I just got this telephone message from Angel Santiesteban-Prats in which he informed me that they wanted to take him to the Salvador Allende military hospital against his will. I am making this communication public right now in hopes of what the response has been of those who are supposed to transport him.
I hope to have more information in the coming minutes.
Message from Angel Santiesteban
I’ve never been in favor of sensationalist or tabloid news, so I’ve preferred to remain silent until now, when the circumstances warrant making it known.
With 10 days of finding myself in prison dark spots began to appear on my face, which I only paid attention to when they also appeared on my arm. I went to consultation of the prison doctor who sent me to the dermatologist who gave me an appointment for the next day at the surgery, where the doctor applied a substance to the marks causing burns. The specialist explained to me this is the procedure for this type of skin cancer that usually appears in white skinned people after 40 years. Days later the scabs were falling off leaving a pink colored area.
Today, April 5, they sent for me from the medical station to inform me that they would be taking me to the Salvador Allende hospital for a checkup, particularly for these spots that were treated. I refused outright, I will not go to any military health center and my position is firm.
They also told me that Antonio Rodiles cannot visit me any more, as he has on two previous visits. When asked the reason they said he wasn’t family, nor is he a friend who ideologically makes “a positive contribution to the revolutionary process.” I let them know that I was here precisely for my ideas which agree with those of Rodiles, and the officer shrugged, a gesture which implies that there are “orders from above,” where a General, not a Captain, rules.
Now I’m waiting for them to come and hospitalize me. I don’t know what will happen in the face of my refusal to go with them and what their reaction will be.
Havana, 5 February 2013. Last Sunday, February 3, the disabled minor Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez, received as a gift a donation made in the name of the Cuban National Council of Churches.
The donation was given to the minor in the presence of her mother Yamayki Rodríguez, the same day her daughter turned sixteen. Keylis could get the gift of a new wheelchair; alleviating her lack of one will allow her to resume her daily activities.
The donation was possible because of the efforts of the organization the Cuban League Against AIDS with the Cuban Council of Churches, an institution that did not hesitate for a second in facilitating the acquisition without any cost to the child.
The new wheelchair was received by the disabled child with joy and she gave thanks for the gift with tears in her eyes, grateful that her situation — which was so dire — was improved.
Yamayki said she was thankful for what her daughter received, and at that moment remembered everything that Keylis had had to deal with since she was very little, describing everything from her heart surgery to the malformations in her hips, knees and ankles.
Keylis sent a recorded message of thanks to the Cuban Council of Churches and I cite it: I thank this institution for allowing me to navigate again… a message that ended with tears in her eyes.
Keylis Caridad Alemán Rodríguez lives at No. 38 Agramonte Street in the municipality of Santo Domingo in the province of Villa Clara.
The literature of Mario Vargas Llosa has prompted several key turning points in my life. The first was 17 years ago, in a summer of blackouts and economic crisis. Under the pretext of borrowing “The War of the End of the World,” I approached a journalist expelled from his profession for ideological problems, with whom I still share my days. I keep that copy with its yellowed cover and detached pages, because through it dozens of readers have discovered this Peruvian author censored in the official bookstores.
Then came university, and while preparing my thesis on the literature of the dictatorship in Latin America his novel “The Feast of the Goat” appeared. The inclusion in my analysis of that text about Trujillo did not sit well with the panel evaluating me. Nor did they like that among the characteristics of American caudillos, I highlighted exactly those also flaunted by “our” Maximum Leader. Thus, for the second time, a book by the now Nobel Prize winner in Literature marked my existence because it made me realize the frustration of being a philologist in Cuba. Why do I need a title, I told myself, that announces I am a specialist in language and words, when I can’t even freely unite phrases.
So Vargas Llosa and his literature are responsible, in a direct and “premeditated” way, for much of what I am today: from my matrimonial happiness and my aversion to totalitarianism, to my having reneged on philology and turned to journalism.
I am prepared now, because I fear the next time one of his books falls into my hands its effect will last another 17 years, or once again slam the door on a profession.
The prisoners I share this barracks with tell me they read in the newspaper Granma that the 5 spies condemned in the U.S. complained because their jailers had offered them chicken twice. That is, they were protesting because they repeated the menu.
When I was free, I always heard these comments that seemed absurd and I immediately looked for a way to find someone on the internet to verify with. Now, in the conditions in which I survive in this prison it’s impossible to verify anything.
The truth is that it makes me laugh the way the prisoners here with me hear the news. I’ve heard several times, and I always have to laugh: this repetition of chicken that the spies complain of would be a reasons for a celebration among the inmates in this prison.
Some Fridays, on a holiday, they deliver what is normally recognized as a fourth of a chicken. That day the dining room is full. The other days it’s preferable to be on hunger strike. I myself, for example, spent five days without going to the dining room. I prefer to survive on cookies and toast that my family brings and that I keep, like a treasure, in a sack.
I have also read the statements of the Spanish political, Angel Carromero, who was driving the car in which we lost Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero. He said that his six months of imprisonment in Cuba was enough to leave him traumatized and needing medical help.
We have to remember that Carromero was held in a special prison for foreigners, that he also had the oversight of the embassy, and the obvious treatment of the political police to “sweeten him up,” so that the real version of what happened that fateful day won’t come to light.
We should ask, regardless of any prison, wherever it is, it’s always difficult to face and endure, what’s left for us who are in these inhumane prisons, with almost no food and with the extra weight of the known evil prosecutions for justice?
Neither the 5 spies nor Carromero know what a prison really is.
Antonio Rodiles (moderator), Iván García, Leonardo Calvo and Luis Medina.
HAVANA, Cuba, April 1, 2013, Pablo Mendez. On Friday March 29 State of Sats held a session on the recently concluded World Baseball Classic at its headquarters on 1st Street between 46 and 60, in the Havana neighborhood of Miramar.
Sergio Girat, administrator of the blog “Major League Baseball Clubs in Cuba,” part of the Cuban Voices Portal platform, gave a brief introduction about the modest results of the Cuban team that participated in the recently concluded World Baseball Classic, passing the microphone to the usual moderator, Antonio Rodiles, who then proceeded to present the panel, composed of Ivan Garcia, Leonardo Calvo and Luis Medina, journalists and knowledgeable bloggers.
The comments focused on the decline in the quality of the principal national pastime, along with to other disciplines such as volleyball, athletics and boxing. Nevertheless, the panelists agreed that despite not fulfilling the prediction of reaching the semifinals in San Francisco, the Cuban team did a good job make it to 5th place. Also, many of those present felt that the national team would have been a strong candidate for the trophy, if the Cuban players had included those with major league contracts.
They recognized that the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico were revealed as world powers; also the celebration of the World Baseball Classic was a success, despite the constraints imposed by some organizations of for-profit baseball and European supremacy in the official structure of the International Olympic Committee.
As the main drawbacks of the national sport, tactical-technical deficiencies were enumerated, as evidenced by the elevation of the level of play following the entry of professionals in the leads, insufficient nutrition of the athletes, loss of land to practice the sport — only in the city of Havana does it surpass the number 50 — the high prices of sports equipment, absence of the best coaches in the first line, and the disappointment of players because of low incentives, among many other dilemmas.
The majority concluded that the high performance sport demands resources that are not available due to the disastrous economic management of the Cuban Government. Also, all warned that if there’s not an opening for the national sports talents to sign contracts with other leagues, our “baseball,” despite our 150 years of experience, will self-destruct.
This article was written by a good fan of Major League Baseball.
Audiovisual materials presentedAudience members listening to the panel.Attendees looking at materials distributed.
This graffiti speaks for itself; it appeared on the Facebook wall of the independent journalist Roberto de Jesus Guerra Perez. Later I will add all available information.
The prisons barracks are overcrowded with prisoners who, for the most part, have committed the crime of “embezzlement.” They have stolen State assets, which according to “socialist legality” belong to the people, public good managed by the Castro brothers for more than fifty years, plunging the country into poverty.
A contradiction: if the goods belong to the people, and they, due to hunger, take an infinitesimal part of their property, they commit no offense and therefore they should not be punished.
In any event, this is only in theory; in practice they are serving time for it, while complaining about the impossibility of surviving on the wages of their work.
“If I don’t take what I consider I’ve earned by my efforts, I can’t feed my family. In my case I did it because I wanted to buy a pair of shoes for my daughter for her fifteenth birthday,” a man with teary eyes told me. Another approached to tell me that he is in prison for selling at satellite dish, the dish only, not the receiver, eyes wide as if looking into the abyss. “They exaggerated in the search they made of my home. When they searched a neighbor, looking for drugs, it wasn’t so exhaustive; in my case, because of the lack of information, they are worried about people seeing images of freedom.”
A great part of this mass of “embezzlers” are directors of companies, buyers, warehouse managers… anyone who has within their reach some item that can sell, buy, rent, and profit from that will then serve to acquire the elements vital to the lives of their children.
In a corroded, worn-out society, where young people, the children nobody wanted, only think about leaving the country or stealing to survive, it’s logical to think that the prisons are overcrowded with the worst fed.
The dictatorship ignores the demands of a society to have, in the political and economic order it offers its citizens, most of all its young people, a reality that guarantees present and future prosperity.
Following the tradition of ancient Roman warriors, the Cuba soldiers, after finishing their missions and/or conflicts in foreign territories, return to the fatherland carrying some live trophy.
Some chose to bring adopted children (whom they later abandon), others import women of unusual physiques that, not willing to put up with certain treatment, end up returning to their origins.
The most bizarre are brought as souvenirs, chimpanzees, macaws, giant tortoises, meerkats, and something more than anecdotes to show and remember.
And for mere competition, the current Cuban emperor assembled a hunting paradise hidden among the rugged beauty Cayo Saetia; an island located in the southeast of Holguin between Nipe Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. Where they can shoot buffalo, bulls, eland antelope, warthogs, zebras, camels, ostriches, fancy reptiles and other animals from distant latitudes.
Lovers of the natural (not nature), and like Nero, in this effort to give the people bread and circuses, in 2011 accepted a donation of African animals that traveled from the Etosha National Park in Namibia, to the National Zoo in Havana.
The humanitarian operation was called “Noah’s Ark II”, and eventually raised questions from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which issued statements expressing concern that these animals caught in the wild, would have to endure a long and tiring flight to a new destination, and it was not known whether any animal welfare organization had reviewed the Cuban facilities, its standards of care and insertion into social animal life.
The reality is that the imported specimens, like any foreign tourist, can count on close attention; the problems were more adaptive.
The black-backed jackal suffered severe depression upon discovering that the lack of fur on his Cuban counterpart is not a typical Caribbean hairstyle but is the result of a severe scabies. The foreign ungulates had a similar reaction on finding that their island equivalents didn’t need hooves, the veterinarians removed them and sold them at very good price on the black market for hand crafted barrettes.
In the carnivores’ area passivity reigns. Cheetahs, spotted and brown hyenas have seen their share of food decline considerably but they live convinced that this reduction is a global campaign against obesity. Due to the lack of water a small sedition in the hippo’s ponds was organized; but everything was sorted out, after a long chat, the artiodactyla — the cloven-hooved — came to understand that Cuba is a “blockaded” country.
Serious trauma, that of a lion that traveled to breed and seeing the Cuban lionesses feeding on bananas and fish heads, none will meet and they have a bad character.
For the rest, everything’s normal. The National Zoo is ready, waiting on the 26th.
This past February 2013 the world was universally surprised by the resignation of His Holiness Benedict XVI from the papacy, an event that hasn’t happened for six centuries. Joseph Ratzinger, the successor of John Paul II in 2005, will retire in Castell Gandolfo with the aim not interfering while the process of a conclave to elect the new successor of Peter goes forward..
February, februarius in Latin, was regarded in ancient times by the Romans as the month of purification and also of the dead. In Cuba could be considered the month of resuscitation. And, along with the visit of Russian President Medvedev the last week of that month, the issue of debt to the former Soviet Union returns. It seems that an agreement was finally reached between the two governments: Cuba will pay a part of this and Russia will write off the rest. The figures discussed are thirty billion dollars owed by the island. Something like what people say is the famous Cuban debt to Paris Club: $ 30.471 million. And one wonders, well, what where has all that money gone, where are the economic results of these loans? Will we Cubans know someday how this national economic disaster was funded?
It must be because of this, among many other questions, that the news of the public ratification, during the meeting of the new National Assembly and the new Council of State, of General President Raul Castro’s agreeing to reside over the dictatorial regime for only five more years. As if half a century was too little time, to prepare a transfer.
The outgoing vice-president relinquished his post; the Minister of the Interior seconded it. Thus the permanents succession within the spheres of power is ensured and set a precedent. Nothing but resignations and… resignations.
A couple of weeks ago my friend, the poet Rafael Alcides, published a text… as a way to air the case of Ángel Santiesteban Prats. I responded to him immediately, “You are wrong, Master…” Alcides sent me this text that I want to share with you about the opportunistic response of eight Cuban writers, affiliated with UNEAC (Writers and Artists Union of Cuba), on the occasion of International Women’s Day.
Here is the complete text:
Dear Luis Felipe: Alcides gave me this charge, but there is no visible email address for you to receive the letter, so I leave it here. In my blog today I posted about Angel. Hugs, Regina (Coyula)
Havana, 2 March 2013
From Rafael Alcides / To Luis Felipe Rojas
My Friend Luis Felipe:
Regarding your calling me “teacher” in replying to my opinions about the recently massacred Ángel Santiesteban, I will answer as Nicolás Guillén would with his usual mischievousness: “The teacher, in fact, will be you.” And as for the reply itself, it has left me confused. Either I didn’t know how to express myself or you read me with too much haste. Let’s see.
I said that from the beginning this is not a political case, adding slyly an “I’ve heard” that could not fail to be considered, and continuing on to demonstrate that it is, in fact, a political case, but to prove it without editorializing, in conformance with the method of poets from time immemorial: to leave this I said without saying it explicitly, so that it doesn’t take hold without being read at least once more, what Hemingway used to define with the seriousness of someone who was claiming the rights of discovery, “Iceberg theory.”
But truthfully, I talk about disagreements in the life a couple magnified to the extreme of sentencing our friend and the excellent writer Ángel Santiesteban to five years in prison, in its origin situations typical of that long list of things and cases of the home that nurtured the jokes of our grandparents, and then I stop to consider what the government could do now to back off.
To shoot blanks, by mistake, at the execution or for reasons of state usually happens with later governments, those that come after the fallen government, never from the government that commits the executions. Conscious of this important lesson in history, I mention possible solutions for the government, withdrawals where we both win. We get our Angel back, and the government, whatever it’s going to do, reserves for itself the romantic role of knight in shining armor who comes out to defend the honor of the lady.
You have to play the hand you were dealt, Luis Felipe. Unfortunately, Angel’s case is much more delicate than that of the 75 from the Black Spring early in the century. Then it was all very clear, then the accuser was the government; this time, unfortunately — I insist, unfortunately — the accuser is Angel’s ex-wife, the mother of his son — a son who is now fifteen years old — and this woman, this mother lied, yes, that woman, manipulated from the beginning or not, sought out false witnesses, simulated the marks of a beating on her face with leaves from a guao tree, she spoke of death threats, arson, finally, my friend Luis Felipe, this woman so in love that she would rather see her ex-husband burning at the stake than with another woman,set the table for these people and they, of course, eager, greedy, as is usual in these cases that fall out of the sky when least expected, quickly sat down to eat.
These are the facts. Not even God could change them move. To move heaven and earth to get Angel our is what we can do now, going to talk to God if necessary (and I believe it is), continuing to insist, of course, each in his own language, that our friend is innocent, that the case was fabricated, but knowing that as long as the ex-wife doesn’t retract, they, the jailers, will be the good guys and Angel will be the bad guy. That’s the situation.
Finally, Luis Felipe, I do not usually discuss with the reader, I respect your turn, but you are not a reader, to come out in defense of Angel with the passion with which you replied to me, makes you a part of me, since I too am Angel, in this moment when we are all trying to get Angel out of prison we are Angel, so I’m explaining to you without admitting that yes, perhaps, I didn’t make myself clear to you.
For your exception and unique character this is first, a private letter, but also first, we are talking about a tribute to your person, so you are authorized to publish it in your blog or wherever you think it would be appropriate, that is, useful to Angel.
I am among those who think that honest men do not have one discourse for coming and another for going. They have one, in my case, it now remains the discourse you replied to yesterday when I only showed the tips of the icy crests in the immensity of the sea.
I embrace you, and thank you again for wanting to do for Angel what you are doing.
Historical documentation depends on both the perspective and the interests of the writer, and the interpretative convenience of the reader. The last war on the Korean peninsula is no exception to this thesis. From the left they say: The Yankee imperialists invaded the north to take the entire peninsula and pressure the People’s Republic of China.
From the right the story is that: The Chinese Communist army, after its victory over the Kuomintang, invaded the south, to control the entire territory.
The fact is that as a result of the Second World War, first, and the Cold War, later, the Korean Peninsula remains divided into two antagonistic states, one south of the 38th parallel and the other north.
South Korea, after the 1953 armistice that ended the fighting but not the war, became the thirteenth largest economy in the world, a world leader in the shipbuilding industry, production of electronics and telephones, the country with the third highest number of broadband internet users per capita, in short: the fourth largest economy in Asia.
North Korea, meanwhile, created the fourth largest army in the world: 45 soldiers per 1,000 inhabitants and armed itself with nuclear weapons. The south is now a democratic country. The north an oppressive family dynasty now headed by the government of the grandson of Kim Il Sung, founder of the North Korean state.
The continuing tensions between the two Koreas; between the north and neighboring Japan; between Korea and the United Nations on nuclear proliferation; have marked the last 60 years since the signing of the armistice. Lately it seems that the new dictator is proving to his people their willingness and ability for conflict and and has put the world in a dangerous situation of nuclear war.
This is not the first time this has happened; the first fruits of that nonsense that corresponded to the Cuban dictatorship during the so-called Caribbean Crisis, in October 1962. Let us trust, once again, that the objectivity and prudence of governments of the countries involved, meeting at the United Nations, will manage to deter this new bellicose challenge that nobody in their right mind wants.
The Dominican Republic team will lead off this Tuesday, March 19, in the Baseball World Championship against Puerto Rico, as the favorite to win. The AT&T Park in San Francisco, California, will host the game. This time the champion will be a Caribbean country.
Cuba failed to advance to semifinals. Despite being first class, the Cuban team was tense, visibly playing under pressure and sometimes misguided. Contributing to this was a technical direction that, instead of calming the players, increased the tension, using expressive forms altered during the conduct of the games.
To this we must add the political charge, with all this implies in the milieu where our athletes perform. To participate in an event of this category is, for Cuban athletes, like marching into battle, a military confrontation. They are the torch-bearers in the Plaza of the Revolution, before the Jose Marti monument. Judges individually and as a team they struggle to fight for the victory and to perform at the level this implies. Which means, also, they will return to the fatherland, with the shield or without the shield; only that is missing.
To our players we must recognize them, first, as victims of discrimination victims that prevents their playing in professional leagues, as players from all the other countries of the area are able to do, regardless of ideologies of their governments.
The lack of suitable terrain in our backyard to develop their athletic skills and many other unresolved material needs. But, the most significant thing to begin to reverse this situation is; Separating sports and politics, let each of them play in their separate arenas. Then we can aspire to be champions again.
