Translating Cuba

The plane had touched down in Panama and through the windows I saw the harsh sun shining on the pavement. I walked the halls of the airport looking for a bathroom and a place to wait until my next flight. Some young people waiting in the main hall beckoned me and begin shouting my name. They were Venezuelans. They were there, like me, in transit to another destination. So we started to talk in the midst of the crowds, the suitcases, the comings and goings, while the loudspeakers announced arrivals and departures. They told me they read my blog and understood very well what we are living through on the Island. At one point I asked to take a photo with them. They responded with long faces and begged me, “Please, don’t put it up on Facebook or Twitter, because it’ll make problems for us in our country.” I was shocked. Suddenly the Venezuelans reminded me tremendously of Cubans: fearful, speaking in whispers, hiding anything that could compromise them in front of Power.

That encounter made me reflect on the issue of ideological control, surveillance and the excessive interference of the state in every detail of daily life. However, despite the similarities I found between those young people and my compatriots, I felt that there were still spaces open to them that have been long closed to us. Among those open spaces, are elections. The fact that today, Sunday, Venezuelans can go to the polls and decide with their votes — along with all the official tricks — the immediate future of their nation, is something that was taken from Cubans a long time ago. The Communist Party in our county cleverly cut all the paths that would allow us to choose among several political options. Knowing that he could not compete in a fair fight, Fidel Castro preferred to run on the track alone and chose as his only relief in the relay someone who, what’s more, carries his own name. Comparing our situations, Venezuelans are left with the hope of maybe… Cubans, the frustrations of never.

So, knowing the cage from the inside, I venture to recommend to Venezuelans that they themselves not end up being the ones who close the only exit door they can count on. I hope that those young people I met in the Panama airport are right now exercising their right to vote. I wish for them, that after this day they will never again fear reprisals for a photo taken with someone, for speaking out about an idea, for signing their names to a criticism. I wish for them, in short, that they will achieve what we failed to do.

14 April 2013

These days, perhaps influenced by what is happening in Venezuela (which seems to be contagious), gullibility is having a deep impact on our government’s journalists as evidenced by various articles, whatever the subject matter. It is a fundamental aspect of political reporting — both foreign and domestic — as well as of articles on culture, science, sports, business and history. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

Reports on the upcoming elections in Venezuela have been about only what the ruling party candidate says or does, completely ignoring his opponent unless it is to attack or criticize him. When it comes to telling only one side of a story, these “correspondents” get the gold medal.

On the domestic front everything is great. When important leaders make appearances and ask students what they know about current world events, the answers center on the “sacred” Cuban elections, the tense situation on the Korean peninsula and unfailingly the “blockade” of Cuba. Are students not interested in the country’s problems?

They never fail to mention “the latest injustice in the case of the Five,” which involves the actor Danny Glover not being allowed to visit one of them for the tenth time because he arrived unexpectedly. The International Committee for the Freedom of the Cuban Five, created to address this issue, states that “any person included on a prisoner’s list has a right to visit him.” Do Cuban prisons work this way? “The Humanism of the Revolution is Fully Alive in the Cuban Penal System,” reads one headline.

“Without flowers the world would be a sad place,” says a farmer who harvests them. He explains to a journalist their importance in funeral services, adding, “Imagine someone dying and there being no flowers for the final goodbye.” Do flowers not serve other less sad purposes? Another headline reads, ”The Santiago Crematorium Now in Operation;” the article states, “A service there will cost 340 pesos.”* Have journalists forgotten that the minimum monthly salary is no more than 240 pesos?

Another article on healthy aging states, “The expert stresses the need for a healthy, varied and balanced diet containing fruits and vegetables (ideally six servings a day).”* Is the journalist aware that pensions are meager and fruits and vegetables are expensive?

I think this is more than enough to demonstrate my point. Is this to be “our American” epidemic?**

*Translator’s note: From the journal Juventud Rebelde.

**The term “our American” have been used to refer to multi-national initiatives proposed by Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution movement.

12 April 2013

If tango is an expression of deep sorrow, the TV newscasts in Spain are not the sublimation of a lost dream, but the chronology of disasters, political corruption, social tensions and chronicles that suggest a mood that portends anarchy. The Hispanic television broadcasters dance with words, images and testimonies of the protagonists of evictions but more than reports and reviews of the daily tragedies and problems of national and European life, they pulse with an ideological counterpoint that draws the color of the news and highlights the political and institutional crisis that is exhausting the country.

In Spain, the partisan positioning and mutual accusations between adherents of the Popular Party and the socialists is remarkable in the Parliament sessions where they air the debts contracted to the European Union, which postpone the solution of the economic crisis that began in 2006 and justify government decisions about budget cuts in sensitive sectors such as health, education, employment.

Both the newspapers and the TV news in Spain offer a sense of tsunamis on the horizon, increasing with reports of possible economic and political earthquakes that will shake neighboring Portugal, Italy, Greece and Cyprus, all engaged in diplomatic tussles with the German government and with “the euro trap” that leaves no options to countries in crisis.

But the TV news not only predicts tsunamis in the peninsula and in the countries of the Mediterranean basin. Venezuela is experiencing a bizarre electoral telenovela starring Nicolas Maduro, successor to Hugo Chavez, and Henriquez Capriles, leader of the opposition, while the Communist ruler of North Korea threatens to launch dozens of nuclear missiles against South Korea and the United States, rather than deal with the problems of his starving country.

Since reality is not always interesting, the TV news I to see barely talks about the potential tsunamis in the bellicose Middle East, the African nations submerged in misery and a Caribbean island that seems like a rhapsody of unconnected voices. I refer to Cuba, from where they ask me what is said in Europe about that part of America, whose militaristic litany seems like the overflowing imagination of reporters.

In Spain and Europe they barely speak of Cuba, immersed in their own dissolving dynamics. Perhaps the “old world” is overcome with exhaustion at some many utopian proclamations. Whoever wants to know, I suggest they delve into the pages of Cubanet and the digital weekly Primavera, or  read the bloggers lined up on the platform Voces Cubanas. I notice that, despite being surrounded by water, there is no tsunami in sight.

12 April 2013

The presidential campaign in Venezuela reaches me indirectly through my room, which is adjacent to the window of my neighbor Tomás, below which he has his television. Tomás follows the details of the rough-and-tumble campaign on Telesur. He thunders against Capriles, whom he considers to be little more than a criminal, and thrills to the son of a very precocious Chávez.

These days I avoid letting the remote linger too long on Channel 15. All the bizarre news and images there no longer surprise me and I am bothered by the excessive propaganda. Cuban television, however, certainly seems to have learned little to nothing from the multi-national broadcaster during all the years in which Telesur was only a three-hour program made up of filtered content.

But besides his devotion to the “candidate of the fatherland” Tomás can also see — if he wanted to see — how Venezuelans are able to choose from among various presidential candidates, how opponents from the opposition are able to make their case and, despite whatever my neighbor might say, can come to the conclusion that Venezuelan democracy is fragile. It is fragile, but it exists — a novel idea for the majority of our population, which was born after 1959.

12 April 2013

Recently in Havana it was announced that foreign and domestic journalists would visit “some prisons.” Something is being plotted or planned those in power on the island.

It’s normal that the regime’s spokesmen defend the indefensible, this is what they live for; having wedded themselves to the lie, it is impossible to divorce her. If the Nomenklatura of power ordered them to say it, all is well, they say: everything is perfect.

The incredible thing about the news or the government farce is that foreign agencies join in on the lie.

Could EFE or another foreign agency EFE freely visit Castro’s prisons? Or interview a prisoner chosen randomly?

The worst thing about this theatrical work is that it insults the intelligence and the pain of a people; I dare to predict that over 50% of Cuban families have had a family member arrested and I am being cautious with the figure; each affected family knows the inhuman conditions of Cuban prisons.

The beatings, overcrowding, lack of medical care, self-harm to demand rights, violence, the company of rodents and insects in the cells, the prisoners’ lack of rights of and the jailers’ impunity are the stark reality of what the Cuban military wants to hide. Now with the support of foreign news agencies and the complicity of the national press.

In a survey we did in early 2010 of the political prisoners in Canaletas Prison in Ciego de Avila, 85% of inmates were repeat offenders in prison and a great number assured that the penitentiary was a university for criminal behavior.

To talk about food in Cuban prisons is synonymous with pain. God and the criminals know the food eaten in these places and the amount is so ephemeral that most prisoners are weakened.

Health care is a topic for another paper, but to cite just one example, Alfredo Felipe Fuentes, a former political prisoner of the Group of 75, was always told by the doctors that he was fine despite his ailments; when he was finally exiled abroad he was diagnosed with cancer. I should note that to destroy the political prisoners is a goal in each prison carried out in cahoots with the political police.

Today I read on the skewed news about Cuban prison system, and I remember with sadness the day Reineiro Diaz Betancourt told a common inmate 19 years old, who had committed a minor indiscipline in Cell Block 43 Detachment 3: “Today we can not beat you up because they’re going to accuse at the United Nations of being counterrevolutionaries.” I looked at him and said. “Guard, you should be ashamed of your words, to be an abuser is an option but not the only option.”

12 April 2013

I had already read in a newspaper article by a fellow from the interior of Cuba that the salsa singer and musician Isaac Delgado, “the cool salsa guy”, had visited our country and offered his music, along with Silvio Rodríguez, in Santo Suárez neighborhood. The incident, although silently mentioned in the national media, has aroused suspicions among the Cubans that found out about it; but there is — and it looks like there will be — more. On the night of April 6th I was waiting for a delayed projection of a film, but since the TV programming was as bad as usual, I started anxiously switching between the six channels “mounted” (“hooked”) to the remote control and stopped at channel 6 (Cubavisión) surprised by the image before my eyes; it was the presence of Malena Burke’s, who was performing at the “Boleros de Oro” (Golden Boleros) Festival, which this time was dedicated to her mother, the late singer Elena Burke, better known as “the sentiment Lady”.

What I could see from her performance, I liked, and I wished I had seen the show from the beginning, given that it had been almost three decades since I last enjoyed one of this “cat’s daughter’s” performance who left this place but not Cuba. However, I still remember the historic diatribes put forward by the authorities and their spokesmen against Cubans who left the country. Since when had recent visitors stopped being stateless? Of course, any attempt to relax relations, mend fences, respect differences, and cut down the distances is something positive and I approve; especially if they are people born from the same womb of the fatherland. But, when will they allow the rest of Cuban artists and all the other immigrants in general who wish to do so to travel freely to our common homeland?

If the presence of this Cuban artist was a surprise for me, the implicit government’s coercion — that seeks to influence the behavior of Cuban immigrants — was not. The new immigration law took effect on January 14th for all Cubans on the archipelago but not for those who reside abroad. Why? What is justified as a selection, it is simply an unjustifiable discrimination and violation. In short, many suspect that the law is not an act of justice to the Cuban society, but rather it is oriented to help wash the dictatorial face of the authorities, who have set out to “charm” the US administration in order to normalize the relations with Cuba.

The formula that the government has used on the migrants does not come as a surprise to anyone, the one that does not allow them to travel to Cuba if they become involved in politics, with the exception of a few. As long as the “masters of the key of our homeland” don’t start from a place of respect for the diversity of opinions, it will be difficult to slide open the bolts to the gates of the national home to all Cubans.

9 April 2013

For someone from Havana, the best thing is to walk the streets in spring. These March days, Jorge Olivera Castillo, 52, poet and journalist, is delighted by the green of the trees, the salty aroma, and the gentle sun.

On any weekday morning, he traces his own journey. Aimlessly wandering through a maze of alleyways crammed with the facades of propped up tenements: in these sites reside in the subjects of his stories and poems. He likes to walk the streets of Central Havana, and places not on the tourist postcards.

It was in another spring, that of 2003, when the State wanted to break a handful of peaceful men and women, making arbitrary use of its absolute power. And sentences were handed out to Cubans, like Jorge Olivera, who disagreed and disagree with a regime that confuses a nation with a farm, and democracy with loyalty to a commander.

Olivera was one of 75 prisoners of the Black Spring. Ten years later, without drama, he recalls those days. “About two o’clock in the afternoon of March 18, 2003 I was arrested. I had returned from the hospital, to be seen for a gastrointestinal problem, when a troop of about twenty violent soldiers appeared. At that time I was director of Havana Press, an independent press agency. They conducted a thorough search of every piece of paper I had. They seized books of literature and my stories and articles. An old Remington typewriter. Family photos, letters from friends, electric bills and even my phone bill. A clean sweep. Everything was confiscated by state decree.”

When a government says that a man who writes must be prosecuted, something is wrong with this society. The weapons of free journalists like Jorge Olivera, Ricardo Gonzalez, Raul Rivero and other reporters sentenced to 24 years in prison, were the words, typewriters and landline telephones through which once a week they read the news and their texts about the other Cuba the regime tries to ignore.

In April 2003, a Summary Court sentenced him to 18 years’ imprisonment. “The trial was a circus. Without legal guarantees. The defense attorneys were more afraid than we were. The definitive evidence showing that I was a public threat were my scattered internet writings and recordings of my participation in programs of Radio Martí,” says Jorge.

He slept 36 nights in Villa Marista, headquarters of the secret police, a former religious school transformed into custody for opponents. Located in the Sevillano neighborhood, in the 10 October municipality, Villa Marists is a left over from the Cold War. A Caribbean imitation of Moscow’s Lubyanka Prison from the Communist period. In March 1991, He was there thirteen days, accused of ’enemy propaganda’. When you enter the two-story building, with walls painted bright green, a watch officer sitting behind glass receives you.

They use techniques of intimidation and psychological torture. You’re not a human being. You become an object. A property of special services. Before a gray dress uniform they undress and humiliate you in front of several officers. They force you to do squats and open your anus. As in Abub Ghraib or imprisonment in Guantanamo Naval Base. But in Cuba it has been applied much earlier.

“They were terrible days. In the cells minimum of four people were boarded. The beds were a zinc plate fixed to the wall with a chain. The medicines are placed on a ledge outside the cell. You are called by a number. I was not Jorge, but the prisoner 666. You sleep with two light bulbs that never go off. At any time of day or night you can be called for lengthy interrogations. They lead you through long and gloomy passageways of packed cells where you do not see any other detainee. It’s like being in the mouth of the wolf,” says Olivera.

Some dictators often have a macabre sense of humor. After extensive tortures, Stalin used trials and self-incriminations as a spectacle. Sometimes there was no show. They put your back to a wall and gave you one shot to the temple. If they wanted to prolong the agony and break as a human being, they sent you to a Gulag.

In Cuba, the agents of the State Security have modeled these methods. Except the shot to the temple. One of those strokes of ridicule that the repressive apparatus of the Castro likes, Olivera keeps fresh in his memory. The condemned of the Black Spring were spread out among the island’s prisons in comfortable air-conditioned coaches, the same ones used for tourists.

“The height of cynicism. We traveled that day watching movies and they gave us good food. We were treated like royalty as we deposited in prisons hundreds of miles from our homes. I was detained in Guantanamo Provincial Combined, six hundred miles from where my wife and my children live,” he recalls.

The worst experience Jorge Olivera lived through was the prison. “The food was a mess. Officers beating common prisoners in common. Inmates self-mutilate. Or commit suicide. Poetry saved me from madness.” It was in prison where Olivera began writing poems. In 2004, due to a string of illnesses, he was granted a parole.

Technically he is still not a free man. If the government decides, the Black Spring prisoners remaining in the island can go back behind bars. Of the 27 independent journalists imprisoned in March 2003, Jorge Olivera is the only one left in Cuba. Abroad he has published four books of poetry and two of short stories.

Right now he gives shapes to his latest poems. “Systole and Diastole”is the working title. He writes for Cubanet and Digital Spring, a weekly where for six years the best independent journalists have performed.

Along with fellow journalist Víctor Manuel Domínguez, he leads a writers club. He is an honorable member of the Pen Club of the Czech Republic and the United States. If people could receive a grade for the human condition, I wouldn’t hesitate to shake his hand to give a ten to Jorge Olivera. His priorities remain information, describing the reality of his neighbors in Central Havana, the crisis of values, prostitution and official corruption.

The author of “Surviving in the Mouth of the Wolf” rejects the ’amnesia’ of newly minted dissidents. “You can not forget history. The rebellious generation that dominates the new technologies is welcome. But they should be honest and admit that before them, we were there. Looking at news on hot news and under constant police harassment. We did not have Twitter or Facebook, we wrote with pens on the back of recycled paper. But we never stopped reporting on the precarious life and lack of a future for the people in Cuba. That can not be relegated or forgotten. The history of dissent is very long. And before us, were those who were sentenced to death in La Cabaña. If we forget these stages, mutilate or distort an important part of the peaceful struggle against the Castro regime,” says Jorge Olivera.

His dream is to do radio, be healthy and live in a democracy. He hopes the day is not too far off when he can reunite with Raul Rivero and Tania Quintero, two fellow exiles. Not in Switzerland or Spain, but walking the streets of Havana in the spring.

Iván García

31 March 2013

The honeymoon between the Intellectual and Power will always be incestuous. They are distant, different roads that will be forced to converge, an arm wrestling where the same one doesn’t always win, even though when it’s Power’s turn it hits harder, but eventually it will be forgotten in time except to remember its negativity.

The slap of the intellectual is almost always eternal even if it costs him his life.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Angel’s family wants to inform the international community where we stand as of tonight April 12, 2013.

Last week, the regime tried to hide Angel in the Salvador Allende military hospital with the excuse of a dermatological treatment he is receiving, to avoid his having access to talk to the Commission of National and International Journalists accredited to visit La Lima Prison on Tuesday last, April 9. Given the outright refusal of Angel to be taken to the hospital, he was informed that he would be given a pass for a few hours to go to his house. He was even advised in a phone call that they would call indicating what time they should pick him up on Monday.

That call never took place. And after many inquiries it was reported to his friends that he had been taken by force and handcuffed to an unknown destination. It also emerged that Angel tried to resist the transfer — illegal of course — and they would have undertaken in any event on Sunday night.

The family waited for the phone call that any prisoner is entitled to but that call never came. Attorney Amelia Rodriguez Cala — after visiting La Lima — was informed that Angel had been transferred to the Prison 15-80, The Pitirre, in San Miguel del Padrón, a severe regime facility. She had made all the relevant official arrangements to visit her client and it was agreed she would visit this morning, Thursday, April 11, at 11 am.

The attorney Rodriguez Cala appeared at Prison 15-80 at the set time but was denied the visit. Some officers told that Angel is housed in solitary confinement and is on hunger strike. It is the first time that the lawyer was refused the right to visit a defendant.

None of this has been confirmed because to the unlawful transfer of Angel we must add a new violation of his rights: not allowing his lawyer to visit.

At this time and without knowing anything for sure about Angel, his family, his lawyer and all his friends are extremely concerned. We fear for his safety. We all know that when a prisoner is beaten savagely they will not show him publicly until they can erase the traces of the crime. We fear that this is the case. And to our uncertainty is added the fact of not having the certain knowledge that he is confined in Prison 15-80 and that it could be just one more lie of the regime.

From here, from his blog, this space of freedom that has led to the situation he now finds himself in, wrongly convicted after a rigged trial based on the false allegations made against Angel by the mother of his son — Kenya Rodriguez — his family and friends demand from Raul Castro Ruz that he to enforce all legal guarantees established by law and that Angel be granted the visit of rigor required by law that his lawyer can determine where he is and what is the state of his health.

From here on out we hold the government of Raul Castro Ruz absolutely responsible for what might happen to Angel and we demand his immediate appearance in perfect physical health.

International public opinion through the media and human rights organizations is aware of what they are doing to Ángel Santiesteban-Prats. The mantle of impunity is increasingly slim. And we will not stop until it breaks completely and there is justice for all Cubans.

We also demand that the commission of journalists who are visiting Cuban prisons fulfill their sacred duty to tell the truth and do not lend themselves to being crass puppets in the Castro theater. The life and safety of thousands of prisoners across the island depend on their compliance with the moral imperative and the ethical duty of the journalist. Therefore, we also hold them responsible for what may happen to Angel and all Cuban prisoners, whether political or common.

At dawn on April 12, we are waiting to find Ángel Santiesteban-Prats in perfect health.

Signed: The editor of the blog: The Children Nobody Wanted

12 April 2013

Today the Human Rights Commission was scheduled to visit La Lima Penitentiary. Because of this they planned to take Angel Santiesteban to the Salvador Allende Military Hospital so that he would not have access to this Commission. At his blunt refusal to enter the hospital they were going to give him a pass for a few hours to go home. He woke up expecting to be taken there. But instead he found himself handcuffed and taken no one knows where. Since this morning we have been waiting in vain for news. We hope there wasn’t an incident when he was transferred but we don’t know any more.

We pray that you spread this news as widely as possible.

9 April 2013