Up To 12 Hours to Attend Medical Emergencies / Lilianne Ruiz

   HAVANA, Cuba, July 2013, www.cubanet.org.- When a Cuban family is afflicted by disease there are many who depend on the favor of some neighbor with a car to take them to the hospital. Moreover, the paramedics and nurses of the Comprehensive Emergency Medical System (SIUM) depend on the “thanks” for their patients to “resolve” a chance to eat a better lunch or a to get a few pesos above their salary.

Juan López (he has asked me use a pseudonym), in order to take his father to the hospital, called SIUM and waited three and a half hours for the ambulance to come. The Center Coordinator told him onthe phone: “Your case is the first on the list be we can’t resolve it.”

“After that long wait I was at my limit. I went to look for a neighbor with car, some way to get him there,” said Lopez. “Time passed and the disease was evolving.”

Once a medical emergency is reported the time stipulated to a rescue is 10 minutes. A young SIUM worker asked not to be named to provide testimony. We will call him Nurse X.

He has a license in nursing and counts on their being a key system, in communication with the Provincial Coordinating Center at 44th and 17th, in Playa. Key 1 means there’s an emergency call. Key 2 indicates they’re on their way and should be there in 10 minutes. From 2 to 3 is working with the patient. And 4 is on the way to the hospital. Key 5 means that the case has been admitted and they’re ready to take on another.

“In reality, we spend up to 12 hours to pick up a patient, but there are seven bases all over Havana and on occasions there are seven or eight cars (ambulances), no more. Other times there are 11 or 12 for the whole province. For example, the based in Plaza also covers the demand for Cerro, Centro Habana and Habana Vieja. There are days, like today, when we are working with just one ambulance.”

The delay experienced by the population is the result of a long list that prioritizes the most severe cases. But from the position of Nurse X the work is continuous.

“Often, we leave at eight in the morning and it’s three in the afternoon and we haven’t eaten lunch. People offer us a soda, some snack, even money. Others have nothing to offer. Some are upset by the delay and protests. Sometimes we’re notified of a case of hip fracture, but after 10 minutes we get a case of loss of consciousnesses and the fracture has to wait. If then a heart attack comes up, the fracture falls further behind.”
Few Cubans have car; you can’t even say that one member of each family has one. The salary of a worker is so tiny that it’s not even enough to take a taxi to the hospital even when it’s a medical emergency.

There are three categories of ambulances, intensive, intermediate and basic. But Nurse X tells us that “it is possible that an basic care ambulance arrives for a critically ill patient and all you can do is verify it and call back to the Coordinating Center. Then they send a second ambulance has that has electrical equipment and a defibrillator, but that isn’t equipped with artificial ventilator and the patient needs to be intubated.”

The look of incredulity on my face leads to, “It happens.”

Nurse X works in an intensive care ambulance, supposedly designed to assist the most severe cases of the city. But because of the deficit of cars, he has even had to take care of transferring patients between hospitals. “I have come to work with 14 or 15 cases in a day, not only life support, but whatever shows up.”

Many buildings of Havana, especially in the downtown area, are several stories, with very narrow stairs. After an exhausting effort, no time to rest, nor is there a coffee before the next call. The SIUM staff work 24 hours. They complain about working conditions and the lunch menu: “Many times you can find yourself with a tray of flour with boiled or scrambled egg, soup with rice. ’International Nurse’s Day’ seems like a lot of hogwash.”

Someone with a degree in nursing, with SIUM, working 24 hours on and 48 off, earns between 740 and 750 Cuban pesos a month, the equivalent of about $30. “There are like 12 or 13 shifts a month. You have to put your feeton the ground, you have to eat and I have a daughter. That’s not nearly enough.”

Like many of his colleagues, Nurse X aspires to leave on a medical mission (outside the country) to improve his economic situation, but to do that he should first leave the ambulances and work as a nurse in some hospital.

“The SIUM is my life, but there comes a Training Course and they won’t release you for lack of personnel. So you stay and unfortunately if Public Health personnel don’t go on a foreign mission they’re nobody.”

The system also serves a political purpose

At the SIUM National Base, based in Arbol Seco Street, Central Havana, things are different. From the outside you see a parking lot with several modern ambulances. The first impulse of the reporter is to ask the medical staff chatting at the door  how many cars the National Service has and what kind of cases they serve. A doctor’s response is blunt: “You have to go with a paper to the institution to which you belong, at the direction of the center, to get answers to those questions.”

We do know that people complain of the delay and the quality of service. ’’The population is poorly educated. This is not a taxi service,” he replies.

I insist, invoking the public interest in the matter. The doctor’s answer is a lie flung in my face with cynicism: “There is no conflict between the interests of citizens and the interests of the State.”

The national SIUM is responsible for performing institutional transfers between provinces, but mainly for covering international events or other events, as on May Day at the Anti-Imperialist Bandstand. They are sent to the airport, to the Palace of Conventions. To the Parliament and any activity that has to do directly with the government. It was employees of the Cuban Red Cross who, during the previous visit to Cuba of Pope Benedict XVI, took the stretchers on hand for the public that might “suddenly fall ill,” and as observed worldwide, used a stretcher to assault a peaceful opponent.

Provincial SIUM workers see the nationals as “people working with very few tools and delivering very good service.” But also “ideologically filtered.” A paramedic from the provincial service who has also requested anonymity explained that “even the driver of the national delegation has passed courses in political training. They are internal officials working for State Security.”

The national SIUM ambulances themselves are equipped with everything you need to face any emergency. He himself asked to be part of that service because ” these people eat well” and don’t have the problems of the provincial SIUM. “When people see these ambulances they believe they’re looking at SIUM, but they’re not. In those cars all equipment works.”

Lilianne Ruiz

From Cubanet

26 July 2013

Monument to My Father / Juan Juan Almeida

“Here, no one surrenders”

With tremendous size and a weight of 15 tons, in Antonio Maceo Plaza in Santiago de Cuba, on the size wall of the Heredia Theater, this Tuesday the lights were turned on to inaugurate a steel frame that recreates the image of my father, Commander Juan Almeida Bosque. I think so much vanity generates ridicule, not respect.

It seemed shameful, like common thieves reuniting in the complicity of the night, for the event to be presided over by Commander Ramiro Valdés (member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba and the Vice President of the Council of States and Ministers), Lázaro Expósito (member of the Central Committee and First Secretary of the PCC in the province), local leaders and a small number of obedient family members who were selected not for love of the deceased but for their closeness to the office of General Raúl Castro.

Long before this inauguration, friends and the not-so-friendly, some to inform and others to annoy, sent videos me and photos via e-mail or social networks, of how it was being constructed and what this work of art would be.

I would like to thank each and every one of the people who worked on it, masons, builders, and those who kept me informed throughout the duration of the assembly. The painter, sculptor and designer Enrique Avila Gonzalez, author of this giant poster. I also thank the members of the musical groups invited, especially the magnificent interpretation of my father’s music by the young concert band from Santiago’s Esteban Salas Conservatory. Also the management of the theater for the piece of wall.

I know very well every stone of the Heredia theater, an important cultural center I watched be built and open its doors. On one occasion, cast in a team performing shows and with a little help, I managed, on the boards of Heredia, to realize an old dream, to be part of a tribute to my father. Music was his bliss, and what made him happy.

My father loved with devotion the great Oriente, Santiago de Cuba was his passion, and by association the Heredia theater was part of his avocation. Notwithstanding that I have always had a certain apprehension about the act, such as imposing an image on a people, without knowing in advance whether they agree or not. What I liked as a child is one thing, and it’s a very different thing not to respect the opinions of local residents. I can safely bet that nobody was consulted.

Some time ago I realized that everything in the world is relative, which for me is honor, for others it may be offensive. With some friends I share the indescribable rarity of having as a father a human who, rightly or wrongly, the government transformed into myth. It is difficult to accept, especially when the object to idealize, or hate, is simply someone you love.

For me, personally, this show provokes indignation, more from knowing that Raúl Castro collaborated in the death of my father with malice aforethought, ruthless deception which to my relief I discovered before he died. So if now the señor General, on going to sleep, feels one more ghost and wants to release one more piece of his questionable past, I tell him that my family, more than a sculptural relief, deserves to hear him ask forgiveness.  Me, no, I want to see him before a judge, to see him condemned.

30 July 2013

CUBAN NEWRRATIVE: e-MERGING LITERATURE FROM GENERATION ZERO / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

From Sampsonia Way Magazine: There are many writers currently creating canon-defying literature inside Cuba. But in the United States, just knowing about most of them is a challenge and reading their work in English is almost impossible. With this in mind, we asked our Fearless, Ink. columnist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo to compile a collection of short stories from writers who, according to his experience growing up and living inside Cuba, are creating new trends for the future of Cuban Literature. However, this anthology doesn’t aim to be absolute or complete; it is here merely to open a door to the Island’s literary movement.

For this anthology Pardo Lazo decided to focus on writers of Generación Año Cero (Generation Year Zero), a movement of writers who began publishing in 2000. He picked 16 short stories from 16 writers and suggested that we illustrate them with work from the Cuban visual artists El Sexto and Luis Trápaga.

Today Sampsonia Way presents the prologue, by Pardo Lazo, as the first installment of a series that, in the weeks to come, will include the 16 stories, accompanied by a profile of their author, some of his or her statements, and vibrant illustrations from El Sexto or Luis Trápaga.

New Cuban flag by El Sexto (Danilo Maldonado)
New Cuban flag by El Sexto (Danilo Maldonado)

Prologue by Orlando Luis Pardo

Translated from the Spanish by Mary Jo Porter

New narrative, or newrrative, is quite a challenging term. Especially if it comes out of Cuba, a rather claustrophobic island even today, in these post-revolutionary times, when general Raúl Castro is trying to reform most of the social life in order to keep it under his control (including culture, of course, including literature).

As such, Cuban newrrative emerges not as a passive reaction but as a creative resistance. It emerges from zero, unexpected, from the very margins of literary tradition and the mainstream, coincidentally starting during the so-called zero years in Cuba: The 2000′s decadent decade.

The writers of this newrrative do not belong to a single generation, but at some point in their meteoric careers they have called themselves Generation Year Zero. A rather urban phenomenon, interested in prose much more than in poetry, theater, or essay, they have occupied private and public spaces with their performance readings, which include other artistic expressions, such as music and video-clips.

Expelled or self-excluded from several Cuban institutions throughout their bizarre lives, in their texts many of them seem to mutate easily from irreverence to indolence to incredulity to iconoclasty, and are willing to deconstruct all previous discourses of what “cubanness” is supposed to be, whether erotic or political, ultimately betting it all on a kind of cubanless cubanness.

Thus, this newrrative comprises a wide range of topics that moves from the sordid, more than dirty realism of Lizabel Mónica and Jhortensia Espineta, to the science fiction of Erick Mota, and the intertextuality of Osdany Morales. Some of these writers even manage to express themselves directly in English (like the music lover Raúl Flores) in a kind of xenophilia that aspires to escape from scholarly Hispanic fundamentalism. Others, such as performance artist Polina Martínez Shviétsova or the translator Abel Fernández-Larrea, try to make music with their prose narratives using a post-Soviet language as if it came from another planet (or from a paleo-Revolution not totally passé, as our rulers are octogenarians who survived the rise and fall of real socialism). There are even writers who appropriate a French learned from watching European film festivals, like the blogger Lia Villares.

Some, like Carlos Esquivel and Gleyvis Coro Montanet, give space in their works to a subtle, socially-rooted humor. More than a few are exploring the digital format of the Cuban underground, developing clubs for controversy such as Espacio Polaroid (in Havana) and literary and opinion magazines (which are illegal in Cuba) in the style of: Cacharro(s) by Jorge Alberto Aguiar Díaz, Lizabel Mónica and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo; 33 y 1 tercio by Raúl Flores, Michel Encinosa and Jorge Enrique Lage; The Revolution Evening Post by Ahmel Echevarría, Jorge Enrique Lage and Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo; La Caja de China by Lien Carrazana; DesLiz by Lizabel Mónica; and Voces by Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo with the renowned Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez and her husband, independent journalist Reinaldo Escobar.

This rainbow of e-mergent voices has won almost every national award in Cuba, but it is virtually unheard of outside the island. Some new names have been added to Generation Year Zero (Jamila Medina, Anisley Negrín, Arnaldo Muñoz Viquillón, Legna Rodríguez, and Evelyn Pérez, for example), but they do not appear in this initial anthology, of which Sampsonia Way Magazine is now the exclusive publisher. However, the anthology does include the contributions of two controversial graphic artists from Havana: The graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado (otherwise known as “El Sexto”) and the painter Luis Trápaga.

by Luis Trápaga

We believe that anthologizing, as with translation, is a form of betrayal. To translate an anthology is, therefore, a double betrayal. But, in literature, only the radical positions are the creative ones. All authentic art takes off from disaster and, as we know, language exists because communication is impossible.

We should, then, think of literature literally as heresy; it is never derived from the aesthetics of cultural ecumenism. We should anthologize from anguish, decide from delirium, instigate from the impossible. In literature, pacifism is the worst sin: Every poetic panorama invites violation with a longitudinal cut, which is more effective if we think in terms of opening veins and arteries with every narration. And thus it is that every anthology is always a little prone to suicide (and, equally, to censorship).

All of Cuba behaves so. It is a ghetto of people half-patriotic and half-stateless. A clickless clinic, because in 2013 the government still hasn’t authorized its citizens’ right to information, which includes, of course, the Internet.

So, to create an anthology in Cuba—a closed fortress placed between internal feudal repression and being the earthly utopia of the international left—is the work of an almost heroic publisher. If, as is the case with this dossier exclusive to Sampsonia Way Magazine, we aim to offer the island’s emerging literary voices, then we no longer have a simple selection, but rather a bet that forces us to take risks (in numbers, names, topics, and styles). This is a bottle tossed into the future, which can explode like a grenade of infinite meanings or barely return to the reader like a listless boomerang.

Let’s be honest: No one knows what will happen tomorrow with the no-longer-that-young Cuban authors of the so-called Generation Year Zero, who are now anthologized from Pittsburgh, or perhaps PittsburgHavana, for the first time in Spanish and English.

Let’s even be cynical: It doesn’t much matter what happens. Literature and prophecy are not synonymous. There is no guarantee of success beyond the unique universe of each authorial text. Literature does not imply certainty—it’s just a symptom of the human experience, which is basically an imaginary experience: Fiction illuminated by emotional memory and expressed according to the limits of language. This is all the wisdom that fits within the literary. And wisdom often ends in dramatic failure.

Let’s go even further for once: These authors don’t fear that failure. They indefatigably seek it. A successful career is always suspicious, or ends up with the guilty feeling that we are collaborating with the status quo.

No, our anthologized writers do not fit within standardized notions of success. Nor do they fit well within the naive idea of the democratic in the minefields of the literary. In the literary world, the majority tends to be mistaken, asleep between the cliches of the canonical tradition and the miracles of market. Such that a kind of “private public” audience must be conceived again and again by each literary generation—especially if it is a generation of Cubans who seem to avoid the classic concept of the literary field, to provoke a literarid feel, while being held hostage by an obsolete State which aspires to replace them as the Ultimate Narrator.

Thus, between the grandiloquent fictions of Power and the minor literature of the newrrative from the Year Zero, or 2000, Cuban Culture gains nothing or, better yet, gains precisely zero. These writers have become the emptying-out of the author versus the violence of the State. This spontaneous nihilism—which prioritizes the histrionic over the historic, the hedonism of inner exile over revolutionary barbarism, the intimate over the institutional (a residual freedom domestic but undomesticated), and the rhetoric over the relating—is what this anthology is attempting to photograph: The New Man is tired not of being a committed intellectual; rather, he is tired of being compelled by forces foreign to his own work and will.

The world’s readers are now getting a peek at a literature that tries to distance itself from Cuban stereotypes without avoiding the terminal tedium of a day lived to the limit which, for the purposes of these authors, is an endless resistance on the margin of contemporaneity.

29 June 2012

Prison Diary XL: A Broth for the Dictator / Angel Santiesteban

My family sends me the underground solidarity of friends and neighbors toward my reality. If we add up the population that doesn’t support the regime, we would think the fall of the dictatorship was imminent; but I know first hand that those who reject the existing process, are the same people who then go to the Plaza of the Revolution because they fear having it worse.

I once told the story of Stalin, who standing in the snow, wanted to teach his functionaries how to  subjugate a people, and before the eyes of his companions, deprived a bird of its plumage and threw it into the snow. Immediately, the bird ran for cover between the boots of the assassin. Several times he pushed him away, and with no other choice to survive, the animal returned to his feet.

I assume his lackeys understood the example well. I would like to ass to that story that after they returned to the shelter of the palace, convinced of the bird’s plea, of its utter helplessness and unlimited surrender, the dictator asked his cook to prepare him a nice broth to satisfy his unlimited whims.

Of course Cubans have never been masochists or stupid, although in these more than fifty years we might well have won; but I understand that the logic of the Cuban is thinking that it could be worse.

The prisoners complain all the time, and every time they bring me a complaint I ask them if they accept that the complaint will be filed with their name, then they get scared, and tell me they’ll be deprived of their benefits.

“And therein lies the price,” I tell them, “change is at the cost of sacrifices.”

Sometimes they complain about the food, and I think rightly, the stink of it makes me think an animal wouldn’t eat it.

I tell them that the following day, June 9, will be four months since my arrival in prison and I have never entered he dining room, I have no idea what’s inside, I assure them that the day we agree to unite in not going to get the food, things will change, they will take steps to improve it.

“Political,” one says to me, “if it were that easy we’d do it with pleasure. The food, which is a stew, they will feed to their pigs, and they will send us to the other end of the island and our families will be hit the hardest, and with the lost of our credits, they will deprive us of every possible chance to get out before serving our whole sentence and everything will remain the same.”

Those who have emigrated know that is true, any rebellion is shut down, in the place where it is, with the worse experience, with the hardest of punishments, and most, therefore, turn their backs on our reality.

It seems that our internal problems will be resolved by international demands like the UN, and like the racist regime of South Africa, they will force respect for the Human Rights of Cubans.

As a start, the first big step of the climb to freedom, and in turn, the beginning of the fall of the dictatorship, will be with the ratification of the UN Covenants; which they are about to demand a the FIDH Congress in Istanbul in the month of May.  Congratulations!

Angel Santiesteban-Prats. Prison 1580, July 2013

29 July 2013

Estado de SATS Celebrates Three Years / David Canela

1.-Público-2-300x225HAVANA, Cuba, July 29, 2013, David Canela / www.cubanet.org.-The civic project Estado de SATS this Saturday celebrated its three years of existence with a children’s party. About 10:30 in the morning Rodiles’ house was full. At the party two clowns performed, exciting the children with games, dances, songs and puppets. Children’s music videos were also projected.

Estado de SATS was born as an event of dialog between the actors of civil society, who attended in many voices and independent groups (artistic, religious, legal, community) to talk about the the future of Cuba. It was held in Gaia House in Old Havana, between 23rd and 25th on 25 July 2010. As the meeting led to open debate, outside an established script, the project was censored, and no other State institution was permitted (or risked) to host it again.

For this reason, Antonio González-Rodiles, one of the principal coordinators, decided to resume it in his own house, in the municipality of Playa. The original idea of the project, of being a marketplace of social diversity, and a public space for alternative ideas–beyond the narrow limits of official discourse ideological–crystallized again on March 5, 2011, when Raudel Collazo and Adrián Monzón were invited to speak about their artistic projects. Since then (and with the exception of Festival Click), the sessions are no longer structured as a “mini-conference” but as a meeting for a specific topic.

Since then, in March 2011, it adopted the slogan Where art and thought converge. In its three years of work, they have held panels, interviews, screened documentaries and films–which had not been shown before in Cuba–poetry recitals and one of short stories (with the writer Ángel Santiesteban), parties, presentations and music concerts, independent project fairs, exhibitions of photographs, art, cartoons and publicity spots.

Over time they have created some spaces or specialized programs, such as Analysis Forum (FORA), for political, social and legal debate, Cinema at All Costs, for the display of audiovisuals, and recently CafeSatso, devoted to literature.

Other independent projects have collaborated with Estado de SATS: Omni-Zona Franca, the Endless Poetry Festival, Voces Cubanas, the Cuban Law Association, Cubalex, EBE (of Spain), Talento Cubano, among others. Many people in the diaspora and Cubans in exile, through speeches and videotaped interviews, media outreach, or the donation of works (for example, the exposition of CoCodriloSmile graphic humor). In addition, Radio and TV Marti and Cubanet have helped to broadcast some of their programs.

From March 2011 to June of the current year, there have been around 66 meetings (one of them when Antonio Rodiles was imprisoned in November of last year). Of these programs, 30 were held with the public and 35 with no audience. One had to be suspended due to police repression; those who could were able to get there recorded his testimony.

Estado de SATS is also the civil society project that promotes the Citizen Demand For Another Cuba, which calls on the Cuban government to ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

CARTEL-SATS

Monday, 29 July 2013, from CubaNet

29 July 2013

Notes for the Transition / Antonio Rodiles, Alexis Jardines

ajindex
Alexis Jardines

HAVANA, Cuba, July 29, 2013: The political landscape of the island has been energized recently. In the international arena the event with the greatest impact is undoubtedly the death of Hugo Chavez and his succession embodied in Nicolas Maduro, a man with few political tools who, despite many odds, has managed, for now, to maintain a certain equilibrium. However, given the difficult economic situation being experienced by Cuba and the uncertain scenario facing the Chavistas in Venezuela, Cuban totalitarianism is forced to avoid placing all its bets on Venezuela.

arindex
Antonio Rodiles

For the elite in power, time, as a part of the political equation, becomes the most important variable. The relaunch of their position in the international arena has become one part of their priorities, and it shows that a new moment in relations with Europe and the United States is vital in the search for new economic and political partners who will provide them stability and legitimacy.

In the interior of the island, the transformations in the economic sector are not generating a new impression given the years of accumulated statism, decapitalization and the precarious situation in multiple sectors. A genuine process of reforms would involve much deeper actions that would stir up a reality already admitted to be a social disaster, as acknowledged even by Raul Castro in his latest speech. But the fear of losing control has become an obsession and the principal obstacle.

The ability of some regime opponents to travel represents, in this sense, the boldest step taken by the elite in power, a clear commitment to improve its image abroad and to rid itself of the stigma of lack of freedom of movement. It is highly likely that this move was taken under the assumption that some bitter pills would be no more than that, that reality would remain stuck in its usual straitjacket, because we opponents would not penetrate the media and, on our return to Cuba, State Security’s absolute control and lack of social expression would keep everything in its place.

Given this scenario, we have to ask ourselves certain questions: Is Cuban society in a position to push for greater freedom and independence? Can the opposition capitalize politically on these trips? And by capitalize we mean our capacity to articulate and project ourselves inside and outside the island as pro-democratic forces with civic or political weight in both venues; a projection that also allows us to end the nefarious cat and mouse game with which State Security, as the arm of the system, has kept us inefficiently occupied. It then becomes imperative to mature as an opposition and as civil society, to be able to widen the cracks in an exhausted system that holds onto control and exercises State violence as elements of social containment.

The experience of multiple transitions shows the importance of understanding the moment of change as a step in the process of national reconstruction and to see it not as a discontinuous turning point. In an extreme scenario like the one facing us, a successful transition will necessarily involve the active participation of skilled human capital with a strong social commitment and a clear vision of the nation that it wants to build.

Without a social fabric that represents least a micro-cosmos, of the mid- and macro-cosmos we visualize, it will be very difficult to build a functioning democracy. Unsuccessful examples are plentiful and it is irresponsible to omit them. The famous Arab Spring-become-Winter is the most recent case, and shows that the establishment of a political system requires a process of maturation and articulation of civil society. To imagine the change and reconstruction of a broken, fragmented country, not only in the physical sense but also in its social and individual dynamics, is an essential exercise if we aspire to construct a democracy that contains the ingredients of every modern nation

As the opposition we must break with paradigms that imply regression and a copying of what has been experienced, in which glorious symbols, epics and personalities play a significant role. An imagined future that places too many hopes on an expansive “spark,” and that often postpones effective work with visions of the medium and long term.

It would also be healthy to readjust the idea that has dominated our minds for more than half of a post-republican century: the desired unity of the opposition as the only path to effective pressure to promote change. We believe that the main role of the transition should fall on civil society, while the opposition, as a political actor, must push with discourse and coherent action so that civil society has the necessary reach and penetration.

Hegel was right in saying that “everything that was once revolutionary becomes conservative.” The words lose their original sense and are redefined to change the context that nurtured and sustained them, so much so that the logic itself of revolutions backfires.

The truly revolutionary act is an abrupt gesture, a moment of rupture that disrupts the established order.  All revolutions, including scientific, are designed to transform, to subvert, the bases of the model or previous paradigm and, in this way, to bring it down.

Thus, what is new in our time is to understand the possible abruptness as a moment in a process, which must be permeated with the ingredients that shape modern societies: knowledge, information, thought, art, technology. The revolution is a time of evolution, but not the inverse.

In the second decade of the present century we can not think of any social processes without taking into account the transnational nature of them. In our case it would be impossible to analyze a transition to democracy and a process of reconstruction without involving the diaspora and exile with its political actors. While they are not anchored in the everyday life of the island they are living elements of the nation and as such gravitate to her. About this, the ordinary Cuban is not wrong. In the Cuban imagination part of the solution to our problems is in Miami (as the diaspora is generically defined). The modern vision of contemporary societies must come from and consist largely through constant reinforcement between the island and its diaspora. The opposition and exile should be precisely the hinge that makes such articulation possible.

And this, in our view, is the other element that would end up framing the Cuban scenario: how, looking forward, the opposition overlaps with a transnational civil society so that the binary logic of the internal and external, of the figures of the “Cuban insider” and “Cuban outsider,” come to an end. For this to happen it is not enough to recognize, on the level of discourse (as the regime does as well), that there are no differences between us, that we are equal, etc. It is something more: we are one and indivisible and this single Cuban has to have the right to exercise the vote and to influence the political present and future of his country, regardless of where on the planet he finds himself or lives; this is, for the opposition and the exile itself, not only a political problem, but a conceptual one.

As political actors we must show that we are an option for governance, presenting the human capital at our disposal, the capacity we possess to generate a political and legal framework capable of filling the possible void that would be left by the one-party nomenklatura. To prove that we could ensure security not only for the country but for the whole region, and last, but no less important, the ability to overtake at the polls the campaigns of the Castro supporters in any eventual free elections.

This would be, perhaps, the most desirable scenario in terms of expansion of the transnational civil society and the corresponding constraint of the totalitarian State. Let us, then, be careful not to confuse succession with transition; let us learn to see ourselves as ordinary Cubans and to demand our full civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights as reflected in the two United Nations Covenants. Let us admit that for the transition the human capital dispersed through the State institutions is needed as badly as the skills, knowledge and financial capital of those who have had to grow up far from — but not out of — their country.

The problem of the Cuban nation today is the problem of the democratic transition and reconstruction, a process that will be possible only if it involves the largest number of Cubans, wherever they may live. We do not say that the country belongs to everyone, which is a de jure declaration; we say that all of us, together, make up the Cuban nation, which is already a de facto declaration.

Antonio G. Rodiles and Alexis Jardines
Monday, 29 July 2013

Published in Cubanet  and in Diario de Cuba

29 July 2013

Disconnected / Rebeca Monzo

I’ve been totally disconnected for days.  When I say this, I’m referring to the inability to receive news from abroad by shortwave, and especially the lack of Internet.  Of course, the majority of the Cuban population is in this very same situation… at least I enjoy a couple of hours online on Monday and another couple on Friday, although not always.  You take what you can get!

On these days of absolute information blackout, I’ve made a tremendous effort to stay in front of the television set in order to monitor Telesur and the National News Bulletin, as well as national radio, in hopes that they’d shed some light on the dispute about the North Korean ship that was transporting “obsolete armaments” (missiles and fueled planes), which were loaded in our country and hidden crudely under sacks of sugar.  The result: absolute silence.

If I’ve been able to glean some other new information now and then, I owe it to a friend who, in exceptional conditions, enjoys a daily session of Internet connection.  He’s the one who’s kept me more or less updated on the developments of the Panama Canal with respect to the ship, its captain, and its crew, as well as President Martinelli’s announcements.  However, upon not receiving any information from my country’s media, I consider myself, like any other citizen, as having all the right in the world to speculate on this sloppy incident.

This circus-like spectacle, put on by who knows by whom, eludes any type of coherent analysis.  We are in the midst of the 21st century, where the monitoring and immediacy of information is practically uncontrollable.  How did they expect to transport that “delicate merchandise” on a North Korean vessel (a UN-sanctioned country) which, on top of that, already had a prior record of drug smuggling?  What explanation are they going to give about this fact, that won’t be like the dull press statement already issued by Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs?

Could it be that they were looking for a crude pretext to abort any intention of political rapprochement with the neighbor to the north, in order to cover up the inabilities of the Cuban regime, as well as the lack of any true will to effect real and profound changes in domestic policy?

They should take care, because the harvest has been very poor and there’s not enough sugar to keep covering up such sloppy work.

Translated by: Yoyi el Monaguillo

24 July 2013

President of the CDR lives in misery / CID

A Cuban family from Holguín, desperate because of the precarious state of their home and the lack of any response from the authorities, went to see human rights activists to ask them to help and to provide a report on her case.

 In the video of Liberal Creole Productions and the Peoples’ Defender of Independent Democratic Cuba (CID), a woman named Luisa tells a group of human rights activists that she is living with her three children, her mother, her father, and two brothers in a house which is in ruins, with holes in the walls and roofs, and canvas doors.

Luisa, who lives in the house where the President’s Office of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR) for her block is located, explains that although her parents had dedicated their lives to the revolutionary project inspired by Fidel Castro, hadn’t received any assistance from the government to help them improve the miserable conditions in which they live.

Luisa asked for help from the opposition following suggestions from her own neighbours.

“I want them to help me, so they don’t come and threaten me, nor put me in prison, because I m always going to say the same thing. I haven’t told any lies, they are the ones who have lied.” says he woman and shows some documents in which, according to her, she applies for a better place to live.

Luisa explains that in that house lives her mother, who belonged to the Association of Young Rebels (predecessor to the Union of Young Communists, (UJC) and the national vanguard of the tourism sector; her brother was a veteran of the Angola war and her father a “fighter in the war against the bandits in Escambray and a socialist militant.”

“They now have absolutely nothing, only a cheque for 240 pesos”, which gets you nowhere.

For their part, the activists who came to interview her and document her living conditions told her that although they couldn’t offer her a home, nor materials to repair it, they promised to accompany her when she decides to make a claim “to the party, the government … wherever” and they promised her they would make the case public.

Source: Radio Marti

24 July 2013

Translated by GH

Talk About “Improper Conduct”… / Miriam Celaya

The government is campaigning for the ‘loss of ethical and moral values’ in society, but what about the disrespect of entering into armament arrangements with the North Korean dictatorship?

The title refers to a memorable documentary that many of us Cubans everywhere must have seen, based on the testimony of those who suffered stark arbitrariness and terror introduced by the Castro regime in the purge unleashed some forty years ago. Improper conduct was an illegal crime figure established in the 60′s and 70′s of the last century by the Castro regime to suppress what was officially considered sexual deviations (homosexuality, “sentimentality”), ideological deviation or anything that could be interpreted by the authorities as politically incorrect. Many intellectuals, artists and ordinary people were arrested, ousted, sent to labor camps or simply made to feel as strangers in their own country.

Most of the anonymous victims of the witch hunt, which was established as State policy were men, for committing the serious offense of wearing their hair long, their pants too tight, not joining the “people’s harvests” or who preferred a certain type of music, among others. No one escaped the close scrutiny of the Inquisition and its olive green zealous executives. Anyone could fall out of favor against the rigid revolutionary parameters.

The repression continued for a time, but the methods changed.  Some of what was once condemned became tolerated, and, currently, schematic guerrillas have been forced to take on new poses and to even accept certain differences. Without apologizing for the damage, without admitting that the unprecedented persecution or the attack against basic rights of free people, that same government now pretends to be in charge of the defense of those rights, and, to prove it, it promotes campaigns, holds events and even organizes parades and festivals.

However, following the speech by the General President at the recent session of the National Assembly, in which he announced a crusade against rudeness and social indiscipline, he said that the wind of censure against “the loss of moral and ethical values” is once again blowing through our streets. Some people claim that fines are being applied to persons who “swear” or profess rudeness in public, who board the bus through the back door or who don’t pay their fares, those who are loud and disturb their neighbors, who throw garbage and debris on the road, etc. In principle, it would not be such a bad thing if it weren’t just one more campaign, or if there were just one Cuban free from all these sins in order to fine the sinners or, if applying these measures didn’t interfere with the rights of other citizens.

For instance, a few days ago, a teenager whom I will call Daniel, residing in the municipality of El Cerro in Havana, was returning home after his high school graduation. With the ease and ideas of spontaneity typical of his age, feeling himself without the responsibilities of schooling and under the harsh summer sun, he had rolled up the legs of his ugly and faded yellow school uniform, and his shirt was partially unbuttoned and hanging outside the waistline of his pants. Carefree, he walked while concentrating on the music blaring in his ears, so he was taken by surprise when a man, very authoritatively, abruptly stopped him in the middle of the street, after demanding the boy take off his headphones and unroll his pant legs immediately.

Instantly, Daniel doubted whether the man was in his right mind, so he demanded to know who he was and why he should obey him.  Then the individual identified himself, not by his name but as an “inspector of minors”, he accused him of incorrectly wearing his uniform, “a symbol of the mother country that the Revolution had given him” and because of that, his parents could be fined and he could be detained in a “care center for improperly behaved youths.”

Not allowing himself to be too impressed, Daniel explained that he was not in uniform because, in fact, he was returning from his high school graduation, so he wouldn’t have any more use for it, that he was going home after having stood in the hot sun in the schoolyard for a very long time, listening to the required speeches before getting his diploma, and that, as he understood it, the symbols of the motherland were the Cuban flag, the national coat of arms and the Bayamo* National Anthem and not an old pair of pants that -to be exact- the revolution had not given to him, but that his mother had bought at an excessive price in the black market after, a year ago, he had outgrown the one rationed to him. The man persisted with his threats, demanded the boy’s identity card and even tried to hold Daniel by the arm. Then, the teenager shook him off and, seriously scared, ran all the way home.

The event, unconditionally true, is based on the direct testimony of the boy and his family. But, in fact, the important thing here is not simply to determine if Daniel acted correctly or not. For many years it has been customary among our teenagers graduating from different levels to perform this kind of rite of passage which desecrates the old uniform, considered by them -and by previous generations, no longer so young- a symbol of the control that educational institutions exercised over their lives. It’s merely an innocent act of rebellion, typical of this stage in their lives, that results in disparate forms of expression: from having their shirts autographed by their classmates to intentionally tearing their uniforms into strips while they are wearing them, without any major consequences.

What this is about, essentially, is that no officer or agent of the government has the authority to coerce a child, whether in private or in public, thus transgressing the rights of that teenager, as well as those of his parents and of other adult family members. The significance of the matter is that, in different hues and in another scenario, official impunity and people’s defenselessness are repeated, counter to the supposed “changes” that the Government advocates, which should immediately set off fire alarms in the population.

And because this is about fines and punishments, the government is not able to take up the slack. These days, Cubans are the ones who should analyze what actions to take about the unspeakable rudeness on the part of their government of entering into arrangements with our other planet’s dictatorship, the North Koreans, cheating the Cuban people and offending the civilized world and the international organizations of which we are members. Castro II should explain this and many other violations that betray the government’s lack of ethical and moral values before attempting to apply enforcement action over his “governed”.

We should also have to include in the analysis the direct responsibility of half a century of totalitarian abuse in the loss of ethics and moral values of our society, not to mention the systematic violation of citizens’ rights throughout all that time. Too bad this same government has also deprived us, with the suppression of civic institutions, of the tools to demand explanations and ensure compliance. Without a doubt, the hour is getting close for the beginning of real reforms in Cuba, starting with policies.

*Cuban National Anthem’s original and traditional title

Miriam Celaya | Havana | July 26th, 2013

From Diario de Cuba

Translated by Norma Whiting

2018: Elections and Transfer of Powers / Reinaldo Escobar

Sixty years after having initiated the actions to seize power, General-President Raul Castro finds it opportune to emphasize that “the process of transferring the main responsibilities of leadership of the nation to new generations is ongoing, gradual and orderly.”

At a time when those who, as children, founded the Pioneers Organization are beginning to retire, the news makes it clear that “the principals responsible for leading the nation” are not as concerned with the nominations made by Nominations Committee as they are with establishing Articles 73 and 143 of the Cuban Electoral Act; and it is also evident that — given that it is all about a gradual and orderly transfer and not about democratic elections — there is no point to the vote of the parliamentarians who have to approve (or disapprove) such nominations.

Everything is already decided! All that’s lacking is some 1,700 days to produce “the baton.” In some drawer, particularly obscure, lies the list.

29 July 2013

Cuba’s Civil Society Is Transnational Says Rodiles / David Canela

From left to right: Antonio Rodiles, Roberto de Jesús Guerra, Yaremis Flores, Jorge Olivera, and Manuel Cuesta. Photo by the author.

HAVANA, Cuba, July 22, 2013, David Canela/www.cubanet.org — Last Saturday the independent Estado de SATS project sponsored a panel discussion among Cuban civil society activists. The participants included attorney Yaremis Flores, journalist Jorge Olivera (one of seventy-five dissidents imprisoned during the 2003 Black Spring crackdown), Roberto de Jesús Guerra, director of the news agency Hablemos Press, and Manuel Cuesta Morúa, a political analyst. The topic of the event was the current situation on the island following the latest political reforms and especially after recent trips overseas by many independent activists.

In regards to the experience of trying to be part of a globalized world, Flores emphasized that “the issue for Cubans is the lack of information.” Referring to his work representing those involved in legal cases, whose rights have often been at risk, he said, “If you cannot travel (to Geneva), they can send you information.”

Guerra and Olivera emphasized the need to strengthen the intellectual and organizational capabilities of the peaceful opposition. We must “continue organizing and empowering opposition groups,” said Guerra. For his part Olivera pointed out that the government “tries to manipulate international public opinion and buy time, which means we must adopt a more articulate and professional approach.”

According Cuesta Morúa, “the government has moved the battle of ideas abroad, and in Cuba tries to present a friendly dissent or a loyal opposition.”

The trend to a more balanced and dynamic migration flow would be a catalyst in the modernization of the country, as there is now a “transnational Cuban civil society,” as Rodiles called it.

As for the present, not all agreed with the idea that we are in a political transition, — as the journalist Julio Aleaga said — although this has not been officially declared. He explained that the reforms in China had begun in 1979, although its results were visible a decade later, with the Tienanmen protests, and that the Soviet Union no one imagined, in 1985, that Perestroika would be the dismantling of socialism.

Olivera believes that in the future “there will be a negotiation between the government and the opposition, because the country is in ruins.” In this regard, the journalist José Fornaris enunciated that “we have to prepare a program of government,” and not be ashamed to admit that we want to be part of the new government.

When the panel was asked what recommendations would that give to those traveling abroad, the lawyer Yaremis Flores suggested bringing evidence and documents on specific cases that demonstrate the problems of Cuban society that are not exposed in international forums, and so give a new face to the society, that humanizes it, and belies the manipulated figures from official groups of the government.

Cuesta Morúa added to avoid saying “I speak on behalf of …”, “I am the voice of …” He said there are receptive people abroad, who don’t want to hear protests, but rather proposals. And with regards to his experience at the last meeting of the Latin American Study Association (LASA), he noted that for the first time they broke the monopoly and the image (official) of Cuba at these academic meetings, due to the actions of independent sectors of the Island

This coming Saturday will be the three-year anniversary of the Estado de SATS project.

22 July 2013

From Cubanet

Havana Carnival, Another Lost Tradition / Rebeca Monzo

When February began, the mass media (radio, television, print) began to promote the parties of King Momo.  The whole city was infected by the expectations of such a grand celebration.  Old and young used to enjoy these festivities so much that they were always celebrated in this month, for four weekends, leading up to Lent.

Days before the chosen start date, already utility poles on the city streets exhibited, by way of ornamentation, contest-winning posters, as well as photos of the Queen and her Ladies in the windows of the major stores, which had been chosen by a prestigious jury.

I remember when I was a girl, my family used to rent a box at the carnival in order to enjoy more comfort while we watched the endless legion of beautifully festooned floats pass by, with young girls on board, sometimes very dressed up and other times scantily clad (confronting the cold February temperatures), according to the theme the sponsors wished the rolling stages to represent.  Then came the convertibles cars and trucks, beautifully decorated.  Of all this, what without a doubt raised expectations most was the float of the Queen and her Ladies-in-Waiting.

The climax was the passing of the troupes with their colorful costumes, some of them carrying enormous lanterns, following the rhythm of their original and well-studied choreographies.  Among the most acclaimed always were the Guaracheros de Regla and the Alacran, this one the oldest of all.  Another spectacle that captured most attention was the risky acrobatics of the Acrobatic Police Motor Squad, with their red jackets and their snug black pants, highlighted by tall boots and varnished leggings, driving their impressive Harley-Davidson motorcycles.  The ride always opened with a profusion of fireworks.

Once the parade ended, we children, defying family prohibitions, threw ourselves into the street to gather the streamers strewn along the way and made big spheres with them to roll down the street.  The one who made the biggest felt, without anyone saying so, like a kind of champion.

The parade had a long route, coming out from the premises of the old Sports Palace, following the whole Malecon until taking the Paseo del Prado, turning at the Fuente de la India and traveling back again to the Prado, resuming the Malecon until the point of departure, where the floats were parked.  Many people during the parade used to cross from one sidewalk to the opposite one to again see the floats on their return trip.

1959 arrived, and these happy celebrations were losing their splendor.  Slowly at first and later sharply, when all businesses were nationalized and their sponsorship was lost in the absence of advertising.  It is noteworthy that the Havana carnivals before this year were considered among the world’s most famous.

I managed to reach a little of the brightness that they still had when I was elected Morning Star in 1963.  By then, the terminology had already changed from Queen to Star and from Lady to Morning Star because the former were considered expression of the petty bourgeoisie.  It was no longer enough to be pretty and cultured and have good manners; now an important element as well was being an “integrated” person (working or studying or participating in political events).  Also the gifts offered to the winners stopped being relevant.  They still kept the tradition of displaying big photos of them in the store windows.

I remember by then I worked in the Foreign Trade Ministry in one of its enterprises. One afternoon, the syndicate secretary passed in a great hurry, touring all the offices, to announce to us, all the girls who worked there, that at the end of the workday we would not leave because an assembly would be held to elect the permanent cane cutters for the sugar harvest, and also the star who would represent the enterprise in those festivities.

To my surprise, I was the favored one.  The next selection would be among the more than 12 enterprises that composed the ministry, and this would determine who would be its representative.  I was elected again. Later competition was held among all the agencies that belonged to the Public Administration sector, to choose the Star herself, who would then compete on a national level.

So it was that one night I found myself in the Sports Center, competing with all the stars from all the syndicates.  Then I was elected first Morning Star of the Havana Carnival of 1963.  I never again went to those celebrations in spite of the fact that during the next nine s received invitations to the Presidential Box.  Now the carnivals that I enjoyed so much in my childhood had disappeared, and all that was left of them was a sad caricature.  In spite of the celebration of all these festivities, including this one, they were transferred “by decree” to the month of July, just when the heat is unbearable.

This weekend there will be a sad caricature of the carnivals on a reduced route along the Malecon where alcoholic beverages and repeated gastronomic offerings will abound.  Vulgarity and marginality, as is now customary, will reign at these celebrations.

Translated by mlk

27 July 2013

Antonio Rodiles Will Return to Miami This Tuesday / Estado de Sats, For Another Cuba

Antonio G. Rodiles en el lanzamiento de la Campaña Por otra Cuba en Miami este mayo
Antonio G. Rodiles at the launch of the “For Another Cuba” campaign in Miami this May

The renowned activist and Castro regime opponent Antonio G. Rodiles, director of the Estado de SATS movement (an independent and intellectual group that encourages the exchange of ideas) will visit the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS) at Casa Bacardi, 1531 Brescia Avenue at the University of Miami, Tuesday, 30 July 11:00 am to give a press conference.

Acompanying Rodiles at this press conference will be the attorneys Veizant Boloy González, member of the Organizing Committee of the Citizens’ Demand For Another Cuba and correspondent for Cubanet and Primavera de Cuba, and Amelia M. Rodriguez Cala, who has defended many political opponents.

This event is open to the public. If you wish to attend please call the Institute at 305-284-CUBA (2822).

Leadership / Yoani Sanchez

Noel repairs the blades of the fan. He has a little workshop in a doorway in Cerro neighborhood. He repairs electric irons, blenders, every kind of obsolete motor, and does good things with rice cookers and water heaters. It’s not a job that generates a lot of dividends. Some of the customers ask for his reliable services and then he doesn’t see them again; others want to pay in installments and end up not paying it off. However, in addition to diminished returns, this labor offers Noel a unique experience. Every day, he is in contact with people, many people. Speaking, opining, telling him what came over the illegal satellite dish and especially listening, opening his ears to what they have to say. So he has become, in his little cubicle full of grease and cables, an actor of opinion, a born leader appreciated for his abilities and respected for his words.

Cuba is full of people like Noel, anonymous, simple, who know reality at a level no minister can reach, even with the most competent advisors. People who don’t show up on TV screens, who aren’t at the front of any parade, but who have natural charisma and contact with the people to lead changes. For now, we only know those with whom we’ve managed to interact or meet personally, but there are thousands. They will never draft a political platform, but they know by heart the most acute problems that afflict our society. They would not sign an action demanding improvements in human rights, nor will they open a blog, practice independent journalism, or autonomous law. The word “activist” scares them and to call them opponents would put an end to the life they have now. They are — without saying so — all that and much more. They are citizens of conscience, to those who damage the situation in our country.

The future of our nation will be influenced by Cubans like this. So many who, today, are behind a desk in some office, at the front of a classroom, filling out forms in some State agency, we will see reach the public sphere. As they feel there’s a mark of respect in stating their opinions publicly, they will emerge from all sides. It’s important that at the point when they decide to take that step we do not react with our suspicions nor with confrontation, but with our embrace. Because while Noel fixes a broken fan blade, I feel that one day he will also have the ability to join together the broken and separated pieces of our reality. The same care with which he glues plastic and fixes the motor, he will put into the social leadership he will show tomorrow.

28 July 2013

Taken Out of the Closet, But No One Asks Forgiveness / Reinaldo Cosano

By Reinaldo Cosano. Havana, Cuba

Posted in the blog of Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada

The veil covering violent homophobic repression is slowly being drawn back, but the gulity aren’t asking for public pardon.

It is hard to specify just how the virus of homophobic repression was incubated, sharp-eyed with the machismo of the days of guerrilla groups in the Sierra Maestra, whose magnitude never had precedent in Cuba, converted into official policy aggravated by principal governing figures, that spiritually mutilated or ended many lives.

Raúl Martínez González (Ciego de Ávila, 1927 – Havana, 1995), internationally renowned famous Cuban painter, designer, sign painter and photographer, homosexual, puts forth in his Memoirs:

“It was 1965.  The attacks and reprisals against homosexuals began.  The UMAP was created, supposedly a rehabilitation center.  Its creation was justified according to already old ideologies, but totally believing in the “New Man.”  This was before the Congress of Culture in 1971 that ratified the official [repressive] policy given the fact of the existence of homosexuals in the country […]  I believed naively that this new rehabilitation camp wouldn’t affect me, because of my personal characteristics, the values that I had as a painter and professor at ENA [National School of Art] and the Department of Architecture of the University of Havana.

“I quickly discovered that the methods employed to recruit candidates and take them as far as Camagüey, where the camps were located, were totally reprehensible, an abuse into which the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution fell, charged with providing names and pointing out all those who they thought had – in their way – an improper sexual conduct, or who simply lived a life apart from the rest of the neighbors.

“Many must have cooperated out of belief that the Revolution acted with good intentions.  Others, with bad intentions, took the opportunity to “toss out [denounce] everyone who was bothersome and caused problems.” (1)

Massive repression against real or imagined dissidents of the Revolution, whose punishments grew worse from 1965 when the raids intensified against intellectual artists, the religious, the disaffected, homosexuals, the underclass and “big babies” — an expression of hate towards generally Catholic youths, children of people of confiscated wealth — interned in work camps cutting sugarcane by hand in Camagüey province, which recalls the Nazi pogroms against Jews, prisoners of war, the politically disaffected, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals, condemned to concentration camps with the maxim at the entrance “Work sets you free,” concealing veneer of genocide.

Coincidentally the Military Production Aid Units (UMAP) emerge in Cuba appealing to work as a means of sexual and political reeducation.  Official strategy of obligatory imprisonment, forced work, isolation of dozens of thousands of Cubans in subhuman conditions.  An epoch of terror for men between 16 and 50 years of age, the age of military conscription.  Bodily self-harm and suicide among the recruits were frequent escape routes from the UMAP.

Alicia Alonso, Prima Ballerina Assoluta, director of the National Ballet of Cuba, protegée of leader Fidel Castro, asked her protector on more than a few occasions to rescue homosexual members of the Ballet from the fate of the UMAP when they were caught in police raids.

The witch hunt showed no mercy to the Intelligentsia — not just homosexuals — for dissenting from the Castro orthodoxy: intellectuals, writers, artists, journalists. Of course, also plain citizens.  Repression that calls to mind the concentration camps and murders of the Maoist Khmer Rouge.

The then-seminarian Catholics Jaime Ortega Alamino, current Cardinal of Cuba, and Troadio Hernández, later priest, for example, were forced guests of the UMAP — the same as other parishioners, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Evangelical Band of Gideon and other Christian denominations — on the inhospitable solitary plains of Camagüey, isolated from the rest of the planet.  One means of punishing and dismembering religion on the premises of the declared Marxist atheism of the Revolution.

The poet José Mario Rodríguez, accused of being “dissolute and liberaloid” (sic), and other writers of the pro-government El Puente Publisher went to stay at the UMAP.  While many writers and artists were besieged, imprisoned, although not precisely in the UMAP camps.  Among them, the poet Herberto Padilla, Lorenzo Fuentes, Reinaldo Arenas, Manuel Ballagas, Roberto Luque Escalona, Fernando Velázquez, Víctor Sierpa, Nancy Estrada, Lina de Feria, María Elena Cruz Varela, Manuel Díaz Martínez, Raúl Rivero, Bernardo Marqués, Manuel Granados and Reinaldo Bragado.

Nevertheless, the repressive waterwheel against the intelligentsia doesn’t stop.  It has never stopped in half a century of “revolution”.

In recent days, the multiple award-winning writer Ángel Santiesteban (2) was sentenced to five years in prison for the supposed crime of housebreaking and offense causing injury, a common crime whipped up as a screen to punish a writer or journalist whose criticisms, even within the revolutionary framework, annoy the regime.

Meme Solís, composer, singer and director of his musical ensemble, was condemned by homophobic rulers to ostracism on the island for being homosexual in his moment of greatest artistic glory, his personal and recorded appearances completely cut from radio, TV, and cabarets because his sexual deviation displeased the ruling class.  He had to wait out eighteen years of censure and human suffering beyond his control until they would grant him the kindness of a permit to leave the country.

Now the Havana regime, intending to take him out of the closet, to make amends, to pardon his defect, invited him lately to visit his country to take part in a luxury gala titled after of one of his greatest hit musicals, Another Dawn, years after his exile and and another fifteen years of imprisonment in the closet, his music banned, making him nearly unknown to the latest generations of Cubans.  An invitation expressing no public nor private apology for condemnation to ostracism,  being shut in the closet, frustrated.

But that most outstanding musician did not fall into the trap of the insulting ransom and declared, in the Nuevo Herald of Miami, that “it is one thing for my music to be played there and another for me to go.  I do not wish to offend anyone but I don’t think that this is the time to go.  The reasons are obvious.  I have been through too much there to want to return.”

The painter Raúl Martínez goes on to say: “Many friends — homosexuals or not — were sent to the camps.  As were well-known figures of the Nueva Trova, budding writers, dramatists.  A wave of fear was loosed among us to learn that the police, especially in the [busy ice cream shop] Coppelia, were making raids or taking prisoner anyone who stood out for their clothing or [feminine] gestures.  I was afraid to be mistaken.  I remember the fear with which I drank coffee at the bus stop, looking from side to side, ready to flee if anything happened.  When I had to stand right there, after leaving the Radiocentro [theater] or the Habana Libre [hotel], I prayed that the bus would come as soon as possible.” (1)

Once Mariela Castro Espín, director of the National Center of Sexual Orientation (CENESEX), daughter of the current ruler, was questioned about the responsibility of her uncle Fidel Castro for the existence of the UMAP.  She astutely stated (or at least so they have her believe) that Fidel Castro — always well informed — had no responsibility at all because at that time he was too occupied with other matters of government.

Raúl Martínez, just like so many other distinguished homosexual people of letters and the arts: the poet and storyteller Lezama Lima (Havana, 1910-1976); Virgilio Piñera (Cárdenas, 1912 – Havana, 1979), storyteller, poet and dramatist; Antón Arrufat (Santiago de Cuba, 1935), writer, dramatist, they were as oysters shut in their shells, persecuted, rounded up, marginalized only for not singing praises to the regime, for not bowing their heads, for staying in Cuba, for not accepting emigration, condemned to live poorly, hidden in the closet from which now, dead or alive, one by one, in turns, the dictatorship goes craftily taking them out, promptly rehabilitated with rounded dates of birth or death.

A suspect fence-mending for political convenience in an attempt to change the repressive image of the regime, to tidy it up with a few strokes of the pen.  Paradoxically “resuscitated” by the same regime which punished them, but without offering a public or private apology to them, their families and friends for so many crimes against honorable people.  Hereditary crimes against the Nation.

cosanoalen@yahoo.com

 Citations:

(1) Martínez González, Raúl. Confesiones (de) Raúl Martínez, Yo Publio. P.394. Instituto Cubano del Libro, Editorial Letras Cubanas, Artecubano Ediciones, Palacio del Segundo Cabo, O’ Reilly, 4, esquina a Empedrado, La Habana Vieja, Cuba.

(2) Ángel Santiesteban. Autor of the blog The Children Nobody Wanted. Prizes: Sueño de un día de verano (Dream of a summer’s day), UNEAC Prize, 1995; Los hijos que nadie quiso (The children nobody wanted), Alejo Carpentier Prize, 2001; Dichosos los que lloran (Happy are those who mourn), Casa de las Américas Prize, 2006.

Translated by Russell Conner

8 July 2013