Among Fish and Cats / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

Photo by OLPL
Photo by OLPL

The catfish has conquered Cuba. The Communist Party and Youth Wing newspapers are singing the praises of its soft, white flesh. However…

The forced introduction of catfish to Cuba from Africa and Asia, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, can now be considered an ecological holocaust. The animals’ voracious appetite has wiped out countless freshwater animals on the island, in addition to non-aquatic species.

This breed of catfish, otherwise known as Clarias batrachus, or walking catfish, can weigh dozens of pounds and grow to a monstrous size. They are scavengers and, thanks to their ability to survive out of water for an extended period of time, all kinds of objects have been found in their stomachs: Spark plugs, marbles, coins, stones, plastic, the remains of vegetation, fish, amphibians, birds, rodents, and sometimes even feces. They will also devour one another when overcrowding occurs.

Sooner or later the Cuban Ministry of the Fishing Industry will have to respond to this irreparable idiocy on a national and international level. In the face of shortages of other sources of protein, the government has tried to provide the population with cheap meat, but many still find the texture and flavor of catfish disgusting and, in practice, even if they don’t have any other option, many buy catfish to feed their pets. (In particular cats, whose numbers were decimated during the Cuban famine of the 1990s, finally seem happy with the Revolution’s food policy.)
Claria Catfish

Photo: OLPL
Photo: OLPL

Although Cuba is surrounded by water, and our archipelago has more than 3,500 miles of coastline, the Cuban Fishing Fleet is a mere phantasm floating across the memory of the Caribbean Sea. Private fishermen came under suspicion for possibly smuggling people to Miami. Cuba is too close to the United States, where, paradoxically, catfish is treated as a delicacy: “God gives a beard to those who don’t have a jawbone,” is a common saying on the island, except that in this case the catfish has a moustache.

Translated by Alex Higson

From Sampsonia Way Magazine

15 September 2013

Between Neglect and Helplessness. Prostitution in Cuba, Part 3 / Miriam Celaya

jineteras090913Official secrecy and complicit silence

The original sin of the “Cuban Revolution” in relation to prostitution lies not in the fact of its not being able to eradicate it, a clearly impossible task, but in denying its very existence. Such a denial doesn’t only retard the search for solutions for social problems — sexual slavery, drug trafficking, child prostitution, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS, etc. — that have appeared on the Island, but also prevents the population from having a clear perception of the issue and its social implications.

By excluding the issue from public debate it remains buried under less pressing emergencies related to economic survival and the precariousness of material resources. At the same time, these very privations accelerate the the deterioration of moral values, and feed the growth of prostitution, especially among teenagers under 18, who constitute the most vulnerable sector. A vicious circle that closes in on itself with a Gordian knot that seems to have no solution.

The end of innocence

While many adult women have chosen for themselves the path of prostitution, it is not less true that the entry of minors into the profession is ever more frequent. Eighteen marks the age of sexual consent in Cuba, but it is not rare to find girls between 13 and 17 who have already become prostitutes.

These kinds of activities, although prohibited by current laws, are difficult to detect due the complex web of illegalities that has been consolidated in the heat of impunity, and that now includes the networks of “recruiters” (generally older prostitutes and pimps), brothels — often protected behind the facade of a legal business, clandestine hostels, etc. — and, in some cases, with the complicity of law enforcement.

Police corruption, meanwhile, can be gross or subtle and ranges from simple extortion of the prostitute to the direct participation in obtaining monetary benefits under the concept of protecting the business; but in all cases it constitutes an important obstacle in combating this scourge.

According to the testimonies of several prostitutes, some police officers who cover shifts at certain key points in the capital receive direct payment from them, or from the employees of neighborhood bars, to permit both the trafficking of these sex workers as well as the clandestine trade in rum and cigars that is a scam usually played on unsuspecting foreigners. Prostitutes and bartenders have established a kind of mutually beneficial professional collaboration and have created true niches of corruption, particularly in poor areas of dubious reputation, such as Chinatown in Havana or San Rafael Boulevard.

The absence of institutions

In addition, some life stories suggest that the majority of minors who venture into the world of prostitution come from dysfunctional families and have grown up in hostile homes, both materially and affectionately, without there being any institutions truly responsible for their safety and protection.

A sample study conducted with a group of young prostitutes between the ages of 15 and 25, allows the conclusion that almost all of the cases came from dysfunctional homes, that prostitution among minors is a growing trend, and that the representatives of the repressive bodies or the courts are the only representatives of any official institution with which they have had any contact or relationship, whether it be to be blackmailed, arrested or punished; but never to offer them an alternative life or to enroll them in some social program that allows them to overcome the serious existential conflicts facing them.

Some of them are completely lacking in family support, others have minor children, are school dropouts, have used drugs at least once, and/or smoke and drink alcoholic beverages regularly.

The issue is compounded because it appears that there is no national program, nor even a local one, charged with supporting those who, given their particular circumstances, have taken to prostitution as a way to solve their material problems, not even for those who have lived in conditions of extreme poverty and lack of attention in dysfunctional homes, those who have been abandoned by their families, or for those who have been systematically abused, including by their own close family members.

Such helplessness is even more inexplicable given that, for over half a century, the Government has developed organizations dedicated to “surveillance” on every block through the so-called Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), or to the needs and defense of women through the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). An institutional structure that, had it functioned in the social interest or fulfilled its founding principles, would have been capable of controlling this evil from the beginning.

Neither the Government nor independent civil society

Even though the problem of child prostitution potentially affects thousands of families, it does not seem to arouse significant interest on the part of the Government, largely responsible for the fate of so many frustrations; the same Government whose educational system, for decades, has robbed parents of their authority and awarded the “paternalistic” State custody of children, teenagers and young people, now abandoned to their own bad luck.

More worrying still is that not even within the alternative spaces is there a particular interest in this matter. In any case, a debate on the topic is not emerging, nor are there civic proposals that take it on, to any extent, from independent civil society. This suggests that perhaps there is an underlying accumulation of moral prejudices or traditional taboos that prevent the same sectors which have opened spaces for questions as complex as racial discrimination or sexual diversity, from taking on the challenge of the debate about prostitution and its social effects.

But far beyond the lack of resources, what is really alarming is the apparent lack of political will within all parties to approach one of the most complex issues that Cuban social reality is facing in the near future.

From DiariodeCuba

Prostitution in Cuba: Part 1.  Part 2.

9 September 2013

Living in a Shelter Comes to Seem Normal / Odelin Alfonso Torna

HAVANA, Cuba , September, www.cubanet.org – For ten years, the issue of housing has topped Cuba’s social problems. The state, unable to meet demand in the medium and long term, commits to offering its abandoned and unrepairable properties. Families of victims, calling on their meager resources and their own efforts, are divided out among warehouses, factories, schools, offices and even in abandoned police headquarters.

Offices of an old abandoned factory in danger of collapse, located in Cuervo road in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, were previously assigned, provisionally, to three families of victims. In the warehouse of the dismantled La Ideal cannery, in the capital municipality of San Miguel del Padron, shelters other families by whatever means possible. The San Francisco de Paula railway station, in the same municipality, has served as a “temporary” roof for three families since the end of the ’90s.

These spaces donated by the State already existed, to a lesser extent, before 2006, the year that Fidel Castro delegated his powers for reasons of health. Already since 1996, part of the International School of Sports and Physical Culture (EIFD), in the Cotorro municipality, was enabled for dozens of victim families to temporarily stay overnight. These families and their descendents are still living in EIDF.

Transition communities like Gambute, Mantilla, El Comodoro and Martín Pérez, all in the capital, have been operating for more than fifteen years.

According to the ousted vice president Carlos Lage, 2006 ended with 111,373 housing units built, 78,833 more than were constructed in 2011 (32,540). Data provided by the National Housing Institute shows that Cuba must build between 60,000 and 70,000 housing units. However, the State is building some 16,000 while between 8,000 and 10,000 are built through private efforts. The State insists that its priority is to “solve [the problem of] those sheltered because of collapses.”

Does Havana, receiving more than 20,000 new residents each year, especially from the interior of the country, record in its annual housing construction plan the spaces and “transition communities” that are offered each year to victims and social cases? Looking at the nationwide housing stock of more than 3 million units, according to the National Statistics Office (ONE) 61% are in good condition, and the rest are “regular” or “bad.” Annual demand is predicted to be twice the plan figures for construction and repair of housing units.

Oris Silvia Fernández, president of the National Housing Institute, interviewed for the new news show “Cuba says,” argued, “We have a very complicated situation in the country’s capital because we have 5,471 families in shelters, and we have to say that there are other families who live in critical buildings with rather complicated structural situations in the capital, and we are talking of a total requirement of 28,000 homes.”

According to the ONE, the Cuban capital has more then 6,000 tenements and former mansions and old houses subdivided into rooms, plus 46 shantytowns — among them the transition communities — on the periphery, where more than 18,000 people live. All of them, and the new generations that come along, have been waiting for more than twenty years for dignified housing. However, statistically, are these cases resolved by the government?

For the long list of victims, offers of land by the State do not seem to be on the table. And despite Decree Law 217 (1997), which regulates the flow of migrants to the capital, the arrival of emigrants from the eastern part of the country increases the total housing needs in the capital.

Hurricanes and tropical storms over the last ten years have affected more than one million homes. Hurricane Sandy, which hit eastern Cuban in October 2012, most affected the provinces of Holguin, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, causing the complete destruction of 22,396 homes. As of the first half of the year, 20,710 remained unaddressed. From previous cyclones — I’m referring to Gustave, Ike and Paloma — 40,000 totally collapsed homes remain unaddressed, according to Silvia Fernández.

The eastern province of Santiago de Cuba has a housing stock of 329,191 homes, with 40% in fair or poor condition. With this as a starting point, Hurricane Sandy affected 171,000 households, and only 44% of the victims have resolved their situation.

Given the low production of materials and a government program to build housing that does not exceed 20,000 annual units, temporary solutions appear necessary  It remains to be known if this is a permanent state.

By Odelín Alfonso Torna — odelinalfonso@yahoo.com

12 September 2013

The Man in Front of the Microphone / Yoani Sanchez

Subtitles read:
Free access to information for me to have my own opinion.
I want to elect the president by direct vote, not by other means.
Neither militants nor dissidents, all Cubans with the same rights.
End the blockade… and the INTERNAL BLOCKADE.

The filters were useless. The many eyes watching the monitors of the “master switch,” with itchy fingers ready to cut the signal, turn off the audio, kill a camera and switch to another focused on the crowd… or even on the heavens…

The professionals were useless, even though they had been carefully trained in TV censorship to cut to a test pattern or superimpose a musical curtain, should any “spontaneous” thing be said that should not be broadcast live.

It was all useless because the man in front of the microphone made the decision of his life: he resolved to put honesty above his own artistic career.

Robertico Carcásses was at the right time and the right place. He couldn’t let the chance go by and so he let loose, on the main stage of the Cuban regime, what so many of us are thinking.

Thank you, Bobby, for your bravery, your originality and for seizing this great opportunity with your voice and your art. Thank you!

*Translator’s note: Carcásses was singing at a concert staged for the release of the “Cuban Five” (Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States) at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand in Havana, Cuba.

15 September 2013

About the Beating of Ana Luisa Rubio: An Obligatory Reflection

Ana Luisa Rubio, a censored and dissident Havana actress, received a beating outside her home on the afternoon of Friday, 6 September, that caused multiple contusions on her face, head and the rest of her body. A few minutes later I received her telephone call in Artemesia: I heard her terrified voice trying to tell us, but barely able to give any details.

Ana Luisa then received the supportive visit of several friends, and that night was accompanied by Antonio Rodiles and his wife Ailer to the emergency room at the Manuel Fajardo Hospital, where she received medical attention and a certificate of her injuries was drafted. That same day she made the relevant police report, for the umpteenth time, to bring charges against the aggressors.

It was impossible for me to travel at that time — transport to Havana at that hour is virtually nonexistent — and as I had a 24 shift on Saturday, I was only able to visit her on Sunday morning. It was not until I saw the extensive traumatic bruising around her left eye, in the corner of the mouth on that side, still swollen, as well as on other places on her body, that I realized the magnitude of the aggression.

Then Ana told me that that afternoon some kids, innocent lures, repeatedly rang her doorbell — which, she said, was consistent with a history of provocations that she has been suffering for years, and has reported a dozen times without that law enforcement authorities doing anything. When she answered the door an outrageously angry woman neighbor rushed her ready for action, followed by a stranger and in seconds there were several men, also unknown to her, who joined in the beating. The modus operandi said it all. The images speak for themselves. The impunity confirms all suspicions that State Security was involved.

Now, the obligatory reflection of this Cuban who was not an eyewitness to these events and which I will try to discuss as objectively as possible. To not get suspicious:let’s suppose it was the unheard of case of a neighbor, truly outraged, inexplicably seconded completely viciously by various strangers, men and women included. Would it not be a case of assault against the person,recognized as a crime in the existing Penal Code and therefore punishable?

Why, then, shouldn’t the authorities act vigorously to enforce the law, arrest the main aggressor, who lives a few doors from Ana Luisa — and expose the guilty? Honestly, I feel that this is a very remote possibility if we consider that the attack was consummated on a woman who despite her vulnerable nature has dared to challenge the absolute power.

I am completely certain that if, the attacked had been anyone other than that “uncompromising revolutionary” regardless of the reasons, Ana Luisa would already be ready for sentencing. But in this case something happens that can not be ignored: casually insist several days before — I insist it was casually, not to get too suspicious — in the afternoon of August 24, Ana had undertaken a one-person public act of protest in the Plaza of the Revolution, and that it does explain a lot.

So as I see it: as long as this is a country where there is a separation of powers and the Prosecutor allows such abuses; a country where the police authority, far from ensuring the safety of the person, is congenial in complicity with the oppressors; as long as this a country without a committed press, able to submerge itself in a sterile catharsis, but never risk a finger on the burning sore; as long as State Security and the Communist Party arrogate to themselves the power to organize the notorious rallies of repudiation and infamous beatings — denigrating, not for the alleged victims, but for those who perpetrate them; as long as freedom of opinion and association are constantly violated and fear corrodes the dignity of man; as long as there are cowards capable of taking advantage of the helplessness of women like Ana Luisa, nothing, absolutely nothing in this suffering country has changed.

13 September 2013

Revolutionary Prostitutes. Prostitution In Cuba, Part 2 / Miriam Celaya

valla020913No social phenomenon arises suddenly or by spontaneous generation, rather it is the result of a long process of the accumulation of essential components. The rise of prostitution in “Socialist Cuba” is no exception. In fact, prostitution was not eliminated by policies dictated by the Government, which favored the mass incorporation of women into the workforce, nor with the wider social benefits that they undoubtedly enjoyed as long as romance subsidized by Eastern European socialism lasted, as was demonstrated when, impelled by the calamities of the so-called “Special Period*” the Government opted for international tourists as the most expeditious way to bring in hard currency.

With the Revolution brothels disappeared, but prostitution did nothing more than change its attire to disguise itself and survive in other forms, perhaps more subtle, which were enshrined and diversified as the system consolidated itself and installed the “meritocracy,” a predominantly male caste formed by mid- and high-level “leader cadres” of the Government, the Communist Party, high-ranking officials of the army or the Interior Ministry, as well as directors and managers of numerous state enterprises and institutions.

The privileges that the new caste of leaders can enjoy, according to their level, includes everything from travel abroad, free or very low-cost vacations in the country’s best hotels, special medical attention and private clubs, to the assignment of housing and cars, along with a generous quote of fuel, among many others.

The meritocracy, in turn, brought an explosion of a subordinate caste, the vaginocracy, formed by women attracted to the power and benefits of the new anointed, which are passed on to those with whom they are linked sexually, who can now enjoy a way of life that, otherwise, they would not have access to. These were not always their wives. It was an open secret that almost every prominent leader accumulated, among his trophies, some young and beautiful lover whom he maintained out of wedlock, based on gifts, perks and material benefits. The most successful of these hunters managed to wed their protector or came to acquire a good home or well-paid job, among other possible benefits.

It was not exceptional for military leaders to travel with their lovers, including on their “internationalist missions,” as happened in Angola, where they appeared embedded as personal staff. And surely they were.

This, with the advent of Marxism in Cuba and of the new class in power, prostitution for barter was reinstated, exchanging sex for money rather than for material benefits, and for the possibility of moving up the social ladder. The new model renewed old principals, tolerating the “vices of the bourgeois past” painted with make-up in the colors of the proletariat. The new prostitutes had no qualms about marching in Civic Plaza on the ritual dates, dressing as militants on the Days of Defense, or quickly stepping up for the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution or the Federation of Cuban Women. Revolutionary prostitutes had emerged, although neither they, nor the society, would consciously assume this definition.

For its part, society was abiding by the new rules. After all, offering sexual favors to a cadre of the Revolution in exchange for certain benefits was not so reprehensible. They were sacrificed comrades who spent a lot of time far from family and should have some leisure activity; it’s true they traded in sex, but at least their shared their beds with pillars of the fatherland, which in some way turned them into patriots. It was the heyday of revolutionary intransigence.

The double standard was imposed almost inadvertently as a national culture and as part of the mechanisms of the survival in a country in which the scarcity of material goods pushed the society towards the frontiers of moral misery. Almost the entire national spirituality was constrained within the ideological corset, which added to the chronic civic irresponsibility, contributed to the aggravation of the “anthropological damage” that has been brilliantly defined by the layperson Dagoberto Valdés.

Simultaneously, the traditional family structure was fractured and its values disrupted. Parents lost authority to the power of the State-Government-Party which appropriated their children and indoctrinated them into the new ideology of the commune. The children were sent to boarding schools from adolescence and grew up in promiscuity far from family control.

They had laid the foundation for the social disaster that would come in the ultimate decade of the 20th century when we Cubans were discovering that prostitution had overflowed the confined limits of the sex trade and infiltrated the roots of the whole society. Soon, the vaginocracy would yield to the strength and diversity of “jineterismo” — hustling.

*Translator’s note: The Special Period in Times of Peace (Período especial en tiempos de paz) was the name given by the regime to the period of extreme economic crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union (Cuba’s main political and economic ally and subsidizer) in 1991.  Its end is not very well defined, but seems to have been around the time when the late Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez started to send oil and money to the island.

Prostitution in Cuba, Part 1: The Many Faces of a Conflict

From DiariodeCuba

2 September 2013

Exiled Cuban Photographer Presents His Work at Estado de Sats in Havana / David Canela Pina

Alberto Maceo – taken from Facebook

HAVANA, Cuba , September 9, 2012, David Canela Piña / www.cubanet.org.- Last Friday the civic project Estado de Sats put on, at its usual site, a photographic exhibition by Cuban artist Alberto Maceo, who currently resides in Flensburg, a small German town on the border with Denmark. The exhibition, entitled From Havana to Here, included thirteen portraits of ordinary people of the streets of Germany, and also to a Cuban woman looking to the horizon from the Malecon. The artist was not present at the exhibition.

Cubans have a cultural similarity with the German population: in both communities the people daydream looking out to the sea, breathing the sea air. Perhaps it was this reminiscence that inspired Maceo to search faces for something Cuban: a distant yearning, an introspective silence. The sharpest eye might discover that they are lower class people, but possessing of a certain dignity.

However, the attributes and attitudes revealed in the composition of these figures are not enough to evoke a defined psychological and social profile. The majority neither seduce nor move one. There is a lack of substance, an infinite projection. Some images look like studies: an expression, lacking temperament, delighting in the vanity of its pose.

Woman on the Malecon - Alberto Maceo
Woman on the Malecon – Alberto Maceo

Very few manage to be a vehicle that leads to another universe: the Cuban woman, wrapped in a cloud of mystery, as if watching from the tower of a fortress; the young guitarist who seems to imagine or remember the verses of a song; and a man sitting on a bench, watching a fjord in the gloom. In the other images, it is difficult to guess at a story, an atmosphere, a conflict.

The quality of the photos is undeniable, but they lack character, uniqueness, and the prism of suggestion. It is true that not all photos can be iconic, like that of Sharbat Gula, the Afghan girl who was photographed in 1984 for National Geographic, but they should aspire to those reflections of the soul, and life experience.

Estado de Sats, builder of bridges

As Antonio Rodiles once said, the main objective of Estado de SATS is to create a public space within the Island. If voices that are pro-government (at least in appearance) are excluded or reject the invitation, either out of fear, convenience or laziness, it’s a personal matter for each person. But the space is open to all arguments, tendencies and attitudes, as long as they are defended with respect and rationality.

Public during exposition - Photo David Canela
Public during exposition – Photo David Canela

The second objective has been to build bridges of recognition and collaboration within civil society, some of whose members have been marginalized for their ideology, and for not worshiping a state that presents itself as the supreme idol. These, from their experiences and convictions (and I must say also , from poverty and homelessness), have decided to reclaim their dignity, and pay the price for their independence.

Perhaps the objective can be summarized as an opening new horizons, and between them, leading to healing through beauty, and refining the sensitivity of many people who have become accustomed to marginality, marginalization, beatings and jail cells. Estado de Sats is a path through the weeds, leading to democracy and reconciliation.

About the author

David Canela Piña. He was born on April 27, 1981 in Havana. He attended Fabricio Ojeda primary school and Otto Barroso secondary, both in the municipality of Habana del Este. He earned a scholarship to the V. I. Lenin Institute of Exact Sciences High School, graduating in 1999. In 2006 he graduated with a degree in Literature from the University of Havana, with a thesis on the poetic worldview of the Cuban writer Raul Hernandez Novás . He has worked as an editor, professor of grammar, literary scholar , and now as a digital media journalist. For seven years he lived in Diez de Octubre; he now lives in the municipality of Playa.

From Cubanet

9 September 2013

I am Malala, too!

Photo from: http://librospordescubrir.blogspot.com/

“The Taliban’s greatest fear has turned out to be a 14-year-old girl armed with some books.” ENCOURAGE MALALA

Malala Yousafzai is a Pakistani girl from a Muslim family, who has become an activist for the right to education for girls, who are discriminated against and prevented from obtaining education because they are women or because of various cultural, religious, or political reasons. She also advocates for those who risk their lives, as she did, just by going to school. As a result of her activism, begun when she was eleven, at age fifteen she was attacked by a member of the Taliban who shot her several times; although she miraculously survived, she partially lost her hearing. So she has become the symbol of struggle for the other 57 million children in the world who have no access to education.

Malala has asked that we take a photo with a raised hand, addressed to the UN, and post it on the various social media networks to demand that education be considered a priority for the UN and all humanitarian organizations in the world. I invite you to join this campaign so we can become an extension of that brave young woman and help in her efforts to train children for life, which is making a better world.

With this writing I publish my petition, later I will place my picture in Facebook, Twitpic, Twitter, Windows Live, YouTube, etc., as well as on the right side of the blog to continuously ask the United Nations to institute education as a priority for everyone from early childhood. We support the work of this girl, as did the former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who was photographed with his hand raised, declaring “I am Malala.” Become an activist for the rights of millions of boys and girls children to education. Be more than an activist: Be like Malala! Join us!

Translated by Tomás A.

14 September 2013

Where Does That Leave Us? / Cuban Law Association

Wilfredo Vallín Almeida

I was flipping through a magazine. It’s called Current PC. It has caused me some anxiety about a reality I am just discovering: although the magazine is in Spanish, my native tongue, I can barely understand what it says; I don’t know the meaning of countless technological terms.

The person who gave me the magazine to browse receives it regularly at home. He’s not a computer specialist, but someone who wants to keep abreast of new developments in technology in a form that is accessible and understandable for him.

Some of the arrticles are:

– 10 Super Plug-ins for Google Chrome

– Mastering Evernote Completely

– Move from Windows 7 to New Windows 8

– Mega, 50 gigabytes of memory for free

– Obsessed with online security.

– How to leave Instangram.

– Redecorate your home with Home Designer.

Reading (or rather trying to read) the articles, I can’t avoid a troubling question: Where are we Cubans in relation to all this? As technological development advances at breakneck speed, how long will we Cubans be denied the right to have the internet at home?

To try to explain myseslf with an example, I quote the following small fragment of the article “When the Internet is Everywhere” from this magazine:

The future has a poetic name, the Internet of Things … Health is one of the sectors that can benefit from the Internet of Things. The right technology will make many doctor visits unnecessary. And doctors can know — in real time and from a distance, thanks to sensors that their patients carry — blood sugar, blood pressure or heart rate itself …

The article continues with a description that seems to me more science fiction than science fact and current technology.

And in the face of all this, where does that leave us?

3 September 2013

Papers, Papers / Regina Coyula

With satisfaction, I watched this week as a friend received an exquisitely wrapped gift. My friend took the package, looked at if for a moment, and tore the paper to take out the contents. Ripping wrapping paper is still a luxury, receiving a wrapped gift is a rare detail, receiving a gift…well, you can fill in the blank yourself.  But when there are gifts, most people give them in ordinary bags of those which have been substituted in many places for ones that are better for the environment, bags that blow away and get dirty, along with the little papers of pizzas or beer cans, until the night before some important anniversary of something that has to do with these past 70 years, when the “cederistas*” — the neighborhood members of the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution — sweep and clean the city and it looks decent for a few days.

Gift wrap doesn’t blow away. Wrapping paper is treasured and recycled to wrap new gifts. Here they sell a metallic paper which is very attractive but difficult to manage and very resistant which has been the solution a second time, a even a third time, for many. My mom who is from an earlier time than I, has always invented a way to make pretty wrappings in an age when without paper there were no gifts.  She saved thick catalogs of wrapping paper that measured, I don’t know, 8-1/2 by 11.  She has those allegorical papers for weddings, Christmas, births, birthdays, couples, and any other event imaginable, in addition to neutral papers and ones in solid colors.  With these little papers my mother wrapped her gifts and they looked great. The catalogs started to get thinner in an alarming way and the lean supply of second-hand paper began. Between the two we developed an efficient technique to hide the wrinkles and folds of their last mission.  It was a thing of trial and error, but we found a way to put the iron at the right temperature, and with a moist cloth in the middle, successfully press this brilliant metallic until it became more manageable.

My mother, poor thing, remained with this fixation. In 2000 she spent Christmas with her sister and nieces and nephews in California, and came back to Cuba with used papers, bows and ribbons that, there, no one understood why she wanted them. They were successful wrappings for the next year and everyone admired and thanked her for them.

It’s not just about the present. Nothing is more satisfying than receiving a gift and tearing the wrapping. Like in the movies.

*Translator’s note: The word “cederista” comes from the initials CDR. In Cuba acronyms are most likely to be pronounced as a word rather than as individual letters, similar to how Americans say “NASA” instead of “en – A – es – A.” So, for example, while Americans say “see – ay – A” for CIA,  Cubans say “seeah.”

13 September 2013

When “The Bad Guys” Carry Calculators / Yoani Sanchez

6a00d8341bfb1653ef019aff596ef3970b-550wiAmong the many phrases repeated over and over in the streets of Cuba, there is one that masterfully summarizes the affect of individual interests. Simply saying “they stomped on my callus,” is enough to let us know that they’ve touched someone’s soft spot, a part of himself that will make him jump, protect himself and go on the offensive. However, this same person will very likely remain silent when “they stomp on the callus” of someone else. Only his own pain will cause a reaction. A primer of human behavior, but one which, in certain circumstances,  fosters the selfishness of certain social sectors.

For months now, Raul Castro has unleashed a strong campaign against illegalities which has turned into a wholesale stomping on the calluses of those who, until now, had managed to keep their “feet” well protected. Thousands of inspectors in the street, tickets for fines being handed out right and left, and a general feeling that at any moment the police might show up. Resellers, the corner vendors, families remodeling their homes, self-employed workers and farmers, are  the focus of this crackdown. No one is safe. Dressed in plain clothes or uniformed, the soldiers of this new battle reinforce the feeling of constant surveillance.

Unlike other previous raids, this one has affected virtually the entire Cuban population. To the point that people are saying “the government has declared war on the people.” A crusade that breaks a tacit social compact, fragile, yet crucial to the survival of the current system. A certain level of permissibility for corruption, for the black market, and for the diversion of State resources has been built up over decades as a mechanism for political control. Faking an ideological loyalty to the regime has been the indispensable prerequisite to embezzlement, stealing, adulterating, without serious reprisals. However, the formula of screaming “Fatherland or Death” to ward off the inspectors and the police is no longer working. The stomp on the callus reaches even the publicly declared faithful followers of the Communist Party. Though it’s worth noting, not all calluses are equal… at certain heights, no one will stomp on your feet.

With this new offensive, Raul Castro’s government faces a growing unpopularity. It’s true that looking at the penalized illegalities, they are ethically and legally unacceptable, but anyone who respected the strict Cuban penal code, literally could not survive. Tolerating a certain level of transgression — or what we call “cimarronaje,” the culture of fugitive slaves — is an inseparable part of the the apparatus of subjugation to totalitarianism. Between the rulers and the ruled an tacit accord is established that implies ceding impunity in both directions. In a country where the president himself has had to recognize that salaries are not the principal source of income, the authorities know that tightening the screws against parallel paths of survival would, over the long term, be political suicide. The unwritten contract where citizens pretend to work and the rulers pretend to pay them is in crisis. The fight against corruption and indisciplines has touched a docile, but numerically very large, political sector.

A few days ago a street vendor of desserts, until recently a faithful follower of official politics, approached a human rights activist. With little preamble he snapped, “I want to make statements…” stunning the dissident, who considered this self-employed individual the Communist Party’s man. But the excessive taxes and the constant fines had caused him to change his ideas. “I can’t stop on any corner to sell my cupcakes because the inspector say I’m a roving vendor and I have to keep moving at all times.” Part of the absurdity that prevails in every State campaign is also evident in these raids against misdeeds.

They also “stomped on the callus” of Catalina when the police demanded “the papers” for the bricks and cement with which she and her family were remodeling their home. The illegal origin of all of it led them to offer to pay the official to forget about it. Because the fight against illegalities doesn’t take into consideration that the controllers, auditors and gendarmes also need to survive. Everyone has a price. Skipping a health inspection at a fast food business costs the owner between 200 and 300 convertibles pesos. A certain Housing Institute inspector is known as “Johnny 1500” for imposing fines of that amount, with the intention that the offender will offer a “bite” of at least half. The anti-corruption crackdown creates new forms of corruption.

For now, the alarm spreads, and the warning mechanisms for possible inspections and reporting become more sophisticated. Everyone passes on the alert when “the bad guys” — which is what we call those armed with calculators, ticket books, fines and the penal code — arrive in a neighborhood or workplace. They come ready to stomp on calluses, many calluses at a time. With each stomp, however, the Castro regime could be losing a pair of feet, many feet, which they rely on.

From El Pais

13 September 2013

Reponsibility is Not Remunerated / Jeovany J. Vega

The story circulated recently on the Intranet: a Cuban doctor, a recently graduated anesthesiologist, was sentenced to nothing less than eight years in prison for the sad death of an obstetric patient. I don’t know the anesthesiologist in questions and I’m not completely versed in the details of the case, but I remain a priori convinced of some truths about this case: she wasn’t absent from her post, she didn’t stop trying the procedure until the last minute, she didn’t try to get out of accepting responsibility, she did not fail through laziness or irresponsibility.

Nor was it about some marginal profiting in the corner from under the table goods, nor was she a functionary collecting the huge benefits from the management circuits, customs, nor hoteliers, nor one of those who emerges from those who hold the upper hand in this country. This young woman gained nothing from this work shift, nothing to alleviate the burden of her home, nothing to benefit her family, no food to put in the mouths of her children, if she has any.

It is a universal rule that the salary received by an individual should be proportional to the effort demanded for their training and, especially, to the amount of legal responsibility assumed when exercising a particular function.

But in this little island that principle is definitely broken: general practitioners, particularly doctors, living as we do amid chaotic and absurd dynamics, working for $25.00 USD a month for authorities who do not blush when they sell a child’s toy for about $80.00 CUC (roughly $80.00 USD). Meanwhile, a simple employee of that same store, just to name one example, takes home five or ten times our monthly salary when he lines his pocket from tips, from fiddling with the prices, and from access to all the rebates and bargains; while this doctor and I earn a little more than a dollar after a day of work, an incredible shift facing influenza, dehydrating diarrhea — including cholera of course, or the risk of meningococcal encephalitis; and this would be our entire pay for assuming the greatest responsibility for the least expected mistake — not necessarily out of neglect or incompetence, but from the logical physical and mental exhaustion, or, and why not, for understandable human error — which can put you behind bars and for what we don’t even remotely perceive that we deserve.

All this sounds like mockery and would be laughable if it were not so serious. The doctor’s previous merits counted for nothing, nor did her desire to finish this most difficult of specializations, nor the five years she was on a medical mission in Venezuela making the best of a bad situation.

Although I respect the pain of the family and do not question their right to channel such a loss to the last resort, as they have suffered pain of unfathomable magnitudes, it would be very healthy, in situations like this, to redirect their focus to those who have rigged the game such that none of us, not this doctor nor the rest of our colleagues, are guaranteed a way to survive in our country with a minimum of tranquility.

by Jeovany Jiménez Vega

10 September 2013

The Donkeys of the Sand Pit / Lilianne Ruiz

Not one lonely statement from the Cuban intelligence services’ spy recently released from US prison after serving out his sentence regarding political prisoners in Cuba. Nothing regarding Kilo 8, Kilo 9, Boniato…[1]

A guy that calls for a campaign to create the illusion that an entire people expects and demands freedom for his 4 colleagues, could well be a man of peace, with empathy with all who are in prison for political reasons. But, it was not like that.

This is the government’s man. He looks like a carnival puppet, but he’s responsible for his actions for he articulates a message, and that message is always on the government’s side, a government that intends to be there always, without really consulting us.

That is why no one should believe that our people have come out to demand the release of 4 spies who tomorrow will ignore their suffering, their hunger, their fear of losing whatever little they have or the nothingness they possess; as does this already released spy, seen in public demonstrations carrying little children. He wants to make believe that this idea of the yellow ribbon was born from civil society, and not the government, as if this human tidal wave that refuses to acknowledge its right to deny itself could also be called a civil society. In slavery there is no power structure.

But, he is there, in that intermediate space. Between the powerless[2] and the State there is the political police, armed to prevent each group from assuming the powers that belong to them.

In school, during the morning assembly of children, a teacher admonished “Tell your parents to put a yellow ribbon in you tomorrow.  They are available for two regular[3] pesos at the neighborhood trinket store.”  I saw people in my building who are waiting for a US visa to leave this misery behind (and they think that they are leaving behind the only misery….but, there are miseries that cannot be left behind)…dressed in yellow.

Lastly, looking at the people dressed in yellow or wearing a yellow bow – people who did not have that air of the functionary trying to get ahead, simple people who do not want to know what they are doing – I remembered what I had been reading the previous night to my six-year-old daughter before bed, Platero y Yo (Platero and I).[4] I had taken in this entire quote of Juan Ramon Jimenez’s magnum opus:

“Look, Platero, at the donkeys of Quemado: slow, bent, with their pointed red load of wet sand in which they carry nailed, as if to their hearts, the green rod of the wild olive tree with which they are beaten…”

[1] These are the names of some of the most notorious Cuban prisons where political prisoners are kept in inhumane conditions.

[2] In English in the original text.

[3] As opposed to CUC or “convertible” peso, the other official currency of Cuba, artificially paired to the US dollar.

[4] Children’s book written by Spanish poet, professor and Nobel Prize laureate Juan Ramón Jiménez in 1917.  It narrates the relationship of a boy and his little donkey named Platero. It has remained extremely popular in Latin America and Spain to these days.

 

Translated by Ernesto Ariel Suarez

13 September 2013

About the Law of Property (IV) / Cuban Law Association, Mérida de la C. Pastor Masson

Lic. Mérida de la C. Pastor Masson

In terms of Civil Law, we have in our society an interesting daily theme which, because it is unknown, we are led to act unwisely on many occasions.

We have all once said “this is mine”, “this is my house”, “this is my car”, and these words cover in reality those assets which are intended to satisfy the material and spiritual needs of the holder of the item, that’s to say, its owner.

Included in personal property matters are your salary, the house which you gain some kind of legal title to, as well as vacant lots and personal and family-owned working materials (Art. 157, Section 5).

These resources (relating to work), are well-defined as being unable to be used to obtain income by way of exploiting the labor of another.

The state does of course also recognise property owned by societies, associations and charities as well as mixed and joint undertakings, as well as that belonging to other legal entities of a special nature, which are governed by the law and treaties as well as the statutes and regulations of the legal entities in question, which supplement the Civil Code.

As I said before, it’s an interesting subject and therefore I will continue on this property theme and in Chapter 3 will deal with the body of law dealing with shared ownership. In this manner we will carry on until we exhaust the commentaries relating to property in the current Civil Code.

Translated by GH

9 September 2013