From a distance you feel the strokes… bam, bam, bam. The arm raises the thick fat stick and then lets it falls hard on the twisted sheet. The spray of lather explodes with every stroke and white water seeping from dirty fabric mixes with the river. It is very early, the sun barely up, and already the clotheslines are waiting for with damp clothes that must dry in the morning. The woman is exhausted. From the time she was a teenager she has washed her and her family’s clothing in this way. What other choice did she have? In that little village lost in the eastern mountains all her neighbors did the same. At times as she slept her body would move restlessly in the bed and repeat the hint of a movement: up… down… bam… bam… bam.
Lately the discussion of women’s emancipation in Cuba has been focused on persuading us of its extent, showing the numbers of women in parliament. There is also talk — in the official mass media — of how many have managed to climb into administrative positions, or to lead an institution, a scientific center or a business. However, very little is said about the sacrifice involved for them in managing in these positions with their busy domestic schedules and material shortages. You only have to look at the faces of those over forty to note the tense frown common in so many Cuban woman. It is the mark left by a daily life where a good part of the time must be dedicated to burdensome and repetitive tasks. One of these is the laundry, which many of our countrywomen do, at least a couple of times a week, by hand and in very tough conditions. Some do not even have running water in their homes.
In a country where a washing machine costs an entire year’s salary, we can’t talk about women’s emancipation. Facing the washtub and the brush, or the boiler filled with baby diapers bubbling on the firewood, thousands of women pass many hours of their lives. The situation becomes more difficult if we move away from the capital and look at the hands of the women who clean, with the strength of their fingers, the shirts, pants and even the military uniforms of their families. Their hands are knotted, stained white by the soap or detergent in which they’re immersed for hours. Hands belie statistics about emancipation and the fabricated gender quotas, with which they try to convince us otherwise.
1980s Aurika washing machine imported from the USSR to Cuba and still used by many Cuban families ... in the absence of another.Photo from museodelanostalgia.blogspot.ch
The eighth and final page of the tabloid Granma hesitantly tells us the story. It’s about the Conrado Benitez Cancer Hospital in Santiago de Cuba, which completed its first capital repair, after the passage of the destructive Hurricane Sandy and fifty-nine years of existence. That hospital, which in addition to serving Santiago, serves the population of Guantánamo, Granma and other eastern provinces, had only “enjoyed” cosmetic and insufficient maintenance, in the “emergency room, observation room, surgery and chemotherapy.”
How did they understand the concept of Cuba as “medical superpower” born of the highest echelons of the Cuban government? Obviously, the top leaders of the country, who are native to the region, inflated one of the many balloons have gone flat since 2006, the year that the historic leader abdicated due to illness in favor of his brother. If Santiago de Cuba is located 540 miles from Havana: will the 148 beds be enough to serve tens of thousands of patients a year in that and other neighboring provinces? Why didn’t this regime build a new cancer hospital for the region?
The main photo accompanying the article shows us the facade of a very nice center that resembles Joaquin Albarran Hospital in Havana hospital and quotes, from the lips of Dr. Rafael Neyra, that “for the first time in the hospital’s history they can count on basic measures and specialized personal to care for patients with major surgery or complications.” What range of care and services did they pay for before? Did they send these cases to Havana, far from their families and usual environment? What type and generation of equipment did they have?
All of the good now, of the health center, and the excellence of the final product that the commentary speaks of, passes through the timidity of the concept of journalism and Cubans in general, about what should be the comfort and quality of services they can expect from a hospital. The so-called free public health is a falsehood that we pay for with decades of inadequate salaries and with the appropriation by the government of the output of the workers; and still they offer us bad medical care — many times in ruined buildings with material shortages of every kind — bad hygiene and inadequate medications for the recovery of the health and quality of life of many patients.
To assess if, indeed, the installation offers proper comfort and primary care, as advocated in the report, we would have to know, by way of contrast, the hospital facilities where the leaders of the country and their family and friends and foreigners are cared for; or better yet, to enjoy the same benefits — why not? — as those who plan our lives with a false paternalistic mentality.
We need new government and general administrative visions and projections and this is achieved by abandoning the old conceptions and structures that led to the financial ruin that is now Cuba. To achieve this we must go to the root of the problems without hesitation or fears, with political pluralism, with freedom of speech and of the press, and a set of laws that protect, defend and guarantee. We will achieve this with changes, not with simple structural restorations that represent on a mocking smile at an inefficient and unproductive dictatorship.
Freedom of information is an issue that has recently been addressed in the press about Cuba with regards to a statement by Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel at a seminar on education. And I mention the press about Cuba and not the press of Cuba, because the words of the Cuban Vice President were reported by the official press avoiding the pitfall that refers to the quality of … the official press.
The free flow of information has been mentioned cyclically with nuances and more or less presence over the fifty-some years of single party government. But not even in its stagnation can the government deny the impact of the technological revolution that has put global news a click away from a mobile phone.
I won’t try to analyze the technological gap that supposedly backed this revolution for the sake of ideological purity. That same ideological purity has made our “information” media a vehicle of propaganda, and has converted economic setbacks into political victories, to distort national and foreign history.
I won’t mention the responsibility of the U.S. government in denying Cuba access to ocean cables, because any careful reader will make the documented observation in this web 2.0 of bidirectional flow.
Much has been said about Telesur in recent times. And although the multinational has its own news bias, we Cubans have been able to glance at another form of news. After comparison, the Cuban television news, in addition to being stingy with the news, appears outdated, ancient, tacky. “Dossier”, one of the flagship programs of the chain, prior to Telesur being broadcast on Cuban television (although it was on 24 hour delay), also has an antiquated air if we compare it to the touch screens and the correspondents and hosts who interact from the four corners of the world.
I do not know what will be the fate of Telesur, the millionaire project funded mostly by the Venezuelan government, but if it ended tomorrow, we Cubans could watch the news. At least we could watch more news.
Returning to the words of Díaz-Canel, the challenge would be to put the government information system at the level to meet the demands of modern society, considering that internet access will become more and faster, and still prioritizing the socially beneficial internet that excludes the society as a whole, through this same information path it will be everywhere in a matter of hours.
Could the official media journalists actively move their practice to this other practice, that would be novel for Cubans but is the norm in world news today? If I open the newspaper Granma, if I tune in the TV news, I think that for many of them it’s too late, because they don’t know how to do it differently.
But the cardinal issue is that, if the political will gathered in the last Party Congress (three years ago!) existed, they would have replaced the leadership of an exclusive news station like Radio Reloj, they would have removed the current directors of the newspaper and television news.
But they are there, no one has bothered them and they in their turn have not bothered to introduce changes in their field of work because where information policy is decided, where is it known that “with the development of information technologies, the social networks, computers and the Internet, to prohibit something is almost an impossible chimera,” (the words of Diaz-Canel, the emphasis mine), clinging while they can to that almost so that even with the change, everything remains the same.
How can we help? Was one question asked of the blogger Yoani Sánchez in Miami. Where people like the Cuban-American Felice Gorordo and his friend the Frenchman Philippe Houdard were present at the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts. When the same question was also asked: How can we help?
The two friends agreed to send materials to Cuba and to establish a new collection point at Pipeline, a work area in Brickell Avenue owned by Houdard and used primarily by employers in the digital age.
Sanchez had given a response several times, how people could help. Sending to Cuba laptops, USB flash drives, cell phones that work on the island, tablets and iPads, CDs and DVDs. Everything that can serve to improve communication and information for Cubans.
But who is responsible for this task? The arrival of this help for everyone is very important for the Cuban opposition.
It is also true that the Cuban opposition on the island is made up of people who want real change and the implementation of human rights. But there are also opportunistic individuals who are pursuing the material for personal gain, thus creating obstacles to the people who need the technology or help to develop their work.
I would be inclined to focus on two people who have shown me that all this help reaches the right hands. Yoani Sanchez and Reinaldo Escobar are the ones!
It extends straight between Reina Street and the Havana Malecon. I remember it from my childhood with its large and polished doorways, with its beautiful display windows of clothing stores, jewelry stores, toy shops and establishments of all kinds. There were several important intersections with other streets also engaged in trade and services in the center of the city with Zanja, San José, San Rafael, Neptuno, Virtudes and San Lázaro. La Plaza del Vapor, an ancient two-story building and a block area completely dedicated to retail stores selling hats, fabrics and textiles, signaled the beginning of Galiano as a commercial artery.
After being demolished at the beginning of the Revolution, with the pretext that they were going to build a residential building, the land was turned into a park. The most famous department store in Cuba, El Encanto, occupied one of the four corners of San Rafael, which it shared with the Flogar Store, La Moda furrier and the Ten Cent store.
After a fire caused by an act of sabotage, in the month of April 1961, the land occupied by El Encanto became another park. Two hotels are located in this major thoroughfare in the capital: the Lincoln and the Deauville.
Even a Catholic church shares space along Galiano between Animas and Virtudes: the Monserrate. The America apartment building with two movie theaters, and the Fin de Siglo and Epoca stores; glassware, coffee shops, ice cream parlors, banks, in short, one of the most important shopping streets of the city of Havana.
In Havana nights it was a pleasant to walk along Galiano, looking at the storefronts or windows, as they say here, under flashes of neon signs. At Christmas, the change of seasons, or just for entertainment, strolling through along Avenida de Italia, Galiano, was a party.
After half a century of Real Socialism everything changed. The lights and glare of Galiano are gone; apathy and chaos are enthroned on their sites as in the majority of the urban landscape of the capital. Now they are finalizing a capital restoration plan for this artery of the city. Paved roads, new lighting, projects to restore the water, sewer and gas; rejuvenated facades, and resuscitation of existing commerce.
But the main thing is still missing, the soul, which gives interest and real value to the property, movable and immovable: the owners. Those who are interested in maintaining, developing and advancing their businesses. They are the very essence of the market, and so, without any capitalist merchants there is no real interest in commerce.
Time will pass and, if small and medium private enterprises are not created, truly independent of the state, the Galiano recovery project will swell the list of failed experiments. It will not be alone there, after a few decades of doing the same scale of work on other commercial streets in Havana, such as Belascoaín and Monte, and, within a few years, everything was gone again. These experiences show that real changes that are necessary, not cosmetic ones, or we will continue on the dry wheel of absurdity.
As a birthday present, Willy Toledo announces that he is going to live to Havana.
At forty something and with his own First World “savage capitalism” bank account, it was now time for the actor to star in one of those “humanist processes that have improved the lives of people” and which are an “example of heroic resistance” to imperialism (that ghost that corrodes Europe: envy of life in America).
Perspicacious people that we are, Cubans, not without curiosity, give him the most post-Communist of welcomes. No one who feels pressures in a “fascist national-Catholic” regimes deserves to live in it forever. And Cuban has half a century of compassionate experience in that respect, which is why accept with our proletarian patience one more of the many media stars who have come to discretely detoxify themselves in a private State clinic.
The “Spanishfication” process of the Island (where nearly a third of a million nationals are looking to escape thanks to the baptismal faith of their grandparents) now has a reverse flow of Iberians: after the Basque ETA terrorists from decades past — half entrepreneurs and half hostages in Cuba — we receive a terrorized Willy Toledo. Literally, because “democracy in absolute deficit” has collapsed his emotional stability. No one is alive there. It’s a question of brains.
Willy Toledo will come as an ideological tourist to find that the most beautiful land is the same one espied by him from his Marxist hound’s crows-nest, with its idyllic ration book and its atrocious business inefficiency, with its scarcity of guaranteed rights even in the Constitution, with its national apathy and criminal hypocrisy, with its zero internet and prophylactic Majority Report style laws, and, above all, with its “suspected dissidents” imprisoned as “traitors” and “common delinquents” like Orlando Zapata Tamayo, his family filmed while he was left to die in the hands of State Security after a hunger strike and torture in prison, and towards whom in 2010, while his body was still warm, Willy Toledo showed no mercy.
Or perhaps he comes with the academic pretensions of a performing Patrick Symmes, who pretends to survive thirty days like a Cuban in Cuba, with fifteen Yankee dollars in exchange for reading, with sleepless irony, not so much Harper’s Magazine as Les Miserables (unspecified if in a local edition).
Or he could come like a killer whale with cancer that stops in the Cubag Archipelago to immolate himself on the shabby stretchers of Havana hospitals, and even donate his body to the aboriginal quacks of the Latin American School of Medicine: a kitsch Keiko with no reasons to rebel, except to evade his taxes (like leftcopy Gerard Depardieu renouncing Europe in favor of the ex-KGB). In this case, our William Tell could end up like Antonio Gades, buried in the east of the Island as a Hero of the Revolution, with the profits from a dwarf statue in Old Havana.
The Cold War rhetoric of Willy Toledo is as simpatico as renting his unshaven face for the Christmas 2007 campaign for the World of Warcraft video game. In any case, with his putative visa as “foreign trainer,” Cuba could be continue to be a “reference” and “symbol” for the “real socialists of the world” where the “Rule of Law has been completely wiped off the map,” though for him, it will not be. In fact, in Cuba he will be much more hidden from within, thanks to the guarantee that nothing will happen like what occurred in Spain at the end of March in 2012 (with the silent consent of the Catholic hierarchy) when hundreds of peaceful activists were kidnapped by the political police just when Willy Toledo was xenophobicly vandalizing a bar in Madrid. In Cuba, what’s more, his anti-monarchic intolerance could heal, through living without outrage for the rest of his life under the democratic dynasty of Castro & Castro Ltd.
The Cuban population pyramid, like a mimetic trend of the rest of our society, is also upside down. There is a permanent plebiscite of the feet: everyone leaves (we all left). Hence, the importance for Raulism of reforesting with subjects who guarantee their governability. Privatizing Cuba with faithful foreigners so that we Cubans won’t reconquer the end of the Revolution. Operation Free Willy would be inserted within these objectives of the transition scheme announced for 2018.
Welcome, then, to the Revolutionary Court, Comrade One-Eyed Willy.
HAVANA, Cuba, May, www.cubanet.org- I’ve heard it said that hunger can affect vision permanently. For a while, I thought that this sentence was just a popular myth based on superstition, however, it turns out to be absolutely true. Hunger and other deficiencies cause, additionally, some distortions, such as lack of perception of reality and total lack of perspective.
This explains why, for many “inside” Cubans, almost everything is irrelevant and nothing transcends beyond the narrow confines of daily survival. Decades of material shortages and of totalitarianism have ruined the ability of a large segment of the population of the island to discern, despite the high levels of instruction exhibited by official statistics, turning subjects into slaves of their own elementary needs.
An example of this was the recent electoral process in Venezuela which showed, by comparison, how far we Cubans are from even reaching the first step of this difficult stairway filled with obstacles called democracy. While Venezuelans offered us a true example of civility by exercising their right to vote and to assert the power of suffrage — an unknown experience for millions of Cubans — the main concern of people on the island was the possibility of the start of a new era of blackouts and a new “Special Period” if the opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles, won. Paradoxically, many Cubans refer to Venezuelans as “crude,” “illiterate” and “ignorant.”
The combined action of the monopoly of information and direction, the lack of freedom of association and the manipulation of the press have been three basic mainstays which — together with the material precariousness of survival — have plunged the Cuban population in a deep ignorance that does not reflect the benign statistics. The Cuban case demonstrates exactly how the use of statistics has allowed the government to misinform the population and feed the national vanity. The farce, often repeated, has spread alarmingly, to the point that even many prestigious international organizations have recognized the “achievements” of the revolution in education and health and other indicators of social development.
The numbers, however, are fickle, and mask a reality very different than the image they project. Decades of incomplete, distorted and biased information have resulted in only a minority of Cubans possessing the ability to analyze issues related to politics, economics, or any event occurring in the world. The “masses,” meanwhile, form opinions from indoctrination and emotions… when they form opinions. Usually, the standard displayed among people faced with any matter not related to their daily subsistence is limited to an apathetic shrug of the shoulders.
The indifference and ignorance grow, while each year the statistics are more triumphant and less reliable. Let’s take the case of the training of doctors and other health specialists. The graduations are massive, but the quality of the graduates is generally very low. The levels of professionalism are often extremely poor and only a few dozen will stand out amid thousands of new doctors and technical personnel in each group.
The same applies to general education. Officially, it is stated that there is a teacher in every classroom, which is a lie. However, the worst thing is that there are hardly any teachers able to educate and instruct students, so both, the levels and the quality of education have declined dramatically over the years, particularly since the 90’s.
The proverbial ignorance of many of these “teachers,” coupled with their failure to educate, has forced parents to search for alternative solutions, such as hiring “tutors,” teachers who have been generally separated from the formal education system due to terrible wages and deplorable working conditions, and now teach in private education. This option has proven the effectiveness the official system lacks, and is marking a major schism among students whose parents can afford the expense of hiring the services of a private teacher and those who must make do with the meager knowledge they receive in classrooms.
But, in the meantime, the numbers and the official press continue out there. The statistics support the government fanfare about the advantages of the Cuban system, yet deceive public opinion by distorting, at the same time, society’s general opinion. The media revels, jubilant, in the advantages of the system. Perhaps this explains why Cubans see themselves as highly educated and intellectually superior to many other people in the region. Another deceit that, in some way, constitutes a small consolation after half a century of dictatorship that has erased the memory of a nation’s population.
A careful read of the extensive article, “A look at the Cuban model of wellbeing,” published in the daily Granma on 13 May 2013, raised, for me, some doubts and disagreements.
The cases with which the article begins are people of different ages who, for one personal reason or others, have decided to return to live in Cuba, representing an insignificant percent of the hundreds of thousands who have not, and who prefer to continue developing their life projects in line with other wellbeing models overseas, despite the economic crisis, the violence, unemployment, social isolation, rootlessness, the distance from their lived ones, the exclusion, discrimination, lack of solidarity, etc.
On the basis of these atypical cases, the entire posterior argument is structured, emphasizing the lack of a feeling of exclusion, the social spaces, social solidarity and the collective creativity and intelligence.
To suggest that there is no feeling of exclusion because everyone in the neighborhood knows everyone else, is an incredibly trivial argument, as is defending the bad custom of sticking your nose in other people’s lives, which is the result of the widespread surveillance among neighbors, leading to envy, gossip and the existence of mandatory collective activities which, far from avoiding exclusion, directly threaten the individuality of citizens, which should be respected. continue reading
In reality, seeing the same faces every day if pretty boring. The number of Cubans who gather in a park or sit around a table playing dominoes in a yard or even on a sidewalk is not an achievement, quite the contrary: it shows the lack of social spaces where one can visit in a pleasant and civilized way, the lack of recreation societies, clubs, fraternities, schools, etc. Perhaps these Cubans, if they had the financial resources, would prefer national or international tourism, or to go fishing in their boats, to meet with their friends in a cafe or restaurant, etc.
To argue that raising the standard of living causes isolation is to ignore the development of precisely the new information technologies that allow one to connect to the entire world (which is not the case of Cuba where Internet is banned) and to expand relationships beyond the family, neighbors, the neighborhood, municipality, the province and even the country. More than knowing one’s next door neighbor and knowing all about him, which constitutes an invasion of his privacy and has the stink of too much politics, how one can know many different people with distinct models of wellbeing and exchange opinions and experiences and even compare them.
It is a mistake to confuse socializing with overcrowding. In our neighborhoods, because of the housing shortage and the poor state of most existing housing, several generations of the same family, and sometimes several families, occupy the same space previously occupied by a single family, undermining the personal life of their different members, a situation that is repeated with the next door neighbors and so on continuously.
The well-known “hot beds” — which is the same bed shared in turn by different people — of Central Havana, are not examples of socialization, but of extreme poverty.
The same thing happens with the crowds at bus stops, waiting for the bus that never comes, and the lines for bread and other products. Contributing their grains of sand to this “socialization” are the low wages, the meager pensions and the widespread inefficiency.
To look for this “socialization” in organized societies where citizens have economic independence is somewhat difficult, because they do not depend on each other, much less on their neighbors. They each live their life and make these individual lives form the life of the community.
Even more difficult is trying to find it in airports, subways and concrete blocks. I’m almost convinced that many of the people forced the shelters and hostels in Havana, would like not having to be face to face with their relatives and neighbors every second of the day and night, and would appreciate a few moments of solitude and tranquility.
The “us” that they are proposing to recover is not a sound proposal and has already been used too much in this country as an excuse to have our compatriots faced with the mistakes and deficiencies to set aside the brave “I” both for good and bad.
Whether in the sharing of the bottle, or transport, or the collective use of a private telephone, or in handing down school uniforms, or in shared snacks or shared medicine, it is not solidarity that is demonstrated, but only insufficiencies and shortages, unresolved for over fifty years of failed social experiments.
To suggest, generically, that in Cuba we can talk and have multiple social exchanges and we can afford a the luxury of a nice chat with many people, because of our high culture and education, is more a joke than a serious argument. Here, when talking or chatting citizens are careful who their partners are and must measure their words, for fear that it may cause them personal problems. Wielding the double standard (I think one thing and I say another: the official line) makes conversations and honest chats difficult.
To strengthen the Cuban model of wellbeing, they propose not to have more but to be more, not to create more wealth, but more humanity, and to live well rather than better. In addition to rejecting the just natural desire of every human being to prosper, they suggest something a little ethereal and confusing for the ordinary Cuban, because they say absolutely nothing, seems more like the slogans of those who also say absolutely nothing.
In addition, they propose to promote social solidarity and strengthen community spaces. Again, more slogans.
If they actually want to achieve the wellbeing we do not have, do not waste any more time trying to present our difficulties, weaknesses, misfortunes and shortcomings as the original components of wellbeing. They are actually the “anti-well-being” components of the Cuban model. Wellbeing is only achieved by working and creating wealth, for which, in our case, profound economic, political and social changes are essential. There is no Cuban model of wellbeing, simply because the other model, the political, economic and social, the so-called socialist model, is a failure and has been incapable of achieving it.
Instruction No. 193 of 8 July 2007, of the Government Council of the People´s Supreme Court, affirms in the first that INASMUCH AS: The administration of justice in our country has as a priority the adequate speed in the processing of judicial proceedings in general and in virtue of that there having been adopted various means to expedite the processing of penal proceedings and especially matters concerning the accused who are in temporarycustody…
Judicial practice reveals something entirely different, since that adequate speed in the processing of judicial proceedings of the accused who are in temporary custody is uncertain, which can be verified simply by having in view the statistical data managed within the framework of meetings of conciliation or coordination, for the analysis of the issue, meetings held between the Courts, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Headquarters of the Ministry of the Interior, responsible entities or their representatives, mandated by the aforementioned Instruction 193, for the evaluating and specifying of the criminal situation with defendants who are in custody, which report on pending legal procedures, paying particular attention to the reasons that negatively affect cases of detentions longer than 90 days. continue reading
It turns out to be incontestable that the measures taken to expedite the processing of the criminal trial with the accused in temporary detention have not achieved that purpose, since the number of accused persons held in detention, in criminal matters, has not diminished, and quite the contrary continues to increase, and the detention time in that situation goes beyond the excessive, not just by the end of the 90 days as Instruction 193 fixes, but in addition the SIX MONTHS established for that purpose, by Article 107 of the Criminal Procedure Act.
This is to act illegally, breaking Paragraph 3 of Article 9 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law to exercise judicial power and shall be entitled to trial within a reasonable time or to release.
It is in this situation that from July 31, 2012, like many people, my wife MARIENYS PAVÓ OÑATE, has found herself at the Western Provinces Women’s Prison; in just three months it will be one year, on the occasion of an alleged criminal offense, and still she has not been brought before the Court to be tried nor has she been released by the Prosecutor.
Lic. Julio Alfredo Ferrer Tamayo
We hear all too often in our mass media with a large audience, such as “Mesa Redonda” (the “Round Table” program) that they analyze and criticize, as a serious violation of human rights, that in prisons in multiple places on the planet, people remain permanently jailed, and they have not even been formally charged. Is this the mote in the eye of another?
The Ladies in White marched on Havana on Mothers Day, 12 May 2013, in memory in co-founder Laura Pollán, and for the release of Sonia Garro and all other political prisoners.
After several days of staging a scene in the tropical paradise prison system for the accredited “press” and the examination of the UN Human Rights Council, where Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez said he will accept the recommendations of the international body and apply them to the Castro prison system and he said he will allow the Red Cross visits, everything is the same or worse. Nothing changed and never will change because changes will never come from those who have caused the Cuban tragedy. The only change possible is to root out the evil dynastic dictatorship of the sadistic Castro brothers.
Cuba is a small island in whose geography is the largest concentration of jails in the world. The Island of Happiness is a huge prison where, in its many overcrowded concentration camps live the tortured, humiliated and starved thousands of prisoners, guilty or not, who have rights like any human being; rights that the regime in Havana never respected. To the common prisoners must be added the more than hundred prisoners of conscience who are caged to silence them on false charges of common crimes, such as Angel Santiesteban.
Fortunately, through Angel — and despite the relentless efforts of his jailers to silence him — we know that in that grisly concentration camp in which he is located, the 1580 Prison in San Miguel del Padrón, Havana, on the 5th May there was the beginning of riot caused by the indignation of the prison population on seeing how two thugs torturing a young black man, mentally ill, whose humanity is locked in there. Thanks to the solidarity of all, they left the unfortunate boy in peace and the inmates calmed down. continue reading
But from this episode we must extract two important things. One is that not even in such terrible conditions of life do solidarity and values disappear. Although there will always be those who choose to ally themselves with their executioners, the majority will preserves and defend their dignity. If they are often silent it is just to avoid greater evils, but moments of maximum cruelty arrive, as Angel related, the principles take over from fear and all become a voice against injustice. This stopped the savagery that might have killed the boy.
But, and no less important, is when barbarism is manifested with all the fury, the clamor of the prisoners is not limited only to scream against it and stop it, but it becomes a cry for freedom, for democracy, against the dictatorship, against the dictator and a stern warning that should not go unnoticed by anyone, especially Raul Castro and the international organizations that do little or nothing to stop the accumulated abuses from the incredible 54 years of so-called “Revolution”.
There were common criminals who turned their pleas for justice for their fellow prisoner into slogans for freedom and against the dictatorship. Common criminals who, possibly, when they lived in freedom (as it’s defined in Cuba) had never questioned the legitimacy or otherwise of the government that enslaves them; the inefficient, shameless and manipulative government that is the one truly guilty for their being there, that has forced them to commit a crime with the sole purpose to survive and feed their families.
This is not about justifying crime. Not at all. But we all know that justice in Cuba is nothing more but a subsidiary power and dependent on political power which administers revenge more than actual criminal convictions. And, betraying the promise that the Revolution was “a revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble,” it vents its rage over the most humble and the most vulnerable. And even more so with those who struggle for freedom.
It is precisely the full force of such arbitrariness and injustice in Cuba that “manufactures” dissidents and opponents, and in this process the concentration camps are no exception. On the contrary. This beginning of mutiny has shown that, when inmates have nothing to lose, they lose fear and regain dignity.
Angel is being abused differently, but no less cruelly. He is being tortured psychologically. They have cut off all means of communication with his family, except for those two measly minutes on the phone every so often. They have taken from him open communication with his peers, who have been harassed and threatened with punishment if they have anything to do with him. But once again, showing courage and intelligence, there many people who create strategies to communicate without being noticed by the guards and by the inmates whom the guards bribe.
Angel is where he doesn’t have to be. He is suffering vengeance for having dared to express himself freely. They have tried to turn him into an abuser and a rapist, but they had nothing to use in this intent because nobody believed it. The unfortunate few who spoke out against him were those who, threatened and pressured, didn’t know how to preserve their dignity or at least to remain silent.
The eyes of the civilized world are on and the abuses they commit. The gaze of international organizations is on Angel Santiesteban and are there are ever more who are speaking up in his favor. The more abuses committed against him, the more solidarity grows, aroused by the injustice.
Raul Castro knows it and he is directly responsible for anything that may happen to Angel. As are the army of eunuchs who fulfill their miserable orders, but not only as obedient soldiers but as genuine sadists manifesting all their murderous instincts.
And once again, and we will not tire of repeating it until we have justice for Angel: we demand his immediate transfer to La Lima Prison where, despite not having to be there, he should never have been transferred illegally and violently. We demand absolute respect for his rights and that he be given a fair trial with full due process, with those who were conspicuous by their complete absence in the trial for him, who are now imprisoned.
We demand that Angel be left in peace to work, doing what he can do like nobody else: write. We recall that while he being beaten, humiliated and isolated, there are international judges reading and evaluating his work; prestigious publishers reading his manuscripts. And when he once again wins prizes and is published, as surely will happen very soon, the world press will report that if he can not collect his prizes, or attend presentations of his books because he is in a Cuban concentration camp, that is not Guantanamo but might as well be.
Look after Angel and try not to continue throwing mud on yourselves. In today’s world nothing can be hidden and, sooner or later, everything is known. So it will be very easy to add to the long list of crimes, that the regime has committed and is committing, this criminal proceeding against an intellectual amid growing outrage while his tormentors bury themselves ever deeper in their rotten and fearful actions. And this must always be paid for.
We also remind them, once again, that the same rights we demand for Angel, we demand for the entire prison population, and in particular we demand the immediate release of prisoners of conscience.
They will never silence the truth. History has proved it. When they are digging their claws into Angel Santiesteban they are further strengthening the symbol of freedom he has already become.
So the demand is clear: Raul Castro, do the right thing and order justice done for Angel and do not forget even for a moment that you are and will remain solely responsible for the physical and mental integrity of Angel.
On behalf of the family and friends of Angel Santiesteban-Prats
The Editors
Note: In this documentary, and especially from minute 24.30, you can see and understand how the Nazis manipulated and hid what they did in the concentration camps by preparing a perfect theater in Theresienstadt where they took the Red Cross delegates and showed them the “wonderful” life of the Jews there. The strategy of staging the Nazis used then was copied by the regime in Havana and so continue to lie to international public opinion about what really happens in their concentration camps. What is curious and incomprehensible is that today, when we have the help of technology and nothing can be hidden and all the evidence of what happens is within reach of everyone, there are still those who deny it and defend it from above.
The Red Cross the Third Reich
Site manager’s note: This third-party video is in Spanish (and German, French and English) and is included here to show the whole post as it was posted, but is not translated.
Although the author himself has since said that his text suffered from editorial interventions (namely that the title should have read “For Blacks in Cuba, the Revolution is Not Yet Finished”), his perspective has still caused a huge reaction on and off the Island. Consequently, a variety of responses to the article appeared in the Cuban online press.
At the time it seemed that the Island’s racial polemic might finally come out of the closet of censorship into the public arena. But unfortunately, at the beginning of April, the Editorial Fund of the Casa de las Américas in Havana dismissed Zurbano from his post as its director.
Thus, the logic of totalitarian intolerance won another battle. Cuba isn’t changing, even though everything looks like it is.
And Afro-Cubans are not the only ones in Cuba left without their fundamental rights. Over the past half-century the anti-democratic tradition on our island has not set out to back racial apartheid, but rather civic discrimination, whereby the State claims that no dissident voice is legitimate, where no law is born out of the people’s wishes but instead by decree of the historic caudillos, where a human being’s fundamental rights are still held hostage in the name of utopia.
In his controversial article, Zurbano claims that “It is unrealistic to hope for a black president, given the insufficient racial consciousness on the island.” But in these historic circumstances what should urgently be made realistic is for Cuba to gain in social conscience and for the president of our country to finally be a public servant, not a demagogic messiah.
Mariela Castro in red shirt and hat speaking into mic
Havana, Cuba – Once again, the conga line led by Mariela Castro Espín swept through one of the city’s main thoroughfares, this past Saturday, May the eleventh, under heavy security and control measures.
The conga line against homophobia, pretends to reproduce the many marches held around the world in support of the rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transsexual (LGBT) community. However, the difference between these and those held in democratic countries, according to some that participate in the one held in Cuba, is that here the stage becomes a political bastion.
The event led by the National Center for Sexual Education, tries to paint the Cuban LGBT within the context of an uncertain opening that exists only for those who pay lip service to it in order to obtain juicy rewards from projects like these, leaving it completely abandoned, and without showing a convincing agenda to a community still far from seeing all of its rights fulfilled.
The number of participants has decreased in recent years given the dissatisfaction and the delays of unfulfilled promises by the group in power. We could add to this the manipulation of the event to support political campaigns like that for the release of the five Cubans jailed in the US for espionage.
An example of this is Mariela Castro’s speech this past Saturday, and the slogans shouted there that only reiterated their political commitment to a government led by her father, Raul Castro. There were no words coming from the mouth of the self-proclaimed leader of the Cuban LGBT community, that could predict the status of the reforms to the family code introduced in the Cuban parliament by lawyers of the institution that she commands; reforms to the family code that recognize consensual unions, adoption and other benefits for the LGBT community.
The presence of foreign guests was notable, but one most criticized by Cuban attendees was that of Argentinian transsexual Lohana Berkins who used a megaphone brought from her country to shout slogans designed to exalt a government recognized around the world for its abuses against the LGBT community. Only isolated voices repeated her slogans while others, in protest, made fun of her or turned their backs on her.
The exposure of Ms. Castro Espin to the public was sparse and always surrounded by a showy security detail. She was followed from a distance by her current husband, Paolo Tito, who documented the event in photographs. Some officers of their personal security detail also took pictures and video.
Members of the LGBT community who toe the official line were also present and picked up by the cameras of the national and international press. Some of the civil society projects that participated were The Observatory for LGBT Rights in Cuba, The Shui Tuix Integration Project, The Open Doors Foundation and The Cuban League Against AIDS. These organizations signed a document that was delivered to the vice director of CENESEX, Ms. Rosa Mayra Rodriguez, on the dais to be delivered to Mariela Castro inviting her to participate in a dialogue on equality of Rights for all. The letter was delivered by Lic. Liannes Imbert, coordinator of the OBCD-LGBT.
Ms. Mariela Castro who was expected at midday left the room where the activities were being held for the community she tries to manipulate to go home for lunch. She was seen leaving in silver Peugeot car licensed to a foreign company (HK) driven by her husband, forgetting that her followers were only having a snack.
Before concluding this note I want to emphasize something what many were waiting for and that was the presence of René González, one of the Cubans who was convicted in the United States and who was recently returned to Cuba after being stripped of U.S. citizenship, the person to whom Mariela dedicates last Saturday’s conga. The truth is, as many have already commented, the non-appearance of someone who promised to appear in one of these events, but did not.
