You must have nearly suicidal courage to accuse Cuban State Security, an offshoot of the Soviet KGB which has thousands of officials and millions of collaborators on and off the island, of a double murder.
The accusation comes from Madrid, from Ángel Carromero, of the youth wing of the People’s Party, who was extradited from Havana and is still serving a four-year sentence, having been accused of the deaths of Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, the leaders of the opposition Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), who were his passengers on July 22nd, 2012, along with the Swedish Christian Democrat Aron Modig (who like Carromero was not injured at all).
Modig was deported to Sweden a few days after the incident, and he remembers only that he was asleep at the time, although he has asserted his confidence in the Spaniard’s version of events. Carromero related his story to The Washington Post and El Mundo, as well as on the radio and television. He also confessed all in person to Payá’s daughter, the human rights activist and new leader of the MCL, Rosa María Payá.
According to Carromero, the collision was not an accident (as he had initially claimed on video, coerced and injected with as yet unknown substances). According to him another car pushed them off the road in the east of Cuba, and uniformed and plain-clothes men took the two foreigners by force to a hospital in Bayamo. Hours later, both Cubans were corpses. The Cuban State has never explained who took them all to the hospital.
Although he has no evidence other than some text messages sent from the hospital, his conscience wouldn’t leave him in peace, and Carromero broke a tacit pact with the secret power of Castroism: its State Security. The easiest thing would have been to incriminate himself of “involuntary manslaughter” with his silence. But not even that would have saved him as long as he was a witness: he would still have been a dead-man-walking.
Now, thanks to his voice and Rosa María Payá’s, the world is coming together to call for an international investigation into the violent deaths of two peaceful human beings with no criminal records. The truth will set us free. Thank you, on behalf of Cuba, Ángel Carromero.
I was riding on the P9-route bus, listening to music playing at a reasonable volume, a song by the Mexican Marco Antonio Solís, in which one verse is repeated several times: “Where are we going to stop?” I liked the catchy chorus and mentioned it to my colleague Julio Ferrer who was traveling with me, when I heard a woman who, in response to the insistent jostling of several school kids trying to get off the bus, told me “It is true, where are we going to stop? I am professor of mathematics, physics, and chemistry” (without mentioning at which school).
What became clear during our brief chat is that we are deficient in everything related to formal education, social discipline, human values, and standards of conduct; she also mentioned rights and obligations at all levels. Obviously I agreed with her comments. She, my colleague, and I remember a topic in our fundamental standards called Civic Education, which our parents learned and taught us, and which we are still fortunate to have, as we are reminded repeatedly day after day.
The Congress of the Federation of University Students (FEU) recently met. Its Conclusions, Recommendations and Work Strategies addressed the issue of reintroducing Civic Education into our educational system. In my opinion this should be done at the earliest grades and ages possible. As a subject (theory) it is quite feasible, and the need is urgent, because it also generates respect for all our true, necessary, and legitimate rights and obligations.
Cuban passport with the “sticker” that allows its holder to board a plane from Madrid to Havana
Of all the check-in lines at the Barajas Airport there is one that is longer and slower. This is the Air Europe flight that leaves from Madrid for Havana. After Iberia cancelled its service to the Island, Cubans living in Spain have been left with only one direct option for their travel home. Here they are, carts loaded with suitcases, filled with presents they have accumulated over months for their families waiting on their native soil.
Two airline employees intercept the line at one point. They have a trained eye to detect tourists going on vacation. If you weren’t born in Cuba you can continue to the ticket counter to hand over your luggage.
But if you have the blue passport with the lone palm shield, then the treatment is different. For natives of the largest of the Antilles, airports are never easy expeditious sites through which they pass and continue on their way. Rather, each border is a heartache; each migratory process is twice as complicated as for other nationalities. The inspection of documents is slow, meticulous.
The Air Europe workers must guarantee that no Cuban boards the plane without permission to enter his own country. If they make a mistake, the airline itself will have to bear the cost of expatriating the passengers. So they take their time to make sure that the customer completes all the requirements before being letting him board the plane.
Most likely they have passed a special training, because they immediately look for the pages of the passport called “enabled”: authorization to enter for exiled Cubans. If everything is in order, they place a small sticker on the cover of the document. Without this scrap of paper you will never pass through the departure gate.
With the new Immigration Reform, which came into effect on January 14, the pre-flight inspection has become more complex. Now airlines flying to Cuba have to check if the passenger is within the range of a 24-month stay abroad allowed by the current law. For those who emigrated in previous years, everything is even more difficult.
The person could belong to the large group of those who are prohibited from entering the Island. Almost always for ideological reasons. Having made critical statements about the government, being a member of an opposition party, engaging in independent journalism, making a complaint to some international organization, deserting from an official mission, or being a target of the whims of power, are some of the causes that block the entry of thousands of our compatriots.
A few days ago, the case of Blanca Reyes, a member of the Ladies in White who lives in Spain, jumped into the headlines when she was denied the possibility of visiting her own country. With a 93-year-old father and a family she hasn’t seen in more than five years, Blanca requested an entry permit for the country where she was born. At the Cuban Consulate in Madrid the reply was terse: “denied.” So her passport was left without that other sticker of shame known as “enabled.” On the corresponding page there is no stamp on the watermarked paper that would allow her to return to Guayos, her little village in the central province of Santci Spíritus.
Without an “enabled” document, Blanca will not pass the scrutiny of those Air Europe employees, nor of any other airline flying to Cuba. For her, the longer and slower line at the Barajas Airport is an unattainable dream. As long as this absurd migratory restriction remains in force, she will have to stay — in the distance — accumulating presents and hugs to take to her family.
From the same instant in which General Raul Castro was enthroned as President, he hasn’t stopped warning that “The battle against crime and corruption has no room for doubt.” On many occasions he has been seen at the podium exhorting publicly the members of his cabinet to maintain an “implacable” conduct against the mentioned scourge.
It’s difficult to convince that popular body that for lack of confidence, without realizing it, passed from alarming sloth to heartless hibernation.
In order to execute his crusade and give veracity to his words, in the year 2009 he created the Controller General of the Republic of Cuba, an organ that until today has carried out audits on all the State institutions and brought before tribunals those accused of economic crimes and corruption, a good number of functionaries, employees and directors of state enterprises, an ex-minister and an ex-vice minister of the food industry, foreign businessmen, an ex-son-in-law of the above-mentioned General President and family members who, confused, wealthy or followers of a lucrative ideology, one day swore loyalty to the revolutionary process.
For some citizens, the General represents a Caribbean Grim Reaper with a collapsible neck, who, with an olive-green cowl and a scythe in his hand will put an end to the kleptocracy. “The struggle against corruption” is an epic banner that the First Secretary of the Communist Party decided to raise, and to hoist it more, he named as gonfalonieri his son the Colonel, a middle-aged man who is a specialist in judging everything and an expert in looking after personal objectives.
Certainly, the law is the only form of giving an effective and round answer to the problem of corruption; but sadly, the publicized content is one more myth, which isn’t precisely destined to eradicate the matter from the Cuban horizon, but rather will concentrate the country’s resources and total power of the State in the hands of the most corrupt, most restricted, most faithful, and even most compromised group belonging to the Castro Espin clan.
Why didn’t the General say anything when the Cuban government was discovered attempting to transport military materiel through the Panama Canal hidden under tons of sugar in a North Korean ship?
If this isn’t muddy, then there’s the possibility that before the unpolluted island ruler, neither was it corruption that a group of “cooperating Cubans” engaged in bringing in contraband diamonds from Ghana and Namibia to Havana, stones that later were sent by air to a beautiful port city in northeast Belgium, Amberes, casually known as the world center of diamond trafficking and commerce. How could that happen without the approval of the State that sees everything, like Big Brother?
I also recall very well that some years ago, in 1989, a group of high military officers were punished for similar acts. And look here, curiously, these trafficking specialists, whom the Cuban government feigns not to know, are all ex-military man and civil workers of the army that works for ANTEX S.A., an anonymous society of Cuban capital located on the African continent, with offices in Angola, whose initials mean strangely (and excuse me for the use and intentional abuse of these adverbs) the name of General ANTonio Enrique (Lusón) EXportations. A Raulista convert who not only is corrupt but also basks in it.
In giving new names to things that already exist, we Cubans in the last century were profligate. We began by getting rid of the original names of various businesses and commercial establishments, and replacing them with a letter and number code that no one understood. For example, a bodega which had always been called La Complaciente was renamed Establishment E-14. This brilliant initiative used up all the letters of the alphabet, combining them with numbers. These coded labels were part of larger entities, labeled “consolidated,” that encompassed everything. There was Consolidated Meat (notable for its absence), Consolidated Leather (ditto), Consolidated Bread, Consolidated Beverage and so on. Over time the changes continued, leading to unions, complexes, groups, chains and more.
The problem has always been an unwillingness to call things by their well-known and widely recognized names. Thus, the economic crisis became the “Special Period,” failures became “corrections,” reforms became “updates,” an independent worker became “self-employed,” corruption became “resource diversion,” a prostitute became a “hustler,” a restaurant became a “paladar,” an opposition figure became a “mercenary,” a private farming business became an “agricultural co-operative,” a small private business became a “non-agricultural co-operative” or “a new type of co-operative,” a client became a “user,” and so on to infinity.
How easy it would be to use the Spanish language correctly! This way, we would all understand each other better and foreign visitors would not have to work so hard trying to understand all this strange terminology. By refusing to call bread “bread” and wine “wine,” you end up with linguistic obfuscation.
Like water — try as one might to impede its flow, one way or another it always finds its own level — sooner or later this absurd terminology will be a thing of the past and forgotten, obviating the need for a Dictionary of the New Cuban Language. Then a crisis will be a crisis, a failure will be a failure, a reform a reform, a worker a worker, a business a business, and so on. Let’s go back to speaking and understanding each other in Spanish!
Not the disdain of the English-speaking animal rights activists nor the anti-bullfight stance of dozens of people and communication media stop the explosion of jubilation, fear and tension of the million people who run before the bulls in the streets of Pamplona, from Saturday, July 6th to Sunday the 14th.
Once again the city of Pamplona, ancient capital of Kingdom of Navarra, fills with pilgrims from half the world who dress in red and white, sing the original hymns of protection to San Fermin, with his image they make a hour-and-a-half long procession, after which they head toward the streets of the running of the bulls, where men and beasts enclosed in “the fences,” nurses and police “transit” to the Plaza de Toros.
The running of the bulls start at 8:00 in the morning, and passes from the corrals of Santo Domingo to the Plaza de Toros de Pamplona, a distance of 850 meters that demands training and puts courage, nerves, and abilities to the test to avoid goring or fatal falls in the middle of so much euphoria and collective passion. It seems that a few minutes of enclosure link men and beasts. They meet again in the plaza hours later, the bulls in front of the bull fighter, the humans from the stands.
Los Sanfermines, the singular and sovereign festival of revelry; is the ultimate party, a test between life and death; maybe the best expression of the tragicomic sense of the Spanish, friend of extreme and ritualistic challenges put in question by modernity. Los Sanfermines is also a hedonistic scene, a friendly and familiar orgy that attracts nearly one million tourists who dust off the old routine, strange and fascinating Pamplona, whose historical hoof-print multiplies its cultural and commercial options, while its inhabitants trip over alcoholic foreigners who distort the bullfighting meaning of the event.
These Sanfermines attracts figures such as Joselito Adame, Alejandro Talavante, Morante, el Juli, Perera, Fandino, and others famous in the ring contracted by the Bullfight Commission of the House of Mercy. The bulls are put up by the livestock businesses Cebada Gago, Dolores Aguirre and Fuente Imbro. The Navarrian government receives more than one million euros in taxes.
Bull fighting is not a sport but a spectacle with deep roots in Spain and counties in the Americas such as Mexico, Colombia and Peru. Behind the spectacle are the ranchers, the professionals of challenge, the fans, the bull fighting plazas and the hundreds of local governments that promote the running in the streets during the summer, from the great Madrid to the small Vall de Uixo, in Hispanic Levante.
Perhaps the Sanfermines, this festival of passion and challenge, is the greatest traditional spectacle in Spain; followed by the celebrated and multitudinous Fallas de Valencia, the Festival of Pilar in Zaragoza, Holy Week and the Fair in April in Sevilla — which exalt the Andalusian culture — the Carnivals of Tenerife and Cadiz, the first sumptuous, the second satirical and mocking; the monumental Hoguera de San Juan in Alicante, the Celebration of Moors and Christians, especially that of Alcoy; the Viking Festival in Catoira (Galicia), San Isidro in Madrid and the less festive and atypical Day of San Jordi in Cataluna, where the running of the bulls was prohibited.
In the Dominican Republic and scattered throughout the world, many friends await, who tried to protect me when I still hadn’t detailed the gross “stories” which later led to the accusations against me. They inferred what would happen to me. They predicted a future I didn’t want to see or that I didn’t care to suffer.
In 2008, when I last traveled abroad months before opening my blog The Children Nobody Wanted, Rafael Lantigua, the Secretary of Culture, a position which in Cuba would have been the Minister, tried to tell me not to return, and introduced me to his personal attorney to arrange the paperwork for me so that I could stay his country.
On the other hand, the poet and narrator Camilo Venegas took me into his home like another son his mother never had. He begged me not to return, envisioning what would happen to me later. Finally I left, with a promise I was not able to keep: I would be back soon.
Pequeño, after receiving me in his home, entertaining me along with his wife and children, addresses himself, through another Cuba, to getting me a job in a subsidiary of an important publisher in that country, with the intention that I would not return to Cuba.
My sister Mary, from Miami, promised to send money to support me, until I had gotten settled.
Freddy Ginebra offered that his Casa de Teatro would hire my partner, in her work as an actress, once again fulfilling his mission as a protector of Cubans.
Lilo Vilaplana called on the phone to offer me passage via Colombia.
Amir Valle, through chat, opened his arms to receive me in Germany.
I left that half-island, leaving behind, probably, my immediate tranquility; but I did not conceive, and I still can’t conceive, abandoning my country and leaving it in the grip of the Castro brothers’ dictatorship.
The only pain prison causes me if the suffering of these people from knowing I am a prisoner; because if the situation were reversed I would be making the same cries, demanding justice, that I hear today; because disgracefully, it is a characteristic of totalitarianism to impose force against those who disagree with their policies.
In any event, as incredible as it may seem, I am comply as a good Cuban, with what I believe to be reason and rights.
My thanks to all of you from this great Dominican land, and for those scattered around the world, who tried to protect me, but within me I had the dream of José Martí lighting my path.
Hugs, Ángel
Prison 1580. July 2013
Translator’s note: This is another of the posts Ángel wrote from Prison 1580 before he was transferred to his current prison where he is being held incommunicado.
Article 129.1 – Property confers on the title holder the possession, use, enjoyment of and disposal of the assets, in accordance with its intended socio-economic use.
Rolando González Camacho received from his grandfather Eufemio González Martínez a property situated at Apartment 4 of building 19213a, fronting onto Avenue 81 between 102 and 194, Alturas de la Lisa Neighborhood, Havana.
The said property was awarded, according to Deed number 1120 by way of Gift, issued in the City of Havana the 25th August 2009 before Licenciado Uber Rae Arias Rodríguez who was Notary at 4604, 37th Street in the Playa Municipality.
Rolando, in spite of his 30 years of age, is legally represented by his mother and stepfather, as he suffers from hepatitis C, partial epilepsy symptomatic of the frontal lobe, neuroblastic migration disorder and bronchial asthma; according to a medical certificate issued 23rd June 2013 by Dr. Víctor Raúl Frades García of the neurological consultancy at the Havana Salvador Allende Hospital.
His infirmities do not limit his conversational ability, given that when I turn up at his house, he speaks happily and expresses his regret that his grandfather left him a property in which he couldn’t even cook since the next door neighbour María del Pilar Olivera Delgado, taking advantage of a period when the property was empty, broke down a dividing wall and taking over a part of his property.
He says he has spoken to María del Pilar Olivera Delgado asking that she remove herself, because he doesn’t want problems with his parents and is afraid of the police.
In August 2009, Rolando issued a SPECIAL POWER, before a notary in the name of his stepfather Jorge Luis García Casañas, his legal representative. García Casañas has made claims in relation to all stages of the proceedings, in order to get them out of his property, not just the person who in August 2011 broke the wall and illegally entered Rolando’s home, but also another two people who joined María del Pilar Olivera Delgado in this unbelievable violation.
Furthermore, the failure of the relevant bodies in this case has been contradictory and completely lacking in clarity.
The legal absurdity of giving support to illegalities committed in his home, has caused Rolando González Camacho damage which may be irreparable, given the effects he is experiencing in his health.
The obvious question therefore is: who takes responsibility for the situation of this fellow countryman who is suffering torture in his own home?
—You messed up the form—said the officer as he offered them a new sheet—. You wrote “climatic” and this is a survey of just checking the boxes, it does not admit calligraphy.
—But we are asking for asylum due to climatic reasons —replied the man.
—The choices are “economic” or “political.” Nobody asks for asylum due to climatic motives.
—We do —insisted the man—. We hate the heat of the summer.
—We do not grant asylum for hating the heat of the summer.
—Why?
—It’s not a serious reason.
—And what’s a serious reason?
—The political and economic causes listed in the form.
The man scratched his head. He looked at his wife.
—But it’s a very closed-ended question, if at least there were a few lines where we could explain…
—I already told you that it’s a survey of just checking the boxes—replied the upset officer—. If you are going to mess it up again, you’d better give it back to me. We’re running low on forms.
The man and the woman looked at each other sadly.
—Listen —intervened the officer—, just check any of the two boxes and that’s it, don’t be a fool.
—You think so?
—Of course I think so —the officer put his mouth near the opening in the crystal window. He did a mysterious sign, as if asking them to get closer too, from their side, to the crystal in the cabin—. What is the real reason you’re asking for asylum?
—Because we hate the heat of the summer —insisted the man; he then took a pencil, looked at his wife—. You tell me, dear: What reasons are closer to our hatred of the heat, political or economic?
—Check political —she suggested—. It must be the government’s fault.
—It could also be due to the economy.
—Yes, it could —she agreed.
—No —the man was fed up—. The right thing to say is “climatic.”
And he wrote again: “climatic”
—Here you go.
—But…, are you stupid?! —the officer crumpled the form.
The man tried to raise his fist, but the woman stopped him in time.
—Leave it —she said—. Stuck in this cabin and with that uniform, he is probably more upset by the heat than we are.
The Law of Criminal Procedure is clear when it indicates in the penultimate paragraph of Art. 251 that: The Police, the Instructor, the Prosecutor or the Tribunal, as the case may be, will decide in relation to the application for modification of the provisional measure* in regard to a time period not to exceed five working days counting from the moment in which the application is made.
It is not clear why the preceding period is breached so often, sometimes doubled or trebled, without complying with the requirement by the legislature to respond to the application for variation of the provision status* of the accused in the brief space of a week. The most serious instance case of such violation occurs when the variation in question is in relation to an accused who is has been remanded in custody, given the very nature of this provisional measure.
An even more unfortunate circumstance is when, in the face of an application for change in a measure, time passes without receiving the due response, ending up with the prosecutor declaring the matter finalised whenever it suits him, in complete disregard of the law.
Unhappily, we see a lot of behavior by the authorities who seem to be acting in a sort of discretionary manner and not in accord with the requirements of the law. This sad reality is even more sensitive when such conduct is in relation to the system of justice, infringing the most basic rights of those subject to legal proceedings.
They are just one example of what should not happen in our battered social system.
*Translator’s note: The provisional status (see next paragraph) under discussion here refers to requests for changes in the custody status of the accused, that is, for example, requests to be released pending trial.
In the town of Playita in Jamaica Beach area in the municipality of Antilla* in the province of Holguin, the peasant Israel Cardoso Gonzalez had two cows of which one has been confiscated by the delegate of the municipality, and in addition they have fined Cardoso 500 pesos.
Israel laments that his cow gave milk for the three minor children of the family. “They said the cow was a danger because it was near the street. That’s not true I had it tied up and there are other cows are running loose here.”
The Defender of the People of Cuba, Manuel Martínez León, who attended the denunciation of the humble peasant, explained that this is a remote area that is three miles from the road, where there are reeds that the government leaves uncared for, and a dirt road where cars don’t travel frequently.
The Defender prepares action for the cow to be returned to the family. Manuel said, “We can not allow this to happen here, we are going to do whatever we have to end this arbitrariness because they take advantage here of any nonexistent breach to steal from people what is theirs.
Report #10 of the Defender of the People of Cuba (CID) of Velasco, Holguin.
*Antilla is the smallest municipality in the province of Holguin, 40 square miles in size. It’s between the Bay of Nipe and the Bay of Banes, on the El Ramon peninsula.
Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart in front of a pile of shoes in Auschwitz. Photo: Lilianne Ruiz
Havana, Cuba, August of 2013, www.cubanet.org — “As long as the Office of Religious Affairs of the Communist Party’s Central Committee exists to monitor pastoral work, one cannot speak of religious liberty in Cuba.” So said Pastor Mario Felix Lleonart from the Baptist Church of Taguayabon to Cubanet in the province of Villa Clara.
The absence of a religious law offers an opportunity for the Office of Religious Affairs to control the churches, driving them toward the political goals of the only party. If there were a law regarding religion, churches would be able to count on a legal foundation with duties and rights. All those religious who do not threaten the society in which they live could be legalized, but this message of non-violent resistance could bury the ideological pillars of the dictatorship.
Monitoring by the Office of Religious Affairs translates into rigorous control over those who have been chosen, or appointed, as leaders of legally recognized religious institutions, and into maintaining strict contact with them. “Faced with any matter that they think requires them to put pressure on a religious denomination, they quickly call its leader. They coerce him, they blackmail him, they manipulate him, depending on his reaction,” commented Pastor Lleonart.
“Many enter into open plotting with this office, and there’s suddenly a divorce between these religious guides and the people of this denomination. They take advantage and make business deals out of the perks that the government can give them, while the people suffer from shortages and lack of liberty,” he added.
The good pastor
Lleonart is a human rights activist and from his Twitter account he was the first to break the news of the political beating in Santa Clara, which caused the death of the political opponent Juan Wilfredo Soto in 2011.
Everything indicates that the approximately $27,000 bank account of the Baptist Seminary of Santa Clara, which is frozen by the State, is being used, among other reasons, as a means of coercion to keep Pastor LLeonart and his wife on the school’s faculty and Reverand Homero Carbonell as its president. These two figures, who are active members of Cuba’s persecuted and authentic civil society, are not to the liking of the Office of Religious Affairs. For this reason, they are pressuring them to abandon their positions of influence.
This bank account is the result of the generosity of other Baptist churches in the United States, but they are not in communication with the Cuban government. “Maybe if the churches making the donation had come to say ’Liberate the Five’*or gave the regime what it wanted, then they would have maintained good relations, but that is not the case.”
The Baptist Convention of Western Cuba, founded in 1905, does not submit to the interests of the government. The church in Santa Clara, which is a member of the Convention, opened its account with the International Financial Bank (BFR), which assumed they had been able to use the money. That is until one day when the government declared that, because of “political sanctions,” it would be frozen. The following was the BFI’s response when asked why the funds were not available: “These are directives from the Party in Havana, from the Office of Religious Affairs.”
When the Latin American Council of Churches (CLAI) held its seventh General Assembly a few months ago in Havana, the government made a show of unfreezing the seminary’s bank account. But it was a farce, as noted by the pastor:
“We cannot withdraw so much as a penny. They let it be known through the BFI that the account would be unfrozen, but only for construction purposes. Who are they to tell the church how to use its money? Or that to withdraw a penny we have to verify that it was used to buy a brick and not cement? Even then we have not been able to withdraw one cent because we are waiting for a signature that never comes.”
State Security, in the person of one of its agents, told Pastor Lleonart on one occasion that he “would not be treated like a pastor but like a counter-revolutionary.”
Another agent told the pastor while in detention that he had heard very good things about him from the community he had gathered together through his pastoral work in Taguayabón, but that there was no reason for him to be in Santa Clara, spending time with “those blacks,” a reference to the province’s opposition leaders, who for the most part are black, such as Guillermo Fariñas, Jorge Luis García Perez (aka Antúnez) and Damaris Moya Portieles.
“The agent from State Security took the liberty of briefing me on what I should do in my pastoral work, presenting it as though it were completely divorced from my work in the field. His briefing is the same as that of the Office of Religious Affairs which — though perhaps not using the same words he did but with the same goal of limiting one’s rights — asks pastors in Cuba to be calm, to focus on singing, on prayer, on giving sermons only within our four walls, to do our part to keep the people calm and to distance ourselves from the reality outside,” says Pastor Lleonart.
In 2009 the prestigious magazine Christianity Today chose for the cover of its July issue a photograph of Lleonart with a quote from him: “Here I am, easing the suffering of my people.”
On July 7, 2013 a religious service was interrupted by a man suffering from mental disabilities. As he was being led out of the church, he shouted death threats against the pastor. The man’s family regularly attends the church and described how he was locked up for twelve days, but was returned home without having received medical treatment and in worse shape that when he left, still threatening the pastor and his family.
“It is not my own life that concerns me, nor that of my family. I hope and trust in God that absolutely nothing will happen. But for me the evidence that State Security is indeed involved is when I realized that — even though everyone knows about the incident and it has even been discussed on Twitter — the authorities have done absolutely nothing. They have let it be known that this matter does not interest them.”
The esteemed Haroldo Dilla, after having had a look through ECURED (a reference site maintained by the Cuban government), has written an entertaining article where he notes some of the shortcomings of that which hopes to establish itself as the encyclopedic model for all Cubans. Although I am not a frequent user of the page, I agree with Dilla regarding its slowness and other defects signaled by him and Rafael Rojas.
What is alarming is that, unlike Wikipedia, ECURED can be found on every computer in educational centers, it is the obligatory reference of students for class assignments and its access is advertised through mobile phones and digital television. Moreover, to sustain ECURED, the employees of the Youth Club of Information Technology, the students of the UIS, and others who fit the profile, must contribute to its growth with ten monthly articles copied from printed sources. That there is the definition of the “collaborative”: without rigor, without specialization, quantity for quality.
In light of its imminent apparition, it could not manage to unravel the need for a clearly enormous effort, even with the duplication of content that had been previously published in other places; and, in fact, ECURED can only be understood as the Ministry of the Truth, like a version of a world beyond the “destruction of history” in the face of the excessive liberty of Wikipedia.
It might have been more rational to create a Cuban team of collaborators to contribute content to the global encyclopedia, to put those other viewpoints to counterbalance (or not), and to have avoided this ill-thought network, no worse executed and without future. This is particularly demonstrated in the diffusion and appetite for the portable versions of Wikipedia, the one that can be accessed from multiple channels, through the same tech specialists that offer their private services, not without first reaching the goal of feeding ECURED.
Translated by Alex Higson.
