Chong Chon Gangsters, S. A. / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

(ELHERALDODELHENARES.ES)

The North Korean vessel Chong Chon Gang, with its belly caramelized in arms and detained in the Panama Canal, floats above the level of State terrorism to settle itself in the much more explosive field of fiction.

Like a Tarantino totalitarian puppet – similar to the 5 Spies/Heroes of the Wasp Network in the USA… here all roles are relative – the supposed captain took a knife from the art (?) director and tried to cut his own throat, perhaps to later save the Great Comrade from the third litter, Kim Jung-Un, the trouble of doing so.

The Cuban government was quick to secretly negotiate a settlement with Panama, before the shit hit the media. Given the magnitude of smuggling – for less than this many capitals have been bombed – it would not be surprising that from Havana they offered a free license to open in Cuba, not one, but a thousand Panama canals the length and breadth of the island. Benicio del Toro promised it in Vietnam and Alfredo Guevara almost did so in the Caribbean.

The Panamanian President in person, with his neorealist name of Ricardo Martinelli, was the one who sounded the alarm, as a dramatic effect to his electorate. And he did it, of course, on Twitter, which is the measure of all things, and where even God now has verified accounts in different languages.

Our Minister of Foreign Relations then made his mea Cuba, and acknowledged that he had shipped some old rockets and planes that, at this point in the comic strip, couldn’t do any more damage. They were weapon props, those that now and again accidentally kill an extra or a double, who don’t even show up in the film credits.

Then, more and more containers appeared, including some with explosives. It was a classic cut to the chase because there’s no decent dramaturge without a bomb as the climax. The tanks, wandering suffering souls in greater misery than the thinkers of Havana and Pyongyang, should have sat down right away to rewrite the ending. Even in a democracy there are leaders that work like this, without all the loose ends tied up beforehand by the government script.

The sugar sacks were packed molecularly in a clandestine Cuban port, so now they must be unloaded by hand, one by one. At the beginning, it was to take days. As of now, it will take a few weeks. Nobody knows for sure the actual number of sacks, so no expert dares dismiss the possibility that this constitutes an irrational number. Or infinite. In that case, the Panama longshoremen have fallen into a trap worth of Borges. Perhaps into a Chinese Box. In any case, the perpetual downloading is another discovery of the aleph.

In the aftermath of the Revolution, it is pertinent to erase the evidence of the barbarities. Under the sugar, weapons as an element to divert attention. Beneath or within the arms could be camouflaged the key narrative of this entire debacle.

What are the North Koreans really taking from the Cuba of Castro 2.0? I recognize that my despair as a writer begins here.

Cadavers, for starters, that source of irreplaceable suspense: illustrious dead – or falsely disappeared – whose DNA remains they want to send to the cosmos or make into plasma thanks to the nuclear program of Kim 3.0. Of course, it could be a wholesale money flight, drawn from remittances of the entire Cuban exile, to mock for the millionth time the Washington trade embargo (another obsolete weapon, in this case against the Revolution).

Given the interminable tons of sugar, it’s possible they are also taking entire dynastic families, who perhaps haven’t figured out yet that the ship isn’t moving any more; so they are still in their high-tech containers, playing Go or digital golf, not knowing that Pyongyang is no longer expecting them. Ricardo Martinelli should tweet a little less and ensure the safety of these stowaways who, until recently, were the political thugs of the fatherland. If it’s “with all and for the good of all,” the emigrants of the elite and the revolutionary repressors can’t be excluded.

It is true that the Chong Chon Gang might explode from its undeclared criminal cargo — in Cuba there is a tradition of civilian planes and boats that flew for this reason — but it’s no less certain that the tragedy could have occurred in the narrowest region of the American continent, which by all rights would reduce any international condemnation to the rank of terroristhmus.

It’s true that they violated several provisions of the United Nations, always so controversial and manipulated when it comes time to vote, but we already know that many powers ignore them when they block their interests. It’s true that in Cuba today we barely produce the sugar consumed by our own people, but no one has yet literally tested a single grain from these sacks (perhaps it’s Caimanera salt, or sand from Veradero passing off this luxury item?). It’s true that Cuba could end up more isolated along with the ALBA block, and forced to pay millions for what could be considered an act of military aggression in times of peace.

But the obsession with the truth shouldn’t blind us before the triviality of verisimilitude, without which no art is authentic. Condemn us, it doesn’t matter: Hollywood will absolve us.*

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo |  2 Aug 2013

*Translator’s note: A reference to Fidel Castro’s declaration at his trial for leading the attack on the Moncada Barracks: “Condemn me, it doesn’t matter; History will absolve me.”

A Curious Anniversary / Rebeca Monzo

This seems to be the year for varied and curious anniversaries. The one most “clucked about” is the sixtieth anniversary of you-know-what. There is also the fiftieth anniversary of Radio Encyclopedia, the fortieth anniversary of the Youth Labor Army and most notably the very curious thirty-fifth anniversary of the Isla de la Juventud (Isle of Youth), which with the stroke of a pen swept away the Isla de los Pinos (Isle of Pines), which for so many years had been the younger sister to the Island of Cuba.*

I have come to visit my friend Lisa, whose daughter is twenty-seven and pregnant. She tells me she is going with her to “González Coro” Hospital, formerly the “Holy Cross” clinic. After listening to me talk about the avalanche of this year’s anniversaries and commemorations, she says it would be a good idea to add to the list the water leak that has been present at this facility ever since she was expecting her daughter. At first they put a metal bucket under it to catch the dripping water, she says. But the leak is still there — though in the interim it has become more like a waterfall — so now they have a big plastic container to catch the “precious liquid.” However, from time to time it overflows and spills onto the granite floor over which the expectant mothers walk, putting them in danger of slipping and falling.

The fake roof in the area of leak has rotted from moisture and is coming off, but this does not seem to trouble anyone. When they can no longer use the space for medical exams, they will close it and later the entire hospital, as was the case with its counterpart, “Clodomira Almeida,” which has been in total ruins for years, as well as “Maternidad de Línea,” which is also closed, to name just two examples of this type. This leak is now as old as my friend’s daughter, twenty-seven years and counting. Like the Puerta de Alcalá,** it “watches time go by,” faced with the indifference of the hospital director, the medical personnel, the Ministry of Public Health and even the patients themselves. Will this be yet another curious anniversary to celebrate?

Translator’s notes:
*Isla de los Pinos is the second largest of Cuba’s islands. Its name was changed in 1978 to Isla de la Juventud.
** A well-known traffic circle in Madrid, marked by a triumphal arch.

4 August 2013

For Sale: Auctioning Off the Past / Yoani Sanchez

se vende6a00d8341bfb1653ef01910496c10e970c-550wiPeople laugh in the darkened room, the seats creak, and from the bathroom a reek invades everything. It’s nighttime at a Havana movie theater and the audience is enjoying the most recent Cuban comedy. Titled For Sale, it was directed by the well-known actor Jorge Perugorría and has already been shown in an extended series of openings. A controversial film that provokes laughter on the one hand, and fierce criticism on the other, it has its favor that it doesn’t leave its viewers indifferent. Either they laugh with pleasure, or get up in the middle of the screening and leave. Such reactions are also symptomatic of how we Cubans respond to certain issues, work and people. We tend to love or repudiate; to applaud or reject, with no intermediate points.

This is a humorously macabre story, with dead people who must be disinterred at the cemetery in the middle of the night. The script takes us by the hand through the absurdity of a reality where the sale of a tomb and the bones sheltered within it is the only path to financial relief for a young professional. For Sale unwinds in an also cadaverous Havana, a city of faded houses with balconies on the point of collapse. It presents us with a society where scruples and urges give way before the imperatives of survival. A wake-up call about the ferocious pragmatism that invades us, leaving nothing safe. A metaphor, perhaps, of a time in which the past is viewed with irreverence and a desire to liquidate it, by we who live in the present.

In its favor, the movie also makes several references to the classics of Cuban filmography. The well-known game of mirrors — the film within the film — amplified and referenced. An explicit tribute to Tomás Gutiérrez Alea (Titón) and Juan Carlos Tabío. The Death of a Bureacrat, For Trade, Strawberry and Chocolate, are some of the films referred to throughout the movie. However, some of these references pass unnoticed by a large audience, one that younger or less versed in national cinema doesn’t know its antecedents. Rather than a difficulty, this lack of reference points allows another way to understand the story being told. If the script wanted to turn these hints into evocations, they’re left for many as events at the same level as others. The trick of the lens looking into the lens needs an aware viewer, otherwise it’s seen as one more point in the story.

And then came the actor…

The figure of the director also cast as one of the protagonists is something new in the cinematography of the island.

Few native directors have alternated between both sides of the camera. In For Sale, the union of these roles doesn’t occur in the cautious manner of Alfred Hitchcock, where we see, for a few seconds and in the shadows, his chubby profile. In this case the spectator senses that the character of Noel recalls, too much, the actor who plays him, perhaps because his designer and interpreter are the same person. It is clear, however, that the entire filming must have been like a huge party for all the participants. To the point that at the end of the filmstrip it rushes to conclude in a great celebration where it seems to offer a solution to all the problems. An abrupt and often repeate, closing in Cuban comedies, that bore more than entertain.

Although with Nácar, the female protagonist, the script reaches for it, it misses an intimacy leaving only a timidity that is not credible. Lacking the weight of interior emotion that has nothing to do with the easy laugh, something we have become accustomed to in movies made in Cuba. The excessive sex scenes and erotic allusions, designed to fill theater seats, in hopes of seeing a nipple here, a thigh there… a couple kissing in the shower. “Wankers” all over the country are pleased with a script that offers them many minutes of bedrooms, beds, cunnilingus and even lesbian moments. Another contribution to the hackneyed stereotype of a hyper-eroticized national identity obsessed with the pleasures of the body. The ideological clichés are harmful, but the carnal also echos banal and enduring perceptions.

If you have to sacrifice the dead to feed the living…

Beyond the pitfalls and limitations of For Sale, its main achievement is to convey a message of particular importance for Cubans today. Filled with laughter, the myths of the past are picked apart, yesterday’s buried bodies are liquidated. The dead stay dead and serve only in regards to the imperatives of the living, every minute of the film seems to tell us. The corpse of the protagonist’s father, an ideologically inflexible man, at the end of the reel is a mere mannequin in an exposition. Played by the actor Mario Balmaseda in the manner of a rigid Lenin, index finger raised, this character embodies the political leaders whose old-fashioned speech provokes laughter more than sympathy. Leaders and ideas in liquidation once their time is passed; the stark conclusion of this filmstrip.

I am among those who stayed until the final minute of Jorge Perugorría’s film. I laughed through several of its scenes and reflected during others. Despite my own objections and criticisms, I preferred to find its nuances and intermediate points. I gave it a chance and I think it was worth it. Because through its 95 minutes, the script reaffirmed an idea I have pondered for years: no one can bear so much past, carrying on their back the weight of all the deceased. A nation is not a cemetery where the living must comply with the designs of those who are gone. The same thing ends up happening to political last wills and testaments as happens to the bones in the film For Sale: they are auctioned off for the imperatives and pragmatism of now.

From El Pais: Cuba Libre

5 August 2013

Who Provoked the Riot in the Guatao Women’s Prison? / Dania Virgen Garcia

Havana women’s jail. Photo: Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate

Havana, Cuba, July 25, 2013, Dania Virgen Garcia / www.cubanet.org.  A reliable source who asked to remain anonymous for reasons of safety — it is clear that this source is not political prisoner Sonia Garro, illegally confined in that prison — said that those who provoked the riot in the Guatao women’s prison west of Havana this last May 26 were male and female officers of internal order.  These had been transferred to other prisons without being prosecuted for incitement to commit crime, among other crimes that were sanctioned by military laws.

The source blames the riot on the first petty officer of internal order, Yunieski Figueredo Garcia; Yasnay Velez Hariarte, Chief of Re-Education, transferred to prison 1580 in San Miguel del Padron, a municipality where they conferred on her an apartment near this prison; Ismari Torres Pexidor, re-educator of detachment 3; and the chief of internal order, Rosaidi Osorio Palmero, alias “Iron Lady,” who was transferred to the prison Valle Grande.

All those mentioned maintained strong corruption with the so-called White Collars.

The deputy warden of the prison, officer Betty, was transferred to the National Direction of Jails and Prisons, located at 15 and K, El Vedado, in Havana.

The six prisoners who initiated the riot, most very young, still are in the Manto Negro women’s prison.

According to the source, “They sent the worst management team from MININT (Ministry of the Interior).”

The new head of the prison, Major Sara, was previously the second.  She arrived sanctioned by another prison. Until she serves out the sanction, Lieutenant Colonel Diaz is standing in for her.

Yunieski Figueredo, alias El Negro, husband of the chief of internal order, Rosaidi Osorio, still continues in the prison as if nothing had happened.  This deputy receives the new inmates.  He is accustomed to harassing the prisoners to force them to have sex with him.

The source alluded to the fact that the White Collar prisoners, who run the economy and finances in the prison, were prohibited from exercising their duty and were replaced by officers who had no experience in the matter.

One group of prisoners who worked in the “Luis Ramirez Perdigon” military school dealt with the location of prisoners in the penitentiaries as well as other military details.

Now, the White Collars are located as cleaning helpers in different Havana hospitals, like the Surgical Clinic, the Pediatric “Juan Manuel Marquez,” Calixto Garcia and the Oncology Hospital.

A racist jail

The Guatao prison hosts more than 100 prisoners for economic crimes, embezzlement, corruption and theft in customs packages, among others.  Every week women with these crimes enter.

“Lieutenant Colonel Diaz is racist,” assured the source.  She refers to fact that the jailers who direct the leading platoon, who are mostly black, were replaced by white jailers, which has inconvenienced the officials.

She said that the prisoners who are pregnant or have recently given birth, who are in the galleries of the Manto Negro prison, live in extremely deplorable conditions. The galleries are very humid due to the seepages in the walls and roofs.

She indicated that in the Guatao prison there are two jailers who belong to the repressive rapid response body that put down the Ladies in White; their names are Yarelis Hernandez Herrera and Maria Pedroso Herrera, both deputies.

The former director of the Manto Negro women’s prison, Lieutenant Colonel Mercedes Luna, was promoted a couple of years ago to the National Directorate of Jails and Prisons (15 and K).  Now she is serving on an international mission in the Republic of Angola.

dania.zuzy@gmail.com

Translated by mlk

3 August 2013

Unionism for the Self-Employed / Yoani Sanchez

Self-employed. Photo by Silvia Corbelle.

The National Tax Administration (ONAT) office is open and dozens of people have been waiting from very early. An employee shouts directions for what line to get into for each procedure, although a few minutes later confusion will reign once again. At a desk without a computer another official writes the details of each case attended to, by hand. The wall behind her back is damp with humidity, the heat is unbearable and people constantly interrupt to ask for forms. An institution that takes in millions of pesos in taxes every year carries on with feet of clay, suffering from material precariousness and poor organization. Congested offices, interminable paperwork and lack of information are only some of the problems that hinder its management.

However, the setbacks don’t stop there. The lack of stable wholesale markets with diversified products also slow down the private sector. The inspectors fall on the cafes, restaurants and other autonomous businesses. Strikes or any public demonstrations to reduce taxes are strictly forbidden. It is expected that the self-employed will contribute to the national budget, but not that we will behave like citizens willing to make demands. The only union permitted, the Central Workers Union of Cuba (CTC), tries to absorb us in their straitjacketed structures. Paying monthly dues, participating in congresses where little is accomplished, and parading in support of the same government that lays off thousands of workers: it is to this that they want to reduce our collective action. Why not create and legalize our own organization, one not managed by the government? An entity that is not a transmission line from the powers-that-be to the workers, but the reverse?

Unfortunately, most of the self-employed don’t consider that salary independence and productivity must be tied to union sovereignty. Many fear that at the slightest hint of a demand their licenses will be cancelled and other measures taken against them. So they remain silent and accept the inefficiencies of ONAT, the inability to import raw materials from abroad, the excesses of the inspectors and other obstacles. Nor have emerging civil society organizations managed to capitalize on the needs of this sector to help them achieve representation. The necessary alliance between social groups that share nonconformity and demands doesn’t materialize. So our labor demands continue to be postponed, caught between the fear of some and the lack of attention from others.

4 August 2013

Angel Santiesteban Transferred, Whereabouts Unknown

From Cubanet

We received a note dated and signed today, 3 August, from the attorney Amelia R. Rodríguez Cala, who represents the writer Ángel Santiesteban. She asks us to divulge:

“I have learned that Angel Lázaro Santiesteban Prats, whom I represent, has been moved to a prison where the sanction imposed by another will be vacated, without his family having been informed of where he was taken.

“In my capacity of representing his legal interests, to immediately restore legality and to tell his family where they’ve taken him, I reiterate that my request to the Minister of Justice was to order his immediate release during the ongoing process of the appeal presented, Amelia R. Rodriguez Cala.”

3 August 2013

The Hungers That Kill Me / Luis Felipe Rojas

“Fly without fear” series, by Luis Felipe Rojas

It was the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges who said “To organize libraries is to silently practice the art of critique.”  In the past few months I have also dedicated myself to organizing  ’my library,’ but backwards, the library of books which I maybe had one day, or that I dreamed of there, inside, when I was behind the wires.

I imagine the independent journalist Jorge Olivera Castillo, in that Havana that fell to pieces reading all of Kundera, or whatever had become his latest obsession, chewing to pieces the best Polish poets.  Or the sharp chronicler Luis Cino with a universal encyclopedia of Rock and Roll, illustrated, with thin columns on the right, in grey, explaining the footnotes.

Now I have two hungers, mine and that of my friends.

Doubts

A long time has passed since the poet Antonio José Ponte didn’t have to send me the magazine Letras Libres from Havana, when some writer friend went to the capital. Thanks to the persistence of Ponte I’ve seen the best portrait of Tijuana, laid out in Letras Libras from the hand of Juan Villoro. Letras… he said in that long ago 2000, “Only a chronicler of the likes of Juan Villoro, author of the The Eleven of the Tribe and Palm Trees in the Quick Breeze, is capable of capturing in all its infinite nuances a city so strange, repellent and fascinating as Tijuana.” In a village in the interior of Cuba we also reconstruct that city of gunshots, visit its bars and marvel at its magnificent graffiti.

Now that the Cuban writer Ángel Santiesteban is imprisoned some shout themselves hoarse saying they are his friends or that they enjoyed his friendship … or they deny it, as a young Havana writer did recently. I enjoyed the goodness of ’Angelito’ on a rainy afternoon in 2006.

Santiesteban gave me a coffee that afternoon, was united with me in those days when, by a ministerial order (of Culture or Interior, or both), I was excluded from the literary life of my country and extending the hand of friendship, he told me to pick a couple of books from the shelves in his home. I had savored quickly a pocket edition of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, by Truman Capote, and that enduring gem Men Without Women, by our Carlos Montenegrao.I hestiated to ask for them, they were new, just arrived from Spain, but Angelito put them in my backpack and even the sun of today.

Maria Montejo Martah taught me to read Hector Abad Faciolince without lapsing into sentimentality, and Michael Hernandez Miranda told me to read everything by Cabrera Infante without becoming a fanatic, a chauvinist who goes around rubbing everyone’s nose in the the fact that Reinaldo Arenas and Gaston Baquero were born in Holguin. I admit I have overcome it a bit.

Today’s specials

It was Ricardo Piglia who said that literature is not transmitted from parents to children if not from aunts and uncles to nieces and nephews, and it was my uncle Gabriel who gave me the César Vallejo there was in Cuba, that lean edition from the Casa de las Americas in the ’80s. A week ago I bought his Complete Poems and it is now ready to enter Cuba.

A professor of Arts in Camagüey has entrusted me with all of Stanley Kubrick as if he were going to kill himself and I downloaded his movies, television interviews dubbed in Spanish and put them on DVDs, along with two specialized magazines, and recently I had news of cinematic soirees held among friends.

When the Universal Library was releasing their jewels at hamburger prices, I want and bought, for my friend Cecilia Torres, El salón del ciego, Las sombras en la playa and La ruta del mago, from the late Carlos Victoria. Now that summer is raging over Santiago de Cuba, Cecilia has written to tell me I’ve saved her from the atrocious reggaeton weekends in the neighborhood, and to thank me, which I pass on to Juan Manuel Salvat who had the patience to save Cuba in such a small space.

These are requests I’ve fulfilled. They are hungry others to fill them up through the long nights of prohibitions. This must be done before life comes to a close, or others come and give us the bad news about the printed book, the uselessness of paper or the ecological disaster we’re living in.

Before I crossed the barbed wire, people came to my house who, before getting off the plane, had collected all the popular editions, the fashions magazines, first aid catalogs, brochures, in short everything printed distributed by the airlines, which would all be outdated in a few months, but in a closed country it was received as if it had just come off the presses.

Now I thank everyone who helped me, and there’s nothing left for me but to imitate them if I can save one minute in the lives of those who were left there, in that feared and beloved hell that is Cuba.

15 July 2013

Message From Leonardo Acosta / POLEMICA: The 2007 Intellectual Debate

Since 1959 to the present, the ICRT has been characterized by being the media and cultural (????) organism that has enjoyed, or better yet suffered, the punishment of having the most mediocre and/or flailingly abusive and irresponsible leaders of the country, almost always ignorant of journalism and culture, or indifferent to both professions. That character “Papito” Serguera owned the strange privilege of having every single one of these “qualities,” which added to his anti-historical performance as a diplomat, which unfortunately has been forgotten, and that almost destroyed our friendship with one of the Third World countries most strongly tied to Cuba through the revolutionary processes of both countries and the first and hugely important internationalist mission from Cuba confronting the imperialist invasion against these brothers.

In the case of Luis Pavon, there are so many overt and covert accomplices that it’s not worth mentioning them here, but it is unarguable that his term at the head of National Council of Culture (CNC) for much more than a “five-year stint” only served to engender or at least prolong the state of “Blood, Sweat and Tears” in the national culture.

But the praise of both characters, now added to the frustrated, resentful and vengeful Torquesada [after the 15th century Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada] and the disastrous Congress of Education and Culture of 1971 is simply a disgrace and an insult to the memory of Jose Marti, Felix Varela and all our heroes and intellectuals.

This makes me think that there are sinister people behind this true campaign for the rehabilitation of the hit-men who have done so much damage to our country and the world prestige of the Revolution.  Who must we hold responsible for these excesses?

I estimate, first of all, the ICRT (Cuban Institute of Radio and Television).  I believe that as journalists, writers, artists, scientists, and of course the clear political minds that abound in our country, we have an obligation to unite to make them explain to us how it is possible that this lack of tact is permitted, with respect to the sensitivity that places us on the plane of certain countries of the South Cone under the power of people like the terrible Menem, champion of neoliberalism, with his so-called laws of pardon and forgetting toward the torturers.

Act quickly with tact and intelligence.

Leonardo Acosta

Link to original post
January 2007

There Is Always a Cost / Fernando Damaso

For health reasons I have to regularly visit a clinic in a hospital which for a long time now has been undergoing repairs which seem as though they will never end. I do not know if it is because it is just taking a long time or because of poor quality which causes things to have to redone on a regular basis.

I have noticed that there is a profusion of propaganda slogans in evidence at these facilities extolling the virtues of the Cuban health care system along with the requisite color images of its “maximum creator.” As though by decree all the posters and even the receipts now carry the tagline “Healthcare in Cuba is free but it costs.” This is true. It costs every citizen the salary not paid for the work performed during his or her lifetime. 

It is not the “attentive, noble and magnanimous” state that pays for it. The money does not come out of its treasury but out of the pocketbooks of each of its citizens. The stated costs of a treatment or surgical intervention that a citizen receives are based on figures from so-called first-world countries. However, the stated value is not applicable here, where surgeons and other specialists receive poverty-level salaries. They are more than paid for by the majority of citizens making contributions for services they do not use because they enjoy good health.

It is a formula which guarantees the state always comes out ahead. It is worth noting, however, the benefits from medical treatments or surgery and those who pay for them are citizens.

1 August 2013

Cuba: The Relationship Between Wages and Corruption / Dimas Castellano

Raul to anppExperience, supported by social sciences, teaches that interest is an indispensable engine for achieving goals. In the case of the economy, the ownership of the means of production and the amount of wages decisively influence the interests of producers. When that interest disappears, as happened in Cuba with the process of nationalization, the impediment to ownership and/or receiving wages that correspond to one’s efforts, forced Cubans to seek alternative sources to survive through the appropriation of the supposed property of the whole people.

Such conduct, prolonged over too great a time, becomes the moral component, that is, the socially accepted norms that are generalized throughout the whole society. To low wages Cubans responded with alternative activities; to the absence of civil society, with life underground; to the lack of materials, theft from the state; and to the closure of all the possibilities, with the escape into exile. Actions expressed in the same way in the nineteenth century; but now, not to abolish slavery and achieve independence, but to fight to survive. A collection of behaviors summarized in the popular expression: “Here what we must not do, is die.”

Given this reality, the government’s response focused on repression: police, surveillance, restrictions, inspectors and inspectors of the inspectors, expulsions, convictions and imprisonment. Actions on the effects, without taking into account that solutions require recognition of and action on the causes. continue reading

At the closing ceremony of the National Assembly of People’s Power on 7 July, the first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC), Raul Castro, said that the implementation of the Guidelines requires a permanent climate of order, discipline and exigency in Cuban society and the first step is to delve into the causes and conditions that have led to this phenomenon over many years.

He also added: “We have perceived with pain during the 20-plus years of Special Period the growing deterioration of moral and civic values, such as honesty, decency, modesty, decorum, honor and sensitivity to others’ problems.

He enumerated the negative manifestations, known by everyone, including that to a part of society it has come to seem normal to steal from the State, concluding that: It is a real fact that the nobility of the Revolution has been abused when the full force of the law has not been utilized, however justified that might be, giving priority to persuasion and political work, which we must recognize has not always been sufficient. And recognizing that we have regressed in citizens’ culture and civics.

Despite what he declared, he failed to recognize that the grants received from abroad, based on ideological relationships and therefore beyond economic laws, were useless to promote development and that in its place, this “help” overlapped the inefficiency of the Cuban model until the collapse of the socialist camp revealed the falsity of the foundations that underpinned it.

At that time, instead of finally redirecting itself toward the creation of a proper and efficient economy, the Government limited itself to circumstantial changes in hopes of better times, until new subsidies, from Venezuela, allowed it to stop the reforms.

The attempt to ignore that the interrelated system of the elements that make up society suffers permanent mutations, which if not addressed in time compel us to reform the entire social structure, has characterized Raul Castro’s government. He is endowed with sufficient political will to preserve power, but without the need for structural reforms, decided to deepen the changes aimed at achieving a proper and efficient economy, but subordinated them to the maintenance of power, which explains the limitations and failures of commitment.

Amid these efforts, the disputed presidential elections in Venezuela in early 2013, triggered an alarm about the fragility of subsidies from the South American country, which has made the order of the day, with no possibility of retreat, the urgent need to deepen reforms already begun.

However, both the first measures implemented, like the most recent, occurring in the absence of a civil society with the capacity to influence them, has determined that the subject of the changes is the same that came to power in 1959. Given its prolonged duration, it has interests to defend and is responsible for everything that has happened, good or bad; a characteristic that prevents it from acting as might a movement that comes to power for the first time. For this reason the scope, direction, speed and pace of the changes have responded to the conservation of power.

Immersed in contradiction of advancing without structural reforms, the Government is facing the huge obstacle signified by the mismatches that have occurred in the social system for decades. Among these is the damaging effect of the disproportionate relationship between wages and the cost of living, as reflected in the prevailing corruption.

Read wages should at least be sufficient for the subsistence of workers and their families. This means that the minimum wage must provide a living, while incomes below that limit mark the “poverty line.” Since 1989, when a Cuban peso was worth almost nine times what it is worth now, the growth rate of wages began to be less than the rate of increase in prices, which explains why, despite increases in nominal wages, purchasing power has decreased to the point that wages are insufficient to survive.

With the average individual monthly salary, around 460 pesos (less than 20 CUC, which is less than $20), one can not cover basic needs. A study of two family units, one of them consisting of two people and the other of three, showed that the first family earns 800 pesos and spends 2391, almost three times more than its income; while the three-person family earns 1976 pesos and spends 4198, more than double what they take in.

The first family survives through remittances sent by a son who lives in the United States, while the second will not declare how they make up the difference. This disproportion is the main cause that, given the loss of the purchasing power of wages, the Cuban family dedicates itself massively to seeking alternative sources of income to survive, in most cases through activities outside the law.

Because it can only distribute what is produced, the government faces a complex contradiction. Cubans, unmotivated by salaries unrelated to the cost of living, are not willing to produce, and without increased production living conditions cannot improve.

The solution is not ideological calls for the people to step up, but to recognize the state as the main cause of the anomaly and so to decentralize the economy, allowing the formation of a middle class, freeing up everything that slows the increase in production, and even making possible the unification of the two currencies which would permit wage reform.

All this implies deepening the reforms to make them comprehensive in nature, including, of course, the restoration of civil liberties, something that so far the government has refused to do.

From Diario de Cuba

1 August 2013

Official statement: We are publishing the complete record of the judicial farce mounted against Angel Santiesteban

We make available for anyone who wants to know the truth and have all the evidence of the judicial effrontery against Angel Santiesteban Prats, the complete record and all the documents that form part of this judicial farce behind which they incarcerated him in concentration camp 1580, El Pitirre, San Miguel del Padron, Havana, where they keep him in a grim regimen, besieged, blackmailed, threatened and isolated from his peers

Furthermore, we facilitate here — again — access to the proof of the innocence of Angel and to that which proves that Angel is an object of persecution on the part of the State Security for political reasons since he decided to open this blog.  On the video of Reasons for Cuba, Cyberwar, they recognize him blatantly and declare him “cyber mercenary enemy of the Revolution.”  The last violent action against him, being still at liberty, was recorded on video on November 8, 2012.

Also, we show some photos of Angel with is son Eduardo taken at different times, including when the complainant, the ex-wife Kenia Diley Rodriguez Guzman, testified that the boy had a terror of his father because of the blows that he gave him.  One can draw his own conclusions.

The objective of publishing here everything together is to shed light on the case, deliberately hidden from Cuban public opinion (and international, although they have not managed this), which public does not know that Angel was submitted to a rigged trial by false claims and incarcerated for five years with the sole purpose of silencing him and using him as an example of what awaits those who dare to defy the Regime.

continue reading

 If Angel were guilty of the crimes imputed to him and the trial to which he was subjected assembled all the legal guarantees, if the condemnatory sentence were just, could it explain why the Havana Regime keeps everything secret from the Island’s citizens?

 We know on good authority that even those who have signed the shameful statement against macho violence promoted by the writers of UNEAC, the only object of which was to criminalize Angel and turn him into the paradigm of the violent and macho Cuban male, have done it under pressure and without ever having had at their disposal the information and documentation about the case.  But the more outrageous and incredible thing is that neither have the sponsors of the infamy ever had it, that is to say, those writers — among which there are friends quite close to Angel — who know that it is all a farce in order to silence him.  Regarding close colleagues and/or friends, who well know how Angel is, having been paid to firmly believe the dictation of the political police without having asked for proof before pronouncing, it converts them to slanderers that, sooner or later, must render accounts before Justice.  They have indulged and validated the rape of all of Angel’s rights, but, even more seriously, have themselves raped Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:  No one will be an subjected to arbitrary interference in his private life, his family, his home or his correspondence, nor to attacks on his honor or his reputation.  Every person has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

 The writers from UNEAC, sponsors of the infamy, should go read carefully the Penal Code, paying special attention to articles 318, 319, 320 and 321, which speak of defamation, infamy and injury.  It does not take much for democracy and the state of law to again prevail in Cuba, and then they will have much to explain before Justice.

In case the mentioned writers do not have the Penal Code, here we provide the article that they will have to have learned well:

TITLE XII.  CRIMES AGAINST HONOR

CHAPTER I

DEFAMATION

 ARTICLE 318.

 1. He who, before third persons, imputes conduct, event or characteristic to another, contrary to honor, which can damage his social reputation, lessen public opinion of him or expose him to the loss of trust required for the performance of his duty, profession or social function, is sanctioned with deprivation of liberty for three months to a year or a fine of 100 to 300 shares or both.  2.  The accused does not incur any sanction if the proof that the accusations that he made or that he propagated were true or that he had serious reasons for believing them, as well as that he worked or that he fundamentally believed to work in defense of a socially justified interest.

 3.  The test provided for in the previous section is not admitted for the accused if he manifestly had no design other than to denigrate the victim.

 4.  If the accused does not prove the veracity of his imputations or retract them or they are contrary to the truth, the tribunal consigns to him the sentence and must give the victim the due record of that fact.

 CHAPTER II

 CALUMNY

 ARTICLE 319

 1.  He who knowingly divulges false events that redound in discredit to a person, incurs a sanction of deprivation of liberty of six months to two years or a fine of 200 to 500 shares.

 2.  If before the tribunal the guilty party acknowledges the falsity of his statements and withdraws from them the sanction is deprivation of liberty of three months to a year or a fine of 100 to 300 shares.  The tribunal must give the victim due record of the retraction.

 INJURY

 ARTICLE 320.

 1.  He who purposely by written or spoken word by means of drawings, gestures or acts offends another in his honor incurs a sanction of deprivation of liberty of three months to a year or a fine of 100 to 300 shares.

 2.  The tribunal can withhold the sanction if the injury is due to the provocative behavior of the victim or if he reacted immediately with another injury or attack against bodily integrity.

 ADDITIONAL PROVISIONS

 ARTICLE 321

 1.  The crimes of calumny and injury are only actionable by complaint by the offended party.

 2.  Defamation requires complaint by the offended party.  If the defamation or calumny refers to a dead person or one declared absent, the right to sue or to establish the complaint falls to his closes relatives.

 Now, with the publication of the full record, we expect that all those who have judge without knowing, will be informed and will realize the grave error of commenting gratuitously.  Expecting correction from those who have defamed and injured Angel is much to ask of people whose morality is worth what it weighs, that is to say, nothing.

 Value the recognition for all those who do not judge without evidence.

 Now, let’s see how those who have done it sustain their infamies.

False testimony of Alexis Quintana bought by Kenia Rodríguez Guzmán

The Cuban Juridical Association, through its various specialists, legally dismantles in this video the farce mounted against writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats.

Agent Camilo pursues Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Agente Camilo amenaza a Angel santiesteban 2012-12-15-13-09-52 from Los hijos que nadie quiso on Vimeo.

 The Cuban Juridical Association, through its various specialists, legally dismantles in this video the farce mounted against writer Angel Santiesteban-Prats.

 Agent Camilo pursues Angel Santiesteban-Prats

Agente Camilo amenaza a Angel santiesteban 2012-12-15-13-09-52 from Los hijos que nadie quiso on Vimeo.

 
This is Eduardito, in the arms of his father Ángel.  Kenia Rodriguez testified that the boy was terrified of his father because of repeated beatings that he suffered at his hands.
  
Ángel and his son when he was already separated from Kenia Rodriguez, mother of the boy and who testified that this boy was terrified of his father because he hit him.
 
Ángel and Eduardo, one month before they jailed the writer.  His son always next to him.

Ángel and his son Eduardo February 27, 2013 during the tribute that they made to Angel before his incarceration the following morning.  Eduardo was not separated for even a moment from his father.

Eduardito saying goodbye to his father Ángel in the patrol car when he is about to be transferred to the Valle Grande prison, February 28, 2013.  Kenia Rodriguez had testified that he son was terrified of his father because of the blows he dealt him.
Ángel with his arm fractured from the beating that they gave him in May 2009 warning him not to be counterrevolutionary.
 
The shirt that Ángel was wearing when he was arrested and violently beaten November 8, 2012 across from the Acosta police station
Violent arrest of Ángel November 8, 2012
Agent “Camilo” pursuing and threatening Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

 Translated by mlk.

17 June 2013

Fearful Debates at “Topics” Magazine / Agustin Lopez

“Last Thursday”

Don’t talk about politics because they’ll hang you, but I hung myself first and talked about politics afterwards.

In front of me there are four panelists, I imagine that they’re people who are knowledgeable about the matter, prominent scholars on the subject of Cuba and its miseries, but full of demagoguery and revolutionary utopias, they were born, grew up, and came of age within the political fanaticism of socialism, submissive and obedient to the directives of the Party and the whims and the ego of the Maximum Leader, so they substituted their needs and looked for sustenance, listening to and making what was bad, and they didn’t deal with looking for what was good.  I’m not judging, I am trying to be just and find reason.

The debate presented today is: Bread winning: incomes and standards of living.
Maria del Carmen psychologist and scholar on the subject, presents the moderator.  Jose Luis Rodriguez prestigious professor.  Betty Anaya Cruz also an expert on the subject and the pompous reporter Yasley Carrero Chavez.

Between them they make a detailed presentation of income, salaries and standards of living.  At no time do they explain how to obtain a salary that covers the necessities, incomes that raise us to a dignified standard of living and earn us our bread in an honest, honored form.  Of course, the means don’t exist in a socialist system and even less in this mutation implanted in Cuba.  They concur that salaries only cover 50% of the necessities and the other 50% comes from other sources of income.  They don’t dare say that it comes from corruption or from selling or exchanging dignity and decorum for leftovers from the State.  If they make direct political critiques they’ll hang.

A leading official representing the State in matters of commerce states that: “Not even if they raise the salary several times will it cover basic necessities and resolve the problem.”  Fuck, I say to myself, why is this mediocre person here if he already committed suicide, he is more dead than socialism, I hope he goes home and runs his errands to the corner store, and to think that he represents society and has a prominent post.

The panelist Jose Luis Rodriguez uses data to show that people’s savings in banks have grown.  Wow! Damn! Now I believe that shame has a price in the stock market.
So I wrote my first question on a scrap of paper that was on the seats.

If the system implanted in Cuba is socialist, based in Marxism and Leninism, and I read in one of Lenin’s books that the salary earned by the worker in a socialist system serves to satisfy his basic material and spiritual needs within the society and still have a little left over for other enjoyment:  What has happened that this hasn’t come true, does the system work?  Could we reverse the situation without political changes?

I didn’t believe they would give me the floor for my question but they gave me three minutes in front of the microphone and so I repeated what I had written and I added these words about the increase in savings: Was it the honest and honored worked who had saved his salary?  The worker can’t save anything.  Therefore it’s not saving but robbing, embezzlement, corruption and other undignified forms of raising income.  

I understood that all this problem of salary and everything else has been engendered by a socialist system and we are going to solve it with more socialism; that’s like a doctor faced with a bacterial infection wanting to heal it with more bacteria.  Thank you I’m done.  

They finished by giving a social and economic tint to the debate, supporting the new reformist model, as always avoiding the subject of necessary political change.  Terror and demagoguery.  If they directly confront politics they hang.

TOPIC: What is the income? What is the standard of living? What is the relationship between them?

19 July 2013

Urgent Communication: Angel Santiesteban Transferred to Unknown Destination

In a new display of arbitrariness and arrogance ordered by those to whom the Cuban people have been subjected for over half a century, Angel Santiesteban was transferred from Prison 1580 to an unknown location. That was the gift the Castro dictatorship had in store for August 2, his birthday, thus preventing mass demonstrations of affection from his many colleagues who know how to appreciate and admire him deeply.

Angel had been “authorized” to make a few seconds call in which only managed to notify a relative that they had moved him, and in the background a voice could be heard ordering him to cut the line, as if he were a hostage attesting to life.

As we said yesterday, dear Angel celebrated his birthday more loved and cared for than ever, the less the regime likes it, the more they ordered his transfer.

Raul Castro Ruz, you and all your minions are directly responsible for the security and integrity of Ángel Santiesteban-Prats. Please note that we have filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission and we have asked for precautionary measures.

Raul Castro Ruz, there is only one step you should take, and that is to enforce the law, and to acquit Angel of the judicial farce that railroaded him.

The Editors

3 August 2013

Very Rare Progressives / Manuel Cuesta Morua

01-moncada-vistas-300x168HAVANA, Cuba, August, www.cubanet.org-On July 26 was a strange date for the so-called Latin American progressivism. Rarely have we seen more than ten heads of state trivializing violence in a public act, as if the failed tactics of killing among human beings were the founding myth of a regional model of progressivism. Only President Mujica of Uruguay saved the situation.

This is new in Latin American rhetoric, and undoubtedly at odds with the fundamentals of progressive ideas. In our hemisphere we remember independence as the founding events of the republics and as the rupture of colonialism, but in no case do responsible politicians in power launch into a rhetorical account of the battles and deaths. Every message from the state is typically civil and about the future.

It is, therefore, worrying that some of the governments in the region have joined the ritual of the frustrated Moncada assailants, without thinking about the precedent it opens in their own countries. Their advocacy of violence paves the way for armed groups in their nations to invent their own Moncada, to assault a few garrisons and justify it with social justice.

There was more enthusiasm for the Moncada assault in the ALBA countries than among Cubans. Judging from Havana’s beaches, and the absence of flags, whistles and allegorical maracas in other provinces, and by the mocking conversations on the streets, the 26th of July was nothing more than another nice holiday. It’s one proof that the mythical condition of an event is related to what you can build, not what you could destroy.

If the current generation of Latin American leaders formed its vision from afar starting from what happened in Santiago de Cuba in 1953, they shouldn’t have lost the double perspective of the fact that, 60 years later, many Cuban revolutionaries entered middle age disillusioned, and that the majority of young people bring little vehemence to the defense of revolutionary violence as the supposed midwife of justice.

cuba260713_001-300x161But the fundamental issue has to do with the progressive vision. It should be noted at this point that the Cuban government is not progressive, it is revolutionary. A revolutionary is a concrete type, brutal and, as Mujica himself would say, short-term; someone who is very upset with the way the world is, who lacks the tools and cultural concepts to transform it, and so, thinks it is best to make it disappear…in the name of justice.

A progressive, on the other hand, is characterized by two fundamental features: doctrinal flexibility and the rejection of violence. He understands the revolutionary, but sees him like the juvenile arsonist, incapable of controlling the fire and its consequences.

When revolutions were at their peak in Africa, Asia and Latin America, progressives enjoyed a bad press in political and intellectual circles throughout the hemisphere and beyond. Especially in our region, you were either revolutionary or bourgeois, representing the interests of powerful nations.

In Cuba, to mention the word progressive is a deceptive intent to mask, under supposed social justice ends, the interests of the United States, but through another means: that of those who, according to revolutionary cunning, want to be ready after having read a few social-democratic texts.

Onthe collapse of what never should have been built under the name socialism, the progressive concepts gain media attention, seen as a new image and the beginning of a breakthrough. Then come the social movements, anti-globalization and people protesting in the streets against the stagnant powers.

In the process, old guerrillas change, adopting the peaceful path, re-reading Gandhi and Martin Luther King, not abjuring Mandela for having abandoned violence and criticizing his own violent past. Joaquin Villalobos, in El Salvador, Teodoro Petkoff, in Venezuela, and José Mujica in Uruguay, are the examples that come to mind.

Everyone understands that elections and representative democracy are important; that human rights that must be defended; that fundamental freedoms are at the origin of any sense of justice that can be conceived; that, in the end, conservatives and liberals may have, if not reason, at least their reasons; and that the attempt to build socialism is the hardest way to destroy modern conceptions of equity and social justice, as demonstrated in Cuba.

Where does the Cuban government fit in this, let’s say, progressive philosophy? Nowhere. In modernity there are greater concerns than those of their adolescent history with its heroic self-contemplation. Mouths to feed, homes to build, welfare to define, old age to ensure, and opportunities that offer, are and should be more pressing and decent concerns than praising what was ultimately a sign of poor tactical military sense that founded nothing.

This Latin American and Caribbean praise is not just a lack of respect for our history, it is also contrary to what progressives claim to defend in Latin America: the growing role of citizens, with their diversity of names and surnames, and measurable justice and social equity social. With no paeans to violence.

Manuel Cuesta Morúa

Translated from Cubanet

2 August 2013

Going Shopping? / Rebeca Monzo

These days the term “going shopping” has fallen into complete disuse. Now it is better to say you are “going looking.” This stopped being a pleasant task many years ago. Just having to confront the reality of an almost non-existent public transport system and the high summer temperatures are enough to make you think twice. Nevertheless, yesterday I went with my friend to “make the rounds,” as we say here, in hopes of finding a faucet that would fit within her tight budget. On this occasion we went to the stores in Central Havana.

For more than thirty years I have refused to visit these old retail establishments, which previously had been the most famous in the city. I remember that before 1959 the intersection of Galiano Street and San Rafael Street was called “the corner of sin” because it served as a place of temptation for men. They went there to watch the parade of beautiful, well-dressed women who often went shopping in this area as well as to enjoy the sight of the lovely, well-groomed employees who worked at its stores.

I went with my friend as an act of solidarity since I had resigned never again to frequent these places. The first big shock came when I entered a store called Transval, the former Ten Cent, which still holds lovely memories for me. We found ourselves going through the unpleasant and unavoidable experience of having to leave our purses in a cubicle after first removing everything of value — wallets, cell phones, glasses, keys, etc. — which we then had to awkwardly carry in our hands since, according to a store sign, they would not be held responsible for items missing from purses in their custody. In other words, not only were we at the mercy of the very people who would rob us, but we also had to turn over our ID cards to them as a guarantee, something that is prohibited by the Ministry of the Interior.

For me entering Transval had a brutal impact. Of the formerly comfortable, pleasant and well-stocked Ten Cent, the only things that remained were the building’s structure, the beautiful granite floors inside and out, and the granite staircases, which were unbelievably well-preserved. We immediately went to the hardware department, but the prices posted there were, practically speaking, out of reach, so we continued our painstaking search until finally, at the least likely place, we found a faucet my friend could afford, for sale in CUC of course. From there we went to La Casa Quintana — the old jeweler whose beautiful logo still hangs above the entry — which is now the lamp department of the above-mentioned store. We later went to El Bazar Inglés, a dark, sweltering place which displays and sells very unattractive items made by local factories and priced in Cuban pesos.

We then headed towards La Epoca. Our visit there was exhausting. We went to every department even though we knew we were not going to buy anything. My friend just wanted to see what was available so she could later buy clothes and shoes for her husband and son when she had the money. This meant I had to go up and down an endless number of stairs — not only here but in the other stores we visited as well — since there were almost no working escalators, even in the stores that had them.

As we were leaving, I noticed Fe del Valle park, a site where El Encanto, the most emblematic and beautiful store in the city of Havana, had been located. I could not help but think that its tragic demise in a fire* may have been the best possible outcome for an establishment which was a storied example of Cuban culture and elegance. At least it disappeared at the height of its splendor and did not end up like its neighbors — Flogar, Fin de Siglo and La Época to mention but a few — which have become sad caricatures of their former selves.

*Translator’s note: El Encanto, Havana’s most elegant department store, burned down on April 13, 1961, the eve of the Bay of Pig’s invasion. An employee later confessed to setting the fire, which killed an employee, Fe del Valle. The site was later turned into a park, named in memory of the deceased.

2 August 2013