Translating Cuba

In Castro’s Cuba those who dare to confront the system, like the Creoles who faced the Crown during the colonial period, will be imprisoned, tortured, killed or exiled.

Nothing has changed. The Castro regime continues to harass those who think differently; they are making me pay for my posts by bringing me to this closed prison to which they have “sentenced” me, according to their own laws, it is  another violation of my rights as because I should be in a prison camp, as I was in La Lima Prison.

But it’s not enough that they unjustly condemned me without any proof or that they locked me in prison, I have been put in a cell block where the prisoners are on a severe regime, those who have committed serious crimes. Because it is State Security who controls my fate in jail and Lieutenant Colonel Reuben of Section 21 warned me so, on his visit to the La Lima prison.

Here in the 1580 Prison, the inmates at times pressure me because everyone wants me to listen to their pain, for me to tell the world of the injustices and abuses that the Cuban prison system commits against them. And I leave my writing and reading to listen. And they show me the beds of those who have committed suicide.

Beside me, one shows me his arms marked all along their length, cuts that he has done more and more as a protest against injustice. The re-educators should ensure that they respect our “rights,” but they’re incapable of it, and sometimes you see them move from one place to another with their military uniforms waiting for their work shifts to end.

Many prisoners have completed their sentences but because of bureaucratic paperwork remain imprisoned.

They, in their silence and in the opposition with their voices, one day very soon, will be rewarded with a society of Rights.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

1580 Prison, San Miguel del Padrón. April 2013

28 April 2013

Although the natural desire of new entrepreneurs is to succeed, the mentality acquired during many years is like the invasive marabou weed.

To please my mom, who had a “craving” after seeing the menu in one of those new “self-employed” businesses I asked to take out an Elena Ruz. I received good service and after some delay which I made a joke about, to which they responded that each order was prepared on the spot, they sent me off with a box inside a bag that would be a surprise for Mom. It was a surprise, but for me.

I had no idea what an Elena Ruz was, but my mom had a good memory. What was in the box was toasted bread (and I suspect it wasn’t fresh) with a light smear of unidentifiable jam, and diced chicken. I was more frustrated than my mom so I returned to the private restaurant, the paladar, and asked to speak to the person in charge who turned out to be a young woman with a nice manner about her.

Advised by my mom, I knew what ingredients and preparation were supposed to be for this spectacular sandwich, and especially how to prepare it, I told the young girl that what they sold could be called a Lina Ruz (the girl didn’t understand anything), Elena the Russian or any other kind, but it was NOT an Elena Ruz.

Her reaction was defensive: The clients like them, no one has complained, everyone has a different opinion about each plate, the culinary standards… it was so much that the only thing I said was, “If you order a daiquiri, and someone brings you a drink that, instead of lemon juice has orange juice, it may be tasty, but it is NOT a Daiquiri.

I left there with a deja vu of a State restaurant, almost convinced that the client didn’t know anything and was never right.

Translator’s note: The recipe calls for a baguette sliced lengthwise, cream cheese, strawberry jam, and sliced turkey breast, and the assembled sandwich is then toasted.

24 April 2013

Just days before Angel was moved illegally and by force from La Lima prison, where he was incarcerated for crimes he did not commit, and when we are still without news of him except that he was locked in the 1580 Prison, or The Pitirre, in San Miguel del Padron, on a severe regime, well away from possible visits international and national journalists and human rights and without even being allowed to make a call to his family, managed to get this post out for the world to remember the terrible case of a prisoner of conscience with whom he shared his prison, Lamberto Hernandez Planas.

Lamberto’s case became known well outside the island and was even brought before the Congress of Deputies in Spain. Even so, and after denouncing it for years, Lamberto has spent more than two decades incarcerated and is a clear example of how the Havana regime systematically violates human rights and how it punishes dissent.

Angel has included links at the end of the post for those who want to know more and initiate action to also demand justice for him.

Thank you very much.
The Editor

Lamberto Hernández Planas or How a Dissident is Born

In La Lima Prison, where I am serving an unjust sentence for crimes I didn’t commit, I met another political prisoner, Lamberto Hernandez Planas, who is 43 and will soon have served 22 years in prison. Neither the tortures and horrors that I will related to you have made him budge a single inch from his ideas of freedom. continue reading

Several days ago I heard from friends  in exiles that a video was posted on a pro-Castro blog in Madrid where they use a recording made about a year ago, or more, several Ladies in White, including some of what they talk about.

It’s not the first time; in 2003 the Cuban TV showed a group of Ladies in White praising and highlighting the prison system and regime in Cuba; in 2005 they showed them in the preparations for the Assembly to Promote a Civil Society in Cuba (APPSC) to denigrate the leaders and organizers and as it was clear that the conversations were manipulated as in this case, it seems very important to start with these memories.

I have decided to tell you this because I need people to understand, especially in the free world, that despite the doctrine this regime has implanted, we are still people who love democracy and it is important to assert the value of freedom of speech. And even if they want to show otherwise by cutting and editing video, the truth always wins in the end. continue reading

Last week Ecuador placed into orbit its first satellite, named Pegasus, from the Jiuquan launch center in China. Both the design and construction of the nanosatellite were undertaken by Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency. With a weight of 1.2 kilograms and a dimension of ten cubic centimeters,  the device will transmit images and videos in real time from outer space for educational and scientific purposes.

This step adds Ecuador to Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela and Chile to the Latin American countries that, since the late twentieth century, began getting involved in orbiting satellite technology and launching various numbers of units per country.

Cuba, which pioneered in outer space with the flight of cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo in September 1980, the first Latin American to orbit our planet, so far as we know has no satellites in operation. Spatial collaboration plans between the Soviet Union and the Caribbean island collapsed with the Berlin Wall, proof that they were more political than scientific. Now the Russians travel to Cuba as tourists, to do business and collect debts. Unfinished tasks of Cubans including recovering our freedoms and lost time and, why not, hoping to some day, to proudly put our own national satellite into orbit.

30 April 2013

Just three days ago, I was at the Miami airport, I did not want to miss the arrival of Berta Soler to this city. Discrete and humble, there they were, sitting in a corner, a small group of those women who from their immensity, some time ago I named “My Brides in White”; then I remembered a Sunday morning, under that strong and indiscreet sun on 5th Avenue in Havana, and revealed before my eyes a perfect formation, which out of ignorance I thought was a convention of santeros.

A total misconception, they were women dressed in white with a flower in their hands. I stopped to watch, and a a fifty-something guy in a beige guayabera, his face distorted by shock and emotion, approached and slapped the hood of my car, and showing his G2 cars ordered me, with unusual kindness, “Get out of here, those are the Ladies in White.” I continued my slow march, determined to know who were those women.

Days later I learned that the same group of women were protesting near Revolution Square, just where I had staged a demonstration considering it to be the gathering place of all Cubans, and that one of them (Berta Soler), was planning not to leave there until she could see her husband, detained and sick. But of course, the police and paramilitary forces evicted them using the always repugnant help of kicks and shoves.

By then, I knew they weren’t just a curiosity, it was a duty, a feeling, I approached the women who demand the release of their families, their loved ones, every Sunday, who even today now manage to upset the complacency of Cuban dictators. Who dares to love so much?

The first time I saw, in the distance, a stout brunette with braids, and a blonde with a sunhat, who turned out to be the angel who, when everything was dark, God placed in my path and whose earthly name was Laura Pollán.

Suddenly a “Down with the Castro brothers” interrupted my memories, it was the deep and serious voice of an ebony become woman, of a lady who for her tenderness and simplicity it is impossible for some to believe that she is an open book. Her smile is a hook; and her courage rhymes with beauty, but not with fakery.

For a second I feared to approach her, I thought of time and its ravages and that she wouldn’t remember me; but no, I was wrong, despite her world travels, and I received many signs of affection from Berta, still a soldier of hope, armed with her helplessness. Practical, rational, obstinate, direct, strong, good-natured, happy, loyal, charismatic and sweet, she is an excellent friend, a perfect fusion of defects and virtues, an authentic Cuban. This simple woman of indomitable spirit; with no pretension to power, practicing love for those who find no mercy. She is a human being immune to this fever of stardom that both swarms and atrophies.

I hugged and kissed the same woman who one Sunday, dressed in white, after attending Mass at Santa Rita Church in Havana, and marching down 5th Avenue, I met sitting on one of the old benches still zealously guarded in Gandhi Park in Miramar, that beautiful Havana neighborhood that resists continuing to be anchored to the era of the thaw.

1 May 2013

“Without a strong union there will be no economy,” said Salvador Valdes Mesa, vice president of the Council of State and member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) in the recently concluded plenary session of the National Union of Sugar Workers. An approach which clearly expresses the vision of unions as instruments of the State and not as an association to defend the interests of workers.

Valdes Mesa, replaced the previous week as general secretary of the Workers Central Union (CTC), in the last two decades was first secretary of the PCC of the municipality and of the province of Camagüey, secretary-general of the Agriculture and Forestry Labor Union, Minister of Labor and Social Security. continue reading

We’ve spent years in the opposition movement and have never stopped making our contribution, however modest, to the cause of the democratization of Cuba. It is a constant maintained by everyone involved in the fate of country, despite the many difficulties in which we develop our work.

We note how our work takes a long time to germinate because the constant police harassment policy, but still, we keep our seeds fertilized and watered for the good of the nation.

This time we wrote a program with a multidimensional architecture that seeks a respectful exchange and discussion between Cubans and the sustained and ultimate articulation with civil society in general through its project “Semillero” (Seed). With this project we plan to reach people with our constructive and legitimate message — as well as that of all the Cuban opposition — to show the different alternatives of hope and reconciliation that exist in Cuba and for her.

Our project offers, for Cuban society, an alternative to the simulation, indolence, emigration and irresponsible obedience, and as noted in the project, also the ambitious goal of “transforming each individual into an actor of his own personal and national destiny.”

Here is a link where you can read the tríptico promocional de «Cuba 360». [Only in Spanish at this time.]

1 May 2013

I’m not exaggerating if I tell you that for more than I month it’s been known with precision the exact number of participants by province, union and sector that will fill the country’s plazas with color in “spontaneous” marches for May Day.

What are these Cuban workers celebrating? In reality, they’re not celebrating anything. They consume a representation that started out being genuine but that has shed meaning along the way. In contrast to the working class in other countries, even though they have equal or greater reasons to do so, they do not fight to increase insufficient wages, they don’t demand an end to the dual monetary system, and they don’t unite against the possibility of being laid off, they don’t protest about the slowness and shallowness of the economic reforms, they don’t organize to restructure the union that represents them.

One of the slogans that will preside over the march this year is: “For a prosperous and sustainable socialism.” If there ever really was socialism, at its beginning it brought changes in education and health-care, which, since the disappearance of the Soviet subsidy, haven’t stopped deteriorating, but prosperity has been an elusive goal of the working class, which at one time perceived the real possibility of reaching it through their own efforts, for long years so demonized.

With regards to sustainability, they should have the grace not to be so dramatic; they’ve had every opportunity over more than half a century at the helm of the government and haven’t even managed food independence despite constantly repeating the official propaganda about the dangers of the Blockade and the Imperialist Threat.

It’s a paradox that the workers march to celebrate conquests that we’ve enjoyed for a half a century or more, but are incapable or organizing themselves around demands that affect their daily lives. Meanwhile, the Cuban working class continues marching being slogans that represent nothing, the legacy of the Chicago Martyrs still leave much to be done among us.

1 May 2013

A few days ago the government organized a Online Discussion Forum for a generic Cuban civil society, about human rights in the country, with an eye on the upcoming report from the United Nations Human Rights Council: the Universal Periodic Review (UPR).

As expected, there was representation only of women, intellectuals, religious and Cuban artists who support the regime, and from pro-government organizations and government institutions such as the National Union of Jurists of Cuba, the Federation of Cuban Women, the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, the Council of Churches, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center, the Cuban Movement for Peace, the José Martí Cultural Society, the Council of Scientific Societies Health Solidarity Organization the Peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, among others.

It was all one voice (the choir syndrome), as if they had rehearsed repeatedly the same arguments already worn out on the marvelous Cuban political system, the democracy of our socialism, the focus on gender, racial equality, and the respect for sexual diversity, the blockade, terrorism, etc. It wasn’t worth spending a single dime on the carefully planned event, with totally known figures, lacking any originality and not bringing anything new.

I’ll touch on another aspect that stands out: the appropriation of certain terms which were previously considered taboo by the authorities and which had been dismissed from the official vocabulary, such as democracy, human rights, diversity, civil society, etc.; instead they used socialist democracy or our democracy, socialist rights, unity, dictatorship of the proletariat, and so on.

It seems that, with the passage of time and the accumulation of failures, both domestic and international, the latter lost credibility and validity, and have had to dip into what was once considered taboo, albeit properly recycled ideologically. Thus we see that by using the term democracy, the authorities say ours is the most perfect and best there is on the planet; the only human rights defensible are those officially accepted; diversity refers only to gender, race and sex, excluding the political; and civil society consists only of those who share the system’s ideology.

The attachment to the politically archaic, outdated and outmoded is so entrenched, that to leave it behind seems an impossible task for the authorities, despite the updates, experiments and other adjustments, designed for their survival.

Meanwhile Cubans, whatever they think, are not part of the terms in use, and this trying to monopolize them by the government, without understanding, accepting and respecting diversity as an indispensable component of the unit, will continue to block the paths for the solution our national crisis.

30 April 2013

Let no one speak again for all Cubans. Ask them in a plebiscite.

“Let them call free and democratic elections on the basis of a new electoral law and an atmosphere that allows all Cubans to have the right to be nominated and elected democratically, exercising freedom of expression and of the press and freely organizing themselves into political parties and social organizations with full plurality. Yes or No?”

Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas, on behalf of the Christian Liberation Movement, Havana, Cuba, 17 January 20122.

Plebiscite Now.

More information at: oswaldopaya.org/es

1 May 2013