Translating Cuba

he early death of Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, president of the Republic of Venezuela, brings with it instability for the country and those allied with him.

With the death of the leader the opportunity to take power is knocking on Capriles’ door. In a country in mourning, the political opponents are gathering their forces to attack the violations of the constitution without concern for the pain of the rank and file Chavista and family members.

The opportunity presents itself but not right now. continue reading

Diaz-Canel. Photo from http://www.observer-reporter.com

If for years Hugo Chavez was politically influenced by Cuba’s “historical” leadership (as those who participated in the Revolution call themselves), it seems that this influence is now reversed. That is, the attitudes of the Venezuelan president are taken into account by the authorities of the Cuban archipelago — who seem to take note of everything and imitate and adopt what suits them — to try to unlock the hinges welded shut by the rust of their political machine.

When Chavez came to Havana in December, and perhaps compelled by his speech to his people before leaving for here — leaving Nicolas Maduro (desperate for the job) to head the government — they coincidentally published a few days later in the newspaper Granma that the Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez had been promoted to the Politburo. Rodriguez is a young man who in 2009 replaced his predecessor, and who has exceeded so far all the required proofs of “Fidel-ity and Raul-ity” with the completion of the missions they have entrusted to him, and the insipidness of his flattering speeches.

A few days after the resignation of Benedict XVI, other “leaves” sprouted fortuitously from Cuba’s photocopier government. The resignations of Abelardo Colome Ibarra, minister of the interior, and Jose R. Machado Ventura, first vice president since an illness in the presidential chair resulted in Raul Castro giving up the vice presidential one to move up. Both these traditional higher-ups — and they weren’t the only ones — humbly, but without saintliness, put their portfolios at the disposition of the National Assembly.

The evidence the number one Cuban had been leaving around for a few years about who his “chosen one” would be, to wit Miguel Diaz-Canel Bermudez, bore fruit recently with the vote to make him Cuba’s first vice-president. With these impressions they have created a file with a renewed image of the totalitarian regime. Raul-ity and renewal seem to be the “R’s” that will begin to de-revolutionize everything that was change to drag the country down and freeze it in Caesarism.

With the perspective of Chavez’s deteriorating health and of money and investment from the United States, the real leaders in power are sending the message of change when the biological clock or the logistic and geopolitical conditions force it, not when it is demanded by society and the nation.

We need real reform in which the branches of government become independent, policy alternatives are recognized, other political parties are decriminalized, there are fundamental rights and freedoms, and genuine, transparent and democratic, elections that represent the different ideological colors of society.

I hope the historical leaders enjoy good health, so that Diaz-Canel — like his Venezuelan counterpart (as I said in a Tweet) — is not assigned the sad task of becoming a spokesperson for another leader, as if he didn’t have other things to do.

It seems that not only talent but a well-learned script, unconditional loyalty to the maximum leader of the only party (which also is the state), the ability to praise them and avoid the “honey of power” accusations from the elite, among other more minor attributes, are the merits of greater weight when appointing and promoting some to the country’s most important positions in despotic and dictatorial regimes.

Translator’s note: This post was published in Spanish before Chavez’s death.

5 March 2013

I froze my ears off  in Prague and from the window of the number 14 tram I could see Misha, the little bear holding a Kalashnikov. I immediately remembered this icon of the 1980 Moscow Olympics and the entire sequence of animated cartoons he starred in later. Those were the days when Cuban children knew more about the Russian tundra than the countryside of our own nation, more about wolves than hutias, more about apples than oranges.

The era when the Kremlin was a constant presence in our lives, with its soldiers, its technicians sent from thousands of miles away and its subsidy so fat it allowed some extraordinarily wasteful spending on the part of Fidel Castro. All this passed through my mind in a second as I read the announcement that this particular display promised a trip to the past through the aesthetic promoted by the USSR.

At a set time, as with all events in the time I spent in the Czech Republic, I went to 10 Na Prikope Street to take a look at the museum. The first surprise was at the entrance, where the woman who was selling tickets had the courtesy to let me pass free, due to the fact—she explained—that I came from Cuba. Given the closeness of the objects in those rooms with my reality, I could enjoy the tour free of charge because in the end it was a journey through my own daily life. Why should I pay for the ordinary, for the usual, for exactly how it is?

While I observed the wonder and giggles of other visitors, I looked at the red flags, listened to the Internationale, and passed by the statues in glorious poses with a familiarity immune to amazement. It was like attending an exposition of gadgets from my kitchen or the underwear in my drawer. Nothing had the character of a museum piece for me, as I live a scenario were each one of these objects or ways of speaking and presenting an image are still present for me. A journey to the same, an excursion to the known and so often experienced. A museum of the past, for this traveler coming from the same remote time.

Closeness, however, is not always synonymous with comfort. So as I advanced through the rooms a feeling of strangulation came over me. The medals, the farmer with a raised fist, and the ugly cans of jam with colorless labels. Everything contributed to an itch that started on my face and spread under my coat to my whole body. Barely two weeks after leaving Cuba, I felt a marked allergy to everything. There were the military uniforms with the peaked caps that our officers mimicked for decades. The insignias for outstanding workers and soldiers killed in the war, so identical to those given out in our own country that I had to look twice to convince myself they didn’t say “Republic of Cuba” rather than USSR or RDA.

So, advancing between the posters in the worst style of Socialist realism I came to a reproduction of a KGB office. The rough phone, the metal files with each drawer labeled with a letter and the files within. Little pieces of cardboard stained by time with the names of the spied upon. The catalog of the “inconvenient” citizens, of the critics who were once the targets of the political police.

I was tempted to look for “Y” and delve into the files in search of a name. But at that moment the feeling of asphyxiation the Museum of Communism gave me reached an unbearable point and I ran out into the street to take a breath of Prague’s air, cold and free.

13 March 2013

Perhaps the concern I feel over the recent visit of Russian President Dimitri A. Medvedev to Cuba is due to my natural incompetence in economic matters, but in truth reading the first item on his agenda leaves little room for doubt. The Russian Prime Minister clearly establishes as the primary purpose of his visit, to establish a “Convention on the regularization of the debt of the Republic of Cuba to the Russian Federation for credits granted in the period of the former USSR.”

It couldn’t have been stated more clearly if it were etched in stone. Any malcontent could get the impression that Comrade Medvedev came to hand us the bill for everything having to do with Russian for the three decades of “cooperation” during the Soviet era. However much this issue is decorated or obscured with the other nine points which are of little importance, that time of Russian dreams has been left definitively in the past by this generation of Russian politicians and they’re giving us a clear and concise message: the seem disposed to collect everything they are owed, down to the last centavo.

I recently reflected on the post-war period and how much a society can progress through an opportune focusing of its efforts. A little more than a decade after the Second World War, Europe was completely changed. Cities flattened by Nazi bombs were rebuilt in the carefree abandon of the ‘60s, and the same thing happened in Japan, once it was stripped of it military ballast. The world watched how, despite the nuclear aftermath, the land of the rising sun rebuilt at a dizzying speed and became a world economic power. A similar evolution occurred in Germany, with all its cities bombed by the RAF, including Berlin having been attacked by the artillery of the Red Army.

However, after three decades of broad Soviet economic protection — equivalent to a Marshall Plan designed especially for us — left us unable to take flight. The fact is, we have given history an eloquent example of how to waste such an opportunity.

But, as it was in the past it continues to be today, and Moscow doesn’t believe in tears. Now Comrade Mededev arrives, at this time and with that message, which could not come at a more inopportune time, no matter how one depreciates the amount for the differences in the value of the old ruble and the agreement to pay in a decade.

Watching the press conference I saw something — arrogance? — in the gestures of the Russian, and something else — worry? — on the face of our President Raul. To tell the truth, I don’t know where we are going to get everything we would need to pay back for thirty years of resources wasted by the handful — I wonder if this would be possible — because at that time no one knew — not the KGB, nor the CIA, not even God — that there would be glasnost, or perestroika, and that someone would one day postulate, for good or ill, the apparent end of history.

9 March 2013

UNEAC 50th Anniversary Gala: Esteban Lazo, Abel Prieto, Raul Castro, Miguel Barnet and one other official. Photo EFE/Alejandro Ernesto

Prison Diary II. La Lima Prison.

Book Fair?

In the last days before going to prison, I managed to read several letters from friends who remembered that Book Fair in Havana where we got together and, in addition to sharing the culture, embraced the writers of this island and those who don’t visit us.

“The ’newest’ generation”* was a family that was ready for any call from its members to defend ourselves against bureaucrats, officials and the political police who constantly harassed us like mad dogs for the slightest thing, sometimes just for an expression between a group of intellectuals or for a story reading, or simply because a lot of intellectuals came to your house, and writers like Amir Valle, Jorge Luis Arzola or Daniel Morales can attest to this.

The killed that emotion of our meeting at the Book Fairs, and now it’s nothing more than a space to catch and convict intellectuals without the least scruples, and as if that weren’t enough, like in a gladiator arena, we began to fight among ourselves, but not even for our lives and ideals, as it was in my case, but simply to defend their chance to survive as best as possible. One refusal, and they would start down the path of ostracism, and not everyone was there for them.

And so the members of my generation preferred to emigrate and save their work and their families and find a dignified life where their children wouldn’t suffer what they had to bear because they knew the ordeal that would come down on them from above if they expressed adverse opinions.

In any event, the Book Fair ceased to be a cultural plaza, now it was taken over by the political and military, as happened in the majority of books presented, and for this type of work major editions are planned.

Hence, what I am sure of is that one day those intellectuals who sought shelter elsewhere will be back, and we will develop a generation, already mature, with our opinions, but above all, with the love of culture, art and literature that has always been the great banner of our generation of the children nobody wanted**.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats

Translator’s notes:

*A post about Angel and his role in “the newest generation” can be read here. Following is an excerpt: By Ernesto Santana Zaldívar. HAVANA, Cuba, June, http://www.cubanet.org – In the ’90s, the generation of the Novísimos (the Newest) brought to Cuban literature themes and narrative forms that marked a certain rupture with the previous generations. Angel Santiesteban, born in 1966, became one of the most emblematic creators of this time, not only for the prizes he won, but also for the acceptance he achieved with readers.

**”The Children Nobody Wanted” is the title of a Angel’s book of stories about Angola, and of his blog.

12 March 2013

The word “people” is widely used by politicians, mainly by those who are leftists or populists. Phrases such as the power of the people, the people decide, the people command, the people’s opinion, the people aroused, the people condemn, the people support and many others are seen and heard with great frequency. For these politicians the people are all homogenous, and include only those who share their political and ideological views, lumping everyone together without taking into account others who might think differently. The reality, however, is something else. Among the people there are views that are similar and views that are different. It is not a closed circuit but rather an unlimited open space. It would be more correct to speak of one or more segments of the people, of minorities and majorities, but certainly not of all the people.

Because of this, but mainly because of its demagogic usage, it is not a word of which I am fond. I much prefer the word citizen, which seems to me to be more  precise and which suggests a higher degree of individuality and awareness of rights and responsibilities. I see a citizen as someone far removed from the masses (a word which fortunately has been out of favor for a number of years), as someone capable making his or her presence in society felt.

One of our principle problems (though not the only one, by any means), is having to accept being confined by this generic concept of the people instead of having defended our status as citizens. The people, as well as the masses, have always been manipulated, serving as a platform and basis of support for flawed ideas, much to the nation’s detriment. This would not have happened if society had been made up of citizens – people who fulfilled their duties while demanding respect for their rights.

Reestablishing the role of the citizen is an arduous and complex task, but a necessary one if we truly want to overcome the moral and civic vacuum in which we find ourselves. It is essential for the real economic, politic and social change that the country demands.

11 March 2013

Although Karl Marx has written (and been greatly quoted out of context) that “religion is the opium of the people,” it seems that the revolutionary hagiographers, in the absence of an Earth that is “Paradise / Empire of Humanity” [1], have needed to construct a Utopian Pantheon of socialists gods who, to be revered, facilitate the passage through this capitalist Valley of Tears until the Redemption of the Humble everlasting. [2]

After the disastrous landing of the Granma, Fidel Castro brought together twelve survivors to begin the guerrilla war. They were twelve, like the apostles, and if there had been less or more, they would have had to erase them. He entered Havana in January 1959, with thirty-three, the same age as Jesus was when he died, received the palms of the people and circulated the famous cover of Bohemia magazine, with Fidel Jesus-like and at the bottom, the words: “Glory to the National Hero!” Thus begins his cult, marked by infallibility (“if Fidel knew this … but they hide everything from him…”), surviving hundreds of attempts on his person, as Daniel resisted and tamed the lions, restored the fiefdom where he was born as a sacred place of the nation, the culmination of pilgrimages. It became essentially forest, land of the caiguarán tree and a magic potion, blessed, he was invincible: “Fidel, Fidel, what does Fidel have / That the Americans can’t handle him?” The revolutionary devotees took the Sacred Heart paintings off their walls and hung his image.

The theme is not new. At the death of Lenin, he was embalmed and his restored body placed in a monument in Red Square, although he wanted to be next to his mother. Stalin, Little Father Stalin too, but he lasted only until the 20th Congress of the Communist Party, when he was buried in the Kremlin, where devotees still place flowers. The “brothers of the East” followed fashion and what about the Asian version! The perpetual delirium surrounding Mao, Kim Il Sung, Ho Chi Minh.

Ignorance is the preferred country of hagiographers. Faced with the misery that is built on land blessed by an abundance of resources, poverty which can not be eliminated because of inefficiency, corruption, politicking, nepotism, cronyism, welfarism, the squandering of wealth, education circumscribed, the repeated lie, leaving only one path: that of hopeful faith.

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias has died. His corpse–presumably embalmed by Massimo Signoracci, who has recently been on a Caribbean and South American tour–will be exhibited for two weeks for people to see it, dream it, pray it. They say he will then rest in a mausoleum and not in his grandmother’s yard, as he wished. He is already the hero of the Fatherland and the martyr of the Bolivarian Revolution because he died from overwork dedicated to his people or from the evil wiles of the Empire or of the Right (we don’t know yet). The cancer that afflicted him wasn’t cancer,  it was another disguise of the Evil One. Nicolas Maduro is the designated disciple, the rock upon which his church will be founded.

Habemus Sanctus.

[1] Excerpt from the anthem “The Internationale”.
[2] Sorry for the profusion of capital letters, but the solemnity required it.

From Cubaencuentro

8 March 2013

Although I do not often think of Hugo Chávez, Evo Morales, Castro or other Latin American caudillos, I confess that the tragicomic saga taking place in Venezuela after the death of President Chávez causes me embarrassment mixed with revulsion. Perhaps I have been conditioned by having grown up under Castro-ism, a rich nutritional source for new populist patriarchs who, after coming to power, impose measures in favor of the dispossessed, whom they use as shock troops against the rest of society, thus facilitating the exclusion of some to the detriment of others.

This binary concept of friends and enemies is as old as society itself and can be illustrated with examples put into practice during the decades of the Cold War. It is what led Hugo Chávez to adopt Fidel Castro as a patron and the Cuban dictatorship as a social model.

The red wave of Chavistas, the interminable line to the coffin, the media campaign and the attempt to sanctify the deceased – mummified like Lenin – by the governing elite causes feelings more of sorrow than embarrassment. Sorrow because of the factions created by the leader and by the stupidity of the masses, who applaud him in exchange for bread and promises, unable to think through the consequences of their actions or of the hostage status to which they will be relegated by a caudillo who promotes hatred and discord in order to carry out his plans for reform.

Chavism is but the latest chapter in the Cold War. It is another attempt at absolute domination by the machinery of the state. Chávez was a hybrid between the tradition of the Latin strongman and Soviet ministerialism. He, like his Cuban mentors, followed the same outline as the former Soviet Union. Though he was not able to fully apply them, he showed himself to be an excellent apprentice of the essential precepts of a model that ran aground decades ago, and which survives only in Cuba and North Korea.

One could talk at length – especially nowadays when Latin American analysts are trying to discern every facet of Chavism – about the intersection of a Venezuela facing the future and the helplessness of its allies in the wake of the passing of the Bolivarian Caesar, who so revered the Comandante from the dilapidated island in the Caribbean that he even inherited the old guru’s cancer. And what about the people who believed in the new redeemer? They will remain in limbo, much like those elderly people in Cuba, who make withdrawals from their much devalued checking accounts and at times, only at times, speak of the horrors they committed in the name of the revolution and the leader, who left them hanging from a diving board of misery.

9 March 2013

Looking back from 2013, I think one of the most controversial measures for the Cuban people last year were the approval of Law No. 113, the new tax system. and Decree No. 308, which since its appearance in the Official Gazette, regulates the norms and procedures that, according to the newspaper Granma, began to be applied in a gradual way starting in January.

In principle, I agree with the new legislation. The economy of my country was built on the cement of an architectural system of arbitrary crime, where many thieves, from all over the world, came to Cuba with suitcases full of money to evade international regulations and, without explaining the origins of the money, deposited it in our bank and invested it in our country.

Here I should point out that some of those crooks ended up cheated, because we were living — and I’m not sure if I should refer only to a time in the past — in a tax and moral amnesty, which among other things affected our candid island modesty, and without any justification, forced us to practice that worn-out Chinese proverb, “A thief who robs a thief…”

One of the meanings of the word freedom is to be part of a disorder; but even so, we Cubans (solvent or not) must recover our culture of taxes.

I invite you to consult the law that went into effect on January 1, which obliges people to pay taxes: personal, utilities, sales, services, land transport, transmission and inheritance of goods, documents, etc. And to review the nine taxes that, although they appear in the body of the ordinance, it will not be in effect for now.

If we immerse ourselves in the spirit of this new tax policy, we will find that it is basically economic. The country is falling apart and this danger falls on everyone in sight. It’s a source of additional relief that it only seeks to collect, not benefit.

This statute passed by the members of the National Assembly of People’s Power (people who are well-read, erudite and eloquent), is an act of publicity which, like any discourse carried out in parables, should not be put into effect. It is nothing more than an incomplete law riddled with loopholes which, subtlety saturated with gimmicky babbling, appears as quasi-chimerical perfection and manages to convert the defrauded into the defrauder.

In a punitive spirit, small tax frauds are persecuted as if the nation’s corruption rested in the carpenter, the shoe repairer, the kiosk vender; and not in the big cities or the State enterprises. Who did they think they were fooling; just a few years ago the Ministry of the Armed Forces (MINFAR) disbursed the shameful sum of several million dollars to set up a project of private jets with airplanes that never flew or left their hangers because there were no buyers. This, indeed, was a mega tax fraud, worthy of being punished.

But Lae No. and its Decree No. 308, are chess moves. A cold creation of the Cuban government which, hidden behind the typical trip of the old poker player, launches on the world, and especially on the United States, a message of solidity and change. If the Spaniards know wine, Havana knows lechery and deceit.

9 March 2013