honor of a Chilean doctor killed during the Pinochet dictatorship) a coiled, yellow animal or vegetable entity that was visibly growing and getting fatter. A few days later another one appeared and then another, exhausting the patience of those confined to the room.

After repeated complaints by patients and family members, two hospital employees finally arrived armed with a ladder, brushes and paint. In one fell swoop they knocked the three unidentified coiling objects from the ceiling, quickly applied a few strokes of paint to the area where the objects had appeared and then left.

No one later came to investigate the cause of these apparitions nor did anyone fumigate. Everything was simply covered up with paint.

Just a few years ago I was caring for a friend who had just had surgery and was in recovery in the Institute of Nephrology Surgical Hospital when I suddenly heard a commotion behind the drop ceiling. To my astonishment the regular patients told me with a striking calm and acceptance, “Don’t worry, ma’am. It’s just the cats chasing the rats!”

According to the United Nations, our country is among the top ten healthiest on the planet. This, as well as daily incidents of sanitation problems and lack of maintenance that affect our hospital facilities — the exception being those exclusively for top government leaders, their family members and foreign patients — demonstrate that both the visitors and the workers of this world-renowned institution, whether there as a guest or working permanently in our country, resign themselves to what the government tells them to do and don’t bother to look for anything more than that.

The patients from the same old hospital, are still waiting to be informed about the cause and origin of those unidentified coiled objects.

Translated by: BW

1 December 2014

Battered women in Cuba: Where can they go? / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

UNHCR workshop on prevention and response to gender-based violence with women from Cuba, Haiti and Peru. (UNHCR Americas)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Havana, 25 November 2014 — “Do you know what it feels like to break the wall?” she asked me years after we met. “It’s like someone cracked a table on your face… it hurts, but you can’t believe its your body.

“Now I’m afraid of men, I don’t want to have anything to do with them,” she confessed while we talked in a café with more flies than menu options. She began to narrate the details of a Calvary she had always kept hidden, from shame and because she felt responsible for those blows. Today, she can’t hear out of one ear, her nose slants to the left and she mistrusts all those whose pants have a fly.

Like many provincial women. Ileana landed in Havana on the arm of a man who promised her “villas and castles,” he said. “I was very young and, since I was a little girl I’d been taught in my house in Banes that I should serve a man and please him.” While she told me her story I had the impression I was speaking with a woman from the early twentieth century, but no: Ileana is younger than I am. She wore the school neckerchief, shouting “Pioneers for communism, we will be like Che,” and studied up to the eleventh grade in a high school in the countryside.

“I came to Havana and for the first weeks he treated me like a queen,” she said, unable to contain her smile. When Ileana laughs her whole face lights up and her nose looks more crooked than ever. “Then he started to mistreat me, but only verbally,” she says, downplaying the importance while looking over her shoulder. A young man had sat down at the table next to us and was observing us laciviously. “Ladies, did someone stand you up? Because here is a stallion who never fails,” he blurts out, under the imperturbable gaze of the waiter.

“The neighbors called the police several times. Then we spent hours and hours at the station at Zanja and Dragones streets, for nothing. The investigator told me they didn’t get involved in things between husband and wife,” and that, “I had to go home with him, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she explains, already on the verge of tears. In Cuba, current law has enormous gaps with regards to gender violence. If the abuse “is not defined in the Penal Code, the abuser is not sanctioned,” a lawyer at the law firm on Carlos III Street later explained to me, asking not to be named.

“He could only be charged if a doctor determined I had injuries,” Ileana recalls. However, a black eye or an ache in the side isn’t considered one. “I had to show a wound that was a puncture or bleeding,” she explains. I look at her and question why a doctor would ignore the marks of cigarette burns on her forearm and her boxer’s nose, without protecting her. What was lacking for a restraining order? That he kill her? I wondered, without sharing it with her.

Things have calmed down. The abuser is far away and this petite woman with her battered face confesses, “Well, I have to say, he wasn’t so bad,” and immediately adds, “in the tenement where we lived one woman had a husband who came home drunk from work one day with a machete.” She touches wood and looks around while concluding, “Thanks to the virgin, I was luckier.”

Her case was archived again and again. She had no phone to call from, no address for a battered women’s shelter is published in the official media, so Ileana endured and remained silent. Her martyrdom lasted for a decade, including rape within the marriage—also not defined in our laws—the odd fracture, and constant humiliation.

“Then my daughter was born and she made me bold,” says this woman dressed in baggy clothes, looking down, avoiding the eyes of the man sitting beside us at the café. “One night I gathered everything and went to my aunt’s house.” However, the escape didn’t last very long. “Someone ran their mouth and told him where I was staying and he came to find me. It was the darkest night of my life.”

Between pushes and insults, Ileana returned to her husband’s house. “That night he forced me for hours while telling me ‘you’re mine and no other man’s’.” She told how the next day she couldn’t even urinate. “I hurt all over and had his teeth marks all over my back.” Then began the phase of total defeat. “I got used to it, that my life would be like this, and stopped resisting,” she related with a pragmatism that is still painful.

Shortly afterwards the abuser found “an even younger country girl he mistreated,” recalls Ileana. “I was crushed, I didn’t want to look at myself in the mirror, I didn’t put on make up, or go out in the street.” In all that time, no women’s organization approached her, she didn’t know of any haven where she could find shelter, and more than a dozen times she heard the police that responded say, “Well, she must have done something to piss him off.”

Today, Ileana shared with me her wish. “I want to have sex with a man without fear… romantically.” As she says it her right hand touches her nose, trying to push it to the center… The place where it should have been if the abuser had not crossed her path.

The Ferguson case and its possible implications for Cuba / 14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez

Ferguson protests. (Andrew Benedict, Twitter)

14ymedio, Yoani Sánchez, Havana, 27 November 2014 – The events in Ferguson, arising from the death of the young man Michael Brown and the decision not to charge the police officer who killed him, have caused millions of people in the United States to question the situation in their country. The protests that followed the grand jury’s verdict raised new questions about the image of coexistence within the diversity that has been presented as a pillar of American identity.

The situation has renewed the alarm about the American model and sets off warnings in other countries where large sectors of the population continue to be disadvantaged, whether because of ethnicity, race, or geographic origin. This week’s images showing the overwhelming anger on the streets of Missouri speak to us of the accumulation of problems, which have found their trigger in the recent decision not to charge the police officer.

It is not only a question of Michael Brown’s death during a questionable arrest, but one of a society that has been fractured for centuries, living with racism that prolongs the distrust, stokes hatred and fuels the violence that is now breaking out into fires and vandalism. A scream, at times, sometimes silenced, that now raises its volume after the sad events of last August 9th.

Cuban society should take note of the events in Missouri. Among us racism, far from diminishing, has increased in recent decades. Motivated in part by the stubborn official policy of denying its existence and downplaying the rancor that sometimes hides under the disingenuous appearance of a joke, but whose bitter side is the high percentage of the prison population that is black, or the economic precariousness that characterizes this community.

At the last minute, and in a race to show international organizations that it is working on the problem, the Cuban government has created an agenda to fight against racism, which sadly lacks independence as well as enforceability. Lectures, conferences, statements by prominent figures in the Afro-descendant community, abound in the media. However, in reality, little has been done to give a voice to those who suffer first-hand from these prejudices.

Capitalizing on fear of greater discrimination has been, for too long, an instrument of ideological subordination on the Island. The constant allusions to a past of abuse and segregation – prior to January 1959 – have been used by official propaganda to maintain the support of the black community. As if the only choices were the current situation or returning to the slave quarters and slave drivers.

The authorities have ended up hijacking and distorting the voice of this community that should have its own presence in independent organizations and entities that allow it to denounce and make demands with regards the situation in which it exists.

Lately, the Ferguson case has also been sadly used by the official media to stoke fears of democracy. “Look at what happened in the United States,” the television commentators – obsessed with the mote in another’s eye – seem to say to black Cubans. Again, the fear of returning to the whip and the specter of police lynchings are used to call Cubans of African descent to conformity or false complacency.

However, anger is something that is incubated slowly. We are fed facts such as false quotas of power delivered to people by the color of their skin, people who have no real possibilities of decision-making.

Anger gains strength when you enter a university classroom and see hardly any colors beyond a “light mixed-race,” while in the prisons it is just the opposite.

Resentment rises when you see who lives in the illegal slums that crowd the outskirts of the capital and compare that to the racial origin of those who hold positions in foreign joint-venture companies, tourist facilities, or in the administration of economically strategic entities.

Pain increases outside the offices that receive remittances from exiles abroad and you can see for yourself that the most of the people who rely on this relief in convertible pesos are white.

Anger grows slowly and one day explodes. The detonator can be a police officer in Ferguson who kills a young black man, or a man in Havana who is handcuffed and put in a squad car for the simple act of walking through a tourist facility with that skin tone that brings so many problems in so many places.

Academic Cruise Ship from U.S. Arrives in Cuba / 14ymedio

place — Students from Semester at Sea at the University of Havana. Photo Credit: Semester at Sea.

14ymedio | Havana | 29 November 2014 — (Supplemented with information from EFE news agency) The M.V. Explorer academic cruise ship from Semester at Sea arrived today [Saturday, 11/29] in Havana bearing 624 students. The students, hailing from 248 U.S. universities, will participate in a program of cultural exchanges, conferences and excursions.

Frank González, rector of the University of Havana, greeted the group upon their arrival. The students were then transported to the grand staircase of the university where they were given another welcome.

On their first day in Cuba, the students were scheduled to attend conferences on US/Cuba relations, and to view an evening performance in the Havana Amphitheater.

On Sunday, the students were to have their choice among excursions to provinces such as Matanzas, Pinar del Río and Villa Clara. This last one will include stops in Remedios, the Monument to Ché, and the eco-tourism/art project, NaturArte. The Trinidad itinerary includes a stop at Topes de Collantes in the Escambray mountains, while in Matanzas they will be able to visit Playa Girón in the Bay of Pigs.

In Havana City, the students are scheduled to visit Ciudad Escolar Libertad (Freedom School City), the old Columbia military encampment that, after the Revolution, was converted into a school. There will also be a tour through La Habana Vieja (Old Havana) that will explain the restoration process for various buildings and streets in the city’s historic district.

The M.V. Explorer will remain docked in the port of Havana until Dec. 3.

Apparently, the program will provide these university students with a very specific vision of Cuba, one that celebrates the “achievements” of the Revolution in the areas of culture and education, among others.

May these students also be able to maximize their brief stay on the Island so that they may compare this ideal vision with the reality that we Cubans live every day.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison

Eastern Family Protests in Havana, #Cuba

The family in this video is protesting having been evicted from their home. Of note is the openly expressed anger of the crowd at the police action against them.

24 November 2014

The family in this video is protesting having been evicted from their home. Of note is the openly expressed anger of the crowd at the police action against them.

24 November 2014

Activists Denounce Act of Repudiation Held During Child’s Birthday Party / 14ymedio

This morning several activists reported an act of repudiation against members of the Network of Community Journalists and Communicators in the eastern city of Manzanillo.

According to reports by those to whom this newspaper had access, Leonardo Cancio had organized the celebration in his home for the birthday of a six-year old nephew and invited his colleagues from the Network.

From the day before he could see around his home several women who the activists say were convened by State Security to communicate to them that they would not permit “a party for children organized by the counter-revolution,” and also they visited neighbors’ houses to warn them not to send their children to said activity.

From early hours a crowd, calculated at some three hundred individuals by the members of the Network, surrounded Cancio’s house in order to impede access by the invitees. Nevertheless, some activists like Tania de la Torre, accompanied by her daughter and granddaughter, managed to arrive in advance. De la Torre explains that “the State Security agents called Alexis and Julio” on seeing them come out of the house “pushed us against the crowd” where they would have received blows and threats of future reprisals.

In statements offered to 14ymedio by Martha Beatriz Roque, leader of this group of independent journalists, the dissident remarked, “That is the Cuba that the Spanish Chancellor Margallo comes to visit, where human rights are trampled unceremoniously.”

Translated by MLK

“You Are A Confrontational Media Outlet,” Security Official Tells ‘14ymedio’ Correspondent / 14ymedio

14YMEDIO, Havana, 28 November 28 — At nine in the morning Friday, 14ymedio correspondent Juan Carlos Fernandez attended his summons at the Piñar del Rio police station. It was the third interrogation to which he has been subjected this year, although on this occasion he did not receive an official warning. A major from State Security, who only identified himself as David, accused him of collaborating with this newspaper, which he characterized as a “confrontational” media outlet that “serves the interests of a foreign power.”

The accusation was accompanied by threatening phrases about a possible “police action” against Fernandez if he continues “doing what you are doing now,” the officer confirmed. Nevertheless, to the question of the accused about a possible arrest and legal prosecution, the interrogator downplayed the seriousness of the reprisals.

Juan Carlos Fernandez defended his right to put his opinions into writing and publish them in any press medium. “I warn you, the weight of the law will fall on you,” responded the man using the pseudonym David, but without giving details. The officer invoked the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba and said that “the Government counts on the support of the people,” at which point the reporter reminded him that the Communist Party has fewer than a million members while the population of the country exceeds 11 million.

Juan Carlos Fernandez is a member of the magazine Coexistence which is published in Piñar del Rio, and since last August he has begun working as a correspondent for 14ymedio in that province. His journalistic works cover the cultural life of the city, reports about social topics and a wide photographic coverage of the territory.

A couple of months ago, Juan Carlos Fernandez brought to light the censorship that Piñareno painter Pedro Pablo Oliva had suffered with the cancellation of his exhibit Dissidences and Utopias.

Translated by MLK

Cuba: Access to WiFi or When Ingenuity is Penalized / Juan Juan Almeida

It is a paradox that on Friday, November 7, the 151st anniversary of the death of a singer of innocence and virtue, the Matanzas poet Jose Jacinto Milanes, at the People’s Court of Cardenas in the same province of Matanzas on the same day two Cuban citizens are awaiting sentencing — Rolando Cruz (age 46) and Livan Hernandez (35) — charged with “illegal use of the airwaves” and “illicit economic activity.”

Of the five arrested only two were charged. Both Hernandez and Cruz, instead of punishment, deserve recognition for demonstrated skills and support for development looking to the future.

The frequency of this network, according to the propaganda in the Girón, managed to link computers, videogame consoles and smartphones, across more than 26 kilometers. It never interfered in the frequency of the Telecommunications Company of Cuba SA (ETECSA), which means it does not constitute an illegal to use of the Cuban airwaves.

The court, as usual, was forced and ignored that Law Number 62 of the Cuban Penal Code in force as of April 1988, in addition to being obsolete, has absolutely no concept of the use of WiFi connections and without a law that sanctions it, there can be no penalty. That is: Nulla crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege. (There is no crime, no penalty without previous law.)

Rolando and Liván violated a resolution that had been signed by the Revolutionary Commander Ramiro Valdés when he was minister of information technology and communication. However, this being an administrative order by a particular agency, the men’s activities could only be deemed a misdemeanor and not a crime.

After five months in jail, under the terrorizing pressure of a process of “instruction,”the accused agreed that the users of that network could access the Internet. However, during the trial the magistrate called to the witness stand five residents of Cárdenas, who said that the connection was only good for gaming, watching movies, and chatting amongst themselves.

The invoices for the servers were produced, and these proved that the purchases were made in Canada and brought legally into Cuba. It was also demonstrated that the accused charged not a single penny and that the users had made only two monetary payments — one for 6 CUC and another for 10. These were for improvements to the network infrastructure, not usage fees.

The prosecutor — an awful neurotic and somewhat loudmouthed version of the famous Dr. House — took the wild recourse of accusing the defendants of “illicit economic activity.” She reminded the tribunal of the guidelines from the Attorney General’s office regarding the severe penalties that are to be imposed for such activities, because of the “ideological danger” that they pose for the Revolution.

The defense attorney, one Nestor González, performed spectacularly. The defense was courageous, convincing and articulate — but hardly effective. The accused had already been sentenced way before the first hearing. It was the usual: the idea is to make examples of the violators, produce a sort of electroshock as a reminder and to demonstrate that in this corporate military era the director general doesn’t want any flight of money, as well as to ratify that the Revolutionary government cedes no space.

Therefore, keeping in mind that in this case there is no crime but rather a country that lacks a legal structure capable of functioning independently from the mandates of the government, we await the sentence.

Translated by Alicia Barraqué Ellison and others.

12 November 2014

UNPACU Denounces A Plan For “Liquidating the Most Active Opposition” / 14ymedio

14YMEDIO, November 28, 2014 — UNPACU issued a statement Thursday night in which it accuses President Raul Castro of having ordered the “liquidation” of the opposition. The organization cites sources from the Ministry of the Interior (MININT) according to which the elimination of the most diligent activists should be carried out in the next three months.

UNPACU believes that the latest attacks on the Ladies in White and Jose Daniel Ferrer fit within that supposed order, given that they involve violent attacks against key dissident figures in the last weeks and come from people tied, in their judgment, to State Security.

In the statement they review last Tuesday’s event in Santa Clara in which activist Guillermo Fariñas asserts he suffered an assassination attempt and in which several Ladies in White were injured, leaving one of them in serious condition. “A similar case occurred at two UNPACU sites in Santiago de Cuba and is now the source of a farce that the government is trying to fabricate against Jose Daniel Ferrer,” continues the statement.

Jose Daniel Ferrer has been called by State Security to give a statement, presumably as a defendant, for the crime of assault against the complainant Ernesto Jimenez Rodriguez. As the statement explains, last November 13^th, at the UNPACU headquarters located in Reparto Mariana de la Torre, in Santiago de Cuba, this man, supposedly sent by the political police, provoked a violent altercation.

“Fortunately, with several activists and responsible individuals present at the headquarters, they managed to disable the aggressor, immobilizing him and removing from him the metal weapons that he carried,” the document highlights.

The same individual had sought membership in UNPACU weeks before, for which reason the organization made the usual investigations that “are performed before accepting any applicant.” The conclusion was that he was tied to the Ministry of the Interior.

“In view of such fact, and without telling the individual anything about it, he was allowed to enter the headquarters with the proper control and knowledge by those present of his status as a political police infiltrator and only for events of no significance for activism,” they explain.

Jose Daniel Ferrer, who has denounced the situation, said that “in no case can an individual who has been seen by more than 15 witnesses attacking numerous people cause a peace activist for Human Rights to be taken into police custody with the objective of creating a false accusation and maybe holding him there without a possible defense. We at UNPACU are not going to submit ourselves to this farce in any way.”

Translated by MLK

Cuba 2014 / Rafael Leon Rodriguez

The 32nd Havana International Fair (FIHAV) 2014 closed its doors after a generous awarding of prizes this past Friday, Nov. 7. It’s said that Brazil was the exhibitor that saw the most growth in traffic from prior years, and Spain — with 132 participating companies — was the most-represented.

This statistic took into account Cuba’s presentation of the “Purse of Opportunity,” now a feature of the country’s new Foreign Investment Act, and the offers of special perks to businesses from the Mariel Special Development Zone. The Cuban proposals, fundamentally framed within the joint-venture model, places at the disposal of foreign investors concerns ranging from those that are active to semi-active – such as sugar refineries – to arable lands, as well as biotechnology and pharmaceutical enterprises.

In short, a promotional gamut of possibilities encompasses virtually all domains of production and services. The Cuban Revolutionary State, which confiscated everything, and everybody, at the start of its totalitarian experiment, now puts up for sale at least half of every asset they have remaining. Of course, this is just for foreigners.

When we Cubans on the Island approach these fairgrounds, we mark them with a bit of wonder, as distant spheres cut off from our reality — A Different Cuba, of which little or nothing has to do with us.

The same happens to us with tourist zones: Varadero, Cayo Coco or Cayo Roman, and with the medical and pharmacological research institutes — these are all spaces that are alien to the majority of Cubans.

They fill the isolated display cases/oases that are viewed and enjoyed by foreign visitors and a privileged few from the home turf. They are diverse pieces of this rigged jigsaw puzzle which the state has made of Cuba.

They are also a likely cause of the flattering, but inaccurate, comments from outsiders regarding our national scene. This whole dynamic – coupled with the crony-capitalist bad habit of ostensibly over-investing beyond the profit potential of the country — has created in the minds of many foreign speculators a “virtual reality” view of Cuba.

But our nation can only be itself. It is the product of all these different spaces, of its successes and failures, in which we Cubans all participate, be we here in the islands, in exile or in the diaspora spread across the world. It is this sense of joint belonging that unites and lifts us up, that makes us feel a certain, commonly-shared pride, when one or some of us stand out. It matters not if they are Cuban players in the American Major Leagues, artists, or volunteer doctors fighting Ebola in Africa.

Therefore, what we need to recover, so that we may join together as one people, are our liberties. We need to re-insert ethics into our value system, to once again place honesty above loyalty that is blind, deaf and dumb. In short, to relaunch a pluralistic democracy in which we all may participate with dignity, without exclusions, in the rights and duties appertaining to Cuban citizens – with no display cases in sight.

Translated by: Alicia Barraqué Ellison

15 November 2014

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: