Translating Cuba

After the attempted riot in Prison 1580

Last night, Sunday May 5 at 7:45 PM, an inmate — Reniel Agramonte Valle — was beaten by two guards: Jesus and Andy the karate man. The inmates of both barracks started shouting against abuse and almost all looked through the windows and bars while the guards continued the abuse of the black, slight and famished 24-year-old.

The prisoners began to hit the gate until it broke and opened; the guards seeing the possible population unnerved all about them, fled and forgot how numerous they and their batons were, the same ones who minutes before struck the prisoner in question, and who by then had been taking their pills for chronic mental illness that are supplied  to them several times a day.

To stop the potential riot, the senior officer, when he reached the scene, freed the prisoner, and when they saw him return to the barracks it began to calm the spirits of his comrades who had already begun yelling “Down with Fidel,” “Down with dictatorship,” “Tomorrow we will get the news to Radio Martí,” “Assassins,” and “Abusers,” among others.

This morning, when the inmates attended the breakfast, they were met with German shepherds, the ones who on just seeing a prison uniform begin to bark and are very aggressive with them, Nazi-style.

In previous days they also beat several prisoners and after the beatings, they put them in cells hidden from the eyes of the rest of the prison population to hide their injuries and bodily signs of violence against them.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

Sowing Terror

One day after the attempted riot in the prison, they began the interviews and the removal of all persons who regularly conversed with me.

They want to keep inmates away from me because they consider a dangerous element my relating to them. And so they were taken to other barracks.

Now the prisoners afraid to approach me because they don’t want to be harmed. I am also concerned about some who claim not to care; because when they receive reprisals for being close to me, my guilty conscience is great because their fates are worse just for talking to me.

Even so, some have changed strategy and started to leave me papers on my bed with silent solidarity messages.

A prisoner on a hunger strike, Jesús Guerra Camejo, for talking with me, has also been taken from the company to an unknown destination.

The inmates are constantly interviewed to obtain information about me, writing or any data they might provide about me.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

10 May 2013

In San Luis, a small town in Pinar del Rio, two young men caught the attention of State Security for distributing flyers for the Zero Violence campaign, and were detained.

Taken to the police station, one of them asked the repressor, “Are you in agreement with the violence?”

The cop responded no.

“Then, why stop me if all I’m doing is calling for no violence?”

The guy in uniform responded, “Because I’m not in agreement with what you’re distributing (the message). Give it to some other citizen to distribute.”

“Then I’m giving it to you, so that you will distribute it, among your people who are violent,” concluded the boy.

The Zero Violence campaign is an initiative from within the independent New Country platform, and is being conducted throughout the Island to create a change toward tolerance; which inevitably contradicts — disagrees with — Revolutionary politics; which is by nature intolerant and, let no one doubt it, violent.

“The authorities are trapped in their own contradictions. Between the image they want to sell of a calm and civilized country and their real conduct relative to repression,” says Manual Cuesta Morua, independent journalist, political analyst, president of the social-democrat Progressive Arch party, and national coordinator of New Country.

The victims of the repression agree with regards to the style flaunted by the agents: whether they’re uniformed police or State Security agents; even people recruited to carry out an act of repudiation try to ignore the existence of the other, the right to different, with an attitude masterfully defined once by Padre Conrado — recipient of the Tolerance Plus prize created by the same Platform — as “The Nullification.”

According to Cuesta Morúa, political violence, in Cuba, feeds on marginality, crude language, barbarism. People who are recruited to perform an act of repudiation are rarely the grande dames of the Revolution. Those who are mobilized to carry out these acts of verbal and physical violence are people who inhabit the marginality reproduced by the Revolution.

The Zero Violence campaign aims to work in marginal communities across the country, because from the moment that people learn not to use certain language and not to engage in certain behaviors, acquiring education instead of ideology, it is quite difficult later to break their own rules; also severed is the possibility of the State buying the attitudes of the marginalized for acts of repudiation, which are, as Cuesta-Morúa noted, “the suspension of politics.”

“When you become aware that you can’t, nor shouldn’t, project yourself violently against others, it quickly activated the culture of conversation,” says Cuesta Morua.

The culture of dialogue has been marginalized by the Cuban authorities, who need to be reminded of that phrase of the far-off Voltaire: I disagree with what you say, I completely disagree with that, but would defend with my life your right to say it.

“Violence in education is part of the organizational structure of State violence,” continues Cuesta Morúa. “Children in Cuba are taught to salute the flag with the slogan, We will be like Che.”

“El Ché,” as the Argentine guerrilla Ernesto Guevara is known, was a Communist and officiated for years, running the deaths before the firing squads of La Cabaña. Cuban mothers and fathers have never been consulted about whether they agree that this is the best educational paradigm. Cuban schools are State-owned, and are an investment in the ideological field. “When you teach a child to be like Che, he is subliminally instilling the culture of violence and disrespect for human rights,” added the activist.

The women who joined New Country created this campaign and are its main promoters. They have organized workshops to teach their peers how to defend themselves in situations of violence, whether domestic or institutional. Through the Zero Violence Help Line, a series of phones have been placed at the service of people who seek advice, literature, or who decide to report an act of violence to the coordinators of the campaign. The coordinators would be responsible for investigating the complaint and for ultimately entering into the Orange Report, created for that purpose, cases of violence that come to their attention. With the hope of seeing what they can do to reduce them to the minimum.

Each year, 18 to 25 November, the Zero Violence Festival will be held, which last year featured guest artists like the rappers the Patriot Squadron, Silvito the Free and the punk band known as Porno para Ricardo. The boys of Omni Zona Franca, who are engaged in poetry, slam, performance, have also joined.

The days of November 18 to 25 coincide with the international day against child violence and gender violence, respectively.

Paradoxical as it may seem, as we said above, there have been a number of arrests of activists and promoters of the Zero Violence campaign in the west and east of the island. They are political arrests, obviously.

Taken from Cubanet.

10 May 2013

Some are advertised online. And they pay taxes to the state. Other work by the left. Either way flowers grow like Havana.

All are located in private homes. Prices vary between one and three CUC with the right to a bag of popcorn and a soda. They also sell ice cream and beer, rum, vodka and whiskey for adults.

There are runs for children, adolescents and youth. And sessions just for adults with horror movies or violence. These private 3D cinemas have a wide collection of films in three dimensions.

Avatar or Tintin, are now all the rage among children. In the neighborhood of La Vibora there are now several 3D cinemas. One of them is located in a house on the side of the former primary school, Pedro Maria, today a dilapidated shell.

So many children, youth and adults attend, making reservations days in advance with Roinel, the owner. The house has air conditioning and a small wood and metal bar. About twenty yellow and white plastic chairs, four large sofas and three high-legged stools.

In one of the showings last Saturday, the makeshift 3D theater was packed. Each session lasts two hours. “It’s tremendous, the reception given the 3D. It is a unique experience and people are loving it. In one day I have to 5 showings with a full house,” says Roinel.

He has 40 polarized glasses. A formidable 60 inch flat screen and a special projector for films in three dimensions. When Roinel is asked about the profits he responds with a smile. “I’m making good money,” he said without giving figures. The olive-green state, owns 90% of the companies in Cuba, and keeps an eagle eye on the new 3D cinema private businesses.

The first public exhibition hosted by the Cuban Film Institute (ICAIC) was held in the province of Camagüey, a little more than 300 miles east of Havana, at an event for film criticism, last March. “It was more symbolic than anything else, because we only had 20 glasses, but for historical purposes it must be as the first exhibition in a public space by the State,” he told the film critic Juan Antonio García from the Spanish agency EFE.

According to ICAIC officials, the agency is considering adapting a small room at its headquarters at 23rd and 12th in Vedado, for three-dimensional projections. As always, the State lags behind the creativity shown by the self-employed.

The equipment in these particular 3D cinema comes to the island thanks to relatives residing in South Florida or Cubans married to foreigners.

Although 3D cinema is now causing excitement, this type of experience is not novel in Cuba. “In the 50s, in various rooms of Havana they showed films with the anaglyph 3D technique, blue and cyan. The new thing now is the polarized glasses,” says a capital cinephile.

According to official data, Cuba has just over 300 cinemas, with 16 and 35 mm format. Most were built before the Revolution. Today, operating theaters have severe damage and do not have the technological equipment to make the jump to 3D. Others have disappeared or turned into juggling schools, theater companies and stores selling schlock.

A movie ticket is very cheap on the island. Two pesos (ten cents). But talking about comfort is another thing. You can count on the fingers of one hand the air-conditioned rooms, ushers with flashlights and clean bathrooms.

The days of the old children’s matinees in the local cinemas where the children saw Chaplin and for the first time and the comedies of Laurel and Hardy, gone.

That magic of a dark room and a large screen has begun to be replaced by new private cinemas in 3D that proliferate in Havana. The difference is that the experience can cost a family two week’s wage.

Iván García

7 May 2013

The Cuban Independent and Democratic party (CID) in Santa Clara marked the 2nd anniversary of the murder of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia — “The Student” — at 8:00 pm on May 8, with a talk and prayers for the repose of his soul, in the home of Joel Fonseca Machado, municipal vice delegate.

Rolando García Casadeval said by telephone:

The event began with the national anthem, the participants shared their experiences of living with Juan Wilfredo Soto and the circumstances of his death, beginning with a personal statement from Rev. Mario Felix Lleonart Barroso, pastor of the Baptist Church of Taguayabon, in Camajianí, and professor at the González-Peña Baptist Theological Seminary professor in Santa Clara.”

The memorial event was preceded by an activity held on May 5 at the same venue, a day on which the beating given him by the political police to the victim that led to his death was denounced on the social network Twitter.

The activists concluded with a march in the street to the municipal cemetery where there were scripture readings, prayers for the repose of Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia and shouts of:

Freedom!, Glory to the martyrs of the Castro dictatorship!, Juan Wilfredo Soto Garcia Lives! and Long Live the CID!

9 May 2013

Cesar Portillo de la Luz (La Habana, October 31, 1922), one of the kings of Cuban music, has died. He departed this world but he left behind his songs and a guitar widowed from arpeggios and creative harmonies. He crossed the threshold of “feeling” into the light of immortality alongside other greats such as Jose Antonio Mendez, Frank Dominguez, Nico Rojas, Frank Emilio, and Aida Diestro, through Elena Burke’s voice. His art converged the melancholic equilibrium of guitars with emotions born from the genre, which marked a time of renovation in Cuban music. Our Cesar, one of the creators of “filin,” took Rebeca, his first stringed wife, and taught a generation and many musicians that one could compose and accompany the feminine instrument – evoking its forms – and he left behind to the history of Cuban music great hits such as Tu, Mi Delirio, and Contigo en la Distancia, or Realidad y Fantasia, works that earned him international fame.

His bohemian soul knew full well his (our) nocturnal Habana that he sculpted and immortalized in the notes of Noche Cubana. I know that he has not hung up his guitar, as some might think, but rather he left her waiting, hung in the walls of all the nightclubs in the capital city, through the multiple voices of interpreters from all regions and cultures and through all the phonographs that play his songs. Just in case, and in honor of our teacher, I will leave his melodies playing in my sonorous memory so that every time I come back to his raspy, fresh voice and his sober, serious image to delight myself with, I can imagine him there, in the eternal international musical scenery of the great.

9 May 2013

To avoid its being used for electoral ends in the face of the July 7 elections, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Transvestite Transexual and Intersexual (LGBTTTI) Pride March has been postponed by its organizers.

The Gay Pride Committee, which has put on this event for at least ten years, informed via social networks that the march usually held in May, would be rescheduled.

In addition, the Pride Committee reported that there was an intention among a group of entrepreneurs active in businesses whose clients belong to the gay environment in Puebla, to hold their own march, which is planned for May.

In regards to this the member activists of the Pride Committee said that the mobilization has marked commercial intentions and is not an event calling on civility, acceptance, visibility and respect.

The document mentions that ten years since its creation, the Pride Committee continues working with events such as the Anti-Homophobia Week and the LGBTTTI Cultural Week, to inform and generate the agenda of the vulnerable groups it represents.

10 May 2013

The building is shaped like a dislocated Star of David. Gray, with a zinc-clad facade and little openings that provoke a strong sense of claustrophobia. The museum is not only the objects on its walls and in its display cases, the museum is all of it, each space one can move through and even the voids — with no human presence — that can be glimpsed through certain gaps. There are family photos, books with their gold-embossed covers, medical instruments, and images of young people in their bathing suits. It is life, the life of German Jews before the Holocaust. One might expect to see only the testimonies of the horrors, but most dramatic is finding yourself facing the testimony of everyday life. Laughter captured — years before the tragedy — is as painful to look at as are the emaciated corpses and piled up cadavers. The proof of those moments of happiness make the tears and pain that follow more terrifying.

After a time between the narrow corridors of the place and amid its bewildering architecture, I go outside and breathe. I see spring greenery in Berlin and think: we can’t allow this past to ever return.

And not very far from there, stands the Stasi Museum. I enter their cells, the interrogation rooms. I come from the perspective of a Cuban who was detained in the same place, where a window looking outward becomes an unattainable dream. One cell was lined with rubber, the scratch marks of the prisoners can still be seen on its walls. But more sinister seeming to me are the offices where they ripped — or fabricated — a confession from the detainees. I know them, I’ve seen them. They are a copy of their counterpart in Cuba, copied to a T by the diligent students from the Island’s Ministry of the Interior who were taught by GDR State Security. Impersonal, with a chair the prisoner can’t move because it is anchored to the floor and some supposed curtain behind which the microphone or video camera are hidden. And the constant metallic noises from the rattling of the locks and bars, to remind the prisoners where they are, how much they are at the mercy of their jailer.

After this I again need air, to get out from within those walls. I turn away from that place with the conviction that what, for them, is a museum of the past, is what we are still living in the present. A “now” that we cannot allow to prolong itself into tomorrow.

10 May 2013

http://www.marketingdirecto.com/

The phrase is attributed to the old Bolero; I’ve only heard part of the chorus and it says that everything will be the same when one of the members of a loving couple returns to the marital nest. It’s also used in colloquial speech in Cuba to emphasize that something remains, monotonous or not, immovable.

In recent days the old melody has been running through my mind on seeing Nicolas Maduro arrive in Cuba on his first visit as president, and the agreements they he signed with the Antillean government.

He came just for that? Like on a vinyl record with its “technological scratchiness,” the tonality more or less new — and noisy — for Venezuelans, seems to me coughed up by an outdated jukebox from the 1950s. I don’t know about Venezuela, but here the longevity script of the totalitarian regime constitutes a verbal rather than an ideological splash, and everyone knows it’s the same rhetoric from forever to guarantee the continuity of the leaders and the group in power.

Imagine the fabrication of mental medals and diplomas that they are sowing in the conscience of Venezuelans to be able to continue manipulating with a populism of false recognitions. The biggest and best medal that can be given to a person or to a people is that of true respect and consideration, with a sober management and conduct, responsible and democratic that represent the genuine interests of a country and they are truly at the service of the nation.

The democratic “bad company” and the immobility of the Castro totalitarianism makes many look with suspicion on all those who come to the presidency of their respective countries and call themselves friends of the old Cuban model. They can’t not create new paradigms with decrepit mental structures and policies.

The world turns and Cuba looks like a stationary satellite almost as old as the almendrones – the old American cars — that roam our streets. And speaking of a satellite, a few days ago we heard the news of the launching of the Ecuadorian satellite Pegasus.

My ancestors from Spain exterminated the aboriginal population of our soil and we see how over the space of fifty-four years, a family also descended from Spaniards — from Galicia, the land of my grandfather — makes us travel on the back of technological development, while other governments of our continent initiate the take of with their “first compatriots” toward a more humanistic track and take flight to modernity. At least they try, the Cuban government doesn’t even try.

2 May 2013

Image: http://www.animalesextincion.es/

Cuban TV fed us some “red and juicy” information on the 8 pm news Wednesday, April 24. It was about some water buffaloes that “escaped” from a state farm and were grazing on the side of the road or wherever they liked, with the related danger that these animals posed for the vehicles on the road.

The author of the article interviewed the director of the site, who defended himself against the criticism he’d received earlier for the same situation, but claimed to have fixed the fence and that the cattle broke it again to escape.

My kids, who are 30 and 26 and only eat pork — beef is so expensive that generally is eaten by government elite and international tourists — laugh about it and I can only join in the amusement. Their mischievous looks leave the caustic question in the air: “How well was the fence fixed?”

In my house, as most likely as in many others, we thought that perhaps to expose a cattle trampling is the only way they can find some directors to eat the meat, and above all, so that they can take a piece to their family.

These water buffaloes were imported from Vietnam and have caused problems for the Cuban livestock industry being wild herds away from state control. In that country they live in swampy areas, and because of their ability to move through the water they use them to plow in pairs — like oxen in our fields — in the rice fields. Who would ever think bring them to Cuba and drop them into our  non-flooded lands to form a herd and run freely?

I imagine the joy of the rural collective when because of an accident they can taste the meat that is prohibited to them even at a party at the center, even more so when they know that some higher up sends the meat to privileged elite events. As an old friend of mine used to joke, “the wind of the Special Period” used to satirize that “the wind of the special period” took Cuba: some are ’more equal than others.’ But equal to whom?

30 April 2013

Image from http://actualidadeducacion.blogspot.com

I suspect that a smart move to improve reputation of the Venezuelan electoral system has been to narrow the margin between the candidates. It gives them prestige before the world and gives their opponents hope to maintain the rivalry, and accept defeat until the next fight at the polls, but neither will they gain more votes than their socialist opponents. I imagine that’s why Hugo Chavez supported from there the costly investment in voting machines and voting technology in general.

The Latin American leader needed — perhaps from the idea of Cuba’s historic monarchs — to legitimize his leadership of the country and he needed other countries to back his democratic image. It’s likely that from there arose the intention to certify through suffrage the “adjustable” preference of the majority of Venezuela for socialism.

It appears that the results are not decided by the count, but rather by the “numbers called” — like in a lottery — that are most attractive to those involved “behind the scenes” of a person chosen by them — like the electoral organ — and infallible for their purposes.

Then the support of the region’s and other nations, that was previously guaranteed by the “gestures of solidarity” in the form of paper currency or oil that the so-called Bolivarian leader used to make, and the guarantee of honoring the oil commitments contracted by the deceased president.

A difference and experience from the Cuban government, which specialized in winning for years with 99 percent of the vote, and this act typical of a sick ego under the influence of North Korea seriously detracts before the democrats of the globe, seems like the totalitarian mastery accumulated here — coupled with the democratic scare that cost Daniel Ortego to lose the Nicaraguan presidency for 17 years — which they put at the service of the South American country as they always do with any leader who speaks out against the United States to tighten his grip on highest office in his country.

I understand why the candidates friendly to the Cuban government deride the mockery their opponents make of their errors and gross manipulations . I remember the story of the appearance of Chavez in the form of a little bird as told by Maduro and the jokes that comment earned him around the world. But they didn’t flinch, because they are sure that they will win.

I suggest that nobody get excited or dizzy with siren song or truly democratic elections in Venezuela or other political models in mummified states, because according to my theory, they’re going to have socialism for a while.

24 April 2013

And my poor blog had almost no spring. Angel Santiesteban, the cry of the last post I was able publish back in March, he is still in prison, and injustice is still have a party. To think that some people look and me and accuse me in Cuba of privileged access to the Internet. And the whole month of April passed with its rains but in my blog not a single drop.

But don’t cry. Here I am again. At least, for those who nevertheless pass through here to see if I reappear, here I am, still alive today, and trying to get out a word while I still have breath. At least you know as long as I’m write I’m not sitting around with my arms crossed. And to witness it and for the glory of God there are my religious communities and the two forums held at the Patmos Institute, and for a witness to the latter I refer to latest that we sent to Diario de Cuba who gives us a voice when we entirely lack one. A hug to everyone, and as my friend Antonio Rodiles says: ever onward!

9 May 2013

To celebrate World Book Day — and the Castilian language — on 23 April, the online edition of the daily El Pais has presented to readers in Latin America with Voces para un Cervantes (Voices for a Cervantes) to download on computers and ebook tablets. The collection “brings together interviews that this newspaper has undertaken with the 37 Spanish-speaking writers who have obtained the highest award in Spanish letters since 1976,” when the Spanish poet Jorge Guillén first received the award.

In each of the interviews we hear the voice of the winners, transformed into contemporary classics of literary creation, although “Some are hurried interviews, made the same day of the Cervantes award where the winners express their joy and surprise. Others, more thoroughly, occurred before or after the award ceremony on April 23.”

All of the award-winning writers are in Voices for a Cervantes, from representatives of the legendary Spanish Generation of 27 — Jorge Guillen, Damaso Alonso, Gerardo Diego and Rafael Alberti — to José Manuel Caballero Bonald, who received it days earlier, through the memorable Jorge Luis Borges and other travelers in Latin letters such as Alejo Carpentier, Octavio Paz, Ernesto Sábato, Augusto Roa Bastos, Carlos Fuentes, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Guillermo Cabrera Infante, Dulce María Loynaz, Juan Gelman, Mario Vargas Llosa, José E. Pacheco, Gonzalo Rojas, Álvaro Mutis, Sergio Pitol, Nicanor Parra, Jorge and Jorge Edwards.

In the El Pais interviews these masterful voices of the New World alternate with the grand Hispanic artists such as María Zambrano, Luís Rosales, José Hierro, Antonio Buero Vallejo, Antonio Gamoneda, Francisco Umbral, Miguel Delibes, Rafael Sánchez Ferlosio, Ana María Matute, Camilo José Cela, José García Nieto, Gonzalo Torrente Ballester, Francisco Ayala, José Jiménez Lozano, Juan Marsé y el citado José Manuel Caballero Bonald.

As clarifies in El Pais, the prize for Literature in the Spanish Language of Miguel de Cervantes was convened by the Ministry of Information and Tourism on September 15, 1975. Since then it has been awarded in the last quarter of each year to one of the six writers nominated by the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language of Spain and Latin America, who receive it the following year on April 23 at the University of Alcalá de Henares, Madrid, which coincides with the book fair in commemoration of the death of the author of Don Quixote de La Mancha.

Guillermo Cabrera Infante

21 April 2013

We, the undersigned members of the plural group ALDECU (Cuban Democratic Alliance),  issue this document in order to express our deep satisfaction with the success achieved by the scores of hunger strikers belonging to the valiant Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), headed by José Daniel Ferrer García, a member of our group. On Tuesday night ended their peaceful protest after reaching the goal of achieving the release of Luis Enrique Lozada Igarza (the initiator of the hunger strike), who was unjustly imprisoned.

While we send our warmest congratulations to our dear UNPACU brothers for that undoubted victory, we express our satisfaction for the fact that the Castro authorities knew to rectify the arbitrariness that they themselves committed.

Havana, 8 May 2013

In the name of the plural group ALDECU:

Félix Antonio Bonne Carcassés

Gisela Delgado Sablón

Guillermo Fariñas Hernández

René Gómez Manzano

Iván Hernández Carrillo

Félix Navarro Rodríguez

Héctor Palacios Ruiz

Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz

8 May 2013