Translating Cuba

I confess that I, like many, was surprised how hard-fought the fight was. Fewer than 300,000 votes difference, and both candidates with more than 7 million votes, is virtually a dead heat that calls for a deep reflection: how is it possible that after all these missions implemented by the Government of Hugo Chavez even half of Venezuelans voted for the alternative, Capriles? Could Venezuelans be so ungrateful? Or is what is hidden behind this shift a part of history that always escapes whenever you look through a single prism?

As I said in my second to last post, almost every reference on the subject has brought me colleagues who are returning from Venezuela, workers who left under conditions that I refrain from judging so as not to stoke the demons. But the truth is that now we get indisputable evidence: half of the electorate voted for the project that advocates reversing more than a decade of Bolivarian Revolution and choosing to return to the previous scheme.

I know well, from my own experience, that the ocean waves tend to distort the reality emitted by the antennas; so it is that hundreds of millions of earthlings still have a distorted sense of the Cuban reality, for example, and by analogy the same thing could happen in this case.

I speculate on the possibility that behind Hugo Chavez’s discourse, however sincere, is sheltering this opportunistic element that never fails in these situations: a whole caste of officials who in the name of the movement have filled their pockets and positioning themselves just to see how much they can benefit themselves, something that could be seen every day by this whole mass of people who voted on both sides, and that is not transmitted, presumably, on Telesur.

But personally, my sixth sense makes me doubt the alternative, Capriles; I simply do not see that he has the charisma to lead a nation. With the entire economic livelihood of the oligarchy there to count on for logistical support, I suspect that the money has been their only currency. It puts me in the dilemma of choosing, never having opted for someone so devoid of magnetism.

Although to offer an opinion from more than six hundred miles of stormy Caribbean away implies a margin for error, “especially when dealing with such complex realities,” this is something that I assume mine isn’t more than one opinion among millions.

I hope that whatever path this sister nation takes, whatever it is, includes the most absolute political and economic independence and the greatest justice and social inclusion possible, and that it all comes through paths of peace because it is this and no other dream that I desire for my own people. But as I see things now, the government of Nicolas Maduro will have to walk a very fine line if he wants to continue his ambitious social project, because it’s absolutely certain that, from inside and outside the country, powerful and dark shady deals are going to be working against him.

23 April 2013

Two different audiovisual have made me reflect again on our country’s future. The first, a recent BBC report on North Korea. It is one thing to read about this dystopian society and another to view images whose referent is the Orwellian nightmare. Politics is complicated, but they can not be good. Knowing them to be friends of my government gives me a feeling similar to that produced in me by demonstrations of friendship with the Iranian government.

But to dispel that depressing vision, last night, in the Cinema of Our America, I saw “No,” the Chilean film about the referendum against Pinochet. The film left me feeling very positive that the opposition could act from joy, and so from that feeling can call people together.

Not to maintain the scheme that to dissent is dangerous, because people from instinct or fear shy away from dangerous situations, even when they can’t divine them, can’t divine the depletion of public confidence in the government.

From the confrontation and the pulse, the heroism is evident, but this in itself does not add up and often valuable and much-needed life. I’m thinking right now about the hunger strike of a large group of activists from UNPACU — the Patriotic Union of Cuba — which very few Cubans inside the island know about, but which is magnified in this rumor of repression to which they are subjected.

There are ideas that I share with you, readers, because you already know what the associations are. With all due respect for the pain of many families, the joy, that component of our character, should be a basic component in the mortar of our reinvention as citizens.

26 April 2013

By Ignacio Estrada

Havana, Cuba. While the Catholic Church stumbles before the growing number of child abuse scandals, the Cuban clergy seems immune to this epidemic.

The fact is that so far this Pandora’s Box has not been opened on the island. I don’t think that’s a reason to think that events like this could not have happened on our land. We would only have to dig and put our ears to the ground to hear the rumors of our grandmothers and grandfathers or even ourselves a little more what happens when we serve at mass.

With my note I don’t mean to accuse any priest or religious but if I pushed the drops would begin to fall. I am convinced that at some point someone started to talk and others thought about how, like in other countries, what the church can give in exchange for their silence.

That’s if the Cuban government, shrewd and cautious like always in its communications between church and state doesn’t think to collect evidence or those small and insignificant anomalies and ask for favors in return or better yet ask for the complicity of the Church and the Cuban Catholic hierarchy.

I know a large number of priests and religious of both sexes and I know some people like the opposite sex and some have occasional and spontaneous relationships but the largest number of these I know are gay.

As a Catholic, as a homosexual and as a Cuban I am going to be talking and this is the ground I stand on. I know cases like these exist and I simply try with my note to call attention to this abomination.

No matter what we are, nor the preferences we have, child abuse must end now. The Cuban and Universal Church should immediately receive an injection of renewal and delouse faults like these, that exonerate those who have not committed these offenses and sit on the bench next to those who have committed them but remain the silent.

I know that those who answer the call of vocation never cease to be men and women, I understand human matter and we are not ones to criticize. The fact that acts like these are committed should not because we, as the faithful, justify our one. On the contrary, we must fix on the true teaching of Jesus Christ.

To allow God that is really our Cuban church is far from any scandal like this. To allow God to enthrone the new Pope with the name of Francis I comes to repair our church and tidy up our home.

22 April 2013

From the site manager: Yusnaby tweeted today that he is again walking the streets… but that his cellphone has been completely erased (by the cops punching in too many wrong passwords)…

But… We have been unable to find any acquaintance in Havana who also knows Yusnaby, no one who can check on him, no photos of him other than the one on his blog, no phone number, no nada. (Does he exist?!)

Speak up, Yusnaby! Do you have a phone, a landline, an address, any place someone can meet you and make sure you’re ok? How about your Mom’s phone/address?

We are all anxious to hear from you. Proof of life, please!

Site manager: Sometimes a little historical perspective is a wonderful thing.

Poster from http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/

The annual carrying on over the victory of Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) happened this fourth month, with the national media playing it down. The elections in Venezuela were the priority of the Cuban government after the physical death of Hugo Chavez and it seems that a matter of so much preoccupation and occupation, a vital matter of political survival for them, that they quietly commemorated the victory gained April 15-19 of 1961 by the then young Revolution, against the invaders.

The remains of Sara Gonzalez* must have been spinning in the stinking waters of Havana Bay this month. Her iconic song “Giron, the Vanguard,” an allegory of that military success of the nascent Cuban dictatorship, wasn’t even heard as usual in the four days of the media hammering that usually accompanies the remembrance.

Sometimes it seems that the government thinks that we are a subnormal people or that we have learning difficulties, so they must repeat to us, over and over again, the events and dates and produce multiple TV and radio programs to  repeat the events and dates over and over again and make many radio and television programs to plant the understanding in our minds over the entire year; but the more repetitions on the anniversaries. Perhaps others, like myself, noticed the government slip-up, but they chose to let us escape, although just this one time, from the persistent official harassment, the manipulation of consciousness that historically reigns over the minds of our subjected people. What a relief!

*Translator’s note: Sara Gonzalez Gomes (~1950-12012) was a Cuban singer songwriter who was part of the Nuevo Trova with figures such as Silvio Roriguez and Pablo Milanes.

25 April 2013

Havana, Cuba, April 3, 2013

“… justice is like a serpent, a viper, that never bites the boots,
it only bites the barefoot.”
Archbishop Óscar Arnulfo Romero
Archbishop of San Salvador, murdered in 1980.

Your Holiness Francisco, first of all I want to thank God, for your devotion and faith, you who have been designated the first Pope, for other merits, Latin American, for the pride of those born on this continent; so it is somehow impossible not to consider you closer and more earthly, for your own Latino people.

Holy Father, I confess that since the loss of my beloved Pope John Paul II, my tie to Catholicism has dimmed, but You, despite the few days you have sat in your humble papal chair, you have practiced that modesty that elevates and exalts, which has already revolutionized the universal church.

Your Beatitude, I write from a prison in Cuba, where I am serving a wrongful conviction for a crime that could not be proved, for opening a critical blog from which I write on behalf of social justice, a penalty that has the sole purpose of teaching me a lesson,although they have not been able to silence my voice, but my heart will not let me cry in my favor, I prefer, I need, I am urged to seek justice for Prisoners of Conscience who suffer in Cuban jails.

Supreme Pontiff, the situation being experienced by our island is already known and unacceptable in the twenty-first century, to paraphrase our beloved Pope John Paul II, to not open itself to the world, to not even open its blinds to plural national thinking, as should correspond to any civilized nation in the world.

Messenger of Peace, we are prisoners because we overcome the fear; the need to be heard made us take off the gag, so we have faced the punishment of the dictatorship, which unfortunately holds to maintain silence and its discipline, attacking with imprisonment, beatings and the mysterious deaths of opposition leaders.

Your Grace, in this prison where I live with two brothers in the struggle: Lamberto Hernández Planas and Pedro de la Caridad Alvarez Pedroso, who have spent 22 years in prison, more than half of their lives, without having committed acts of bloodshed, without having hurt a human being; also suffering imprisonment are a married couple, Sonia Garro Alfonso and her husband Ramon Alejandro Munoz, who have not harmed anyone, only their ideas have been enough to keep them in jail without cause or conviction; as well as Calixto Martinez, for his journalism. But they are not unique; like them there are many throughout the country’s prison system.

Universal Pastor, my voice was one that opposed the last visit of Pope Benedict XVI, because I felt that was a mockery of the Vatican, as the Cuban government took advantage of his kindness and good intentions, and every papal visit only adds a false recognition before humanity, especially when Cuban representatives of the church that you represent ignores the Cuban opposition as a political force.

Dear Pope, José Martí, the Cuban most universal, addressing a soldier wrote on October 20, 1884: “A people is not founded, General, in the same way that one commands a military camp,” and the current governing Nomenklatura Cuba accepts no position different from the militarized.

We ask you, as Vicar of Christ, that do not rub against the manipulations of the Castro brothers, exercised for more than half a century since the beginnings of their  nefarious power in 1959. With humility, we pray that you be elusive to their  antichrist offerings. For the Cuban people it is not enough that we have have the holy days returned to us. We need freedom, “Which can not be anything other than freedom to think differently,” (Rosa Luxemburg), and that they accept and respect once again the Universal Human Rights.

Bishop of Rome, I have the hope that your papal administration will bring peace for Cubans. So that then, one Cuba united, without hatred or pain, will give you the spontaneous welcome no Pope has received on this soil.

Humbly I beg of you,

Ángel Santiesteban Prats
Writer
La Lima Prison
Havana, Cuba

* This letter was written by Ángel on April 3 when he had not yet been illegally and forcefully transferred to La Lima prison. It was just delivered yesterday April 24 at the headquarters of the Nunciature in Havana.

Today, April 25, Angel continues in the strict regime prison in 1580. The reason for his transfer was to prevent his being interviewed by the Commission of National and International Journalists who visited the center on April 9. This visit was one of many performances organized by the Castro regime to deceive the world about what really happens in their prisons, authentic concentration camps. Three weeks before the UN Human Rights Commission meets in Geneva and submits a report on the Castro government which will include aspects of prison policy, the committee of journalists — without the least ethical principles — counting on the complicit silence with all the human rights violations committed by the dictatorship. The UN Human Rights Commission, based in Geneva, now has in its hands the possibility to remedy such an affront to the dignity committed by the journalists. In a few days we will know if they will.

25 April 2013

On April 21, as a prelude to the celebration of World Book Day in Madrid and other cities in Spain, the daily El Pais published a review by Antón Jacinto of The Dark Charisma of Hitler, by the British historian Laurence Rees, who analyzes the personality of the great German dictator and the capacity of hatred as an element of popular leadership. I attach  major pieces of that article because it made me think of F. Castro and other “charismatic tyrants” in Latin America who combine hatred with the terror and mass manipulation.

“We know almost everything about Adolf Hitler, but irreducible secrets of his personality and leadership remain. For the famous British historian and documentarian Laurence Rees (Ayr, Scotland, 1957), none are greater than how he managed to drag along with him, in the terrible cycle of war and genocide, millions of Germans. To try to clarify that and to explain the keys to the fatal attraction of the Nazi leader, the author of Auschwitz, Horror in the East, Their Darkest Hour, and Behind Closed Doors, has dedicated his new book, The Dark Charisma of Hitler. Rees highlights the features of Hitler “his unlimited capacity for hatred.” He warns: “The power of hate is undervalued. It is easier to unite people around hatred around than any positive belief.”

As a person, says Rees, Hitler was quite unfortunate. “Badly damaged” psychically, incapable of true friendships and affections, bathed in hatred and prejudice. “Lonesome and with a vision of life as a struggle and human beings like animals.” But he had charisma. “We tend to think that charisma is a positive value, but despicable people may have it,” he muses.

Rees says, “The most important thing to understand that Hitler’s charisma depended on people. Charisma does not exist offline. You cannot be charismatic on a desert island. Much of what makes it is the other… Yes, the idea is that when we feel a special connection with someone we believe that depends on this person but actually it depends partly on us. Hitler’s charisma came from both the people who followed him as well as himself… “

Rees explains how among the Germans themselves the influence of Hitler’s charisma resulted in changes. “People who saw him as a ridiculous or disturbed in 1928 came to consider him as a savior in 1933.” There were always, however, people immune to his charisma. Philipp Von Boeselager, who conspired to kill him, found him outrageous and said it was disgusting to watch him eat: a boor. “Well, but you have to remember that … unconventional times require unconventional leaders.”

People had to be predisposed to follow Hitler, says Rees, although he, the leader, brought his intransigence, his absolute sureness of his role as a providential figure, his ability to connect with the hopes and desires of millions of Germans, their uncontrolled emotions and, above all, his contagious hatred. “One of the hardest things in the world is accepting the blame and responsibility for yourself, we are all predisposed to project our frustrations on the other, in the form of hatred.”

Did Hilter’s success depend on his charisma? “Yes, this aspect was vital. If someone says he will do something extraordinary and he does, the next time it is easier for you to have faith. Hitler played strong, all or nothing, and every victory strengthened his charisma. Many military, for example, who looked at him with suspicion, surrendered to his genius, his intuition, the famous Fingerspitzengefühl, after a long series of victories that seemed inexplicable…”

So, how did his charisma survive the failure at Stalingrad? “Unlike Mussolini, Hitler dismantled the structures of the State, so it was more difficult separate him from power, in addition, he had instilled fear of the Red Army in the Germans and their revenge, which would happen at the defeat and although Hitler would be gone, and of course Hitler increased the terror of his repressive apparatus in direct proportion to the loss of his charismatic leadership.”

Hitler cultivated his charisma … “including in many small ways. He wore glasses, but never let himself be seen or photographed in them. He carried a magnifying glass. They even fabricated a special typewriter with large characters to write the texts he had to read … He also studied his image in the mirror and practiced his famous glare.”

Rees points out the differences between Hitler and Stalin in terms of charisma. “Stalin practiced negative charisma, the entire image of Hitler seemed hollow. Under Stalin there were no rules to avoid being killed. No one was sure. In Nazi Germany it was clear who would be persecuted by the regime, in the Stalinist USSR, no. Stalin used fear like Hitler used hatred.”

British historian Laurence Rees

25 April 2013

By Ignacio Estrada

Havana, Cuba — Some time ago I listened to a doctor from from Villa Clara narrate her life as a medical aid worker, in the Republic of Venezuela.

I listened carefully to each of her stories. Gossip that she perhaps told me in confidence between friends, but the mere fact of the imminent threat of the spread of red tide and the enthronement in Venezuela of Cubanization makes me see myself obliged to recreate one of these stories.

According to the doctor friend who served as a volunteer in Venezuela for more than five years and managed to become head of a Medical Mission to one of the parishes and that the role of the doctors was more than saving lives and, on occasion, they served as thermometers of Venezuelan society .

When I use the word thermometer, an instrument known for measuring environmental and body temperatures. It is because this also the work of the  majority of medical aid workers to provide services to measure the state of opinion of the Venezuelan people. Information that is collected and passed to the intelligence services and the government so that they know where they need to work and how to change that state of opinion.

Perhaps what for many is not important for others is novel and what a pleasure for it to be both, Important and Novel. Who can imagine the Cuban army of white coats doing intelligence work in a foreign country? Work is not unknown by the authorities in power who try to win converts.

According to what my friend told me things weren’t left there; during times of presidential campaigns they also had to work to win votes for the official President. And this vote is won by explaining to people that the benefit they receive from healthcare and other things is free thanks to former President Chavez and the humanitarian work of the government. These chats take place in the clinics and while traveling around the the neighborhoods to deliver medications, and the conversations also serve to threaten the beneficiaries that if Chavismo ceases to exist all the projects will cease to exist.

This work is repeated whenever Medical Mission Cubans are in Venezuela, many of them looking for what they can not achieve in their own country for their families with their profession. The Cubanization is one of the key factors and principle support and bastion of Chavismo Venezuela.

This same friend in one of our many conversations, also told me about where she lived with another compatriot in her profession. According to her, this other doctor was serving on a Medical Mission on Margarita Island, one of the opposition stronghold states in Venezuela. It turns out that the opposition mayor once visited the Diagnostic Center that was under her charge on this island. And seeing the poor conditions there promised to send help the next day to improve the waiting room, and fix the air conditioning and the consulting room.

The aid appeared quickly but the doctor could not receive it under threat of her superiors that she would be deported to Cuba and Medical Mission suspended for receiving help from the opposition. It would seem stupid but but it’s not, because on signing on the Cuban doctors would realize that not everything is like they say, and I am more than convinced that they exchange the improvements for their families for what they are forced to endure.

This doctor knew how to use one of the beneficiaries of her attentions and through him asked the Mayor that please not to send the aid the following morning, thanking him but he was sincere in the reason he attended and the opposition mayor heard her and didn’t fail to fulfill his promise to help the cooperative.

I do not advocate violence, or the witch hunt, but at times like these I sympathize with the Venezuelan nation and call for the social order and the restoration of democracy. I am one of the many Cubans who do not want to export the model that has failed our nation to another country in our America, I am one of those who wants Cubans to travel freely and conquer new areas and earn their livings with dignity but without trampling the suffering of others.

I apologize to God first and secondly to my friend, a doctor who for safety I don’t say her name name to reveal her stories, but just knowing that there are people who need to hear these truths is bigger than any secrets and I am convinced that someday she will be relieved by having used me to fix who knows what collateral damage that has been caused.

To say Enough is Enough of Cubanization in Venezuela, it not to close the doors of this nation to freedom-loving Cubans. It is to close off those who by deceit come to trample and usurp the rights that it is up to citizens to decide for themselves and that is the right to take back the future of our nation be it any of the existing models.

22 April 2013

According to Wikipedia, the Chinese in Cuba are the most prominent and largest Asian community settled on the island. History records that on June 3, 1847 the Spanish brig “Oquendo” landed the first 200 Chinese laborers from the port of Amoy; although long before the “Oquendo” there were already Chinese in Cuba who had arrived from the Philippines, the so-called Manila-Chinese.

The Ten Years War surprised these migrants in Cuba and they joined the liberation forces. Many of them mixed with Spaniards, blacks and even mulattoes. From there was born the Chinese-Cuban.

The relations between the governments of Cuba and China have been up and down over the years but mostly down; but sometimes things go smoothly. Several Cuban leaders drive Geely cars — made in China — models also used by the National Revolutionary Police automotive troops and the G2 – State Security. The “kitsch” Cuban progeny — offspring of those in power — venture in what they believe to be new routes and go shopping in Hong Kong, experts in social themes exchanging opinions of “change” with certain regularity, businessmen of both countries sign galactic contracts, and high level delegations visit with such pleasure that the Cuban president even sang to Hu Juntao in Mandarin.

The new surreptitious business is “solidarity” with groups of Chinese who land on the island with regularity with which water drips from a broken pipe, constant drops, stimulating black market springs that move the well enshrined chain of the underground economy.

Some authorized contractors assert they are very calm customers, they don’t take hookers home and barely leave their rooms. They don’t behave as tourists, don’t go to the beach, don’t buy maracas or visit museums; throughout their stay on the island they spend their time muttering, and eating.

So much so that the new culinary specialty in the rooms-for-rent homes is to make a cup of rice with two and half cups of unsalted water, which makes a hideous mass which is then allowed to dry, add curry, make balls, and after frying it it’s called Rice Croquettes are called.

This has given rise to traveling salesmen who used to go door to door selling flowers, condoms, lobster or beef and who now support themselves selling rice (the little balls). It’s not illegal and they earn more, hence the refrain, “Take advantage of good fortune, when it’s rare,” (which, of course, rhymes in Spanish).

But housing agent who leads foreign clients to rental housing, the former immigration official for the Playa neighborhood, referring to the development of this lucrative market and new line of work, assured me with sarcastic ingenuity, “Nothing changes. The government sees nothing and tomorrow will say they didn’t know; but up to today it goes on and there’s no lack of “curry” in the hard currency stores. Look,” he continued, changing to a secure line and French, “What they know they don’t question. The reality is the Chinese are coveted customers, they travel  in small groups, stay in Cuba for 13-25 days, but before leaving, hello, what is important here is cash, everything is original and well-done, they pay up to 700 CUC for a Cuban passport, 200 for an identity card, and a thousand more to be included in the official civil registry, thus becoming duly legalized Chinese-Cuban citizens.  And now nationalized, they continue traveling into the future destined to our larger neighbor, ready to be welcomed by the Cuban Adjustment Act.”

The illegal traffic of Chinese using Cuba as a trampoline is a forbidden business that, tolerated, accepts accomplices, not witnesses.

24 April 2013

And, finally, Miami.

After decades of Made in Havana propaganda, I could travel that explosion of expressways called Miami (the entire city is an airport), where every little house is a clone of a Cuba lost forever (with their flags and little virgins), where every generation has at least one family representative, where the food remains as intact as a five-day-old, or five-decades-back memory, where dancing and laughing and even making love hurts us deep in the soul, where God speaks our exile slang perfectly. Because everyone in Miami is us, we live there or here: the city was built like a dream from which sooner rather than later the nation would wake up, a dream to conceal the nightmare of never returning home (Miami, mercy).

I entered and left Miami through the magic mirror of its radio and TV stations. It’s a miracle against modernity this hypermedia Miami, so homogenous and yet so plural. As banal as it is true-to-life. It could be a first impression, but after the despotism of Havana, where there are no longer any live programs (even the speeches of the Maximum Leader are broadcast with a few seconds delay, for protection), Miami simply amazed me. From sadness, but it amazed me.

With the mordant and lovable Jaime Bayly, with the precision to the point of causticity of Juan Manuel Cao, with the impassioned chorus of María Laria and her glitzy staff, with the eternal solidarity of Radio República and, of course, with the heart in the microphones of Radio Martí, the only broadcaster of the Cuban exile that transmits almost from the interior of the country (its studies are not in Havana but they have much of Havana and the other cities and towns of our country), with all and for the ratings of all I said the first thing that came to mind, without agendas dictated by any imaginary mafia of the Ministry of the Interior, without mutual fear nor mediocre censorship, without adding not even a line to what I have always said from my Cuban cellphone in my native Havana neighborhood.

We Cuban social activists agree that “to think and live in freedom is to learn thinking and living freely,” a phrase of Rosa María Payá’s at the University of Miami that electrified even the tears of this second capital of all Cubans (perhaps the first capitalism of all Cubans), where she and I coincided, each in transit to our own democratizing destination for our repressive country.

I resisted indulging my appetite in Miami, I have witnesses to my austerity. The food didn’t go down my throat: some kind of anguished happiness made me ignore my old acquaintances, living their successful lives in a Cuba that in Cuba we couldn’t even imagine (or we didn’t dare to imagine, and so delayed our respective exiles).

I saw the sea of Miami, but I didn’t look out on it nor want to smell it. I didn’t want to imagine the Island on the other side of the horizon, 45 minutes to where the Cuban political police wait for us to put us in quarantine without charges.

I felt the heat. They offered me a job, I didn’t answer. I slept on a sofa. I slept in a suite. I slept almost in a closet, at the edge of the probing looks of our civil society where I was a first-timer and happy. I remained sleepless in an airport of flights cancelled en masse by American Airlines, with the intuition that Miami had cast a spell on me to not let me leave.

Finally, I came, I saw, and I went, because Manhattan is less desperately Manhattavana, and because to vacate the subways is the secret formula of my subterranean Cuban-ness that flees Cubans because we all have within a mini-ministry of the interior. Everyone, starting with the pro-democrats.

I moved in the free cars of Facebook activists whom I didn’t know in person, but who from the beginning of the chats we already liked each other, beyond political or geographic positions. I spoke in the mythical Calle 8 Art and Research Center as if I was very sure about what I was saying, while my spirit was then a tissue of pure emotion. I flew to and from Miami thanks to the generous pockets of Cuban entrepreneurs who want Cuba more than me, people of diverse economic strata who treasure the archives and the illusions that dictatorial laziness derailed, destroying not only our rights as citizens but, with the same idea, a nation.

And this will be the most sinister, but also the most sincere legacy of Castroism or the Revolution: the day after is already humanly impossible. Our present precariousness is perennial. The elite in power have taken the necessary steps for a staged transition (and this includes my presence here: Miami, forgive me), where the peaceful dissidence inside and outside of Cuba will have no more space than the scaffold and, in fact, we are disappearing drop by drop and without witnesses of interest to the world, because the world is only interested in the millions and millions who now promote this neo-utopia that exploits capitalism without freedom. Businessmen of all countries, unite.

I spoke with personalities from Cuba’s republican history and about our most intimate and tense relationship with the government in Washington. I saw fewer homeless than in New York where, in turn, I saw fewer than in Central Havana, although this does not alleviate the humiliation of seeing myself flying to American universities while a human being sleeps on the sidewalks of this permissive country.

I want to return to Miami. I would not want to return ever again. I’m still about to leave. But very soon I will return. Miami, look at me: do you want to be my love, at least while Cuba doesn’t fall?

From DiariodeCuba.com.

24 April 2013

Photo from http://www.elcomercio.com/

Again terrorism achieved its murderous aims when many innocents were killed at the finish line of the Marathon held in Boston, Massachusetts for more than half a century. Naturally, the bombing also erupted in the media, which sent us images of the two Chechen youths who were the authors of this act of terror that cost three lives and injured more than 170 people.

I sincerely sympathize with the pain of the families of the victims of this vile episode committed from a distance without showing their faces; and I also sympathize with the families and friends of all who perished in the same or similar circumstances.

So far, the Cuban press only referred to the event from the news perspective, with nothing of the usual sociological and super-politicized analysis — with a visible justifying subtext — of the reasons that in some regions, countries or social groups inclines people to violence as a means to express disagreement with certain policies, political or power centers, which is the same as using the lives of people to send messages to the “criminal complaints inbox.”

The official media in my country always mentions social injustice, poverty, the domination of foreign powers, cultural issues and religious fundamentalism, and uses and abuses the term “double standard” to demonstrate their disagreement with the treatment given to some known terrorists. Doesn’t that make them the same?

When their allies throw Molotov cocktails it’s a revolutionary activity, if other people do it they’re terrorists. Their allies, the FARC, don’t kidnap, they “retain”; but if the an antagonistic group executes an analogous action it’s kidnapping. The saddest thing is that these manipulations are not confined to the field of semantics, but are commonly conceptualized.

When it comes to something like the case of Bin Laden and action of the CIA, the media are supersaturated with criticism of the U.S. government and its imperial and interventionist methods of domination.

When they talk about governments partial to Cuba, like Russian and its two wars launched against Chechnya to prevent its independence, the immorality of the double-speak or the scandalous silence. Perhaps they are waiting for the trial of the young survivor “terrorized by the cruelties and injustices” involved in the massacre, to highlight the exaggerated punishment the judicial system of the United States imposes on the defendant.

I know that peace is fickle and threatened, at least by verbal violence, cultural differences, socioeconomic, geopolitical, strategic or hidden and diverse interests. From primitive times there were people trying to control others and governments or groups who, in the legitimate exercise of their defense, applied the laws as established — unlike dictatorships — in favor of maintaining peace and political and social stability. These values and rights of communities or societies remain today and we must respect, without interference, what is established in the legislation of each State when it comes time for justice.

The reasons that may predispose a person to choose the option of terrorism are dissimilar and complex to analyze in the personal space of a blog, which has its   communication codes for amenable and digestible reading; but I blame these acts contrary to human rights, proclaiming premeditated aggression against innocent civilians even outside, the objective pursued, in order to strike terror to a part of society through fear and achieve a political purpose or otherwise.

I repudiate these violent actions aimed at creating alarm and social instability, inciting ethnic hatred, religious or political, and that use of any weapon of war, explosives, chemical or biological weapons, to endanger the life or physical integrity and psychological health of people.

23 April 2013