Camaguey Political Police Back Down / Fernando Vázquez Guerra

CAMAGÜEY, Cuba, October 21, 2013, Fernando Vázquez Guerra. On Friday October 18 , at 8 am, the dissident Ernesto San Juan Vazquez, with his mother, Xiomara, and his sister, Yaimara, accompanied by everything they possessed in what was their home (refrigerator, cabinet, stove, TV, bed, radio, etc.), planted themselves in Cristo park — opposite the cemetery — in the center of the city of Camagüey.

The reason for the protest was that the State Security forced the owner of the house they rented to throw them out, under an immense operation of the Political Police, the Special Brigade, rapid response brigades, and several patrol cars from the National Revolutionary Police (PNR), and a special brigade truck.

Activists of Human Rights Party of Cuba and the Orlando Zapata Tamayo National Civic Resistance Front offered them support at all times.

At the encampment, which lasted for seven hours, the solution came when the political police chiefs went to Ernesto’s landlord, Mr. Ramón García Hidalgo, and lowering their heads denied all slander towards this opponent and asked him to again rent to them at his house located at No. 54 San Juan Bosco street, between San Ramon and 3rd Street, in this city.

Noteworthy is the support of hundreds of neighbors who booed the entire police operation. The human rights activists who were present are:

Alexander Pérez Aguilar
Pedro Ifraín Pérez Inferrer
Daniel Miyé Jiménez
Andrés Fernando Bilbao Garcés
Santo Manuel Fernández Sánchez
Fernando Vázquez Guerra
Yarisley Rodríguez Ramírez
Indomar Gómez Izaguirre
Josvany Arosteguí Armenteros
Marisol Peña Coba.

From Cubanet, 21 October 2013

Three Cuban Women Under the Boots of Crime / Luis Felipe Rojas

Signs: Throw something at my house because I have more honor than you. Political officer throws excrement at my house under the dictatorship
This appeared on the house of Caridad Burunate after being pelted with eggs by a mob.

“On October 4, they had me in a choke hold, it was the Special Brigade.  There were men, I was talking to one of the big men, they took me to the door of the house, inside the house.  They came with their uniforms.  Some men dressed in overalls painted the house in asphalt, five times they have done it, without taking into account that there are minors here,” that is the testimony of Damaris Moya Portieles, President of the Central Opposition Coalition, resident of Santa Clara.

Violence against women, dressed in white or not; with or without gladioli in hand has become recurrent all over the island.  It has to do not only with the hate sessions like the Acts of Repudiation, the physical mistreatment and the torture are “a piece of cake” in the containment measures against the opposition.  Damaris herself relates:  ”Some months ago I was admitted into the Arnaldo Milian Castro hospital, the result of a beating that the State Security officers dealt me,” she says, and offers the name of the oppressors:  ”Yuniel Monteagudo Reina, Erik Francis Aquino Yera and Ayor vigil Alvares, plus Pablo Echemendia Pineda,” she concludes.

Fourteen Sundays Under Rocks and Words

She is a hardworking woman and always likes to prepare the best dishes for her family; one day she decided to do it for the poor.  Caridad Burunate hosts each week in her home some twenty elderly and destitute people to give them a little ration of food.  She does it under the project “Capitan Tondique,” and the name of the anti-Castro guerrilla fighter has cost Burunate, in Colon, Matanzas, the well-known acts of repudiation, beatings, arrests and the painting of her house black.

“The mobs prepare, they are criminals, and they cuff us, fight us.  Even prisoners have been brought from the Aguica prison, because they tell them that they are going to give them passes, they even kick us.  When we arrive at my house from the walks (every Sunday with the Women in White), they wait for us with bags of rocks, eggs, they even painted my house because they wrote, “Long live Fidel, Long live the Revolution” and I wrote to them on top of that:  ”Down with the Revolution” and “Down with Fidel.”

The president of the People’s Power, Dignora Zenea Sotolongo, brought a jeep full of eggs, which are non-existent, people do not have them to eat, and they threw them at my house; and of course, she has almost all her family in Miami.  This house they bathed in eggs and asphalt.  They give eggs to children for them to throw.  I made myself an opponent because we have no rights, and because I have always enjoyed expressing what I feel, I did not do it just for myself, but also to help others,” she concludes.

A Violent Beginning

Tania Oliva Chacon resides in Palma Soriano, Santiago de Cuba.  She received the first beating “in March of this year,” when she joined the Ladies in White.  ”On October 10 I found myself at a friend’s house and we were about to watch the class they broadcast on TV every day, but the house was surrounded since early morning, and when we were about to sing the national anthem, they threw themselves on us like beasts, like animals.

They knocked me down with a kick to the leg, and injured me.  They immobilized me for 21 days, but I had no way to heal.  The one who kicked me is Captain Arsenio, the chief of the sector Police.  One of my companions was badly hurt, they got him in the ribs and he is still in a very bad way.  On many occasions they come dressed as special troops in order to impress us.  I was in my last year of studies for a Bachelor’s in History, but as I began to demonstrate and to tell about the thefts that were happening, then I “fell ill” and could not finish.  My son has graduated and has not been able to get a job,” she said.

Translated by mlk.

21 October 2013

Cuba: Journalism in the Cross-Current / Ivan Garcia

periodocubaAn autocracy’s efficiency can be measured by, among other things, its immutable capacity for controlling information. Everything passes through an ideological filter. Some guys sitting in an air-conditioned office minutely evaluating it to determine what people can see, hear or read.

Books, records, news, novels, films and television programs must be approved by the Cuban Communist Party’s censor. Anything the regime has not approved can be considered illegal.

Granma, Juventud Rebelde, Trabajadores and all the other party organs must play the same tune. Everything is planned. Very little is left to chance.

Once the order from on high goes out, docile reporters must write about the economic crisis in Europe, the lack of social discipline on the island or the private middle men who are blamed for the high price of agricultural products.

Fidel Castro has always said that the Cuban press serves as one of the weapons of the revolution, one it does not hesitate to use. And while you can find examples of good reporting and sharp social commentary, it is never of a heatedly controversial or political nature.

The most talented official journalists play in the minor leagues. They are not highly visible. Obedience takes precedence. The local press — a synonym for mediocrity — is designed to misinform. The color of its style manual is olive green.

Fidel Castro used to stride through a secret passageway that connected his office in the Palace of the Revolution to that of the director of the newspaper Granma a few yards away. It allowed him to review news stories or change a layout.

It is said that he personally wrote its most inflammatory editorials. Unless an official journalist has been accredited by the communist party, a government minister might not respond to his phone call or might even hang up on him. Officials and institutions — if you can call them that — bury information and statistics. Raúl Castro would like to turn the this situation around.

Awhile back, some provincial media outlets, local broadcasters and TV talk shows initiated a discreet and very cautious form of tropical glasnost. One can now read crime reports, sports writers criticizing the policies of INDER,* and one daring reporter accusing a state agency of bureaucratic foot-dragging.

While it is good thing that the national press is beginning to reflect the opinions of the average Cuban, it’s a bit too little, too late. By our count a handful of men and women began to write in the mid-1990s about the side of Cuba that the regime was trying to hide.

Almost all of us were empirical journalists, educated by daily life. Twenty or so — I was one of them — had the good fortune to attend workshops led by the poet and journalist Raúl Rivero. We were reasonably well-educated and had an enormous desire to learn and get ahead.

Journalism for us meant going out and looking for news in the neighborhood and in the ranks of the dissidents. It meant reporting daily using old typewriters and, because there were no computers, filing our stories by phone.

As in every aspect of life, there are independent journalists who are good, average and poor. And people who think clearly but write badly. Whether good or bad, they go on reporting on areas of national life that the official media ignores.

The credibility of independent journalists has grown since 1995. Their points of view and social critiques have influenced opinions outside the island. The regime knows this, which is why it is begun trying to compete without mentioning its competitor.

It is independent journalism that has caused official journalism to rethink its role and forced its reporters to go out into the street.

It is not a battle for information. Completely independent journalists are swimming against the current; their reports will never be published in state-run newspapers. Their colleagues — independent journalist licensed by the state — are monitored, harassed or accused of alleged crimes.

This is because there is a gag law which allows a reporter working outside the control of the state to be sentenced to more than twenty years in prison. The official press operates on an uneven playing field. Nevertheless, it is losing to the competition.

Photo: Cover of the first issue of a magazine that has remained a symbol of alternative journalism and that in the mid-1990s gave independent journalists their start. The regime allowed only two issues to be circulated. It blamed their publication on Raúl Rivero y Ricardo González Alfonso, who were later convicted and sentenced to jail. From “Remembering the Revista de Cuba.”

*Translator’s note: Acronym for The National Institute of Sports, Physical Education and Recreation.

17 October 2013

The Poet Rafael Alcides Dedicates his Presentation to the Unjustly Jailed Writer Angel Santiesteban

The Quixotic Soul of Rafael Alcides
For Luis Rafael

An emotional Havana evening, the kind which seals memory with a light of fire, I met the poet Rafael Alcides Pérez (Barrancas, 1933). Choosing to remain anonymous, as is his custom, he was in the audience which was attending the launch of my poem-book Colómbico, being held in the bright room of Havana’s Hotel Inglaterra.

I learned he was there almost immediately after I had finished my duties, after signing a few autographs for friends and strangers, when the poet and critic Virgilio López Lemus, who had made the eulogy for my book, came with Alcides and introduced me to him. “It’s a must have for Cuban poetry,” said López Lemus and Alcides smiled indulgently. Silent, hardly daring to comment. His eyes, however, scrutinized every gesture, like his poetry.

Born in the eastern town of Barrancas, Alcides moved to Havana to study for his baccalaureate and thence to Havana, where he graduated as an industrial chemist. A nomad since he was young, he traveled to Mexico, USA, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Venezuela, writing poems here and there like someone taking photos.

A member of the “fifties generation” — writers born between 1925 and 1945 — affiliated with Cuban revolutionary project headed by Fidel Castro and which sought to banish exploitation and inequality from the island, Rafael Alcides put his literature at the “service” of a nationalist  and justice-seeking ideology, writing crystal clear, intimate and clearly understandable verses for the people who shaped his poetry, colloquial, at times choral, other times intimate and questioning, which bears witness to the present and defends the future.

During those years of dreams and hope, he worked as a producer, director and writer for radio and unveiled the new conversational, lyrical canon of articles and reviews for the magazines Unión, Casa de las Americas and La Gaceta de Cuba, and on his radio programme, In the place of poetry. So he was recognised as an author of value, who published the poetry books: Mountain Hymns, 1962, The Wooden Leg, 1967. 

History, however, was in charge of clipping the wings of dreams and the 1970s came with their censures and excesses. After a publishing silence, the lyrical work of Alcides reemerged in the eighties, with poems that speak of a change of themes and approaches, where the poet becomes questioning, doubtful, raising his voice of dissent and seeking answers in epic genre of everyday life.

He dares to deal with issues and questions which speak of this “Quixotic soul” for which he is recognized, and that leads him to confront “windmills” knowing that they can throw mud at him, under the indifferent gaze of Sanchificados. The artist decides to retreat and write from the margin. His commitment to justice, sentencing him to be an exile within his own country, which however takes the point of view that a poet is a creature “charged with bearing witness to the present day and announcing it tomorrow”.

His writings express the irony of someone who knows that his work doesn’t deny but rather affirms. Grateful like a dog, 1983, And they die, and they return, and they die, 1988, Night in memory, 1989 Nobody, 1993, all carry his rebellious speech, his faith in humanity and his desire for communication, which is also evident in the anthology published in Spain by Renaissance and entitled GMT (Seville, 2009), a compilation of articles written between 1963 and 2008. And with each poem Rafael gallops upon Clavileño, dreaming of a utopian island which his sincere verse and Quixotic attitude have conquered.

– See more HERE

The writer Ángel Santiesteban Prats will receive a new tribute, this time from the poet Rafael Alcides. State of SATS* will open Cafésatso, a space for literature, conversation and pure coffee.

Rafael Alcides will dedicate his presentation to Ángel Santiesteban, wrongly imprisoned by the Castro dictatorship.

Friday, 12 July 2013. 6:00 pm

1st Avenue between 46 and 60 #4606

Miramar, Havana, Playa

Free

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

9 July 2013

Prison Diary LX: Mr. Miguel Ginarte: the Guiding Light of Cuban TV / Angel Santiesteban

Miguel Ginarte (photo courtesy of the blog by Yusnaby)

My mother always warned me that the Cuban government proceeds through their actions: “When they no longer need you, the squash you like a cockroach”.

In the cultural media, it is well known that there are very few shows on Cuban TV that do not use Miguel Ginarte to produce their programmes; in fact, very few are those who in the end who are not grateful for his disinterested help, his constant effort, because he takes the care with each show as if it were the final project that he would ever collaborate on. A man who people rarely hear say no, and when he has had to say no it is because it really was beyond his reach to help.

But that ranch not only provides work for the The Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), but also for the Ministry of Culture, who closed events at that location, like a peasant with a pig being roasted under the stars. I was able to participate in some of these closures before opening my blog, of course, and there we could also see the make up of the diet of then Minister of Culture Abel Prieto, now adviser to President Raul Castro: Fish and wine.

At that time, Ginarte wasn’t selling or diverting resources, as he is now being accused of. The television directors, when they wanted their guests to be treated decently, approached Papa Ginarte: who never turned his back, and after giving the respective indications, persevered to make sure that the requests were met.

As the actor Alberto Pujol said in his letter, there was no luxury to be found there; on the contrary, everything was very modest, to the point that it looked like somewhere one would film a mambises* cabin in the foothills of a mountain. Ostentation never interested Ginarte, only the quality of his work, because as every good Cuban peasant knows “A bull is tied by his horns, and a man by his words”.

As always on the island, behind this web of lies against Ginarte, there must be an official in love with the place, to at a whim do away with the work accomplished by the sweat of another; perhaps someone who resents Ginarte because at some time he should have said no, as only he knows how to do with bureaucrats. But it should come as no surprise to anyone: everyone’s time will come, regardless if they are excellent professionals, altruists, creators, honest, revolutionary people; they need only to be inadequate for the plans of those in power to be literally swept under the carpet.

I remember him with his jovial smile of a macho peasant who enjoyed very few days before entering prison. I would like to be able to say to him “the master should be ashamed, Papa Ginarte”, and remember him on his horse, back in the seventies, going to see Luyanó with his daughter Dinae and, patiently, lifting us up one by one to give us each our turn on his beautiful auburn steed.

At any rate, despite the pain that the injustice committed against Ginarte has caused us, there is something that makes it worth it, and that is his friends and admirers who have joined him by tooth and nail. I am sure that, as always, those who are ashamed will sign the petition, as they have done for decades. Others will want to do it but their lack of courage, or their commitments or perks, won’t let them; they think that it is not their problem, for now. But when someone does it from their heart, then that is already more than sufficient.

 Ángel Santestiban-Prats

Lawton prison settlement. Ocotber 2013

*Translator’s notes: Mambises is a term used to refer to independent guerillas who, during the 19th Century in Cuba and the Philippines, fought in the wars of independence. 

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy

The Literary Mafia in Cuba / Víctor Manuel Dominguez

HAVANA, Cuba, October, www.cubanet.org -The overall control the authorities have established over the publishing system, promotional spaces, travel agendas, and whatever takes place on the country’s artistic-literary plans, brings many writers together in a kind of mafic that some prefer to call a “clan,” a “pineapple” and other words that mean the same: “Interest groups.”

Joined by friendship and affinities of aesthetics, politics, generations, race, sexual orientation, or simply for advantaged access to publishing opportunities, spaces of influence or prevalence in the rarefied Cuban literary market, those involved in this war of interests defend, by any means, the groups chosen for their personal realization.

In a country where everything is measured by the common denominator of the unconditionality of the regime, these groups, driven to certain tricks that allow them to expel or disqualify others, living together without public displays of animosity, but alone tripping each other up, setting dirty traps, and making use of their space gained at any price for their works, styles, shapes and themes: these are the literary reference points of the nation.

That’s why the Cuban literary mafia, beyond their ambitions for or vision of the national literature, share control, participate in book presentations, and even serve on contest juries that know ahead of time who will win, or organize a story or poetry anthology where members of each group appear in equal parts, like a pact of honor among mediocre authors who represent the interests of the clan.

For many years, and in the corridors of clerks, careerists, believed, and other members of the various literary trends, walking the gardens of UNEAC (Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba) — mojito in hand — among other places of cultural interest, four denominations have arisen to “characterize” each group in the national literary watering hole.

Cafe Literario Attendees -- Photo from VMD
Cafe Literario Attendees — Photo from VMD

The first, baptized The School of ’Socialist’ Realism (also know by its rivals as The Penis Club), brings together the macho egocentrics who call themselves realists, “filling key posts in magazines, publishers, and the country’s promotional institutions, despising other current modalities. Their totem is Mario Varga Llosa.”

For natural opposition, the second group is called The Pink Mafia, with the principle characteristic of its coreligionists being homosexualities. The defend fantasy and absurdist literature, and their works revolve around the issue of gays looking for a place in society. They are belligerent, to the point of scandal, toward their counterparts in the Penis Club. Their idol is Virgilio Piñera.

The third is called The Black Colony, because it “brings together individuals of this race united in asserting their neglected rights in a mass mixed-race yearning, at all costs, to pass through Aryan, Nordic, Slavic or Latin, according to its spokespeople.” Their literature is a provocation, conceptual, deconstructivist. Your guardian angel is Severo Sarduy .

In last place, The School for Wives, whom The Penis Club call Clitoris Hall, or Hell, due to the fickleness of their demands, and a fierce feminism which advocates a generic discourse to gain areas of sociocultural emphasis, and is uses to achieve their purposes. Their idol is Simone de Beauvoir.

These and other qualifications heard at gatherings, exhibitions, bars; or read in publicized controversies in literary magazines (Yoss), and books such as Questions of Water and Earth (Jesus David Curbelo), show us the interior panorama of an exclusive literature, divided and censored, that lost its influence on the cultural heritage of the nation.

Víctor Manuel Domínguez, vicmadomingues55@gmail.com

Cubanet, 18 October 2013

A Cyber Cafe in Cuba? No chance.

Illustration: photomontage The Singularity of the Island.

Under the heading “Protect Internet Cafes in Cuba. Julian Assange Bungles It,” the website  http://www.lasingularidad.com offers good advice for Cuban citizens and digital non-conformists wanting to get around censorship restrictions.

Every time that I receive questions from activists in Cuba about the internet browser rooms, I never tire of repeating the phrase “Begone, Satan”, “Good riddance”, “Take them winter wind”, or any other interjection I can think of at that moment to make it clear that they should run as though from the devil himself. Like moths to a flame, they are designed to attract the unwary, who are bedazzled by its radiance.

The Cuban regime took its time designing these “booby traps” and — in what it considers a masterful sleight-of-hand — is attempting to make itself look good in the eyes of the modern world, which increasingly considers internet access to be a basic human right.

In fact, it has already reaped some rewards this week by successfully recruiting a “figure” of no less international stature than Julian Assange to proselytize politically on behalf of the Cuban regime. This is a completely surreal and incomprehensible development since, supposedly, the hacker’s code of ethics mandates fighting for free access to information.

His support for one of the world’s most repressive communist dictatorships — one known for restricting access to the free flow of ideas on the internet — is a senseless action that will very probably cause Assange to lose face in the eyes of the hackers who support him. Will Assange turn out to be one of those typical useful, misinformed fools or an opportunist looking for free vacations in the Caribbean? Whatever the answer, the betrayal of the ideals of hackers like Anonymous will not go unnoticed.

Why is Nauta a trap?

1 – Price censorship.

The cost of one hour of access to the internet in these rooms is 4.50 CUC, some $5 US if we convert it. Considering that the average salary in CUCs is approximately $20 per month, we can calculate that one hour of internet use costs Cubans close to 25% of their monthly salary. In a country where the salary is barely enough for one or two weeks’ worth of food, very few can afford to visit these rooms. By way of comparison, if in the United States or Europe one hour of internet cost more than $1,300, social network sites like Facebook would be very bleak places…

2 – Total lack of security, privacy and basic functionality.

To be able to buy a Nauta card, users have to display their identity cards. Their names, addresses and surnames, together with the identification code of the cards sold, are registered in a database. In this same database all their activity is stored: the sites they visit, passwords they enter, screen captures and general captures of all that they type (keyloggers).

The computers available are in fact thin clients* running a modified and highly restricted version of Windows Xp, an operating system so antiquated that it will soon be discontinued by Microsoft, which will no longer issue updates for it.

Short Restrictions:

It is not permitted to right click with the mouse. This reduces functionality for those who are used to cutting and pasting text using menus and eliminates all the information that right clicking in Windows provides. Hint: You can use the keyboard shortcuts ctrl+C to copy, ctrl+X to cut and ctrl+V to paste.

It is not permitted to run any programme from USB memory sticks.

It is not permitted to run any programme from command lines (CMD.exe).

Task Manager is disabled, the Ctrl + Alt + Del and don’t even dream of administrator access in order to install some program that you may need.

Overcoming Nauta

The number one rule is : If you can avoid it, DO NOT USE IT. In Cuba, there are many other alternatives: Access from work centers, much less restrictive network dial-up access, illegal accounts shared by foreigners, friends who can send your emails as a favor, and of course access to offline internet content like the Web Packets Weekly Mulitmedia Packets that reign across the island.

If you have no other option you can protect yourself using these simple tips:

1.  Use disposable email accounts, ask your contacts to do the same if possible. The value of your messages lies not only in their contents but also in those to whom they are directed and from whom and from where you receive them (Metadata).  Never use your name or personal information to create an email account or to search websites on the Internet.  If you use false data and a fake name it will be much more difficult for government analysts or their spy programs to determine if your mail or user profile is worth the effort of analyzing.  These spy programs are used by almost all governments, including the United States and, of course, Cuba.

2.  Mask “complicated” words in your messages by using spaces, repeated letters and punctuation signs at random.  This will prevent automated software or analysts that search for key words from being able to flag your messages or profile as being of interest for analysis.  For example, instead of writing “the dissidents screamed liberty at the demonstration” write “the di. Si-dde :ntes shouted lib. ee.r t y in the demi. str *ati-on”  A text search for the words “dissident” and “demonstration” will not detect your messages.  Government agencies in other countries like the C-I. A and the N-S. A will not appreciate this advice, either.:)

3.  Mask your messages by excess information.  For example, began your email with several paragraphs of weighty poems and by prior agreement let your recipient know in which paragraph will be the true message.  The poor analyst that has to read your email will simply go to the next when he sees your long poem. The idea is to make his work difficult all the time.  Remember to mask words as explained above.

4.  Be aware that everything that you type and capture on-screen is being recorded on your user profile.  If you are forced to use a personal password, mask it with random fillers that you will then remove with the mouse and the Delete key. For example, if your password is “freecuba123,” write “iwantfreecub123456.”  Then select “iwant” and “456″ with your mouse and hit delete.  This is not 100% safe with advanced keyloggers but it will make it hard for the analyst who is watching your information to discover which is the true password.  There exists no completely secure protection in the world of information nor in the real one.  It is like protecting your home:  the more difficult you make it for the thief, the less likely your house will be the one in the neighborhood that gets hit.

5.  Use PHP proxies for accessing web pages whose navigation is censored and that you do not want to be kept in your navigation history.  Write on Google:  ”php proxy list” to access web pages that keep lists of proxies that constantly change in order to prevent them from being blocked.  These proxies will permit you to navigate as if your were in another country and will hide the website addresses that you visit.  Nevertheless, remember that your screen is being recorded and if you do something that calls attention they might check your user profile.

6.  Https is your friend.  Always prefer web pages in which the URL or address begins with https.  This means that all traffic between your navigator and the web page server is automatically encrypted in a secure way, hence the letter “s.” However, remember that what you type is being recorded so you cannot stop using the tricks listed above or better still, if you can avoid it, do not enter your search information on any page from Nauta.

If you have other ideas and suggestions for the protection of privacy and security of users in browser rooms in Cuba, write them in the comments below.

Archived in Cuba

*Translator’s note: Computers or computer programmes which depend heavily on other computers (their servers) to fulfill their computational roles.

Translated by Shane J. Cassidy, mlk

30 September 2013

Humberto Real Suarez: 16 Years Old, Condemned to Death / Lilianne Ruiz

The parents of Humberto Real Suárez

Havana, Cuba, October 2013, www.cubanet.org – Humberto Real Suarez is another of the men who disembarked on the night of 15 October 1994 on the coasts of Caibarien, along with Armado Sosa Fortuny.

Today he is serving a sentence of 30 years imprisonment in “Kilo 8” maximum security prison in Camagüey.

The group of seven men, under the command of Sosa Fortuny, had sailed from Tavernier, Florida. They belonged to the Democratic National Unity Party (PUND), but they had received minimal military training, barely knew each other, and they were inferior in number and materiel to the army they intended to fight when they got to the Island.

It’s been 19 years since the night when an accidental shot from Real Suárez’s rifle cost the life of a man and thwarted the plans of the command to create a guerrilla front in the Escambray Mountains.

Real Suárez has never recanted his actions, but he regrets that a man is dead, so he characterizes his act as recklessness:

“I came here to fight against the government army, not to kill any civilians. The man’s death was an accident. But the reasons that made me return to Cuba, ready to engage in armed insurrection, are still valid,” he says in a telephone interview with Cubanet.

After a year and a half of psychological torture at the Villa Marista prison, he was tried in 1996 and sentenced to death. He was then 26 years old.

Independent lawyers from the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, after analyzing the prosecutor’s file, concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge Real Suárez for the death, and issued a call to human rights organizations to intercede with the Castro government for his life.

The pressure exerted by the appeal of his parents, Graciela Suarez and Humberto Real, calling for international support to preserve his life, alongside the work of human rights organizations and the declaration of renowned intellectuals like Mario Vargas Llosa, resulted in Real Suárez not being executed. In December 2010 the initial sentence was commuted to 30 years in prison.

The document in which the sentence was given in 2010 again stated that no explosives were found among the weapons taken. That did not remove what was in the prosecution’s description of the alleged intentions — without any proof: “to carry out violent actions against schools and public facilities.”

On the other hand, several paragraphs describe the accused as anti-social elements, imitating the propaganda the Spanish government used against the mambises — at the beginning of the Ten Years War — painting them as “highwaymen” to the Cuban public. And much later — in the sixties of the last century — against the rebels fighting the Castro autocracy, calling the extermination of thousands of Cubans in the Escambray mountains, “a fight against bandits.”

Demanding Dignified Treatment

Humberto Real Suárez (family archive)
During the 16 years he was under a sentence of death, confined in an isolation cell, the only request Real Suárez made to his jailers – in all the hunger strikes he made during that period – was his right to go to the firing squad dressed in the same military clothing he was wearing when he arrived in Cuba.

When asked how how he endured for so many years a death sentence staring him in the face, Real Suárez replied that faith in God allowed him to live those 16 years without fear of execution.

Today his life is spent in a cell in the Kilo 8 prison, but shares the day with other prisoners. At 6:00 am, the guards open the gate and let him walk up and down a 40 yard corridor, until 6:00 PM. Each day, the prisoner is entitled to one hour of sunshine in the courtyard of the prison.

Recently, Humberto Real Suarez’s launched a new public petition. This time before the Archbishop of Havana, begging Cardinal Jaime Ortega to arrange the transfer of their child to a prison in the province in Matanzas, as it very difficult to travel to the province of Camagüey, given the difficult conditions of transportation in Cuba and the advanced age of both parents. Graciela Suarez and Humberto Real, have as the only purpose in life to alleviate the prison hardships of their son, through family visits that have been held during these 19 years.

Humberto Real’s father, also interviewed Cubanet, related that when he saw his son for the first time after the 1996 trial, he only managed to say, “Here is your father.” Graciela, the mother, says she has never been able to sleep a full night.

Justice in Cuba looks after its own interests

The speech that served as an ideological alibi to the court that convicted Real Suárez – in 1996 and 2010 – is a discourse of extreme violence, exemplified in the slogan “Socialism or Death,” among others.

On July 13, 1994 (the same year of the failed landing), 41 people, some of them children, died at sea as a result of the deliberate sinking of the tugboat “13th of March.” The responsibility for these deaths was never acknowledged by the government, which instead of bringing forward those who were guilty, responded to the popular protests known as The Maleconazo (August 5, 1994) with more repression. Later they justified it, in the face of national and foreign public opinion, with uninterrupted ideological propaganda in all the mass media, a maneuver known as the Battle of Ideas.

Humberto Real Suárez and his companions were not tried with all the procedural guarantees, but none has asked for clemency. They, along with many inside and outside the island, continue to hold on to the dream of freedom and human rights for all Cubans.

Lilianne Ruíz

Cubanet, October 18, 2013

Red Sea, Blue Sea / Regina Coyula

In the beginning there was the word, before discovering his vocation behind the camera, still being a boy, Miguel wrote really well. Now, with this novel he should prove it, although he excuses himself by saying that it’s early. It doesn’t matter — in Red Sea, Blue Sea, the obsessions are there that would (will) become movies. Congratulations on your presentation.

Saturday, 19 October at 1 PM EDT (at) The Place of Miami in Miami. Go and cooperate with the artist!!

And… you can buy it here!

Translated by: JT

18 October 2013

Are People Motivated to Procreate in Cuba? / Rebeca Monzo

Many people wonder why there is such a low birthrate in our country, where there is an excellent climate for raising a baby: no extreme temperatures, good sun and magnificent beaches.

Here are some images that will answer this question for themselves.

The first is the facade of the González Coro Hospital, formerly the Sacred Heart Clinic, one of the most modern installations of this type in the fifties. The dream of most future mothers was to be seen here throughout their entire pregnancy and after the birth, particularly in the late sixties when the other similar facilities, constructed earlier, started to demonstrate the deterioration of the already incipient abandonment.

More than twenty-eight years ago, a little drip started in the OB/GYN waiting room. Then the solution was to place a bucket under it and a blanket under that.

Today, the same situation persists, only made worse by three decades. It has become larger and greatly affected the false ceiling, which shows a creeping deterioration, even more so because it’s a health center and safety and hygiene should come first.

What solutions have the health authorities found to deal directly with this and other facilities?

Simply to place an enormous bucket to collect as much water as possible, and instead of placing blankets around it on the floor (which are rare and expensive) as they used to do to absorb the spray, they have placed enormous cartons, to prevent the pregnant women from slipping.

18 October 2013

Partial Solutions / Fernando Damaso

With regards to the adoption of the Mariel Special Development Zone Decree Law, it comes to mind that this idea of trying to solve the problems of the country not in a global way, but by creating regions and special plans, has been a tendency of the authorities since their earliest days in power.

We remember the declaration of the town of El Cano, as the first socialist town of Cuba and, later, that of another unimportant one as being the first town where money would not be needed. These constituted, at the time, childish utopias within the large adult utopia that has been the so-called Socialist Revolution, which has had very little of socialism and a great deal of voluntarism.

To these initial blunders, we have to add the failed Havana Cordon, the Ten Million Ton Harvest, the micro-jet bananas, the failed livestock cross-breeding plans, the Pharaonic harvests of pangola grass and pigeon peas, the windbreaks, the embankments on any nearby key, the Turquino Plan*, the Escambray Plan, and a great deal more economic and ecological nonsense.

Now, copying the Chinese brothers in turn (we lack originality), and after greatly criticizing them, the so-called Special Development Zones started to appear which, though they strengthen the creation of accelerated wealth in the chosen and controlled regions, they deform the economic map of the country, generating reas of extreme poverty, where people have no other option for survival than to emigrate to these new El Dorados, where all this rootlessness and loss of identity leads, affecting the social fabric, making even more virulent the economic and social differences between regions, creating a country alienated by its different living conditions, very distant from “with all and for the good of all” advocated by José Martí.

For those of us who dream of a single prosperous Cuba, where citizens do not have to emigrate from the places of birth to develop their life projects, time and the tenacity of Cubans are working in our favor.

*Translator’s note:  The Turquino Plan was a 1980s effort to develop forestry and site appropriate agriculture to stabilize mountain populations and make mountain areas independent of cities.

18 October 2013

It is Forbidden to Name a Baby “Antunez”

Jorge Luis Garcia Perez “Antunez” – Yudeici wants to be her son to be his namesake. Photo by Tracey Eaton

CAMAGÜEY, Cuba, October 18, 2013, Fernando Vázquez Guerra / Cuban Network of Community Spokespeople / www.cubanet.org.- On October 15 at 3:00 in the afternoon, Yudeici Rondón Villavicencio, who is the Delegate from the Rosa Park Feminist Movement, was beaten with her newborn child in her arms by two members of the political police in the Ana Betancourt Maternity Hospital in Camaguey, where she had been admitted. One of the attackers is the Psychologist of State Security known as Claudia and the other was Angel Eduardo Guadarrama, nicknamed Carlos.

For several days, Yudeici has maintained a social difference with the State Security because she wants to name her son Jorge Luis Antunez and this repressive body will not agree to it. Now, the regime wants to take away a parent’s right to name their newborn child. Yudeici responded that it is that name or none, so the baby left the hospital without being registered.

Jorge Luis García Pérez (Antúnez) is the name of a prominent human rights activist living in the center of the island, who served several years in prison for his activism.

If you want to support Yudeici, the telephone number of the hospital board is: 5332297511, extension 1089.

From Cubanet, 18 October 2013

What Happened in “The Bivouac”? / Michel Iroy Rodriguez

Ladies in White (seated against wall in background) surrounded by police and plainclothes agents, last Monday, photo EFE
Ladies in White (seated against wall in background) surrounded by police and plainclothes agents, last Monday, photo EFE

HAVANA, Cuba, October 18, 2013, Michel Iroy Rodriguez / www.cubanet.org.- At the detention center known as “The Bivouac,” near Calabazar, on the border between the capital municipalities of Arroyo Naranjo and Boyeros, and Cattle Arroyo Naranjo, a repressive wave of arbitrary arrests launched by State Security between the 11th and 14th of this month, just before the second anniversary of the death of Laura Pollán Toledo on the 14th, resulted in the jailing of 46 opponents, in dubious circumstances.

From the early hours of Friday the 11th, until Sunday, State Security agents were arresting Ladies in White, regime opponents, human rights activists and independent journalists, so that they would not be able to attend the second anniversary mass for the death of Laura Pollán, nor participate in the usual Ladies in White Sunday March from Santa Rita Church in Miramar.

In protest against the arbitrary arrests, 23 detainees in “The Bivouac” went on hunger strike and all refused to be indicted on charges by the officers of Villa Marista (headquarters of the State Security). During the interrogations they were subjected to they received threats from officials from the political police.

David Aguila Montero, director of the Social Agency of Independent Journalists of Cuba (ASPI), who was detained from Friday the 11th and who was one of those who declared a hunger strike, said that the treatment of those arrested was deplorable. He spoke of activists with illnesses who were prevented from taking their medication or who were given it off schedule.

During the three days he was held, Aguila Montero claims to have seen 34 male regime opponents in “The Bivouac,”many of them from other provinces, and 9 Ladies in White, including Niurka Luque who, he said, had a wound on her face that looked like it was made with a knife when she was arrested .

After more than 92 hours, the detainees were released, but the whereabouts of 4 activists from the province of Pinar del Rio were unknown at the time of writing this information.

Michel Iroy Rodriguez, yeikosuri11@gmail.com

From Cubanet, 18 October 2013

Human Rights Defender Kidnapped In His Home / Veizant Boloy

An act of repudiation in front of the house of Andrés Pérez Suárez, courtesy of the author.

Havana, Cuba, 11 October 2103, Veizant Boloy / www.cubanet.org.- Today, Friday, 11 October at 6:45 AM, Andres Perez Suarez, president of the opposition  group Commission for Assistance to Political Prisoners and Their Families (CAPPF, was arbitrarily arrested.  The arrest was carried out by the Department of State Security agent known as Camilo, supported by the police of patrol car no. 131.

“Now, Andres, things are complicated for you!” Camilo shouted, as he tried to enter the house by force, according to information received in a phone call by Regla Rios Casado, a Lady in White and Andres’ wife.

“He climbed over the fence, which is more than six feet high, and climbed on the roof looking for a way to get into the house,” said Rios Casado. “He told us he had a search warrant but what he showed was a an arrest order and they took him away.”

Also near Pérez Suárez’s house they arrested Mario Moraga Ramos and Roberto Ávalos Padrón, both CAPPF activists. In this operation the participating State Security agents were Leodan, Frank, and Captain Alejandro. According to agent Camilo, who hours later returned to threaten Rios Casado, Perez Suarex was taken to the police station at Infanta and Manglar in the capital municipality of Cerro.

From September to now, the government’s represssive forces have deployed operation and arrested Perez Suarez nd his wife to keep them from going to the Ladies in White march at Santa Rita Church, where they go every Sunday.

“Every time, after enduring harassment and beatings, we are abandoned to our fate,” commented Rios Casado. “The last time agent Camilo arrested me they took me without my shoes and without any money to a complicated place* called La Lechuga, in Melena del Sur. On that occasion a man and a woman, both police officers, dragged me out of the patrol car by my feet,” she concluded.

Regla Rios Casado and her family have suffered more than three acts of repudiation from last month to today.

Opponents have, on several occasions, denounced this practice through legal means. Based on the exercise of complaint and petition, provided for in Article 63 of the Constitution of the Republic, and Article 26 of the rules themselves that recognize that “every person who suffers injury or damages unjustly caused by the officials and agents of the State exercising the functions of their job, have the right to demand and obtain corresponding reparations or indemnification in the manner established by law.”

The Attorney General of the Republic neither responds to complaints nor protects against them. Even though it is required to do so within 60 days of the violation.

More arrests today

We also learned that agent Camilo visited the Route 12 settlement of San Miguel del Padrón. Arrested there today were Yoeldy Boza Garrido, 24, and his father, Juan Bautista Boza, migrants to the capital from the province of Guantanamo. They live in appalling conditions, in a shack. Presumably, the reason for the detention was Yoeldy’s statements to Cubanet, in a video that shows the precariousness of their environment.

Veizant Boloy  — veizant@gmail.com

*Translator’s note: It is now a common practice to arrest opponents, drive them to far off places, and simply abandon them there. This is part of the strategy of repression the opponents call “catch and release.”

From Cubanet, 11 October 2013