Stories and Storytellers / Fernando Damaso

graffiti

Much is written and spoken in the official media about the upcoming 20th Congress of the Cuban Workers Center (CTC) and its importance to the workers. Nothing is further from the truth, considering that the CTC is a government organization designed for total control of the union movement in the interest of the Party and the State.

For many years, practically since the disappearance of Lázaro Peña as an authentic labor leader and Secretary General of this organization, it was converted into one of the many governmental tentacles to control the citizenry, in this case the workers.

Its conversion was being prepared from before, by the Aclaraciones [Clarifications] section of the newspaper Hoy [Today], organ of the Communists, written by its director Blas Roca (author also, in 1943, of the pseudo-scientific pamphlet “The Fundamentals of Socialism in Cuba” in which he tried to fit Cuban history within the dogmas of Marxism-Leninism and Stalinism), where he delineated and established a kind of Revolutionary Code about how the workers should behave in the new society: no restoring to strikes, following the Party’s and government’s orders, and prioritizing duties in detriment to rights.

Thus, they repealed by decree the independent employers and a unique and infallible employer: the State, whose strong and unconditional ally was the CTC.

This role, totally detached from the interests of the workers, was later sanctioned with laws and decrees, and with the designation from top to bottom of prefabricated union leaders, with no real influence over its representatives, ready to exercise its role as guardians of the flock, and prevent the appearance of true leaders.

Now, with the appearance of self-employed workers, one of the great preoccupations of the CTC is how to integrate the flock of the established syndicates, and not allowing them any affiliation or, even worse, creating their own unions rather than the existing and sanctified ones.

The CTC and its unions, who in all their years have responded to the Party and the government and never defended the rights of the workers, lack the credit to define themselves as their maximum representatives, and try to adapt themselves to the so-called “updating of the model” to be in tune with the moment, but without giving an inch on any of its prerogatives. A very difficult task before an ever more disbelieving population, tired of so many stories and storytellers.

20 January 2014

The Car in Cuba: To Die With Face to the Sun or to Live With Eyes Closed / Juan Juan Almeida

If you have some years like I do, you will remember that some time ago, trendsetters, while they publicly occupied radically conflicting positions on the big billboards of the ideological scene, coexisted embraced in the comfort of the only and non-proletarian star of Mercedes-Benz.  Beautiful symbol that still today represents a kind of category for those who are anchored to the era of the World War and “the Cold War.”

In Cuba, the hunger to buy a status symbol doesn’t mean the brand of the Teutonic giant, but any car with the flavor of liberty and air conditioning.  The gentlemen “upstairs” well know that under the publicized slogan of “updating the model,” more than achieving the dreams of a sacrificed people, is to make money off them.

The Cuban government eliminated the uncomfortable restriction that demanded an official permit to acquire a vehicle, but in exchange, the prices are astronomical. Before this new measure, the privilege of having a modern and private car was only within the reach of a certain number of workers, a limited group of high officials (this includes friends, girlfriends, lovers, brown nosers, relatives), famous artists and elite athletes. continue reading

Prices might infuriate, but not scandalize.  Experience has shown me that there is nothing easier in our archipelago than to die facing the sun, or to live with eyes closed.  Cuba is a captive market without second options.  As the days pass, Cubans will accustom themselves to this new level of “anti-life.”  Did something happen in the afternoon in which without warning they raised the prices of milk, electricity, water, soap, beer, and gasoline?

The wheeling and dealing in used cars, whether of second or seventh hand, will continue functioning and hybrids will be imposed.  Permit me to clarify that the Cuban hybrid car is not conceived in that classic conceptual format that you know, which combines a combustion engine with an electric one.

It is a work of art, a colossus of the industrial gothic; which to achieve, primarily you have to acquire a circulation permit for a non-existent or hopeless car; then resolve by any means possible an authorization to buy a rebuilt motor for this supposed automobile that only appears on paper.  With that paper, the motor and some indulgent gratification, known as a bribe, which never hurts, get another authorization to buy a body in the path of what one day were rental cars for tourists; and finally, with everything in order and a magician, this Frankenstein is assembled that, simply said, broadly speaking, sounds ugly but is beautiful.

The new cars, without doubt, will be sold, including the Peugeot 508 for 262,000  dollars.  Someone has to show off, and for that there is everything; presumptuous officials, artists, athletes, new style self-employed, repressed with dollars under the mattress, and of course, the kings of the dawn.  In short, the speculation of Havana.

I do not believe that any businessman, nor the buzzards of “Cuban-American merchandising” that are now taking their baby steps of sending cars (stolen, new or used) from Miami to some nearby port, in order to then locate them in Havana, inspired in this apparently anarchist measure, and excited about the car show, might be able to travel and sell cars on the island to everyone who wants to buy.

In the emerging car business of Cuba it is not the market but the State who will dictate guidelines. An old government tactic called plunder with iniquity.

Translated by mlk.

10 January 2014

Oh, Lord, Won’t You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz? / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

2013 Mercedes Benz A-Class
It may be legal to buy a car in Cuba, but who will be able to afford one? In Cuba, this 2013 Mercedes Benz A-Class will retail for five times its price in the rest of the world. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
On January 10, 2014, the Cuban state liberalized car sales. For the first time in over five decades of Revolution, it will no longer be necessary to obtain permission from the Ministry of Transport to buy a car in Cuba. But in a country where the highest salaries barely reach $40 a month, having enough money to afford the cost of a new automobile is something of a surreal dream.

Most vehicles cost hundreds of thousands of CUCs (Cuban convertible peso). By the island’s official exchange rate, this equals several million Cuban pesos.

A 2013 Peugeot 4008, for example, costs 239,250 CUC. In Spain, its price is around €32,000 (about 44,000 CUC). It’s more or less the same case for China’s Geely vehicles, as well as Mercedes Benz, and BMW: Compared to the rest of the world, prices are five times higher, or more, in Cuba.

To make things worse, buyers won’t find any offers for credit.

The message is very clear: It may now be legal to buy a car, but no Cuban will be able to justify such an enormous expense, which totals far more than their lifetime earnings.

Only state-run companies (and you won’t find any other kind of company in Cuba) will be allowed to import these cars. The government justifies all this by claiming that the massive tax imposed upon the vehicles will be invested in developing public transport.

Cuban protest groups and the international press have torn into the Cuban government since it announced these prices, but it came as no surprise to me. Without a free market economy, we live in an empire where the wishes of those who cling to power are out of reach of both law and common sense.

And so the Raulist reforms will last as long as their mastermind, Raúl Castro, is still alive. After him will come not just the deluge, but the delirium, whose symptoms have been announced today in the hundreds of thousands.

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, from Sampsonia Way Magazine

20 January 2014

The Fate of the Six Cubans of El Dorado / Juan Juan Almeida

Today, although motivated by shaking the walls with the scoop in the competitive world of information, knowing that six Cuban citizens are bogged down in Bogota facing the possibility of being returned to Cuba moves me.

Angel Barrios Cabrera (33), Eudardo Roldán López (39), Greysi Padrón Basulto (27), Yoanker Paradela (30), Brian Betancourt (41)  and Nayip Mayo Horta (31), without pursuing the fate of Icarus, in order to escape from the island and from Minos, decided to jump and fly on a sea of uncertainty to Ecuador, a county that even with all documentation in order, did not permit them to enter.

It is true that at any border, immigration officials have the last word to permit us access or not to the territory on arrival; but it is noteworthy that this pattern of behavior with regards to the return of Cubans is becoming habitual. continue reading

So habitual that it now raises suspicion and even smells of the existence of a prosperous but incipient business destined to finance the updating of the new Cuban economic model.  I cannot guarantee it; but the lack of evidence and the obvious increase of the flow of returned Cubans is food for thought, and a lot.

Rejected in Quito, and taking advantage of the return trip to Havana, they decided to stay in Colombia and after days stranded in the El Dorado international airport, this Saturday, January 11, Bogota extends them a safe conduct permit to enter the country for 10 days, valid starting this Monday, so that they can go out, move through the city and reside temporarily in one of the refugee centers of the ACNUR, an agency of the UN.

Here it should be noted that when I spoke to one of them, whose name I do not say because as my grandfather used to say, “A deal is a deal, and respecting it is gentlemanly,” he told me that a good Samaritan Cuban had gotten them toiletries, clothes and food. Bogota is a very cold city inhabited by warm and supportive people.

He also told me that this immigration waiver will allow them this week to prepare and present the refugee claim before the Colombian Chancellery, and in this way get an extension of the document that will permit them to stay in that country for a period of two or three months.

I believe it’s quite clear that the fact that the Colombian authorities have granted this kind of safeguard is only a step which, of course, is thoroughly appreciated, but it does not mean that they have granted them refugee status.

In my personal opinion, it is a simple political measure by Bogota, with the clear intention of not affecting relations between the governments of Colombia and Cuba, besides not obstructing the peace process that curiously and opportunely just resumed in Havana after a recess taken by the negotiating parties and the good reason of the December holidays.

On ending my long and often interrupted telephone conversation with one of the six Cubans, he asked him to please call his mother in Cuba, and so I did.  After conveying the good news and all the rest, I was surprised by the reply of a woman who with incredible strength answered, “You tell him. . . that I will miss him like crazy; but not to give up and to fight, only in this way are dreams achieved.”

Translated by mlk

16 January 2014

SOS: Angel Santiesteban Again Accosted by the Regime, a Member of the United Nations Human Rights Council

In the early hours of Sunday, 12 January, at 6:30 AM, Angel Santiestebian-Prats was the victim of a surprise search by Officer Joaquin, deputy chief of prisons in Havana province. We do not know what they were looking for, but clearly they weren’t satisfied with what they found although they took everything: the Declaration of Human Rights  — hopefully they took the trouble to read it — statutes of Amnesty International, an Encuentro magazine, a Cuban Hispanic magazine and a story.

The harassment of Angel is constant and constantly growing. The regime continues violating his rights and those of all the prisoners — political and common — under the complacent gaze of the concert of free nations of the world, and now shamelessly before the United Nations Human Rights Council, which has rewarded it for “safeguarding” the human rights of the entire world.

Angel is still imprisoned for crimes he didn’t commit and that they have never been able to prove precisely because he did not commit them. The judicial farce that the political police mounted should have been denounced by the same Human Rights Council that now “honors” the regime.

On 28 February Angel will have been unjustly imprisoned for a year, without the Prosecutor having responded to the “Motion for Review” presented by his attorney, Amelia Rodriguez Cala on 4 July last year. continue reading

We already denounced last 18 December that Angel had begun to be harassed and provoked by his jailers, in what we consider a clear strategy to push him to commit some disciplinary infraction that would justify a new transfer to a severe-regime prison or that would allow his accusers to demonstrate his supposed violent character in the review of the trial which, if the Cuban legal system worked, they are obliged to hold.

Nor has Angel’s right to a pass every sixty days been respected; he and his companions were deprived of this right at the end of November. But on 3 January, his nineteen companions in the prison left for their six-day pass, which was compensation for the pass they’d taken from them. Angel continues not to receive this benefit and only receives harassment and provocations.

Dictator Raul Castro continues to demonstrate to the world how in the Island Prison you violate all the rights and freedoms with his archaic but deadly mortal reign of terror, who also continues his efforts to bringing it to the rest of the continent with the complicity of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

You and the whole army of minions at your service are absolutely responsible for the life and safety of Angel Santiestebian-Prats. And remember that while the world is watching in horror as you send paramilitary mobs to beat peaceful Ladies in White carrying gladioli as the only weapon; as you arrest stops mothers with their children; as you use children as shields in acts of repudiation against those who think differently and also serve as witnesses for horrific scenes of physical violence. And this same world is recognizing the talent of Angel, rewarding him, as happened in September when he was awarded the Franz Kafka International Novel from the Drawer Prize, and the tribute he received in November in Montreal.

Raul Castro, with the world as a witness, we hold you directly responsible for whatever happens to Ángel Santiestebian-Prats.

Justice always comes.

Enough of the dictatorship.

Freedom NOW for Cuba.

The Editor

13 January 2014

The Courage of a Few Covers the Shamelessness of Many in UNEAC / Angel Santiesteban

Francis Sanchez

With infinite pleasure I received the text of the intellectual Francis Sanchez “Smoke Signal for freedom.” With concern, because we are not naive, we are aware that this text of his, with his point of view, will be considered by the culture officials and the political police, as another sign of his incorrigible rebellion, “another stripe for the Tiger”  as our beloved, and physically gone, writer Guillermo Vidal said.

Bravely, Francis has exposed his reasons for distrusting my prosecution and trial and the entire campaign undertaken against me. Hardly aware of what happened, Francis has come to the logical conclusions from the most biased knowledge of the events, except that Francis has displayed his boldness and put his finger on the sore spot.

He begins the text with a Hemingway-like sentence: “Today is Angel Santiesteban.” That they have violated my due process, my most elemental legal rights, in an arbitrary and insolent way, before the eyes of the rest of the artists, accepting their silence, is the worst thing that could do against themselves. Tomorrow there will be others, perhaps some of those who signed the letter “against violence” to climb the ladder, ingratiating themselves with power, cowards, and so many other negative reasons, and then they will see their lives consumed under the silence of many and the opposition of few, where I will find myself, of course, defending their rights. And I will do it for them and for myself. continue reading

I will repeat once again that no conclusive evidence was offered against me, except my handwritten copy of a government newspaper and according to the graphologist, as shown by “the height and tilt of my letter: I am guilty.” And a friend of my ex-wife — whom I’d been separated from emotionally and physically for more than two and a half years — as was reported at the trial, what he knew with respect to what he’d heard from her, which makes him an “ear-witness,” (that is, it’s hearsay) which is the same as nothing. However, for my part I presented five authentic compelling witnesses, who were rejected after the hearing. All of the investigative file, the appeal, the review, plus the video of the false witness, are found on the Internet so that everyone can draw their own conclusions.

However, many chose not to look, because anyway what are they going to do? Not to support the government but to put themselves in a good position and to continue to receive the gifts of power, and on the other hand, not to exacerbate their fears of the fury of the regime and the hardships involved.

I greatly appreciate that another writer raises his voice for Justice, regardless of whether it is in my favor, we are gaining in civic conscience and that is what’s important. I will wait for others to be honest and lose their fear, that’s the reason, the real demand for which I am imprisoned, because I lost the fear of suffering. There is an intangible quote that grips us when we say what we feel, and that is much greater and more gratifying that the suffering, when it is overcome.

Surely, the times of freedom are coming. The sleeping elephants wake up and discover their memory, are ashamed of their past and present, begin to live for the future and their honesty.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. January 2014.

17 January 2014

Round-up of “Indigents” Begins Prior to CELAC Summit / Pablo Pascual Méndez Piña

One of the old "camel" buses in Cuba.
One of the old “camel” buses in Cuba.

Given that there are only a few days left before the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) is going to be held in Havana, as is usual in these cases, they are rounding up the indigents.

The sites where the largest concentrations of homeless people spend the night in the capital are in the areas near the waiting room of the interprovincial bus terminal, located on the Avenida del Puerto, opposite La Coubre pier (formerly the Calvary pier), and behind the segment of the wall at Egido and Leonor Pérez Streets, adjacent to the main railway terminal.

Luis Alberto Blanco, 49, a resident of Henequén Viejo neighborhood, in the municipality of Mariel in Artemisa province, said that from the beginning of the year they had an orientation for the municipal Communist Party for the appropriate agencies for the “evacuation” of the destitute before 28 January, given that it is expected that the leaders participating in the summit area with visit the port development zone that the Government is building on the bay.

According to testimony from the victims themselves, for the nights they are forced to board a bus known as “The Colony,” a nickname derived from the name of the property to which they are transferred, located in the municipality of Boyeros, 15 kilometers south of the capital.

They say that is they resist the transfer, the repressors turn off the lights in the bus and beat them.

The bus is identifiable by body structure, similar to the old “camels” that circulated during the so-called Special Period, although a little smaller.

“The Colony is the terror of the homeless,” said one of the victims in an interview months ago.

The Summit of CELAC’s, an organization currently chair by Raúl Castro, will be held on 28 and 29 January.

The Cuban Government Mocks its Citizens / Anddy Sierra Alvarez

The Cuban government reaffirms to its citizens that transformations are directed towards psychological oppression, and at the same time it mocks Cubans as a way of demonstrating absolute power.

The law approved in January 2014 by the Cuban president — the sale of automobiles — reveals the great achievements that will be realized in 2014 by the present governing system.

With the development of approved prices for the acquisition of an automobile ranging up to a quarter of a million (250 thousand dollars) the news caused many capital residents laughter and disappointment for those who were planning to buy a car in better and more current condition.

One of those affected, Reinier Corrales, 45 years old, resident of Arroyo Naranja, considers that he sold his Toyota at 18 thousand convertible pesos (CUC) in order to improve by another more modern one.

“And now what do I do,” anguished Corrales asks, “I planned to trade up and not even my house is worth what the government wants for a 2013 car,” he says.

Reinier and many others have been affected by this decadent and brutal situation of supersonic price manipulation that the government has established through 55 years of totalitarian power. continue reading

If some fortunate one were to decide, the gain would be for them three times greater than the wholesale cost, and I am sure that it would not exceed 50 thousand dollars.

Currently it is the main topic on the streets.  Cubans have stopped worrying about food and have focused on whispering and debating opinions on the topic in question.

Maybe State Security has not noticed Cubans distracted a little from their daily economic distress by what many repeat, “What will I buy myself. . .?”

Translated by mlk.

17 January 2014

Generational Collision in the Alejo Carpentier Charity / Orlando Freire Santana

Havana, Cuba, December – http://www.cubanetorg – It’s not a secret for anybody that, in general, youngsters favour transformations which advance social development. As far as Cuba is concerned, the majority of young people who are academics and researchers urge that the economic changes being implemented by Raul Castro’s government be taken forward more rapidly. And journalism should not lag behind.

This understanding was corroborated in the winding up of the course entitled “Journalism is not a job for cynics”, which took place at the Alejo Carpentier charity. On this occasion, the journalists Jesus Arencibia and Ricardo Ronquillo, both from the newspaper Juventud Rebelde took part in a panel, along with Doctor Graciela Pogolotti, president of the above mentioned cultural institution.

The first one to mention it was the youngest of the panelists, Jesus Arencibia, who, to the astonishment of some of the people present, strongly criticised the present situation of the Cuban press. Responding to the question, “What journalism do we need today in Cuba?”, Arencibia stated that we lack media able to function without approval from above; and, pursuing this line, argued that editorial policy should not be the preserve of a political party. Arencibia also questioned the activities of the official Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC), who insist on not mixing up journalism with commercial publicity, without saying anything about political propaganda which dominates the work of the news-pages, the radio and the television in our country. continue reading

Right after that, Ricardo Ronquillo, deputy director of the Juventud Rebelde daily chipped in. Although at intervals he tried to continue his predecessor’s critical comments, Ronquillo explained that his suggestions were directed at “ensuring that the Cuban press was equal to the challenge of the revolution.” According to this panelist, we are watching a structural crisis in Cuban journalism; driven by a lack of resources in terms of journalists and the press, as well as the loss of their credibility due to the role they were playing in the service of the governmental institutions.

Referring to a situation which should not be repeated, as it demonstrates the inflexibility which impoverishes the work of the press, Ronquillo recalled what happened subsequent to the revelation of the announcement that Fidel Castro had passed the leadership over to his brother Raul. According to the journalist, it was incredible that no-one in the Cuban press will comment about this significant event. Nevertheless, we can only suppose that past events like that have been brushed to one side in the heat of Raul Castro’s protest against media secrecy.

Doctor Pogolotti, the senior member of the panel, gave us the most conservative presentation. After talking about her times as a journalism student in republican Cuba, she applied herself more to the form as opposed to the substance when it came to assessing the kind of press we need. In her opinion, the Cuban media should abandon headlines which don’t invite you to read; they need to improve the image and graphical design which accompany the information; and they should also be able to count on journalists capable of investigating the most varied aspects of our reality. In essence, this representative said almost nothing about the official culture of government control of the press.

The panelists’ contributions were lengthy and there was not time for the public to express their opinions or ask questions. Notwithstanding, in the door of the institution, I was able to hear the opinion of a young student of journalism:

“We haven’t moved forward at all in eliminating secrecy and self-censorship. It seems as if Mr. Ronquillo has forgotten that, following our government’s official declaration about the capture in Panama of a North Korean ship carrying Cuban arms, not one journalist dared to open his mouth …”

Cubanet, 9 December 2013

Translated by GH

Different Strokes in Havana / Regina Coyula

I would like not to commit a blunder and put myself in tune with the times, and instead of talking about layers of the onion, say that any city, any society, resembles also a multi-system disc where the tracks spin and re-write themselves without affecting the various files among them.

After this rhetoric, Havana these days is a city whose manifest decay has cross-dressed into a vintage beauty; tourists, with cameras that a Cuban doctor could not buy with an entire year’s salary, wander around taking a picture of a ’54 Chevrolet here, a collapse there or a smiling, chubby, dark, cigar-smoking woman with the sound track from Chan Chan or Guantanamera.

Another refined and glamorous Havana perfumes the air conditioning of trendy new places open to the heat (warmth, no need to exaggerate) of the Raulist reforms. With restaurant licenses, operating in practice as bars open until dawn, the celebrity has found there an ideal space; also firm managers, successful private workers.  Foreigners do not make up the majority in these places.  A happy and unworried gathering of women without any ugly, fat, old or poor ones, accurately calculate at a glance the value of their potential companions. continue reading

My son, a very worthy specimen of masculinity, was “disqualified” at Esencia Habana, one of these places in Vedado where, for a bottle of Smirnoff vodka that sells in a Miami liquor store for 20 dollars, they charge without a blush 63.2 CUC (more than $65 US).

A friend of Rafa who lives there came for four days to the wedding of a friend of his girlfriend.  It was the girlfriend’s first visit after her departure as a girl, and she was reunited with her childhood friends, almost all university students, and they suggested the place.

Rafa was the rare one with his casual attire among those long-sleeved shirts tucked into the pants, the dress shoes and the catwalk dresses.  The girls danced to the rhythm of Justin Bieber, Pitbull or Gente D’Zona, while they made faces before their latest generation iPhones and Samsungs whose only advantage in Cuba is the flash.  My son felt the separation, but it did not matter to him because he and his friend had a ton of things to talk about.

They next day they were to meet again, this time at a more calm place but based on the advice of the friends of the girlfriend, they went to Espacios, another of these places in the “miky” fashion*.  Rafa said goodbye after a while: “Bro, it’s not my scene, I’m leaving.” His friend understood, and I, though they who aspire to a life of luxury may criticize me, I felt very comfortable with the idea that, in the rewritable disc of Havana, my son is in the file of the rare.

*Translator’s note: A comment from a Lonely Planet site defines “miky” (or “miki”) as follows: Miki is the opposite of “freaky” (friki). It’s Cuban youth slang for go-with-the-flow youth following trends, meaningless fashion music (salseros, regetoneros etc) and are not really “special” or doing anything thoughtful. Freakies on the other hand see themselves as “deeper”, with opinions, “quality” and more rebellious. Mikis are deemed by their “adversaries” are shallow, uneducated and daft, while freakies are seen by mikis as snobbish intellectual brats.

Translated by mlk.

17 December 2013

Detained for Distributing “The New Republic” / CID, Rolando Pupo Carralero

On the morning of Tuesday, 14 January 2014, the president of the CID’s Citizen Committee Against Cruelty, independent journalist Roberto Blanco Gil, was arrested in the public street of Pinar del Rio while distributing the weekly news report, “La Nueva República”.

Blanco Gil was arrested in front of the Reparto Hermanos Cruz supermarket carrying 100 copies of the weekly, which were seized by the repressive agent known as “the dwarf”, badge number 11804, and the sector chief, badge number 11869.

After putting handcuffs on him they put him in a patrol car and took him to the bus terminal sector. There he was interrogated and threatened by State Security Official Yoel, who said he would go to prison if he continued to distribute enemy propaganda, and who threatened that he would not be allowed to deceive people and disparage the Revolution.

After being detained more than 7 hours Blanco Gil was released.

By: Rolando Pupo Carralero

A Year Without the White Card (Travel Permit) / Lilianne Ruiz

HAVANA, Cuba, 14 January 2014, www.cubanet.org.- How has the Cuban political scene changed for human rights activists and leaders of the political opposition who have left and returned to Cuba? Is the day after the fall of the Castro regime close? To answer, Cubanet contacted some of the protagonists of this story.

Miriam Celaya (blogger and independent journalist)

Why is immigration and travel reform so important? Well, because we know that until that time you needed a permit to leave; and of course the dissidents, opponents, nonconformists, independent civil society members, anyone ’uncomfortable,’ if you don’t sympathize with the government, they simply forbade you to leave and you didn’t leave.

I believe it’s a positive measure in the sense that it opens up for us the possibility of traveling when we’ve been invited. We have been able to have direct contact with institutions, with other governments and with free societies in the free world. It has strengthened our voices, people have met us personally.

But one can’t overestimate these things, because I don’t think this has substantially changed the Cuban political scene. Yes, we have been able to get solidarity, to find support, there have been groups that have now found sectors aligned to their respective activities, to the spheres where they operate as activists and they are receiving more effective support.

To me, this seems very good. But on the other hand I don’t see that these trips have significantly changed the Cuban political scene. It also tends to focus attention, to give to large a role to what the government does. The measures the government takes, which could mean some real opening on the road to democracy.

I think it’s time for civil society and all of us to understand that what we do doesn’t completely depend on what the government does, because the government is on the defensive: why give them that role?

To the extent that we can’t understand our own political reality, our own position toward the interior of Cuba and occupy a place in the political game of the country… I don’t think that because there is travel it’s going to substantially change the political situation in Cuba; we can’t change outside of Cuba, we change the interior of Cuba.

Guillermo (Coco) Fariñas, winner of the European Parliament’s Andrei Sakharov Prize in 2010, General Coordinator of the United Anti-totalitarian Forum (FANTU) and spokesperson for the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU)

Guillermo-Fariñas-300x150The timid reforms, including the immigration and travel reform, implemented by general-president Raul Castro’s government on 14 January 2013, should not be perceived as an advance of achievement, but rather as the fulfillment of a long postponed or delayed right. We must have the civic courage to demand other rights that they still don’t recognize. continue reading

The significance that the various anti-Castro political leaders and other prominent dissidents have been able to go abroad is dichotomous, because on the one hand we understand that it’s a cynical political maneuver to cleanup the image of the regime and manipulating international public opinions, to stop the pressure for changes toward a State of Law.

On the other hand, it’s a unique opportunity to enjoy exchanges with interlocutors abroad and with allies in the Cuban exile. To invite Cubans on the Island to international forums, where they can talk, denounce, and then return to the bowels of the totalitarian beast as a symbol of courage and resistance for the people of Cuba.

Dagoberto Valdes (Director of the magazine “Coexistence” www.convivenciacuba.es; Catholic layman and intellectual)

Dagoberto-ValdésIn my opinion, it’s the reform that has and will have the most impact on the situation in Cuba. I have to point out that it is unfair there are still Cubans who can’t enjoy this human right for being on parole, I’m referring to those of the 73 of the 2003 Black Spring who are still in Cuba.

It’s been good for those Cubans who have the economic resources to travel or who have invitations to travel with the expenses paid. For those who travel it’s good because they have direct access to a vision of the world that can’t get through the official media inside Cuba.

It’s also very good for their interlocutors abroad who can get to know face to face the members of civil society, be they opponents, dissidents, bloggers, independent journalists, small businesspeople, and who can hear, without intermediaries, the opinions, criteria and proposed solutions of them in relation to the serious problems Cuba experiences.

It’s good for their families and friends and contributes to strengthening the cultural, family and religious exchange of the Cuban nation, which is unique in being dispersed all over the world. I hope that this inalienable right isn’t considered the property of any government, but an unrestricted freedom of every citizen for the mere fact of being a person.

Marta Beatriz Roque (economist, journalist, former prisoner of the Cause of 75, can not leave Cuba because of the limitation imposed by being on parole).

The political scene here is very complicated, because it is always divided. There is a political scenario toward the exterior and another within. The government has tried with all their measures to change the political image of Cuba abroad, and that’s why they’ve allowed people to leave the country, but they don’t want to saw that people can benefit from this reform because, in the first place, if someone wants to go on vacation in Jamaica, for example, with what money can they do that?

It will be the child of a leader, or someone whose trip is paid for from Jamaica because clearly people don’t have the necessary capital to pay the feels for all the paperwork. It’s one thing to say that in Cuba people can travel, or they can buy houses or cars, or they can work for themselves, but what are the restrictions on all this?

There are the economic restrictions in the case of self-employed workers, and they don’t allowed professionals to be self-employed at all. But abroad, the political scenario has totally changed, because now they have the chance to talk with the dissidents who have traveled abroad.

This indicates that there possibilities of freedoms toward the exterior, but we know that inside Cuba, these freedoms don’t exist. I think that if the particular case of those in my situation, according to Article 23 in the migratory law, those who have pending sanction, can’t travel. They can ask permission of the court that tried and sentenced them. But you just have to remember that the courts here are subordinate to what the government decides, and the government decides through the political police.

Cuba and the United States wouldn’t have to talk about new immigration conventions, simply because the American border guards won’t have to worry about someone coming by sea and people are constantly going by sea. I want to say that the freedom to travel hasn’t been a solution for those who want to leave Cuba.

Elsa Morejon (blogger and freelance journalist, wife of opposition leader Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet)

Elsa-Morejón-300x225The reform is still discriminatory because there are a lot of Cubans who can’t leave or enter Cuba. I have been able to travel in the past and since these changes and the pressure at the airport when you leave Cuba and later return, it’s incredible.

There is no free and democratic country where you are watched by the police when you leave and enter your country. Plus, the reform makes Cubans wait 2 years after leaving the country (as emigrants) before they can return to their own country and this is a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, because in all the countries of the world people leave and return to their countries when they see fit.

It’s discriminatory because for one group it’s “yes,” and for another group, “no.” In Cuba, most people can’t afford a ticket to leave. When they get that money what they do is stay abroad.  Others go to work in other countries,; but they don’t have the money to travel and return. It’s very humilliating that we have to depend onsomeone elsoe, on a friend who gives us the money to trael because we can’t earn enough money from our own work. That is, they are making modifications to the laws in Cuba, but Cubans don’t have access to them because our economic conditions are so prcarious.

The opposition in Cuba is peaceful. Though it the people have come to know many things that were unknown because there is no press freedom. And thanks to this strong dissidence that has been here going back years and persisting until today. the government had to make these modifications.

Wilfredo Vallín  (Attorney; President of the independent Cuban Law Association)

There was an external view of the Cuban opposition as an opposition with a low cultural level, people with very little or no preparation, and this has been an opportunity to demystify it. It has been important to give the real picture of the internal situation in Cuba. On the other hand, this has allowed contacts with people who, in one way or another, are interesting and important for is. I managed to meet in Spain with the head of the Spanish Notaries, and had the chance to talk with him for several hours.

In Sweden I talked with the president of the Bar Association. In Costa Rica I got to meet and talk Mr. Oscar Arias, twice president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner. And so, from this point of view, establishing contacts, links, collaborations, courses, for us it is very important. It is also very comforting that the vast majority of Cubans who have now let, have returned to Cuba. This gives a dimension to the maturity the internal opposition has acquired.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa (President of the Progressive Arc Party president and general coordinator of the New Country Project)

In political terms it has allowed several things. The first is visual contact. Not even the social networks substitute for person to person contact, which is what creates crust between interlocutors to confirm and promote initiatives. Another aspect is the perception of others. To leave andmake contact in all environments allows others to get an idea that democratic change is possible.

Prior to January 14 there was a struggle and support that it seemed more heroic and testimonial. We are supporting a community of people who want change for the country, but will they have the capacity and possibilities, really? Because the first freedom of man is not free speech, but of movement; what makes freedom of expression authentic or now, is precisely the possibility of escaping when you express yourself in closed regimes.

For example, in North Korea the fact of freedom of expression is neither effective nor real, regardless of fighting for it, because in the end you can’t escape and you stay in the trap of a brutal regime like this. The ability to flow from one side to another in the porous borders in the world is what gives force to the struggle for democratic change.

The possible impact of freedom of expression and other civil liberties becomes more real; and then the exterior community sees that it is much more viable, that it’s really practicle to work for the democratization of the country. That has had an impact within the country, because these travels have allowed redefine the stage. People begin to be measured with real politics: how to think, what is said, how politics are done, what is language, what are the levels at which the politics are being developed in the world.

Eliecer Ávila (computer engineer, young political leader)

The balance has been positive for activism, despite our inexperience in almost all aspects of diplomacy and ongoing dealings with the media. Then came a crisis from the opinions and attitudes of the different activists; which is normal because each one was consolidating a character and forging an opinion which, fortunately, wasn’t unanimous.

Today, thanks to all those experiences are creating infinitely superior projects and the results will be seen very soon. To have the ability of submitting yourself to the scrutiny of international settings is a great strength and at the same time the greatest professional and moral challenge that anyone can face.

Antonio Rodiles (leader of the Estado de SATS Project)

This is a process where you will not see results in the short, but in the medium term, both inside and outside. Inside, I think has been very favorable first that we were able to go to other forums outside the island and have our voices heard. We were able to communicate directly what’s going on here, the dynamics in the country, what are the needs, what are the weak points, what are some strengths. That was necessary. We were able to interact directly with Cubans outside the island we have seen, we have known. I think that part is obviously very positive. It has meant new experiences, we could see other realities such as occurred in Eastern Europe, and well, anyway, this whole part of trade, flow of information and contacts, I think has been very positive.

The negative part is that one can disassociate from the work being done on the island, if the trips are too long, if we’re not in total contact with the rest of Cuban society, we can weaken that link. Personally, I have tried to travel for short periods, to maintain the rhythm of my work. There has also been a realignment of political activists, thanks to the how they see themselves relative to the exterior and the interior with this new possibility. It seems these are necessary things that have to happen.

With time these rearrangements will settle, and little by little we’ll see what the consequences of these trips are, now in practice. In any event, I do think that the trips are absolutely necessary.  We need now that Cubans who do not agree with the system can come out. The government has sent a clear signal: “Outside the island you can meet whomever you desire, you can talk, you can participate in the forums, but here inside we are the ones who still have all the control, all the power,” and whomever crosses the line they have drawn, they simply have to face the consequences.

This is what we’ve been seeing in practice. I think that it will continue to be the logic of the regime and well, we’ll see what the effect is of the support we receive from the international arena to stop this policy of repression and violations. The effectiveness of our work remains to be seen.

Mario Félix LLeonart (Baptist pastor, blogger, community leader)

Dialog in international forums has made possible a new kind of citizen diplomacy, which represents the people, the civil society that we are rescuing. Until 14 January 2013, diplomacy was only representative of the official voice. In my case, I felt that there would be bridges between Cubans inside and I represented outside; and between churches which, in the past, tried to separate. I felt I occupied spaces that until then were only accessible to the emissaries of the regime.

The official diplomacy, which was all that could exist before, is now confronted by another alternative. There are two versions that are now circulating through the world and are beaten, both in political spaces as well as cultural and academic ones. It will no longer be so easy for the official diplomacy because now they have to face a new version that has come out of the island itself. Also, the distances between the internal and external opponents have been shortened and alliances and cooperation between them are favored.

The faces of the internal opposition have also become known with greater impact within the island, thanks to the media in the world that have covered them, which the media within the island have not, and like a boomerang the coverage has spread within Cuba thanks the informal networks where all kinds of content circulates. Moreover, the travels and the returns of the opponents destabilizes and confuses the acolytes of the regime who for decades have been used to repress and now are surprised to see their usual victims traveling and becoming empowered. Obviously, these repressors lower their levels of obedience.

Reinaldo Escobar (blogger and freelance journalist)

It is perhaps a little premature to evaluate the repercussions of the January 2013 migratory reform, on the atmosphere of Cuban civil society. In fact, Cuba is not longer the island where people can’t leave without permission from the government and that is a  transcendental event. It’s no longer necessary to be “well behaved” to get permission to leave.

Cuba’s dissidents have had the chance to present an image of what’s happening in the country outside the country, which has somehow broken the monopoly the Cuban authorities have to give this sugar-coated and idyllic image of the socialist Revolution “of the humble, by the humble…”

On the other hand, it has changed many people’s opinion of Cuba and this has influenced many people who used to come here only to applaud, and now they’ve come to question, to challenge the Cuban authorities, who have no option other than to give an answer.

One year after migratory reform, the government has lost the monopoly on the dissemination of the reality of Cuba abroad and the opponents and civil society activists have gained in experience and with respect to other scenarios. What

Lilianne Ruiz, Cubanet, 14 January 2014