The Long-Awaited Glass of Milk / Alberto Mendez Castello

vaso270613“On the evening of Friday, June 7, the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro Ruz received comrade Diosdado Cabello Rondon, President of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela” Juventud Rebelde reported a few days ago.

“The president of the Venezuelan Parliament,along with Fidel, made a brief tour of numerous crops capable of generating high numbers of proteins for the production of milk and meat,” added the official newspaper.

But if the meat and milk products are scarce in Venezuela lately, in Cuba this is a chronic disease that has now lasted for more than half a century.

In Cuba milk is rationed for the sick and children up to seven years old.

In hard currency, one kilogram of powdered milk costs a little more than five convertible pesos (CUC) and one kilogram of beef more than nine.

To bring a kilo of milk powder and one kilogram of beef to the table, a Cuban family needs to spend 350 Cuban pesos, more than three-quarters of the average monthly wage in the country.

“We have to erase from our minds the idea of seven years, we spent 50 years saying up to seven years. We should be producing milk so that anyone who wants to can drink a glass of milk and there is land to produce it here,” Raul Castro said in Camagüey on Thursday, July 26, 2007.

But on the sixth anniversary of those word, spoken and applauded, we still do not see the long awaited glass of milk for Cubans.

“The first secretary of the Provincial Party Committee (PCC) in Las Tunas, Ariel Santana Santiesteban, toured the municipality of Puerto Padre, where food production is not adequate,” the State channel, Canal Azul, reported on June 9.

According to the Puerto Padre station, due to insufficient feed, cows here averaged only 1.6 quarts of milk per head. This is the production of a good dairy goat.

Dr. Castro Ruz has done experiments in livestock since the early sixties of last century, when he divided and subdivided hundreds of thousands of hectares of grazing land in the country to introduce the grazing system of French academic Andrew Voisin.

To assess the implementation of their rational grazing system, the then Prime Minister invited the French academic to the Island, where the University of Havana awarded him the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.

On the afternoon of December 21, 1964, Dr. Voisin died of a heart attack at the residence of Protocol No. 1, in the Cubanacan neighborhood, where he lived.

“In 45 days I built full grazing systems, with everything, with quality materials, but they are completely destroyed,” an accomplished master builder who has been in charge of the construction of hotels, hospitals and factories to throughout Cuba told this correspondent.

“Look at this, look at the crime!” said an old cowboy showing this correspondent a number of dairies equipped, in his time, with modern equipment, now completely abandoned.

“The inefficient food production in Cuba, a country with a tropical climate, equipped with water, pastures, farming methods and knowledge to produce and conserve fodder, is due to political rather than technical misconceptions political. If the day of the politicians is put aside to let the producers get to where they are capable of going, you will see instead of a lack of food, a surplus,” said an experimental agronomist to this correspondent, stating: “For this it is necessary that they stop experimenting with what we know how to do.”

As it seems unlikely that the Cuban communists, in charge of doing everything in this country, will allow ranchers and farmers to develop the wisdom that comes from their ancestors, they will continue to experiment with how to produce milk to distance the glass from Cuban tables. That, perhaps, is the experience that the speaker of the Venezuelan parliament brought to his country.

Translated from Diario de Cuba

30 Jun 2013

Prison Open and Minds Still Closed / Rosa Maria Rodriguez

From http://voces.huffingtonpost.com

The new immigration law that went into effect on January 14 of this year, returned the right to travel to most Cubans, although it’s a right euphemistically recovered, because only a privileged minority can manage a trip abroad.

Now many are asking themselves if the more than five decade closure and violation of this inalienable right had any justification in national security and politics, or if it was a simple whim because since January we can see that opponents of the regime have left and entered our country freely and what happened? What star fell? Not even one of those on the epaulettes of those who oppress us. For so many years they have hijacked, among others, our right to travel, and now there are more than a few who question whether so many restrictions and abuses happened just to reaffirm dictatorial power, domination and submission.

Two constants dominate the social dialogue on this topic: one, is that no one receives wages commensurate with the current cost of living in Cuba that will allow them to self-finance an excursion to any coordinates beyond our borders — it’s expensive enough to do it within our national territory — and the other, is the dependence on funding the cost of the trip from the outside. There are many who compare this situation with the historic event of the abolition of slavery and the attitudes of those first freedmen, who didn’t know what to do with their new condition, and how to pay for their expenses on becoming a salaried employee.

They strangled Cuban society so much for so many years, that I don’t doubt they would also review, rectify and allow the ex-prisoners “on parole” who were sanctioned to exaggerated penalties in 2003, who also can travel abroad, since they only owed the State, not society, the specific cruelty of a group of dictators who like overseers in colonial times, still persist in putting Cubans in the stocks of lack of liberties and trampling on their rights.

27 June 2013

Ah, the Homeland… / Miguel Iturria Savon

The border fence between Morocco and Spain’s enclave in Malilla

“You barely talk about your country,” A friend of my wife tells me at a gathering in Valencia. I smile, because this traveling satirical traveler, not mythic even in his native Santander, where he sometimes goes to visit his mother and sister. Before leaving us he gave me the Dirty Trilogy and the King of Havana, by Pedro Juan Gutierrez, whose pages had such a negative impact that he postponed his visit to the island for almost a decade. And he admits his “sorrow and frustration after trekking through this tragicomic and bittersweet Cuba with the exception of Trinidad, Varadero and Viñales.

Yes, I do not usually talk about Cuba, about which I have published some books and hundreds of articles in the digital press. I’m not lazy but in the face of such discursive, traitorous and demigod banality, I limit myself to answering specific questions about my country and its challenges. In addition, the island is not the center of America nor the world and we run the risk of being mono-thematic and boring to our friendly hosts, immersed in the problems of their family, environment and country.

I don’t think, as my friend Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo does, that “There is no country with virtue. Every country is a virtual shaving”; although in the case of Cuba, the word has lost its drawing power. Not even the “patriotic” and corrupt gurus of the only Party still believe the tiresome rhetoric about sovereignty, nation, homeland and freedom. After decades of tyranny and slogans the concept is devalued and neither emotion, nor a million employees and soldiers who are paid to sustain the regime.

I guess that thousands of exiles and hundreds of peaceful opponents on the island are in harmony about the significance of the word nation, as well as the mythification from exile during the 19th century of Padre Félix Varela and the poets José M. Heredia and José Martí, icons of the fledgling nation and creators of literature.

They have pronounced, from the podium, so many beautiful and moving phrases about the Homeland and the Nation that I’ve learned to be cautious with these “useful” and fickle voices. In short, the Homeland is usually “the land of my fathers,” “the soil where I was born,” the garden we build, the family that embraces us, the wall that we try to cross, the country where someone waits for us, or the “promised land” of the marginalized who flee misery, wars, and the lack of opportunities on their “native soil.”

30 June 2013

Everyone’s Task / Fernando Damaso

Archive photo

If we observe the behaviour of the Cuban economy in 2012 and the first half of 2013, what becomes clear is that, in spite of the “updating” and new “guidelines” (which amount to nothing more than a simple wish-list), there are no significant achievements to indicate that at least we are on the right path.

Neither agriculture (a real disaster), nor industry, nor construction, nor transport have shown improvement. On the contrary, they remain laggards, failing to make a collective contribution to the country or to improve the lives of its citizens.

The only successes to be reported are in what is referred to as international collaboration (the hiring out of professionals at low-cost) and tourism. Reaching a level of two million visitors a year (a ridiculous figure for any country in the region) has been billed as “a great achievement” in spite of all the many projects and all the foreign capital invested in this sector.

What is really going on? The effectiveness of the few measures taken so far has been limited by absurd restrictions and excessively slow implementation (so in that sense nothing is new). They hinder development and, worse yet, do not completely free up productive forces or allow for economic expansion in all areas.

Politics continues to be focused on the economy. Out of fear of having to pay the costs for decades of mistakes and volunteerism (which by necessity will have to be paid), the economy is being sacrificed. Bets are being placed on an uncertain, miraculous future, the discovery of oil, a change in U.S. policy, a Latin American economic union, and even effects from widening the Panama Canal and the possibilities presented by the port of Mariel. The hope is that one of these developments will get our chestnuts out of the fire.

Cuba’s economic problems, as well as its political and social problems, have been multiplied many times over. They must be resolved by all Cubans — those here and those overseas — with our resources, efforts and intelligence. As long as this participation is premised on accepting absurd and archaic political restrictions, and as long as a small group of “chosen ones” retain control of the thunder key — the only ones capable of doing anything in spite of their multiple failures – very little will be accomplished.

28 June 2013

Angel Santiesteban: To Proven Innocence, Manifest Disloyalty

Editor’s note

This is going to be a long but necessary post. From the La Lima prison, where he currently finds himself serving a five-year imprisonment which the government imposed in a rigged trial in order to condemn him for a common crime that he did not commit, we have received these responses by the writer Angel Santiesteban, dictated to a friend by telephone. [Note: In the time between when this post was written and its translation, Angel has been transferred to Prison 1580]

A first answer from Angel Santiesteban to the open letter by writer Jose Migues Sanches (Yoss), recently appeared on the blog EforyAtocha:

And an answer to the document from the witness Leticia Perez Gonzalez, circulated in Cuba by the organizers of the Campaign All Against Violence.

We have also received, via fellow writer Luis Felipe Rojas, the response from the Cuban poet Rafael Alcides to the manipulation that has been made since Cuba the Campaign All Against Violence a letter that he sent to Angel Santiesteban.

We ask the readers of this blog to forgive us (for the very long post), but we consider it necessary to publish at the same time these three important items.

An Open letter to Writer Jose Miguel “Yoss” Sanchez

[Translation taken from Havana Times]

Colleague José Miguel Sánchez (Yoss):

In your letter — apparently affectionate and confident — you create the impression that we used to have ice cream together, or we’d go to the movies together or any of those other things done by a couple of friends in everyday life. I’m sorry, but I only recall a few greetings when our paths crossed in some literary events and chance meetings in the city.

Really, what you wrote seems pathetic to me. If I remember correctly, you were only in my house three times…or something like that. One time it was to get a book I was lending you, and the other times when you were looking for a Mexican woman, who I later had to accompany out of your house as she cried uncontrollably. Remember?

However, I — who could say something with proof — kept my mouth shut because I had no interest in attacking you, nor did I want to think you’d do that to me. Therefore I find it surprising that you, without knowing me, have traced this intimate psychological profile of me. continue reading

If everyone who has written something against me were to submit even a single piece of likely information, something palpable against me, I swear I’d be silent for the rest of my life. But I know they can’t do that. I can say this because professional investigators were after me for three a half years — not only with their cunning, but with their dirty dealings — yet the prosecution failed to present a single solid piece of proof against me to the court.

They could only present conjecture, like my “slanted handwriting.” This makes me think you’re one of the many who have heard bells without knowing from where they toll, because I’m sure your eyes have never seen anything that could convict me in this case. You limit yourself to merely echoing other speakers. You repeat or imagine, but you don’t make anything clear in your ambiguous writing.

It seems that we were close friends, and a few of the words you wrote were spoken as if we were intimate friends, which tended to confuse people and sow doubt. I don’t know why you wanted to give that image, but I would urge you to demonstrate the truth in your words with evidence.

As for Heras and Sacha, since you mention them, I’ll tell you that the first one wasn’t in the country when my ex-wife says the incident occurred, which undermines him as a witness. By that time we had an estranged friendship, because despite our long friendship, he failed to understand my right to express opinions in my blog that were critical of what was happening in my country.

As for Sacha, I always talked a lot with him, but even he was surprised to also hear the version told by the mother of my child. He only had two versions: mine and hers. Nothing more.

Colleague Yoss, every day the media campaign against me grows, it’s to my honor. Have you ever wondered why there’s such dedication? For me it’s clear: I believe this work has been undertaken to attack me because they’re pressured by the injustice they’ve committed, because anyone who gets closer to the facts will find evidence of the crude hoax prepared against me.

Just ask for the proof for punishing me. I want to believe that you’ve fallen into the trap of others, given that in what you’ve written I’ve seen no elements to support your words and assumptions. It’s a shame you’ve behaved like this; but please, when talking about something as delicate as this, proof has to be shown.

Yoss

I don’t know where you got the information about the alleged domestic problems between me and my ex. Could you give me the source or where you got this information? The person you describe has nothing to do with my personality. In fact, in our best times the mother of my son always used to tell me that I “wasn’t in love with her because I didn’t get jealous.” All you would have to do is ask any of my former partners to confirm that I’ve never been branded the jealous type. This was the first time anyone has ever accused me of that.

Hopefully you can get access to the proof that I did in fact present to demonstrate my innocence. These were corroborated by the police experts themselves. Nonetheless — despite them having no solid evidence against me— I’ve been sentenced. I hope you don’t think I’m guilty because of the “slanted handwriting” attributed to me by Lieutenant Colonel Graphologist. As my lawyer proved at the trial and in the appeal, as was supported by national and international law, such evidence isn’t conclusive enough to send me to jail for even one day.

In fact, regarding my not accepting even a fine, I refused to be deprived of the right to be innocent until they proved the contrary. There’s been a lot of writing and signed letters against me, but no evidence against me. That alone makes this legal process and trial unfair and rigged. It only allows the smokescreen of the campaign against me to hide a poor legal process and injustice.

I want to believe that you’re honest and innocent, and that you’re seeking the two sides of the story, the two versions. Do not be misled by personal determinations that trust your instincts. That’s what I want to appeal to in understanding how you’ve dared to consider me guilty.

I still trust you and I know you’ll seek that evidence and then tell me who’s right. I also hope that only after you read everything, you’ll give a true approximation about what really happened in my case.

But don’t be naive. How can you deny this was a rigged trial when they left me without witnesses (five witnesses could have spoken in my defense) because the court alleged a slight contradiction between the testimony of my son and their testimonies?

As has already been shown, there’s no such contradiction. To the contrary, it confirms the testimonies of my witnesses who, nonetheless, were dismissed. That’s called distorting the facts, lying. Then they illegally punished me with a clause that adds more time corresponding to the crime I supposedly committed.

I’m not pleading for mercy. I never will. When I’m wrong, those who know me know that I accept my errors. But being innocent, much less would I ever plead for mercy. I’m only asking for justice, a clean and transparent trial where all of you can be present and judge whether it was rigged or not.

Yoss, it’s simply that no mortal should be punished without proof. They can’t declare me guilty without a single item that affirms this, an element that’s more than the word of my ex-wife (who discredited herself in the trial by committing perjury several times), and her character witness or hearsay.

Looking at this all objectively, it’s not about whether I’m guilty or not. Here it’s about evidence that affirms or refutes. The channels are so clear and convincing that they leave no doubt: I doubt you’ve seen the video of the alleged witness that my ex-wife bribed.

Did you read the testimony of people who assured that I wasn’t even around at the time when my ex says I hurt her? Yoss, in all honesty, I want to trust that you’ll seek out those who can provide you with the legal information presented in the trial and that you’ll get to the truth. You shouldn’t condemn anyone a priori, like you did, it’s necessary to investigate, to first try to get to the truth.

If you’d like to interview my lawyer, I’ll make sure you can. But please, don’t believe anything you don’t find out through your own efforts, and watch out for those who handle and provide you versions that suit the government.

State Security is of course behind everything, just as you somewhat accepted but then contradicted yourself.

I expect your perseverance and questioning, but I need evidence against me, Yoss. I’m sick of just words and innuendo. I don’t want people to take my word; rather in the evidence that was presented. I trust that once this proof is known, all of that will serve to absolve me.

Best regards,
Angel
La Lima Prison, Guanabacoa

Witness, but of what?

Like the maxim of the Cuban writer Amir Valle in his article:  ”A stab in the back”:  the truth always catches up with a lie.

Before anything I want to make clear that I join any call against the diverse known violations, but particularly this I cannot join because underlying it is an accusation against me personally, totally unjust, which is based on a trial that is not supported except by the declarations of the mother of my child and the testimony of Leticia Perez Gonzalez, whose participated in the trial as and “ear-witness” or reference was limited to repeating the words that her friend told her. Nor could she corroborate whether the events occurred, so that any assumption of  her version of events as true is a form of perversion and distortion of the truth and cannot be conclusive.

In my sole, unvarying and repeated statement, I have said that a little after 8 pm my son called my cell when I was in a Masonic session.  He let me know that some police had been in my house searching for me.  I called an ex-police officer and sister of a friend and neighbor and asked her to find out if there was some mistake.

After a while, she called my cell to tell me that there was an accusation by the mother of my child, and she was alleging that I had raped her.  Immediately, I called my editor and friend who lives near the police station, in order for her to talk to my ex and ask her, in the name of our son, to stop that new accusation.  It was not the first time that she did it and in the previous trial they felt that she was lying.

I also asked my editor friend to tell her that I was getting an apartment so that they would not be renters because she did not want to live in her aunt’s mansion and it had been sold.  Then my editor called me again to assure me that she could not do anything about it, that my ex was stuck on the idea of making the complaint.  Five calls were made from my cell, which the police reviewed without finding a single word to compromise me.  They also went to the Grand Lodge and reviewed the attendance book where my name appeared with that date.

It goes without saying how detailed they were with my case, trying to find some chink at least to implicate me.  They did not succeed.

Even now one would have to ask himself why the doctor who, according to Leticia Perez, received her, did not remember the case or having attended her, although she assured that said doctor told them that my ex had to return with a police officer.  All that is recorded in the investigative file.

To top it off, Leticia Perez falls into flagrant contradictions with her friend and mother of my son, who says in her statement, months later, that the Instructor refused to take her to the Forensic Medicine.  Which of these two lies?

According to Leticia Perez’s testimony, the mother of my son does not agree to see the doctor because our son would stop seeing me for a space of 25 years; nevertheless, from that moment she prohibited him from seeing me for a space of three and a half years, until my son could escape and look for me in secret. In all that time I could not even approach my son because the Senior officer Pablo had gotten a restraining order. On reading these false statements I remembered and was moved again by the story of Salomon and that mother who prefers the other (the false mother) to have the child in order not to hurt him further.

Another big contradiction: how are her words supported that she did not wish me to be punished by 25 years in jail, and nevertheless, she maintained for more than a month adding new complaints to the initial one? Between all these complaints, which were dismissed later in the process, they added 54 up to years of jail, which is more than double what Leticia Perez say the mother of my son avoided; and she still failed to add the accusation of attempted, on her presenting with her witness, Alexis Quintana, in the police station, which adds 20 years more, which would make a total of 74 years in jail.

It is surprising that the witness presented by the Prosecutor, Alexis Quintana, is spoken of because once more Leticia contradicts the experts who reviewed the video, considering it as spontaneous when he reveals before the camera that he was pressured by the police and bribed by the mother of my son and shows the gifts that she gave him as a bribe.  Then if Leticia Perez questions the video, is she assuring that the expert’s report is false?  It appears to me a wildness, impudent and malicious, that now they use said witness as proof, after the prosecutor was obliged to dismiss him and had to dismantle his petition for a sentence of 54 years, limiting himself to asking for 15 years imprisonment against me due to the lack of proof of the majority of accusations by my ex.

Also, thanks to the writing by Leticia some doubts are cleared up for me in this respect:  I never came to know for sure if it was only a comment or if there really existed that officer called Noriega who the false witness assured had gone before to warn that there would be a fire.  They never used that one, I only heard of him by word of the Investigator, but now I understand that it was a way propping up the witness, although I do not know for what motive they dismissed that strategy.

If it were true, this Officer Noriega would have committed several insubordinations, because besides not having skill and having heard the supposed witness, he would have been judged for not testifying and serving as a witness. Or is that the officer refused to lie or that they saw it not very judicious to come to this officer with the witness Alexis Quintana, who has an extensive rap sheet which includes, among other crimes, armed robbery and continuous fraud?

The prosecutor was the one who presented Alexis Quintana as a witness.  In the recorded video authenticated by the experts, he assures that he had warned the mother of my son that there was a short-circuit just in the place that was near a climbing plant that served as the roof on the patio and where there were dry leaves.  The video is on view on YouTube, and I believe it is sufficient evidence denouncing the terrible irregularities of the process against me.

I remember that as there was an old garage in the basement of the building, it always had oil and gasoline in the sink, in order to throw in the pipes where also, he told me, the sounds of rats were heard.  He asked me several times for fuel to dump there.  If it’s true that there was the odor of gasoline, maybe that is the reason.

I also want to say that when I started the blog in 2008 I still maintained some relationship as the father of our son. Only later when I began my stable relationship with a known Cuban actress did she begin to criticize and speak badly to my son about my partner. I say this in order to make note of my political position long before her denunciations, and there is a photo in her house that she herself took when the Security broke my arm a few months after the blog was started.

I also want to make clear that no one has wanted “to pass her off as crazy.”  As many friends and colleagues know, the mother of my son, since we were in a relationship, was tended by psychologists, and in fact a partner of Francisco Lopez Sacha who also worked in UNEAC took her to a psychologist friend of hers long before we separated.

It was the mother of my son herself who told me that on 1 September 2009 they hospitalized her at Hospital de Dia De Arroyo Naranjo, for two reasons:  she did not understand the losses of her grandmother and her marriage.  One month before her admission, the denunciations began.  She herself also told me that the doctor had proposed hospitalizing her full-time, but as she told him that she had a son and lived alone with him the doctor agreed to treat her on an outpatient basis.  They also decided to wait until the 1st of September because July was the boy’s vacation month with me, and he would spend August with her.  On several occasions I insisted to the investigator to search that clinical record, but I do not know why he never did so.

My lawyer demonstrates that in the photo of the supposed violence there only existed one graze wound, a type of scratch behind the ear.  The witness Alexis Quintana in the video clarifies that it was an herb that the mother of my son rubbed there because it served to irritate her face.  And the medical document, as the photo demonstrates, only refers to that light graze, and not as Leticia Perez asserts, that it was on both sides of the face.  The medical record also picks up no mark on her wrists or ankles as asserted by the reference witness.

Leticia Perez tries to exaggerate the events without, once more, support from the certificate of recognition, nor by the photo contained in the file. Her words are one thing and the proofs in the investigative file are something else.

I trust those honest Cubans who have joined this Campaign All Against Violence do not imagine the governmental dishonesty that is behind this effort to denigrate my image and to cover up the conviction without proofs with which they have condemned me.  I know that many of the signers have not had access to the necessary elements of trial, nor do they possess a means of seeing the video that clarifies by itself and denounces the macabre strategy against me.

Also Leticia Perez, in her statements in the investigative file, contradicts herself: in one statement she agrees that she called me some days before the complaint occurred in order to ask for my help for the mother of my son, who had no money to pay the rent and needed 50 CUC.

Then in another statement, only days later, she asserts that I stole from my son’s mother’s house a quantity of money, a little more than 100 CUC, when some days earlier I had purchased a television for our son for 340 CUC and for 120 CUC a de-humidifier that was in his room. What need did I have to steal that money from her if when she asked I gave it with pleasure and love because I knew that it was for the good of my son?  If the mother of my son had money, why did Leticia Perez, as she agrees in her statement, ask me for 50 CUC?

It is also necessary to clarify that the one who asserts that between Major Pablo and Kenia, the mother of my son, there existed an amorous relationship is the  same Alexis Quintana, who asserts in the video that he stayed in his apartment.  If he had supported the accusations that they made against me, today my sentence would not be 5 years but 54 years.

As my lawyer showed, given my stature and physical constitution, it is impossible for her to have a light scratch on only one side if the blows that she related were with both hands and with a closed fist on both sides of her face.

I cannot deny the shame that I feel on reading this defense.  Human miseries are so numerous that I feel revulsion towards everything regarding this plan against me.  It hurts so much to see my name vilified.  It hurts so much to have to show at each step that I am innocent.  I have achieved more than my Investigators, because my friends managed to undo the false witness.  My thanks to God for bringing us light to film that person.

With respect to the video that Leticia Perez describes it does not agree with or approach reality.  Alexis Quintana, besides not being threatened, having made two different videos, nor filmed reading a paper as she asserts trying to pervert reality, because I was informed by the Investigator that she saw the video, so why discredit it describing scenes of reading that she did not see?

In the end, Leticia Perez asks the same questions as I:  Why did they delay the process?  Why didn’t they gather more evidence, more real proof if they spent three and a half years trying to do so?

I know how delicate the matter is.  All of us who hear an injustice feel the waking of our instinct of solidarity.  That’s why, in this case in particular, they have wanted to proceed in the least transparent manner.

There is only one truth: I am innocent and I have been sentenced without proof. My witnesses were disqualified by the trail court, and then I was condemned by a mistaken article.  I only ask for a fair trial; in that I will consider myself absolved.   We just need justice in this country to access my petition.

A guilty person might have taken advantage of the opportunities to escape that presented themselves to me.  I have said, and I repeat, that I wanted to stay knowing what would happen, but it is enough that I know that I am innocent to confront the injustice.

I feel more free in this jail than in Miami.  From here I mock those who think they avenge themselves on me.  I am freer than they, and I will await justice at any time, even after finishing this unjust sentence.  One day the bright light of truth will come, and many will lower their heads because they consciously or unconsciously lent themselves to this crime that is committed against me.

Angel Santiesteban, La Lima Prison, Guanabacoa

To Redress a Wrong

By Luis Felipe Rojas

A couple of weeks ago, my friend, the poet Rafael Alcides, published Acknowledgement of Receipt; a way of airing the case of Angel Santiesteban Prats.  I responded to him immediately: You are mistaken, Teacher….”  Alcides sent me this text which I want to share with you all apropos of  the opportunistic response of the eight Cuban writers, affiliated with UNEAC, on the occasion of the International Day of the Woman.

Here is the complete text:

Dear Luis Felipe:  Alcides gave me this assignment, but there is no visible mailing address to make the letter get to you, that’s why I leave it here for you.  On my blog today I published about Angel.

A hug,

Regina Coyula
Havana, March 2, 2013

From Rafael Alcides
To Luis Felipe Rojas:

My friend Luis Felipe:

Regarding the treatment of teacher that you give me in replying to my opinions about the recently butchered Angel Santiesteban, I will respond to you as Nicolas Guillen would have with his mischievous custom of town people:  “You are the teacher more than I.” As for as the reply, you leave me confused.  Either I do not know how to express myself, or you read hastily.  Let’s see.

I say on entering the subject that it is not a political case, I add ironically an “I have heard” that one could not fail to notice, and I proceed to demonstrate that indeed it is a political case, but I show it without editorializing, conforming to the method of the poets of all times:  leaving it said without saying it in an express manner so that it endures, so that the wind does not blow it away at least before it is read again, what Hemingway defined with the seriousness of he who was reclaiming right of discovery, “Theory of the Iceberg.”

But truthfully, I speak of marital disagreements magnified to the extreme of punishing our friend and excellent writer Angel Santiesteban with five years in jail, in its origin a private situation of that interminable list of things and domestic cases that fed our grandparent’s mockery, and then I pause to consider what the government now could do to release him.

Unshooting the one shot fired in error or for state reasons used to be done by previous governments, those that come after the fallen government, never the governments that committed the execution.  Aware of this important lesson of history, I did not mention possible solutions for the government, ways out with which we would both win. We, recovering our Angel and the government, what is going to happen, reserving for now the romantic role of knight with lance ready who come out to defend the honor of a lady.

You have to play the cards you are dealt, Luis Felipe. Unfortunately, Angel’s case is much more delicate than that of the 75 at the beginning of the century. Then everything was very clear, then the accuser was the government; this time, unfortunately, “I insist, unfortunately,” the accuser is Angel’s ex-wife, the mother of his son, “a son who is now 15 years old,” and that woman, that mother lied, yes, that woman, manipulated from the beginning or not, searched for false witnesses, fabricated marks of a beating rubbing her face with irritating leaves, perhaps, she spoke of death threats, fires, finally, friend Luis Felipe, that woman so in love that she would prefer to see her ex-husband burning in the bonfire before seeing him with another, put those people at the table, and they, of course, avid, greedy, as customary in these cases fallen from they sky when least expected, swiftly sat down to eat.

These are the facts.  God could not change them now.  Moving heaven and earth to get Angel is how much we can do for the moment, to go to speak with God if it is necessary (and I believe it is), without stopping insisting, of course, each with his tongue, that our friend is innocent, that a case was fabricated, but knowing that while his ex-wife does not contradict herself, they, the jailers, will be the good ones and Angel is the bad one. That is the situation.

Finally, Luis Felipe,  I do not usually argue with the reader, I respect his turn, but you are not a reader, coming out in defense of Angel with the passion with which you have done it on replying to me, you become part of myself given that I am also Angel, in this moment all of us who are in favor of getting Angel out of jail are Angel, that why I am explaining myself to you while admitting that yes, that maybe, that perhaps I have not made myself understood.

Because of your exceptional and unique character, this is a private delivery in the first instance, but only in the first instance, let’s say an homage to your person, by which you are authorized to publish on your blog or wherever it might seem convenient for you, that is to say useful for Angel.

I am one of those who think that honest men do not have one speech to walk and another to leave, as happens with shoes.  They have one, in my case, this from now on continues being the speech that you answered day before yesterday when I alone stopped seeing the point between the frozen crests in the immensity of the sea.

I embrace you, and again thank you for loving Angel as you do,

Rafael Alcides

 Translated by: mlk.

16 March 2013

20 May 1902, The Possible Republic / Dimas Castellanos

Decorations for the birth of the Cuban Republic 20 May 1902
Decorations for the birth of the Cuban Republic 20 May 1902

Once the flag of the stripes and stars was lowered amid popular rejoicing on 20 May 1902, Generalissimo Máximo Gómez proceeded to raise the national ensign at Palace of the General Captains. “I think we have made it,” were his words that day.

After four centuries of colonialism, three decades of independence wars, and more than three years of foreign occupation the Republic of Cuba was officially born. This new date altogether with January 28, anniversary of the birth of the Apostle (José Martí), October 10, the Cry of Yara, February 24, the beginning of the War of Independence, and December 7, the fall of the Bronze Titan (Antonio Maceo), would form a pentarchy of illustrious anniversaries, with a singularity when it comes to political material; May 20th taught us a lesson: negotiation.

In an attempt to reduce its importance and to shape this event into a particular ideology and into the objectives of those in power, May 20 has been compared to the military coup d’etat of 1952, and it has even been denied as the event that marked the birth of the Republic. An example of the latter was the opinion expressed by historian Rolando Rodríguez who said that May not be remembered as the day that marked the birth of the Republic because the Republic had already emerged in Guáimaro on April 10th of 1869… “That is where the origin of the Cuban Republic is,” he said. continue reading

Guáimaro, undoubtedly, is inseparable from the foundation of the Republic. It represents the beginning of that process, but that is different from the moment when it became a reality, when Cuba, despite the imposed limitations, debuted as an independent country, recognized by the international community. Guáimaro is the building block, but the advent, despite what our personal inclinations may be, was in 1902. Rolando simply confuses process and results.

His rejection of the date is not illogical. It is true that the Republic was not born with absolute independence or full sovereignty, but his reasoning does not take into account that this outcome did not only result from the effort and bloodshed of Cubans, as was desired, but also from the entry of the US Army into the war due to the geopolitical interests that were being defined in the international arena by the world powers of that time period. Like it or not, beyond our desires, that is what happened.

After Spain’s defeat and the signing of the Treaty of Paris, the occupying government issued Order No. 301 on 25 July 1900, calling the Cuban people to a general election to appoint the delegates of the Constitutional Assembly that would develop the Constitution and would define Cuba’s relationship with the United States. A commission charged with the task of defining US-Cuba relationships, but their result was rejected by US authorities. After multiple discussions, procedures and disagreements, the delegates received a final blow.

The Platt Amendment, passed and signed by the president of the United States, was delivered to the delegates to be incorporated into the Constitution, and it included a note signed by the Secretary of War stating that the President “is required to comply with [the ultimatum] and to execute it as it is […] he can neither change it nor modify it, add or take out anything,” as a condition of ending the military occupation.

What were the factors that led those Cubans to approve a document so lacerating to independence and national sovereignty? Simply, that they could not count on anything else, but their commitment, dignity, intelligence and capability to fight in the political arena. And that is what drove them, regardless of whether one or the other may have felt some sort of admiration for the occupying government. To add to this quandary, the Liberation Army had been demobilized, the Cuban Revolutionary Party dissolved, the Nation had not reached a crystallization point and lacked a Republic, with a State and a government of its own, and the people were exhausted from by the prolonged war.

The events that took place in March of 1901 attested to this. After the objectives of the Platt Amendment were publicly known, a demonstration of about 15,000 people walked through the streets of the capital toward the Martí theater, the headquarters of the Consitutional Assembly, to the residence of the military governor in Arms Square, demanding independence and sovereignty with an invocation directed to the American people.

However, a few days later, when a delegation of Cubans embarked to the United States to discuss our nonconformity only about 200 people showed up for their departure and barely a few dozen attended their return: a clear expression of the exhaustion and helplessness of the people in general.

In this situation, although intransigence might have seemed very patriotic, it was groundless and of no use. Choosing belligerence would have been suicidal before the superiority of the occupier.

The “all or nothing” expressed in “Freedom or Death,” “Independence or Death,” “Motherland or Death,” or “Socialism or Death” has proved itself unreal. Life went on after 1878 when we were not able to get our freedom. Life went on after 1898 when we did not completely win our motherland. Today, while this totalitarian Socialism is dying out, life goes on, which proves that intransigence, despite its solemn declarations, has contributed very little.

However, despite that this Republic of incomplete independence and limited sovereignty was not precisely the one José Martí dreamed of, Cuba joined the international community with a juridical personality of its own and closed the doors to annexation; the occupying army was withdrawn, and our destiny would not be that of Puerto Rico, Guam or the Philippines.

Time proved our wisdom. In 1904 the Hay-Quesada Treaty was signed, and our sovereignty over Island of Pines was recovered in 1925. In less than 20 years, Cuba managed to emerge from the economic stagnation and the social upheaval caused by the war; civil society strengthened; in 1934 we got rid of the Platt Amendment, and in 1939 the Constitutional Assembly convened, from which later emerged the brand-new 1940 Constitution that served Dr. Fidel Castro to support his defense at his trial for the Moncada Barracks assault in 1953.

Reminding ourselves that this Constitution endorsed the fundamental rights in the First Section of Part IV would be wiser than judging the Cuban delegates: the essence and spirit of habeas corpus, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and association for all legal purposes and freedom of movement. Freedoms/rights, inherent to human beings, that are the foundation of the respect and observance of legal guarantees, of citizen participation and the realization of popular sovereignty. Rights that are mostly absent today.

Published in Diario de Cuba

Translated by Chabeli

31 May 2013

Poland, Walesa, and a Journey to Freedom / Intramuros, Dagoberto Valdes

Dagoberto Valdes and Lech Walesa

By Dagoberto Valdés Hernández

For years I had a dream. Today it has been realized. Poland has always been part of my cultural, religious and freedom identity. Disappearing several times on the map of Europe, “semper fidelis” Poland maintained its nationality thanks to its rooted ancient culture. I learned from Poland, and its greatest son, Blessed Pope John Paul II, that culture is the soul of a people and the soul is immortal. Since then I have dedicated my entire life in Cuba to rescuing, promoting and cultivating the cultural identity of my Fatherland.

Later, I had the inexpressible honor to participate in the preparation for the Polish Pope’s visit to Cuba in 1998. And to be one of his colleagues at the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

Now I have arrived in twenty-first century Poland. I walk the path of his roots. The path of his history. I drink from the sources. Thanks to Lech Walesa Institute.

As luck would have it I arrived in this country on June 4, the anniversary of the elections won by the Solidarity Union. I’ve met its leaders. Heard their testimonies of their lives. Their love for Cuba. On Thursday June 6 I personally met the living legend of the last stage of Polish history, President Lech Walesa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and and legendary leader of the Solidarity Trade Union.

Just after eleven o’clock he came hurrying to the headquarters of the Institute that bears his name and where he continues his work. He entered the meeting room and sat with confidence. He greeted us. He spoke briefly and quite frankly about his impressions of Poland and Cuba. Respectfully and cordially he gave us the floor to ask him questions or to give him news of the Nation  where he said he wanted to go one day when we have freedom and democracy. Each one expressed his thoughts and his admiration for his work and the history of his nation.

Personally, I enjoyed the meeting. I looked at the lapel of his suit and found there, as always, the blessed image of Our Lady of Jasna Gora, Queen and Patroness of Poland. I heard him mention with deep devotion the name of Blessed John Paul II, his role on the long road to freedom in Europe and in his homeland. The support the Polish Pope always gave to Solidarity and its leader. His visits before and after the change. continue reading

I asked for the floor to express my respect and before it was turned over to me I heard an unmerited presentation about me and my work from my friend and interpreter Tomasz. I thanked him for the opportunity to meet him and told him I wanted to convey good news about Cuba.

I said that ordinary Cubans had become less fearful and the fabric of Cuban civil society had grown and strengthened and is poised for greater coordination for unity in diversity. He listened to me intently, nodding his head, staring at me. At the end of my speech that lasted less than three minutes, I got up from my seat and offered him a symbol of the workers and peasants of Pinar del Rio: a box of Cohiba cigars.

At the end we quickly took informal photos. He had spent more time than planned with the Cubans. He signed some books and reiterated his love for Cuba and wished us the best for the future. He left as fast as he had come. After the applause was a feeling of hope and confidence in ourselves, that “there is no freedom without solidarity” in which the peaceful path to democracy is not just an option but the only ethically acceptable option.

Over the long weekend, from 8 to 10 June, we went to the places where it all started: Gdanz, an ancient and beautiful city on the Baltic Sea. We visited Westerplate, where World War II began that September 1, 1939. We offered honor and prayers for all those who died in this horror of the twentieth century. On Sunday at early Mass at the Parish of Santa Barbara the Eucharist was offered for them all and for the conscience of mankind with that gigantic phrase on the memorial for the fallen: “No more war”. We could feel the terrible cross of a Poland invaded and bloody.

But there is no cross without resurrection. On Monday, we visited Gdanz Shipyard, door of life, a sanctuary for the rights of workers, temple of nonviolent struggle. Tabernacle of peace with justice, freedom and solidarity. So I wanted to express the famous Polish poet who was asked to write a verse to place forever in the back wall of the monument, but he refused humbly expressing that none of his poems could express what had happened and chose Psalm 29 verse 11 which proclaims: “The Lord gives strength to his people. The Lord will bless his people with peace.” In fact, in this sacred place, the Polish people received “the power of the powerless” and not to use it for war and violence but for freedom and solidarity by way of peace is the gift and task.

We began what was for me a pilgrimage and a school, by the monument to the fallen workers in these yards. Over the intense and luminous blue of Gdanz, rise, solemn and serene, the three crosses with three crucified anchors. This symbol of hope and of the deep sea. This symbol of the Passion of Christ in his people. But it does not give the impression of a tragic monument. It looks like a giant flower of life that comes from the assumed cross and redemption. It looks like a lighthouse in the sea of oppression and injustice, that the eventful life of those who row tirelessly toward freedom loses neither its direction nor its way. I got the impression of an immeasurable arm of warning. A warning signal, a prayer which rises for all who decide to fight for their freedom, we take the paths of solidarity and peace.

I could not stop the tears as I joined this silent prayer and looked down to pay tribute to all crucified in their body or in their soul, I realized that the blood and tears of so many men and women had been marked by the artist’s hand, concentric circles on the pavement, widening from the center of the monument, it seemed to reach to each pacifist fighter and every crucified village. I wanted to kneel there and stay awhile open to expansive mysticism. But Magdalena’s voice dissuaded me, the passionate guide who told us that there was a wide balcony reserved for the contemplation of this triple cross, in the huge cultural center and museum that  Solidarity built just below the monument and in line with the famous Door 2 which we approached reverently.

There it remains close to three decades later, the picture of the Black Madonna of Czestochowa and the portrait of Pope John Paul II that the shipyard workers had placed as shields during strikes where it all started. Then we passed through the vast hall of the Directorate of Health and Safety at Work, where the rounds of dialogue and negotiation were held over the 21 demands that the Solidarity Union demanded from the government that said it had been “the dictatorship of the proletariat” to guarantee the rights of workers.

In the end, we were cordially invited to the opening of Museum-Center of European Solidarity, which will be June 4, 2014.

Our friend David, mystic and musician from the Omni-Zona Franca project of Alamar, gave me a huge red pen with the image of Pope John Paul II, a true copy of the one Lech Walesa used to sign Gdanz Agreements. With it I wrote in the guestbook the incredible religious experience of having stepped on ground sacred to the history of mankind.

I did think of my suffering mother, of the example that my father left me on leaving this world too early, of my three children, my granddaughter who was born on May 20, the day of the independence of Cuba, of my family, of close friends and collaborators from the Civic Center, of that magazine Vitral (Stained Glass Window), and the current magazine Coexistence. And also forgiving all and each of those who have considered themselves my enemies or opponents with a prayer for the reconciliation of all Cubans.

This land has been inscribed with the letters of Solidarity the eternal message that full and true freedom can only be achieved through the paths of justice and peace.

I left with the deep conviction that it is worth spending a lifetime to inscribe, educate, empower, ethically and civilly, this message in the soul of the people, in the language and the circumstances in which each nation embarks on his own journey toward the civilization of love.

20 June 2013

Prison Diary XXVII: Iroel Sanchez, Militant in his Interests / Angel Santiesteban

Iroel Sanchez. Photo by Tracey Eaton
Iroel Sanchez. Photo by Tracey Eaton

The then-president of the Cuban Book Institute could have been one of my witnesses in the trial that was set up against me, but our political differences and his official functions did not permit him to put himself on the side of justice; which I never understood, because on the day that I might be a witness to any arbitrariness, I will come out in defense of the abused without caring for the ideals or religion he might profess. I like to say that I belong to the party of my feelings.

In the days of the 2009 Book Fair, barely five months before my ex-wife began her accusations against me, when I was talking with Iroel Sanchez at a corner of the fort concerning my attendance at the presentation of a book by the writer and dissident Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo, outside the Fair, which Sanchez considered a “provocation” that the CIA was behind, we were interrupted by my ex, who was upset, her breathing labored and her posture hostile, and who asked me for explanations for having gone to the event in company of a lady, because “she could not stand it.”

Iroel, on seeing himself involved in that situation, excused himself, though not without first asking me to continue the conversation at another more opportune moment.

It is worth mentioning that I had separated from my ex two years before and was in a relationship, already public, with my current partner.

After Iroel Sanchez walked off, I asked her for respect and distance, but paying no attention she searched for the sales booth of the woman I was with, with whom I am still friends and whom I do not name out of respect, and rebuked her in front of her co-workers and her partner.

A friend who was impressed by the attitude of my ex, of whom she retains a violent image.

Iroel Sanchez himself, after we resumed the interrupted conversation, asked me to be careful of her because of her aggressiveness, because she seemed to be “in love.”

Nevertheless, in spite of having been present at that scene, Iroel Sanchez signed the letter headed by 8 women who began a campaign against me based on violence against a woman with the purpose of serving as a smoke screen to hide the regime’s abuses.

I have searched in my memory for personal experiences while we met on the cultural level, I as a writer and he as a State functionary, in order to analyze his behavior, without trying to judge him, only trying to understand. continue reading

Our disagreements began in 2001, the year in which I won the Alejo Carpentier prize for the book Los hijos que nadie quiso [“The Children Nobody Wanted”], when as a result of its publication the “Association of Cuban Combatants” sent a letter where they classified the book as ”counterrevolutionary.” Later, Iroel Sanchez himself confessed to me that his companions from the war in Angola criticized him for having permitted its publication, thinking that he should have censored me.

Months later, at the Book Fair of Guadalajara, Mexico, he told me that the scene of the old woman with the little plate, from the story Lobos en la noche [“Wolves in the night”], for him was unendurable, that of many parts, it was the part that he could least bear.

Our big disagreement was with that posting where I made public the economic needs and shame suffered by the Cuban delegation to the Book Fair of Mazatlan, Mexico, which motivated the order that he gave to an unknown official to respond to me. This posting was also the reason why they cancelled the email service that I had been granted by the Ministry of Culture, with the objective of isolating me.

Another reason against me arose from post that I published on my blog, on the totally unfounded accusation that he made to a pair of young people with a baby that was passing by the training field at G and Malecón, saying that they did not want to return to him the portfolio which I had lost while walking there and which, according to him, they had found.

I also never shared his high-sounding speeches of honesty and austerity, which did not correspond with his lifestyle, using the resources of the Institution that he presided over for his personal benefit, such as when he put the car which had been assigned to him as an official at the disposal of his family, including fuel costs.

For me, I never knew what happened between him and Felipe Pérez Roque, after which they ousted the latter, whom he considered his great friend and with whom he had been a classmate at CUJAE [Instituto Superior Politécnico José Antonio Echeverría], professing to him his delusions of student brotherhood and ideals.

His animosity towards Alpidio Alonso was no secret, when Alonso ceased to be president of the Saíz Brothers Association and went to the Institute as “Vice President without Portfolio” he offered the criticism that on the day on which he was not needed in the culture sector he would not sit and wait to be reassigned but would practice engineering, which was what he had studied.

At the end of his days in the Segundo Cabo Palace he did not comply with his rule, refusing to leave his position as president.

By those ups and downs of life, here in the prison I run into an inmate who had fought in Angola and overlapped with him in those days of “war.”

He tells how Iroel Sánchez and Juan Carlos Robinson (today also ousted after having been in senior positions of political power), were nicknamed “the runners” because when they felt the sound of the enemy shells firing, they were the first to arrive at the trenches. He also tells me, sadly, how they distributed the medals Robinson nominated.

Even more coincidentally, I also know another prisoner here who worked with him in the Juventud Comunista [Communist Youth], and who says that they identified him a ”frustrated guard” because he was outstanding in doling out beatings, back in August 5, 1994, when some of the people in Havana, unhappy people, launched a protest in the streets*. Among them always there was the suspicion that Iroel sometimes was beating dissidents for pure pleasure, because he struck without necessity, just to prove that he had a better attitude than the others in “defense of the revolution.”

I have wanted to share here a series of experiences and facts, actions and feelings, to help me understand the human being, the greater ambition that, as an artist, haunts me.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats. Prison 1580. June, 2013.

*Translator’s note: This came to be called the “Maleconazo.”

Translated by mlk

9 June 2013

We Are Now Going to Hold a UPEC Congress / Reinaldo Escobar

The themes of the Union of Cuban Journalists (UPEC) congresses over the years could be confused in both their wording as well as their ineffectiveness and the subsequent failure to fulfill them. I remember one, “For a critical, militant and creative journalism,” and others that decency prevents me from presenting here.

Once again the professionals of the press are engaged in another congress. Obviously they didn’t invite any independent journalists or any bloggers. In any event, I offer a slogan as the title of this post, maybe they will even use it.

28 June 2013

Letter from Padre Jose Conrado to the First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party re the Victims of Hurricane Sandy in Santiago de Cuba

sandyMr. Lázaro Expósito
First Secretary of the Cuban Communist Party in Santiago de Cuba

Mr. Secretary:

I am writing to you in your capacity as the highest political authority in our province of Santiago de Cuba. I am aware that, given the hierarchical structure of the Church, by rights it is not for me to undertake this effort, but rather for my Archbishop, Mons. Dionisio García, and I have repeatedly suggested that he do so. But following the dictates of my conscience, and from a basic sense of personal responsibility toward our people, on the eve of my perhaps definitive separation from the people of Santiago de Cuba whom I love so much, I am addressing this letter to you.

In recent months we have experienced the tragedy of a people who have lost everything or almost everything they had to survive: as you know more than a hundred thousand Santiago de Cuba families have been affected by Hurricane Sandy. We have watched with amazement the delivery of aid for our people from so many countries.

And with amazement we watched how this aid was sold for hard currency, or at inflated prices, in flagrant violation of the the intent of the donors who gave it freely. We have received information from reliable people who have followed the trail of the transports and have seen how this aid, above all the roofs, were stored in State or military warehouses, while the population was informed that these materials had already been exhausted.

With amazement we have seen government or military installations repaired in record time, while the people continue without roofs over their heads, with their houses uncovered.

We are witnesses to the frustrations of the people, to their desperation and helplessness, to a voiceless and threatening silence that makes us think that at any moment they could explode with an uncontrollable and justified rage, which could have dire consequences for the coexistence of our citizens.

Many times, on going to offer them our humble aid, almost all of it sent by other Cubans on the rest of the island, poor as the victims themselves, we have heard, “You are the only ones who remember us, the only ones who have assisted us”!

Mr. Secretary, the people perceive you to be an honest man, who works hard to fulfill his obligations and who cares about the people. We have also heard that corruption and incompetence surround you on all sides and, much to your dismay, hinder your work. All of this saddens and worries us.

As a priest, I have renounced having my own family. Along with some of my colleagues, when our families, parents and siblings decided to abandon our country, we decided to stay to serve our people in their misfortune. These people are our family: our parents, our children, our brothers and sisters. We live for them and we are willing to die for them. If today we raise our voices, at whatever risk it might entail, including being misunderstood, it is to seek a solution to so much misery and pain, and because we are not inclined to stare at the bulls from the other side of the fence, but to commit ourselves and to help with all our strength.

I ask in the name of God, in the name of truth and justice, and calling on your true patriotism which I do not doubt, that you seriously investigate what has happened and quickly remedy it.

Padre José Conrado
Padre José Conrado

I also ask that you yourself communicate with the president of our country, General Raúl Castro Ruz, so that, with the full weight of the State, repairs can be undertaken on so many totally and partially destroyed homes, something so important for these families affected by Hurricane Sandy. The call to the solidarity of our people you have already demonstrated in your generosity and ability during the hurricane and in the face of its devastating destruction. Thus, we make possible the Nation José Martí dreamed of, “with all and for the good of all.”

Padre José Conrado Rodríguez

Translated from version appearing in Penultimos Dias

26 June 2013

Filling Stores with Bolivian Clothing / Juan Juan Almeida

No doubt you heard that last week, on June 13 and 14, representatives from Cuba and Bolivia met in Havana to take part in their countries’ first business forum and first round of negotiations to explore various possibilities for economic exchange and for strengthening bilateral relations.

It is a bad omen, I tell you, that such an important meeting took place in the Hotel Nacional, in the Tanganana Room to be exact, which coincidentally is named after the cellar that forms part of the aged facility’s foundation and where, according to legend, Franciscan monks hid valuable treasure.

The treasure is no longer there, only vestiges of the old legend remain and any business agreement between Cuba and Bolivia will last exactly as long as a Palestinian peace plan: one round.

But that is my very skeptical opinion. According to official sources, this transcendental encounter was led by important officials from both countries, who share a common enemy. The United States, Chile and the hole in the ozone layer would seem to be disconnected strands but they carry a direct message and a clear meaning. The meeting was more a political consultation than a business gathering.

Teresa Morales, the Minister of Economic Development, led the delegation from the South American country. You might remember her name from the very descriptive headlines of well-documented articles that appeared not long ago about the hundreds of demonstrators in the Altos district demanding her resignation for — and I quote — ”her inability to resolve the problem of access to staple foods and for exacerbating the shortage of basic goods and services.”

Judging from all the signs and signals, cooperation between the future partners promises to be unruly and counter-productive, which is typical of fraternal governments which ignore laws and citizen demands.

Cuba was represented by Estrella Madrigal, a fat, bland mid-level director with limited decision-making authority. She, like many, augments her diet with unproductive trips, presents from businesspeople and some small change here and there.

Other than a speech limited to the matter at hand — joint economic ventures — she spent all her time drinking mojitos, eating canapés and urging the participants to take advantage of the enormous possibilities offered by membership in the Bolivarian Alliance of the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). She expressed her support for SUCRE (Unified System for Regional Compensation), a proposed common currency to be used for all joint operations. In addition to speaking about investments, she referred to the siphoning off of goods on consignment.

With corrosive cleverness Cuba offered the Andeans one-of-a-kind, exclusive access to the thousands of empty shelves in its monolithic chain of stores so that they might sell Bolivian-made textile products, footwear and cosmetics. The risk would be all theirs; nothing would be paid for in advance.

The accord has stimulated the sparkling wisdom of Cuba’s people. Some have even dared predict, with some degree of fear, that Bolivia’s traditional multi-colored woolen shawl — the aguayo — will be become by decree the national attire. No matter what happens, it all depends on who pays more.

26 June 2013

Celebration of the 4th Anniversary of the Network of Civic Libraries / Wendy Iriepa and Ignacio Estrada, Jennifer Fonseca Padrón

By Jennifer Fonseca Padrón, Activist and Independent Journalist

(www.miscelaneasdecuba.net) | Four years after the birth of the Network of Civic Libraries (NCL), its members and founders decided to come together to honor the date, look at the accomplishments of their work and set new goals to reach. The celebration took place at the NLC headquarters where a dozen librarians exchanged ideas and made a brief account of the founding and development of the organization; among them the presence of Teresita Castellanos, co-founder and integrant of this civic organization, should be highlighted.

“The Network of Civic Libraries was created in mid-June 2009 at the request of a group of librarians who were then dispersed without being part of any project or already disappointed at others,” says Omayda Padrón, National Coordinator from the start to this day. One of the future goals to achieve is the growth and rescue of libraries across the country, she added. “The work of independent libraries is equally important to the work of movements, political parties and other civic organizations because it represents a permanent source of resistance against the government in any community, city or province,” said León Padrón, a reporter invited to the talk.

The main objectives of the Reinaldo Bragado Bretaña Network of Civic Libraries are book launches in independent libraries, giving lectures, literary gatherings, offering courses on leadership, human rights, Twitter, among others; exchanging ideas with other organizations and mainly to make known books that have been censored by the government, as well as to promote unknown literature in Cuba by Cuban writers from the diaspora who were once convicted and even their work was banned. This was the case of Reinaldo Bragado Bretaña, the writer and reporter the Network is proudly named after.

Also it needs to be highlighted that within the Network we are developing the Animated Smiles Project which consists in rescuing civic values, encouraging reading as a habit and regaining the culture where children play children’s games, particularly for those who live in the outlying communities of Havana where most of the families are dysfunctional and present problems of alcoholism, drug and domestic violence and many more, expressed Padrón.

Translated by: Chabeli

21 June 2013

WE ARE ALL HERE / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

WE ARE ALL HERE BUT WE HAVE NOT LEFT

Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo

The Tucumanian night of Miami seizes me with hunger and with no desire to leave the hotel. I am alone. They have already forgotten me, luckily. I have already forgotten myself. Love is not waiting for me outside. Not yet. Not today. Tomorrow we’ll see.

I turn on the internet. A bit of crazy videos. A bit of Cuban culture. Some music I don’t recognize. I prepare my next month here. I hear the Metro that runs on the elevated track. I hear the moon rotating, and it is not the northern moon that I know so well from the United States. We’re not there. I hear the “shipwreck” tone from my AT&T smartphone.

Some friends of the barbarity are calling my mobile. It’s past ten o’clock. But barbarity is always about to knock on my door. And I hear them, having fun, über-Cubans, repeating the wonderful and filthy jokes from two decades ago. They are Erick and Nelson and already they are coming, driving over for me. In the Palmetto sports car. There is no option. I tell them “Don’t show up without a good plate of spaghetti.” And fruit.

My luxury hotel is a boarding home. I do nothing. I am homeless in Miami. But still not exactly out on the street. I make contacts with the so-called “counter-revolution.” What a privilege. I make myself intolerable to State Security, the guarantee that my criminal red Lada* will take my life in Bayamo or in Boston or in whichever of these hotels transparent to the Havana mafia. I wonder how still there does not preside in this country an agent of Cuban intelligence. I do not doubt that they have placed a hidden camera in the room to blackmail me when I return. Or a radioactive pin to guarantee me cancer, as the Cuban subsidiary of the KGB. Poor little assassins.

It’s a question of waiting. For the moment, I type. I go down to the lobby and finally I swallow the spaghetti with desperation. Fuck, was I hungry. It is beautiful to go hungry. Don’t feel too bad for Orlando Luis. In Cuba he was weary of swallowing and swallowing. There is a surplus of Cuban food today. It is needless. Hunger is an invention of the dissidence movement, when it doesn’t know how to have another vision, when it doesn’t think. I came to the United States to see if I could stop eating in Cuba. And I’m achieving it since March 5, when I set foot in a beautiful New York park.

We talk with Erick and Nelson about our work there on the Island. We were scientists. We were excellent. We were a disaster.

It was all comical and Machiavellian. We leave the hotel as we left Cuba. We buy stuff to drink. The city looks like a deserted airport. At these hours of the night I continue still more convinced that it is not at all about Miami. This is West Berlin and we, the newly appeared from the barbarity, we are going to upset its urban logic with so many Cubans fleeing towards here.

The man who serves us is an Afghan. The guy does not know Spanish in Miami. For nothing more than that, he deserves an automatic deportation. To Guantanamo, of course.

For a moment we seriously consider turning him in. Not for any specific motive. To screw with him.  So that something more than exile happens in our lives.

We continue talking of the Biotechnology Era in Cuba. My friends cannot stay past twelve. In the morning they work. I’m just a witness. This was why they took me out of the hotel. So that I could give testimony about their lives. I’m a hostage.

Half of Havana now is now passing through Miami. This will be the final evidence of Castroism as the measure of all things, as a criterion of truth. One of the two cities does not exist. They would annul themselves by coinciding at the same time. One of the two cities will have to die. And I want to be in it at that moment.

Nor are any of our thousand and one lives here. We all leave a very important phone call that is left for us to make. Or it gave us a busy signal and for that reason we need to try again. None of us has fully arrived here. Nobody deserves the thousandth-and-first death of returning there.

The laughter has given me a little indigestion. They drive me back to the hotel and in the bathroom of the room, I attempt without result to return the spaghetti with  my head stuck in the bowl. Not even that. I digested it too fast. It’s called vertigo. I wish that none of this would have happened to us. I wish that we were all awake, but the nightmares stick to us like a bad slogan. I would not like to leave it unsaid here and now, that impossibility.

 *Translator’s note: Lada: A Russian-made car common in Cuba and used by the police, among others.

5 June 2013

In Serious Condition in Holguin Hospital and Police Don’t Bother to Show Up / CID

Mirta Velasco Toledo found herself in serious condition in a hospital in Holguin after being hit by a stone as a result of street brawl, in front of her house, involving three dangerous and well-known thugs from the area. The incident occurred on Thursday, June 27, at seven in the evening and two hours later the police still had not appeared, despite constant calls from the family.

From the hospital Zusleydis Pérez Velasco, national president of the CID and niece of the victim denounced the lack of police interest:

“If they had been alerted to any kind of opposition activity there would have been a surplus of cars, fuel, police and State Security agents arriving to repress it immediately. But when it is a matter of protecting or defending the population they are not the least bit interested.”

This is one more symptom of the degree of disorder and inefficiency of this regime. All the Castro elite care about is anything they consider a danger to their own security, not the people’s. Meanwhile they use the resources of all Cubans for personal gain, while they continue monopolizing everything to sell it, or for their own use, and they do not care about anything else.”

The incident occurred at No. 14 Playa Girón Street, between  Bay of Pigs 14th street between 24 de Febrero and Avenida las Américas in Holguín.

28 June 2013