A Common Platform / Fernando Damaso

Photo: Rebeca

The year 2014, complicated for the authorities, is no less so for the peaceful opposition. If the government is forced to deepen, widen and accelerate its reforms, faced with demands from citizens who are worried about the present and tired of waiting for a bright future that never comes and always seems further and further away, the opposition, without trying to achieve unity, must agree on a common platform where at least some of the nation’s immediate interests are addressed in a way that will make possible the passage from the totalitarian regime to democracy.

Among these could be: economic restructuring and, in addition to state ownership, recognizing private property with all its rights and duties, freeing the productive forces, both in the countryside and in the towns and cities; the formation of political parties and organizations that truly represent the variety of Cuban society, rejecting the absurd, obsolete and unnatural concept of a single party; the restoration of all civil liberties, first of all the right of expression, assembly and the press; the dismantling of the repressive apparatus and reduction of armed forces to the minimum necessary for the tasks assigned to them, so that they are no longer a burden to the country; and the revision and adaptation of the judicial system to the new conditions. Although these are not all, they could be used to start, adding to them later, according to how events unfold. continue reading

For this platform, to become a viable project for all Cubans, it must provide for participation in its realization of the peaceful opposition inside and outside the country, as well as that of citizens who have for years served within agencies and government institutions, with honesty, responsibility and professionalism. Solving national problems is a difficult and daunting task and will require the participation of all Cubans who desire the best for Cuba, beyond political and ideological criteria, without any exceptions whatsoever.

Although this will be a complex task, thanks to the too many years of division, on the base of accumulated experiences, it is possible: we just have to take firm steps in this direction.

4 January 2014

Raul Warns of Capitalist Digital Avalanche Targeting Cuban Youth

raul-castro-santiago-de-cuba-ain-580x385-300x199In Carlos Manuel de Cespedes Plaza, in Santiago, decorated with giant photos of Fidel age 33, and a young Raul, age 28, the 82-year-old Raul Castro, often tongue tied and clearly grumpy, let out a cry of alarm against the powerful forces “inside and outside” the Island who are trying to undermine the Communist system among young people.

Raul was presented not as the head of the government, but as commander of the Second Front, which fought against the troops of Fulgencio Batista.

Plaza-Santiago-de-Cuba-discurso-de-Raúl-2014In his desperate harangue from the same balcony in Santiago de Cuba from which his brother Fidel proclaimed the Revolution 55 years ago on New Year’s Day, the old former guerrilla warned: “The challenge is greater now.”

On an island where the government tries to control what you read, watch on TV or hear on the radio, the avalanche of digital information distributed from house to house constitutes the most serious threat to the totalitarian regime. continue reading

Raul-Fidel-en-1959-300x187In olive-green, with his commander’s epaulet and its four stars, Cuba’s foreman stressed, “There is an ongoing campaign of subversion” directed at the young. “We see attempts to subtly introduce neoliberal and capitalist ways of thinking, to dismantle socialism in Cuba from within.”

Raul said, “Let there be no mistake, the new ideas are driven by powerful forces inside and outside” of Cuba, and have created “a pessimism with respect to the future.”

Fidel Castro, now 87, has not attended the New Year celebrations since he officially ceded power after undergoing emergency surgery in 2006, and formally handed it over in 2008.

Before three thousand guests, the speakers preceding Raúl focused on praising the gains of the healthcare and educational systems of the island in the 55 years since the Revolution brought down Batista.

The younger Castro recalled that the U.S. attacks against the Cuban government left more than 3,000 dead, and thanked the former Soviet Union for its strong support.

In his speech of about 20 minutes, Raúl received only five rounds of applause, including one when he mentioned his brother Fidel.

From Cubanet
2 January 2014

Speaking of Resolutions / Yoani Sanchez

To climb to the sky… you need a big ladder and a little one. Photo: Silvia Corbelle

Any day is a good day to start a project, to realize a dream. However, at the beginning of each year we repeat the ritual of setting goals for the coming twelve months. Some of them will be met, others will remain unfinished and added to the agenda for the following January. There are those that address personal matters, like having more time for family, playing sports, making that postponed visit to the dentist… but the list can also be tilted toward professional aspirations such as changing jobs, finishing some research, getting a degree in a new subject.

I’ve asked some friends and acquaintances what their desires are for 2014 and the answers are a kaleidoscope of intentions.From “get strong in the neighborhood gym,” “sell the biketaxi to buy a motorcycle,” “fix the roof”… to “finish my university degree,” “reunite the whole family in Miami,” “make a video,” or “open my own snack bar.” Visas to emigrate remain among the commonly shared desires, particularly for young people. To the point that many professional plans are primarily aimed at accumulating resources so as to be able to leave the country. Nearly six years after they were begun, the so-called “Raul reforms” have not managed to significantly improve our individual standard of living or the national economy. continue reading

Personally, after a 2013 that changed my life, my sequence of projects is so diverse as to be impossible to complete in its full scope. I will continue offering courses to teach people how to use the new technologies. This year my dream of an independent digital media will finally see the light, a project that has had me running all over the place the last few weeks. Like all births it will bring rupture, pain, joys and anxieties. In the coming weeks I will publish the schedule for the “birth.” Stay tuned.

In my room there is a mountain of books that I would like to read for the first — or the umpteenth — time. How deluded am I  to believe I will have the free time to do it?! I want to return to the pages of the masterful Kapuscinski, reconnect with Truman Capote, and find some texts of Javier Cercas that are missing in my library. I will continue to devour magazines about apps, gadgets, software… because, I confess, every year I am little geekier.

Friends and readers have an important place in my annual plans. Hopefully I can pamper you a little more, spending time in good conversation with a coffee in front of us. To those who are far away, I only hope that “the gods of technology” will take pity on me and give me greater access to the Internet so that I can answer your emails. But you already know, Olympus is capricious and Zeus does not release the lightning bolt of connectivity.

My house, my little family, my plants and animals, which complicate my life and make it happy, are also among the priorities. I can’t complain, really, because they don’t ask for much and they give me everything. I hope to review with my son his first lessons in philosophy, and to bring Reinaldo to that “dirty piece of sea” we made ours twenty years ago. I will focus on them. Because in times of increasing pressure, they have been the people I love who have helped me to keep smiling.

The center of all my plans is my country. Without it I would have neither home, nor family, nor friends, nor things to write about, not plans to make… nor even a potted yagruma to care for. Although I know that home can be anywhere, mine, I have decided — for good or ill — is located on this Island. I stay, despite so many acquaintances having departed and the continued blocking of the great national potential by an outdated and intolerant power. I stay, also, to help create, through journalism and information, a free, democratic, prosperous and inclusive Cuba.

As you can see, I have in hand the list of resolutions for 2014. I will have to cross some out along the way. Which? I don’t know. But for now I like to think that all of them are possible.

2 January 2013

 

End-of-Year Matinee and Outing / Rebeca Monzo

My friend emigrated 20 years ago. “She left without saying goodbye,” as the lyrics of a popular song go, but I understood. She was always saying to me, “This country is being swallowed up by laziness.”

Much to my surprise, the telephone rang on the night of the 25th. It was her sister, who said to me, “Guess who I have here that wants to speak with you?” Immediately, her name rolled off my tongue. I was truly shocked.

Yesterday, the 31st of December, we arranged to meet at a private restaurant in Vedado, one of the few open that day. My friend is very absent-minded and left me waiting for over two hours. During that time a terrible, ominous downpour fell from the north, not the one I wanted but from the north nonetheless. Much heat, rain and then a wonderful breeze.

To get to the restaurant, we passed the ruins of what was once the historic and iconic Hotel Trotcha, where Generalissimo Máximo Gómez stayed before settling in the Quinta de los Molinos. There I took photos of my friend and said, “You see, for the price of a ticket to Havana you can feel like you made a stop in Greece to visit ancient ruins.” continue reading

Since the only private restaurant open is charming but very expensive, we had a very frugal lunch. I was careful with my friend’s money; she is not a “millionaire,” as many people from here assume of people from there. All I ordered was an appetizer, a soft drink and an ice cream. She followed my example and did the same.

A longing for the good times led our steps towards the Hotel Riviera. We were both very impressed at its current state. Our excitement did not allow us to see details that we noticed upon leaving: leaks, stains and peeling furniture. There was no one in the lobby or in the cafe. It looked like a beautiful desert, with only a few people enjoying the pool. This hotel is managed by the Cuban company Gran Caribe.

From there we went to the Melía Cohiba. It was then that I told her, “This hotel was built to highlight the architectural beauty of the Riviera.” The Melía was busy and cheerful. All the fountains in the lobby were busy, a good number of tourists were coming and going, and a huge Christmas tree was there to welcome you. The differences were striking, a result of good maintenance. It is managed by the Spanish hotel chain, which keeps it in top condition.

We continued our walk to Linea Street so my friend could catch a cab, a very difficult task since all the “tarecones” from Playa are usually full. Finally, one stopped.

“I will take you but you have to give me a ’fula’ (normally ten pesos),” the driver said.

“O.K.” she said and we took our leave, giving each other one last hug. I crossed the busy and crowded street, and managed to catch the #27 bus (it almost never passes by), which was practically empty. I arrived home with my feet aching but happy to have had this strange but wonderful matinée and end-of-year outing.

1 January 2014

I Will Continue Fighting Until the Dictatorship Leaves Power / Angel Santiesteban

Position of Principle

I have learned that some people outside the country who are interested in the details of my ordeal in prison had the misconception that I had agreed to perform the forced labor that other prisoners are required to do.

I want to clarify that since my arrival in this place [Lawton Prison Settlement] last August 2nd (those sentenced to less than five years are not to be held in maximum-security prisons, according to the Penal Code), I stated that I would not cooperate with “re-education” because I believe that until you commit a crime you should not be imprisoned, nor, for the same reason, re-educated. After the first pressures to give in (they tried to convince me by saying that if I worked I would get a pass every month, and if I didn’t, every two months, an option that I accepted immediately) they never brought the subject up again.

Keep in mind that my transfer to a maximum-security prison on April 9 was because I refused to report to a hospital for a hastily arranged “health check,” knowing that the real goal was to hide me from the committee of foreign journalists who would visit several prisons that day, including “La Lima,” the place where I was incarcerated. This refusal led to my placement into “1580,” a prison created for violating their rules, a place where they do all the dirty work of Havana province. There they informed me that I would be secluded for six months. continue reading

“Twenty days before the UN visit, a Cuban dissident disappeared”
Angel Santiesteban was transferred unexpectedly from his prison and his whereabouts are unknown. At the same time, Castro’s government opened several Havana prisons to the international press, as a prelude to the arrival of the human rights commission on May 1.”

I also want to point out that since I entered prison on February 28 I have not eaten food provided by the prisons, nor have I agreed to wear inmate clothing, nor accept the toiletries or the boots that they sometimes hand out. Perhaps the constant fatigue that I suffered in “1580″ was reported to the prison authorities and they decided to remove me after four months, two months before the completion of the six months punishment to which I had been sentenced.

El Pitirre Prison [“1580”]

In those four months I had two meals a day: at noon I breakfasted on milk and crackers, and that also passed for lunch; at six p.m. I made a soup from packets imported from China, which are sold in the national chain stores, so I lost forty pounds and my taste for food has disappeared.

I suppose that the move here was an attempt to keep me from being an eyewitness to the daily abuses and violations committed in those other prisons, which allowed me to maintain a very high level of denunciation in my blog The Children Nobody Wanted. Two months ago, at this prison, an officer tried to turn off the TV so I couldn’t hear the news, resulting in a direct confrontation. A few days later the re-educator told the prisoners, behind my back, that he was going to “put me in a box” because, he said, I was not a political prisoner. Two days later the chief of CETEM came, wanting to make a deal and threatening to cut off my benefits.

[photo caption] “Eduardito saying goodbye to his father Ángel in the patrol car when he was transferred to Grande Valle Prison on February 28, 2013. Kenia Rodriguez [Ángel’s ex-wife] had testified that her son was terrified of his father because of the beatings he had inflicted on him.”

I want to re-affirm my patriotic desire and need to be a prisoner rather than leaving the country. I rejected the opportunity to leave the island and reach the streets of Miami, which was offered before my incarceration, because I did not want to feel like a fugitive, fleeing the terrible persecution to show my opposition to totalitarianism. And I will keep on fighting until the dictatorship leaves power and allows participatory democracy to guide the paths of the nation.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Settlement Prison. December 2013

 Translated by Tomás A.

2 January 2014

Detentions and Beatings for Dissidents in Guantanamo / Luis Felipe Rojas

Last December 24, as a reverse Christmas gift, officials of the National Revolutionary Police (PNR) arrested human rights activists Yordis Garcia Fournier (Youth Movement for Democracy) and Yobel Sevila Martinez (Eastern Democratic Alliance – ADO) in the city of Guantanamo.

They told reporters from Palenque Vision that they there were brutally beaten and harassed in the presence of a high official of the so-called State Security.  I personally know Yordis as well as Yobel, I know of their humility and bravery, of the commitment they have to Cuban freedom.  In the case of Garcia Fournier, he finished a one-year and some months sentence for a supposed “insult” to authorities in 2008.  Sevila Martinez, like several members of the ADO, has an enormous string of arrests and beatings, ordered precisely by those who say “take care of the public order.”

Translated by mlk.

Note: this video is in Spanish:

27 December 2013

On the Bad Death of a Good Man / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

PLASTIC TEARS

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

In the Boniato jail, in Santiago de Cuba, a physically impaired man, a common prisoner (for me no prisoner is common), Norge Cervantes, blind, said in farewell to Antonio Villarreal, one of the 75 prisoners of the Black Spring with which Fidel Castro reacted to the Varela Project:  ”The tears that run down my cheeks are from the heart, because I have plastic eyes.”

Antonio Villareal was found dead in Miami last Saturday December 28.  Day of the Innocents, may this noble child of sixty-something years who was tortured to the hilt in Cuba rest in peace. Even losing control in stages over his more basic reflexes, like controlling his urination. And his tears. He spoke with many crying inside and out of Cuba by telephone or on camera, but his olive green tormentors never managed to break him. That is why they savaged him.

Of course, nothing like that will happen to us. We are healthy and in control. We triumph, as Miami already triumphed and very soon Havana will triumph. Miami, a city largely shaped from Havana, in order to complete its historic role that after 2014 will rush to it: saving the Castro Revolution, managing a future enterprise for its militarized white collar mafioso. Putinism unaided. continue reading

There is nothing that the Cuban government does that is not marked by death (hence its true power in perpetuity). The liberation of the 75, for example, already drags with it with several deaths, including that of Laura Pollan, who would still be with us if those “liberations” had not occurred, because she alone knew how to defend herself much better from the assassin plot that took her life from behind and cremated her in order to leave no evidence.

Cardinal Jaime Ortega is architect of all these forced deportations and complicit in the string of crimes to which he in person is giving the consummatum est.  The Castros just supply the labor.

It is speculated that it was a suicide and soon the press will pardon him because Antonio Villareal had “mental problems” or “was sick in his nerves.”  Killing oneself is not a symptom of mental illness, but of spiritual strength: It is a blow to the arrogance of God or the senselessness of Nothingness. If he killed himself, it is because Miami deserved it. But, in any case, there exists not the least evidence that it was a suicide. Menaced or sick, what is a fact is that we Cubans had abandoned him, even from Havana.

We Cubans are all like that blind prisoner, but in reverse. Our tears are plastic, like the eyes with which we look without seeing.

Translated by mlk.
Note: The following video is in Spanish.

30 December 2013

Letter of Damages 2014 / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

What if the light or freedom doesn’t reach us in time.

What it Evil prevails over our bodies and our exhausted demand for freedom.

What if Fidel and Raul Castro don’t die, as they threaten.

What if the surname Castro remains a cruel scar after Raul and Fidel.

What if Cuba falls into the hands of or never emerges from the Latin American debacle.

What if the United States doesn’t remember our nation any more.

What if free Europe never stops betraying us.

What if the truth is too true.

What if it’s too late to revive the broken soul of our people.

What if the Cuban exile never returns, as it already never returned.

What if even more violence lies ahead for us.

What if death, always death, looks us in the eye and undermines the love that remains in our heart.

What if memory degrades our will to love.

What if we are not.

What if we weren’t.

Cuba, nobody would have love you more than you and me.

31 December 2013

December Tells Me / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

December starts in New York.

The people don’t notice it, because they are not Cubans. But December is the month of death and of hope. The end of a year. We are still here. Another year begins. We don’t know if it will be our final date. Beauty and liberty surround us leaving us no alternative to sadness. We miss some love.

That’s Manhattan. The place where with each new life we miss the same old love. Although people don’t notice, because they aren’t Cubans, and December just appears to be another excellent commercial opportunity.

My name is Orlando Luis. I was born on the 10th of this month in 1971. I will turn 42 outside Cuba. Pardon the ambivalence. Maybe outside of Cuba I will turn 42. Perhaps it has been 42 years since my homeland deported me.

Whatever the statistics of the Revolutionary State say and their comparisons with other emigrants, there is not one Cuban outside of Cuba who has not been deported. The dreams demonstrate it, although they are not enough to take the Castro brothers to an international court. continue reading

Those recurrent nightmares of exile bring us together around the evil axis of what Castroism has meant for our bodies. We know that the Cuban people is a fascist invention from before independence. But our bodies suddenly collimated by the same sovereign dreams still permit us to recognise ourselves as a nation.

We are Cubans because we dream the same terror, because our land terrifies us so that nobody who is really Cuban really wants to return.

We are Cubans because our heads sway in communion during the mornings of sweat, tremors, sleepwalking, funny faces, halitosis, frog in the throat, pills, snoring, apnea, and awakening with tears, while we imagine we are in Havana, but what perversely persists outside is now New York.

December in Manhattan is the most desolate and uncomfortable season of the year.

We remember, also, our cadavers abandoned with the prosaic haste of the party. Well, I have bad news recently arrived from our island: in the Cuban cemeteries there is a dismal sacrilegious fraud going on. Many bones have been looted by the negruno pantheon. Others have been captured by the political police to osteoporosisize the history of their crimes and, in passing, to sabotage any future homage to their victims. Still others are in the hands of apprentice doctors and also artisans working for CUC (Cuban convertible currency) making tortoiseshell jewellery.

The rest is a mixing up of common graves with family ones. Neither Martí nor Ché nor any of the remnants of our despotic heritage are what it says on the label. The marble tells lies. Neither grandmother nor aunt nor your love are waiting for you there. Cuban cemeteries are a puzzle which our own flight has left without a code to decipher.

I repeat it but not without pain: it’s very late already, we won’t go back there where no-one is left.

The diffused December nation waits for the first snows and celebrations summing up the year. The Cubitas diaspora thickens little by little, according to the Cuban exile it disappeared. We are a will-o-the-wisp, juggling lights, an optical error of refraction.

We breathe. We swallow the free air of New York. We recognise ourselves as strange beings in front of the shop windows of almost mournful luxury. To be the phantom mannequins on this side. Not mixing with anything, because we will always be with one half of our soul on each side of the glass, violently Cuban shadows whose memory is fragile but very well fermented. We are not simply at the moment, but we are indeed half New York and half Havana.

I put up my coat collar. Stick my hands in my pockets. I look like someone out of a crime thriller, half way between private detective and serial killer. I cough. The New York cough of Cubans without a Cuba is also a lingering symptom. We cough out of sheer stubbornness. We worry about our lungs, about the rheumatic rhythm of our breathing, but in practice we hardly ever get ill unless it’s to die.

By then, by the time we suffer a New York December, we will be destroyed, consumed.  People will not notice, because they will not be Cubans. But December will again be the month of the death of hope. Another year which will not have put an end to everything. Still we will not be so many here. Another year which never stops starting, since no date would be able to finish us off.

The sadness which surrounds us makes us free and beautiful with that brilliance which is wonderful and has no alternative, implying complete truth. We do of course miss some love.

 Translated by GH

2 December 2013

A Very Bad Bet / Fernando Damaso

During 2013, despite delivering appeasing speeches in international forums, primarily for foreign consumption, Cuban authorities maintained and increased the repression against peaceful opponents, in most cases culminating with the use of physical violence by their agents and employees.

All indications are that this will continue and possibly worsen in 2014. Those who exercise absolute power for too long consider themselves above the law, and act according to their personal interests and not in the national interest. So they denigrate and persecute those who do not share their views and have the courage to speak out. They organize rowdy concerts in front of opponents’ homes. They use school children, without their parents’ permission, for acts of repudiation where profanity and physical attacks are common. Law enforcement officers, rather than maintaining order, act as henchmen (in one case an official photographer, caught up in the surrounding frenzy, began kicking a dissenter). In the same way they insult and assault the Ladies in White. In the provinces the situation is even worse, where they exploit the information isolation that exists there, where everything remains between the Party, the People’s Power, and State Security.

The authorities, making a mistake once again, have made a very bad bet, choosing the worst way to try to quell the increasing rebellion of responsible Cubans who have lost their fear. What this does is unite them in opposition. If they would listen to the clamor of the people who, disgusted by ineffective political clashes, demand real solutions to their problems without so many absurd delays, and would hear the different opinions of those who just want the best for Cuba, all could be improved in a civilized and participatory environment.

But as they perpetuate the dogmas and the orthodoxy, and continue defending at all costs the failed ideas that have brought us only pain and misery, they conspire against the peaceful settlement of the profound national crisis.

Translated by Tomás A.

31 December 2013

Cuba, Dignified (?!), Custodian of UN Human Rights Teaches Its Citizens The Art (?!) Of Repression / Angel Santiesteban


The Cuban musicians who sell their soul to the dictatorship

What was always everyday, the times of freedom reject. This happens in the country’s culture. A great share of Cuban artists have always allowed themselves to be used for political purposes. They never asked why or for what. They only agreed to hold their concerts, regardless what the real purpose of the alleged cultural activity would be.

Until the 90s or so, when they were interviewed (it also happened with athletes), they made clear their support for and gratefulness “to the Revolution,” but above all “to the Maximum Leader Fidel Castro.” The discourse of the creators was changing, and they no longer expressed such recognition, and dedicated their achievements to “the Cuban people and my family.”

The money they earned in the international market, which until then it was heresy to save it, even in a bank account abroad, they failed to surrender to government coffers, not to say, to confiscate, as they did with every right they seized. Then cynicism made its way into cultural society: it began to take on one side and the other no matter where it came from. The important thing was to survive. continue reading

Despite the freedoms, today they continue to exercise their artistic functions in the same way. They do not mind being used and programmed in the discredited “anti-imperialist Plaza,” “Plaza of the Revolution”, and whatever political act they perform in. The important thing is to be on the official list and are allowed to exercise their art, keep their savings earned on their trips and buy luxury cars (the blackmail of the famous letters (the permission to buy cars) signed by the Ministry of Culture).

On 10 December, the world’s day of celebrating Human Rights, in this case the group Arnaldo y su Talisman, was summoned to a podium in front of the house of the dissident Antonio Rodiles, where an International Meeting on culture and free opinions was going to take place where they would exchange experiences in the totalitarian system. The great horror was the use of Young Pioneers, children who witnessed the repression exercised by the regime’s henchmen.

I think that after the many reasons for the musicians to refuse, this use of children was a strong motive to refuse to be used as the court jester. We know that the artist, having been turned into a small business owner, who has opened private restaurants, and like the popular phrase says, “without the rope, you won’t enjoy the pleasures.”

The truth is that now, with good reason, the invitation to take place these days is questioned on American soil. You can not be part of the oppression and sit down to eat with the opposition. This cynicism as a national sport is intolerable. Honestly, it’s better to play music for the family or starve to death, than to be, in addition to being false, a lapdog for the dictatorship.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton Prison settlement. December 2013

Translated by: Shane J. Cassidy

26 December 2013

Why Do I No Longer Speak With “Them”? / Reinaldo Escobar

Six years ago I published a text titled “Disqualified for Dialogue,” where I related what occurred in a police station with some State Security agents. Since that date they haven’t returned to attempt one of these semi-friendly conversations in which “they” try to make me believe that they are keenly interested in hearing my concerns, differences or discrepancies with politics of the Party. Since then I have made the decision never to talk to them again. Why?

Because talking with State Security signifies rewarding the belligerence of a repressive institution that has no legal, political nor moral right to engage in making economic or ideological decisions for the country. Because the main purpose of these conversations is to draw out information from us that will affect other civil society opponents and activists.

Because those are the occasions they also take advantage of to cause trouble, to make us believe that others are selling themselves to a foreign power or collaborating with the intelligence agencies, and are people of low moral stature, lacking in ethics and principles. continue reading

Because they try to manipulate us saying that we are salvageable, not mercenaries like the rest, and they misinform us with false hopes, as if they were the ones who were in command of all the destinies of the nation and had the power to be the appropriate vehicle to channel criticisms and complaints.

Because the conditions in which these conversations usually occur involve our going to a site, saying our names and showing our identity cards, while they only introduce themselves using pseudonyms.

Because we do have not opportunity to terminate the dialogue and they are the ones who decide how long to continue listening; we can barely gesture or use appropriate terminology without their saying that we are showing a lack of respect or contempt for authority.

Because we are not allowed to record what they say, nor to invite a witness, while they, for their part, can film and edit the conversation, putting their arms around us or putting a pen in our pockets to give the impression that we are their collaborators.

Because we shouldn’t let them convince us that they know everything: our sexual preferences, the routes our children take to school, the private weaknesses of our friends, the money we have at our disposal, the people we see…

Because nothing of what they say, none of the threats they make or the prohibitions they establish, is delivered in writing, with letterhead, stamp, name, grade, title, signature, appealing to the terms and articles of established laws, as these official institutions should express themselves; rather everything is left on the plane of what these anonymous subjects say “personally,” perhaps because they believe themselves to be “more of a man” (or more of a woman) than any of us.

I don’t talk to them any more, because I am a free man and do not have to give an accounting to anyone of where I go, who I meet, or what projects I have.

– See more at: “Disqualified for Dialogue.”

30 December 2013

Abused Cuban Teachers / Ernesto Garcia Diaz

educadora

HAVANA, Cuba , December, www.cubanet.org – While the celebrations for the Day of the Educator succeeded as a cultural fact, in the Palace of Conventions at the Second Regular Session of the Eighth Legislature of the National Assembly of People’s Power, with rhetoric of “the changes are more socialism,” but they did not publicly honor the work of teachers. Nor did they envision real changes to the education sector which urgently needs attention, given the profound problems suffered in Cuban society with regards to the development of values.

It’s worth remembering that the Castro regime, from the early years of its government, transformed a secular educational system into an atheist one. From that point forward, students and teachers studied in the schools in the countryside and teaching outposts.

Since then, Cuban education has remained under the “scientific” doctrine of Marxism-Leninism, idealizing the New Man as if he were sculpted in bronze. Martí’s ideas faded from the schools, to the point where it was questionable to call the Apostle (as we refer to José Martí) our National Hero. continue reading

Decades later the dictatorship has tried to refocus the works and thoughts of the Apostle to suit the convenience of the Communist autocracy, but without retracting their errors. However, none of these measures could extinguish the secular educational doctrine of Father Felix Varela, nor the historical memory of the Cuban nation, tied to beautiful traditions.

Teacher’s Day is of special significance to the Cuban family, dignifying their role and exalting their qualities, in a way that transcends different nuances. On December 22, parents and students try to get a gift for their teacher, but most do not have the resources to do so, something that highlights the social differences. The teachers also suffer and share in the poverty of our people.

Today, the scandalous disaster of educational policy is painfully obvious. The teacher in Cuba, with the education required, barely earns $25 a month. The regime earns large sums of money from lending out scientists and teachers to other countries, but Cuban teachers do not receive the compensation they deserve.

Ernesto Garcia Diaz

Cubanet / 31 December 2013

Castro, Correa and Maduro Awaiting 2014 in Varadero / Juan Juan Almeida

We are almost at 31st December and in all the world people celebrate that holiday. In Cuba, the incoherence of our life obliges us, at midnight, to make a toast and express our wish that the next year, 2014, will be better and less painful for the prisoners, the ill, and for all those people who, without much choice will receive the coming year awaiting a call or a hug from those people who cannot be here. For everyone, a prosperous new year.

The president of the Republic of Cuba as you would expect, will also celebrate this date, receiving a select and chosen group of friends, the first day of January, and with that, the coming of another anniversary of the Revolution, number 55.

Yes, Raúl Modesto Castro Ruz will welcome in 2014 in his house in Varadero. In his private villa, or, rather, in the complex of houses which make up the “discreet” and modest mansion, recently done up for the occasion. continue reading

All prepared with punctilious care. The doors and windows (made by KÖMMERLING) imported from Germany and installed afterward by trusted specialists in this shameless summer house, for family recreation. Appropriate for a great leader who publicly advances a stubborn policy of austerity.

The menu is no problem, in the purest and most exquisite Parisian style, with island tweaks. The culinary offer will be professionally served by glove-wearing waiters, and supervised by an official of the FAR (Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces),whom they call Albert Einstein because he has no talent, and who authorised the music to be provided by an orchestra of such cultural ineptitude that they played recorded music instead.

And, how can we speak of the food without mentioning the guests? Right, we will take it one step at a time, because the story still has some unknown quantities.The current president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his majesty Nicolás Maduro is expected, and, they say, the Ecuadorian head of state, his excellency Rafael Correa. Friends whom they will put up in the recently repaired guest houses, inside the private villa.

And the drink won’t be lacking, catering for all tastes, there will be drink waiters, equally trustworthy, for whatever last-minute fancy. And for those drinkers who lose it after drinking too much, they will serve a reinforcing consomme with meat and chicken and lamb. To finish the night, or start the day as the case may be, they will provide beautiful white deckchairs, in the Mediterranean style, on the sand.

If there are any snags with the party, or if at the last minute they change the plans due to my fateful indiscretion, you need to know that I was happy to break the secret, but the credit isn’t mine, rather that of an army of idiots wearing sunglasses who made it impossible to hide it.

Now I remember the braying, sorry, the speech of the comrade General when he predicted, during the recently-finished second regular session of the 8th term of the National Assembly of Popular Power, that in 2014 we hope to get to a prosperous and sustainable socialism, less egalitarian and more just, with new targets and more sacrifices. The politics of obsolete octogenarians racing against the calendar.

Tomorrow we will drink a toast to all Cubans, those who are here, those who are there, and those who are over there. And we wait for the new year with the absolute conviction that our day is just around the corner.

Translated by GH

30 December 2013

Christmas in Cuba has no Carols, but Villains in Power

The majority of the Cuban community will celebrate Christmas and the advent of the new year, unaware that a political prisoner, David Piloto Barcelo, is serving his punishment in the worst conditions, for defending his unobjectionable right to choose a president, to openly criticize government conduct, to protest, to demonstrate, to join the party that better fits him, etc.

Possibly also, the majority of Cubans will die without testing the state of rebellion and liberty that being an activist in opposition to the dictatorship offers.  Piloto Barcelo practices it daily, his screams against the henchmen that mistreat us day after day in the prisons, could be heard in Prison 1580.

From my barracks, some thirty meters away from his, with several walls and roofs in between, his voice arrives full of truths against the executioners in each arbritray action or appearance.  His protest is constant, all in spite of his precarious health. He contracted tuberculosis in their cells, and not even that condition has impaired his upright posture as permanent opponent. His crime: demonstrating on “Revolution Plaza” and throwing leaflets demanding the freedoms of which they deprive us. continue reading

Some days ago Piloto Barcelo was transferred to Cinco y Medio Prison in Pinar del Rio. That is another punishment that he will have endure far from his family. What is left, because after the State Security threatened his mother, she suffered a heart attack, and it killed her. Now his sister will have to travel to that distant place in order to provide him with what is necessary to survive, because otherwise we die.

And it is not that being happy or eating turkey on Christmas is a crime; may those happy ones who manage it multiply until all Cubans can do it in their own land; but do not forget that someone suffers for you at this moment, and that he is also summoned, from wide ranging possibilities, to fight and give tribute to these human beings that have preferred the sacrifice before the pleasure.  And that self denial is for the good of all, because when Cuba is free, we will enjoy it equally.

Not forgetting Piloto Barcelo, Sonia Garro, Ramon Munoz, Armando Sosa Fortuny, Marcelino Abreu Bonora, Ernesto Borges Perez, Madelaine Lazara Caraballo Betancourt, Makiel Delgado Aramburo, Ivan Fernadez Depestre, Angel Frometa Lobaina, Allan Gross, Bismark Mustelier Galan, Ángel Yunier Remón Arzuaga, to mention only a few of those among hundreds of prisoners confined plus those who are on parole and make the humiliating list of  political prisoners of the Regime recently “distinguished” for safeguarding Human Rights on the UN Council.

Even so, to everyone Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement.  December 2013.

Translated by mlk.

30 December 2013