The Ladies in White under attack by State Security and their mob
The dictators and their henchmen, as a rule, are extravagant, autocratic, narcissistic, hypochondriac, provocative, enigmatic and disturbing individuals. Because of this, and more, anyone who grew up in any of the links in the chain of a dictatorial regime, shares a psychosocial trauma that is difficult to cure.
Government violence starts to weaken the welfare state with the constant exercise of its own virtuosity to impose terror and creates uncertainty under the umbrella of authority. This validates the power and leaves citizens without any real possibility of using an internal or external entity to defend their rights. It is called — according to some scholars – legal helplessness.
Scientifically it has been shown that this damage affects all people regardless of social class to which each individual belongs. And it affects not only the psychological and family level, but also damnifies cultural and educational development.
I do not believe in left nor right; but that all dictatorships possess as their only ideology the practice of supremacy, and imposition of their rule to the extent that society ends up adopting passivity, submission and resignation as a natural phenomenon.
Totalitarianism, with absolute certainty is sexist, the rules legally and reigns over the woman by whatever means.
I think many know the repeated humiliation of Cuba’s Ladies in White. But there is so much more; for example, Cuba’s psychiatric hospitals are stuffed with very descriptive records of horrific sexual assault by the authority, which not confronted legally, damages not only the body memory of each female victim, but also the shock becomes irreparable, and is extended to the children.
Countless women who have been affected in their individuality, in their environment, in their family, social and ethical surroundings. Hate, in these cases (without referring to the many mothers who have lost children in the sea), is a sensible and even necessary emotion.
Compelling reason forces me to believe that in order to discuss the future of Cuba and its transition, we should first be self-sufficient and unburden ourselves of the disguise, and with it, the desire to please.
I don’t know about others, but to me, I respect the view of those who are anxious to figure out how to outline a common moral discourse that encourages citizen exaltation; it sounds naive, false, ridiculous and even childish tome to hear them speak of Forgiveness as if this were an elegant, civilized and pragmatic response to State violence.
I wonder how could Forgiveness, by itself — if it could — not be the starting point for another period of violence, or how this same absolution could achieve the reconciliation of a society that for years seen their children confronted like bands of enemies.
I have read, and lately I hear with reiterated frequency, several formulas and examples, but I only trust two old tools that have historically proven to be more reliable than revenge, and more effective than tolerance: The law and justice.
Exchanging Marriage for a House. Read this please!!!
Date: Thursday, May 23, 2013, 3:43 PM
Sir: For people like you who make fraudulent marriages or use Canadian citizens to come to this country and then let them ship out, the image of Cubans in this country is falling so low. More and more Cubans are seen here as social climbers, ruthless, without values or scruples and it is for acts like this. You know that if the Ministry of Immigration finds out what you are doing not will the person will not get a visa and be blacklisted but you can lose your status here? (Which obviously would not be a loss for this country).
On the other hand your announcement is very good especially when talking about the benefits of this country, yet in it you do not talk about the new Canadian law which, from October 26, , requires that spouses MUST live in a legitimate relationship for a minimum period of two years after obtaining residency, or they can lose their status and you can lose yours too. Here is the link to Immigration Canada where this law is.
Since you speak so clearly in your ad you should touch on the point that does not seem fair to the person who accepts this not tell them all the pros and cons.
I am not writing this to upset you, but to get you to do a little reflection, as you have shown yourself a bit aggressive in your writing and this isn’t a good way to think things through.
I must say that I totally agree with you that the marketers in Cuba don’t have their feet firmly on the ground and are not aware of the reality in which they live, asking these amounts beyond all logic. But what you propose is a fraud from every point of view (for the Canadian government who opened the doors of their country and to the Cuban citizen to whom you didn’t speak clearly about things here).
From your message I can deduce that you’re doing very well here so I think that instead of this you can gather a certain amount and negotiate a fair price, in the end according to you one achieves here everything he wants.
Regards
(I didn’t find the classified ad that gives rise to this answer, but I can imagine it. NOTE from Regina)
Cuba’s Ministry of Communications has announced the opening of a hundred Internet cybercafes throughout the whole country for June 4. The official press informs us there will be a doubling of the navigation capacity and a reduction of 1.50 CUC in the price per hour (to 4.50 CUC, or a little more than $4.50 US), if we compare it to the previous 6 CUC per hour it cost for an access card.
With the implementation of the 118 centers, government officials announced an increase to more than 334 computers with internet access. This is a ridiculous figure when taking into account that about 68,000 specialists from the Ministry of Health use email and the Internet, who in turn sell it “under the table” at prices ranging between 30 and 60 CUC per month. The same applies to journalists, intellectuals and other employees of ministries and state enterprises that have access to the Internet from their homes and who, with this practice, earn extra money while helping to scale up access to the network among Cubans.
For the small business owner in Cuba is still more profitable to rent email accounts and Internet service “under the table” in the interstices of the black market. At the distance of a click or a discreet phone call it’s possible to have sixty or ninety hours a month, according to their needs. Use of public Internet sites for businesses such as real estate, sales of various items, and rooms rentals is infrequent. A domestic connection remains the ideal way.
Illegal Internet cafes, which operate at rates between 1 and 2 CUC per hour, will not be affected by this measure that is announced as one more reform of the Revolution, because payment rates, although they have fallen by a third, will still be prohibitive for most people, if we consider that the minimum wage is about 220 Cuban pesos per month and a connection card cost 112 Cuban pesos for an hour.
Email service is commonly used for messaging with family and friends abroad, in these rooms you can see the long lines of girls waiting for their turn to communicate with their foreign boyfriends or suitors. Those who want to have a more secure communication, rarely use the email service sold by the State.
Another innovation is the implementation of the e-mail “@nauta” with international reach with storage capacity of up to 50MB.
In the flood of information coming from the main official newspapers, nothing appears about about the restrictions on sites opposing government policies. Magazines and newspapers showing the daily life of the Cuban reality are sometimes censored by the controllers of the national servers.
The famous “Operation Truth,” where restless kids from Computer Science University launch daily attacks on the social networks in search of new dreamers with the revolutionary project, has sharpened its weapons.
For over five years the “Hermanos Saiz” Association offered young artists and writers the possibility of a fixed line, computer, and a fee to pay the telephone bill in exchange for “combatting” inconvenient intellectuals, wandering daily through the social forums to convince Internet users around the world of the revolutionary benefits and to submit a monthly report of their cybernetic fidelity.
With proceeds from one 11-hour session, the 118 Internet rooms should report an average of half a million CUC at least, assuming a massive influx to the connection spots, but with the rising cost of everyday life, connecting to the Web is still a luxury that few can afford if they use only the services the State provides.
This post is from the Havana Times, and is an authorized translation prepared by that site of an article that appeared in the BBC’s El Mundo.
A summary is the statistics is as follows:
In a country of over 11 million people, the new internet (mostly intranet) access will consist of:
1 cybercafe for every 65,000 people (assuming 8 million potential users).
334 computers for the entire country, operating 11 hours a day, for 3,674 hours of computer time, daily, for the entire nation.
If only 10% of the population wants to get on-line, each individual will be able to do so once every six months.
If 8 million of the 11+ million Cubans want to get on-line, each person will be able to do so once every 5 years.
If one individual could connect for one hour a day, it would cost them $135/month (U.S.) — nearly 7 times their monthly wages (or more, for lower wage workers).
All use will be monitored, and any user who violates the “norms” will be cut off. No politics, no sex.
Revolico.com — Cuba’s “Craiglist” — is blocked.
No one under 18 will be admitted. (Forget homework help, students.)
Cuba’s New Cybercafés: A Piecemeal Strategy
There will only be 334 computers in the entire country to connect to the Internet. Photo: Raquel Perez.
HAVANA TIMES — Next month, 118 public Internet access points will open across Cuba, something which Cubans, one would expect, ought to regard as rather good news. Though any step in the right direction should be applauded, it would be remiss not to gauge the real impact this measure will have on the island.
Supposing that there are 8 million young people and adults across Cuba who are interested in using the Internet, we would have one cybercafé for every 65 thousand people. You would see line-ups of people longer than those that would gather outside bodegas if they began handing out beef rations again.
With a total of 334 computer consoles around the country, the cybercafés will be open 11 hours a day. If every user were to navigate for only an hour, a mere 3,700 people would be able to access the Internet a day. If we maintain our initial figure of 8 million potential Internet users, people would get to connect once every 5 years.
Even if we assume I am exaggerating and that only 10% of this hypothetical population wants to use the Internet, each person would have access to the web only once every six months. And Cuba’s phone company, ETECSA, needed all of two years to take this bold step, from the date in which the installation of an underwater fiber-optic cable between Cuba and Venezuela was completed.
Though the company’s directives offer some hope, claiming that, “in the future”, they will attempt to expand their services to meet demands with Wi-Fi networks, Internet service for mobile phones and even homes, they play it safe and conclude by saying they “cannot give any specific dates.”
The price of Internet is so high that a typical Cuban family would have to spend all their income so one of their members could connect for one hour a day. Photo: Raquel Perez
People, however, can do their own math. If, in the time since the sub-aquatic cable was installed, the capacities created can accommodate a mere 3,700 users a day, it will take centuries before all Cubans of age and deserving of Internet access have this privilege.
In addition to this, they have announced that rates will be lowered to US $5.00 (4.50 CUC) for every hour of Internet use, a price which proves affordable if one connects to the web once every six months, but which would entail spending US $135 a month if one wanted to do so, for 1 hour, at least once a day.
A Cuban’s average monthly salary is of US $20. Supposing that, in a given family, there are two people earning this salary and a couple of pensioners receiving US $10, plus a relative in Miami who sends them US $50 every month, they would have to devote the family’s entire income to pay the cybercafé bill.
The problem, apparently, is that ETECSA requires substantial sums of money, “significant investments”, to modernize the country’s technological infrastructure. It shouldn’t take long to put together such money, considering that, with these new cybercafés, they can take in US $16 thousand a day, some 6 million dollars a year.
Strict Rules on Users
In addition to being expensive, cybercafés will impose strict rules on users, and authorities will reserve the right to block the account of any individual who employs the web to carry out actions that “undermine public safety or the country’s integrity, economy, independence and sovereignty.”
ETECSA will also “immediately suspend the service if it detects that, during the navigation session, the user has violated any of the ethical norms of behavior which the Cuban State has established.”
In a nutshell, no politics and no sex. I imagine that the slogan of these cybercafés will be something along the lines of “A healthy Internet for the Cuban family.” A system of filters which block access to a number of ideologically or morally “offensive” sites is already in place.
Each cybercafe with access to Internet will have approximately three computers and 67 thousand potential users. Photo: Raquel Perez
Political censorship on the web is rather “tropical”: though some sites operated by Cubans living in Miami are blocked, the main newspaper of Cuban exiles can be freely accessed by cybernauts on the island. In the case of Spain, one anti-Castro page is blocked and another isn’t, though both publish pretty much the same information.
When it comes to moral matters, however, censors evince the puritanism of a small-town parish priest. In their crusade against pornography, they block new pages containing videos, photographs, contacts, stories or any kind of eroticism – literally nothing gets past them.
They are also particularly intolerant of any commercial use of the web. Cuba’s main classifieds page, Revolico.com, is blocked. There isn’t a single Internet user in Cuba, however, who does not know how to use a proxy to evade the official filters and access these ads.
The most surprising restriction, however, is that people under 18 will not be allowed to navigate the Internet at these cybercafés. It looks as though junior and senior secondary school students will have to cultivate a good deal of patience and wait until they reach university to get to know what the Internet is all about.
We would well be justified in describing Cuba’s current strategy for the expansion of Internet services, which leaders in the sector insist will lead to a luminous future of web connectivity, as a piecemeal tactic.
In his five years as a graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, El Sexto (The Sixth), has gone through violent and arbitrary arrests, the seizure of his personal property, threats and other abuses, but has continued to stamp his works throughout Havana.
State Security has kidnapped him and even taken him to visit Alexis Leyva, Kcho, an “example of artist” according to them. In vain, El Sexto, is backsliding and the direct and confrontational tone of his art grows ever stronger. If at one time he used great ironies such as “Return my five euros,” he now puts “Down With Castro” on a bloody background or paints a swastika over the face of Fidel Castro.
“I’m like a dog with a bone,” says Danilo in conversation with this reporter, “even though every time they erase my graffiti faster.” When they increased the pressure on him, he decided to combine the marginal arts of tattoo and graffiti and began to draw on his own skin what he wanted to denounce; and in addition, as an example of his persistence, he wrote his signature over the police pink paint-outs over his previous graffiti.
A Spray Can as a Weapon
But they have to catch him in the act to stop him. Simply carrying a spray can in his pocket, as happened on Friday May 17, when he went with some friends to buy some beer at the corner of Twenty and G about nine in the evening. A policeman asked for documentation and took him to the station at Zapata and C, where he had to wait until the next day to meet with the chief of the station.
“When I finally talked to him,” Danilo said, “he asked me, ‘So you’re the one who does all that out there?’ I gave him a disc with my work, so he would know what I was doing. ” The reaction was take odor samples (they tried to get him to give them urine samples, but he declined, although they disrespected him with extreme rudeness) and they took him in two patrol cars to make a search of his home.
“They started to take canvases, sprays, a laptop, a camera, memory cards, discs and unused canvases, and put everything in nylon bags that said ‘Forensics’,” El Sexto said. Then they took him back to the police station and at midnight that same Saturday, the 18th, they returned to take him to the office of the chief, now absent. “There was a woman who behaved with very little respect. All my belongings were on a table, any old way, all mixed up,” says Danilo.
The officer informed him that three of his paintings would be confiscated, as well as templates for stencils, his artistic projects, thirty-seven enamel spray cans and even four cans of oil paint and even his resume, arguing that they were objects related to “a crime under investigation.” Then they handed him a record of what had been seized and released him.
Not Unemployed: Artist
Two days later, El Sexto started a legal process with an attorney to get them to return what they had seized him, because when they searched his home and confiscated objects, he was not given a copy of what confiscated, as dictated by the procedures. “Why did they return some works and not others?” the graffiti artist asked. “Why did they keep the spray paint that I bought at State stores? They did what they felt like, violating many things,” he said.
He had been branded unemployed and he had replied: “I am an artist, although I am not your artist. I’m not here to worship any god. I have the right to criticize and say what I want.” And it was more clear when he told the police: “You’re not talking about some revolution, but a phalanx who loves the F of Fidel. It is illegal for me to paint the walls, but not to write “Long live Fidel” or “In line with Fidel” without asking anyone. Why do I have to check with you to say something?”
The Secret Process
Determined not to be passed over, he will continue to demand the return of his works. “I did not kill anyone, I am an honest person, I live in my work and my wife is pregnant,” he pointed out to the officer. “In fact, my greatest endorsement is what you do, punishing me, which confirms that I’m doing my job. How ironic.”
When the informed his attorney that a file had been opened on his client, the counsel asked what he was accused of, and the only response, according to what Danilo said, “they told him they couldn’t tell him, because it was a secret process. I insisted, but the only thing they told me was “soon” they would tell me what I was accused of. They alleged that it was a falsehood that they’d made an accusation and that I had refused to sign it. But we wrote letters of complaint and delivered them to the appropriate places,” Danilo Maldonado concluded.
The Criminal Value of the Artwork
From these events, Otari Oliva, one of the project coordinators of Christ the Saviour Gallery (which did a great series of exhibitions of Cuban graffiti between September and November), wrote a text setting out his concerns as an artist: “The situation of El Sexto makes me reflect: a work of art can possess criminal value and this is referred to in the criminal code of my country. Starting today I would like to be able to determine, as I can determine the criminal value of certain acts, the criminal value which may lie in a work of art.” And then he made his position clear: “Either the criminal code will be adequate and judgment will be pronounced from an exercise in transparency, clarifying for Danilo and everyone the reasoning of the authorities, or we are dangerously close to a burning pyre of books, in addition to the hands of our artists trembling perhaps a little more from now on.”
Either way, El Sexto does not have among his plans, backing down. In the coarse search they did of his home, the experts like a bag with the word “Forensics” printed on it, which he now thinks of using to create a work. A gift that they gave him to continue honing his art.
Photos courtesy of Ernesto Santana. Originally published on Cubanet.
Some days ago I was told that I had been “revoked” to a maximum security prison for six months for the hunger strike I undertook. They are so predictable I could not help smiling. But it has been nothing more than a justification to punish me and keep me away from the phone in a further attempt to reduce the regularity of the posts I write for my blog, The Children Nobody Wanted.
Since I’ve been here I haven’t gone to the dining room, for the benefit it represents for me to spend time in my cell, allowing me to write, read, and also avoid losing this in search of food you can not eat.
One prisoner told me that perhaps the conversation I had with the Prison Director had been a provocation for me to declare a hunger strike again, to land me in solitary confinement and to put an end to my public demands. They want to silence me to prevent me from giving my opinions about May 1st and their report to the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.
Once again, the government of the Castro brothers, violates the rights of a Cuban with their usual cynicism, using another lie to commit a new injustice, as I had been informed that he was not revoked because the transfer from La Lima Prison to 1580 Prison was not because of a discipline infraction, and this is what they also told my family on Saturday April 13.
Now I am, for those who still defend the dictatorship, in a maximum security prison, instead of the promised hospital where they would give me a “check up.” Lie after lie.
Worst of all is that they have emerged, again, unharmed before the Human Rights Council, precisely on the issue of prisons in Cuba, where they commit so many abuses and violate the rights of prisoners with impunity.
The Council and the world must prevent the Cuban government from continuing to mock the United Nations.
We Cuban Prisoners ask each fair and decent citizen take a minute of your life and protest the abuses that occur in Cuban jails.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
1580 Prison, May 2013
Havana, Cuba
Eliecer greets his father and girlfriend on returning to Cuba
A big hug to all my friends who have remained concerned about my arrival. Today for the first time I put my hands on a keyboard. Since I boarded the plane in Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport, after five minutes of free WiFi, I have heard nothing more about what’s going on in the world.
During the journey I had time to think about many things. The memories of the vivid moments of a journey that took me to twelve countries passed through my mind with a particular drama. I felt I had known contemporary civilization, the Modern Era, the development to where humanity knows and understands, and I was on board a flight that took me out of this recently discovered reality and carried me back to years earlier. But I was absolutely sure that this was what I wanted; the sentimental ties I’d left in Cuba and a sense of responsibility to the future were overwhelmingly powerful reasons.
I wasn’t even sad, I was happy to return.
My landing was uneventful, but already from the air something was not right. The image I saw through the window as the plane descended caused me a rare chill. I had been warned about it by some friends experienced in comings and goings. I had heard about the shock I would feel when, involuntarily, my brain began to compare details, shapes, colors, light, life. And so it was, they were not wrong in even a single word.
Once at the airport, knowing that my father and my girlfriend were on the other side of the spider web, I just focused my mind on doing things the best way to get out fast. I was among the first waiting for the luggage and as I saw the coast was clear I wanted to think I could leave in an ordinary way, despite my immense physical and mental exhaustion, the thought of quickly being the arms of my old man and Raquel restored some of my strength.
The bags were delayed a while. I hadn’t taken the precaution of sealing them, or at least putting a padlock on them. I was afraid someone would slip their hands inside, take out something that I would feel deeply. Every gift, from a flash drive to some used clothing had a recipient and would solve or alleviate some problem.
Finally my things arrive and I directed my steps hopefully toward a sign reading “Exit,” where I saw all those who were on my flight leaving. I hadn’t gone far when a young customs official pulled me out of the line and told me I should go to an open space on the side of the aisle where there were large suitcases, the young woman told me it would be a “routine check.”
I only managed to answer: “Do what you want, but please make it quick, I’m really tired.”
Another young officer, but with a higher rank, said something and told me to follow her, we had to go to another place. Then I began to realize that things weren’t normal; in my case, unfortunately, they would be abnormal.
We came to another room where there were only Cubans. There I experienced the veracity of all the amazing stories I had heard about Cuban airports for Cubans. Everywhere I looked I saw people arguing, angry, fatigued, lazy, despairing and jealous. In this room, in full view of everyone, my luggage was dismantled one by one, piece by piece, detail by detail, with the thoroughness of surgeons.
Everything that they found interesting they took for a while to analyze it in another place, where they then brought and photographed it. Specifically phones, memories or any kind of technology or cables.
The most contentious issue was the literature. According to the officer who took the things, “the topics seem inappropriate, analysts are keeping these books and if you want, you can claim them later and if the claim is approved you can come and get.”
I said I would not go from Puerto Padre to Havana to claim them for fun.
And what were the subjects of these books? Was it in a case of a manual on how to make a bomb? No, only books on critical culture, democracy, human rights … Well, it seems that here that is the same as a bomb.
In all these efforts they spent four long hours, and even people coming on later flights had left. Then I still had to stand in the huge line to weigh the luggage and pay taxes. In the process, a lady approached me to tell me: “Your father’s out there, pretty pissed off already.” I knew that, indeed, things could get ugly if I didn’t get out soon because my father, who taught me not to bear the humiliation, would come and find me however he could.
I stood it for another minute, totally not up for it, I was relatively close to one of the “declassified agents” who work in customs and I was ready to unload everything I wanted to say. But it seems they know where the critical point is, and at that moment a boss appeared who, after I paid, let me leave.
God, what a thrill, I was half passed out but got that second wind to crush my loves ones to me. Also my great friends Reinaldo Escobar, Agustín and another boy who took some pictures.
On the way to the house where we stayed the night I was looking right and left, the houses, the streets, the people. My brain started another strong exercise that still has me dizzy, which I will tell you about later, when I’ve had a bit of a rest. Soon the immense Yoani will return, all my senses are focused on her.
Life has shown me that the future is unpredictable and what lies ahead in Cuba is difficult to predict.
The regime in Havana tries to oxygenate itself any way it can. Raul Castro is more pragmatic than his older brother, he knows that system they built is unsustainable and that any moment it could collapse under its own weight.
The elite in power announces more access to the “Internet,” (which will really be an Intranet), controls politics in Venezuela, allows dissidents to leave a return to the island, calls for more foreign investment and under the table tries to approach its eternal enemy, the USA.
Three years outside the island have helped me to mature politically, professionally, and above all, to learn to live as a human being.
From my point of view, those who will rule on Cuba’s future will not be those who have been persecuted, abused, imprisoned and beaten for years. Perhaps one will come to fill an important position in a democratic government, perhaps.
I don’t doubt that some exiled could manage to take the reins of the Cuban nation and that is legitimate, because one never ceases to be Cuban. Also, the exiles have the greatest advantage because in freedom they can study and prepare, unlike those still on the island.
The children, grandchildren and other descendants of those in power in Cuba have studied abroad and that’s not by choice. But the topics studied by a peaceful opponent are the prison bars, hunger and repression, a great deal of repression.
In the Cuba of the future there must be room for the whole world, but if we rest on our laurels, tomorrow our island will be governed by those who today are encroaching upon the rights of Cubans, ordered the beatings, spying on opponents and other atrocities. Those who are pushing for change will be swallowed up by history, not for the first time, I see it coming.
Five decades of repression is a long time to implant fear and erode the values of a people, five decades change the mindset of people and destroy their own capacity to govern. Hopefully, hopefully, I am wrong.
To update, in one of its many meanings, means to put in tune with the times. It updates the valued, that which, having demonstrated its effectiveness, should be retained, although infused with new spirit or, what is similar, provided with renewed energy. It wouldn’t occur to anybody to update the obsolete, whose properties have been superseded by development, because updating cost far more than replacement with something new, which is much more efficient.
In the case of the so-called “Cuban upgrade” some inconsistencies occur: first, it’s trying to update the archaic, the failed, which throughout its existence has demonstrated its practical infeasibility, and also this updating is carried out “at the speed of the burial of the rich” — slowly — and plagued with absurd restrictions that reduce its effectiveness for oxygenating the dying national economy, “straitjacketing” it even more, making it hard for it to breathe. This is the stark reality.
None of the measures taken so far — most simple legalizations of what has been being done illegally for years — have represented improvements for the ordinary citizen, much less an economic boom. Moreover, they haven’t even offered stable solutions for many of the main problems, such as food, which is becoming more precarious and more expensive every day. Actually “there has been a lot more heat than light,” notwithstanding the usual triumphalist declarations, which we are so accustomed to.
The fact is that what we need is not an “upgrade” but a “change.” What doesn’t work should be replaced by something that does work, or at least that has proven to be better. If we don’t abandon the “ideological hoax” and the eternal empty slogans, we will never get out of the impasse to which we’ve been brought. We are simply continuing to enmesh ourselves in the unbearable tangle of these fifty-four years, with no present and no future, living in the past, clinging now to some “generic guidelines,” that try to say a lot without actually saying anything.
Change is an urgent need, both economically as well as politically and socially. Without it the way continues to be blocked, and this is a real blockade.
What you see here was once the seal of the centrifuge of our washing machine. A frightening little sound every time we turned it on that announced it was already signing the song of the peanut seller, until more than a month ago it told us, gentlemen I’m retiring, and it expired along with the motor damp underneath.
Between naiveté and hope I went in vain to the State repair workshop and collided there with the predictable evidence: in the intricacies of the black market — virtually the only one available for these purposes — this piece of rubber would cost between 20 and 25 CUC, that it at least 500 Cuban pesos, plus the usual labor cost, without which we would have to wash our clothes by hand.
This happened exactly when our ministry decided to start “paying” doctors 2.00 Cuban pesos (less than 10¢ U.S.) an hour for each night shift from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM, which is 24 Cuban pesos per night shift — and so with an average of five night shifts a month this comes to 120 Cuban pesos, or the equivalent of some $5.00 U.S. now added to our monthly salaries for this work.
The incontrovertible evidence strikes us in the face again: while we public health professionals devote ourselves to our work, we continue to be the last link in the food chain; the pittance added to our salary today proves it. Other sectors triple or quadruple the pay, however mine, which for more than a decade has been the greatest source of hard currency entering the country (in exchange for doctors on “medical missions” abroad in countries like Venezuela), is kept destitute, in practice and deliberately.
Luckily selfless helping hands took on our repair, and although we always have to buy the part, having had to pay the full price for the disaster would have tripled our cost.
However, this still meant paying an entire month’s salary. While this is happening our minister determines that we do not deserve more than 2 Cuban pesos per hour for night duty, which destroys our health. They definitely do not respect us.
Almost two years late, the famous fiber optic cable will be available to the population within a few days. One hundred and eighteen Internet sites will be opened throughout the country, although the number set up by the State phone company, ETECSA, for information isn’t working (cleverly or by chance the phone number is 118).
I don’t know the details, I don’t know if the rooms will have three computers or twenty, but the news is positive. Many Cubans will be able, for the first time, to look into the abyss of the web, the initial dizziness will pass.
My son, on hearing the news, first said that having Facebook and Revolico (the Cuban “Craigslist”), people would be content. Then I got a little petty: “Don’t think they’ll be that content.” The prices are a step forward compared to connecting in a hotel, but “our working people” whose wages, let’s say, are around 400 Cuban pesos a month (about $16.00 US), will have to work more than a day to afford a single hour of surfing the Internet.
If they also want international email, this hour will cost them three and a half days’ wages, and if they get greedy and want to go out on the information highway, one hour will relieve them of a fourth of their monthly salary.
In a population of 11 million, I don’t doubt that at least while it’s a novelty they will form lines to get into these rooms. It’s speculation on my part, but it would be best if they offer the service 24 x 7.
I suspect we will navigate “a la Chinese,” and in addition to set sites, commitments in writing, the room directors walking behind users to verify their good behavior, and big character posters explaining what we can and cannot do, we would leave behind our browsing history and “the comrades who serve the sector” could access this information, thus depreciating the value of privacy.
But I am content. At last we Cubans can surf the Internet!
A resolution urging the regime of the Castro brothers to ratify the International Covenants on Human Rights and to cooperate with the workings of the United Nations, was passed in the 38th Congress of the International Federation of Human Rights, which concluded on Monday 27 May in Istanbul (Turkey).
The resolution, proposed by the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) and titled “With regards to the situation of civil and political rights in Cuba,” asks Havana to ratify the Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which it signed, as also demanded from Havana by the Campaign For Another Cuba.
The document also calls for the abolition of the death penalty on the island.
The Congress was attended by more than 200 organizations from 130 countries.
It seems that the economic imperialism of so-called Latin American left is going to throw the ballots in favor of the election of Piedad Cordoba for the presidency of Colombia.
Telesur’s news-ticker already announced her candidacy for the nomination so we should be preparing for this new time of awakening of the peoples of the continent. Winning this election will guarantee Venezuela peace on its western flank, but above all, it will make possible the removal of the base that the Northern Giant has in this Latin American state and insure the entry of a new country in the area in to the strategic hemispheric alliance against the interventionism and hegemony of the United States.
Thus, it would affirm the “made in Cuba” demagogic discourse, and support the continuity “of the soldiers of perpetual socialism” — although Latin American is now more humane and multi-party — continuing to place kings in front of their respective people, whom they give free education so as to later try to avoid that they think or that they do only in the direction convenient for them.
With regards to health care which — as in the Cuban case — is also free, it is mediocre in a general sense in the attention and services and this is aggravated by the material scarcities of every kind and also of doctors, who are sent outside of Cuba by the state patronage masked by solidarity. To compound the South American problems in general, are already thinking even about creating a continental army to defend the interests — those of the caudillos, for example — of the countries in the region.
These forms of “divine” government with no alternation in power, cause its citizens to indefinitely “choose” the same person or group for the top job, as has been done historically in Cuba, despite the ongoing red ink through multiple olive-green administrations through 54 years.
The government of my country, seems to be the evil brain — for parasitic dependency and disability — of the anti-United States design, and dedicates itself to bleeding other peoples by exporting this failed model, while waiting with open mouths for the barrels of oil and all possible assistance that feeds and sustains their costly and impoverishing stay at the forefront of the nation.
In the same way the presence of Ms. Córdoba mercifully facilitated the FARC’s release of hostages, it is possible that her winning the Colombian presidency, will disarm this or that other army to attribute the victory to the leftist struggle and justify in the first instance, her reelection.
I do not know if in Colombia — with its complex reality of narcotrafficking, armies, insurgents, drug cartels and other problems that surely I don’t know — it will be easy to impose a queen with a popular image; what truly saddens me is that this model that is presented to the rest of the world as humanistic is installed in countries in the region, a model that for over half a century has led Cubans to general poverty, divided families and society, violated fundamental rights, led to prison, to exile, to national bankruptcy.
